The Aesthetic Philosophy Of The Art World

2215 Words9 Pages
Since the turn of the 20th century at least one of the biggest questions the art world has had to ask is whether or not art has to be beautiful, the consensus from the trend setters has generally been no with many hailing the praises of artworks, a mere commoner such as myself would find distasteful. The aesthetic philosophy that sits at the core of this question and many others the art world is concerned with is whether or not beauty is capable of presenting the unpresentable. If not can the competing type of experience the sublime does a better job? I will attempt to answer these questions with explicit reference to material art pieces mainly that of the avant-garde, via the philosophical writings of Emmanuel Kant and Jean-François Lyotard with minor reference to the much earlier Edmund Burke. Edmund Burke in his distinguishing between the sublime and the beautiful notes that the beautiful things in life tend to be small, attractive and well-formed. Whereas the sublime in his eyes is large, brutalist and overwhelming the latter being of most note. A porcelain sculpture or a flower may appear beautiful to Burke, whereas a brooding storm or gigantic skyscraper seems sublime. [ref Burke] Immanuel Kant takes from Burke these basic distinctions and attempts to build them into his idealism by attributing certain experiential processes to both concepts. For Kant, The Beautiful is an experience which moves us in a positive way, be it because of its completeness or form i.e. a
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