art

[chloe]

music appeals directly to the emotions but art (visual) only reaches our feelings through our intellect.<P>(read words to this effect somewhere - sadly cannot remember where.)<P>opinions?<P>

[ben]

On what evidence are you basing the claim that music appeals to our emotions? I didn't think it was self-evident. It may invoke emotions in us but as we've discussed before this is due to some connection/memory we have which we associate with the music. If you are saying that is how it appeals to our emotion then I would say it is the same for visual art.<P>Can you expand on the different ways that music and art appeal to us. What does it mean to say "music appeals directly to the emotions"? Many who view visual art do not know its 'purpose' and will judge its 'value' on whether they like the look of it it or not. Surely with music it is the same but with hearing instead of seeing?

[alex]

I don't believe that we can draw a distinction between music and visual art in the way that that 'quotations' suggests. I think both visual art and music appeal to both the intellect and the emotions at the same time.<P>I think it was Eisenstein (a Russian film-maker) who filmed a close up of the disection of an eye. I am using this as an example of how visual art appeals to intellect as well as emotion. The obvious and immediate emotional effect is repulsion and disturbance. Intellectually the art appeals because it is ironic. An eye, which we are using to witness the film (Obviously not the same eye) is being destroyed yet we continue to see. This produces an intellectual response and works on the emotional response too. <p>[This message has been edited by alex (edited 09 January 2002).]

[chloe]

well i've remembered where i first read this idea (hey!) - schopenhauer discusses in detail why he thinks music is supreme amongst all forms of art. while i think that his world view is strange and its inconsistencies appear to be widely recognised, i was attracted to his argument because it is an attempt (i think) to explain a fundamental difference between music and the other forms of art:<P>absolute music is different in that it cannot refer to one specific event, or one specific instance of an emotion. instead it is the sounds themselves which depict perfect emotions and provoke a response.<P>visual art, film and literature by their very nature reach our feelings through the depiction of specific instances of the emotions in question.<P>in alex's film example, the eye dissection causes feelings of revulsion because it shows one particular, revolting event. however a piece of music is able to communicate just revulsion to the listener merely through combinations of sounds, and without the need to refer to a real-life situation.<P>does this make sense?

[Flamin'RedJJ]

I have to agree with Chloe on this one-
actually the theory that music is perhaps a higher form than the visual arts has existed since the late Renaissance period, when the theory of affectations in music was put forward.
Baroque composers aimed to capture an individual mood or 'affect' in a movement or piece e.g. melancholy.<P>Such abstract concepts are able to be communicated to the listener much more directly and inescapably than in a painting.<P>Obviously it's possible to appreciate all art solely on an aesthetic level, but music above other forms (it seems to me) immediately transcends the physical to the emotional/ spiritual plane.<P>Actually, on further reflection, perhaps the theory originated even further back with the Ancient Greeks, and probably Plato, if I know my civic humanism.
Can anyone confirm this?

[clara]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by chloe:
[B]music appeals directly to the emotions but art (visual) only reaches our feelings through our intellect.<P>opinions?<P>When listening to music, I only feel specific emotions because of the way I have been brought up - especially in a western society surrounded by music most of the time. That is why when I listen to traditional ethnic music from somewhere like rural Japan, I don't necessarily understand what emotion the music is trying to convey - simply because I haven't been brought up in that tradition.It is only because my ears have been trained to enjoy western music in particular that I can pick out emotion within it. (maybe this is not always true - for instance rhythm is something that one can feel with a limited emotional degree just on its own, partly because of the way it alters the speed of our hearts after a while, but thats biological, and rhythm anyway is something found in all societies).<P>Here's where I disagree with your statement. I think that it may be that people who find music easier to interpret than art just havent been trained in it (strange as it sounds) - do you get what I mean? <P>Although we are surrounded constantly with visual objects, as we are with sounds, we tend to be presented with music as a means of enjoyment and something you can find emotion in more often than visual art. Not many people I know seek enjoyment through visual means (other than cinema films, but that is for emotion in story rather than as a form of visual art in most cases) however most people listen to at least one form of music each day. That is why I think that if we were trained to seek emotion in visual arts and had as much inadvertent practise at it as we do for music, then we would gain as much emotion from it. What I think I am trying to say is that intellect only comes into the statement at the beginning because we need to think harder as we are not used to using our vision to pick out emotions (other than in facial expressions which is why visual art such as photographs showing human faces with a particular emotion appeal directly to our emotions without need for intellect).<P>Have I been making sense?<p>[This message has been edited by clara (edited 09 February 2002).]

[kjeevah]

*fuming*

music appeals directly to the emotions but art (visual) only reaches our feelings through our intellect.

that statement is a personal insult to myself and what i do.

all i can say is that whoever has held that belief over the ages must have been looking at some pretty bad art.

a sound, a colour, a shape.. they can all directly trigger emotions.

[The Smegman]

I think anything that is to be considered "art" should appeal both to the intellect and the emotions. I think music is more emotional than most visual art is set out to reproduce something from life, whereas music is more abstract. I think abstract visual art (the kind of stuff that there is no point to overthinking about) appeals to the emotions as much as music.

[clara]

I think music is more emotional than most visual art is set out to reproduce something from life, whereas music is more abstract. I think abstract visual art (the kind of stuff that there is no point to overthinking about) appeals to the emotions as much as music.

Hmmm, I see what your getting at but I disagree on several points. Music is not abstract - for me, music comes into two main categories: that which is intensly mathematical/"intellectual" (e.g. Serial music, bits of Messiaen), and music which is descriptive (programme music). Pieces can come under both categories. But as for music being abstract... if mathematical, then it appeals more to our intellect, if descriptive, it appeals more to our emotions.

I would say very few pieces of music are really abstract. I was amused by Strauss' (Richard not Johann) comment that he was such a good composer that he could describe a man through music even down to his hair colour. Now thats descriptive if nothing else is... And he was pretty much right as well.

[chloe]

i was wrong. completely. utterly. naive. and narrow-minded too.

today i was incredibly lucky in attending an art exhibition whose paintings and drawings moved me every bit as much as music does. and in a surprisingly similar way. i guess i just hadn't seen enough art or art by the right people before!!

[kjeevah]

chloe - referring to my previous post in this thread, i am so genuinely happy that you have been enlightened

personally, my interest in art lies pretty much entirely in the evoking of emotions and feelings. art with a literal concept to it seems a bit shallow to me.. if you can describe in in words, then why not just write a poem instead?

a picture tells a thousand words, hundreds of which could never be described in any language other than the visual one in which it is presented. music, like art, and like prose, is just another means of communication.. each has its own area of feelings, emotions and ideas that can only be conveyed in that particular form.

or put another way.. could you convey the idea of the colour purple to someone who has never seen it before by prose? or the sound of a violin to someone who has never heard it before by a painting?

[Arch Deacon Of Hi-Top Chu]

art eh? Well when we use the term 'art' we usually mean visual art, I think we need to first ask the question what is 'art'? I've done this before and I see it as almost another term for expression, wether this is expression of a meaning or expression of an emotion, whatever, art is expression. There are many different forms of art or ways of expressing, visually or through sound, or anything, the way or form of art I guess is determined by the sense the audience uses to experience it.

I think what is important to this topic though is what you express and what method you use to express it are not the same thing. As in it is possible to create intelectual communicative music and emotionally communicative visual art.

[yromemtnatsisrep]

art is only as valid as the way it is interpreted.

[someoneisatthedoor]

art is only as valid as the way it is interpreted.

I smiled at this.


Art, beauty, emotion, intellect, all are in the eye of the beholder.

Though one could argue that since music has a consecutive structure written into it (there's only one way to experience the 'elements' of the song) that (like cinema) it has more direct control over it's audiences responses. If one looks at a piece of still visual art one isn't always sure how one should look at it or which aspects should draw ones attention, but with music these decisions and judgements have been made for you...

[yromemtnatsisrep]

woah..............you're agreeing with me..........


mildly.

[TheQuestion]

music appeals directly to the emotions but art (visual) only reaches our feelings through our intellect.<P>(read words to this effect somewhere - sadly cannot remember where.)<P>opinions?<P>

No, not at all. All art can work on intellectual or emotional levels and it's never good to disregard either.

[Pincho Paxton]

Art to me is about complexity, evolution, creation, spacial awareness, originality, and symetry.

So 6 banks of energy in the brain are accepting the power of a picture. The total energy gives a result.

The result is an emotion.

[fire,water,earth,timecube]

Art to me is about complexity, evolution, creation, spacial awareness, originality, and symetry.

So 6 banks of energy in the brain are accepting the power of a picture. The total energy gives a result.

The result is an emotion.

PINCHO please take your effections from this thread outside
art speaks to me mostly through drawings though but it tells me
never to give up and that is why pinchoism will never make it past me.

[someoneisatthedoor]

woah..............you're agreeing with me..........


mildly.

I don't disagree with you for the sake of it, I save that for aspacia. Art in terms of history, role in culture, position as regards the high/low division is all worth thinking about.

But the actual liking or disliking of a piece isn't worth talking about unless it is necessary for one of the other discussions.

[Gobbo]

I'm goin with Alex, this is a generalization, but perhaps true for more cases than not.

[more or less]

i think a 3 month old infant appreciates nursery rhymes more then it does van gogh and picasso.

i think a 12 years old appreciates say, metallica or green day more than they do jackson pollack.

so, i think i disagree with nearly all of you as schopenhauer is correct at the most essential level of meaning, or just taking the first post as it is.

visual arts are more stimulating, are more information, and use a more refined sense and amount of reasoning. that music is intellectual, and that visual information is emotional not being denied, imho, by the idea the music appeals, at least, more directly to emotion than do the viz arts.

if schopenhauer is so wrong, more intellectuals would "be moved" by brittney spears and more pimply teenagers would be crowding around the museums and talking about how "emo and fucking RAD"" jackson pollack is. clearly, intellectuals are "more moved" by symphinic movement, and i say that is because it is more intellectual thatn other forms of music. same is true of jazz, for the most part - which is the highest form of art as it also is the form of music that first allowed for abstract expressionism in the sense of the avant garde element of some of it.


when i see a kid say "that's hot" while admiring Irises at the ghetty center, i will reconsider this...

[someoneisatthedoor]

Jazz is the highest form of art? Care to qualify that claim?

[surreptitious75]

Art is the exploration of the human condition in any form from a truly subjective perspective
It may or may not appeal to our sense of logic but it always appeals to our sense of emotion
For all art no matter how highbrow or elitist it is is designed to elicit an emotional response

Although the notion of elitism is rather suspect for who gets to decide what is and is not elitist ?
And so maybe a better one is between good art and bad art but then who gets to decide on that ?

So the only one that is truly meaningful is the one you make yourself between art you like and art you do not like
This is true regardless of whether or not absolutely everyone agrees with your choices or no one agrees with them
Because unlike in science and mathematics it is not about inter subjective consensus but individual self expression