Philosophy 1361, Philosophy and the Arts Dr

Philosophy 1361, Philosophy and the Arts Dr. Cynthia Freeland, Spring 2008

Paper 3 Topics

Directions: Choose one topic from below. Aim at 3 pages. You should refer to at least some ideas in Freeland's But Is It Art, and/or in the articles by Hume, Bourdieu, or Hein in ABQ, to help as you do your analysis and observations. (Use relevant quotations to back up some of your points.) Due Tuesday, April 8 by midnight on WebCT; be sure to submit your paper using the Turnitin.com icon for Paper #3.

Museums and Value

Visit two museums (two art museums, one museum and one commercial gallery, or one art and one non-art museum), and make observations about what you saw. Imagine that you are an intelligent alien from another planet such as Vulcan, reporting on human values, culture, and behavior. Notice as much as you can about how the museum treats artistic value in relation to other values (emotional, spiritual, commercial, political, etc.). Observe also how the humans respond to their museum. You may also write about a museum or museums you have visited in the past, if you feel you remember it well enough. Recommended museums are the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Menil Collection. Some good examples to discuss would be Lucy’s Legacy or Body Worlds at the Museum of Natural Science (last year) or Pompeii at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. If you want to include some discussion of how the museum presents information on its website, that is also fine .(Best article to refer to is the one by Hilde Hein.)

Art, Money, Audience

Discuss the work of several artists whose work somehow addresses issues about taste, public accessibility, or art and money. Should art be "pure" with no relation to money? Is art contaminated by being made commercial? If art is popular and accessible to the public, is it probably not good art or high art? (Try to clarify what those terms mean.) In what various ways have your selected artists tried to deal with the treatment of art in our society as a commercial product? (You might wish to deal with artists or artists' collectives in other societies, too, if you are familiar with them, such as Huichol art in Mexico or Inuit art in Canada, or Native American art forms.) Possible artists to discuss include Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Damien Hirst’s diamond skull, unusual museum architecture, Jeff Koons’ art (and kitsch), Dale Chihuly’s glass art, J.S. Boggs’s “money” art, Thomas Kincade, etc. (Useful materials: Freeland chapter 4; Bourdieu, class handouts and examples.)

Taste Cultures

Using some ideas from Bourdieu, begin exploring some of the "taste cultures" around you. If you were a sociologist continuing Bourdieu's research in contemporary America (or Texas, or Houston), how would you approach your research project? One way to answer this question is to describe at least three different taste cultures that you are familiar with; these should reflect, perhaps, differences in age group, race, religion, ethnicity, social class, educational background level, etc. How might you set up some interviews to help you identify the relevant culture? Consider how taste cultures are formed. Can a person move across diverse taste cultures—how, when, why? Is some taste better than others? Why (how) or why not? Try not to offer a superficial, knee-jerk relativist answer that says "all preferences in art and cultural activities are purely a matter of subjective taste"—is this something YOU really believe about your own preferred types of art, music, architecture, etc.? (Recommended articles: Bourdieu and Hume on taste, Freeland Chapter 4, and/or Hein).