Art Videos

This past week, I had the opportunity to watch two very interesting videos about art and the aesthetic of art. One video focused mainly on the philosophers of the ages, and how they viewed art. While the other showcased art and science working together.


Aesthtics: Philosophy of the Arts
Some of the key points in the video was the fact that there has been a great difference in opinion about art over time. Some people see art as rational, while others see it as a form of beauty and expression. 
The philosopher that I agreed with the most would have to be Nietzsche. He was a philosopher in the 1800's and his main idea was "will to power" and "Art is a resounding yes to life...it goes beyond the rational". I agree with his idea that art is a yes to life. By creating art, we say yes to life. We accept the challenge to create things that have to do with the complexities of everyday life. He counters the ideas of Plato about aesthetics, because he sees beauty not only in life but in art as well. 


In the second video CARTA, two researchers discussed in depth how art and science are related. This is usually an area that is avoided in art. You never really hear too much talk about how art can be a science. However, this is the main focus of this video. It shows a link between art and science that I have never been exposed to before. It made me look at how art is perceived in a whole new light. 
I found Changeux's view of art very interesting. He showed tools and cave paintings dating back 100,000 years, and showed how they were artistic pieces. He showed that even thousands of years ago people were using 'artistic composition'. I thought he made an interesting point how there is a 'genetic envelope' of art. He said that all people are predispostioneid to create art in one form of another. 


Ramachadran also introduced some fascinating points in his lecture. He argues that science and art meet in the brain. He studied why certain pieces of art have such profound effects on people. I liked his example of the statue of the Hindu Goddess. There is a famous statue of a Hindu Goddess that Indians enjoyed very much and thought was beautiful. However, once Western people saw this statue, they decided that it did not look like a woman should. It had breasts that were too large, and a too small waist. On the other hand they enjoyed Pablo Picasso's work. Ramachadran argues that Picasso was creating an exaggerated image, that was not life like at all. But the Western people said Picasso was being deliberate when he painted that, and that is what makes his painting more acceptable.  His main point was that the 'goal of art is to deliberately distort images in some way to produce a positive effect on the human brain'. 


Both of these videos relate directly to the text that we are reading in class because it delves deeper into the understanding of what aesthetics means, and how we can define it. This video gives insight into a complicated issue and shows it in a new light, so that we as observers of art can look at art with a new critical lens. By doing this, we can gain depth of understanding the many complex layers of what aesthetics means, and that we should take this new information into account as we continue on in this course.