With be Lucio Fontana’s art pieces. He
With this essay question I am going to be focusing on the value of knowledge in the arts and how without real-world application it can or perhaps cannot be diminished. It is important to know that the arts are not just paintings; it is also music, literature, sculptures, photography, dance, cinematography and theater.
Before indulging in the topic, the definition of knowledge is needed. Knowledge is an awareness and understanding of someone or something. It can be factual information, descriptions, or skills and knowledge is usually acquired through experience or education. There can be own knowledge which merely is knowledge belonging to an individual, but there is also community/shared knowledge which belongs to a group of people. In philosophy, the study of knowledge is called epistemology and the philosopher Plato famously defined knowledge as “justified true belief.” Another definition that is important is the word “value,” and it means the worthiness and importance of something.
This question asks me whether or not the worthiness of knowledge attained form the arts can be measured by its application in the world.Ome side to this argument will be that the more application to the world an art piece has the more value it has to it. When community/shared knowledge is applied to the world its value increases. Art is supposed to be shown and shared so, in the beginning, it is own knowledge, but once an artist displays it, it becomes community/shared knowledge. An excellent example of this would be Lucio Fontana’s art pieces.
He was the first to ever make a cut into the canvas, unlike the other artists who just painted on it. This revolutionary movement had significant influence on many people and artists as well. With art, the impact that it may have on other artists is whatin the application in the world. Most of the time people take inspiration from other art pieces from different artists and for example for me when I used to take Visual Arts I would constantly have to research individual artists that inspired me to create a particular piece in the way I did.
When making art a community/shared knowledge, whatever happens it already contributed to the world that is created by art due to the fact that many people will be either delighted to see the art piece and many will take it as an inspiration and some might as well wholly hat the work and not understand a single shred of it, however, it still had an impact on their lives making it an application in the world. So I think that art in this world is applied through sharing and shared knowledge. A musician won’t be called a musician unless he or she deiced to show their work to the world or perform in front of people. If the knowledge we gain from the arts was merely just personal, the lessons that it could teach us and the inspiration that it could give would not run as deep as it does now.
On the other hand, however, is the side where I say that own knowledge has value and worthiness to us. When the knowledge attained form, the arts are not shared, or applied personal knowledge still has benefits to it. Even though art is mostly created to be shared and works of art are usually are a collection of different community/shared knowledge, own knowledge can’t be denied its place in the spotlight. What I mean by this is that the way people see the art is always going to be different based on their knowledge.
Two people can look at one artwork such as dance (let’s take modern dance) and one person may be close to tears because of the emotions that they could see behind it and the other person might think “oh well this is pretty.” Well, this may be quite an extreme example. However, it is the main idea. Our interpretation of art is always influenced by what we know, and it is also affected by ways of knowing such as imagination and emotion for example. In VA I used to have to always write down about the conceptual aspects of my artwork and interpretation could be different than somebody else. One time, my class had an assignment called mystical forest, and I was stuck for quite a while, but later I came around something that was interesting. I painted a road floating the sky with trees on the edges a jumping buck and jellyfish floating in the air, and that was what I saw in my piece however when I asked my teacher what she thought she told me that she liked two I combined the ocean and the forest , she said that my trees look like coral and the sky is like the water, and I thought that that was an outstanding interpretation of the piece which I didn’t think about.
This is a great example of how our own knowledge influences how we see and perceive things. Art is supposed to evoke a sense of emotion and passion and awe, and well the general idea is to get at least the smallest response for the audience. Personal knowledge impacts how we see the artwork conceptually and our own interpretation of it that may be different from our friends or teachers or family members but that is completely fine, and it should be accepted.
I guess you can call art like a window to the soul because of all the emotions and interpretations differ from person to person. Without personal knowledge the value of the arts could be diminished however I believe that you do not have to apply the knowledge of the arts with the world for that specific art piece to have more significant value.As I was writing my essay, this one question kept popping up in my head, and that was what actually can be considered art and who determines what is and what isn’t art. “According to the intention criterion, something is a work of art if it is made by someone with the intention of evoking an aesthetic response in the audience.”1 This is what the Theory of Knowledge book said and I can see where it comes from as I agree but this one thought bothers me, do drawings or paintings of well-known artists, such as Picasso, when they were younger are not considered art or do they have value to them seeing as the artists is of grand influence. Does that mean that whenever a child draws something that that is not art or whenever I draw something in art class would that not be considered art either? I think that anything that evokes emotion, thinking and feelings can be regarded as art whether it be a child or an adult or a well-known artist.
I believe that many would disagree with me however I think that art is a much more complex concept and you cannot simply just say that one thing is and one thing is not art. Nonetheless, I do believe that art has to be human-made because nature is beautiful and it can evoke emotion. However, I would not say that it is art.Nevertheless, I believe that without application in the world, the value of art does diminish. Whenever art is not applied in the world what audience other than you does it have? Art is supposed to evoke emotions, feelings and further thinking and if you are the only one viewing the art its value is not as great as if you were to show it to the world. However, I do still believe that both community/shared knowledge and own knowledge have great value and influence on art and neither one should be disconcerted. Shared and own knowledge complement each other, and I think that one without the other is not really, entirely possible.
Without application in the world, the value of art knowledge can be diminished, but it does not have to. The value of knowledge depends on the person and for some own knowledge is more critical and for other shared/community knowledge is more valuable. I think that both are important but when it comes to the value shared/community knowledge is personally more valuable and worthy.
1 Lagemaat, Richard Van De. Theory of Knowledge: For the IB Diploma. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2016.
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