I do think that people like art more when they can relate to it and I think Hume would find fault in that as self-absorption but I am not so sure that it is a bad thing. Artists can often express difficult concepts that we might have trouble not only articulating to others but difficulty discerning in ourselves. I have found various novels that I have read and thought I do that and I never realized it. Once art, in my case mostly novels, allowed me to recognize characteristics in myself I was able to take a deeper look at myself and see if there was a quality I wanted to work on in my own character. One of art’s purposes is engendering emotions in people. In order for people to respond emotionally to a work of art they have to relate that art to their experience. They make associations, probably through symbols as Goodman suggests, and these lead them to connect the art to an emotion which they then associate with the work. If they receive the emotion then they can relate to the artists presentation. If people truly did not relate to a work of art why would they like it? If they cannot make any connections and through these connections draw emotion out of it then it is just an image or a string of notes. When we create meaning we have to be relating the art to something even if we are simply relating black to depressing we are interpreting the art into something we understand. If that did not happen it is likely we would say it’s boring and move on. I suppose a painting, for example, that was liked because its organization was pleasing would be art we are not relating to emotionally, but in a way it is. People like patterns so we associate a pleasant feeling with them or we dislike chaos so it strikes us emotionally to see it in art in a way we can come to appreciate. Either way we are making associations between the art and our own views of the world. It would be impossible not to.
Can art exist that people do not or cannot find a way to relate to?
No comments:
Post a Comment