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Socrates Cafe: What Is Good Art?
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  British-born painter Roy Adzak said “good art is not what it looks like but what it does for us”. French painter Paul Cezanne suggests “that a work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art”, while American poet Ezra Pound demands that “Good art can not be immoral. That’s the question that we’re asking in our next The Socrates Cafe – “What is good art”. How do you define good art? What does it include, or not include? Post your comments, then respond to others on this page. Guest
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I preface this by saying that I am by no means an art expert, or for that matter one who “understands” art. I tell people I work in radio for a reason… my visual aptitude is low. But this question makes me think back to when I was in Chicago in October 2001. I had a few hours to kill and went over the Chicago Institute of Art to bide my time. When I walked into the first part of the museum there was a large statue standing high in the center of the room, with paintings around the outside walls. There was something about that statue that I really liked (I think it was a Rodin statue but don’t quote me on that). I spent 3-4 minutes looking at it then turned my back to look at the paintings, but something kept drawing me back to the statue. I’d look at a few paintings then return to the statue. Even after I had left the room, I kept thinking about the piece and felt compelled to return to the room before I left. I still think about that statue today.
Fast forward a bunch of years later and I was taking a bunch of Ukrainian journalists on a tour of Boston. One of our stops was the Museum of Fine Arts on Huntington Avenue. If you’ve ever been there, it’s a massive place and we only had a few hours. So we all split up and went to the places we were individually interested in visiting. I happened into a room that had a display of a contemporary artist (again not sure who it was). The first thing I noticed was the smell… a horrible one. When I walked in, they had a canvas of black that I learned upon closer inspection to be matted with dead flies. There were several other pieces of equal grossness. Needless to say, I didn’t stay long.
What made me attracted to the Chicago sculpture? Not sure I can put that into words. I personally felt that to be good art. I also feel that “good art” is judged and true to the person experiencing it. I’m pretty old-fashioned and don’t really “get” a lot of contemporary art. Paint splattered on a white canvas, something I feel I could do as well with a blindfold, I could be convinced by someone else that that is “good art”, even if I don’t think so. Smelly dead flies on paper… not so much.
Keith, I was thinking about some of your audio pieces, which are really amazing pieces of storytelling, and wondered if journalism can be art. The object of what we do at NHPR is to inform - its purpose is not artistic - and yet there are times when your and others' work lead to the same kind of feelings and experiences that I get from hearing a great song, or reading a great book. Driveway moments.
Brady you raise a real good question. When I'm producing a piece and using audio to tell as story, I definitely see what I do as a sort of art form... the uses of the right music, sound, sound effects, intonation of voice, writing... I think it evokes a reaction in certain ways that art does.
I also have my personal opinions as to who does it "Good" and who doesn't. I can hear something and be mesmerized by the art in the piece or I can be turned off by it. It’s good to think about this question.
BUT, now I'm going to turn the tables… first by "outing" you as NHPR's Web Producer and then asking you the same question about web design. You put a lot of thought into how a website "looks" and "attracts". You think about the colors, the fonts, where items should be displayed and I'm sure with your job you find some sites "attractive" and some visually turn you off. Do you consider web design art and can you find "good art" and maybe "bad art" for the web?
Web design can definitely be art, and it can be good art - though this brings up the same issue Darren talked about, that it's usually not done as art (an end in itself) but as a means to an end, a function for something else.
In a lot of ways web art is still evolving. So much of it involves mashups, using elements from other projects and remixing them into something new. Many are quite good, but my favorite is this piece, which really uses the medium of the web in a fun and clever way:
http://producten.hema.nl/
I think believe that that anything done "well" could and should be considered art. You have that right.
But journalism, for instance, by definition, seeks to describe something that is already there or already happened or is predicted to happen, it doesn't seek to break new ascetic ground and it has rigid parameters, words.
You can make up words but then it becomes nonsence right? is art just mixing up and creativity arranging things already there?
It can be.
Perhaps it is our language that is lacking, we need more varied words to describe fine art vs. something that is done well and thus done artfully.
I am cleaning my apartment as art. Therefore I am an artist. Art is subjective, so I can consider myself an equal to Michelangelo right?
Everyone can be called an artist if everything can be done "as art" and if everything is art then what isn't art and why bother to use the word?
You raise some good points. I do have to be clearer. I don't think the journalism itself is art, but many producers and reporters at NPR and affiliates talk about the craft behind the journalism.
If a reporter is telling listeners that there was a fire on Sunday in Concord.... that it was started by a lit candle, that no one died but the house burned down is not art in my book. If a newscaster reads those facts, that I don't see that as art, but there is a storytelling experience too. We may decribe the flames, what the neighborhood looks like, try to explain the emotions of the people, you may hear sounds of fire engines, the crackle of the flames.
When we talk about the "craft" in journalism we talk about the "theatre of the mind" experience of taking you there where you can hopefully see, hear, smell and feel the same experience that maybe the reporter did on the scene. That I think is a kind of art. Its the same kind of art that you might consider a radio drama is, except this is fact and the drama is most likely fiction.
We do bat the term 'art' around in our culture with some abandon. I think art is something different from cleaning your apartment or maintaining your motorcycle. Perhaps it's about intention...the starting place in an artist's head. I think there are plenty of significant untrained artists. I don't think it is necessary to have gone to 'art school' to create artwork. But I do think it takes a mind set...an interest or need to develop a visual image.
And I think that's what I was hoping to bring out with my question - that there can be artistic elements and artistic reactions in and to journalism, the fact that it's not being done as art complicates the issue. Maybe my next question should be "does art have to be done for art's sake to be art," though that has the word "art" in it a few too many times :)
The light sculptor Robert Irwin once wrote about the experience of observing art (or any other significant life experience for that matter), "Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees." If it takes you through the looking glass, then splatter or not, it's got art written all over it. The public eye not only observes the work, it completes the work - the artist on the other hand can only draw the barest of comfort from Sartre's dictum, "Hell is other people." Whatever the artist's assumptions and process, the conclusion is always up to us.
It was the Damien Hirst exhibit at the MFA in Boston that you saw. I saw it, too. And though repelled by the smell of decay of the black fly encrusted canvas that you mentioned it struck me as compelling and found that I was drawn to it. I'm an artist and the work I create shows an awareness of loss. What I saw in that canvas (I believe the piece was titled "Armageddon") was a massacre - each fly representing the death of a person. I envisioned this piece as being taken from the wall of Dante's Inferno to represent the souls that resided there. I feel that art should be experienced on a visceral level and including the sense of smell in art is such a powerful way to do that. Smell can bring you to a place - imagined or real - like no other sense can. It can immediately conjure up memories and feelings that affect us physically. No, I could never have this piece hanging above my sofa, but it did touch me, and, like your response to the Rodin statue in Chicago, I was drawn to return to this piece.
Caron Gonthier
http://byzanicon.deviantart.com/
To become a better judge of art, get an arts education:
http://starbulletin.com/2007/10/03/editorial/commentary.html
The very title says it all, good art is a personal value judgment.
Is the "good" part a personal opinion of the host and his guest because that is the only legitimate "good" they can talk about without it being pure speculation.
I look forward to hearing this show!
Good art only exists in the mind and memory of the individual. The artist has no obligation to pander to society or any individual and society has no right to decide what is good art.
The term "good" here in the question is a little troubling--I take it to be "effective" rather than a particular value judgment. While to some extent a reaction to artwork will always be subjected to individual tastes, because society is made up of individuals, there is also societal taste. We, as society, can judge what is good and what isn't, and often do through the free market (our largest engine of value).
Art that is good enough doesn't need to worry about criticism. It changes the world to fit its values.
modern art was made "good" by the elite not by society at large! Heck, the CIA helped make Jackson Pollock "good" because he served their purpose as a (propaganda) weapon in the Cold War.
The vast majority of society didn't consider Pollock to be good! Even today, Pollocks' 'action painting' is looked upon with suspicion even though he is one of most 'expensive' artists out there!
"Good" should also be followed by what year it is as van Gogh's art was not "good" in his lifetime! It took brave patrons, curators and gallery owners to make van Gogh "good", society finally caught on but had to be convinced that van Gogh was a "good" painter!
I went to a Jackson Pollack exhibit at the NYC Guggenheim a couple of years ago. I did not expect to enjoy it, but I LOVED it. The work was not merely pleasing to my eye, it was exciting, and even more surprisingly, it made sense to me. I guess a component of good art is that it be understandable, on some level, to its audience. Did I understand the Pollack work as the artist intended? Does intelligence have anything to do with it? Who knows? This may sound trite, but it is exhilarating to find capacities you didn't know you had.
No work of art will speak to everybody, but I believe it's important and worthwhile to go out of your comfort zone and experience art forms that you aren't used to or knowledgable about. You might be surprised, as I was, at what you learn about yourself.
One of the misunderstandings of modern art might be because people may not have seen the real thing but just pictures in art books and little jpgs on their screen.
One day I happened upon a Marc Rothko color field painting and suddenly understood it when I allowed the pure color to radiate around me, it made sense and it was good. I had seen a hundred Rothko pictures and not once had I been impressed in the least because I was only taking in an impression, not the actual paint on the canvas with the light shining on it. That made all the difference and a believer out of me!
I haven't had a Pollock epiphany yet but i am open to the idea!
I agree - I haven't seen many of Rothko's pictures (the Currier has at least one), but for me, they are all about the color, and that is enough. They're beautiful.
http://thedailyshag.com/re-what-makes-you-an-artist/
I wrote this post some time ago, but it fits in with the two artists you guys are discussing, Jackson Polluck and Mark Rothko. They are both favorites of mine. The post isn't long, but it definitely explains my take on what makes an artists or even art!
-Tom
I had a similar experience to Susan's years ago when I went to an extensive Picasso exhibit at the Met in NYC---There was something very exciting in seeing how much work went into each piece, the sketches, first painting, the changing of styles over time, art captures people
and there are as many kinds of art as there are people/experiences---
i do think all art is good art, as all photos are good photos; as long as the artist can touch something genuine in someone by doing what is important to them
it is worthwhile.
Every time I go to a museum (not often enough) I am enchanted by the feast for the senses
It puts me in a timeless place
Sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes thought-provoking, or simply awe, calmness, color-love, shape-love
Always, I feel better and leave with ideas and a sense that life contains unlimited treasures
I finally "got" Pollock while producing a show about Pollock on The Exchange, which was tricky - how do you do a radio show about a painter?
One of the guests described action painting as comparable to improvisation in jazz - yes, he's "dripping paint on the canvas" but he knew how to do it to make the paintings speak.
that's a great question and i think it's actually more effective than an illustrated magazine article on a painter.
Humans tend to respond to other people's reactions to things, if the host and guests talked honestly about their reactions to the work of the painter it could influence the listener to go to the exhibit or gallery and look with a more critical eye at the visual material.
I found the film of Pollock painting to be helpful in my appreciation of action painting too!
I learned a lot from that film as well! It brings up the question of how important process is in understanding and appreciating art - it may be that knowing how Pollock did what he did makes it more special. Or not.
How to do dance on radio is a more interesting question. The great visual and dance artist Remy Charlip came up with a good solution in the 1970's when he created 10 brief spoken scenarios for dances that will never be choreographed.
never say never David!
I think that it is a wonderful testament to our innate creativity to be able to describe the beauty of something that must be either done or watched directly!
Of course dance can exist in aural form. Remy's point is that every work of art, whatever its medium or skill-set,reveals an underlying scenario. His notion in creating "Ten Imaginary Dances" was that he set out the scenario in simple, even humorous terms - and the dance is then completed in the listener's mind's eye 9 - and ear.
To paraphrase a former Supreme Court Justice, I can’t define art, but I (think I) know it when I see it.
When I first started studying architecture (many decades ago), my professor mentioned how terrible the architecture was on a high-rise apartment building across the street from the college. My young mind couldn’t see the difference between the “poor” design of the apartments and the “good” design of some well-regarded building that were designed by famous architects. After many years, however, I understand, but I can’t explain why.
Today, I am a photographer and am dealing with similar issues regarding taste. Some photographers are technically-focused whereas others are more artistic. My work is received differently by different people. The result is that I have to do what I think is right and let others think what they may. Who knows; in a few hundred years, I may be “discovered.”
Having said all that, I think that most of modern art is phony. If an artist has a good line of gab or can create a persona, many people will be seduced by it. Andy Warhol was a perfect example of that.
here's something I wrote on my art blog about this!
I think the reason why so many people feel so strongly negative against certain ‘contemporary/modern art’ is that they don’t or can’t understand it and it makes them feel vulnerable and somehow lacking, perhaps in an intellectual or subjectively un-fashionable way.
I like to use the “David Byrne” approach when exposed to art that I don’t ‘get’. David Byrne (from what I’ve read) tends to like art that isn’t my cup of tea, but it’s David Byrne, you don’t get more ‘artsy’ than him, if it’s art he would know and I trust him to be able to distinguish art from non-art, and so because there is a David Byrne it means the Emperor isn’t naked, just that I see can’t see his clothes.
I used to think modern art was some big joke full of people who just wanted to fool the world but it really isn't, it's just that i didn't like the idea that i didn't get it, i still don't get a lot of it, but now I don't feel so threatened by it as i trust the art world to weed out the fakers!
I am a former intern at NHPR, I work at RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth and I study social and polical philosophy and how art effects society especially in the face of apathy. I am working on a treatise on American Apathy and articles on art and beauty.
Good art affirms life and inspires people to beauty and action, social justice and change, while staying grounded in the complications of daily living. I think beauty needs to be brought back in postmodern art because too much vitriol and irony zaps people's desire for change.
Plato's Republic Book ten talks about the role of the "poet" in society.
I would recommend these books: On Beauty and Being Just by Elaine Scarry and also Venus in Exile; The Rejection of Beauty in Twentieth Century Art by Wendy Steiner.
Tell Andrew Walsh I say Hi!
I think good art is something that makes your insides swell. It could make your heart swell (it might be a beautiful landscape painting reminding you of home) or it might make your stomach swell (art that might be trying to prove a point about animal cruelty).
I think there is a difference between something that is generally pleasing and something that evokes a reaction, good or bad. The stronger the reaction, I think the more tempted a person is to decide whether it's good or bad art. And maybe it is deemed as "good" if it evokes the reaction the artist wanted.
I guess I have to reject the premise of the question. I don’t think there’s any such thing as “good art” or “bad art”. Art is the eye of the creator and beholder. Individuals can judge specific pieces of music, sculpture, performance, etc based on their own taste on a case-by-case basis, but the idea that there are overarching guidelines that make some art “good” and some art “bad” flies in the face of what art is all about.
Obviously, you can critique certain crafts. Theater reviewers, art critics, music experts – these people clearly know the ins-and-outs of their respective fields, and artists across all disciplines train very hard to hone their crafts. I don’t mean to take away from those obvious facts or to diminish the difficult work that faces any artist. But when you’re talking broadly about “art” in all its many forms, functions and definitions, I don’t like the idea of trying to categorize it into “good” and “bad”.
I've just read this on p. 1 of Vonnegut's TIMEQUAKE:
"I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did'."
This personalizes art judgement, as I think you are doing, with "...eye of the beholder."
Since all lives have different ups and downs, uniquely so, "appreciat[ing] being alive at least a little bit," makes art personal.
Good art is art that conveys unique content through fine form. Form (what it looks like: color, shape, line, texture, etc.) and content (meaning) are the basics of art. Cliched art conveys no unique ideas through forms we have seen again and again: like the white farmhouse, red barn and Vermont mountains my parents loved so much. Much contemporary art has little form and cliched political content.
Work like Duchamp's, discussed recently on NPR, has original content but readymade forms and is open to lively debate as to whether it is good art or not: mostly because some of it can be seen as not as visually pleasing as some of the "retinal art" he deprecated.
I have the biggest problem with conceptual art because its visual from is rather weak, as in the work of Kosuth and his One and Three Chairs. The content here is a continuation of Duchamp's mind games.
I think much postmodern art is weak because artists like David Salle have little originality, paint badly, but because they throw incongruous images together, about which famous critics can write about poststructural schizophrenia (Jameson), they are hailed as great artists. Such rubbish has become our academia and will be seen as shallow as it is in the future.
Great art has to reach the soul of the artist and that of the viewer, a very politically incorrect idea. From the Roman Pantheon to Gothic cathedrals to Michelangelo, Monet and Kandinsky, great art touches our hearts and makes us see the world in a new way.
Or so says this art professor [ :) ] whose web page has needed updating for the last five years.
I'm an MFA: Poetry student at UNH. Poetry, for me, is an attempt to convey an experience through symbol (both words and images) and rhythm. The poem is the medium through which the experience is shared with others. The key to a good poem is that it is not didactic: it does not instruct, but offers.
I believe "good art" of any kind functions the same way--it conveys an experience, which may be beautiful or horrific (not that those are always separate), in a complete way through a chosen medium. Art is more intimate in many ways that speech. It doesn't say, "listen to me". It says, "be me".
This show reminds me of the time I took a music theory course in high school. I worried early on that learning to take apart an entire piece of music and put it back together would ruin my ability to enjoy music for its own sake. Knowing all those details and formulas was supposed to get in the way of just sitting back and enjoying the song. But the exact opposite happened. I can't quite explain it, but it made me extra happy each time I could point out what was behind a part of a song I really liked.
Visual art for me is a different story. I don't need the details about what makes good artistic technique to enjoy something.
But no matter how much you know or don't know about art and music, I think it's really easy to define what is good. Art or music is good if you like it, and there doesn't have to be any rhyme or reason behind it.
There is no "good" art or "bad" art. There is just art. The words "good" and "bad" are subjective terms that have everything to do with context. What one viewer does not appreciate, another will. Labeling something as "good" or "bad" implies a universally accepted opinion, while art cannot be pigeon holed that way.
i agree with scott above.
also, i came across this video today and i thought of this discussion. it's only a few minutes long:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1078966177/bclid1133262555...
The purpose of the Socrates Cafe is for people to share their personal opinions and thoughts on the question and then for others to challenge assumptions by asking more questions. We're not hoping to walk away from this conversation with a conclusion "Good arts means____". Socrates Cafes are not interested in group conclusions. We’re looking for your personal thoughts on “good art”.
There are some who would think all art is good but there are others who feel that good art should have standards or their personal tastes determines what they think “good art” is. As I posted above my personal thoughts is that thousands of smelly dead flies matted on a canvas is not "good art". I say that and yet I have a real hard time to put into words what I think "good art" is. My personal taste are pretty old fashioned. I like Winslow Homer and Rembrandt for example.
Museum curators all the time determine what they think is "good art" and what isn't. They decide what makes "the cut" and what is worthy to be displayed in their museum and what doesn't. Just like there shouldn't be a universal determination on what is good art. Shouldn’t I be allowed to determine what I personally think "good art" is and what "bad art" is?
So I would encourage posters to talk about their personal determinations of "good art" and not looking to come up with a universal decision
My personal opinion is that the question is flawed. There is no answer. It's like "how long is a piece of string?" or "how deep is a hole?"
It's all about perspective. Just because someone appreciates a particular piece of art does not make it "good" and just because you don't like thousands of smelly flies matted on a canvas doesn't make it "bad".
Put 1000 people in a room with a Mapplethorpe exhibit and many of them are going to like it and many of them aren't, but it isn't good or bad. It's just art that some people appreciate and others don't.
There are already too many labels in our society without trying to label art as good and bad.
Maybe I'm just not understanding the purpose of the Socrates Cafe.
Hey Keith!
I think the universal versus relative (opinions) debate is a bit tricky.
Some people might suggest that films showing the rape of children is beautiful art; or burning a huge pile of tires for three days is beautiful art, or art which bullies others through irony and abuse. Or, what about the artist who recently starved a dog for art's sake? Or, what about Leni Reifenstahls film that showed Hitler in such a beautiful light (her ability to capture forms and shapes was considered so moving) that the films were used as the major form of propaganda for the rise of the Nazi Regime, even though she claims later in life that she was simply trying to make "formal art," that is, art which looks at the beautiful shapes and forms of the moment and not the meaning of those shapes and forms. Hers was not political art, she claims, it was simply art. Unfortunately, it was such a beautifully filmed film that it moved people to trust in Hitler and his sense of glory, strength and his vision to murder the Jews or the weak.
In life, there are some universals, otherwise we couldn't function as a community. Without some universals, justice and law would have nothing firm to go by. Of course, society is always in a state of upgrading and changing itself to be better (the dialectic). So, opinions are valid and everyone percieves things slightly differently and craves different things in the art they consume based on what stage in life they are going through (the universal stuff: love, death, hate, anger, awe, self-pity), but, if life was nothing but subjective opinions without universals than we can easily see how people could rationalize anything--including murder or rape. With too much subjectivity of thought, nihilism is possible. With too much universality of thought, tyranny is possible. I would argue that there is a balance somewhere in the middle.
I'm not advocating the rationalization of anything, just that the question, in order to be answered, needs a different framing.
Perhaps "What is effective art?" or "What is good art to you?". Either of these could be answered without labeling.
For the record, no artist just starved a dog for arts sake. An artist pretended to starve a dog to make a point. He took a stray dog in off of the street from amongst the hundreds of stray dogs in his area. He tied the dog up in the exhibit space, and gave it no food or water. People were horrified that he was starving this poor dog. After exhibit hours, he fed and watered the dog. At the end of the exhibit, he released the dog back to the street. His point? His point that was all of the people that were so outraged at the apparent lack of care being given to this dog, never even gave it a second glance as they walked past it, or any of the hundreds of others every single day as they went about their business. They had become so numb to what was around then that they didn't even see it until it was stuffed right in their face.
Very effective art.
Scott -
Regardless of what point he was trying to make, he starved a dog. Maybe he didn't kill it, but, I have heard otherwise.
However, you must be familiar with the notion of a means to an end? The means is the process that you undertake in order to get somewhere. Maybe you starve a dog to make a point...etc. Or, maybe you rape a woman to show rape is wrong? Or, maybe you rob a bank to show how stealing is bad?
Either way, I am weary of some approach that has hypocrisy tied up into it. It ultimately fails as an experiment for me if the end result is to suggest the opposite of your behavoir. This includes art.
You questioned nihilism. Nihilism has two parts to it: A. that there is no meaning because there is no cohesion of thought. Anything, then, is possible because nothing is sacred or universal. Which leads into the second part of nihilism: hedonism and destruction or, in other words, manic pleasure seeking (even if it means rape and robbery) and the destruction of propery or lives (even if it means murder or bombing) because nothing matters if everything is just all subjective.
I am weary of relying too much on opinion and too much on universal fact. I think there is a common ground between the two which I am open to talking about in a debate on Universal versus Relative, sometime.
I've decided that it's ok to do something, anything "as art" but you have to pay the consequences for your actions as decided by the people that see it, the public, also, will be judged by their reactions.
I will now boycott the county that allowed this art to occur (and of course never mention the name of the artist, ever). The public and government did not stop it, perhaps it was a 'grey area' in their laws but the fact that it was allowed to happen in public, the slow death of an animal that could have been prevented by any number of people makes that society complicit and they must pay the price. The price is me never visiting their country or buying their goods.
There is no way, no way at all that spectacle could have happened in the USA, for all our problems there are very very few of us that would have been ambivalent to this art.
Little old ladies, children, even policemen would have broken the law to save that dog if they saw it. The values we have as a society do not allow art to cross that line, we can tolerate a lot but not public torture of animals.
It's still art, no matter how pointless or criminal it might seem, but where you show that art is a factor also. The country that thinks so little of life will now suffer for it's values and art helped me make understand their values.
Since the artist convinced people that he did something that never actually happened, and has caused this much passion and discussion about it, it was very effective art.
very effectively made me boycott that country, you'd think that country might want to set the record straight eh?
Why would anyone want to set the record straight when they are garnering so much attention? I don't think that the boycott of Costa Rica or Nicaragua with your tourist dollars is actually going to have much of an impact.
Scott--
To be fair, it is not certain, after googling news reports, looking at the wikipedia page and other petition pages whether or not he starved the dog for certain or if he left it already in its starving condition to show people what a starving dog looks like; although there are accounts that he left the dog for three days with no food or water at the gallery and that it eventually died. I would be interested in seeing where you found information that he feed and watered the dog after hours and that he didn't in fact let it die.
But, I feel like you are missing the point of my question. You say that you believe it is effective art and I agree with you; yes, it is effective. Let's say he did let it starve and it died, just for a thought exercise. That, surely, is effective art. Starving a dog to make a point. Right? But, my question is: does art have to take into account morality as a means to an end? In other words, the end result was that it was effective, right? So, does that mean that starving a dog is okay (let's pretend for a second that he did) if starving a dog is effective? What does that mean about other things we might do to cause an effect? What, in your opinion, is okay in terms of the means that we take in order to create an effective (the means to an end). Do you think the means should be up for moral or ethical debate? Why or why not?
Donna,
I fully understand your question and I believe that you are asking it simply to elicit a knee jerk reaction.
I haven't heard anyone say that it is ok to rape, murder, or starve to create art and/or make a point. What I have said, is that it is ok to depict these events to create art.
Is it ok to actually starve a dog to make a point? No, but it is fine to depict a starving dog to make a point.
Is it ok to murder someone to show how terrible the act of murder is? No, but it is ok to depict the murder of someone to show how terrible murder is.
Is it ok to rape someone to show how terrible rape is? No, but it is certainly ok to depict the rape of someone to show how terrible rape is.
I could go on and on about hypocritical and morphing morals and ethics for an hour, but suffice it to say that what might be considered moral and ethical today is no guarantee that it will be considered moral and ethical tomorrow.
It seems to me that the Socratic Method really "is" about coming to a conclusion and not just discussing for the sake of discussing.
Either by asking questions whose answers lead you to a conclusion, or by asking questions of someone with an opposing viewpoint to get them to contradict them self and therefore prove the opposite opinion correct.
Simply asking "What do you think" is not the Socratic method.
Good art is something that encourages thoughts and questions, whether it is a classical painting or decorated car. I find that most modern art is not created with this thought in mind.
Someone said it and I've remembered it:
good art should disturb.
Good art should unsettle, should activate the brain, should cause questions.