Questionns/Answers on art
TRINITINE
questions.
Hart said in effect: You defined aesthetic emotion as a state that has no
reflection beyond experience. If true, where does inspiration come from?
Example: An individual has an experience that produces an inspiration, or a
perception and concepts. He says, "I see this. It makes me think." I can't see
this in your description of aesthetic emotion.
Trinitine: True, because "I see this" is neutrally objective. "It makes me
think" is rational. Both are non-emotional and cannot be the aesthetic emotion.
Hart: This seems to be saying that art is about ideals, rather than ideas.
Conceptual idealization is nowhere to be seen.
Trinitine: True again about art being about ideals. Conceptual idealization is
rationalization, not emotionalization
Hart: If an individual paints an image of a plant, so as to express the
sensation and emotions it evokes within the artist, where is the ideal?
Trinitine: The sensations and emotions in his painting make his painting more
ideal than the real.
Hart: Some artists reflect the world around them, and love the imperfections,
the sense of how things are, not as they should be?
Trinitine: Did you ever love anything that was imperfect? Love is for the ideal
perfection, as seen in the mind of the viewer. Three artists paint the same
portrait. All the portraits are different. Each saw a different beauty that was
in the mind of the beholder.
Hart: Nature is not art, but what of art that attempts to mirror nature?
Trinitine: As I said, Nature may not have art, but it has beauty. That perfect
beauty can be mirrored in the mind of the artist.
Hart: What if the idea of using art to reflect on concepts of what the artist
perceives in his life, in effect, in Nature?
Trinitine: Beauty can be of the soul, the mind, the body, or of Nature. These
make moral, intellectual, sensual, and natural concepts that are ideal. The
artist's life revolve around these ideal concepts acquired in his life, and he
seeks to concretely image what his mind abstracts as ideal.
Hart: I think that the individual is never separated from Nature, so how can
the two be divorced within the realm of art?
Trinitine: The individual's body cannot be separated from Nature, but his mind
and spirit can be separated. That is why the mystic, ideal and the concretely
real are different. The mystical is transcendent, the ideal is mental, and the
real is natural (Physical).
Hart: Is art supposed to be pleasing, as you imply , or is it something else?
Example: I view "Drowning Soldier" that is offensive and disturbing. I love the
image, call it art, as it challenges me to look at something on the merits of
the evocation of emotion, rather than the quality of the emotion evoked.
Trinitine: Pleasing is a relative term. A dominantly religious person looks at
a dying Jesus on a crucifix and feel a sad aesthetic emotion that is felt for a
perfect God. An intellectual person looks at a Renaissance painting and feels
the aesthetic emotion at the geometrical forms, proportions and symmetry he can
see in the painting. A dominantly sensual person looks at a nude painting and
has an aesthetic emotion because of its affect on his senses. Looking at
"Drowning Soldier" (I haven't seen it) could evoke ideals that are opposite to
what is seen as offensive, like ideals of the sanctity of human life.
Hart: Could art now be turning toward other figures outside of ,man?
Trinitine: Does a Pollock painting picture anything visual about man? Does
"Modern Art", showing a plain white canvas, or the squirls of an elephant's
trunk, say anything of man? Of course, they do infer that man is now in a
no-valued, non-art phase of his society.
Hart: Could not nature be presented without the expressed valuation created
within a human culture?
Trinitine: Why paint a mirror image of nature, with no human valuation, when
the real thing is just the same or better?
Hart: Could it be that man is now looking beyond self, to mere observation
without the bias of the watcher? Would this not exclude the concepts of soul,
mind, and body?
Trinitine: If so, then man is a now a zombie with no feelings, no aesthetic
emotions, and no need for art. It would exclude the use of man's
soul-mind-body.
Hart: Could it be that the exploration of "man", thru art, has reached a
point where one either repeats what has been discovered, OR, one must now face
those things that are not within the value system of "man"?
Trinitine: The principles of art never change; the facts always change. Art
revolves around the soul-mind-body-nature and their values. These reflect the
changing values of man. The lessons of past civilizations can tell you what
happens when art has reached a point of repetition and turns to no-valued
non-art. The solution is to repeat the cycle of changing values and art that
parallels changes in dominance from spirit to mind to body in man. But but
each cycle will be different in fact than the previous one,but same in
principle, just as Western art is now different from Roman Art, from which it
grew.
Hart: Could the underlying concepts of art have exhausted the exploration in
one direction, and is unsure of which new set of "values" to assign them?
Trinitine: Beyond the spiritual is the rational, beyond the rational is the
sensual, beyond the sensual is the emotive in art and in values. The emotive
"Dark Age" of art can be avoided only by returning to the spiritual.
Hart: Could we now be into the idea of art without the human ingredient?
Trinitine: Look at what is dominantly called "Art" today. Does it have much
human ingredient in it?
TRINITINE
TRINITINE
and is linked with society, and reflects it, then it says we are looking in the
mirror of our society.
Trinitine: I fully agree. All the arts parallel the human values of society.
This is obvious if one lines up the dominant portraits and paintings thru the
Medieval-Renaissance-Modern- Post modern Ages of Western history. Art in these
ages parallel the phases of religious- intellectual, hedonistic-emotive
values. Said anaother way, art parallels moral-ethical-hedonistic-emotive
values. These parallels are the mirror of art and society. In fact, avante
garde art usually predicts the art and human values of the next generation.
Alison: Traditions of art have been abandoned and deconstructed by Feminists
and Post-moderns. The philosophy of modern aesthetic is entirely under the
pressure of redefinition.
Trinitine: What else could it be when the Feminists are dedicated to reversing
values that endured thousands of years, and the post-moderns admit to having no
concept of truth, morality, justice, beauty, or philosophy.
TRINITINE
this can be a thought (Instinctive withdrawal from image that forms a concrete
conceptual opinion based on sensual experience; i.e., I'm force to think when
confronted with it visually. How does this fit into the aesthetic emotion?
Trinitine: First, if you had an "emotion", you had a 素eeling", not a
"sensation", which is thru the senses. This changes your experience: To
paraphrase you: I see art. I feel it. Then I think of it. This reflects three
of your mental function: Seeing-Feeling-Thinking. There is a balancing change
between these three functions. As you "saw", you weren't feeling or thinking
much. When you "felt", you lost seeing and thinking. When you "thought", you
lost seeing and feeling. Art appreciation is relative to one's dominant nature.
The dominantly spiritual would have stayed longer on his feeling. The sensual
person would have stayed longer on his sensations. You, who are probably
dominantly rational, quickly went to conceptual thinking. This infers that the
aesthetic emotion applies to all persons, but the degree and quality of this
emotion is relative to the person being dominantly spiritual, rational, or
sensual..
Hart: This seems to be saying that art is about ideals rather than ideals.
Conceptual idealization is no where to be seen.
Trinitine: True of ideals, but conceptual idealization is rationalization, not
emotionalization.
Hart: A conceptual idealization existing free of emotion? I don't get it?
Trinitine: For the dominantly spiritual person, it is about feelings (Emotion)
and the transcendent; for the rational, it is about conception and the ideal,
for the sensual it is about sensation and the real. All of these feel the
aesthetic emotion but to a differenct degree and quality.
Hart: What happened to the emotion of "God"?What emotive response is necessary
for emotion to play a part in the process?
Trinitine: Again, the dominantly spiritual person would have a greater degree
of the emotion over an art about God, than the dominantly rational or sensual
person.
Hart: If an individual paints an image of a plant, to express sensations and
emotions, where is the ideal?
Trinitine: Seeking positive emotions and sensations, would the individual paint
the flower in anyway but the best he could in all aspects? Is not the best you
can think of an ideal of perfection?
Hart: I have a problem with the ideal being used too much. For me art is about
concepts, sometime dealing in ideals, but not always. Or are you saying an
ideal can be less than perfection? The perfect imperfection?
Trinitine: Ideals and conceptions are rational. You keep returning to these,
yet you say you want to see and feel the natural and the real. This infers how
we are all spirit-mind-and body, but dominant on one of these. So all of us can
be seekers of the altruistic, the ideal, or the real; but all of us will seek
what is relative to our dominant nature. On this principle, the rational
idealist will look at ideal perfection, while the dominantly sensual person
will look at what is less ideal and perfect, but will call it perfect and
ideal. We know ourselves when we know what our dominant being is. You seem to
be in conflict between the ideal and real, which means you are asking, "Am I
dominant rational or sensual? Socrates said,"Know thyself". As a Socratic
questioner, you leave too much to answer, which I will answer your other
questions in another report.