Text 14630, 60 rader
Skriven 2007-05-16 16:12:09 av Josh Hill (1042.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: OT: a proposal for increasing teachers' salaries
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On 16 May 2007 08:56:17 -0700, lizardgirl <gabiks@comcast.net> wrote:

>On May 15, 6:47 pm, "Carl" <cengm...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The factors by which one judges art are (as Amy and others have
>> pointed out) not completely subjective, and I don't consider
>> myself qualified to judge art other than as it conforms to my personal
>> taste.
>
>sure, there are formal elements (color, composition, balance, line,
>form, etc) by which you can 'evaluate' individual works.  and these
>can be helpful in understanding the significance of a specific piece,
>as well as bodies of work by an artist or group of artists.   doesn't
>take more then one semester of art appreciation to get the basics down
>(should you be so inclined.)
>
>the notion that art needs to conforms to anything other then an
>individuals taste makes no sense to me.  does one need to understand
>wine making in order to enjoy a glass of wine? does knowing the
>process make it taste any better?  you may now understand why it
>tastes the way it taste, but does that alone make you want to drink
>it?  if it don't taste good to you, it don't taste good to you.

It seems to me that there's a different kind of learning involved.
Someone discovered some years ago that when trained musicians listen
to music, they rely mostly on the left hemisphere, whereas untrained
listeners rely on the right one. The musicians are presumably thinking
notes and staffs and time signatures, while the listeners are thinking
the sounds without the symbolic representation and theory. But they're
still analyzing the same material, and that appears to be an acquired
skill -- to mention some extreme examples, people can't even tell
whether a note is higher than another if they haven't been exposed to
a given musical tradition, and I remember reading about a tribe
somewhere that wasn't able to understand drawings with perspective,
because their own art was two-dimensional -- they'd never developed or
been exposed to it.

I know that my own appreciation of art has improved over the years, as
I've listened, watched, and read, and I know that others have had the
same experience. And what's curious is that as this happens, people
tend to discover and enjoy the /same/ works. Not always, but at a much
higher than average frequency. It could be the Beatles, or it could be
Picasso, or Shakespeare -- way more often than chance or the random
elements of taste would suggest, people end up considering them
extraordinary. (The same thing is true of food, e.g., people may
prefer meat or they may prefer seafood, but on the whole people prefer
prime steak and lobster to hot dogs and fish sticks, good as the
latter may be.)

-- 
Josh

"The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet
that people have the right to live life as they please,
as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process. . . .
The radical right has nearly ruined our party. Its members
do not care about the Constitution and they are the
ones making all the noise." - Barry Goldwater
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