THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS
A MORAL OR IMMORAL BOOK.
Books are well written or badly
written. That is all.
Oscar Wilde
WITHOUT MUSIC, LIFE
WOULD BE A MISTAKE.
• Friedrich Nietzsche
REMEMBER THAT THE MOST
BEAUTIFUL THINGS IN THE
WORLD ARE THE MOST
USELESS; PEACOCKS AND
LILLIES FOR EXAMPLE
• John Ruskin
Art is what you can get away
with.
• Andy Warhol
Works of art?
• On the next slide you will see some
descriptions of works of art. Try and
impose some sort of ranking between
those most likely to be considered works
of art, and those least likely.
• Be prepared to justify your choice.
Sunflowers
Van Gogh
A copy of
Sunflowers
bought in
Slough
A sheep cut
in two and
preserved in
a glass case
Untitled white White canvas White canvas
canvas
titled “A foggy titled
day”
“Hiroshima”
A superb
A beautiful
sportsman at mountain
their peak of
achievement
Mozart’s
Clarinet
concerto
Einstein’s
theory of
relativity
King Lear by A poem
Shakespeare generated by
a computer.
WHY?
• If art is the pursuit of the aesthetically
pleasing, why do the reproductions come
beneath the original paintings?
• How do we explain that the Mozart is
different in every performance in terms of
speeds, volume and overall sounds, yet is
still “great art”?
• Are our aesthetic judgements subjective or
objective?
• Does a work of art need to be man-made?
We need to consider
• The intentions of the artist. (Though does
intending something to be art mean that it
is?).
• The intrinsic quality of the work. ( What
about forgeries though?).
• Spectator response? ( Do we need an
expert opinion though… can we trust
ourselves to be objective?).