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Quote by Cynthia Freeland

“Kant noted that we typically apply labels or concepts to the world to classify sensory inputs that suit a purpose. ... Beautiful objects do not serve ordinary human purposes, as plates and spoons do. A beautiful rose pleases us, but not because we necessarily want to eat it or even pick it for a flower arrangement. Kant’s way of recognizing this was to say that something beautiful has purposiveness without a purpose’.”

Quote by Cynthia Freeland

Book:Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction
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Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction

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Cynthia Freeland

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“Hume emphasized education and experience: men of taste acquire certain abilities that lead to agreement about which authors and artworks are the best. Such people, he felt, eventually will reach consensus, and in doing so, they set a ‘standard of taste’ which is universal. … Hume said men of taste must ‘preserve minds free from prejudice’, but thought no one should enjoy immoral attitudes or ‘vicious manners’ in art … Kant too spoke about judgements of taste but he was more concerned with explaining judgements of Beauty. He aimed to show that good judgements in aesthetics are grounded in features of artworks themselves, not just in us and our preferences. Kant tried to describe our human abilities to perceive and categorize the world around us. There is a complex interplay among our mental faculties including perception, imagination, and intellect or judgement. Kant held that in order to function in the world to achieve our human purposes, we label much of what we sense, often in fairly unconscious ways.”

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Book:Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction by Cynthia Freeland, Oxford University Press
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“There is a movement afoot to convince artists that they are simply another type of entrepreneur. On the surface, this is a seemingly harmless and understandable rejection of the starving artist trope. Yet people seem to have forgotten that, since the beginning of recorded history, artists' cultural role went far beyond simply making a product to peddle.”

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Book:Art from Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
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