I’m taking voice lessons through Steinhardt and I really love them so far. We do vocal warmups and then we are working on My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music, and I really love singing and I am so happy to be working on getting better at it. My goal for the semester is to expand my range and work on songs for Shabband.

I am really horrible at drawing, so I’m taking this class in the hope that with some practice and direction I can improve and be passable as an artist. The class is structured around weekly sketchbook assignments and larger portraits, but the primary focus is a self-portrait.

This is my first year Gallatin research seminar. It is taking a philosophical approach to the arts. Unfortunately, the class doesn’t seem to be focused on architecture, but Professor Trogan said that I could incorporate it into my final research paper. Right now we are learning about different philosophical approaches to art in general, but as the semester goes on it will specify on painting, theater, music, and other mediums. I hope this class will help me gain a better understanding of philosophy regarding beauty and how to make buildings more attractive and pleasing to the eye.

The Merit of Forgeries

Goodman argues that the difference between an original painting and a fake is an aesthetic quality, and is rooted in the fact that one could eventually know the difference between the forgery and the original. It does not matter to Goodman whether the differences are imperceptible to the naked eye. His belief even applies to paintings between which the differences cannot be seen except via x-ray images. He believes that the fact that his perception of the image could change is an aesthetic difference. Moreover, he does not assign any value to fake works, and believes that the fakes create a precedent for further fakes to be accepted as real, as in the case with the Van Meegeren paintings that he cleverly passed off as Vermeers. Because each Van Meegeren that was accepted as a genuine Vermeer broadened the critic’s definition of what a Vermeer looked like, Van Meegeren was able to pass off more of his paintings as Vermeers which may not have happened if the experts had seen some of Van Meegeren’s work. Goodman believes that the comparison is the root of the aesthetic differences between a fake painting and an original.

Denis Dutton, however, believes that all art is performative and that forgeries are bad because they misrepresent the performance. He does not believe that the aesthetic difference between a forgery and an original is the source of the problem, but rather that the misrepresentation of achievement does a disservice to both artists and changes the aesthetic experience of a viewer. He does ascribe some value to forgeries as an acknowledgement of the forger’s technical skill and performance of passing of the work as an original, and Dutton uses several examples including one’s experience of listening to an etude by Liszt played at a very high speed. After admiring the skill of the pianist, the listener discovers that the recording was sped up electronically. The listener may be disappointed at first but might later appreciate the work of the sound engineer who sped up the song or the fact that the pianist could play an etude by Liszt at all. This type of admiration is only possible after discovering the truth about the way the work was produced and ensuring that it was not misrepresented. Dutton’s argument is more compelling because it ascribes value to both the creativity of the artist of an original work and the technical skill of a forger, editor, or director who make their own contributions to the creative process.

Dutton’s argument is more inclusive and appreciative of the technical aspects of art than Goodman’s. He is able to strike a balance between the two main viewpoints on forgery and where the value of art comes from. Dutton writes, “In its extreme forms, contextualism in critical theory has tended to emphasize the origins of the work, its status as human achievement, at the expense of purely formal properties; in its exclusive concentration on formal properties, isolationism, or formalism, has (by definition) tended to slight the importance of the human context, the human origins, of art.” (page 16) This statement clearly outlines the main issues with choosing either extreme stance: valuing only originality comes at the expense of technical skills, and only valuing skills comes at the expense of creative merit. Goodman, however, only discusses the problems that fake paintings create in the art world without noting any appreciation for the skill of the forger. Goodman completely omits any value on technical skill and only seems to address the value of the creativity and originality of the original artist.

In the contemporary art world, “real” paintings are typically worth more than forged ones except in rare cases in which the forgery becomes famous through performance or media. Of course, it is difficult to know how deeply the monetary value of items penetrates into the psyches of average Americans when they go to a gallery or otherwise observe art, and it is certainly engrained in American culture that fakes are worth either nothing or far less than original works. Dutton addresses this issue as well by pointing out the absurdity of statements such as “… if a work of art is a forgery, then it must somehow be without value: once we are told that these are Van Meegerens before us, and not Vermeers, we reject them, though their formal properties remain unchanged.” (page 16) Indeed, his argument allows for the appreciation of the formal properties of art as well as the creativity of the original artist. He proceeds to restate his argument that the issue is one of representation rather than of physical qualities. Dutton presents an excellent analysis of the importance of both types of work in the art community.

Ethical Arts: Architecture and Morals

Throughout history, art has been critiqued and assessed using many criteria and can be viewed through many different lenses. This paper will explore architecture as an artistic medium and discuss some of the challenges it faces. As both a shelter and an art form, architecture in particular lends itself to many forms of criticism. Buildings dramatically impact the surrounding landscape, displace natural landforms, and can endure for hundreds of years. In addition to being a stable and functional structure, a building is ideally pleasing to behold and promotes the better aspects of humanity such as community, education, and caring. The purpose and physical form of a building or other architectural structure fulfills can greatly impact the area it is built in. All of its properties are entwined: its function impacts its shape and interior, and impacts the way it will affect the landscape. It can affect local fauna and flora, and create movements within a society. In order to create the most complete analysis of a work, the ethicist perspective will be used to examine the moral aspects of architecture. The ethicist perspective, rather than moralism or formalism, lends itself to the fullest critique that balances the ethical qualities of a work with its other properties. Architecture and individual structures can have ethical implications and be considered objectively “good” or “bad”.

Ethicism in philosophical aesthetics is a way of discussing art in which the moral qualities can be considered alongside the physical formal qualities but not take precedence over them. Supporting ethicism, philosopher Andrea Sauchelli describes it as “the interaction between art and morality is such that a moral defect in a work of art negatively influences the work’s artistic value (and a moral merit, when relevant, is always an artistic merit). (Sauchelli) Simply, a work of art can aesthetically better if its content is morally upright, and worse if its content is reprehensible. A. W. Eaton directly addresses the ethicist argument in his essay Painting and Ethics. While Eaton’s essay uses paintings, such as Titian’s Rape of Europa, to demonstrate the ways formalistic qualities can promote morally unacceptable things or actions, his points about ethicism can be applied to other art forms including architecture. Eaton and another scholar, Andrea Sauchelli, share an account of ethicism that is multifaceted, which is what makes it so appealing. It allows for all aspects of a work to be critically analyzed and understood as parts of one whole piece, rather than alienated from each other and forming an incomplete understanding of what a piece truly represents.

The content, or what is depicted in a work, can be distinct from its formal qualities such as light, color, shape, and medium. For example, a sculpture may depict a nude female using the medium of marble. Those are formalist statements that describe the physical qualities of the work. However, the same sculpture could be described as coy, mischievous, or serious. These qualities, while they have some basis in the physical aspects of the work, are somewhat subjective and would be more accurately referred to in terms of the content. In architecture specifically, its formal qualities would include the size of the structure, the materials it is composed with, its shape, and what physical items are within it. The rough equivalent of its “content” is its purpose, in addition to the effects it would have on its surroundings. All of these qualities can be considered to form a wholesome understanding of what the architectural work represents, and what that means for the society it effects. Formalism, or the complete separation of moral implications from a work’s physical qualities, and moralism, which advocates that only ethical qualities should be considered in terms of artistic merit, both alienate parts of an art work from the whole piece and do not account for contradictions that may be present within one work.

The main indicator, for Eaton, that a work of art is open to ethical judgements is that it “…calls upon the audience to respond in ways that are either problematic or commendable.” (Eaton, 54) For example, an image of a Holocaust death camp that attempts to show the camp in a positive light, perhaps via bright, cheerful lighting or showing smiling guards, encourages viewers to think that maybe the Holocaust was not so bad, which is morally problematic. Rather than showing the camp as it was: a horrible place where humans were treated worse than most animals, the artistic qualities attempt to elicit a positive response from the audience. In this example, the formal qualities of the work are inextricably tied to the content, and therefore, the public’s reaction to it.

For Eaton, this kind of image would be aesthetically worse as a result of its moral implications. Expanding on this concept, Andrea Sauchelli states in her essay The Merited Response Argument and Artistic Categories that “…the idea that the prescription of an unmerited response in the audience by a work of art should count as an artistic defect.” (Sauchelli, 240) This argues that even if the artist in the above example did not intend for the work to make the Holocaust seem nice, if the audience reacted that way, the work should still be subject to artistic demerits. This does not necessarily mean that the work should be removed from a gallery or decried as “not art”, but its content and the reaction the public had should be taken into account throughout any academic discourse surrounding the work. Furthermore, like the film Triumph of the Will, the work could be used in an academic setting to learn about the techniques from that time period and the values of the society. Using problematic art as a tool for learning should not be discontinued, but rather encouraged when proper context is included and discussed alongside whatever the work itself has to offer.

A formalist critique encourages the analyst to draw a distinction between the formal qualities of a work such as medium, light, shape, and color, and its content and whatever that might say about the artist or the work itself. For example, one would discuss the architectural merits of a gas chamber without placing it in the context of a mass murder and identifying its purpose. One would detail and analyze the location of the building, its shape, color, and the materials used to build it and completely ignore the reason the building exists. Clearly, it would be problematic to simply state that a gas chamber is “beautiful” or make other aesthetic judgements about it without taking into account the historical context in which it was created and the gruesome purpose it served. This type of contextualization is what Sauchelli promotes: because morals and societal values vary so greatly with space and time, one cannot make sweeping moral judgements about a work without considering the context in which it was created and the personal bias inherent in any analysis. (Sauchelli) Since such an analysis is incomplete without contextualizing the structure, content must be viewed as an aesthetic quality of a work.

On the other side of the spectrum, moralism purports that the value of a work should be based solely on its ethical and moral implications. In this view, the best works of art would be those that depict people saving lives, helping the needy, and so on. Only those types of work would have artistic merit. This view does not leave the opportunity for works whose content lacks a moral alignment or clear stance to be appreciated and understood fully. Moreover, it could harm work whose content may be dismal but actually could have an ethical result. For example, videos of the war in Vietnam were gruesome and usually broadcast in a way that promoted the war, which many consider morally deviant, but for some individuals they sparked a great anti-war sentiment and led people to donate to aid civilians and other affected parties. If those films were to be considered from a moralist perspective, they would be “bad films” because they showed some of the worst of humanity, even though the results some had were just the opposite. Again, the context of the work and the reception it received from the public are important criteria to consider. Sauchelli also addresses work that an artist produced that the public perceived as having a different meaning than the artist intended. She holds that the public reaction matters even though it did not match the artist’s intent, but the intent should still be taken into account. This mode of thought allows for a complete view of the work rather than one fragmented by prioritizing one quality above all others.

Clearly, the most complete analysis of an artistic work comes from some kind of ethicism. With this perspective, the analysis of architecture in particular becomes much more complex. Unlike some other artistic mediums, and to the chagrin of the “art for art’s sake” movement, works of architects typically have a purpose. As Levine, Miller, and Taylor write: “The design and regulation of a living space, whether a room of one’s own or a city, involves an array of moral considerations and implications.” (Levine, Miller, and Taylor; 104) Design can influence self-identity, character, social responsibility, and draw attention to the underlying values of an individual or society. As such, ethical considerations should be at the forefront of architectural and design decisions, but few architects actively acknowledge and consider these effects in their designs. As a result, buildings may not be as suited to their purpose as its users would hope, and the focus typically shifts from what design would benefit people to what design is the most cost-effective for the owner.

In their essay, Ethics and Architecture, the authors strongly discuss the relationship architecture, landscapes, and design have with the morals of a society. They emphasize the cross-disciplinary aspects of architecture and the “…social, political, and personal character of architecture and design.” (Levine, Miller, and Taylor; 104) In this brief statement, the authors confirm the interdisciplinary nature of architecture and reinforce the importance of a wholesome critique and analysis. Much of these aspects of a design are related in some way to the purpose it is meant to fulfill. The purpose could be a shelter, a community facility, a commercial facility, a recreation area, an educational facility, and so on. Many buildings that are created today have a purpose that society deems morally acceptable. A new school building could improve student outcomes and opportunities and make the area around it more desirable to live in. A new park could have the same kind of positive draw, this time with a focus on nature, which many societies today value. Conversely, some buildings have a purpose that is controversial from an ethical perspective: a juvenile detention center, for example. Maurice Lagueux addresses some of these different effects in his essay Ethics Versus Aesthetics in Architecture.

The beginning of the essay draws parallels between the study of ethics’ relationship to architecture and its relationship to biomedical sciences. Clearly, both studies affect the lives of many people and are linked to ethical debates. Within architecture specifically, the function of a building in particular opens itself up to ethical questions and debate. In addition to the basic function a building fulfills, aspects of its design can promote certain values and make life better or worse for the building’s inhabitants. As Lagueux writes, “The decision to build giant habitation units rather than family-oriented cottages, the decision to make use of (or not make use of) traditional ornamentation or unexpected attractive spaces to neutralize the dullness of low-cost housing, the decision to provide for community gathering and communication in a building or urbanistic scheme, the decision to organize schools in a way that contributes to children’s socialization in a climate of self-confidence, the decision to build hospitals in a way that creates hope in the lives of patients faced with death, the decision to plan prisons in a way that reduces prisoners’ violent compulsions, and so on, all such decisions have considerable impact on people’s lives. Since they affect ways of life and corresponding values, determining which decision is appropriate in all such cases is clearly an ethical problem.” (Lagueux, 118-119)

All of the examples listed by Lagueux imply something about the society the design was created for. Organizing schools in a way that promotes socialization indicates that the society values social skills, and so on. Moreover, Lagueux’s analysis leads to questioning societies that do not make these considerations in their structures: it could indicate that their values differ and they perhaps do not care about the benefits of “good design”. More likely, however, it indicates that the architect was unaware of the ethical implications of their work. Like Lagueux, Malgotzata Mizia would likely advocate for architects and designers to be held to a higher standard when it comes to the ethical impact of their work. Mizia writes that an architect “should be an exceptional constructor visionary, a technocrat with his head in the clouds, a “poet of sky-high structures” and a “painter of dreams fulfilled on earth” who has a combination of the artistic restlessness and the impetus of a defiant artist with the humanistic soul of a guardian and volunteer and, at the same time, the technical precision and thoroughness of a watchmaker.” (Mizia) Clearly, architects carry a lot of responsibility for their work, as it must withstand the tests of time and mother nature as well as benefit the people they are meant to serve.

Beyond the literal purpose a building is meant to serve, other ethical considerations surround the building’s impact on society. While a new school building might be wonderful for some students, the morally laudable purpose might be overshadowed if lower income families were displaced to clear land to build it on. Information such as this would be unavailable if one simply observed the physical building itself, which demonstrates the importance of placing the work in historical and cultural context. Many authors mentioned herein express their support and philosophical reasoning for the inclusion of such contextual information in the analysis of a work or art, and argue that this inclusion is even more crucial when discussing architecture. Because architecture and design impact individuals, communities, and entire societies so profoundly it is necessary for architects to create spaces that promote community values, as well as for scholars to study such works with the ethical implications in mind. Asking moral questions and demanding more from today’s designers are simple but effective ways to ensure that the buildings of the future impact those they serve positively.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Eaton, A. W. Painting and Ethics. New York, 1997.

Lagueux, Maurice. “Ethics Versus Aesthetics.” The Philosophical Forum XXXV.2 (2004): 117-133.

Levine, Michael P., Kristine Miller and William Taylor. “Introduction: Ethics and Architecture.” The Philosophical Forum XXXV.2 (2004).

Mizia, Malgorzata. “Architecture as an Art of Understanding.” The Polish Review 59.4 (2014).

Sauchelli, Andrea. “The Merited Response Argument and Artistic Categories.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 73 (2013).

This class fulfills my premodern requirement and is a prerequisite for many architecture history classes in the Art History department at NYU. I really enjoy it so far, and I think that as the semester progresses I will become more engaged with the works we are studying.

The Hands of God

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the religious text clearly states “You shall have no other gods beside Me. You shall not make for yourself any graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of any thing that is heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them, nor serve them, for I, the Lord Your G-d, am a jealous G-d, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.” (The Bible) This passage can be found in the Old Testament book of Exodus, and is one of the ten central commandments the Israelites received from G-d at Mount Saini. In simpler terms, Jews and Christians are not permitted to create likenesses of G-d or worship any images. In spite of this command, humans often used symbols to represent G-d, and produced thousands of images of Jesus Christ himself, even though he is technically also G-d, in conjunction with the Holy Spirit. Because of this restriction, artists creatively used recognizable symbols to communicate the presence of G-d in their art to their audience, without creating a complete representation of Him and overtly disobeying one of the Ten Commandments. While many religious scholars debate the acceptability of this practice, it certainly occurred in artworks throughout history.

A common way for an artist to represent G-d without actually attempting to portray a complete humanoid form is through symbolic hands coming from the sky.  The hands of G-d are typically included in scenes that follow a biblical narrative. Early Christians commissioned these types of works to make biblical stories and lessons more accessible to the largely illiterate populace they were attempting to convert. It also gave the artist some interpretive power over the biblical narrative, allowing them to showcase values they felt were most important and perhaps omit those aspects of the religious text that they disagreed with or did not connect to. This created an interesting ethical dilemma: because most people could not read the bible itself, their only knowledge of its teachings was via a human being, whether an artist or a member of the clergy. Learning this way imparts someone else’s interpretation of the text without fail, but all readings of the bible are interpretations regardless. If one truly believes, it would be impossible to completely understand what all of the text means and what that says about G-d. As a result, the stories of the bible cannot be represented with any sort of collective accuracy.

Culturally recognizable symbols and analogies in works of art made it simpler for the church to spread their message and appropriate Christianity into existing religious practice. This relative tolerance allowed individuals to comfortably shift to Christianity rather than have it thrust upon them. In many polytheistic religions such as the worship of Greek and Roman gods, it was extremely common to depict the gods in works of art. Because of this tradition, it is logical for artists to represent G-d symbolically. Hands coming out of the sky, typically performing some mystical act, are a relatively obvious way to convey that this act was performed by G-d. Other godly symbolism includes crowns, rays of light, thrones, and the scale of the figures. Any of these details could convey the presence of G-d to the audience of the work. These symbols are important because there is no true biblical description of what G-d looks like, other than that humans are “made in His image” and that the bible is written in gendered language that indicates that G-d is male. This is not without complications: made in his image could have a very loose meaning, and representing G-d as a regular human would be very problematic for those trying to convince the populace of His awesome and almighty power. Moreover, it specifically says not to represent G-d in the bible. Because hands may not constitute a complete representation, the faithful can argue that they do not constitute a “graven image” or “false idol”.

An excellent example of the use of hands coming from the sky to represent G-d can be found in the Dura Europos Synagogue. A work entitled “Moses and the Exodus from Egypt” from 244 CE depicts the Israelites escaping Egypt. This story comes from the Old Testament of the bible. This work includes the Egyptian soldiers chasing the Hebrews, the fish in the ocean, the Egyptian soldiers drowning in the sea, and the parted Red Sea. The sea is clearly being parted by some disembodied hands protruding from the cloudy sky in the work. Rather than disappearing into the clouds, the arms appear to have been cut off and suspended on the top of the image due to the geometric representation of the arm. The hands are shown only below the elbow, and appear slightly cartoonish. They lack bone structure, shadows, folds in the skin, and other imperfections present in real hands. They are spread apart and roughly follow the line where the sea is splitting. Anyone with knowledge of this biblical story in which G-d divides the sea to allow the Israelites to escape bondage in Egypt would immediately understand that the hands represent G-d’s direct intervention. This phenomena can be found directly in the text of a Pesach siddur, and the phrase “He freed us from Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” is represented literally in this work of art. Of course, there is no consensus among religious scholars on the acceptability of this practice as a whole.

In a later depiction, “Moses receiving the Law” from the Moutier-Grandval Bible in 830, another Old Testament narrative is portrayed. In this image, Moses recevices the law on a mountaintop. He stands on a relatively abstract, slightly orange mountain and reaches towards the heavens to receive the commandments. The Moses figure is stepping up higher onto the mountain and gazing upwards towards the sky. Two angels hang upside down from the sky, and between them protrudes a hand that passes the scroll to Moses. This hand is much smaller than the one depicted in “Moses and the Exodus from Egypt”. This shows only one hand, and the image only goes up to the wrist. Rays of light surround the hand and shine directly into Moses’ face. The placement of the hand (the fact that it is coming out of the sky, which no human could accomplish) and the rays of light both indicate to viewers that this hand represents G-d. As in the image from the Dura Europos Synagogue, the common knowledge of this Old Testament biblical story would also contribute to the collective understanding of the hand’s symbolism. Again, the presentation of only a hand conveniently somewhat skirts around the commandment to not create graven images, and even produces a type of irony: this painting itself is, arguably, a graven image of the receiving the very text that insists graven images should not be created.

While many symbols were used to represent a heavenly figure throughout history, the use of hands appears several times in various artworks. This symbolism can be found at Dura Europos Synagogue, where the hands of G-d protrude from the sky and part the Red Sea for the Israelites escaping slavery under the Egyptians. It can also be found in the Moutier-Grandval Bible, where G-d’s single hand delivers the law to Moses on a mountain top. The placement of these appendages in the sky and the rays of light emanating from them contribute to their mysical meaning and increase the likelihood that the imagery will be recognized as heavenly by the general populace observing the work. The use of symbolism to represent G-d stems from an attempt to follow one of the Ten Commandments that insists that humans should not create a “graven image” or worship false idols. Coming from a long history of the worship of idols, it is logical that ancient peoples would not be immediately prepared to cease all production of representations of G-d, especially in a society where few members could read and write. Often, these potentially rule-breaking images (along with word of mouth) were the only resource by which early Christians could learn about the stories in their religious texts. As a result, artists creatively evaded outright rule breaking and symbolically represented their higher power in their works.