Archive for the ‘Art’ Category

Shakespeare – The Tempest

Tuesday, April 9th, 2019

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises. Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. The Intention A standard interpretation of the Tempest is that it is Shakespeare’s meditations upon the theatre; that Prospero as magus is Shakespeare’s image of himself, and that Prospero’s renunciation of magic at ...

Botticelli – The Birth of Venus

Sunday, March 31st, 2019

One of several criticisms of the Actual Intentionalist theory of interpretation – even in its weakened or modified forms – is that it requires that each artwork have just one correct interpretation. According to Davies (ed. 2015, The Philosophy of Art, p. 118) for example, such a critic rejects the idea ...

Poussin – Et in Arcadia Ego

Saturday, March 23rd, 2019

According to Actual Intentionalism, an artwork should be considered as a type of communication by the artist, and the ‘meaning’ of the artwork – which is what is to be understood by an interpretation of the artwork – is just what its author intended when creating it. There is supposedly ...

Titian – Sacred and Profane Love

Saturday, March 23rd, 2019

The appreciation of art is usually taken to involve an aesthetic judgement, and this judgement is most often said to be essentially non-cognitive. According to the Hume/Kant model of artistic appreciation, however, an aesthetic judgement of that kind is very often dependent upon a previous cognitive act of ‘understanding’ the ...

What’s the Point of This?

Monday, May 8th, 2017

  A: Imagine this B: Look at this Something big wrapped in plastic Christo Javacheff (2000) Wrapped Reichstag Project for Berlin A pickled cow Damien Hirst (1995) Mother and Child, Divided Some bricks William Anastasi (1964) En Route (Stack of Bricks) Originally untitled A toilet Marcel Duchamp (1917) Fountain A bike seat with handlebars arranged like a bull Pablo Picasso (1943) Head ...

Art vs. Pornography

Sunday, May 7th, 2017

Many defenders of Bill Henson's pictures of naked sexualised children claim that the public (Philistines) are wrong to condemn Henson's work as pornography because they are art. (But note that some in the Art world's 'in crowd' were prepared to admit Henson's offensiveness before the public noticed.) In making this ...