Art Museum VS Concert

The other day, we had a class discussion about fetishism and satisfaction. We also compared how pleasing a concert performance is to an art museum. One argument was that going to a concert is more pleasing because it is more like a once in a life time thing and it would be something you can savior in your memories. Another argument was that you can lose interest after a while of going to the same art museum over and over again, after all, the museum will have the same exhibits and art work. Here's what I think:


It all depends on your preference and what you like better. For instance, I'm an art major but I don't like looking at other people's art work over and over again, everyday, unless it's something I like a lot, like garbage art. But I also like going to concerts. The problem with comparing these two ideas is that concerts cant really be performed every single day in the same spot and each performance would be different each time.

What is Beauty?

What I think is beautiful will be different from what you think is beautiful.
Here's what I think is beautiful:

• the colors of the clouds and the sky as the sun comes up into view to signify that it is morning as the birds just start to chirp and the air is starting to become warm from the sun's rays
• the ocean waves crashing and lapping over the softest grains of sand at the beach
• the fresh looking customized nike shoes I had just found online
• the sound of Whitney Houston's voice as she sings
• the ripe rasberries still dangling from the rasberry bushes
• the picture of my parents' wedding day where my mom wore a beautiful white wedding gown, smiling into the eyes of my dad in his black tuxedo.
• the velvety red petals folded and curled together, forming a rose with sharp thorns pricking out of the stem.
• the 5 star restaurant food I see on T.V. were they decorate the food to extreme elegance, too perfect to eat.

Based on only a few of the things I described of what I think is art, you can tell that I mostly describe beauty in nature. It is, in a way, kind of tough to describe something as "beautiful" when there are there words you can use, especially now-a-days where all we use are slang terms. It could be just me but I think the purity and simplicities of nature are pleasing to look at. I've been raised on the country side so many of the things I have seen would be viewed differently from what an urban city dweller would see it as.

Question: Depending on how we describe beauty, does it matter how we were raised that answers why we have differences on the definition of beauty?

Response to Kim's blog:

"Do you think Tolstoy and Goodman have compatible theories about art?"
    No I don't think so. Tolstoy is an art philosopher who believes that a good piece of art would have to express an emotion. This is so that people can have a connection they can both share with art. The connection they have with emotion is something everyone can experience. He explains his theory that "through the use of such devices as color, sound, and movement, art communicates to its audience a feeling or emotion that the artist has previously experienced."

    What Tolstoy believes the best art is what makes one feel tainted by whatever feeling or emotion the work of art is trying to convey to art viewers. Art that effects its people who take in the view of the piece of art and receive the most emotion from it is what Tolstoy considers true art. Where as for Goodman, he uses the question, "when is art?" rather than the usual "what is art?". So far, the two philosophers may seem to have the same ideas, but Goodman believes that the meaning of the art doesn't matter, but only how the art was made. According to Tolstoy, every piece of art has emotion, which means that every piece of art has meaning. So that brings out the differences between Tolstoy and Goodman.

Question: Since there are the questions, "What is art?""When is art?" is there another question you can use in art philosophy?

Response to Natalie's blog:

"Is it possible for pieces to be better than others?"

    It depends. I mean, there are so many levels of art and then you have to also depict what you mean by better. One piece of art can better show cubism, for example, and then you'd think of Pablo Picasso and his art works. And then there art other things that you can describe for best, such as best painting, sculpture, act, music, dance, etc.

Backtracking to Hume

So, Hume states that we can't truely judge art unless we are clean/pure, meaning not drunk, high, upset, happy, sad, or anything. So what does that leave us at? What emotion do we have left and what would we think of and how would we think if we aren't influenced by anything? We are influenced by everything. So just trying to think of how we would act and be if everything in our lives never affected us seems a bit impossible to imagine.

What would we be like if we weren't influenced or effected by anything?

Coffee Art?

After watching the movie called, "The Green Hornet," I suddenly was in awe of the way people make their coffee. I picture it as some form of art, knowing that there isn't a very clear deffinition of what art is and all. After looking up some images of coffee art on the internet, I saw that with a lot of practice, you can pretty much create any image in simply something you drink when you wake up in the morning.

You can take a cup of coffee like this:

and turn it into something like this:

or this:



So here's my question.... Because coffee is drinkable and you can create art with it, shouldn't it be more known and attention grabbing since it doesn't last as long as a painting would?

Why does Weitz say that art’s “openness” makes a definition impossible?:

What Morris Weitz means is that Art continually evolves, mixing up the categories in art and moving them around so much that it disrupts other categories that he believes it is impossible to define art in such a way he believes all other word can be directly defined. Because of the fact that art has no boundaries and is considered a practice make the definition of art indefinable. There are also just so many varieties, parts, sections and exceptions in art for it to be described in a coherent way. As art changes throughout evolution, the definition also changes along with it. Art can be looked at in many ways, as what Morris Weitz comments about L. Wittgenstein's essay, art could be looked at as a game. 

Weitz mentions how although art has many categories, such as "'tragedy,' 'comedy,' 'painting,' 'opra,' etc." Only thing is that art has to fit perfectly into that category description, other wise, there would have to be a new category made in art. You can compare art to a family for example, as Weitz tries to explain. For every family member, one person can have brown hair, blue eyes, and freckles. This family member might look similar to another family member but have different resemblances. For example, family member number one might have straight hair and family member number two might have curly hair. This is the way Morris Weitz thinks of how words are defined. He believes that words can seem like they mean the same thing but have a distinct definition that makes the words different from each other. And that is why he believes art is indefinable.

Shouldn't there be certain principles that the definition of art should follow? If there are, what are they?