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?

Question:

Why do we choose to leave the definition of the term "art" so broad and infinite?

Hume's Philosophy:

We could only judge what good and bad art is through human nature, through whatever we see fit that brings pleasure to our eyes. The difficulty is that one's opinion can change according to what they feed and what their emotions are. If one were, for example, to have a fever, that person would have a much different opinion if he or she were to be well. He or she might choose for example, tea rather than coffee when sich with a fever and coffee over tea after a night of partying with a hangover. Small things can affect one's opinions. If someone were in a bad mood, he or she would choose the most gloomy, dark, and/or gruesome paiting. If someone were to be in a good mood, he or she would choose the most cheerful, happy and bright painting.

Why do our emotions effect our opinions so easily?

Something I Found:

Click on the link below to see what I had found. It's mostly just an article on art taken to the streets and turning a place into something different, something people can play around with (especially with a camera). He turns a peaceful setting into something extreme or disruptive, yet also playing with our minds. Just imagine stepping out of your house or apartment and seeing this outside.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1153004/Mind-crevasse-The-amazing-3D-pavement-art-pedestrians-edge.html

Response to Brycen's blog:

If photography is to be considered art, then is real life also art? Is nature and everything around us also art?

Real-life can be art, for example, dancing and acting, if that is what Brycen means. And to answer his other question, yes it can be. As Thomas E. Wartenberg has explained in his essays, art can pretty much be anything that is pleasing to ones' eyes.

For instance, one can find a spider web and find it pleasing (thus, similar to what John Dewey has stated about whether or not animals could make art), and consider it art.

If you look at the world through a photographer's eye, anything can be a possibility of becoming a piece of art depending on how one looks at it. Taking a picture of it on a Kodak or Nikon or any other type of camera only makes one feel like it's more official as a work of art. You don't have to look through a pair of lenses to consider something you see a work of art.

Response to Gina's question:

Is it better to repress our emotions for the sake of societal standards, or should we express ourselves freely through the medium of art?


Well, we already express our explicit emotions in art as of now along with the past, and we do repress almost all of our emotions for the sake of society. But to choose which is better, I'd say, leave it the way it is now. People are very fragile beings that are very opinionated and prefer explicit things to be censored. I'll have to agree with that, after all, there are younger people/children who aren't mature enough, nor old enough, to hear or know of such emotions. It helps the way children grow up into when they become older. Those who are exposed to such explicitness would experience, for example, violence early in life.
To express our feelings and emotions in art is more of a safer way of expressing it than to just to tell people about it (then again that's why we have therapists to talk to about it). Through art, if you choose abstract art, you can hide those explicit thoughts in the painting or drawing or whatever art form it is you choose. So either way, we use art as a form of escape to express our hidden emotions.

Response to Joshua's question

Will art ever go extinct?:

I believe that art is forever evolving. Honestly, I don't think art can ever go extinct. If it does, how would art become extinct and how would the world look like for art to become extinct?

Art of Scarification:

Looking at my friend's new tattoo, I see how raw it looks and how much it hurt in the process. Another friend asked her if she bled a lot, which was the first time I've ever heard someone ask such a question. I never knew you could bleed when you got a tattoo. And thinking about it now, how much I badly want one I wonder if, as horrible and disgusting as it sounds, pain can be a part of art, or at least the thought of it.

There's also people that brand themselves (they prefer to use the term "scarification"). This type of body art used to be the rite of passage in the ancient times, where when one goes through this process, they become known as a real man or woman. Not to be gruesome or anything, this topic interests me. When you look as someone's tattoo, you usually look at the size first. And the first question everyone asks first is usually "Did it hurt?" And for me, I believe that the coolest looking tattoo is always the most largest and most painful-looking tattoo (on their back for example). And the thought of knowing that this person went through all that pain to get that tattoo done and finished on their very own skin makes it even more worth while to look at.

One form of body art that gives me the creeps of thinking about is "scarification." Like tatooing, scarification is one of the oldest forms of body art many cultures use as a rite of passage. But now, it is becoming one of the popular forms of body art, just like tatooing, piercing, etc... 

Knowing this and how people are taking art to the next level I want to ask:
Does pain make art more interesting?

Beautifying Natural Art

After reading John Dewey's essay, I realized how true he is about how people don't think of organic objects and/or things as art. Currently, I am taking a Great Monuments of Art II class that is mostly focused on Navajo Folk Art. I often tend to find this subject dry during lectures about rugs that the Navajos have made, Navajo sand-paintings, and such.

We do not really think of objects that are beautiful (creative) and also useful are considered art. As Dewey says in his essay, "A conception of fine art that sets out from its connection with discovered qualities of ordinary experience will be able to indicate the factors and forces that favor the normal development of common human activities into matters of artistic value."
We have houses, or apartments, that are considered our shelters, yet we also keep it clean and/or modern and just the way we think houses should be in our eyes. We would never really think of our houses as a piece of art. Sure, keeping the house clean is in a way a form of survival in order for it to be inhabitable, but we add extra touches to it. Those extra touches we add to it include windows curtains, rugs/carpet/wood flooring, doors, pictures/paintings/wall decoration, etc....

These extra touches are not important to our everyday lives, for we can just survive in caves and dirt floor. Instead, we choose to satisfy ourselves with unnecessary appliances and such, using what we know about art and color coordination, we add a bit of beauty and art into our shelters we call home.