What is Beauty and Why We Value Art so Much - Essay Example

Arts Q. What is beauty What are aesthetics Beauty is a thought. Everyone has his own thought and standard of beauty. The thought of beauty relies upon the culture and the way of living of one individual. When thoughts about beauty create strong effects, they can become beauty ideals. The thought of beauty is affected by many factors. These factors include culture, money, desires, economic conditions etc. as described by Freeland (Freeland 2001). Beauty standard changes from time to time. About 80 years back, the rich people of Europe and US kept on trying to keep their skin as white as possible. By 1920s people started to take sunbath for leisure and a healthy and beautiful look. Beauty is an idea which changes with the matter of time. Historically, people had a standard that well-fed bodies are beautiful and with the changing time slim bodies have become a sign of beauty. It is a common saying in this world that beauty hails from art. Sensible art and media is the creation of selections arranged by an artist or media maker. Whereas these metaphors can provide us a fine idea of what people consider or think is beautiful, the metaphors do not essentially provide us a good plan of what people actually seem to be like. For instance, newspapers and television nowadays do not truly symbolize a precise sample of people in the actual world. In the olden times art was predicted as a base of beauty; quite a few even avowed that natural beauty is subsidiary to artistic beauty. Plato, conversely, divided art and beauty into two self-determining thoughts: genuine beauty reflects reality, whereas art is a misleading simulation of nature. Aristotle, by difference, held that good art is beautiful and that, consequently, the two are indivisible: a great work of art is an attractive work. The Aristotelian aesthetic belief succeeded for centuries, but it was the eighteenth century that provided growth to the concept that forming beauty is the necessary point of art (Freeland, pg 31-40). Kant holds that great art is beautiful, though it fluctuates appreciably from natural beauty: a good work of art is a beautiful image. An image can be beautiful even if its topic is not beautiful (Freeland, pg 10-15) Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) squabbles that beauty is the necessary trait of art, and natural beauty is a likeness of artistic beauty (Harold, 1972). In this view, beauty reflects deliberate creation, not minor results of sightless, natural forces. Aesthetic refers to someone's personal idea of what is beautiful. It can also be said as an individuals own taste and judgment of things. It is the theoretical idea of what beauty really is. Similarly in the case of arts one also uses his own personal idea to judge how beautiful one piece of art is. There has been a debate since the beginning of this world on the subject of aesthetics. Kant famously related aesthetics with the subject of arts. In his view a good view about aesthetics depends upon the originality and the beauty of the art works. While on the other hand David Hume gave his own perception about Aesthetics (Freeland pg 8-10). It stated that the view about the artworks depends upon an individuals own taste and culture. Aesthetics is directly related to arts when it comes to the appreciation of a work. Aesthetics may help one to realize the beauty of a piece of art. Q. What is art Why we value art so much. Freeland supports the "cognitive" concept of art--which, in her observation, holds that art is parallel to language as it "communicates complex thoughts." This is a doubtful suggestion, because it entails that art first and foremost occupies a straight transfer of information or awareness. At any rate, it is primarily fiction and drama between the arts that can pass on "complex thoughts," however infrequently as unambiguously as expository prose (Freeland, pg 148-155). The expression concept, according to Freeland, holds that art talks "something in the realm of feelings and emotions"--a vision she discovers too restraining. Art, she indicates, "can express or communicate not just feelings but also ideas." not any of the arts reliably "expresses" or "communicates" either sentiments or thoughts (Freeland, pg 178-182) The main function of art is not communication however, rather is (as Ayn Rand suggested), the objectification of principles. Any "communication" that results is side-effect of that procedure. Freeland approves her observation that art is maybe best explained as "a continuous expansion of our awareness of the world around us." For art can equally improve a consciousness of ourselves with defy and increase our perceptual connection to our environment. For this cause - dead sheep or not - we will carry on to build it and take a look at it in an effort to make logic of the difficulties of our cracked current lives. In the present century the value of art has increased so much that people are implementing the shape of arts in their daily routine. Although the awareness of the beauty of art is still not known by people, the importance of art has been known to everyone. Art has entered the life of each and every individual living in this world. That can be in the form of paintings or any thing creative. As art has entered into the communities the importance given to it has increased over the time (Tilghman, 1984) Q. 10 personal values to decide what is art Everyone has his own different concept about art. The definition of art changes from person to person and artist to artist. According to me, art is present in every object of the world. There is a need to observe the beauty, happiness, agony or ecstasy which an individual feels. A number of people think that art is a piece of work which is praised and the others say that art is whatever a person makes to express or convey some idea. I'm one of those who think that even if you paint a paper with a single color and draw 4 straight margins on it, it is art. According to me art can be a thought given by any of the individuals living in this world. It can show the feeling and principles one has for other things. In my life I personally don't prefer having pieces of arts which are preferred by all but I rather prefer having the pieces of arts which are preferred by me. It is not necessary that the pieces of arts only made by the famous artists appeal to me. But anything which is showing the environment of this world or is showing an individual's feelings is art according to me. One should keep in mind that art can be anything in his surroundings. Bibliography Freeland, C. A. (2001). But is it art: an introduction to art theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Osborne, H. (1972). Aesthetics. Oxford readings in philosophy. London: Oxford University Press. Tilghman, B. R. (1984). But is it art: the value of art and the temptation of theory. Values and philosophical inquiry. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: B. Blackwell Rosenberg, H. (1972). The de-definition of art: action art to pop to earthworks. London: Secker & Warburg. Read More