Art criticism

« reason for praising you, it is reason for praising anyone who does that action in those circumstances.

Some thinkers(Stuart Hampshire ( 1954 ), for example) have argued that reasoning in criticism is impossible because of the impossibility of this sort of generality in that context.

Thus, it is claimed, the fact that a painting has a patch ofcolour in a certain position may be the explanation for its admirable compositional features.

But the existence ofthat patch in that location cannot be cited as a reason for concluding that the painting is admirably composed.

Forprecisely that shade of colour in the same position in another picture may be the cause of that picture's badcomposition.

And if exactly the same feature can sometimes count for a conclusion and sometimes against it, itcannot be cited as a reason for believing that conclusion.

Care needs to be exercised here, however.

Sibley hasremarked that we can make a distinction between what he calls the 'neutral' features of a work of art and the'merit' features.

A neutral feature would be a feature such as the possession of iambic pentameter, an alliteration ora colour patch in a certain position.

The feature is neutral with respect to merit conclusions because it is possiblewithout any unnaturalness to say, for example, 'it is the alliteration that spoils this line', and, in the case of anotherpoem, 'it is the (self-same) alliteration that makes this poem.' Statements about neutral features cannot, indeed, beused as reasons in support of critical judgments.

However, asSibley observes, other terms do not have theneutrality of those just cited.

If we take terms such as 'witty', 'radiantly coloured', 'elegantly composed', 'subtle inits harmonic variations', 'ham-fisted' or 'ponderously executed', then these terms seem to have a positive (ornegative) merit force.

Though there would be nothing unusual about saying 'What makes it so good is its wit', itwould be odd to say, 'What makes it bad is the subtlety of its harmonic variations.' These terms do then seem tohave a general positive or negative force and are generally (and so genuinely) reasons for thinking something goodor bad.

However, as Sibley also pointed out, this positive or negative force is at best prima facie .

That is to say, although the possession of wit is a prima facie reason for saying that something is good, we cannot argue that because something possesses wit, it is for that reason good or has something good about it; for the wit might beout of place, as, for example, it is sometimes said to be in the Porter scene in Macbeth .

For that reason we cannot deduce a work's value from the fact that it has wit in it.

Once again the critic's judgments seem not demonstrableby reason, a fact that, again, may appear to support subjectivism.

4 An alternative model Hypnotized by the successes of the physical sciences and mathematics, many who thought about criticism - including, notably, theRussian Formalists - sought to remodel it along the lines of these activities and to look for inductive and deductiveways of proving critical judgments, the impossibility of such proofs being evidence of the unscientific subjectivity ofcriticism.

In view of arguments already given no programme of this sort could succeed.

Observable features, suchas onomatopoeia, alliteration, patterns of plots, no less than sound patterns in music or colour areas in paintings areneutral features, as likely to count for merit as against it, and cannot support critical judgments in any deductiveway.

In fact the model of the sciences and mathematics provides the wrong model for the procedures of criticaljudgment.

What is required in criticism is not inductive and deductive argument but an ability to see the qualities of visual works of art, hear the qualities of music and notice the features of literature.

The model that best fits the practices of criticism appears to be the model of getting someone to perceive something rather than arguingsomeone into something.

This is not, as it is with the colours of traffic lights, simply a matter of pointing the gaze ofa colour-sighted person in the right direction.

Like wine-tasting, aesthetic perception may require practice andexperience.

The critic, in helping one to see, hear or notice, can use a variety of devices, ranging from simplypointing out the features believed to be present to the use of analogies, metaphors, comparisons and gestures, inthe way in which a conductor may help a choir to sing a phrase in a certain way by hand movements.

If this kind ofmodel is adopted - and, given that we use our eyes and ears in artistic appreciation, what more appropriate onesuggests itself? - then the questions of rationality and objectivity assume a different aspect.

First, the scope ofreasoning in artistic judgment is immediately narrowed.

What the critic wishes to do is to help the reader, viewer orlistener to see or hear what is there to be seen and heard.

And although critics can give reasons for looking andlistening ('because the object will reward your contemplation'), and although they can give reasons, possibly of adeductive or inductive kind, for believing that something has merit or demerit ('most people think this is good, so tryit'), they cannot give reasons that will make people see or hear something.

The case is analogous to that ofordinary perception: I can give you reasons to look at the traffic light but not to see that it is red.

Although criticaljudgments are thus not objective in the sense that reasons can be given to prove them, this is not the only way inwhich objectivity is possible.

We need to ask, then, what kind of objectivity is appropriate to critical judgments.Given that these are perceptual judgments, the kind of objectivity they will have, if any, will be the kind that canbe possessed by perceptual judgments.

We do have an inclination to believe that statements about the colours oftraffic lights and the sounds of fog horns can be true and false, right or wrong.

That possibility depends upon therebeing some kind of agreement in visual response among human beings in the presence of such things as grass andtomatoes.

Some, notablySibley, have suggested that this kind of agreement is found in cases of art appreciation,and hence that this activity, too, has some claim to objectivity.

That this objectivity is dependent upon humanresponses does not, as Hume argued ( 1757 ), prevent there being standards in terms of which we might adversely judge the adequacies of certain responses: for example, the response of someone who thought Barry Manilowsuperior toBach.

5 Final remarks To assert thatBach is superior toBarry Manilow is not to rule out anyone's right to prefer Manilow to Bach.

As Kant remarked in one of the most important treatises in aesthetics ( 1790 ), if all one wishes to say is that one likes a thing, then, at least in aesthetics, who is to deny one that right? But if one wishesto say that the thing is good, great or awful, one is making a claim that goes beyond any statement of one'spersonal preferences, a claim that, as I have suggested above, may invoke an appeal to a shared sentiment.

Next,it needs to be noted that discussions of subjectivity and objectivity are bedevilled by assertions that judgmentsmust be either one or the other.

Better perhaps to think of the subjective and the objective as poles of a spectrum;to think of the judgments we make, affected as they will almost certainly be by our life histories and our distinctivehuman personalities, as lying somewhere along this spectrum; and to be characterized, at most, as tending towardsone or other of its poles according to the perhaps excusable degree of idiosyncrasy they display.

Finally, we maysum up art criticism as the activity of detecting and of helping others to detect the perceptual value and devaluing. »