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AESTHETIC JUDGMENTS

ARE CULTURALLY RELATIVE

Aesthetic Relativism: Ideas/attitudes about

art and beauty are constructed by culture,

and “there are as many kinds of art and

artistic values as there are cultures” (Dutton

695).

Marxist View of Aesthetics

• Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)

argued that Society is

made up of those who

own or control the

means of production

(capitalists) and those

who work and become

merely tools of

production (the

proletariat).

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The Marxist Critique of Aesthetics

• These two classes necessarily exist in a power

struggle over property rights and economic

advantages.

• The Values we derive from religion, ethics and

aesthetics have all been molded by this class

struggle, usually to suit the needs of the

dominant classes.

Implications for Aesthetics

– Most aesthetic theories and values reflect the

interests of the powerful (their truth and value are

suspect).

– Traditional views of art are sometimes used as

instruments of oppression or enable oppression

by refusing to challenge the status quo.

– Good art must challenge these values and replace

them (implying that aesthetic theories are all

relative)

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Marxist Criticism of High Art vs. Low Art

• Marxist critic Lawrence Levine draws attention to how High Art/Low Art & Fine Art/Popular Art distinctions serve the dominant classes.

• In the middle ages Church Art was funded by the elite but consumed by even the common peasant.

Shakespeare’s Globe theater

was accessible to people with

less income.

Art (with a capital “A”)

• Kristeller argues that enlightenment era thinkers

“grouped the arts together into a separate and

coherent group of activities and artifacts with a

distinctive character” in order to achieve a more

systematic study of the arts .

• Some categories were: painting, sculpture,

architecture, music and poetry.

• This is the beginning of the notion of “art proper”

or Art.

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“cultural products came to be removed from

the market place, rescued and placed,

significantly, in concert halls, opera houses

and museums that often resembled temples,

to be perused enjoyed and protected by the

initiated—those who had the inclination, the

leisure and the knowledge to appreciate

them”

-Lawrence W. Levine

New Artform’s and the rise of Popular Art

• As technology made new art forms possible, as well as the ability to bring existing artforms to a mass audience (mass-market books, radio, photography, film)

• Those forms that did not fit the traditional categories were thought of as low (Films were thought inferior to drama)

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The Rift Grows

Popular Art

Fine Art

Whether real or not the perceived distinction between the

two categories on the part of critics and the public propels

them both away from one another… High artists push to

develop even more sophisticated and difficult work (ex.

Joyce or Borges). Popular arts proliferate sub-genres,

“dumbing down” content to reach even broader audiences

(ex. mass-market romance/mystery paperbacks)

Ted Cohen’s defense of High/Low Art Distinctions

• In “High and Low Thinking About High and Low

Art” Ted Cohen notices an interesting

inconsistency about how critics affirm or deny the

value of art…

• Low art is of less quality because it is art that

anyone, even the uneducated masses can enjoy.

• Yet high art is praised because of its “universal

appeal”, its ability to reach and move people of

all backgrounds.

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Art Connects Us

• The inconsistency makes more sense if you think of how art connects individuals to one another through shared aesthetic experience.

• Cohen accepts the low/high distinction…but does not say one is more or less important…only important to different people.

• “It seems that a wide connection, a link between me and many others can be made thorough a work either because the work has great depth or because it is all pretty much on the surface…”

• People form distinctive

identities around artistic

genres…such as in music

where fans distinguish

themselves from the fans

of different styles, often

with feelings their genre

to be superior.

• Entire subcultures can

evolve around these

aesthetic enclaves. (i.e.

hippies, ravers, goths,

metal-heads, punks, etc.)

POSER

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Art Divides Us

• Novitz drew attention to high/low distinction’s ability to divide. He viewed it as a social convention, that serves the cultural elite…by making their preferred art the only legitimate art.

• Novitz points to how “high art” rarely threatens the interests of the dominant classes.

SNOB

The Marxist Critique of Aesthetics

"Contemporary bourgeois art, for example, serves the reactionary imperialist forces. It seeks to divert the working people from struggle against the exploiters...Bourgeois art is employed to glorify the capitalist order of things...”– Afanasyev, Marxist

Philosophy

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The Marxist Critique of Aesthetics

• "In a class society art

bears a class character, it

is partisan. There is no

’pure art, ’ no ’art for art’s

sake, ’ nor can there be

any. The accessibility, the

great power of conviction

and emotional influence

of art make it an

important weapon of the

class struggle”

The “male gaze” in Western Art

• In Ways of Seeing (1972) marxist art critic John Berger challenged “male gaze” in western art cannon (especially nudes)

– Assumes a male spectator, images are presented for male enjoyment.

– Female subjects are presented as passive and sexually available.

– Female subjects are dehumanized/objectified by being reduced to objects of aesthetic contemplation.

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Sex vs. Gender

• Feminists differentiate sex from gender

– Sex is whatever physical characteristics separate male

from female.

– Gender is what society considers normative for male

and female behavior

• Society constructs gender through a set of

cultural norms—forms of social pressure that

define and enforce what thoughts and behavior

are considered appropriate for men or women.

Gender is socially constructed

• “One is not born a woman, one becomes one” – Simone de Beauvior, The Second Sex(1949)

• “the perceived object, aware of herself perceived, finds herself coerced to self-awareness as through the eyes of another, thus ceasing to be herself” – Jean-Paul Sartre

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)

& Jean-Paul Sartre (1909-1980)

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Gender is socially constructed

• In a patriarchal (male-dominated) society constructs gender hierarchically. In the Second Sex, Simone de Beauvior argued that “Woman” is constructed as “man’s other”, she depends on men for…– Status and privilege

– Income

– Identity

Feminist critics of aesthetics recognize the significant role art plays in the social construction of gender.

Women internalize the “the male gaze”

• “Both men and women have learned to see the world through male eyes. So, for example. Women throughout their lives expend enormous amounts of time and energy and money making themselves “beautiful” …women judge themselves according to internalized standards of what is pleasing to men… this arrangement oppresses women. It also, as both feminists and non-feminists have argued oppresses men.”

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Feminist critique of “disinterested perspective”

Some of the strongest feminist criticisms of aesthetics are aimed at the idea of “disinterest” and “aesthetic attitude.”

• But why? Shouldn’t feminists embrace the notion that bias & bigotry distort our perception of art?

“Standard aesthetic theory oppresses women by assuming a gender-neutral, disinterested ideal spectator who in fact embodies a privileged white male perspective.”

-Sarah Worth,

Feminist Aesthetics

Feminist critique of “disinterested perspective”

If we believe the Western cannon was selected by disinterested ideal critics (i.e. Hume’s “standard”) then we allow the canon to “falsely pretend to objectivity when [it] actually reflects power and dominance relations; in this case the power relations of patriarchy” (Freeland 133)

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Women’s Art = Low Art

• Remember, “disinterest” preceded the 18th century distinction between fine arts and craft. Also, some aesthetic attitude theorists insisted good art should avoid political themes which may reduce the spectators “distance” from the work.

• Crafts and “domestic arts” such as quilting, embroidery, etc. are artforms traditionally made by women. Feminists have criticized the fine art/decorative art distinction because it denigrates craft as either “not-art” or “low art”.

“Aesthetic Attitude” ignores the context of art

Aesthetic attitude theorists have been accused of mystifying artworks and removing them from the context of everyday life.

“Feminist theorists replace reverence for art with skepticism. They ask that we be willing to rethink what we value and our reasons for valuing it.”-Mary Devereau

“Feminist aesthetics wants to allow

art works to remain in their context,

rather than isolating them and

putting them on display separately in

a museum. This might mean

displaying a traditional African mask

in a museum not alone , but with

accouterments used along with the

mask, and a video of the ceremony in

which the mask was worn…a feminist

approach will allow for the meaning

of the creation to reveal itself in

more diverse ways because of the

contexts that are included in its

presentation”- Sarah Worth, Feminist

Aesthetics (Routledge Companion to

Aesthetics)

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Two debates in feminist aesthetics

All feminists agree that Western art history and aesthetic philosophy have been negatively impacted by centuries of patriarchy but there are disagreements on the exact nature of the problem and how best to correct it. Two separate but related debates are…

• Is there a distinctively feminine style in art produced by women?

• Should feminists work to supplement the Western canon or subvert it?

A “feminine essence” in women’s art?

Feminist art critic Lucy

Lippard (1937 -)believes

men and women

organize their

experience of the world

in fundamentally

different ways and this

is reflected in their art.

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A “feminine essence” in women’s art?

According to Lippard, distinctively feminine characteristics of art include:

• Preoccupation with the body and bodylikematerials.

• Abstract sexuality exhibited in circles, domes, eggs, spheres, boxes and biomorphic shapes.

• A fragmentary, nonlinear approach when compared to male art.

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986)

Black Iris, 1926

Judy Chicago (1939 - ) The Dinner Party, 1979

“…a work that helped launch the feminist art movement. Her triangular dinner

table installation celebrated prominent women at place settings done in

traditionally ‘female’ mediums of embroidery and china painting, each plate

adorned with vaginal imagery of fruits and flowers.” (Freeland 122)

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The Guerrilla Girls

• Starting in the 1980’s the Guerrilla Girls (a group of feminist activists) launched a provocative media campaign to raise public awareness of gender inequality in the artworld.

• Like Judy Chicago, they sought the inclusion of underecognized female artists in the canon of great artworks.

They are still out there! Check out

www.guerrillagirls.com

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Linda Nochlin’s rejects any distinctive

“feminine essence” in women’s art

• Linda Nochlin (1938-),

one the most celebrated

feminist historians of art,

supports the idea of

resurrecting forgotten

female artists but also

challenges the

“uncritical” manner in

which these revisionist

histories are sometimes

presented.

Claude Monet (1840 -1926)Pierre-Auguste Renoir

(1841 – 1919)

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Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1652)

Judith Slaying Holofernes (1614-20)

Rosa Bonheur (1822–1899)

The Horse Fair, 1853

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Don’t supplement the canon. Subvert it.

• Rather than supplementing the western canon with examples of forgotten women artists, Nochlin recommends we demythologize the very notion of a canon and the myth of “genius” it perpetuates.

• Like Nochlin, many postmodern feminists reject the notion of a feminine essence. At best it credulously accepts that there really is a feminine nature that exists apart from culture. At worst, it can actually reinforce patriarchal stereotypes.

“Deconstructing” gender through Art

• Instead of making art with overtly “feminine” themes some postmodern feminists prefer to use art as a means of deconstructingour notions of gender.

• To illustrate these different approaches compare Judy Chicago’s the dinner party to the photographs of Cindy Sherman.

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Cindy Sherman (1954 -) Untitled Film Stills, 1977-1980

“[Sherman’s photographs] deconstructs the cultural constructs of

femininity by proposing that femininity is not real, but is the artificial

product of images, cultural expectations and ingrained behaviors, such

as ways of dressing, walking, or using makeup.” (Freeland 142)