Jean Michel Basquiat’s “Riddle Me This, Batman”, produced in 1987 is a Neo-Expressionist figurative painting (see fig. A.1). It was first shown in Paris’s Galerie Yvon Lambert. Two months after its debut, the piece exchanged hands several times, emerging briefly from private collections only to be snapped up at auction. Most recently, it was sold at a Sotheby’s auction for over six-million USD. Mark sagoff 119 Million dollar pieces were common in the 1980’s. During this time, the price of neo-expressionist works increased steadily. In the market place of public bidding-wars and private sales it seemed that art no longer had intrinsic value. The ever-increasing prices of these works drove many artists to manufacture pieces in turn making huge profits. However, this rather pessimistic consumerist view of art did not replace the true aesthetic value of Basquiat’s “Riddle Me This, Batman”. Rather it is Basquiat’s ability to produce and express reflections of culture, identity, and of the pains of life, which resist the monetary function of aesthetic value, in favor of an aesthetic standard as a matter of taste. Aesthetic value is determined by a standard. Typically, this standard is called beauty. While beauty is conceptually simple, easily evoked in the mind’s eye, it becomes far more complex when used as a scale of aesthetic judgment. Treating one piece of art as more beautiful than another implies that beauty can be measured, and in order to do this measuring an objective standard must be used. There are two problems in understanding beauty to be an objective standard. In his essay, The Aesthetic Hypothesis Clive Bell illustrates that aesthetic value is a matter of taste: All systems of aesthetics must be the personal experi... ... middle of paper ... ...ened to be Warhol’s assistant. Warhol’s death in February 1987 caused Basquiat to sink into depression. His addition to heroin resurfaced, gaining momentum until his death only 18 months later. Works Cited Aristotle, . Metaphysics. Aristotle: Selections. Edited by Terence Irwin and Gail Fine. Indianapolis: Hackett , 1995. Bell, Clive. The Aesthetic Hypothesis. Aesthetics. Edited by Susan Feagin and Patrick Maynard. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Brooklyn Museum, "Exhibitions: Basquiat ." Accessed December 3, 2011. http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/basquiat/1983.php. Kant, Immanuel. Art and Genius. Aesthetics. Edited by Susan Feagin and Patrick Maynard. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Sotheby’s, Contemporary Art Evening Auction. Last modified November 9th, 2010. Accessed December 4, 2011. http://tinyurl.com/7abp44j.
Mitchell, Helen Buss. "Aesthetic Experience." Roots of Wisdom: A Tapestry of Philosophical Traditions. 6th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2011. 303-24. Print.
Towards the end of Basquiat’s life, he became a victim of substance abuse. Many of his friends believed that he used drugs as a way to cope with his paranoia. He found it very hard to trust anyone around him once he gained fame (Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child). At the time, many African American males shared the same fear and used drugs as a way to manage it. Basquiat died from a heroin overdose and serves as an example for any African American male who deals with paranoia.
There is beauty and there is beauty. The two are not mutually exclusive, but rather represent two poles on a continuum. At one pole is the beauty that is associated with a sense of lightness and balanced order. It has a faintly decorative quality to it. At the other extreme is the much darker form of beauty that we associate with profundity and truth. This latter form of beauty I will analyze in terms of the containment of the sublime. The distinction between these two extremes of beauty has less to do with the objects under consideration, whether a flower, a sunset, a poem, a painting, or a piece of music, than it does with the attitude of the considerer of the object. That is, anything that possesses beauty of the first kind can also be viewed as possessing beauty of the second kind, if the attention of the viewer is directed appropriately. The differential across the continuum is constituted by the degree of awareness of the element of the sublime in the beautiful.
1. Hunter, Sam and Jacobs, John. Modern Art, 3rd Edition. The Vendome Press, New York, 1992.
Baird, Forrest E., and Walter Kaufman. "Aristotle." Ancient Philosophy. 3rd ed. Philosophic Classics, vols. 1. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2000. 304 - 444.
The. The "Aristotle". Home Page English 112 VCCS Litonline. Web. The Web.
(1) See "Judgment, Aesthetic" in A Companion to Aesthetics edited by David Cooper (Basil Blackwell, Oxford: 1992).
I'm Clive Bell's Art he expresses the belief that the only people that can say something with a notable and impactful way regarding aesthetics are those who have studied it and can make sound judgement. Bell finds that these people must be sensible because one must be able to think deeply about aesthetics in order to make a clear judgement.
In Introduction to Aesthetics, G.W.F. Hegel’s opening paragraphs describe the spacious realm of the beautiful, the relationship of beauty in both nature and art, and the limitation and defense of aesthetics. Hegel addresses that the proper way to express the meaning of aesthetics is to refer to it as Philosophy of Fine Art, however, once adopting this expression humans, “exclude the beauty of nature” (Hegel). As humans, it has become a way of life to use our senses to help describe the beauty of nature, animals and other people in our world. According to Hegel, “beauty of art is higher than nature” (Hegel) and it is the art that is created by the spirit that stands above that of nature. Nature is an incomplete substance and the, “realms of nature have not been classified and examined from the point of view of beauty” (Hegel). Therefore, there is a difference between the beauty of nature and
David Hume’s essay “Of the Standard of Taste” addresses the problem of how objects are judged. Hume addresses three assumptions about how aesthetic value is determined. These assumptions are: all tastes are equal, some art is better than others, and aesthetic value of art is defined by a person’s taste(from lecture). However, Hume finds the three beliefs to be an “inconsistent triad”(from lecture) of assumptions. If all taste is equal but taste defines the aesthetic value, how can it be that some art is good and others bad? Wouldn’t all art be equal if all taste is equal? Hume does not believe all objects are equal in their beauty or greatness. He states that some art is meant to endure, “the beauties, which are naturally fitted to excite agreeable sentiment, immediately display their energy”.(text pg 259) So how will society discern what is agreeable and what is not? Hume proposes a set of true judges whose palates are so refined they can precisely define the aesthetic value of something.
It is difficult to define or explain the artistic impulse, even today, and it is even more difficult to pinpoint the one point in history when human beings developed a desire for aesthetically pleasing objects. However, several trends that have endured for thousands of years, particularly the decoration of vessels, textiles, and jewelry, and the creation of drawings and sculpture even today when they are no longer the easiest way to tell a story, leads me to believe that there is something in the human spirit that has always sought out the beautiful, whether in concord or conflict with the practical. And although the role of art and artists has changed drastically in the past and will likely continue to do so in the future, there will always be an impulse, whether admired and supported or looked down upon by society, to make life just a little bit brighter.
Diarmuid Costello, Jonathan Vickery. Art: key contemporary thinkers. (UTSC library). Imprint Oxford: Berg, 2007. Print.
Geuss, Raymond. "Art and Criticism in Adorno's Aesthetics ." European Journal of Philosophy (Black Well ) 6, no. 3 (1998 ): 297-317.
In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus defines beauty and the artist's comprehension of his/her own art. Stephen uses his esthetic theory with theories borrowed from St. Thomas Aquinas and Plato. The discourse can be broken down into three main sections: 1) A definitions of beauty and art. 2) The apprehension and qualifications of beauty. 3) The artist's view of his/her own work. I will explain how the first two sections of his esthetic theory relate to Stephen. Furthermore, I will argue that in the last section, Joyce is speaking of Stephen Dedalus and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as his art.
In order to understand Joyce’s theory of beauty, the process that occurs must be de-constructed. Beauty can be found in vastly different contexts—the sun setting over the ocean or the Mona Lisa hanging in The Louvre in Paris—yet every experience has been