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Mathematics - most self-flattering, self-aggrandizing trivia game ever invented?

I found the following ambigram and an inspiring little essay on the equal sign in mathematics by John Langdon. I thought I would share it with you.




MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is a coded language through which we can assure the gods that we are not unaware of what is going on around us. Or it may be the most self-flattering, self-aggrandizing trivia game ever invented. The English philosopher Bertrand Russell seems to have seen these two points of view. He said that mathematics "possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere... yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show." He also wrote that math "may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true."

We have found about a zillion ways of dressing up the equals sign. You can put x on one side and (-b ± √(b2 - 4ac)) / 2a on the other. You can put E on the left and mc2 on the right, or 1 on one side and 1 on the other. You can add (5 + 5 = 10), subtract (5 - 5 = 0), multiply (5 x 5 = 25), and divide (5 / 5 = 1). Do with numbers what you will, it all comes down to the equal sign. The rest is symmetry.

Did human beings always know that they had the same number of digits (!) on both their right and left hands? I prefer to think that one day, shortly after the dawn of Homo Sapiens, one individual came running back to the cave with that exciting discovery. "How obvious," we think. "E = mc2 !" "How obvious," the gods think.
"There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will," said Hamlet. There is an order to the universe, and starting with the person who discovered the symmetries of the extremities, continuing through the present with formulators of theories about "string," galactic bubbles, DNA, dark matter, chaos, particles, and white holes, we human beings understand some percentage of that order. "Divinity," as Shakespeare wrote the word, with a lower-case d, could be interpreted to mean "divine-ness," not necessarily as "God." And what could be more divine that the fact that sunflowers, Norfolk Island pines, lizards and snowflakes use the same system we do?

The Taoists must have felt that human beings are part of that system. Their observations of nature guided their principles and their approach to life. But their focus was as much on the concept of opposition as on the idea of equality. The Taoists may or may not have been impressed that 5 = 5 or that 2 + 3 = 5. Symbolically speaking, they would likely have focused on the fact that the numbers in question were on opposite sides of the equal sign. Observing the sun and the moon, man and woman, night and day, they concluded that opposites are equal, and in balance.

The graphic inspiration behind the equal sign is not terribly well disguised: two separate elements of identical length in close juxtaposition - two things that are equal. The gods may have been satisfied when we realized that things that appear to be different can actually be the same. We can hope so, as we haven't progressed much beyond that theme.

Every specific proof depends on that symmetry. Every piece of art in some way responds to the concept of repetition and variation. Things are different, yet ultimately the same. Chaos, according to the Bible, is what preceded Creation. What follows is its opposite - order. Is chaos, then, equal to order? Yes, in that they are the two states in which we can imagine the existence of all things. Does order depend on awareness?

In any case, mathematics is our security blanket. As long as we have it, we can feel that our lives make sense - rough-hew them how we may.



MATHEMATICS ambigram and essay, Copyright John Langdon 1992, 1999. All rights reserved. See www.johnlangdon.net

Does beauty play a role in evolution?

Q:Does beauty play a role in evolution?

When choosing a wife, almost all men prefer beautiful women, and the standards of beauty seem to be universal across races and cultures. So I assume the preference to beautiful women is in our gene. How did we get to this?


A:What an excellent question. Something I have wondered about for many years. The short answer to your question is YES.

Before going further we need to consider what is meant by "beauty". This is always a bit awkward when it comes to modern human beings. But it is this definition that is what you are asking. As you noted, there does seem to be a universal sense of beauty. Ultimately beauty seems to be defined by symmetry.

A useful overview of the issues of female beauty can be found at
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/b103/f01/web1/ekanayake.html
This also discusses a little about the waist to hip ratio issue.


But how did we get to this?

There are a couple of theories. One main principle is that a when selecting a mate especially within in human populations one key feature is the ability to nuture and protect the young. The classic example is the waist to hip ratio of a woman probably says something about her ability to carry off-spring.

But with regard to more subtle issues, particularly of facial features, the connection is less clear. One aspect of facial beauty (also of body beauty overall) is symmetry. There is some evidence to suggest that symmetry of body indicates the level of health of the individual. One major health factor for many animals is what the parasite load of an individual is.

A key piece of research related to this can be found by Anders Pape
Møller

"There is considerable evidence for secondary sexual characters in a wide variety of organisms reliably reflecting levels of parasite infections (Møller 1990), and studies of a diverse array of plants and animals show that parasites render their hosts more asymmetric and hence less attractive than unparasitized individuals (Møller 1996). This is also the case in humans: Men throughout the cultures of the
world value female beauty higher than any other attribute, but the importance of beauty is the highest in cultures with serious impact of parasites such as malaria, schistosomiasis and similarly virulent parasites (Gangestad and Buss 1993). "

the orginal source is at
http://www.mindship.org/moller.htm


With regard to the specifics of facial beauty of females ( and possibly males too ) there is an excellent list of scientific papers located at:
http://digilander.libero.it/linguaggiodelcorpo/beauty/

Aspects of facial bone structure also may allow for subconcious measurement of symmetry of a person and be able to get a sense of how healthy they are. There was a series on the BBC about the human face that may provide even more insight and this can be found at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/humanface/index.shtml

However all is not lost. Here is an easy to read article from NewScientist magazine that suggests that being ugly at may be a useful reproductive strategy
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991239

Also from newscientist there is some evidence that beauty wins out over youth in the partner selection game of life
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns9999940


But in conclusion it is likely that male(or female) perception of female beauty is a result of evolution to suggest something about the overall health of person. Beauty is selected for because it gives the greatest chance of healthy off-spring in the most efficient way.


________________________________________
Q: The answer and comments are very helpful. But they haven't completlely quieted my inquiring mind yet.

I don't how much I should believe the parasite theory. It doesn't sound very convincing.

My biggest question is for woman's facial beauty. It is easier to accept men's preference to women's figure beauty, such as the right waist/hip ratio, because it is biology relevant. But in our time, facial beauty has nothing to do with a woman's ability to bear healthy children.

People mention facial symmetry, but symmetry and beauty are two different things; it may be true that most beautiful faces are symmetric, but only certain symmetric faces are beautiful. It is not hard to find perfectly symmetric but unattractive faces. I think symmetry is just a (overly) simplification of beauty that scientists
make, so they can measure and quantify.

Is it possible that our preference of woman's facial beauty (assuming it is in our gene) is just a fossil feature that was formed during a certain period of evolution but has no biological relavance of the present-day human?



A: Female facial beauty is a very interesting issue.

You are correct, attractivness(or beauty) is not simply dependent on symmetry. There have been various studies that look at skin complexion also. I recall a study once that indicated a preference for certain facial types that females choose which their view of attractive men changes depending on where they are in their menstrual cycle.

You also state that " But in our time, facial beauty has nothing to do with a woman's ability to bear healthy children." . It seems that hormone levels have an influence on how subcutaneous fat is distributed in the face.

This idea is discussed in an article by Natalie Angier at
http://fig.cox.miami.edu/~bhoward/bil150/Man_woman.html
Discusses a number of studies in relation to faces including babyfaceness here is a little quote from the article " By the Perrett scenario, social skills like cooperativeness, honesty and gentleness proved generically desirable in the early stages of human evolution. Because such nurturing traits are associated with femaleness and juvenileness, the appeal of the feminine, youthful look became
pansexual, and helped to counter such standard engines of sexual dimorphism as competition between males."

Some typical features are the cheek bones, though it turns out not to be neccessarily bone but rather the distribution of subcutaneuous fat.

Your last comment about 'a fossil feature during a period of evolution' is the key issue. It is possible that these features evolved at a time before language/speech had evolved and provided a means of communicating their health status.

An interesting article by Jürgen Schmidhuber analysed facial beauty using fractal geometry. The abstract states that " They yield a short algorithmic description of all facial characteristics, many of which are compactly encodable with the help of simple feature detectors similar to those observed in mammalian brains. This suggests that a face's beauty correlates with simplicity relative to the subjective
observer's way of encoding it."
http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/locoface/newlocoface.html

So there could well be a gene (or more likely several) in our brain
that sets up a recognition of beauty/attractivness.

There is also a site that does a geometrical analysis of the face at
http://www.beautyanalysis.com/index2_mba.htm
That is worth investigating.




I think that you would find these books useful in your investigation of this topic. Summaries and reviews are available from the links provided:

The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women
by Naomi Wolf
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0385423977/
Argues that standards of beauty are thrust upon society through the media.

Survival of the Prettiest : The Science of Beauty
by Nancy L. Etcoff
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0385478542/
"Survival of the Prettiest argues persuasively that looking good has survival value, and that sensitivity to beauty is a biological adaptation governed by brain circuits shaped by natural selection."


I am currently unable to escape the notion that standards of beauty change over time, which might indicate that, in addition to any evolutionary or genetic basis for beauty, we are conditioned to find certain people beautiful. Also, some people differ in who they deem beautiful, though norms can be documented.

For example, compare voluptuous film stars and "pin-ups" from the first half of the 20th century, to "Twiggy" or Goldie Hawn in the 1960's, to today's Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. The further one travels back in time, the more variety in the standard of beauty one will discover.

Bombshells: Jayne Mansfield
http://www.bombshells.com/jayne/gallery/color/index.shtml

Swingin' Chicks: Twiggy
http://www.swinginchicks.com/twiggy.htm

Sports Illustrated: Heidi Klum
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/features/2002/swimsuit/gallery/heidi/6.html


Women also prefer handsome men, though this has been downplayed in mainstream culture. My own theory suggests that men don't want to be seen as ornamental and have to measure up to a woman's standards, so he compensates for his looks with money, job, etc.

Women today strive for the "hanger" look that fashion models possess.Men and women alike don't immediately recognize or understand the reason behind the very slim look (especially unnaturally slim or "boyish" hips on a female) comes from the fashion industry itself where women are paid to be walking hangers. Clothing must drape a
certain way, and clothing is the number one priority. Therefore the clothing takes precedence and a designer won't want a woman's natural features such as breasts, hips, etc. "marring" the line a dress would have when on a hanger.

In the survival of the fittest, biology would dictate that men seek women without very slim hips because of their inability to properly carry children. But the media today has heavily influenced society in what it believe is the "right" and "good" way to look. Thus Marilyn Monroe is being called "fat" today (a misnomer when you are comparing a "human female" with a "female hanger")and Courteney Cox (who is
gaunt, drawn and feeble looking) is seen as the embodiment of health and good fortune.

The only other theory I hold is that slim women are seen as weaker by males and thus easier to dominate. Larger, more robust women are seen as "masculine" and therefore a challenge to the fragile male ego. Items such as high heels and corsets were/are also used to keep women subdued. A woman can not outrun an attacker in high heels and heels as well as corsets present harm to the bones, back, legs, and internal
organs.

Beauty still is in the eye of the beholder. I personally don't believe "beauty" is evolutionary but the concept of beauty as maintained and fed by the massive media surely is. If we were looking at things from a survival standpoint, beauty doesn't save your life in and of itself, but a "beautiful" woman would be more protected, such as a fine item or an "ivory box" (to quote from E.M. Forster) would be protected. Thus woman is seen as thing, as ornament, while man continues to be
seen only as instrument.

Women's desires for a Brad Pitt over a Michael Douglas are often ignored, and this we have media rife with images of morbidly obese, old, balding, "ugly" men often paired with slim, young, "beautiful" women.

The question is, why has evolution/men continued to ignore women's desires? And why aren't more attractive men seen from a biological standpoint as having stronger potential children and virility?


Taken from here.

The Function of Beauty

The Function of Beauty

According to Kant, beauty has no function beyond the pleasure it generates. As much as this view influenced philosophical discourse, it did not satisfy natural scientists and social and cultural researchers.

Beauty and sexual selection.
Charles Darwin (1809–1882) sought to answer the question: how has natural beauty been acquired and what is its purpose? He rejects the idea that beauty in nature is a merely arbitrary outcome of physical forces. Darwin believed that the beautiful colors and diversified patterns we see in butterflies, moths, fish, birds, and other creatures must be beneficial in some way. In The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), he presents the theory that beauty is a result of accumulative sexual selection. Studying mating rituals among various species, Darwin concludes that the animals' splendid decorations, their pomp and display, could not be inconsequential, and that it is impossible to doubt that the female admires the beauty of her male partner. This contrasts with the traditional view expressed by Burke (1767) that beauty is feminine, while the sublime is masculine.

Kant states that only humans are capable of appreciating beauty. Darwin insists that the origin of the ability to notice beauty (and appreciate it as such) is the same for animals and humans. Yet he agrees that humans' perception of beauty is far more complex than that of animals and involves cultural values and traditions. He examined courting customs in different cultures and confirmed that beauty plays an equally central role in choosing mates, in spite of cultural differences.

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) concurs with Darwin as to the origin and role of beauty in human life. In Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Freud asserts that there is no doubt that beauty originates in sexual feelings, and that all forms of pleasure are related to sexual love. According to Darwin and Freud, the function of beauty is universal, but the variety of its manifestations coheres with cultural relativism. Tattoos serve as a beautifying means in one culture and are condemned in another. The Makalalo women used to pierce their upper lips and place a ring in it. Piercing, until recently regarded as esoteric in Western culture, is now commonplace in Western society. Facial hair (beard or mustache) is thought to enhance masculine beauty in Western culture. While the American Indians considered facial hair vulgar, they appreciated long hair for men. However, the passion for beauty and the readiness to suffer to achieve it are similar in all cultures.

Naomi Wolf, an active feminist, denies that this is true. She rejects the idea that beauty answers genuine, universal needs. Beauty, according to Wolf, is a myth created during the industrial revolution and used ever since by men to manipulate women for their own interest. Beauty, she holds, is not universal and is not a function of evolution. The readiness of women to suffer in order to achieve the false ideal of beauty indicates the dominance of men and confirms male manipulation. Thus, according to Wolf, the female suffering for beauty is not a genuine product of evolutionary forces (1991). Camille Paglia criticizes this kind of feminist approach for concentrating on images of beauty of the last century and for failing to encompass a broad historical view. Paglia places the origin of beauty in ancient Egypt (1991).

In contrast to Wolf's position, Nancy Etcoff argues that beauty is a powerful and genuine element in everyday life. She agrees with Darwin that beauty influences sexual choice, but she goes on to argue that it influences all aspects of life from early childhood on. Beauty is not the result of political or economical manipulation, but rather the other way around: due to its strong impact, beauty is used as a means of achieving political and economic ends. Beauty, according to Etcoff, is not a product of a certain period in history; its origin, rather, lies in human nature itself (1999).

Beauty and art.
Art was traditionally considered a source of beauty; some even argued that natural beauty is subordinated to artistic beauty. Plato, however, separated art and beauty into two independent concepts: real beauty reflects truth, while art is a deceiving imitation of nature. Aristotle, by contrast, held that good art is beautiful and that, therefore, the two are inseparable: a good work of art is a beautiful work. The Aristotelian aesthetic tradition prevailed for centuries, but it was the eighteenth century that gave rise to the idea that creating beauty is the essential purpose of art.

Kant holds that good art is beautiful, although it differs significantly from natural beauty: a good work of art is a beautiful representation. A representation can be beautiful even if its subject matter is not beautiful. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) argues that beauty is the essential feature of art, and natural beauty is a reflection of artistic beauty (Aesthetics, 1835). In this view, beauty reflects intentional creation, not incidental results of blind, natural forces. The poet Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805) associates art with freedom and beauty: we arrive at freedom through artistic beauty, since it is a product of intentional, free choice (Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, 1795). The comparison between artistic and natural beauty led Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) to the observation that life and nature imitate art far more than art imitates life or nature. Art is the creation of beauty; life and nature constitute its raw materials (The Decay of Lying, 1894). Benedetto Croce (1866–1952) similarly states that the sense of natural beauty is a derivative of artistic beauty. Beauty of nature cannot be explained unless one regards it as the work of a divine creator. Beauty, according to Croce, is a synonym of intuition and expression, and these refer to the artistic form. The content of the work is beautiful only when wrought into form.

Robin G. Collingwood (1889–1943) defines art as an attempt to achieve beauty (Outlines of a Philosophy of Art, 1925). However, his viewpoint did not gain influence in the twentieth century. The prevailing analytical trend preferred, it would seem, clear-cut, definable notions and has not been conducive to the study of the paradoxical nature of beauty, its ambiguous logical status, and the endless disputes over matters of taste. Thus, beauty has been dismissed as a vague and insignificant concept and considered irrelevant to art. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) remarks in this analytical vein that beauty is an odd word that is hardly ever used (Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, 1938). John A. Passmore states that there is something suspicious about the notion of beauty, and that artists seem to get along quite well without it. He associates beauty with kitsch and bourgeois art (1954).

The association of beauty with superficiality and tranquil bourgeois life stood in contrast to the revolutionary spirit of modern art and the general atmosphere between the two world wars and after. Detaching beauty from art became common practice. According to Curt J. Ducasse (1881–1969), there is no essential connection between art and beauty. Art is an attempt to express feelings, and artists may intend to create or express ugliness in their work (The Philosophy of Art, 1966). Nelson Goodman (1906–1998) argued that many of the best paintings are, in the most obvious sense, ugly. Beauty, according to Goodman, is a vague and deceptive concept, while art is a kind of language that has no essential bond with beauty (Languages of Art, 1968). The influential and much-discussed institutional definition of art presented by George Dickie (1974) similarly bypasses the notion of beauty.

Mary Mothersill strongly criticizes the wide neglect of beauty and its detachment from art. She argues that the idea of beauty is indispensable and taken for granted in art criticism, because although critics do not explicitly refer to beauty, the idea is implicit in their criticism (1984). Mothersill's analysis of beauty reflects a change in approach. By the turn of the century we witness the growth of a renewed interest in various aspects of beauty. Wilfried Van Damme examines the anthropological perspective of beauty (1996). Eddy M. Zemach defends the objectivity of aesthetic properties and their empirical testability (1997). James Kirwan studies the history of the concept in order to illuminate the experience of beauty (1999). Peg Zeglin Brand examines the role and significance of beauty in social life and in relation to gender (2000). Lorand offers a theory of aesthetic order that revives the connection between beauty and art (2000), and Nick Zangwill rethinks the metaphysics of beauty (2001). These and other contemporary studies confirm that beauty is central to human experience in spite of its neglect in the discourse of the last century. The genuine vitality of beauty is bound to intrigue the reflective mind and inspire further investigations of its nature.


Taken from here

A Case For Beauty

A Case For Beauty

by Jan Cannon



For some years a discussion has been going on among a number of people interested in ceramics and the visual arts about whether or not pottery should be considered an art, along with the "Fine Arts" of painting and sculpture. Before determining whether or not pottery is capable of artistic expression, we must first know exactly what "art" is. The American Heritage Dictionary defines art as "the conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium." Ralph Waldo Emerson, writing in the middle of the nineteenth century, recognized the central role of beauty in art when he noted that art's primary function was to ". . . educate the perception of beauty."

Beauty is a quality rarely addressed in contemporary art, although considering artistic works in relation to beauty would lead to a more universal means of appreciation and a more enduring aesthetic. It would also diminish the susceptibility of museums and galleries to fads and the commercially motivated quest for the "new." Some people object to such a criterion on the grounds that it is too subjective, but I argue that any other method of evaluation is too variable and egocentric to be of real value. Beauty, as a manifestation of pure consciousness, synonymous with peace, love and joy, is the true basis of our being and the one constant of our existence.

Difficulties in determining what is genuinely beautiful, or art, arise from the tendency to rely on the intellect. Instead, intuition should be the primary faculty used in creating and appreciating art. The rational faculty, of course, may be appropriately used in making art and I do not mean to imply that intuition is in conflict with reason--just that the rational faculty comes more into play in the expressive, as opposed to the perceptive, aspects of the creative process. Consequently its role is secondary to that of intuition in making and evaluating art. Even though using intuition may be an uncomfortable prospect for many, because it is beyond the proof of the intellect, the creative worker or critic who ignores this faculty does so at the risk of aesthetic irrelevance. Referencing aesthetic creations to an absolute quality such as beauty, using the faculty of intuition, seems a more practicable and reliable method for deepening our understanding of creative works.

Contemporary artists tend to emphasize technique and process, frequently at the expense of beauty. Critics similarly overlook beauty in their attempts to understand and appreciate artistic works. Although considerable skill is employed in the making of much of today's "art," and much energy is spent analyzing it, the undervaluing of beauty renders it ultimately unsatisfying. Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his essay on art:

"The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely, a radiation, from the work of art, of human character,--a wonderful expression, through stone or canvas or musical sound, of the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature."

He observed in the same essay:

"As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. High beauty is no longer attainable by him in canvas or in stone, in sound or in lyrical construction; an effeminate, prudent, sickly beauty, which is not beauty, is all that can be formed; for the hand can never execute any thing higher than the character can inspire."

Emerson felt that ". . . genius left to novices the gay and fantastic and ostentatious, and itself pierced directly to the simple and true." In his view, the traits common to the highest works of art are ". . . that they are universally intelligible, that they restore to us the simplest states of mind, and are religious." In contrast, much contemporary work seems overly narrow and personal, almost algebraic. Values are assigned to symbols and the initiated decode the works and proclaim the experience art. This is not art; it is mathematics without discipline. Others attempt philosophy or social commentary in their work. Such themes are completely inappropriate in art and are better served in other ways, such as by designing or flying space shuttles, writing essays or letters to the editor, or by making financial contributions to worthwhile causes. It is sad that so many people have abandoned beauty for such superficial attempts at intellectual legitimacy or social relevance when beauty, one of the supreme forces of human experience, is so capable of affecting real transformation in the human being and society.

The conceptual approach to art is further limited by its dependence upon narrative. To the degree that a person is engaged by narrative or reasoning in experiencing visual art--whether in trying to answer a question posed by the "artist," or in trying to place the piece in reference to some other piece, or by any other intellectual consideration--to that degree the possibilities for a true artistic experience are limited. True artistic experience takes place prior to intellection.

Pottery's freedom from the necessity of narrative is one of its greatest strengths. It can exist simply as line in relation to line, as texture, as dynamic volume, as color in relation to color; it may even be utilitarian. This, of course, is not to say that anything with an identifiable reference is flawed. Reference to natural imagery, for example, may simply be an excuse for a line or color or texture. An artist, as nature's agent, has a right to these designs and is wise to study them. Artists surrendering to nature will find their work becoming an act of that great original force rather than merely an abstraction of it.

Clay has tremendous potential for artistic expression and is capable of communicating the great aesthetic themes as well as any medium. Minerals made plastic by water and shaped by a human hand, hardened by air and fire, existing in, and at times containing space; that these, the most basic elements of creation, can affect a transcendental experience is truly magical.

We are in the midst of a process that is so much larger than we can imagine. I think, for all of the seeming importance of contemporary art and ceramics, that history will not take notice of much of the work being made now, unfavorably or otherwise; much of it being so profoundly insignificant. That alone which is beautiful will last, its place secure in the stream of thousands of years of culture. May we revel in the perception of that great Beauty from which we have come.

Taken from here

Art, Intuition and understanding.

Art, Intuition, and "Understanding"
A talk given by John Adams Griefen at the Art Students League, September 1999
Taken from here.


I am pleased to speak here tonight because I've enjoyed teaching here occasionally since 1969 and because I am grateful for the consistency the League offers in the midst of an often depressing and aimless art world.

I feel that it is important to clear up certain misconceptions about art because I believe that they get in the way of our understanding of art's very fabric and have led to some aberrations in the art of today and the understanding of art in general.

Hearing the following repeated over the years tells me that people have a problem with modern art:

"I don't understand it."
"Can you explain it?" and
"I know you think it is good, but why?"


The problem, of course, is that one cannot understand art, explain art, or say why it is good or bad. Let me repeat: art cannot be "understood". Our familiarity with art can be broadened and enhanced by art history and good writing on esthetics, but this has nothing to do with and bears no relation to direct experience with the work. Art must be experienced intuitively.

It must make one react, because without reaction there is no experience.

When someone says "I don't understand" he or she is either blocking the reaction or just not getting it. People are not used to accepting a powerful intuitive experience per se, but this is the only way to experience art. Esthetic intuition is the way we experience art. It is not rational. It is direct and unedited and personal. Many great works of art have content that can be political and social and have great importance, but these are content, not experience.

When someone asks "Can you explain it?" the answer is no. But just because something cannot be explained does not mean that there is no esthetic value there. If everything was the same quality there would be no art museums, only natural and social history museums.

But, we might ask, how can artistic experience determine qualitative differences if that experience is intuitive and non rational and unproveable? Is some experience "more valid" than other experience? Yes, it seems so. Some people also seem have a natural inclination toward art and taste and look harder and longer and better. At least, this is what history tells us. The long-term consensus of lookers at art, in my experience, have made museum repositories of wonderful things and have excluded the much greater number of lesser things.

I believe art is important to life. Love, kindness, peace and health are more important than art, but art is important. Art can carry over time and space and can unite human feeling across time.

For example, prehistoric cave paintings and early Chinese bronzes.

If we saw a cave artist painting on a building today we would probably put him in jail, but the art he put on the walls and ceilings of his caves comes across to us immediately over tens of thousands of years. It is beautiful and moving beyond whatever cultural significance it may have had in whatever culture the cave man had. It must, because we have little idea what that culture was anyway.

Chinese bronzes also speak powerfully from a culture I know very little about; it is far away in space and time but the bronzes are direct and immediate and need no baggage. It is not from knowledge that we feel the power of this art, it is by way of esthetic experience. There is no need for intellectual understanding.

When people try to "understand" or "have art explained" there is room for a kind of fraud that undermines what art really is there for and what it has for us. If people believe that art can be explained to them they can be talked into anything. Intuition by its very nature has no defense against rational argument. You can use the very same arguments for a good work of art as for a bad work of art. Find an exposition of a work you like and then apply it to a similar work of the same origin that you don't like. The expositions are often equally applicable.

Even good writing about art enhances the art only after you have a free and honest experience of the art. If you don't "get it" don't worry about it. Go look at it again. My friend, the critic Clement Greenberg, gave me but one definite "rule" in the thirty years I knew him: "go look again". I got the idea of "getting it " from him. He said, "If you don't get Shakespeare you don't get English literature".

"Understanding" a work of art is a peculiarly 20th Century problem. In the past the esthetic component of art was taken for granted and experienced without much notice. A painting of a crucifix in the 17th century had a strong religious message and its esthetic experience just happened. But when Varsari and others wrote about art in the Renaissance they wrote about the esthetic quality of the art, not the exposition of the subject matter, and that was what made the difference when choices were made.

Thinking about pure esthetics goes back at least to Immanuel Kant and was talked about by writers like Flaubert in the 19th century. But it was not until the mid twentieth century, largely because of abstraction, that the art world and the public began to be faced with "pure" esthetics -- the "artness" of art. Art writers searched to "understand" and "interpret" art. Abstract art left them empty. Eventually they embraced art they could talk about at the expense of art they couldn't. I'm not saying there isn't good art in any style or ism, but a style is not good because it can be talked about. Too often the talk itself becomes the justification for the art. The public is pleased that it is all being explained to them but they confuse the explanation with the art itself, thereby forcing the art to become an illustration for the explanation.

Meanwhile difficult and unexplainable abstract art and writing about it (not explanations of it) have been historified and locked safely into the past. I am not trying to promote abstract art; what I am talking about applies to all good art. We are lucky enough to be living in a time when we are able to experience all art with new power and direct feeling because of our recent consciousness of direct intuitive experience. This is why I find it so tragic that at a time like this so much of the art world denies the exhilarating direct experience of art in favor of the dull comfort of familiarity, easy explanation and "understanding".

Can it be that the very power of great art makes us retreat from it?

Thank you.