The Intimate Philosophy of Art by John Armstrong

Okay, so you Google the painting and you find that it was painted in 1483 and so you are trying to figure out what else was going on in the world of art or in the world of history at that time in Northern Italy, or you find it was painted in 1893 by some guy born in Norway. It is also the one that is going to cost you the least personal effort – so it has that recommending it too. Now, he later goes on to explain that this is probably the least satisfactory way of coming to understand a work of art, but, especially today with the internet, it is one of the more readily available ways to start out on our journey. The first thing he suggests is to get information. The question is, what? And that is where this book comes in.

We often know we aren’t really up to understanding certain great works of art and so we blame ourselves.īut while blaming ourselves might give us some kind of masochistic pleasure, it is probably better to try to do something about it. Nietzsche says in Beyond Good and Evil, “‘I dislike him’-why?-‘because I’m not a match for him’ Did any one ever answer so?” To which I think, when it comes to works of art, people answer like that all of the time. Except, this doesn’t really reflect the best of all possible worlds, but rather one of the more likely and therefore possibly also one of the not-so-great worlds. In the best of all possible worlds that would probably be the end of the story – you looked, it did nothing for you, you got on with your life. The Americans have invented a word for this sort of moment, which is, as far as I can tell, meh. You know the score – you go to the gallery to see the latest blockbuster exhibition and there is a masterwork, something you’ve heard about all of your life, and you get into the room with it and it isn't so much that you feel disappointed by the painting, you are struggling to even feel that much emotion.

The simple question this book asks is, what should you do if you feel disappointed by a work of art you know is much better than you can work it out as being from what you are seeing. Given that you can’t really expect any exposition of German Idealism to be a page-turner, not if it is going to say anything worthwhile, even this section was forgivable. The idea is rather simple, but apart from maybe the section on Kant, Schelling and Hegel, it is also very readable.

The Intimate Philosophy of Art by John Armstrong