On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 1:08 PM, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
proposed:
x appreciates p iff:
1. x likes p
2. p is beautiful
3. x's liking of p is caused by the beauty of p
and is not worried by statements like
i. The Mona Lisa _is_ beautiful; still, I don't like the picture _AT ALL_:
in fact, think it's UGLY.
Of a similar statement, he wrote:
"Doesn't strike me as a paradox at all. It only shows that aesthetic
appreciation is different from (and not necessarily co-extensive with)
purely
subjective liking,"
Or perhaps alla H. L. A. Hart one (but not I) may see 'nice' from an
EXTERNAL perspective (the first part of the utterance) while the internal
perspective comes second. A split-utterance, as it were.
Omar continues:
"a point at least as old as Kant's Critique of Judgment. (And perhaps as
old as the Mona Lisa, if we grant that art can express ideas.) I also might
think that a real woman whom I met is beautiful while not liking her much.
On the other hand, I like squids while I don't think that they are
aesthetically beautiful."
Well, after Kant, aestheticians also rely on this fine distinction:
the beautiful-sublime
distinction.
And so, we can say that the serpent in the Laoconte, the statuary group,
rather than 'beautiful' is 'sublime', or the expression of total suffering
in the Belvedere Torso (which represents Aiace contemplating suicide): alas
the head is now lost, and we only have his body, which Michelangelo found
sublime.
But 'icon' is NOT the keyword to aesthetics. If it means 'image' (or
'imago'), surely a sunset is beautiful and sublime, and while Baumgarten allows
for 'natural' beauty, most aestheticians seem to narrow their field to
'artificial beauty'.
In any case, I say, 'icon' is not perhaps the keyword, because we
'aesthesis' is the keyword: a theory of perception. You see a toad -- you can
describe it at a first level. Then the 'imago' causes in you a 'pleasurable'
state, which is represented in Omar's analysis by clause (i): "I like it".
Since 'ugly' should have a part here, we can imagine the gardener who finds a
dead toad next to the flower bed next to the pond he was weeding: "Found
this ugly toad down there, ma'am; what shall I do with it?" "Ugly? Don't think
my mister will say that. Leave it here, and he'll find a place for that
beautiful thing in his studio."
When it comes to 'artifice' beauty or ugliness, the pleasurable effect is
just not sufficient. As Lamarque remarks, we need Grice. The point was first
made by Catherine Lord in the British Journal of Aesthetics, and developed
by Eva Schafer. We need an UTTERER and an addressee -- Benedetto Croce saw
more or less the same thing. And we need the addressee to RECOGNISE what
the utterer is doing. Is the utterer trying to provoke a pleasurable
response (that Grice symbolises as 'r') in A (his symbolisation for
addressee)?
Only if the and only if the addressee recognise the utterer's INTENTION to
maximise the pleasurable effect of his displaying x will his thing qualify as
the object of study of 'aesthesis'. It is PRETTY complicated. This
intention is not 'straight', in that it's reflective. It's the recognition on
the
part of the addressee of a second-order intention in the utterer to the
effect that the addressee gets this pleasurable response in his 'aesthesis'
that counts.
So we may need further clauses than (i)-(iii) above. But the above, as
presented by Omar K. and his attending comment, is interesting in that we
surely need to distinguish between (i) and (ii).
i. The Mona Lisa is beautiful but I don't like it.
ii. The Mona Lisa is beautiful but I don't like her.
Perhaps Geary should also add whether Da Vinci LIKED her (id est, the Mona
Lisa).
After all, the Mona Lisa (and Da Vinci was Italian, i.e. a descendant of
the Old Romans who invented portraiture -- aestheticians tend to say that
compared to Roman statuary, Greek statues look all the same -- I heard a
tourist in Delphi, "You've seen one Greek statue, and you've seen them all".
The Mona Lisa painting is thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the
wife of Francesco del Giocondo.
Lisa del Giocondo, née Gherardini was also known in Florence as Lisa
Gherardini, Lisa di Antonio Maria (or Antonmaria) Gherardini and Mona Lisa. She
was a member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany in Italy. Her
name was given to "Mona Lisa", a portrait commissioned by her husband and
painted by da Vinci.
So in this case, the utterer (da Vinci) intends to provoke a pleasurable
reaction in Francesco del Giocondo, who commissioned the thing. (Gombrich
notes that comissioning is keyword in 'aesthetics', even if he doesn't see
himself as an 'aesthetician' much).
Like other Florentines of financial means, Francesco's family members were
lovers of beauty, and patrons.
Francesco gave this commissions to da Vinci for a portrait of his wife.
He is thought to have commissioned his beautiful wife Lisa's beautiful
portrait to celebrate both Andrea's birth and the purchase of the family's
home.
Beautiful Mona Lisa fulfilled 15th- and early 16th century requirements for
portraying a female of virtue.
Mona Lisa is obviously portrayed as a faithful wife through her gesture —
her right hand rests over her left.
(As Geary remarks: "having her left hand resting over the right provokes an
'inverse' effect")
Leonardo also presents Mona Lisa as fashionable and successful, perhaps
more well-off than she was.
Still, the thing is iconic, in that the imago of the real Mona Lisa
provoked (or caused) in da Vinci his movement with the brushes. She was, after
all, sitting IN FRONT of him (and smiling "all the time", he later recollected
-- "sometimes even laughing," as when the maid came in and dropped a cup
of tea on my shoe").
Mona Lisa's dark garments and black veil were high fashion -- all the rage
in Florence.
The dark garments and black veil are surely not a depiction of mourning for
her first daughter, as some scholars have proposed.
These scholars knew nothing about Florentine high fashion of the day. "It
would have been ridiculous to have her wearing a pink Chanel prêt-à-porter,
for example).
The portrait is strikingly large.
But while SIZE is a key term in aesthetics, utterers and addresses can deal
with it.
The size of the Mona Lisa is in fact equal to that of commissions acquired
by the wealthier art patrons of the time.
This extravagance has been explained as a sign of Francesco and Lisa's
social aspiration.
In fact, it may well have been the original scenario that Mona Lisa said to
Francesco (in Italian): "Darling, a miniature will do" -- perhaps thinking
that it could be surrounded by so-called precious stones. But Francesco's
new house was big and the size of the walls usually restrict the utterer's
intentions in this as in other occasions.
As for the utterer's intentions, Leonardo had no income during the spring
of 1503, which may in part explain his interest in this private portrait
(or icon, if you must) of his image of the Mona Lisa. We still speak of
'imago' even if da Vinci is NOT, as per ordinary-language parlance, IMAGINING
Mona Lisa.
da Vinci's financial situation explains his utterer's intentions: later
that year, he indeed had to delay his work on Mona Lisa when he received
payment for starting The Battle of Anghiari, which was a more valuable
commission and one he was contracted to complete by February 1505.
Mona Lisa was furious, and it actually took some work for da Vinci to
recover her 'natural' and beautiful beautiful smile that he so beautifully
recreated artificially.
(He is to have repeatedly say to her, "Cheers", in Italian -- which is a
variation of "chairs" -- cfr. Panofsky on "Say cheese!").
In 1506 Leonardo considered the portrait unfinished -- against Francesco's
judgement, who said "It looks finished enough to me -- ain't that what you
call sfumato?"
As a result, da Vinci was not paid for the work and did not deliver it to
his client, after all his hard work.
The artist's paintings traveled with him throughout his life, and he may
have completed Mona Lisa many years later in France, away from the Mona --
"She was merely an imago of my imagination for me at the time," he later
recalled in his "Journals", in one estimation by 1516.
The painting's title dates to 1550.
An acquaintance of at least some of Francesco's family, Giorgio Vasari
writes taht "Leonardo undertook to paint, for Francesco del Giocondo, the
portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife"
"Prese Lionardo a fare per Francesco del Giocondo il ritratto di mona Lisa
sua moglie."
The portrait's Italian name La Gioconda (also an opera by Ponchielli, but
unrelated) is the feminine form of her married name. ((In Pionchelli's opera
the meaning is literal)
In French it is known by the variant La Joconde.
Though derived from Lisa's married name they have the added significance
that the name derives from the word for "happy" (in English, "jocund") or
"the happy one".
Speculation assigned Mona Lisa's name to at least four different paintings
and her identity to at least ten different people.
By the end of the 20th century, the painting was a global "icon" that had
been used in more than 300 other paintings and in 2,000 advertisements,
appearing at an average of one new advertisement each week.
In 2005, an expert at the University Library of Heidelberg discovered a
margin note in the library's collection that established with certainty the
traditional view that the sitter was the Mona Lisa of Florence.
The note, written by Agostino Vespucci in 1503, states that Leonardo was
working on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo.
The Mona Lisa has been in custody of France since the 16th century, when it
was acquired by King Francis I.
After the French Revolution, however, it came into the possession of the
people.
Today about six million people visit the painting each year at the Louvre
in Paris, where it is part of a French national collection.
Cheers,
Speranza
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