alt Hacker News> if you want to learn how tricky the question is, you should probably ask some trained person about it, like a philosopher of art. They can talk about it for dozens of hours without stopping to breathe.
This is tangential to the discussion, but I've always wondered why "philosophy of art" it's not "psychology of art" instead. Philosophy generally deals with things science can't deal with (yet) like ethics, metaphysics, qualia. And art is just about how humans (and probably other intelligent animals) perceive something meant to evoke emotions and thought. It's something science can deal with now, whether it's a "hard" science like neuroscience or a "softer" one like psychology and sociology. From Wikipedia I get:
> Philosophers debate whether aesthetic properties have objective existence or depend on the subjective experiences of observers
So in this case it's actually a type of philosophy, but it seems so useless to talk about something like this. Obviously what's aesthetically pleasing to some will not to aesthetically pleasing to someone else. And anything at all can be aesthetically pleasing. I'm sure many people find a piece of cow shit aesthetically pleasing. Many people dislike flowers and paintings. Things that are aesthetically pleasing to almost everyone are aesthetically pleasing because they share something that can be explained by studying our brains (like whether symmetry is generally perceived as prettier than asymmetry). Do any philosophers really think an aesthetic property, if it somehow has any objective existence, is any different than anything else that we treat as abstract but would have objective existence if we philosophized about it long enough (like mathematical structures or language)?
It's like some was bored enough to create this field when the interesting philosophies were already taken. And it's similar to those "philosophies" that talk about honor or duty and similar things that are so far removed from reality and can't possibly be connected to any ground truth about the world and need to be talked about in sociology circles, instead. Like, we don't have and can't possibly have a "philosophy" of HN comments. We can discuss so many interesting aspects of the comments here, but none of that would be philosophy, it would be closer to science.
> I think there is one more necessary (but not sufficient) property of art: it should stick into memory. Your stones in a metal cage have this property, you remember them, you ask questions about them. It is not sufficient to claim that they are art, but I think it is close enough.
I remember then because they were in a public park and I thought:
> The city and the government subsidizes this useless stuff instead of fixing the sidewalks. The amount of work to make these statues could've gone into something actually useful.
If that art was made by people with their own money and put in a private place and I somehow managed to see them, I'd just think "welp, those people don't know what to do with their money, but who cares". And I'd forget about them pretty quickly. So maybe the point of the useless sculptures was to annoy me that the government spends public money inadequately. I doubt that was the intention of the artists and they somehow tricked the government into letting them put the statues in a public place because the government subsidizes shitty (IMO) artists all the time and most of those artists actually think their art is good.
And just to clarify, the sculptures are really, really shitty. Literally a badly welded wire care with some crushed rocks above a bigger rock that was barely chiseled, if at all. Something a 5 year old could do if they had the strength to move the rocks or were allowed to use welding equipment. You have Michelangelo's David where you can admire the Michelangelo's skills, the time and care he took to sculpt it... and then you have a bunch of rocks in a cage. It's like comparing the Mona Lisa to a piece of paper someone took a shit on (which I'm sure has been put up in galleries at some point).
> When I imagine a 100-ton stone hanging from a rod I feel nothing. But when I see it, I can't stop laughing. Someone had gone through a lot of troubles to hang the stone, and to do that they managed to convince others that it is very important to hang the stone.
Definitely, although I'd be annoyed at the wasted resources, especially if they're public money.
> It is pretty funny to watch the artists, the lengths they are ready to go just to follow the rule of not following rules.
Like some kinds of fashion where you try to be unique and express your individualism but you end up looking the same as everyone else.
> Obviously what's aesthetically pleasing to some will not to aesthetically pleasing to someone else.
Yes, but it doesn't mean that:
> it seems so useless to talk about something like this.
What it means, that things become very complex to the point when sciences still can't take over the discourse and philosophy needs to fill the gap. All people are capable of understanding the idea of art. All people appreciate some kind or art. All societies, not just European or just developed countries, develop the idea of art. Some scientists argue that animals also have it, for example Frans de Waal believed that chimpanzee have some sort of art. It seems like an innate feature of Homo Sapience, but what is it? Why the ability to appreciate art was evolved in a first place? How it makes species more fit to select for their genes?
It just happens so biologists have not much to say about the topic. Anthropologists can describe a lot of kinds of arts from different cultures, but they are also can't answer the question. Psychologists tried to define art, but their answers do not look sufficient for me. To be frank, I've read just one psychological book[1] on the topic, and probably not the most influential, but I like the idea that art is based on the contradiction between form and content (and a kind of a cognitive dissonance triggered by it, though the idea of cognitive dissonance was after Vygotsky). I mean everywhere I look, at any piece of art, I see the contradiction. I'm not sure that it is contradiction between form and content in all cases, but some kind of a mismatch surfaces every single time. I'm not sure that this is a sufficient to have mismatch between form and content to become art.
But in any case, what I'm trying to say, sciences try to answer the question "what is art", it just happens that people are not content with the existing answers, and different scientific approaches to the question do not add up into a theory of art.
> So maybe the point of the useless sculptures was to annoy me that the government spends public money inadequately. I doubt that was the intention of the artists
I doubt it also, but the thing is: the artists did exactly that. Then you spend time thinking about it, and moreover you tell me about rocks in a cage. The sculpture touched you, it triggered your emotions and thoughts. This is the goal of a modern artist. Their goal not to annoy, but to trigger emotions. I laugh at such things, you become angry, we are both influenced by art.
> Like some kinds of fashion where you try to be unique and express your individualism but you end up looking the same as everyone else.
Yeah! When you try to look cool and not like others you are also become an artist, and if you end up looking the same as everyone, you are failed.
You remember the caged rocks, so they are not like the others, the artist succeeded. This argument doesn't feel right for me really, at least when we are talking about your reaction: you are annoyed at how public money are spent, not about some traits of the sculpture. But modern art use this argument, and I think it is not just plain non-sense, I just cant get my finger on the grain on truth there. I cant refine the argument and draw a line around it that will play the role of limits of applicability for the argument.
You see, the art should make people stop and think. You stopped and thought about the rocks. I'd guess... I cannot know obviously, but still I'd dare to guess, that you missed the opportunity to reflect on your feelings triggered by those caged rocks? Why you was annoyed? Maybe because people spend resources inefficiently, as you say, but maybe the inefficiency is just your rationalization hiding the real cause of annoyance? I dug into similar annoyance in myself, and I've found that I was annoyed because people do not share my understanding of art. I had some theories that people are mistaken because they do not try to think what is art and what is just plain crap, they just follow fashion. And for some reason it annoyed me a lot. What is this reason, I'm not sure, I think it has something to do with a social status or something like. Like, society I belong to ignores my opinion and goes into a direction I do not approve. It kinda make me a less important member of the society? I can't explain it clearly, because I do not understand it myself. But it is a very interesting observation, and I guess those rocks might become your opportunity to make this observation or maybe some to learn something else about yourself. Though I may be gravely mistaken of course. I can't just look into your head and explore your feelings and their causes, these things can be done only by you.
> You have Michelangelo's David where you can admire the Michelangelo's skills, the time and care he took to sculpt it...
Well... With Michelangelo I'm an example of what you said about the subjectivity of art. I don't see the point of drawing things on a canvas or shape rocks into a form of a muscular guy. I kinda can see the appeal of paintings before the photography was invented, but now they are useless.
[1] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D1%81%D0%B8%D1%85%D0%BE...
I don't think that the book was translated from Russian, I can't find no link to English description, and the Russian article in wikipedia I believe is not good, and the firefox's translation of it into English even worse. But I decided to add the link, because it would be strange to talk about an anonymous book.