Ashishpal Singh 4/9/12 The Art of Art Criticism There is an important contrast between individual preference and making

an objective aesthetic judgment about a work of art. This statement is expressed in the sentential form X is good but I dont like X or X is bad but I like X. Liking or not liking a work of art may hinge on individual preference but the first half of the statement suggests that there are objective standards for evaluating a work of art. This leads to further questions of how one can justify an aesthetic judgment or know if its true or false. David Hume and Immanuel Kant have written extensively on how one can validate an aesthetic judgment. Hume does not take into account the difference between individual preference and aesthetic criticism while Kant successfully discusses the distinction. David Hume discusses taste with the word referring not to the gustatory sense but to serve as an analogy for an individuals sense of beauty. Taste is what governs and justifies aesthetic judgments. He writes, Thus the distinct boundaries and offices of reason and of taste are easily ascertained. The former conveys the knowledge of truth and falsehood: the latter gives the sentiment of beauty and deformity (Hume). This establishes a belief that taste is an emotional response differing from reason. Hume proposes that emotional responses inform one if an object is beautiful or not, and the particular feeling is in itself the aesthetic judgment. Beauty is an impression rather than a thought. Hume also viewed aesthetic judgment as being neither true nor false but some judgments could be better than others. Since sentiments are the essence of evaluation, no sentiment can be wrong or right, but one can refine their ability to more articulately and accurately define their emotional response. In Of the Standard of Taste Hume specifies the five features a true art
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critic must have. To perform a proper exercise of critical judgment, a delicate taste is essential. Hume describes this as, Where the organs are so fine as to allow nothing to escape them; and at the same time so exact as to perceive every ingredient in the composition (Hume). A delicacy of taste in the gustatory sense would mean the ability to discriminate flavors, textures, scents etc. Using this as an analogy, a delicacy in aesthetic taste would mean the capacity to recognize and discriminate aesthetic features of works of arts. Another feature of the true critic is practice. One of the most effective ways to cultivate a taste is expand ones horizons by experiencing many works of art. Also, by experiencing a work multiple times a critic can remove distortions and get a better sense of an art form and its features. A third characteristic of the true critic is being adept at making comparisons. By comparing ones observations to other works of art, one can better judge the quality of a work of art. Stephenie Meyer may seem like a great writer to someone until they read Leo Tolstoy. A true art critic should also be free from prejudice. Personal prejudice may cause one to misperceive the characteristics of a work of art and may mask the objects true beauty. Lastly, the true critic should have a united and delicate sentiment. An emotionally unstable person or someone who suffers from a social disorder that may not allow them the capacity to feel emotions in a normal way will be handicapped in their assessment of a work of art. This holds especially true in this case since Hume believes that emotional responses are at the very core of what one finds beautiful. But taste, being an emotional response, is an inaccurate indicator of beauty. Sentiments cannot provide a direct connection to their causes. A feeling of awe at a work of art does not give insight into what features caused the response without reasoning, attentiveness and reflection. If beauty is defined merely as a pleasant emotional response, then the statement that X is

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beautiful is commentary on ones reaction of X and says nothing about X. Humes verdict would hold true if emotional responses were incorrigible in nature but there is logic to emotional responses and the fact that this logic is susceptible to being flawed confirms that a judgment of taste must involve something more than a pleasant or unpleasant impression. Furthermore, Hume fails to make a distinction between personal preference and an objective criticism of a work of art. He states that any criticism of a work of art can be neither wrong nor right but then lays out qualities that a true art critic must have. This seems counterintuitive as he diagrams a blueprint of how one should criticize a work of art after having stated that no sentiment can be wrong. Using Humes analogy of taste, if one were to bite into a spoon full of sugar and say that it was spicy, assuming there is no miscommunication in the semantic definition of spicy, it would be difficult to defend that the response isnt wrong. Similarly, if one has an inappropriate emotional response to a work of art, seeing how emotions are intentional states, it would be difficult to argue that the specific sentiment isnt wrong. Hume does do an admirable job of laying out characteristics that a true art critic should have. The core elements of- delicacy of imagination, good sense, comparison, practice and freedom of prejudice- are important to any objective or appropriate interpretation of art. This blueprint implies that there are certain standards and this subverts his initial notion that art criticism is subjective. Immanuel Kant also comments on the judgment of beauty in Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. He begins by discussing the distinctive elements about judgments of beauty under four heads, or moments. The first moment discusses how judgments of beauty are based on sentiments. This is similar to Hume in that both discuss how a pleasurable feeling is yielded from an experience of beauty. Kant however does make a point of distinguishing this feeling by

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mentioning that it is of a distinctive kind. The feeling is disinterested and does not depend on the agent having a desire for the object to find it beautiful. The second moment discusses how judgments of beauty should take into account that everyone else who experiences the work of art should also judge it to be beautiful. This idea is termed universal validity. However, agreement should not come from the categorizing of a concept in the work of art as being a determining element of beauty. Judgments of beauty cannot have concrete concepts for one to abide by. For example, it would be ludicrous to say that all beautiful works of music have trumpets in them. These judgments of beauty also cannot be proven for there cannot be binding rules by which someone can judge beauty by. Judgments of beauty are different than judgments of agreeableness. Simply liking a work of art is based on personal preferences and concepts. Judgments of beauty relates to an intuitive response. The distinctive pleasure of finding something beautiful is disinterested and does not stem from a desire for the object. This differentiates judgments of beauty from subjectively liking a work of art. In the third moment, Kant discusses how judgments of beauty involve the representation of purposiveness. Kant writes, Is a way of presenting that is purposive on its own and that furthers, even though without a purpose, the culture of our mental powers to [facilitate] social communication (Kant). Kant is saying that a beautiful object contains the property or quality of purposefulness on its own, without actually having a defined purpose. The fourth moment discusses how ones judgment should serve as an example of how everyone ought to judge the object. The necessity of why such should be the case does not depend on concepts or rules but rather a kind of intuitive sensation or indeterminate concept. For example, our pleasure in viewing Les Demoiselles D'avignon by Pablo Picasso stems from our intuition and purposiveness of its form. There are aesthetically pleasing aspects

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of the arrangement of the piece. One may like the portrait because of the colors used or the image of five promiscuous prostitutes may compel them to recall memories of not too glamorous weekends of the past but these would be judgments of agreeableness. A true judgment of beauty is disinterested and not based on a concept, while being a pleasurable sensation of detached pleasure. While Hume proposed that aesthetic judgments arose from impressions, Kant advanced the idea that intuition is the essence of critiquing beauty. However, Kants idea is very abstract and perhaps a bit too demanding. The idea that ones intuitive experience of finding an object beautiful should be experienced by everyone is simply not plausible. It can be objectively valid that a painting is green and this would hold true universally, but saying a work of art is beautiful and believing that all ought to know this as objectively true at an intuitive level raises some serious objections. Kant does manage to address the important distinction between something being objectively good while not being subjectively preferred. His method of validating if something is objectively good however, is flawed. Both Hume and Kant may have missed on a key element of art criticism. To interpret if a work of art is objectively beautiful requires more than impression and intuition it seems. To evaluate a work of art as good or beautiful might require one to know the genre the art forms falls into and evaluate the work through the demands of that style. For example, in order to evaluate if a musical performance is good, one would need to know what genre it falls under for it would always yield negative results to judge a Jazz ensemble in terms of how Hip-Hop they sound. If the genre is Jazz, then one would have to know the requirements of a good Jazz performance. The ensemble would then have to be observed with-in those paradigms. The critic, in this example, would have to know Jazz and its elements well at an intellectual level, while

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also having a keen, discriminating ear along with other characteristics mentioned by Hume when describing the true art critic. The critic may not have a personal preference for Jazz but he should still be able to objectively interpret whether the ensemble played well or not. David Hume and Immanuel Kant provoked interesting discussions in the fields of aesthetics. Both presented arguments for how to validate judgments on beauty and although they suffered their fair share of shortcomings, Hume and Kant raised some great points for philosophers of aesthetics to consider.

Works Cited

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Hume, David. "A Treatise of Human Nature." Www.Gutenberg.org. The Project Gutenberg, 13 Feb. 2011. Web. 10 Apr. 2012. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4705/4705-h/4705-h.htm>.

Kant, Immanuel. "The Critique of Judgement." . Part I : Critique of Aesthetic Judgement / Translated by James Creed Meredith. EBooks@Adelaide, 2008. Web. 10 Apr. 2012. <http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/kant/immanuel/k16j/>.

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