Art
This page is one of the explanatory pages for my website, http://www.CardinalKnowledge.org. The website is a work in progress, and each and every part of it is open for discussion. The comments to these explanatory pages are where this discussion is to take place.
Art is one of the four fundamental directions of collective knowledge. Unlike philosophy, science, or religion, it appeals to raw emotions and senses. I believe that the unique way by which artistic knowledge moves from person to person is the sensory perception. Or, to be more precise, the qualia, the qualitative characteristics of objects, different from their properties.
A quale is directly intuited, given, and is not the subject of any possible error because it is purely subjective. It is the perceptual experience, which cannot be transmitted from person to person in any other way. Even though often contested by the philosophers, as I mention in Philosophy vs. Art, I am certain that the qualia are the kind of knowledge we, as humans, gain from pure, cardinal, art. Be it music, painting, dance, or even literature, the true value of a work of art is what remains with you when you subtract everything you could learn about it by reading a detailed description from what you, personally, have learned from it.
Of course there is utilitarian, applied art. Graphical design and architecture,for example, are often pleasant to see simply because they serves their purpose. Illustrations are often necessary to relay specific information, which *could* be relayed by words, be it a scientific diagram or a war propaganda poster, but any artist worth his salt puts something personal in his work. To quote Ernst Gombrich, “It is a secret of the artist that he does his work so superlatively well, that we all but forget what his work was supposed to be, for sheer admiration of the way he did it”. Think about it, Michelangelo’s David or Rafael’s Sistine Chapel ceiling were all commissioned biblical illustrations with rigorous guidelines, yet today we see them simply as examples of fine art.
Art is, by its nature, subjective. That is why instead of sampling the works of art that changed the world, for this part of my website I’ve chosen the works of art that changed me. I’ve picked a movie, a painting, a sculpture, a photo, a novel, and some music that I like.