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132-398: Among the modern reasons art may be displayed are aesthetic enjoyment, education , historic preservation , or for marketing purposes. The term is used to refer to establishments with distinct social and economic functions, both public and private. Institutions that preserve a permanent collection may be called either "gallery of art" or "museum of art". If the latter, the rooms where art

264-549: A feminist movement developed. Parental authority was seen as important, but children were given legal protections against abuse and neglect for the first time towards the end of the period. Access to education increased rapidly during the 19th century. State-funded schools were established in England and Wales for the first time. Education became compulsory for pre-teenaged children in England, Scotland and Wales. Literacy rates increased rapidly, and had become nearly universal by

396-413: A machine learning approach, where large numbers of manually rated photographs are used to "teach" a computer about what visual properties are of relevance to aesthetic quality. A study by Y. Li and C. J. Hu employed Birkhoff's measurement in their statistical learning approach where order and complexity of an image determined aesthetic value. The image complexity was computed using information theory while

528-413: A subject -based, inductive approach. The analysis of individual experience and behaviour based on experimental methods is a central part of experimental aesthetics. In particular, the perception of works of art, music, sound, or modern items such as websites or other IT products is studied. Experimental aesthetics is strongly oriented towards the natural sciences . Modern approaches mostly come from

660-406: A work of art ), while artistic judgment refers to the recognition, appreciation or criticism of art in general or a specific work of art . In the words of one philosopher, "Philosophy of art is about art. Aesthetics is about many things—including art. But it is also about our experience of breathtaking landscapes or the pattern of shadows on the wall opposite your office. Philosophers of art weigh

792-411: A Renaissance Madonna for aesthetic reasons, but such objects often had (and sometimes still have) specific devotional functions. "Rules of composition" that might be read into Duchamp 's Fountain or John Cage 's 4′33″ do not locate the works in a recognizable style (or certainly not a style recognizable at the time of the works' realization). Moreover, some of Dutton's categories seem too broad:

924-423: A culturally contingent conception of art versus one that is purely theoretical. They study the varieties of art in relation to their physical, social, and cultural environments. Aesthetic philosophers sometimes also refer to psychological studies to help understand how people see, hear, imagine, think, learn, and act in relation to the materials and problems of art. Aesthetic psychology studies the creative process and

1056-604: A democracy. The political legacy of the reform movement was to link the nonconformists (part of the evangelical movement) in England and Wales with the Liberal Party . This continued until the First World War . The Presbyterians played a similar role as a religious voice for reform in Scotland. Religion was politically controversial during this era, with Nonconformists pushing for the disestablishment of

1188-470: A facsimile/copy). Aesthetic judgments can often be very fine-grained and internally contradictory. Likewise aesthetic judgments seem often to be at least partly intellectual and interpretative. What a thing means or symbolizes is often what is being judged. Modern aestheticians have asserted that will and desire were almost dormant in aesthetic experience, yet preference and choice have seemed important aesthetics to some 20th-century thinkers. The point

1320-455: A fashion among employers for providing welfare services to their workers, led to relative social stability. The Chartist movement for working-class men to be given the right to vote, which had been prominent in the early Victorian period, dissipated. Government involvement in the economy was limited. Only in the post-World War II period , around a century later, did the country experience substantial economic growth again. But whilst industry

1452-469: A group of researchers at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. The tool predicted aesthetics based on the values of narrative elements. A relation between Max Bense 's mathematical formulation of aesthetics in terms of "redundancy" and "complexity" and theories of musical anticipation was offered using the notion of Information Rate. Evolutionary aesthetics refers to evolutionary psychology theories in which

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1584-445: A major employer and industry in their own right. Expected standards of personal conduct changed in around the first half of the 19th century, with good manners and self-restraint becoming much more common. Historians have suggested various contributing factors, such as Britain's major conflicts with France during the early 19th century, meaning that the distracting temptations of sinful behaviour had to be avoided in order to focus on

1716-484: A man "if he says that ' Canary wine is pleasant,' he is quite content if someone else corrects his expression and remind him that he ought to say instead: 'It is pleasant to me ,'" because "every one has his own [ sense of] taste ". The case of "beauty" is different from mere "pleasantness" because "if he gives out anything as beautiful, he supposes in others the same satisfaction—he judges not merely for himself, but for every one, and speaks of beauty as if it were

1848-467: A museum is the preservation of artifacts with cultural, historical, and aesthetic value by maintaining a collection of valued objects. Art museums also function as galleries that display works from the museum's own collection or on loan from the collections of other museums. Museums might be in public or private ownership and may be accessible to all or have restrictions on access. Although primarily concerned with visual art , art museums are often used as

1980-648: A number of locations. Galleries selling the work of recognized artists may occupy space in established commercial areas of a city. New styles in art have historically been attracted to the low rent of marginal neighborhoods. An artist colony existed in Greenwich Village as early as 1850, and the tenements built around Washington Square Park to house immigrants after the Civil War also attracted young artists and avant-garde art galleries. The resulting gentrification prompted artists and galleries to move to

2112-546: A particular conception of art that arose with the Renaissance and was still dominant in the eighteenth century (but was supplanted later). The discipline of aesthetics, which originated in the eighteenth century, mistook this transient state of affairs for a revelation of the permanent nature of art. Brian Massumi suggests to reconsider beauty following the aesthetical thought in the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari . Walter Benjamin echoed Malraux in believing aesthetics

2244-613: A philosophical rationale for peace education . Beauty is one of the main subjects of aesthetics, together with art and taste . Many of its definitions include the idea that an object is beautiful if perceiving it is accompanied by aesthetic pleasure . Among the examples of beautiful objects are landscapes, sunsets, humans and works of art. Beauty is a positive aesthetic value that contrasts with ugliness as its negative counterpart. Different intuitions commonly associated with beauty and its nature are in conflict with each other, which poses certain difficulties for understanding it. On

2376-433: A physicist might entertain hypothetical worlds in his/her imagination in the course of formulating a theory. Another problem is that Dutton's categories seek to universalize traditional European notions of aesthetics and art forgetting that, as André Malraux and others have pointed out, there have been large numbers of cultures in which such ideas (including the idea "art" itself) were non-existent. Aesthetic ethics refers to

2508-422: A piece of art. In this field, aesthetics is not considered to be dependent on taste but is a matter of cognition, and, consequently, learning. In 1928, the mathematician George David Birkhoff created an aesthetic measure M = O / C {\displaystyle M=O/C} as the ratio of order to complexity. In the 1960s and 1970s, Max Bense , Abraham Moles and Frieder Nake were among

2640-446: A play, watching a fashion show, movie, sports or exploring various aspects of nature. The philosophy of art specifically studies how artists imagine, create, and perform works of art, as well as how people use, enjoy, and criticize art. Aesthetics considers why people like some works of art and not others, as well as how art can affect our moods and our beliefs. Both aesthetics and the philosophy of art try to find answers to what exactly

2772-548: A property of things." Viewer interpretations of beauty may on occasion be observed to possess two concepts of value: aesthetics and taste. Aesthetics is the philosophical notion of beauty. Taste is a result of an education process and awareness of elite cultural values learned through exposure to mass culture . Bourdieu examined how the elite in society define the aesthetic values like taste and how varying levels of exposure to these values can result in variations by class, cultural background, and education. According to Kant, beauty

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2904-430: A rise in prosecutions for illegal sodomy in the middle of the 19th century. Male sexuality became a favourite subject of medical researchers' study. For the first time, all male homosexual acts were outlawed. Concern about sexual exploitation of adolescent girls increased during the period, especially following the white slavery scandal , which contributed to the increasing of the age of consent from 13 to 16 . At

3036-546: A role in economic life but exploitation of their labour became especially intense during the Victorian era. Children were put to work in a wide range of occupations, but particularly associated with this period are factories. Employing children had advantages, as they were cheap, had limited ability to resist harsh working conditions, and could enter spaces too small for adults. Some accounts exist of happy upbringings involving child labour, but conditions were generally poor. Pay

3168-573: A substantial part of the metropolis... In big, once handsome houses, thirty or more people of all ages may inhabit a single room Hunger and poor diet was a common aspect of life across the UK in the Victorian period, especially in the 1840s, but the mass starvation seen in the Great Famine in Ireland was unique. Levels of poverty fell significantly during the 19th century from as much as two thirds of

3300-475: A symbol of the British Empire. Queen Victoria died on 22 January 1901. The Victorian era saw a rapidly growing middle class who became an important cultural influence, to a significant extent replacing the aristocracy as British society's dominant class. A distinctive middle-class lifestyle developed that influenced what society valued as a whole. Increased importance was placed on the value of

3432-687: A time when job options for women were limited and generally low-paying, some women, particularly those without familial support, took to prostitution to support themselves. Attitudes in public life and among the general population to prostitution varied. Evidence about prostitutes' situation also varies. One contemporary study argues that the trade was a short-term stepping stone to a different lifestyle for many women, while another, more recent study argues they were subject to physical abuse, financial exploitation, state persecution, and difficult working conditions. Due to worries about venereal disease , especially among soldiers, women suspected of prostitution were for

3564-528: A venue for other cultural exchanges and artistic activities where the art object is replaced by practices such as performance art , dance, music concerts, or poetry readings. Similar to a gallery, a kunsthalle is a facility that hosts temporary art exhibitions however does not possess a permanent collection . The art world comprises everyone involved in the production and distribution of fine art. The market for fine art depends upon maintaining its distinction as high culture , although during recent decades

3696-461: A wide range of new inventions. This led Great Britain to become the foremost industrial and trading nation of the time. Historians have characterised the mid-Victorian era (1850–1870) as Britain's 'Golden Years', with national income per person increasing by half. This prosperity was driven by increased industrialisation, especially in textiles and machinery, along with exports to the empire and elsewhere. The positive economic conditions, as well as

3828-569: A wide-ranging change to the electoral system of England and Wales . Definitions that purport a distinct sensibility or politics to the era have also created scepticism about the worth of the label 'Victorian', though there have also been defences of it. Michael Sadleir was insistent that "in truth, the Victorian period is three periods, and not one". He distinguished early Victorianism—the socially and politically unsettled period from 1837 to 1850 —and late Victorianism (from 1880 onwards), with its new waves of aestheticism and imperialism , from

3960-408: A work, though possibly of interest in themselves, have no bearing on the correct interpretation of the work." Gaut and Livingston define the intentionalists as distinct from formalists stating that: "Intentionalists, unlike formalists, hold that reference to intentions is essential in fixing the correct interpretation of works." They quote Richard Wollheim as stating that, "The task of criticism

4092-655: Is a unique commodity, the artist has a monopoly on production, which ceases when the artist either dies or stops working. Some businesses operate as vanity galleries , charging artists a fee to exhibit their work. Lacking a selection process to assure the quality of the artworks, and having little incentive to promote sales, vanity galleries are avoided as unprofessional. Some non-profit organizations or local governments host art galleries for cultural enrichment and to support local artists. Non-profit organizations may start as exhibit spaces for artist collectives , and expand into full-fledged arts programs. Other non-profits include

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4224-533: Is actually continuous with older aesthetic theory; Aristotle was the first in the Western tradition to classify "beauty" into types as in his theory of drama, and Kant made a distinction between beauty and the sublime. What was new was a refusal to credit the higher status of certain types, where the taxonomy implied a preference for tragedy and the sublime to comedy and the Rococo . Croce suggested that "expression"

4356-563: Is already made by Hume , but see Mary Mothersill, "Beauty and the Critic's Judgment", in The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics , 2004. Thus aesthetic judgments might be seen to be based on the senses, emotions, intellectual opinions, will, desires, culture, preferences, values, subconscious behaviour, conscious decision, training, instinct, sociological institutions, or some complex combination of these, depending on exactly which theory

4488-472: Is art and what makes good art. The word aesthetic is derived from the Ancient Greek αἰσθητικός ( aisthētikós , "perceptive, sensitive, pertaining to sensory perception"), which in turn comes from αἰσθάνομαι ( aisthánomai , "I perceive, sense, learn") and is related to αἴσθησις ( aísthēsis , "perception, sensation"). Aesthetics in this central sense has been said to start with

4620-427: Is central in the way that beauty was once thought to be central. George Dickie suggested that the sociological institutions of the art world were the glue binding art and sensibility into unities. Marshall McLuhan suggested that art always functions as a "counter-environment" designed to make visible what is usually invisible about a society. Theodor Adorno felt that aesthetics could not proceed without confronting

4752-512: Is displayed within the museum building are called galleries. Art galleries that do not maintain a collection are either commercial enterprises for the sale of artworks, or similar spaces operated by art cooperatives or non-profit organizations . As part of the art world , art galleries play an important role in maintaining the network of connections between artists, collectors, and art experts that define fine art . The terms 'art museum' and 'art gallery' may be used interchangeably as reflected in

4884-696: Is employed. A third major topic in the study of aesthetic judgments is how they are unified across art forms. For instance, the source of a painting's beauty has a different character to that of beautiful music, suggesting their aesthetics differ in kind. The distinct inability of language to express aesthetic judgment and the role of social construction further cloud this issue. The philosopher Denis Dutton identified six universal signatures in human aesthetics: Artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn have indicated that there are too many exceptions to Dutton's categories. For example, Hirschhorn's installations deliberately eschew technical virtuosity. People can appreciate

5016-442: Is for it to cause disinterested pleasure. Other conceptions include defining beautiful objects in terms of their value, of a loving attitude towards them or of their function. During the first half of the twentieth century, a significant shift to general aesthetic theory took place which attempted to apply aesthetic theory between various forms of art, including the literary arts and the visual arts, to each other. This resulted in

5148-456: Is now called classical music was somewhat undeveloped compared to parts of Europe but did have significant support. Photography became an increasingly accessible and popular part of everyday life. Many sports were introduced or popularised during the Victorian era. They became important to male identity. Examples included cricket , football , rugby , tennis and cycling . The idea of women participating in sport did not fit well with

5280-499: Is sometimes equated with truth. Recent research found that people use beauty as an indication for truth in mathematical pattern tasks. However, scientists including the mathematician David Orrell and physicist Marcelo Gleiser have argued that the emphasis on aesthetic criteria such as symmetry is equally capable of leading scientists astray. Computational approaches to aesthetics emerged amid efforts to use computer science methods "to predict, convey, and evoke emotional response to

5412-422: Is subjective and universal; thus certain things are beautiful to everyone. In the opinion of Władysław Tatarkiewicz , there are six conditions for the presentation of art: beauty, form, representation, reproduction of reality, artistic expression and innovation. However, one may not be able to pin down these qualities in a work of art. The question of whether there are facts about aesthetic judgments belongs to

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5544-532: Is the reconstruction of the creative process, where the creative process must in turn be thought of as something not stopping short of, but terminating on, the work of art itself." A large number of derivative forms of aesthetics have developed as contemporary and transitory forms of inquiry associated with the field of aesthetics which include the post-modern, psychoanalytic, scientific, and mathematical among others. Early-twentieth-century artists, poets and composers challenged existing notions of beauty, broadening

5676-488: Is usually defined as 'primitive' art, or un-harmonious, non-cathartic art, camp art, which 'beauty' posits and creates, dichotomously, as its opposite, without even the need of formal statements, but which will be 'perceived' as ugly. Likewise, aesthetic judgments may be culturally conditioned to some extent. Victorians in Britain often saw African sculpture as ugly, but just a few decades later, Edwardian audiences saw

5808-540: The Belle Époque era of continental Europe. Various liberalising political reforms took place in the UK, including expanding the electoral franchise. The Great Famine caused mass death in Ireland early in the period. The British Empire had relatively peaceful relations with the other great powers . It participated in various military conflicts mainly against minor powers. The British Empire expanded during this period and

5940-530: The Church of England . Nonconformists comprised about half of church attendees in England in 1851, and gradually the legal discrimination that had been established against them outside of Scotland was removed. Legal restrictions on Roman Catholics were also largely removed . The number of Catholics grew in Great Britain due to conversions and immigration from Ireland . Secularism and doubts about

6072-570: The Pax Britannica , was a time of relatively peaceful relations between the world's great powers . This is particularly true of Britain's interactions with the others. The only war in which the British Empire fought against another major power was the Crimean War , from 1853 to 1856. There were various revolts and violent conflicts within the British Empire, and Britain participated in wars against minor powers. It also took part in

6204-513: The awe inspired by a sublime landscape might physically manifest with an increased heart-rate or pupil dilation. As seen, emotions are conformed to 'cultural' reactions, therefore aesthetics is always characterized by 'regional responses', as Francis Grose was the first to affirm in his Rules for Drawing Caricaturas: With an Essay on Comic Painting (1788), published in W. Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, Bagster, London s.d. (1791? [1753]), pp. 1–24. Francis Grose can therefore be claimed to be

6336-463: The early modern period , approximately 1500 to 1800 CE. In the Middle Ages that preceded, painters and sculptors were members of guilds, seeking commissions to produce artworks for aristocratic patrons or churches. The establishment of academies of art in the 16th century represented efforts by painters and sculptors to raise their status from mere artisans who worked with their hands to that of

6468-412: The entropy , which assigns higher value to simpler artworks. In the 1990s, Jürgen Schmidhuber described an algorithmic theory of beauty. This theory takes the subjectivity of the observer into account and postulates that among several observations classified as comparable by a given subjective observer, the most aesthetically pleasing is the one that is encoded by the shortest description, following

6600-475: The "Uncanny" as aesthetical affect. Following Freud and Merleau-Ponty , Jacques Lacan theorized aesthetics in terms of sublimation and the Thing. The relation of Marxist aesthetics to post-modern aesthetics is still a contentious area of debate. The field of experimental aesthetics was founded by Gustav Theodor Fechner in the 19th century. Experimental aesthetics in these times had been characterized by

6732-399: The "full field" of aesthetics is broad, but in a narrow sense it can be limited to the theory of beauty, excluding the philosophy of art. Aesthetics typically considers questions of beauty as well as of art. It examines topics such as art works, aesthetic experience, and aesthetic judgment. Aesthetic experience refers to the sensory contemplation or appreciation of an object (not necessarily

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6864-587: The 'workshop of the world', Britain was uniquely advanced in technology in the mid-19th century. Engineering, having developed into a profession in the 18th century, gained new profile and prestige in this period. The Victorian era saw methods of communication and transportation develop significantly. In 1837, William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone invented the first telegraph system . This system, which used electrical currents to transmit coded messages, quickly spread across Britain, appearing in every town and post office. A worldwide network developed towards

6996-587: The 1880s, sanitation was inadequate in areas such as water supply and disposal of sewage. This all had a negative effect on health, especially that of the impoverished young. For instance, of the babies born in Liverpool in 1851, only 45 per cent survived to age 20. It had been hoped that there would be a rapid improvement following the Public Baths and Wash-houses Act 1846. This was the first legislation to empower local authorities in England and Wales to fund

7128-413: The 19th century and germ theory was developed for the first time. Doctors became more specialised and the number of hospitals grew. The overall number of deaths fell by about 20%. The life expectancy of women increased from around 42 to 55 and 40 to 56 for men. In spite of this, the mortality rate fell only marginally, from 20.8 per thousand in 1850 to 18.2 by the end of the century. Urbanisation aided

7260-550: The 19th century for the first time in history, improved nutrition, and a lower overall mortality rate. Ireland's population shrank significantly, mostly due to emigration and the Great Famine. The professionalisation of scientific study began in parts of Europe following the French Revolution but was slow to reach Britain. William Whewell coined the term 'scientist' in 1833 to refer to those who studied what

7392-454: The Bible. A variety of reading materials grew in popularity during the period, including novels, women's magazines, children's literature, and newspapers. Much literature, including chapbooks , was distributed on the street. Music was also very popular, with genres such as folk music , broadsides , music halls , brass bands , theater music and choral music having mass appeal. What

7524-490: The British Empire, reform included rapid expansion, the complete abolition of slavery in the African possessions and the end of transportation of convicts to Australia . Restrictions on colonial trade were loosened and responsible (i.e. semi-autonomous) government was introduced in some territories. Throughout most of the 19th century Britain was the most powerful country in the world. The period from 1815 to 1914 , known as

7656-553: The Origin of Species (1859), which sought to explain biological evolution by natural selection, gained a high profile in the public consciousness. Simplified (and at times inaccurate) popular science was increasingly distributed through a variety of publications which caused tension with the professionals. There were significant advances in various fields of research, including statistics , elasticity , refrigeration , natural history , electromagnetism , and logic . Known as

7788-472: The Victorian era covers the duration of Victoria's reign as Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland , from her accession on 20 June 1837—after the death of her uncle, William IV —until her death on 22 January 1901, after which she was succeeded by her eldest son, Edward VII . Her reign lasted 63 years and seven months, a longer period than any of her predecessors. The term 'Victorian'

7920-420: The Victorian heyday: mid-Victorianism, 1851 to 1879. He saw the latter period as characterised by a distinctive mixture of prosperity, domestic prudery , and complacency —what G. M. Trevelyan called the 'mid-Victorian decades of quiet politics and roaring prosperity'. The Reform Act , which made various changes to the electoral system including expanding the franchise, had been passed in 1832. The franchise

8052-638: The Victorian view of femininity, but their involvement did increase as the period progressed. For the middle classes, many leisure activities such as table games could be done in the home while domestic holidays to rural locations such as the Lake District and Scottish Highlands were increasingly practical. The working classes had their own culture separate from that of their richer counterparts, various cheaper forms of entertainment and recreational activities provided by philanthropy . Trips to resorts such as Blackpool were increasingly popular towards

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8184-451: The West." The rapid growth in the urban population included the new industrial and manufacturing cities, as well as service centres such as Edinburgh and London. Private renting from housing landlords was the dominant tenure. P. Kemp says this was usually of advantage to tenants. Overcrowding was a major problem with seven or eight people frequently sleeping in a single room. Until at least

8316-504: The accuracy of the Old Testament grew among people with higher levels of education. Northern English and Scottish academics tended to be more religiously conservative, whilst agnosticism and even atheism (though its promotion was illegal) gained appeal among academics in the south. Historians refer to a 'Victorian Crisis of Faith', a period when religious views had to readjust to accommodate new scientific knowledge and criticism of

8448-411: The adjacent neighborhood "south of Houston" ( SoHo ) which became gentrified in turn. Attempting to recreate this natural process, arts districts have been created intentionally by local governments in partnership with private developers as a strategy for revitalizing neighborhoods. Such developments often include spaces for artists to live and work as well as galleries. A contemporary practice has been

8580-407: The aesthetic experience. Aesthetics is for the artist as ornithology is for the birds. Aesthetics examines affective domain response to an object or phenomenon. Judgements of aesthetic value rely on the ability to discriminate at a sensory level. However, aesthetic judgments usually go beyond sensory discrimination. For David Hume , delicacy of taste is not merely "the ability to detect all

8712-410: The artist. In 1946, William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley published a classic and controversial New Critical essay entitled " The Intentional Fallacy ", in which they argued strongly against the relevance of an author's intention , or "intended meaning" in the analysis of a literary work. For Wimsatt and Beardsley, the words on the page were all that mattered; importation of meanings from outside

8844-407: The arts as part of other missions, such as providing services to low-income neighborhoods. Historically, art world activities have benefited from clustering together either in cities or in remote areas offering natural beauty. The proximity of art galleries facilitated an informal tradition of art show openings on the same night, which have become officially coordinated as " first Friday events " in

8976-586: The basic aesthetic preferences of Homo sapiens are argued to have evolved in order to enhance survival and reproductive success. One example being that humans are argued to find beautiful and prefer landscapes which were good habitats in the ancestral environment. Another example is that body symmetry and proportion are important aspects of physical attractiveness which may be due to this indicating good health during body growth. Evolutionary explanations for aesthetical preferences are important parts of evolutionary musicology , Darwinian literary studies , and

9108-411: The basis for welfare provision into the 20th century. While many people were prone to vices, not least alcoholism, historian Bernard A. Cook argues that the main reason for 19th century poverty was that typical wages for much of the population were simply too low. Barely enough to provide a subsistence living in good times, let alone save up for bad. Improvements were made over time to housing along with

9240-418: The boundary between high and popular culture has been eroded by postmodernism . In the case of historical works, or Old Masters this distinction is maintained by the work's provenance ; proof of its origin and history. For more recent work, status is based upon the reputation of the artist. Reputation includes both aesthetic factors; art schools attended, membership in a stylistic or historical movement,

9372-580: The branch of metaphilosophy known as meta-aesthetics . Aesthetic judgment is closely tied to disgust . Responses like disgust show that sensory detection is linked in instinctual ways to facial expressions including physiological responses like the gag reflex . Disgust is triggered largely by dissonance ; as Darwin pointed out, seeing a stripe of soup in a man's beard is disgusting even though neither soup nor beards are themselves disgusting. Aesthetic judgments may be linked to emotions or, like emotions, partially embodied in physical reactions. For example,

9504-466: The building of public baths and wash houses but, since the act was only permissive rather than mandatory, improvement was slow. Conditions were particularly bad in London, where the population rose sharply and poorly maintained, overcrowded dwellings became slum housing. Kellow Chesney wrote of the situation: Hideous slums, some of them acres wide, some no more than crannies of obscure misery, make up

9636-446: The category of Post-war art; while contemporary may be limited to the 21st century or "emerging artists". An enduring model for contemporary galleries was set by Leo Castelli . Rather than simply being the broker for sales, Castelli became actively involved in the discovery and development of new artists, while expecting to remain an exclusive agent for their work. However he also focused exclusively on new works, not participating in

9768-489: The children in school; in 1840 only about 20 per cent of the children in London had any schooling. By the 1850s, around half of the children in England and Wales were in school (not including Sunday school ). From the 1833 Factory Act onwards, attempts were made to get child labourers into part time education, though this was often difficult to achieve. Only in the 1870s and 1880s did children begin to be compelled into school. Work continued to inhibit children's schooling into

9900-489: The classical arts such as poetry and music, which are purely intellectual pursuits. However, the public exhibition of art had to overcome the bias against commercial activity, which was deemed beneath the dignity of artists in many European societies. Commercial art galleries were well-established by the Victorian era , made possible by the increasing number of people seeking to own objects of cultural and aesthetic value. At

10032-742: The diplomatic struggles of the Great Game and the Scramble for Africa . In 1840, Queen Victoria married her German cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha . The couple had nine children, who themselves married into various royal families, and the queen thus became known as the 'grandmother of Europe'. In 1861, Albert died. Victoria went into mourning and withdrew from public life for ten years. In 1871, with republican sentiments growing in Britain, she began to return to public life. In her later years, her popularity soared as she became

10164-634: The direction of previous approaches. Schmidhuber's theory explicitly distinguishes between that which is beautiful and that which is interesting , stating that interestingness corresponds to the first derivative of subjectively perceived beauty. He supposes that every observer continually tries to improve the predictability and compressibility of their observations by identifying regularities like repetition, symmetry , and fractal self-similarity . Since about 2005, computer scientists have attempted to develop automated methods to infer aesthetic quality of images. Typically, these approaches follow

10296-474: The early 20th century. 19th-century Britain saw a huge population increase accompanied by rapid urbanisation stimulated by the Industrial Revolution. In the 1901 census , more than three out of every four people were classified as living in an urban area, compared to one in five a century earlier. Historian Richard A. Soloway wrote that "Great Britain had become the most urbanized country in

10428-424: The end of period. Initially the industrial revolution increased working hours, but over the course of the 19th century a variety of political and economic changes caused them to fall back down to and in some cases below pre-industrial levels, creating more time for leisure. Before the Industrial Revolution, daily life had changed little for hundreds of years. The 19th century saw rapid technological development with

10560-434: The end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century there were also the first indications of modern values regarding art; art as an investment versus pure aesthetics, and the increased attention to living artists as an opportunity for such investment. Commercial galleries owned or operated by an art dealer or "gallerist" occupy the middle tier of the art market , accounting for most transactions, although not those with

10692-453: The end of the century. Private education for wealthier children, boys and more gradually girls, became more formalised over the course of the century. The growing middle class and strong evangelical movement placed great emphasis on a respectable and moral code of behaviour. This included features such as charity, personal responsibility, controlled habits, child discipline and self-criticism. As well as personal improvement, importance

10824-470: The end of the century. In 1876, an American patented the telephone . A little over a decade later, 26,000 telephones were in service in Britain. Multiple switchboards were installed in every major town and city. Guglielmo Marconi developed early radio broadcasting at the end of the period. The railways were important economically in the Victorian era, allowing goods, raw materials, and people to be moved around, stimulating trade and industry. They were also

10956-467: The expertise of the gallery owner and staff, and the particular market, the artwork shown may be more innovative or more traditional in style and media. Galleries may deal in the primary market of new works by living artists, or the secondary markets for works from prior periods owned by collectors, estates, or museums. The periods represented include Old Masters , Modern (1900–1950), and contemporary (1950–present). Modern and contemporary may be combined in

11088-516: The family, and the idea that marriage should be based on romantic love gained popularity. A clear separation was established between the home and the workplace, which had often not been the case before. The home was seen as a private environment, where housewives provided their husbands with a respite from the troubles of the outside world. Within this ideal, women were expected to focus on domestic matters and to rely on men as breadwinners. Women had limited legal rights in most areas of life, and

11220-630: The fields of cognitive psychology ( aesthetic cognitivism ) or neuroscience ( neuroaesthetics ). Mathematical considerations, such as symmetry and complexity , are used for analysis in theoretical aesthetics. This is different from the aesthetic considerations of applied aesthetics used in the study of mathematical beauty . Aesthetic considerations such as symmetry and simplicity are used in areas of philosophy, such as ethics and theoretical physics and cosmology to define truth , outside of empirical considerations. Beauty and Truth have been argued to be nearly synonymous, as reflected in

11352-489: The first critical 'aesthetic regionalist' in proclaiming the anti-universality of aesthetics in contrast to the perilous and always resurgent dictatorship of beauty. 'Aesthetic Regionalism' can thus be seen as a political statement and stance which vies against any universal notion of beauty to safeguard the counter-tradition of aesthetics related to what has been considered and dubbed un-beautiful just because one's culture does not contemplate it, e.g. Edmund Burke's sublime, what

11484-414: The first time. Whilst some attempts were made to improve living conditions, slum housing and disease remained a severe problem. The period saw significant scientific and technological development. Britain was advanced in industry and engineering in particular, but somewhat undeveloped in art and education. Great Britain's population increased rapidly, while Ireland's fell sharply. In the strictest sense,

11616-451: The first to analyze links between aesthetics, information processing , and information theory . Max Bense, for example, built on Birkhoff's aesthetic measure and proposed a similar information theoretic measure M a ¨ = R / H {\displaystyle M_{\ddot {a}}=R/H} , where R {\displaystyle R} is the redundancy and H {\displaystyle H}

11748-429: The forms differ in their manner of imitation – through narrative or character, through change or no change, and through drama or no drama. Erich Auerbach has extended the discussion of history of aesthetics in his book titled Mimesis . Some writers distinguish aesthetics from the philosophy of art, claiming that the former is the study of beauty and taste while the latter is the study of works of art. Slater holds that

11880-403: The highest monetary values. Once limited to major urban art worlds such as New York, Paris and London, art galleries have become global. Another trend in globalization is that while maintaining their urban establishments, galleries also participate in art fairs such as Art Basel and Frieze Art Fair . Art galleries are the primary connection between artists and collectors . At the high end of

12012-402: The idea that human conduct and behaviour ought to be governed by that which is beautiful and attractive. John Dewey has pointed out that the unity of aesthetics and ethics is in fact reflected in our understanding of behaviour being "fair"—the word having a double meaning of attractive and morally acceptable. More recently, James Page has suggested that aesthetic ethics might be taken to form

12144-546: The ingredients in a composition", but also the sensitivity "to pains as well as pleasures, which escape the rest of mankind." Thus, sensory discrimination is linked to capacity for pleasure . For Immanuel Kant ( Critique of Judgment , 1790), "enjoyment" is the result when pleasure arises from sensation, but judging something to be "beautiful" has a third requirement: sensation must give rise to pleasure by engaging reflective contemplation. Judgements of beauty are sensory, emotional and intellectual all at once. Kant observed of

12276-491: The leading theorists from this school, Stanley Fish , was himself trained by New Critics. Fish criticizes Wimsatt and Beardsley in his essay "Literature in the Reader" (1970). As summarized by Berys Gaut and Livingston in their essay "The Creation of Art": "Structuralist and post-structuralists theorists and critics were sharply critical of many aspects of New Criticism, beginning with the emphasis on aesthetic appreciation and

12408-420: The management of sewage and water eventually giving the UK the most advanced system of public health protection anywhere in the world. The quality and safety of household lighting improved over the period with oil lamps becoming the norm in the early 1860s, gas lighting in the 1890s and electric lights beginning to appear in the homes of the richest by the end of the period. Medicine advanced rapidly during

12540-408: The market, a handful of elite auction houses and dealers sell the work of celebrity artists; at the low end artists sell their work from their studio, or in informal venues such as restaurants. Point-of-sale galleries connect artists with buyers by hosting exhibitions and openings. The artworks are on consignment, with the artist and the gallery splitting the proceeds from each sale. Depending upon

12672-444: The middle of the 19th century to 'diminished cruelty to animals, criminals, lunatics, and children (in that order)'. Legal restrictions were placed on cruelty to animals. Restrictions were placed on the working hours of child labourers in the 1830s and 1840s. Further interventions took place throughout the century to increase the level of child protection. Use of the death penalty also decreased. Crime rates fell significantly in

12804-494: The middle- and working-classes a role in politics. However, all women and a large minority of men remained outside the system into the early 20th century. Cities were given greater political autonomy and the labour movement was legalised. From 1845 to 1852, the Potato Famine caused mass starvation, disease and death in Ireland, sparking large-scale emigration. The Corn Laws were repealed in response to this. Across

12936-456: The mimetic arts possesses what Stephen Halliwell calls "highly structured procedures for the achievement of their purposes." For example, music imitates with the media of rhythm and harmony, whereas dance imitates with rhythm alone, and poetry with language. The forms also differ in their object of imitation. Comedy, for instance, is a dramatic imitation of men worse than average; whereas tragedy imitates men slightly better than average. Lastly,

13068-518: The names of institutions around the world, some of which are called galleries (e.g. the National Gallery and Neue Nationalgalerie ), and some of which are called museums (e.g. the Museum of Modern Art and National Museum of Western Art ). However, establishments that display art for other purposes, but serve no museum functions, are only called art galleries. The distinctive function of

13200-589: The nature of taste and, in a broad sense, incorporates the philosophy of art . Aesthetics examines the philosophy of aesthetic value, which is determined by critical judgments of artistic taste; thus, the function of aesthetics is the "critical reflection on art, culture and nature ". Aesthetics studies natural and artificial sources of experiences and how people form a judgment about those sources of experience. It considers what happens in our minds when we engage with objects or environments such as viewing visual art, listening to music, reading poetry, experiencing

13332-416: The objective side of beauty by defining it in terms of the relation between the beautiful object as a whole and its parts: the parts should stand in the right proportion to each other and thus compose an integrated harmonious whole. Hedonist conceptions , on the other hand, focus more on the subjective side by drawing a necessary connection between pleasure and beauty, e.g. that for an object to be beautiful

13464-448: The observer. One way to achieve this is to hold that an object is beautiful if it has the power to bring about certain aesthetic experiences in the perceiving subject. This is often combined with the view that the subject needs to have the ability to correctly perceive and judge beauty, sometimes referred to as "sense of taste". Various conceptions of how to define and understand beauty have been suggested. Classical conceptions emphasize

13596-403: The one hand, beauty is ascribed to things as an objective, public feature. On the other hand, it seems to depend on the subjective, emotional response of the observer. It is said, for example, that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". It may be possible to reconcile these intuitions by affirming that it depends both on the objective features of the beautiful thing and the subjective response of

13728-476: The opinions of art historians and critics; and economic factors; inclusion in group and solo exhibitions and past success in the art market. Art dealers, through their galleries, have occupied a central role in the art world by bringing many of these factors together; such as "discovering" new artists, promoting their associations in group shows, and managing market valuation. Exhibitions of art operating similar to current galleries for marketing art first appeared in

13860-461: The order was determined using fractal compression. There is also the case of the Acquine engine, developed at Penn State University , that rates natural photographs uploaded by users. There have also been relatively successful attempts with regard to chess and music. Computational approaches have also been attempted in film making as demonstrated by a software model developed by Chitra Dorai and

13992-426: The perception of artwork; artworks presented in a classical museum context are liked more and rated more interesting than when presented in a sterile laboratory context. While specific results depend heavily on the style of the presented artwork, overall, the effect of context proved to be more important for the perception of artwork than the effect of genuineness (whether the artwork was being presented as original or as

14124-477: The philosophy of art as aesthetics covering the visual arts, the literary arts, the musical arts and other artists forms of expression can be dated back at least to Aristotle and the ancient Greeks. Aristotle writing of the literary arts in his Poetics stated that epic poetry , tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry , painting, sculpture, music, and dance are all fundamentally acts of mimesis , each varying in imitation by medium, object, and manner. Aristotle applies

14256-461: The poem" ) in 1735; Baumgarten chose "aesthetics" because he wished to emphasize the experience of art as a means of knowing. Baumgarten's definition of aesthetics in the fragment Aesthetica (1750) is occasionally considered the first definition of modern aesthetics. The term was introduced into the English language by Thomas Carlyle in his Life of Friedrich Schiller (1825). The history of

14388-514: The population in 1800 to less than a third by 1901. However, 1890s studies suggested that almost 10% of the urban population lived in a state of desperation lacking the food necessary to maintain basic physical functions. Attitudes towards the poor were often unsympathetic and they were frequently blamed for their situation. In that spirit, the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 had been deliberately designed to punish them and would remain

14520-433: The resale of older work by the same artists. All art sales after the first are part of the secondary market, in which the artist and the original dealer are not involved. Many of these sales occur privately between collectors, or works are sold at auctions. However some galleries participate in the secondary market depending upon the market conditions. As with any market, the major conditions are supply and demand. Because art

14652-472: The rise of the New Criticism school and debate concerning the intentional fallacy . At issue was the question of whether the aesthetic intentions of the artist in creating the work of art, whatever its specific form, should be associated with the criticism and evaluation of the final product of the work of art, or, if the work of art should be evaluated on its own merits independent of the intentions of

14784-535: The role of the culture industry in the commodification of art and aesthetic experience. Hal Foster attempted to portray the reaction against beauty and Modernist art in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture . Arthur Danto has described this reaction as "kalliphobia" (after the Greek word for beauty, κάλλος kallos ). André Malraux explains that the notion of beauty was connected to

14916-530: The same sculptures as beautiful. Evaluations of beauty may well be linked to desirability, perhaps even to sexual desirability. Thus, judgments of aesthetic value can become linked to judgments of economic, political, or moral value. In a current context, a Lamborghini might be judged to be beautiful partly because it is desirable as a status symbol, or it may be judged to be repulsive partly because it signifies over-consumption and offends political or moral values. The context of its presentation also affects

15048-439: The scope of art and aesthetics. In 1941, Eli Siegel , American philosopher and poet, founded Aesthetic Realism , the philosophy that reality itself is aesthetic, and that "The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites." Various attempts have been made to define Post-Modern Aesthetics. The challenge to the assumption that beauty was central to art and aesthetics, thought to be original,

15180-405: The second half of the 19th century. Sociologist Christie Davies linked this change to attempts to morally educate the population, especially at Sunday schools . Contrary to popular belief, Victorian society understood that both men and women enjoyed copulation . Chastity was expected of women, whilst attitudes to male sexual behaviour were more relaxed. The development of police forces led to

15312-553: The series of articles on "The Pleasures of the Imagination", which the journalist Joseph Addison wrote in the early issues of the magazine The Spectator in 1712. The term aesthetics was appropriated and coined with new meaning by the German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten in his dissertation Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus (English: "Philosophical considerations of some matters pertaining

15444-400: The so-called autonomy of art, but they reiterated the attack on biographical criticisms' assumption that the artist's activities and experience were a privileged critical topic." These authors contend that: "Anti-intentionalists, such as formalists, hold that the intentions involved in the making of art are irrelevant or peripheral to correctly interpreting art. So details of the act of creating

15576-402: The spread of diseases and squalid living conditions in many places exacerbated the problem. The population of England, Scotland and Wales grew rapidly during the 19th century. Various factors are considered contributary to this, including a rising fertility rate (though it was falling by the end of the period), the lack of a catastrophic pandemic or famine in the island of Great Britain during

15708-478: The statement "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" in the poem " Ode on a Grecian Urn " by John Keats , or by the Hindu motto "Satyam Shivam Sundaram" (Satya (Truth) is Shiva (God), and Shiva is Sundaram (Beautiful)). The fact that judgments of beauty and judgments of truth both are influenced by processing fluency , which is the ease with which information can be processed, has been presented as an explanation for why beauty

15840-588: The study of the evolution of emotion . Victorian era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire , the Victorian era was the reign of Queen Victoria , from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. Slightly different definitions are sometimes used. The era followed the Georgian era and preceded the Edwardian era , and its later half overlaps with the first part of

15972-427: The term mimesis both as a property of a work of art and also as the product of the artist's intention and contends that the audience's realisation of the mimesis is vital to understanding the work itself. Aristotle states that mimesis is a natural instinct of humanity that separates humans from animals and that all human artistry "follows the pattern of nature". Because of this, Aristotle believed that each of

16104-430: The text was considered irrelevant, and potentially distracting. In another essay, " The Affective Fallacy ," which served as a kind of sister essay to "The Intentional Fallacy", Wimsatt and Beardsley also discounted the reader's personal/emotional reaction to a literary work as a valid means of analyzing a text. This fallacy would later be repudiated by theorists from the reader-response school of literary theory. One of

16236-477: The use of vacant commercial space for art exhibitions that run for periods from a single day to a month. Now called "popup galleries", a precursor was Artomatic which had its first event in 1999 and has occurred periodically to the present, mainly in the Washington metro area . Aesthetic Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics ) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and

16368-402: The war effort, and the evangelical movement's push for moral improvement. There is evidence that the expected standards of moral behaviour were reflected in action as well as rhetoric across all classes of society. For instance, an analysis suggested that less than 5% of working class couples cohabited before marriage. Historian Harold Perkin argued that the change in moral standards led by

16500-749: Was a comparatively recent invention, a view proven wrong in the late 1970s, when Abraham Moles and Frieder Nake analyzed links between beauty, information processing, and information theory. Denis Dutton in "The Art Instinct" also proposed that an aesthetic sense was a vital evolutionary factor. Jean-François Lyotard re-invokes the Kantian distinction between taste and the sublime . Sublime painting, unlike kitsch realism , "... will enable us to see only by making it impossible to see; it will please only by causing pain." Sigmund Freud inaugurated aesthetical thinking in Psychoanalysis mainly via

16632-534: Was expanded again by the Second Reform Act in 1867. The Third Reform Act in 1884 introduced a general principle of one vote per household. All these acts and others simplified the electoral system and reduced corruption. Historian Bruce L Kinzer describes these reforms as putting the United Kingdom on the path towards becoming a democracy. The traditional aristocratic ruling class attempted to maintain as much influence as possible while gradually allowing

16764-485: Was generally then known as natural philosophy, but it took a while to catch on. Having been previously dominated by amateurs with a separate income, the Royal Society admitted only professionals from 1847 onwards. The British biologist Thomas Henry Huxley indicated in 1852 that it remained difficult to earn a living as a scientist alone. Scientific knowledge and debates such as that about Charles Darwin 's On

16896-448: Was given to social reform. Utilitarianism was another philosophy that saw itself as based on science rather than on morality, but also emphasised social progress. An alliance formed between these two ideological strands. The reformers emphasised causes such as improving the conditions of women and children, giving police reform priority over harsh punishment to prevent crime, religious equality, and political reform in order to establish

17028-473: Was in contemporaneous usage to describe the era. The era can also be understood in a more extensive sense—the 'long Victorian era'—as a period that possessed sensibilities and characteristics distinct from the periods adjacent to it, in which case it is sometimes dated to begin before Victoria's accession—typically from the passage of or agitation for (during the 1830s) the Reform Act 1832 , which introduced

17160-401: Was low, punishments severe, work was dangerous and disrupted children's development (often leaving them too tired to play even in their free time). Early labour could do lifelong harm; even in the 1960s and '70s, the elderly people of industrial towns were noted for their often unusually short stature, deformed physiques, and diseases associated with unhealthy working conditions. Reformers wanted

17292-468: Was the predominant power in the world. Victorian society valued a high standard of personal conduct across all sections of society. The emphasis on morality gave impetus to social reform but also placed restrictions on certain groups' liberty. Prosperity rose during the period, but debilitating undernutrition persisted. Literacy and childhood education became near universal in Great Britain for

17424-432: Was well developed, education and the arts were mediocre. Wage rates continued to improve in the later 19th century: real wages (after taking inflation into account) were 65 per cent higher in 1901 compared to 1871. Much of the money was saved, as the number of depositors in savings banks rose from 430,000 in 1831 to 5.2 million in 1887, and their deposits from £14 million to over £90 million. Children had always played

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