This term I am taking the philosophy of arts and tonight is the first class.\u00a0 As usual, there isn’t any Chinese face in the class.\u00a0 Ok, there are some CBC, but definitely no one looks like coming from HK.\u00a0 The professor working full-time in Kwantlen College and teaching part-time in SFU.\u00a0 It seems all the 200 level philosopher professors are out sourced to Kwantlen College.\u00a0 Maybe the lower level students are not good enough to deserve a tenured professor.<\/p>\n
This class is a lot harder than I expected, not because of the aesthetic theories, but because almost I had never heard of all those artists.\u00a0 I feel totally lost especially when the professor using some contemporary artists with reference to films, painting, visual arts, or simply junk arts.\u00a0 The professor challenged us on the definition of arts by giving us controversial examples.\u00a0 Is a signed urinal art?\u00a0 Is 4 minutes 33 seconds of silence a piece of music?\u00a0 What about a frozen shark in a bath tub?\u00a0 In my opinion, those are just garbage.<\/p>\n
I feel more like home in the second half of lecture.\u00a0 The professor start talking about the 3 major art theories: representationalism, expressionism and formalism.\u00a0 Representationalism dated all the way back to Plato and Aristotle.\u00a0 Then expressionism comes in the 18th century due to the popularity of music, something representationalism cannot explain.\u00a0 Then again in 19th century, formalism comes in and gave a paradigm shift on the definition of arts.
\nMaybe we can simply explain arts away by claiming it as a catalogical error just like the mind in the mind-body problem?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"