Reflection 2.2

Tiegst Ameha

Reflection 4

WC: 939

The question of whether or not beauty is an objective is both more complexly answered and more complicated when brought out of the realm of the lay public and into the realm of philosophy. The philosophers in our readings for this section all make distinctions between what kinds of subjects are even capable of objective beauty in addition to answering the simple question to the question.

In Wollheim’s arguments he makes a distinction between types of art that is even capable of objective beauty. For Wollheim there are the literary and performing arts and the plastic arts. The plastic arts refer to those that are physical objects, such as a painting or sculpture. On the other hand, for literary and performing arts though they can take physical forms, the art works themselves are not physical forms. In a book of poetry the art is in the words, not the book which is only an instantiation of the art, one of many possible forms it may take. In the same way, performances of symphonies and plays do take physical form in the people and sets that perform them, but these are simply one of many ways and times it is done. Wollheim asserts that with these arts, it is impossible to claim objectivity, as the work takes different forms many different times. The plastic arts, however, are capable of an objective standard. He references Locke’s ideas of primary and secondary qualities of objects. Unfortunately, there is a hole in this application of Locke. If beauty is said to be a secondary quality (but nonetheless objective quality) of art works, then what is the corresponding primary quality that it can be said to stem from? Because without having a primary quality to look to, there is no explanation of what your senses interacted with and the quality becomes completely subjective. Wollheim ends in the position that beauty can be an objective quality, but only in the case of plastic arts.This I take issue with, because I think there is valid beauty in the non plastic arts as well as the plastic arts.

A text I find more agreeable in its arguments, is Deveraux’s text. Her arguments are formed around the idea of the male gaze, which she asserts many forms of art and film take on. The idea of the male gaze is that viewers and producers of these various representations take on a gaze which is gendered male. This is not exclusive to male viewers and producers and in fact is quite common in females in addition to males. Deveraux calls into question any claim to neutrality in artistic vision. And you can see this to be true, as there is never a time in which you look upon a piece of art with your background, motives, and expectations completely checked. Furthermore, this idea of the male gaze also implies that male needs, beliefs, and desires dominate art. Beyond the continuation of traditional gender roles in film which could fill a paper on its own, on a base level there is an exceptional amount of phallic symbolism in art in addition to female submissiveness. But how does this figure in with the question of whether or not beauty is in the eye of the beholder? Deveraux uses all of this to make the claim that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, but rather in the societal and cultural conventions in which the beauty and beholder reside. This claim I find to be incredibly agreeable. An example that comes to mind instantly comes when you consider certain European and African countries and their standards of the beautiful. In North America and Western European countries the beautiful is tall and slender and athletic. In these other countries, though, the beautiful is full figured and big hipped, and this makes sense because in those cultures it is a sign of wealth and good health that a person is able to eat enough to be full figured. In the same way, in older cultures it was beautiful to be fair skinned because it signified that you were rich enough not to work in the sun, whereas in western culture now it is beautiful to be tan. In relation to art, you see a huge shift between traditional representational art and say pop art that incorporates kitsch; which is due in large part to the shirt in cultural expectations of beauty.

For Kant, he acknowledges that beauty is a singular and personal judgement. You would think this is a simple no answer to the questions of its objectivity, but Kant being Kant it simply is not. He of course spends a considerable amount of time clarifying that it is an aesthetic judgment and what this entails. First he states that beauty is a disinterested pleasure, one not grounded in any sort of reasoning or utility. Of course this supports the idea that there is no objective way of measuring beauty. But the second claim about beauty as an aesthetic judgement that Kant makes is that it is necessarily a subjective universality. This complicates the question of objectivity. If there is a universality to beauty which we assume, there must be something in beauty that compels us to think this. I certainly don’t agree with Kant, partially for the fact that I don’t see the consistency in his arguments and frankly he confuses me. Deveraux’s explanation of beauty being a product of the cultural biases and horizons of expectations is the one that made the most sense to me and more importantly which I agreed most with.