Is artistic judgement merely subjective opinion Essay Example For Students

Is artistic judgement merely subjective opinion? Essay Many would say that art is an expression of personal feelings and emotion, and therefore many would say that art is also judged by subjective opinions, as personal feelings are required to appreciate art. Two factors affecting our artistic judgment are our individual and cultural paradigms, which forms the basis of our subjective opinion on a piece of art. Our individual paradigm relates to things like past experiences. When we see a piece of art that strikes us, at many a times it is because the piece of art reminds us of certain things, such as past memories or events. When this happens the piece of art then becomes more than a non-living thing but something that reaches out to us. This conforms to the universal structure of thoughts, in which we use data, facts and experience while thinking. Our cultural paradigm also plays an important role in our subjective artistic judgments. This happens as our minds are constantly influenced by our religions and cultures, thus affecting our personal taste and likings. An example of this would be people living in a country whose main religion is Buddhism would tend to prefer the painting of a Buddha while a Christian would prefer a painting of Christ Jesus. This shows that our religious and cultural background plays an important part in our artistic judgment, as it forms our point of view of art. Although it may seem that artistic judgments are based on subjective opinions, there are evidences that objective opinions are present in our artistic judgments. The article Is beauty just biology? has research showing that humans sub-consciously have unanimous preferences for beauty. In the article, it states that there are certain features like body symmetry that affects the attractiveness of humans. It also states that even babies, who unlike adults, are not affected by paradigms, tend to stare longer at photos of people who are considered to be attractive by adults. This shows that the human mind has a sub-conscious preference for beauty, and this preference related to the objects features. Thus this links us back to our artistic judgment, which is also affected by our human preferences in terms of its beauty. This gives evidence that there are also some objective opinions in our artistic judgment. Hence, artistic judgment is not merely on subjective opinions but also based on objective opinions.