January 28 readings

Plato

Plato starts off by explaining how children believe stories regardless of its fiction or not. He then goes into explaining how that no matter what the story is, God should be represented in a good way. He speaks down upon Homer in the writing for not doing this. Plato is saying that god should not be misrepresented unless it is for the good of the city. I personally don't agree with this level of censorship. It is limiting the amount of individuality a person can achieve. The artist or author should have free will to whatever he puts into his work. He is not making you view it so why should he limit what the piece is about.

Dewey

This article was very hard for me to follow but what I got out of it was that Dewey is pointing out that somethings that we view art presently were not created to be art in the past. We view them as art because we think they are aesthetically pleasing. Examples of this include dancing which used to be for religion mainly but now has turned into an art form. He uses a flower as an example and states that many people like flowers because they are aesthetically pleasing but if we are to go and research how the flower came about we would gain a lot more respect for it.


Danto

Danto's writing was very hard for me to understand. He speaks about the Imitation theory of art which is that some artists are creating imitations of already existing objects. He explains that through art, you can see more then just what the object really is.