Epistemology in Art and Beauty

Abstract
This paper explains how to see knowledge in art and beauty by objectively perceiving the

subjectivity of art. The author uses the theory of aesthetics and mathematics concept of evaluating

art and beauty, while using epistemology as its aligning principle. Various artwork from different

periods will be used to illustrate the theory behind what we essentially call beautiful. The objective

is to critique art deeply by examining its value to knowledge and through other artworks. This

understanding is valuable today especially today’s art whereas artist break the concept of aesthetics

where they value solely on the experience that triggers in the audience.

St. Thomas Aquinas’ argument of degree1

Introduction
The concrete concept of art has only been around since the 16th century when Giorgio

Vasari, incidentally a known friend of Michelangelo, published his highly influential book called

Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550). Taking a more greater

value to individual creativity rather than collective production. Within a single generation,

people’s attitudes about objects and their makers shifted dramatically. Now taking notice of the

makers of the art rather than one who commissioned or bought it. It elevated the statuses of artists

and solidified the definite gap between art and craft the still persists today.
 Looking into ancient Greece during Plato and Aristotle’s time, the notion of beauty or art

is not clear. Plato suggests that art is a mimicry of things that we see as beauty. Moreover, Plato

thought that the artist could only imitate sensible objects which are themselves imitations of some

form. On his view, such imitation results from a lack of knowledge of the forms, the true essences

of which artistic representations are but deficient approximations. Aristotle, on the other hand,

sees beauty as its own form. The concept of form, especially in terms of formal causality, which

connected the beauty of an object to its form. In other words, an object’s form is the cause of its

beauty. The main difference between Aristotle’s notion of form and Plato’s notion of the Forms is

that Aristotle thought the form of the object was constituted by the essential or species-defining

properties inhering in the object. Plato maintained that the Forms of each thing existed in a realm

that transcended physical things.2

In terms of aesthetics, Thomas Aquinas focused his comments mostly on the notion of

beauty. Thomas’ definition of beauty is that beauty is what gives pleasure when seen . This

definition suggests a subjective understanding of what we call beautiful. The ambiguity comes

from this word ‘seen,’ which in turn is concentrated on visual arts. Knowing beauty is not the

result of a discursive process, but a process of visual perception and feedback. Nevertheless, it is

an activity of the mind and eyes. Knowledge occurs when the form of an object, without its matter,

exists in the mind of the knower.

Art can be interpreted of its purpose and function in many different ways. Christianity, like

many religions before it and since, has become involved with the making of art. Its theme has
dominated the European art for thousands of years. It has been clear in using art for an

understandable purpose: to make its message more resonant, emotionally attractive and popularly

appealing. In Thailand during the 15th century, sculptures have made enumerable statues of

Buddha. The purpose of this art is clear: You’re to look at the Buddha and take inspiration,

becoming a little more as he is. Art became an advertisement for its ideas.

For most of its history art has been put on a concrete definition: to glorify religion, to share

its ideas among people or as simply propaganda. Modern art is a result of a swerve because of

these reasons. Art has been revered and yet somehow still in question. Using the words of the poet,

Théophile Gautier, which argues that art must free itself from agendas of religions and

governments. The point of art is always just for its own sake as he put it in French, “l’art pour

l’art”, art for art’s sake. This doctrine of art for art’s sake became the motto of the new generation

of artists. Art is an end in itself and doesn’t try to change or do or speak about anything.

Art can serve as a way communicate thoughts, ideas and feelings, just as written text does

the same. The aim of paintings is to target the mind of the artist and communicate these mental

pictures by visual means. Paintings or drawings can convey a reality unique not only to the artist,

but characteristic of a time, people and culture. Similarly, written communication presents a range

of ideas including fiction, faith, and fact. Although there is a unique reality to any idea once it

assumes existence in the mind. That is why what we as see as reality to be true is debatable. An

artist creates as a way of communicating feelings to other people – oftentimes that can’t be

expressed in words or texts.

Art as Knowledge
Art in its technical epistemological perspective is defined as judgement of sentiment and

taste.3 Since art is subject to various interpretations, some deliberate direction must be posited for

relating it to ways of knowing. Just as knowledge relies upon its source for credibility, art relies

upon the artist for its quality. In both cases, the creator’s source of motivation can be examined.

Since each is attempting to convey a truth about reality, we are compelled to query the center of

their beliefs and how they intend to arrive at their conclusions. Such inquiry yields the source of

the alignment between art and epistemology.4

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) describes how knowledge can be

acquired by empirical means and discusses the limits of reason. To draw the line between what

humans can and cannot know is the task of epistemology.5 The principles is limiting but can

convey an objective outlook to art, particularly in visual aesthetics.

Scottish philosopher David Hume argues that the important thing about art is its

‘agreeableness’, the pleasure we derive from it, and that this is a matter of our sentiments, not its

intrinsic nature. ‘Judgements’ about good and bad in art, according to Hume, are not really

judgements at all ‘because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real,

wherever a man is conscious of it’6 Tackling the question, “is it good?” Hume made it clear that
the truth is a concept grasp in philosophy and art is the presentation and apprehension of truth by

means of imagery.

The question whether art is of any epistemic value is an old question in the philosophy of

art. If art is of epistemic significance, they maintain, then it has to contribute to our quest of

achieving our most basic aim, namely knowledge. Unfortunately, recent and widely accepted

analyses of knowledge make it very hard to see how art might significantly contribute to the quest

of achieving this aim. Therefore, by the lights of recent epistemology, it is highly questionable

whether art is of any epistemic value.

Addressing this argument with means of defining art not as in its form, but by its structure.

The intention is not to observe the artwork as a whole, rather by how we can analyze each stroke

part by part to redeem a pattern. Essentially follows to find some form of truth.

The kind of knowledge claim we can have about art concerns the sort of information art

can provide about the world. It is widely accepted that art does, in fact, convey important insight

into the way we order and understand the world. It is also widely acknowledged that art gives a

certain degree of meaning to our lives. Art can elicit new beliefs and even new knowledge about

the world.

The extraction of knowledge in visual aesthetics would require for artworks to have a

common reality or a universal validity. A principle in epistemology whereas we know truth as

having the same common ground. Explanations suggest that one holds itself to a personal truth or
taste simply because they already believe it to be true. This is motivated by the comfort given in

beliefs and is generally opinion or faith-based. The artist uses those visual ideas along with making

his own contribution to the public domain of knowledge that is communicated visually.

Paintings that Show Knowledge

and describe them. Among the hardest patterns we've tried to understand is the concept of turbulent

flow in fluid dynamics. As difficult as turbulence is to understand mathematically we can use art

to depict the way it looks. In June 1889, Vincent van Gogh painted the view just before sunrise

from the window of his room at the St. Paul de Mausole asylum7 where he'd admitted himself after

mutilating his own ear in a psychotic episode. In the “Starry Night”, his circular brush strokes

create a night sky filled with swirling clouds and eddies of stars.

Figure 1 Van Gogh's Starry Night, art medium: Oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Art,
New York City
 Van Gogh and other impressionists represented light in a different way than their

predecessors seeming to capture its motion. The effect is caused by luminance, the intensity of the

light in the colors on the canvas. The more primitive part of our visual cortex which sees light

contrast and motion but not color will blend two differently colored areas together if they have the

same luminance, but our brains primate subdivision will see the contrasting colors without

blending with these two interpretations happening at once the light.8 In many impressionists works

seems to pulse, flicker and radiate oddly. that's how this and other impressionist works use quickly

executed prominent brushstrokes to capture something strikingly real about how light moves.

Andrei Kolmogorov furthered our mathematical understanding of turbulence. Scientists

have struggled for centuries to describe turbulent flow — some are said to have considered the

problem harder than quantum mechanics. It is still unsolved, but one of the foundations of the

modern theory of turbulence was laid by the Soviet scientist Andrei Kolmogorov in the 1940s.

Experimental measurements show Kolmogorov was remarkably close to the way turbulent

flow works. Although a complete description of turbulence remains one of the unsolved problems

in physics. A turbulent flow is self-similar if there is an energy cascade in other words big eddies

transfer their energy to smaller eddies which do likewise at other scales.

Scientists looked at van Gogh's paintings to see whether they bear the fingerprint of

turbulence that Kolmogorov identified. "'Turbulent' is the main adjective used to describe van

Gogh's work," says Aragn. "We tried to quantify this."9

Scientists studied the luminance in Van Gogh's paintings in detail they discovered that

there is a distinct pattern of turbulent fluid structures close to Kolmogorov’s equation hidden in
many of Van Gogh's paintings. The researchers digitized the paintings and measured how

brightness varies between any two pixels. From the curves measured for pixel separations, they

concluded that paintings from Van Gogh's periods of psychotic agitation behave remarkably

similar to fluid turbulence. his self-portrait with a pipe, from a calmer period in Van Gogh's life,

showed no sign of this correspondence. And neither did other artists work that seemed equally

turbulent at first glance, like Munch’s “The Scream”.

Conclusion

References

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3
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4
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https://philpapers.org/rec/KLIATA

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8
Visual cortex | Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_cortex
9
Ball, P. (July 7, 2006) | Van Gogh painted perfect turbulence | Retrieved from

https://www.nature.com/news/2006/060703/full/news060703-17.html