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Languages of Art

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Languages of Art is one of the most influential books in the field of aesthetics to be published in the past fifty years. I only read it recently, and as I did so I became aware of how often I had come across resonances of this book in art reviews and essays in art history ever since I first began reading such things.

This influence is unfortunate, because in his treatment of visual art, Goodman makes some sensational errors.

Goodman claims, and attempts to prove, that resemblance is irrelevant to representational art. In other words, that portrait of your Aunt Maud is a good likeness not because it looks like her, but because the artist has effectively deployed a system of visual symbols, more or less equivalent to language, that both artist and viewer have been acculturated to accept as constituting a "likeness." Never mind the fact that the colors and shapes in the portrait are remarkably similar to those on Aunt Maud's face. Goodman assures the reader that perceived resemblance has nothing to do with even the most realistic painting or sculpture.

Sometimes going against the grain of common sense yields astonishing insights. Other times, as in this book, it only makes the author look silly.

Read this book if you are interested in the background to a kind of extreme cultural relativism that has taken the field of art history by storm in the past twenty years.

I read this book for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of art. In Nelson Goodmanfs book gLanguages of Art,h art is the subject of his philosophical inquiry, this diagram is a look at all the different features that show up.

Artist
Work-----------History
Audience «
Art world Creativity
Normalcy

This is just a straightforward examination of those things that go into the meaning of art. Then you have history to show that whatever is being displayed in this complex, which is not a complicated, organized whole, but a set of factors that inter relate with each other. Then you add history to ask who are the artists, what are the works, who is the audience, what is the art world and that will change over time. So, what is the meaning of art? Well there are different ways that art will have meaning in different periods and in different ways. All these factors have content in history. All are factors in art. The idea of creativity and normalcy is a factor in art too, because we would tend to think in some basic way. The whole point about art is that it is something creative. It is something that is special, and even if it were a readymade, the setting of it would prompt a special insight into this ordinary object.

Therefore, something about art is creative, and by creative, we mean something special, something new, something out of the ordinary. Thus, normalcy and creativity are kind of in tension with each other and he adds that they are in tension because that is a fact too. If there is a notion that there is something, wrong with normalcy, that is a ridiculous thing to say. First of all, where would the avant-garde be without normalcy for one thing. Because the whole point of the avant-garde is to be at odds with normalcy. Without normalcy, you canft have shock of the new. It is a negative relation, but it is still a relation. Normalcy doesnft have to be boring, just common ways of thinking and understanding that are a setting for a community. No human being could become a human being without the forces of normalcy in their lives. No human could grow into an avant-garde artist if they were not raised in normalcy under certain patterns and expectations. The only truly absolutely creative person is a person who is insane. And we define insanity as someone who can make no contact with us, they are on wavelength and there can be no communication. There could never be a philosophical proposal that normally is something unfortunate because that could not be, there canft be any culture, community, or development of a human being without some set of norms, some ways of behaving. People develop norms. There are ranges of creativity. Important works of art go against tradition. Creativity doesnft have to break boundaries like the avant-garde it could be like Mozart who worked within normal conventions of art. Tension between creativity and normalcy over time brings new normalcy. Creativity establishes new norms and ways of seeing thus pushing normalcy forward. The four factors complex; artists, work, audience, and art world go through changes over time and changes are brought about by tension between creativity and normalcy.

These four factors in tension they donft fit together really like puzzle pieces. These are factors that are identified as part of the meaning of art, but these factors themselves can be in tension. This can especially happen when it comes to the art world and creative artists, because very often creative artists run afoul of the institutional assumptions. Thus, they will be refused a show. In addition, there can be tension between the audience and the artist, the audience and the work, and the audience and the art world, these are pieces so to speak, but they are not puzzle pieces that fit together they are factors and forces themselves that have tensions. Whatever is going on, that is it all within the four factors. What is art? Or rather when and where is art. This is sort of a historical art world hermeneutic thing; to Goodman it is the most intellectually satisfying way to look at it. Not that the other theories donft have something to offer, but I find it intellectually satisfying because it covers so much, it is so comprehensive, nothing seems to be left out. Now someone says well where is your theory that identifies art? Well that is sort of the point Duchampfs greadymadeh was making art an institutional event, that is why Goodman thinks that the Fountain was a work of art that points to the institutional factor. That is at least one way to view it. Art is what the art world says it was throughout history sometimes that sounds circular, it is circular but it is not empty. Because when you look at anytime in history and between the four factors decisions were made. Capitalism liberated art from religious patronage. Artists are free agents now. This model is a way for finding results, but wonft give gah result. These are all dynamic elements; art is a continually contested notion then. Most theories didnft talk about audience and art world aspect of this four factor model.

I recommend this work for anyone interested in philosophy, philosophy of art.

Languages of Art enables a person to review the deep structure of aesthetics through symbolic diagram. Goodman presents/offers a model of aesthetic production based on a flow from microperceptions into the macroperception of affect. He allows one to review the product of aesthetic direction through symbolic structure based on folds.