THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A MORAL OR IMMORAL BOOK.Books are well written or badly

written. That is all.

Oscar Wilde

WITHOUT MUSIC, LIFE WOULD BE A MISTAKE.

• Friedrich Nietzsche

REMEMBER THAT THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THINGS IN THE

WORLD ARE THE MOST USELESS; PEACOCKS AND

LILLIES FOR EXAMPLE

• John Ruskin

Art is what you can get away with.

• Andy Warhol

Works of art?

• On the next slide you will see some descriptions of works of art. Try and impose some sort of ranking between those most likely to be considered works of art, and those least likely.

• Be prepared to justify your choice.

SunflowersVan Gogh

A copy of Sunflowers bought in Slough

A sheep cut in two and preserved in a glass case

Untitled white canvas

White canvas titled “A foggy day”

White canvas titled “Hiroshima”

A superb sportsman at their peak of achievement

A beautiful mountain

Einstein’s theory of relativity

Mozart’s Clarinet concerto

King Lear by Shakespeare

A poem generated by a computer.

WHY?• If art is the pursuit of the aesthetically

pleasing, why do the reproductions come beneath the original paintings?

• How do we explain that the Mozart is different in every performance in terms of speeds, volume and overall sounds, yet is still “great art”?

• Are our aesthetic judgements subjective or objective?

• Does a work of art need to be man-made?

We need to consider

• The intentions of the artist. (Though does intending something to be art mean that it is?).

• The intrinsic quality of the work. ( What about forgeries though?).

• Spectator response? ( Do we need an expert opinion though… can we trust ourselves to be objective?).