Week 6: Aesthetics and Emily's Art
[edit] Teaching Emily’s Art
Philosophically speaking, Emily’s Art raises two central questions. The primary one is whether there are objective standards for evaluating art works. The second is how the fairness or justice of an act can be determined. I would like you to focus on the first, since we are using the book to discuss issues in aesthetics or the philosophy of art. But you may find it useful to approach that discussion via the question of what made the judge’s decision unfair.
But before discussing that, let me mention that Emily’s actual drawings are also interesting. Many people assume that good are is realistic, that is, presents an accurate representation of the objects depicted. However, even a little acquaintance with the history of art demonstrates that art rarely strives for accuracy of representation and, when it does, it often is not very good. Emily clearly does not aim at drawing pictures that are simply accurate, but rather is interested in expressing her attitude about the things she draws, be they her busy mother, she and her best friend, or her dog. So one place to begin you discussion is with Emily’s picture of her dog and a trite but accurate dog picture such as the one I will show you. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let’s return to the philosophical issue of artistic evaluation. The question is whether there are objective criteria for the evaluation of artworks and, if there are, what they are. Philosophers disagree about the answer to this question. There are some – called emotivists – who think that evaluations of art – “Ohhh! That’s great.” “Ugh, that sucks!” – are little more than expressions of the evaluator’s feelings. On such a view, artistic evaluations are essentially preferences, similar to a person’s preference to vanilla or chocolate ice cream. Other philosophers think that there are objective criteria of evaluation. Their evidence has (at least) two sources: First, disagreement about the merit of works of art makes sense, while disagreement about which flavor of ice cream is better does not. Second, we put some works of art in museums and toss others in the trash. These philosophers would argue that such facts show that we implicitly believe that there are objective standards of artistic evaluation.
In our relativist age, I think the ordinary view is that there are no objective standards, that there is no difference between evaluating art and tasting different flavors of ice cream: You like some things better than others and express those preferences in judgments of the things “goodness.” I don’t think this view is false, but I do think that all of our reactions to the story show that we believe in a different view. After all, if we think that the judge’s decision was wrong, that’s different than just saying I would have made a different choice. And I believe that everyone reading the story thinks the judge made a mistake, because Emily is simply a better painter than her friend. Of course, the mistake could be that the judge used the wrong criterion to judge the work, i.e. whether she liked the object it represented. But I think we also believe that Emily’s art is objectively better than the other first graders’, so she deserved to win.
The question of what makes an action fair is a basic question of social and political philosophy. If you find that the art discussion doesn’t get anywhere, you can always ask them if, and why, they think the judge’s decision is fair.
The MLK Session
Since the book makes a big deal about an art contest, you might want to make sure that they know what a contest is and ask if they think there can be an art contest. We will skip the beginning material and only read the book up to the point where the judge decides against Emily. You can suggest to the teacher that she can read them the ending and discuss it with them. (What is friendship? What is a hurt in the heart [psychological as opposed to physical injury]?)
There are a variety of different ways to approach teaching this book, so you’ll have to decide what you think is best. A first one is to begin by getting the kids to talk about their preferences for different flavors of ice cream. You can ask them to say what their favorite flavor is and then choose two who have different flavors and ask if one of them is wrong and the other right. Presumably once the joking has ended, they will say something like De gustibus, non est disputandum. You could then ask them to look at one of Emily’s drawings and ask whether they think it is good and why. You might then show them a really bad drawing and ask them if they think Emily’s is better. Once they answer, you can ask whether there is a difference between tastes – where there is no grounds for arguing – and art – where we may think that there is. The process here is a slow one and you need to be patient to let it work itself out, always noting along the way where they are and what they have accomplished.
Another way to go would be to start with two pictures. I’ll try to bring in the awful dog picture I keep for just this purpose. You can show them the two pictures and ask them which they think is better. If they disagree, you can ask them to explain why they think the picture they prefer is better. If they don’t, you can still ask them how they justify their preference. Alternatively, you begin with the fact that Emily’s picture doesn’t win the contest and ask them whether they think that was fair. When they say, as I presume they will, that it wasn’t, you can ask, “Why not?” They need to come up with a reason why Emily’s picture should have won – other than that it was better than the others which begs the question, an important concept to explain to them. Suppose that they say that Emily’s picture should have won because it is so colorful (or whatever). You can then ask them whether they think that any picture that is very colorful is a good one. (Unlike the other routes, this one would question the idea that there are clear standards that one can use to judge art.
Whatever route you choose, it might be good at some point to go around your group and ask each of them to say whether they like Emily’s picture of Thor and why. I have found that doing so puts a range of different properties of the picture on the table – it’s colorful, funny, expressive, etc. – that the kids can refer back to later.
