When considering his or her writing, society takes into account the author’s personality, taste, and passions. The author’s failing are also used to justify the failing of their work even though one rarely has anything to do with the other. Barthes argues that the “theological” (the message of the “Author”) meaning cannot be found in a single line of text. He believes that a culmination of cultures and ideas are laced together to form a multi-dimensional space. He goes on to further state that once the Author is identified with the work, a critic needs only to look at the Author to find the “meaning” behind the work.
Therefore, the artist can be considered irrelevant to the meaning of the art, and the artwork itself. Beardsley in 1946 subscribed to this view, stating that the intentions of the artist within an artwork are not available. • Since we frequently can and do interpret a work of art with little or no knowledge about the artist, let alone what is intended, an artist’s intention doesn’t fix the meaning of the work. Example: Consider a painting of two rings joined. Suppose the artist sincerely asserts that it represents the male/female relationship.
Jessica Margarita Gutierrez Professor Levy Music 24C 28 October 2012 Debussy: Impressionism & Symbolism in “Des pas sur la neige” "I am trying to do 'something different' -- in a way reality -- what the imbeciles call 'impressionism' is a term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by art critics." –Claude Debussy The term “impressionism”, derived from a painting by Monet named Sunrise- an Impression, is defined as music that evokes moods and visual imagery through colorful harmony and instrumental timbre. Debussy disliked the term in relation to his own music, and in fact his music could be considered more along the lines of symbolism. The symbolist poets such as Mallarmé, Maeterlinck, and Edgar Allan Poe fascinated him and he composed several pieces to be set to their works. However impressionism and Debussy are forever intertwined, because just as impressionist painters developed new theories on light and color so did Debussy in the realm of music.
(19) “Degenerate” art was defined as artwork that confused the human senses of natural form and or had no artistic skill. Hitler also felt that this artwork offended German feelings. There are two paintings by unknown artists that would be referred to as artworks A & B, these works will exemplify what classified as degenerate and what was acceptable. Artwork A is a perfect example of cubism, in which the “recognizable world of senses” (6) (Modern Art Movements by Gloria K. Fiero), was disassembled then reassembled in an abstracted form. Instead of showing objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject matter in multiple viewpoints to give the subject greater context.
What makes this so different and interesting to the eye is not only the style in which it was painted, but what was being painted. . With everything going on in the painting, the impression is that of silence and control. This painting may be viewed as simple, but creating it was far from simple. When Seurat made a decision to travel to La Grande Jantte, he found his inspiration.
Like Dorian Gray’s decisions, the foreshadowing, motif, and hubris throughout the novel also reinforce the theme of moral conscience versus vanity. This excerpt of The Picture of Dorian Gray contains foreshadowing that strongly reinforces the theme, moral conscience vs. vanity. At this point, Dorian is befuddled as to the painting’s purpose, “It had taught him to love his own beauty. Would it teach him to loathe his own soul?” The syntax of the foreshadowing is evident of rhetorical questions, which is representative of uncertainty and inner conflict. The diction shows the contrast and battle for priority in Dorian’s stream of consciousness between values and beauty.
Wagner was such an opponent because he represented the disease of decadence which plagued the culture and from which Nietzsche suffered for a time, but of which he also cured himself. In other words, Nietzsche emphasized his overcoming and revaluation of Wagner because he wanted his readers to understand it as a metaphor for his larger battle with decadence in general. The goal of this portraiture is to demonstrate on an individual level what could be done on a cultural level to revitalize culture. Through an analysis of Nietzsche's portrait of Wagner in the late period, I will claim that in order to understand Nietzsche's revaluation of decadent values in nineteenth century German culture, one must understand his relationship with the composer. From The Birth of Tragedy, where Wagner's music represented the hope for the re-birth of pre-Socratic Greek culture to The Case of Wagner, where Wagner was the artist of German decadence par excellence, Richard Wagner always personified nineteenth century Germany for Nietzsche.
According to Watson, no research could be considered valid if the introspective method of validating behavior was used. He scoffed at the idea of using untrained people who pondered their own thoughts and placed them in record, as research that was bound to be a failure. Watson decided that it was time to “turn to behavior as the data to be observed” (Goodwin, 2007, p. 343). Watson made it his
But even if it is said that there might be a designer, Hume criticizes that a cause need only be relative to its effect. So it is therefore not valid to argue from this limited world and its supposed design to some infinite or perfect designer, being God. Hume states that the evidence just does not allow us to go that far. He also points out that, since this is the only world that we know, we can’t really tell whether or not it is good. It may be that last string of a set of worlds that were badly constructed, and may therefore be the result of having tried and failed many times.
One offended critic described ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ as ‘a poisonous book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction’. After harsh criticism of the novel in Lippincott’s magazine Wilde decided to include a preface to an amended version of the text upon its republication. This comprises a series of epigrams expressing Wilde’s own aesthetic philosophy, aiming to discard the idea that all art should serve a moral purpose. This can be viewed as an attempt to prevent further offense being caused by aspects of the novel. However in order to evaluate whether it is an immoral story we must first consider whether it is consistent in this view that art need not have a purpose.