Music and art week 3

Department for
Continuing Education

Music and Art
Marilou Polymeropoulou
marilou.polymeropoulou@music.ox.ac.uk

Week 3 - The work of art pt. 2
http://musicandartoxford.wordpress.com/

Saturday, 4 February 2012

Previously

• Deﬁnitions of art and music
• Aesthetic theories
• Expression, beautiful, good, evaluation in
music


This week

• Articles’ key points
• Visual and hybrid forms of art
• Examples


1. Sheldon Nahmod “Artistic Expression
and Aesthetic Theory”
• Purpose of article: artistic expression in jurisdiction. 1) Control of art, 2) concept of beauty, 3)
concept of sublime

• Plato and ideal society: 1) Control artistic expression 2) Mathematically beautiful

• From Plato to Kant: attempts to reconcile Greek Philosophy with Christianity: 1) Geometric
beauty 2) knowledge and power ascending from individuals not God (Cartesian theory) 3)
empiricism and subjectivity: psychological processes of art (sensation & reflection)

• Kant: centring on the human mind 1) feeling comprehends art, 2) aesthetic judgement separated/
disinterested from/in knowledge and desire, 3) aesthetic judgements refer only to the feelings of
their subjects (subjective universality), 4) art and beautiful cannot express ideas (as art is
removed from knowledge and desire) -- opposing to Plato’s perspective

• Hegel: theory towards humanism.1) spirit developing into self-consciousness (Absolute Spirit), 2)
art reveals truth through the material world

• Marx: dialectical materialism. 1) economic relationships determine everything (incl. art & culture),
2) art must represent a socialist reality, promote its ideas & behaviour -- similar to Plato’s
perspective

• Sublime: 1) historically, 2) definition in Burke and Kant, 3) Sublime and infinity

Examples of the sublime


• Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 In C Minor,
Op. 67, "Fate": I. Allegro Con Brio


2. Iris Murdoch “The
sublime and the good”
• Against elitism in art
• Aims to deﬁne art
• (Biased) assumption: Shakespeare is the greatest of
all artists. then forms aesthetic supporting this
judgement philosophically
• Morality and art (eg should art express society?)
• Plurality of deﬁnitions of art: according to values,
taste, morality, expressions etc

2. Iris Murdoch “The sublime and the good”

• Begins with Kant’s deﬁnition of art (beautiful and
sublime)
• Free beauty: true judgement, common sense
(universality)
• Dependent beauty: concept of perfection
• Sublime and emotion
• Beautiful is an analogy to good (symbolises) but
shouldn’t be tainted with it


Criticism
• 1) Kant: pure/true art is a small area of what we
think of as art. Criticism on concept/set of rules
applied in order to achieve beauty (e.g. wordless
music).--liberal view
• 2) Tolstoy: good art - simple, understood by all (the
Iliad, Old Testament, folk tales,V. Hugo), bad art -
obscure, impressionism, Mallarme, Baudelaire,
Beethoven. Criticism on simplicity as a characteristic
of art.


Is it bad art?
De Satan ou de Dieu, qu'importe? Ange ou Sirène,
Qu'importe, si tu rends, — fée aux yeux de velours,
Rythme, parfum, lueur, ô mon unique reine! —
L'univers moins hideux et les instants moins lourds?
Baudelaire, Hymne à la Beauté, Fleurs du Mal, 1861

From God or Satan, who cares? Angel or Siren,
Who cares, if you make, — fay with the velvet eyes,
Rhythm, perfume, glimmer; my one and only queen!
The world less hideous, the minutes less leaden?
William Aggeler’s translation, 1954


criticism (cont.)
• Reason within sociohistorical context (Hegel).
Example of Sophocle’s tragedy Antigone (442 BC)
• Antigone plot and issue for Murdoch: Conﬂict
between incompatible goods: 1) treason (human law),
2) Gods’ honour and brotherly love (divine, moral
laws)
• Catharsis: combination of Kantian and Hegelian
elements


Love and Freedom

• The essence of art and morals
• Discovery of reality: art, morals, love
• Praising individualism -- Ontological
perspective (hence tragedy is the highest art)
• Freedom: aesthetic theory incorporating
ontological theory, existentialism, historical
context, social understanding of otherness


Examples
Delacroix, Liberty leading the people (1830)
Constable, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831)


Hybrid forms of art
• J. Levinson (1984) “Hybrid art forms”
• Deﬁnition: hybrid art forms are art forms arising from
the actual combination or interpenetration of earlier
art forms.
• True hybrids (primarily thought as such) and Gedanken
hybrids (reconsidering works of art as hybrids)
• Combination of media (as art forms, eg. dance and
music, theatre and dance)


Varieties of combination

• Juxtaposition (addition) - mixed media phenomena. Two or more arts are
joined together and presented as a larger and more complex unit (e.g.
accompaniment, audiovisual shows, installations)

• Synthesis (fusion) - two or more arts are brought together in a way that
they lose part of their original identities (e.g. Wagner’s Operas as a synthesis
of song and drama, Schwitters’ collages)

• transformation (alteration) - similar to juxtaposition but the arts combined
do not equally contribute to the result (e.g. kinetic sculpture)


Music installation (juxtaposition). Sound and Light show,
Horus Temple, Edfu, Egypt


Collage (synthesis). Kurt
Schwitters Das Undbild, 1919

Kinetic sculpture (transformation). Theo Jansen, Beach
Animal (2010)


Observations
• Hybrid art forms tend to be examples of creativity

• Interaction is a central point

• Tracing common features/comparing arts used for the hybrid
form

• Integrative effects: rich and complex. Cognitive overload for one
purpose. (Wagnerian opera, with its ideal of a complete, all-
encompassing experience, achieved through an intimate union of
symphony, song, drama, and stagecraft )

• Disintegrative effects: symbolic or allusive of the psychological
fragmentation, informational bombardment, and pervasive
anomie of contemporary urban life. (Wilson/Glass Einstein on the
Beach)

Philip Glass/Robert Wilson, 1976.Einstein on the Beach.
“I feel the Earth Move”


Music and art week 3

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