music and art week 1
TRANSCRIPT
Music and ArtMarilou Polymeropoulou
http://musicandartoxford.wordpress.com/
Department for Continuing Education
Week 1
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Course material
• Audiovisual presentations
• Scores, pictures, audio and video recordings
• Books and articles (library, print, and online)
• Course blog
• Field trip
• Course work
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Week 1 lecture structure
Part 1: Introduction to terminology: art and aesthetics
Part 2: course overview
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
“To see something as art requires something the eye cannot decry - an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld”
A. Danto (in Frith 2002:249)
“To grasp the meaning of music is to hear something not simply present to the ear. It is to understand a musical culture, to have a scheme of interpretation”
S. Frith (ibid)
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
PlatoΠλάτων
• 424/423 - 348/347 BC
• Founder of the Academy of Athens
• Philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric, mathematics, art, politics
• Western philosophy
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Plato: on art
• The Republic (Πολιτεία, Politeia, literal translation “society”)
• Imitation and representation of reality
• Therapeutic, healing for human soul
• World of Ideas vs. world of tangible objects
• Art as craft, Techne (Τέχνη)
• Bad art undermining morality vs correct, good art shaping character
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Aristotle, Ἀριστοτέλης
• 384 - 322 BC
• Student of Plato
• Founder of Lyceum
• Physics, metaphysics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, politics, ethics
• Influenced Western philosophy
• Reason, logic, aesthetics
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Aristotle on art
• Separate art from politics
• Channelling human creativity: 1) gnosis (theory, knowledge), 2) praxis (practice), 3) poiesis (creating)
• Categories of Art: 1)imitation of visual representations (colours and designs) 2) imitation of human behaviour (poetry, lyrics, dancing)
• Pleasure and art
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Raphael Scuola di Atene (1510-11) (detail)
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Organon (Tool, Organum)
• Ontology - On + Logos
• The Categories (predicaments)
• Influence on aesthetics and evaluation theories
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
The Categories• 1. Substance (Human)
• 2. Quantity (5 ft. 6 in. tall)
• 3. Quality (white)
• 4. Relation (shorter than the board)
• 5. Place (in a classroom)
• 6. Time (now)
• 7. Posture (standing)
• 8. Possession - Habitus (clothed, wearing black trousers)
• 9. Action (breathing, teaching)
• 10. Passivity (being watched, listened to)Wednesday, 18 January 2012
• Ancient aesthetics: Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, China, Rome, India, Mayan
• Islamic aesthetics: Islamic culture. Arabesque, mosaic, islamic calligraphy and architecture
• Indian aesthetics: Spiritual or philosophical states in the audience. Architecture, sculpture, painting, literature, music and dancing
• Chinese aesthetics: Confucius and the role of arts and humanities
• African aesthetics: oral and written traditions
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Western Aesthetics
• First used by Alexander Baumgarten Aesthetica (1750-1758): the science which examines beautiful in nature and art
• Immanuel Kant, Taste (Geschmack) in Critique of Judgment (1790)
• Hegel (1823-27): Taught Aesthetics as a secondary spiritual reality
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Hegel and Kant
• To what extent art is the purpose or the vessel of reality?
• How close to reality is art?
• Is art for everybody?
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Leo Tolstoy “What is art?” (1897)
• Essay in which he argues against aesthetic theories which define art in terms of good, truth and beauty
• Art at his time was corrupt and decadent. Artists had been misled
• Art requires capacity to unite people via communication
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Week 117/1/12
• Course overview
• Introduction to terms art and aesthetics
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Week 224/1/12
The work of art pt.1
• On listening: the art of music and sound
• What is music?
• Music aesthetics
• The evaluation and appreciation of music
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Week 331/1/12
The work of art pt. 2
• Visual and hybrid forms of art
• Jean Cocteau and Les Six
• Personal reflections
• Examples: Criticism, evaluation, aesthetics
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Week 47/2/12
• Impressionism
• Debussy’s “The Sea” (1905): listening, reading, representing
• Monet’s “Impression, sunrise” (1872): landscape and realism
• Reflections on Expressionism
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Week 514/2/12
• Avant-Garde traditions
• The art concept in the 20th century
• Examples
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Week 621/2/12
• Jazz, Fox-Trot and Pop
• Dancing and performing arts
• Popular culture and the Frankfurt school
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Week 728/2/12
• Ethnographic art and representation
• Defining cultural aesthetics
• The Rules of Art (Bourdieu)
• Examples
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Week 86/3/12
• Collections
• Hard Rock Cafe: restaurant and museum?
• The art of collecting
• Top 5 lists and Desert Island Discs
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Week 913/3/12
• Field work
• Visiting Oxonian museums (Pitt-Rivers/The Ashmolean).
• Museum exercise
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Week 1020/3/12
• Workshop: re-examining art and music
• Discussion of coursework
• Summary of the course
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Exercises
• Aristotle’s 10 Categories for Cueva de las manos (Argentina 14,000-9,000 BC)
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
M. Babbitt’s article
• Who cares if you listen? (1958)
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Personal aesthetics
• Choose artwork
• Describe its ontology (Aristotle’s 10 categories)
• Why is it/is it not important for you? Justify according to influence, communication (Tolstoi), culture, society etc
Wednesday, 18 January 2012