Current Reading Progress: Beginning of Chapter 3 of Better Living Through Criticism
The main themes of chapter one of Better Living Through Criticism are taste, art, and subjectivity/determinism. The text begins by discussing the nature of taste: what exactly it is, how we come to have it, and the like. It outlines three basic questions that form the foundation of the understanding, or lack thereof, of the interactions with taste, i.e. criticism. They are, 1) how do we know what we know?; why do we feel what we feel?; and what are we talking about? The first two seem fairly clear to me. 1) Since taste seems to be largely, if not entirely, determined by what we know, how we come to know what we do is an important aspect to understanding why our taste is the way it is. 2) This second question is fairly similar to the first; however, it jumps into the realm of emotion. Art clearly invokes our emotions; if not, we wouldn’t cry at movies or be utterly stupefied by beautiful sculpture. Because art pulls at the strings of feeling, understanding why we feel what we do is a key to understanding the mechanisms behind taste and our discussion with it. The appreciation of art is much more than an examination of technical ability or originality—it is a visceral experience, ineffable and often strong enough to change the tide of history. 3) This question is the most interesting one to me because it seems so obvious. Of course you have to know what we’re talking about to critique it. But I think the question asks something much more fundamental—I am just not sure what.
The chapter then moves on to discuss several different philosophers and their arguments around taste, beauty, and art. One of the most featured was Kant with his discussion of beauty being something objective. My comments about this in my Common Place book are in the photos below (titled “Kant’s Objective Beauty”). To sum up my reaction found on those pages: I completely reject the notion of beauty being an objective quality. I stand resolutely with the postmodernist view that beauty is a subjective quality determined by your life experiences. I do not see any way of saying that one work of art is more beautiful than another no matter what anyone says. This brings me to the next item in my Common Place book: “My Thoughts on Taste.” To me, “taste” is a nice condensing word that means the collection of likes and dislikes one has towards art. “Good taste” is the collection of likes and dislikes that a community has agreed upon. But in general, taste is deterministic: everyone has their own.
Later in the chapter, A. O. Scott brings up the Abramović exhibit at the MoMA, “The Artist is Present.” I think that the idea was absolutely brilliant, beautifully executed, and deeply thought provoking. The last photo of my Common Place book I’ve included here is the page where I discuss the exhibit in three sections: what was the exhibit?; is it really art?; and my opinion. To really answer the question “is it art?”, I think that you first have to define what art is. Knowing that going through that definition would be incredibly time-consuming, I will leave that for another post. However, the piece does do a few things that I think make it art (but which are not necessary features that art must have. Abramović had intention behind what she did, she intends for the spectators to be changed by her work, and she wants to push the boundaries of our understanding, specifically she wants us to question exactly what I am question: what is art and is this it? I have a myriad of opinions and thoughts about this piece! I love how Abramović makes the viewer an essential part of the piece itself. The person sitting in the chair across from her has suddenly become the art. It cleverly closes the divide between spectator and art, subject and object; it allows for easier access to understanding by being so overtly distinct and so eager to find connection, therefore closing the gap between the matured art critic and the quotidian person; having only one person sitting across from her at a time highlights the idea of the individual experience of art, that everyone gathers something different depending on who they are (this strongly relates to my earlier discussion of Kant). My fascination with this piece prompted me to do more research on Abramović. I found a TedTalk of hers and read some more about her type of art. She believes that performance art is uniquely powerful due to its ephemeral nature. She’s quite an inspirational artist.
Currently, I have 7 pages of jam-packed, Common Placing madness, complete with discussion on the foundation of criticism, logical reasoning in arguments, Kant, population size and determinism, taste, “The Artist is Present,” “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” “Reasons for Attendance,” and vocabulary. This type of work is highly time-consuming, yes, but also immensely valuable to the deep thinking process. Doing this type of work makes me suspect that we will be taking a considerable amount of time to carefully consider topics and thoroughly think though concepts. This really excites me as it is something that I already love to do! I also have a hunch that we will be doing a lot of work with determinism, which also excites me. I have some extremely rattling thoughts about the whole thing that I may include in a separate blog post (additional to the three required).
