Steve Sommerville's Blog

www.stevesommerville.co.uk

Finished

Well, after 5 years of studying Fine Art, part time at Farnham, I have just finished. All the work is handed in and the degree show is set up. It's now just a case of going to the Private View (PV) and seeing what marks I get. It feels strange having finished at last, as I have been working away at things for so long; in some ways it feels like only yesterday when i started the course, but in other ways it feels like it was ages ago in a different life time. I suppose the interesting thing is to see which direction my work goes now, will I continue with the same intensity, or even working with wood.

The Farnham, UCA Degree Show, PV launch is on the 7th of June, and the main exhibition runs from 8th to 16th of June. Please come along if you get chance.
I have attached a couple of shots of the work I put in for the degree show, the pictures are a bit cluttered, as everyone was still setting up at this point, but it should give an idea.

(download)

The next image is of a piece, that I didn't have space for in the degree show, but I instead exhibited in the James Hockey Gallery, which is also in Farnham.

Img_6368

Critical Assessment of Practice

During the early stages of my work in September 2011, my practice was focused on taking ‘natural’ pieces of wood, and damaging them, to create an anti-aesthetic art object. Whilst this was initially very successful, several criticisms were levelled at my work over the course of the academic year: My work was too small, decorative and I used a chainsaw too often, this lead the charge that too many of the pieces look similar and repetitive.

I think that many of my works were similar, however throughout the later part, I tried to address this by exploring the use of processed wood, the introduction of materials such as foam, metal and paint. I have found this approach challenging, as it has significantly affected the technical aspect of my practice and the aesthetic of the finished pieces. As a consequence, my practice feels as if it is at a point where it may develop in a new direction and that these new ideas have not been fully resolved.

During the course of the academic year, as well as a general maturing in my practice I believe that I achieved two major developments. Firstly, I was able to resolve my previous inclination towards overly decorative and white-plinth mounted work and I believe I have now reached a point where I accept the role of a gallery, and a plinth, but I do not automatically want to locate my work in a preconceived space. Secondly, I have also developed an ability to tackle large scale works and projects, through a combination of confidence, increased technical ability, and possessing the correct tools. I have found that by increasing the size of the pieces, the relationship between the mark-making, the object and myself have all changed significantly.

In addition, I have identified two further areas that require attention. Firstly, I think that I have focused on one material too much, and while initially this allowed me to develop ideas and skills, it has started to become too limiting. Secondly, I have not successfully resolved the aesthetic ‘look’ that I feel my work should have. I prefer aesthetically strong work, and find that my earlier pieces look more resolved and balanced, while the more recent pieces, using timber and foam, look aesthetically weak.

More New Stuff

In the last few months, I have actually had a lot of quite interesting and new ideas, regarding my own practice... but as the course deadline and degree show is fast approaching, I am having to curtail them somewhat. I suppose I shall wait for the degree to finish and then see which direction things go from there.

The first piece is really an experimental idea, that reverts back to the use of 'polished, nice wood' that I was using about 18 months ago, but deliberately introduces a break that is mended using metal joining plates. The idea being that the break and joining plates contrast against the nice, smooth, polished wood causing a sharp contrast and making the viewer question the piece. I think it was surprisingly, much more so than I anticipated, but I'm still a bit wary about falling to the lure of the shiny wood trap I fell into earlier.

The second piece, is again another experimental piece where i decided to completely abandon the idea of using 'real' wood and cutting into it. So instead I made a construction out of MDF and metal rods. I think this was quite a successful piece, and reminds me a bit about a Lesley Foxcroft exhibition I saw a while ago, but the piece feels very weird and alien to everything I had been doing previously and I wasn't sure if it was too much of radical departure for this stage of the course.

The third piece, is really just a rehashed idea I had from a while ago, of just totally brutalising a piece of wood with an axe and drill and then forcing in nail and screws. I don't really think the piece is that successful, it is too busy and looses a sense of what its really about. I don't think this style has really much scope for development. The fourth piece is a kind of combination of the second piece, and some of the earlier pieces I had done, i.e. nice big scale work, but constructed and made out of commercial timber and bolts. I think this was kind of an interesting piece, and certainly an area I would like to develop a bit further.

The fifth piece, is again a continuation of the idea of the 2nd and 4th pieces, but trying to create a much larger physical construct. I found this piece surprisingly weak, and couldn't quite shake the feeling that it just looked like a slightly disjointed child's playground climbing frame.

(download)

New Stuff

I haven't posted any of my newer pieces for a while, this has been partly due to the fact that I have been busy and also due to the fact that i have been trying a lot of experimental work. Most of the experimental work is to get away from over-reliance on the chainsaw and the mark-making that I have got too comfortable with. The works are shown below.

(download)

The first work was an experiment to alter the material properties of the wood by adding a layer of enamel paint. I have very mixed feelings about this work, I think it achieves the object of radically changing the way you look at the wooden piece underneath the paint, and the bright uniform colour gives the piece a very confused contour and surface. But I keep thinking that the overall piece looks weak and just doesn't seem to pull together. Perhaps the paint colour is just too strong and dominates everything, and the result is just ugly and plastic, I think the technique might have scope for further development, but at the moment i'm not sure.

The second piece is basically a recycled old piece from when i was into my 'polished shiny wood' phase, and really all I did was to add expanding foam around the base, with the idea that the plastic would offset the natural material and also create a feeling of organic growth and decay eating into the wood. I'm fairly happy with the end result although i would have like to grade the 'growth' more and maybe texture it in a different way.

The third piece is a much simpler variation of the earlier work I had undertaken, but this time I worked over the wood just using a series of axes to give a criss-cross pattern across the wood, I then slightly singed the piece with a blowtorch to add a sense of colour and depth. Overall i was quite disappointed with this piece, I think it just ended up looking too subtle and decorative, the size of the marks in relation to the piece of wood just weren't convincing and the end results just looks like an unfinished piece.

The fourth piece, was a variation of an older 'totem' style piece that I had created, but instead of leaving the scars empty and showing, I filled each one using expandable foam. I was actually quite please with the end result of this piece, it maintained a continuity with the previous work, but at the same time, add a whole new dimension to it, challenged the aesthetic and made it look quite ugly.

The fifth piece is really the same idea as the fourth piece, but with paint spread over the piece to further confuse its aesthetic. I don't like this piece, it looks too forced and contrived.
The sixth piece is a combination of the ideas of the second piece and fourth piece, using a polished smooth bit of wood with scars cut in, but then filled in the cuts with expanding foam. I even less happy with this piece than the fourth one, it just looks too contrived and forced.

The seventh piece is also a recycled earlier piece, but with the sheets of metal added as cut through sections. I think it certainly adds a new dimension to the piece and creates a tension between the wood and the metal, but I think the original piece was perhaps a bit too weak, to successfully integrate with the new idea. An interesting idea and one i think I will develop.

The eighth piece is a continuation of the idea of the seventh piece, but scaled up and done as a specific piece rather than a recycled one. I'm pleased with this piece, it has a sufficient size and scale that the sheets of metal work with the wood, and the bridging effect of the bolts between the to wood pieces, give and extra positive/negative space angle. The only aspect of this piece I wasn't happy with with the base, the two concrete blocks just end up looking like feet and detract from the main piece.

 

Art in The Garden

I am lucky enough to be chosen to exhibit some work at the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens in Romsey, Hampshire. I am looking forward to this exhibition, as the park is a good location for my work and should fit nicely with the Gardens. The exhibition opens on Saturday the 19th May and runs until October, so if you passing do visit and keep a look out for my work. 

The work I am showing in the garden is from a slight older series I did last year, I am exhibiting the following 3 pieces:

(download)

Photography and Sculpture

As an artist, one of the most important things you have to do is show your work especially if you want to make a career out of art. To do this you need to be able to send images of your work to potential curators, galleries, museums, and collectors etc. How this is done depends on the medium you work in, but assuming it is a non-time based medium, the only realistic way of doing this is by taking photographs of you work, and then either sending in the hardcopy photos or sending a CD of images. Now for paintings and drawings this is generally a lot easier as they are usually flat and you only have 2 dimensions to worry about - in sculpture things are a lot more complex. The rest of this post is really a summary of the things I have slowly learnt the hard way, over the last couple of months, about how to take half decent photographs of your own work. Now the thing with photographs, is that a good photograph will just make the work look like it ought to, but a bad photograph will significantly detract from the work and make you look amateurish. So if you send in poor quality photographs to an exhibition/curator/gallery you are marking yourself down before you have even started. Of course you don't have to show your work, and in some ways I like the idea of just making work, and not bothering with the hassle of trying to show the work and sell it and instead to just make the work because you need to make it. The problem is, if you decide to start exhibiting your work, you get sucked in to the whole slightly weird and crazy world of contemporary art. I might discuss the art world in another post, but this post is really about presenting the work to an interested 3rd party.


Ok, so when it comes to photographing your work there are basically two options: Do it yourself, or get someone else to do it for you. Personally i'm a believer in doing it yourself, especially if you are an emerging artist who will be changing & updating your works fairly regularly; if you can photograph your own work it will save you a lot of money and trouble in the long run. Using a professional photographer (or alternatively a mate who is a serious hobbyist), will require some planning and usually handing over lumps of cash, so I would only normally recommend this if you are really put-off about photography, or if you need some good high quality photos for a specific reason.


I will run through a quick high level view of what you need to know and how to shoot some halfway decent photos of your own work. It's important to remember that this is a learning process like everything else, so your first few shoots will probably not be great. 

Camera
If you are going to be doing a lot of photography for your work, then invest in an entry level DLSR (Canon EOS 1100D and Nikon D3100 are both good). The more expensive ones are much better, but a waste unless you are seriously into photography. An alternative is to get a 'bridge' camera, these are halfway between a DSLR, and a point and click compact - these are pretty good all round cameras, and ideal if you are after something to take photos of your work with and as a general all round camera. Finally there are point-and-click compact cameras, these will do if you don't have anything better (or don't want to spend more), but you will find that you hit the limits of these cameras pretty quickly.


Lighting
Getting good light is essential for taking photos of the work, it is also one of the most difficult factors. The best lighting is natural daylight at around noon, but usually this this isn't practical unless you work is outside, or you have lots of natural light coming in through a window. Soinstead you either need a well-lit artifical area, or you need to start looking at providing additional artificial lights. When thinking about lighting there are two factors at play: The first is making sure that the piece has enough light so that it is correctly lit and you aren't getting shadows in the wrong place. The second is setting up your camera to match the type of lighting your using.


To sort out the first issue, the best lighting is one the covers the whole piece and doesn't cast areas into shadow. Good natural lighting will sort this out automatically, but poor lighting needs to be corrected. I normally overcome this by using 2 constant light Softboxes from PhotoSEL (Bargain at £120), I set these up at each side of the piece at 45degree angles and then move & point up or down depending on the size of the work. I would generally recommend avoiding flash unless you really know what your doing.


The second issue is related to your cameras 'White balance' and the fact that light from different types of sources is actually a different colour and will make the colours of your work look wrong if you choose an incorrect setting. Most DSLR's and bridge cameras have a variety of settings for this and a 'custom mode' to tune to whatever lighting is present; compacts tend to have a few presets, but don't usually have a custom mode. In practical terms, if you are shooting outside, or in good natural light leave your camera on 'auto white balance' (AWB) and don't worry about anything else. If you shooting indoors, in non-natural light then there are three ways of doing things: Firstly, set you camera to a custom white balance that approximately matches the lights in the area (i.e. tungsten, fluorescent etc..), this is the easiest approach and will work with all cameras - but it will give the leas satisfying results. The second option is to set a custom white balance, by photographing a piece of white card under the existing lighting conditions, this lets you camera work out what 'white' should actually look like; this is a good option, but can be a bit fiddly and needs your camera to have a custom white balance mode. Thirdly (and the method I use), take the photos in auto white balance mode, and then correct using a software package like iphoto, adobe elements 10 etc..., this works well if you are shooting in camera RAW mode, but can be a problem if you are shooting in JPEG as you loose quality. This mode is also fairly good if you have a limited functionality point & click, but have access to either of the software packages I mentioned.


Shooting Location
This depends on the work you are shooting, if the work is located outside and heavy, then its location will be fixed and you just have to pick a good position to shoot from. Usually though most shooting is done inside, if this is the case, then you need to setup some sort of space to shoot in. Really what you need is an empty bit of floor space, that is painted a dark colour like grey, and a clean white wall to shoot against, this will sort of mimic a typical gallery space and helps you give an idea of what the work would look like if it was installed in an actual gallery. Then position you piece (& plinth) so that you can capture it with the camera, and not shown any background mess. It is possible (but difficult) to set up a continuos, white or black, vinyl screen which gives a very smooth background and makes the work 'float' in space, but I would only really recommend this for very small intricate pieces as it doesn't really work with larger objects unless you really know what your doing.

Shooting Position
This is partly a matter of taste and style but also depends on the size of the object and its location. Generally I would recommend shooting at a slight angle so that the depth of the piece is shown and try and get the piece so it sits in the centre of the frame and that any background clutter is out of sight. Aim to shoot slightly down at a bit above the eye level of the piece; it is important to avoid shooting at a very steep angle to the piece (i.e. very up or down), as this creates problems of perspective and converging parallels and can distort the piece (the way train tracks appear to converge in the distance), cameras seem to over emphasise this for some reason and a piece can suddenly end up looking very odd and distorted 

Tripod
Get a tripod. Really. If you are shooting a still life you need a tripod - you can pick up fairly decent ones from Jessops or any camera shop for about £45 and they are an absolute must, as they let you set the camera to the highest quality levels and avoid the problems of camera shake.

Camera Settings
The final hurdle it to pick camera settings that are suitable for the piece. I normally shoot in Manual (M) mode or Aperture Priority (Av) mode. Firstly set you lens aperture to a big setting (small f), this will help give a good background blur, and keep the object sharp. Note that if you have a DSLR with a lens capable of a very big aperture (small f), don't set it so small that parts of the piece appear out of focus. ISO setting should be as low as you can get, ideally 100, this gives maximum quality.


If you are in Av mode, the camera will pick the best shutter time for you. Note that if you are shooting a dark object against a light background you will need to use the overexposure control, to stop up the camera a couple of notches. This is because the camera get confused by all the background light and misses the object. If you are shooting a light object against a dark background, it is the same principle in reverse. If you are in Manual mode, you just have to play about a bit until you get the right settings. In both cases though it is important to remember that is the sculpture that is the important bit and this is the priority, so in some cases you amy have to sacrifice other areas.


Finally make sure you camera is in the highest quality mode you can get, and set the white balance to suit the lighting (as discussed above) then start shooting. I would recommend taking quite a few shots of each object, try them at different angles and heights to see what works. Then you can go through them later and discard the ones that aren't any good.


Right thats all. This is by no means a definitive guide, but should give you a good few pointers to start shooting with.

Degree Show and Moving on

The culmination of my undergraduate course in Fine Art is a ‘Degree Show’, where the students showcase their best work in a single, week long, exhibition at the host college/university. The format is fairly prescriptive as there is only limited space and resources available, but for most students it is their first professional exhibition.  I am fortunate in that I have exhibited work before and also curated some exhibitions, so I have a good idea of what to expect and how much effort is involved, but because of that I can’t help thinking it will be a bit of an anti-climax. I have exhibited before, and always find it a little bit underwhelming and the whole private view (PV) a bit tedious and full of self-congratulatory nonsense. I don’t mean to sound ‘sour grapes’ it’s just that in my opinion, the part that has been most interesting, has been how my artistic style has changed, developed and matured over the years. That process has been the biggest development and reward and a degree show doesn’t really capture it; I can look back at my own work and wince at how childish and naive it all seemed, but at the same time be amazed at how far I have come.

Still the degree show is a fairly big event and a few collectors, art journalists and galleries come to look at the exhibition and snap up emerging talent, or that’s the theory at least. I suspect it might happen in the big-ticket institutions like The Slade, Wimbledon, Chelsea etc… but I think I’m perhaps a bit too cynical to believe it would happen at a non-London based institution. Actually I think it perhaps still one of the great myths in art, that you will be labouring in your studio day after day, then one day you will get a tap on the shoulder and fame will find you. Mostly I think it is just a case of making work, applying to exhibitions and galleries consistently, until some of the slightly bigger galleries notice and decide to give you chance. Much as I despise the football, I see art as being much like the football leagues – you start in the bottom league and compete with other artists to get into small galleries, and slowly, with success you can start moving up the league tables.

So what happens after the degree show? My ideal, is that when I finish the course, I will be accepted on to an MA/MFA at somewhere like the Slade or the RCA, and then I can have a focused year r two, really developing my work, but it may not happen. Art institutions are notoriously fickle and my practice isn’t exactly ‘on-trend’ so I think it’s a case of wait and see. Probably what will happen is that when September arrives I will move down to Dorset as planned, and I will set myself up in a new studio and continue to create pieces and try and apply/exhibit to any upcoming art exhibitions.

The funny thing is though, ultimately exhibiting, selling pieces, becoming a ‘named’ artist and so on doesn’t matter. I create the work because I enjoy it and because at some level I almost need to make it. Art is somehow wrapped up into my soul, even if I lived on a desert island I think I would probably still make stuff. So even if my art career doesn’t get anywhere I will still create the pieces, and when they get too old or I don’t want to look at them any more, I can just recycle them into firewood.

Slade and RCA Portfolio

So, this is the final portfolio that i put together for the Slade and the RCA. The RCA allowed a few more images, but the core content is the same for both. Overall it has been a very worthwhile experience putting the portfolio together and has really made me take a step back and look at my work, and also think more carefully about presentation and plinths. The hardest lesson i learnt in all this, was the importance of good photography. Despite having a good camera, and a basic understanding of photography, most of my pictures ended up looking very mediocre, and i think ultimately let the portfolio down. I think at some point soon, I am going to have to go and do a proper photography course and learn about still life photography.
Now it is just a case of waiting to see if I get called to interview to either of them. The images I submitted are below:

(download)

New Stuff

Been a while since I lasted updated with what I have been working on... I think I must have been getting carried away with the theory side of things. Anyway, here are the latest pieces...

The first piece, I was very pleased wit - to me it gets the subdued but slightly edgy aesthetic feel to it. The size and scale of the piece works well, and it fits neatly onto a plinth (which helps give a sense of scale) to the piece. I think the only area where I question this piece, is on the mark making, it feels like they should mean something, or have a significance - which in actual fact they don't. Does this matter, or not? I'm not sure yet, but it is a strongly recurrent theme on all my work.

The second piece was a bit experimental, although its not obvious from the photo. I actually fully set fire to this piece and let it 'slow roast' in a mini-bonfire. I think the resulting piece is actually very weak and doesn't do anything significant or different to previous works, but it was quite an interesting learning piece.

The third piece was also a bit experimental, and involved using a drill and hole saw to cut into the wood. I really can't make up my mind on this piece - part of me thinks it looks a bit too decorative and unfinished, but part of me quite likes the unusualness of it. It has an almost symbolic, mystical feel to it due to the repetition of patterns. The fourth piece was also experimental, and I decided to try and carve a more complex 3D shape from the wood, giving it complex edges and form. I then stained the wood a sort of orange colour, and burnt it - but in a very staccato way, so that it looked mottled. I actually really like this piece, i think probably because its fairly different to my other pieces and the experimental idea seemed to work. I think i will come back to this style and try some more variations.
The final piece was intended to be a large resolved piece, brining together my earlier style and increasing the scale while making it site specific. I think that the image I took of the work, doesn't really do it justice, as i couldn't capture the whole of the piece and show the detail of the piece as well. Overall though i have mixed feelings on this, i'm glad i finally tackled a bigger site specific work, but i actually don't think the piece is that effective, probably because stylistically it was so similar to older work.

(download)

Cognitive Aesthetics / The Contradiction in Contemporary Art

Over the last few posts, I have started to realise that there is a major contradiction at the very heart of the subject of Contemporary Art. I am fairly sure this has been discussed by many learned people before, so this is my take on the subject. The contradiction is this: ‘If art is an entirely based on subjective views of taste, how is it possible to critically assess an artwork, and how is it possible to differentiate ‘good’ from ‘bad’ art?’ Just to be clear, I’m not quoting anyone famous here, I just put the key discussion point in italics to make it stand out.

I will begin by trying to explain the meaning of they key sentence. The first part of the sentence refers to the issue that art is primarily a subjective field, and people have widely divergent tastes. At one extreme I could take a sculpture or painting that is world famous like Duchamp’s 
Fountain show it to some people who would say it is a work of genius and others would say its nonsense; at a mid-level maybe a work by Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko, would generally get a better reception, but there would still be some people who didn’t like it and then at the other extreme a J.M.W. Turner painting is almost universally admired. Then the fun bit is that if I took the paintings off to another part of the globe with a very different social structure (i.e. most of Africa, Japan, China etc..) the responses would be different again. So I don’t think there is any way of getting away from the taste problem.

Interestingly one of the related problems with taste, is that as well as the concept of taste, people are physically different.  Some people are blind, partially sighted, colour blind and then most people are widely varied in how they actually see colour (some see lots of shades, others less) and then at the other extreme there are people with Synesthesia, where are there senses seem to overlap. I think that people also view works differently depending on how they are feeling, if you are in a bad grumpy mod, then it is easier to be dismissive, if someone is calm and relaxed work is viewed in a different way. So that creates a whole second level of issues where people will physically interpret works differently  

The second part of the question is rooted, in the ideas surrounding formalism, and the idea that any artwork can be broken down into key formal components (line, shape, colour, tone, texture etc..), this was a popular theory for a long time, and personally I still think it has a good degree of validity. But a lot of contemporary art is just too complex for this sort of analysis, i.e. Tracy Emin’s ‘ My Bed’ or Damien Hirst’s‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’  (Or the stuffed shark if you prefer), where these works get complex in formal analysis, is that they are situated and rooted in society and deal with social issues, such as personal vs. private space (Emin) or societies never-talked-about-relationship with death (Hirst). You don’t have to particularly like or admire (i.e. find them tasteful) to see that the works are difficult to analyses in formal terms.    

The third part of the question, is even more difficult than the second part. How do you apply concepts of good and bad to a subjective object? In a way I consider this a sort of related problem to the idea of moral relativism, i.e. it is difficult (or inappropriate) to make moral judgements on a society that we have no involvement with or understanding of, because we invariably bring our own societal prejudices with us and start thinking we are right, they are wrong. But then you can end up with the case, of people (i.e. philosophers or whoever) tying themselves in knots, and not being able to condone the ritual sacrifice practised by the Aztecs, or Slavery practice in Europe – which I don’t think anyone with any sense would wholeheartedly condemn. This moral area is a whole big philosophical mess, and a major subject in its own right, which I’m not going to go into, but I think it is an interesting parallel between aesthetic theory and moral theory. 

So where does that leave us?

The premise of the question is perhaps a misleading one, in that it hints that taste is an absolute, which I think it is easy to prove that it isn’t. The general consensus on taste, at least in philosophical terms, is that taste is very much a case of an individual and their social context. In more formal terms  the branch of philosophy that deals with this concept is known as Cognitive Aesthetics, which is a fancy way of saying that the main view is that art should be viewed in terms of both social context of the artists/viewer and also the physical context of the viewer; or put another way there are no absolute standards and everything is relative to both the viewer and the artist.

If I am honest, I find the theory a fairly convincing one both at a common sense level (which is the acid test for a lot of philosophical puzzles these days) and at a more formal logical level. Although this should by no means be taken too seriously, there are many cases where the reasoning of philosophy doesn’t really fit with reality and there are plenty of thorny issues out there, where the conclusions seem bizarre, but the logic has no obvious flaws. But, as I stated at the beginning of my post, if this theory is correct, then it is impossible (or perhaps invalid or inappropriate is a better word) to make value judgements on something artistic, as there are too many subjective factors involved to make any such universal declarations that ‘this is good’ or ‘that is bad’. So while this theory sounds very reasonable and logical, and also ties up with the way different cultures react to different aesthetics, it doesn’t really match the day-to-day reality of life at the sharp end (or blunt end…) of being an artist or art student.

Where I think the idea of cognitive aesthetics is flawed, is that it doesn’t take into account that people do make value judgements all the time, even practising critics, tutors and artists, who try and avoid such thoughts of pattern. Perhaps we are wrong in making such value judgements on art? But I don’t think we are, I think it is in part built into or psyche, we can come up with all the aesthetic theory we like, but people will carry on making value judgements on things with aesthetic value. Certainly as a practising artist, I make values judgements about my own work regularly in order to determine what I think of the pieces I have created and in this scenario there is no need for relativism because I am both the viewer and the artist. Similarly almost everyone else involved in the art world make value judgements on other peoples work frequently. Overall though, I think that avoiding values judgements is actually a bad practice and I would also go so far as to argue that not making a value judgement is an easy way out and an avoidance of dealing with something critically. I suppose at a high level I agree with the theory and I accept that we do all bring our own prejudices and tastes with us when we look at a work, but I don’t think we can just say that we are not going to make a value judgement because everything is relative.

I think that how cognitive aesthetics relates to work works is that when we ‘like’ a work, there is an overlap of taste between us, as the viewer and the taste of the artist. This overlapping of taste creates a degree of empathy with the piece, which makes us receptive to the work and likely to receive it an a positive way. This in turn places into a frame of mind where we are much more receptive to the ideas of the work and more likely to inspect the work carefully. I think, that this theory might explain why some works become accepted and adopted by the public as a whole, such as Angel of the North by Anthony Gormley, the style and aesthetic of the piece, is one that is widely accepted by much of the public and people fell they can relate to it. Where a lot of the more challenging works by artists such as Hirst, Emin the Chapman Brothers etc… has an aesthetic that people struggle to relate to; so many people will see the work and perhaps admire the ‘cleverness’ of the piece, they will not really end up ‘liking’ the piece, as there is no overlap of taste occurring.

This leads on to an interesting point, in that I think taste as a concept, contains a certain moral element. I argued earlier that taste is formed by the social context of the viewer and the artist. In each case, of both the viewer and the artist, the society they live in will have a certain moral element to it. This moral element decides in part what is morally acceptable and what is morally unacceptable, as well as a whole area of moral ambiguity in the middle. So for example if we see art, that is of a ‘happy; scene i.e. landscape painting, it would be either morally neutral or possibly morally favourable. Conversely if we were to see an installation art of a dog being starved (this actually happened see here), there would be a strong moral reaction. Personally I would go and rescue the dog and bollocks to the consequences and probably plant a fist on the nose of the ‘artist’ who came up with the idea. These two cases I think show instances  of how morality, is part of society, which in turn dictates to a high level our taste and response to a work. Therefore when we view a work, we are making a judgement that is based on taste, but which is also based on morality. If we avoid considering this moral dimension and our response to the work, then we are in part not correctly interpreting the work; either in a positive or negative sense. I therefore think that it is both possible and justified to make a moral judgement on a subject*, and thus if we are justified in making a moral judgement on a subject we are equally valid in making an aesthetic judgement.

So how do I think that we can make value judgements on artworks?

I think the first point to accept is that we as artists and viewers do make value judgements on aesthetic objects. Secondly, I think cognitive aesthetics has shown us that aesthetics does have a social and situational dimension that is part of a taste judgement. Thirdly, and perhaps controversially, while we accept that taste has a social dimension, we often share enough of a common social background with the artist to make a taste judgement on their work. Fourthly, we will make judgements of taste based on accepted societal norms of beauty, taste and morality. Fifthly, as we share this common social dimension, we are justified in making a taste judgement on a piece. Sixthly, when we make a judgement on a piece, it contains an element of taste and morality. Finally and again perhaps controversially, that as we do make a taste judgement, we are justified in taking a moral stance on the work.

Ok, so that whole post perhaps got a bit long winded, and I’m sure my arguments have a lot of holes in them. But I found it quite an interesting post to write, as it made me challenge my own assumptions on taste and beauty. I think that when I get round to finishing my MA in philosophy I will probably end up doing my dissertation on aesthetics and this sort of subject and argument.  

* You may have noticed I slightly ducked the whole issue of moral absolutism versus moral relativity. Which is mainly because I’m running out of space and energy to write about it. But yes I accept this jump should be considered further and should be challenged.