Interesting As a Judgment Of Art

2025 Words9 Pages
“Interesting” as a valid judgment of art
Su Zar Wai Hnin @ Susan
August 3rd 2011
The Essay: Expo S-20E
Jill McDonough
For long, art, which is commonly agreed upon as the creation of human creative skill and imagination, has been the topic of controversy. As views on art and its purpose differ from person to person and from time to time, conflicting theories of art have developed. Consequently, these theories have largely influenced the way people judge the beauty in art. Throughout time, artists have consistently surprised people by challenging the norms of art and expanding its boundaries. As generations pass, the views on art change and new criteria for art are established. For example, beauty, a gladness to the senses that has long been the unquestioned criterion of value in the arts, has been discredited by today’s world where innovation and abstraction are valued. Furthermore, the changes in these views on art are accompanied by transformations in how people perceive art. The process of judging art, which used to be a simple matter of assigning pieces of art into two categories: beautiful and ugly, has been made complex by the addition of new descriptive words, such as “interesting”. While Susan Sontag, the author of the article, “An Argument about Beauty,” argues that people describe a work of art as “interesting” merely to avoid sounding philistine or having to commit to a judgment of beauty, “interesting” is a valid judgment in itself when a piece of art evokes curiosity in the viewer (Sontag 24).
One might wonder what the word “interesting” entails; if something is considered “interesting,” is it abstruse or puzzling? As with every other judgment, what is considered “interesting” differs from person to person. One person might find the complex “interesting” while another might find simple elegance “interesting”. Ultimately, “interesting” is used to
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