I want an unquestionable – the word that comes to mind is scientific...

I want an unquestionable – the word that comes to mind is scientific, or mathematic – way of showing that Beethoven is superior to Kanye West, that Shakespeare is superior to Stephen King: is there any theory of aesthetics that comes close to this?

What is the most persuasive and rigorous criteria to evaluate the value of a work of art that you have ever encountered (apart from survival through time)?

It bothers me to strive to achieve great results in an artistic career when every single looser can say that Star Wars is one of the greatest works of art of all time, or that Jay Z is a genius, or that Tupac is a great poet (or even a respectable poet, for the matter), and other things like that. It is a great offense to me the typical consensus that everyone has an opinion and that all opinions should be respected and that art appreciation is subjective and that there is no way to say that Beethoven is objectively superior to The Beatles.

I feel that an objective and unquestionable way to destroy the pride that everyone has to say: “I like what I like and you need to respect me” and “tastes are tastes, opinions are opinions, and everyone has their own” would be one of the greatest achievements of human thinking.

It would be glorious to show to some of Hollywood’s self-fellating industry people, to ghetto kids, to rap and hip-hop fans just how inferior their “artistic” heroes are. Unfortunately I don’t think that it will ever be possible to achieve the mental artifact to actually do it.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=S9AbuFhT0W4
heartiste.wordpress.com/2011/11/18/a-quantifiable-objective-standard-of-beauty/
twitter.com/AnonBabble

*loser

Also your opinion is shit.

/thread

Someone who admires Jay-Z or Kanye West or La La Land or Star Wars or Tupac and thinks that Beethoven, Shakespeare and Michelangelo are not great should get away from a literature board.

Seriously, there is no excuse for such a mindset. You should kill yourself.

>Getting mad with elitist taste and elitism in culture appreciation

There are people on Veeky Forums right now that think that Kanye West is a great artist and that hip-hop and rap is as significant as music and culture as the great composers from the baroque and classical era.

No wonder we have so much mediocrity in the critic threads when one realizes that retards like that are trying their hands at poetry and short-stories.

>is there any theory of aesthetics that comes close to this?

There are many aesthetic models that would favour your point of view, but none of them is either scientific or mathematic.

It may sound like a cliche, but if you understand perfectly both Kanye and Beethoven you will, deep down, know who is better. Someone may say that this is inherently biased and worthless. They're either beyond salvation or have never experienced true greatness not even once. Either force them to listen to that music/read those books or ignore them. There is no other way around.

You can't objectively determine what's "better" in any piece of art but there are some qualities most people find "literary".

Even then, if there was an objective way to determine if Shakespeare is actually WORSE than Stephen King or that Kanye West is BETTER than Beethoven, would you accept that so easily?

>I feel that an objective and unquestionable way to destroy the pride that everyone has to say: “I like what I like and you need to respect me” and “tastes are tastes, opinions are opinions, and everyone has their own” would be one of the greatest achievements of human thinking.
That's pathetic. I'm really not trying to be mean, but if you really feel that way I honestly pity you. What a small-minded and petty worldview. Your self-worth is dependent on proving other people wrong, on demonstrating that you have all the correct thoughts. If you didn't have some deep trauma to cover up, you would be comfortable in your own tastes without lording them over other people.

You don't even need aesthetics, just look at the production process.

youtube.com/watch?v=S9AbuFhT0W4

Every thread until you watch it.

OP here. I know you are right about it: there is no need to try to offend people or to be offensive for no reason.

What makes me mad is that I offered a ride to some people in the office where I work jus to be offended for my own taste. These people are all unimpressive when it comes down to mental achievements, and they seem to be proud of it. I do not talk to them that much, yet I give some of them rides once in a while.

This last time, when I turn the car on I forgot that I was listening to Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. When I turn the car on the radio also starts automatically. The sound started to play a great vocal section of the work. I turned it off very quickly because I knew the kind of taste that the people that were with me had, but I was too late. They started to mock me and make jokes about my “old people” music and the “flock of fat old ladies screaming”. I try to defend myself by stating that such music is old only when we consider the time when it was made, but that it is so impressive in its mastery that it is perpetually new, perpetually contemporary.

They keep mocking me, so I questioned what music they like, and they said “Oh, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Rihanna, The Killers, Artic Monkeys, things like that”, to which I reply that in 30 years from now nobody would remember who these people were, let alone listen to their songs. Then the people in the car got somewhat triggered and said that normal people listen to music not to show off or brag about it (as if I ever talked about music with any of them), but because they like those songs, and that only strange people listened to music from 200 years in the past.

So I was wondering how I could know, at least to my own satisfaction, that one can actually say that artwork A is better than artwork B.

Don't share your music, keep it to yourself. You've learned the hard way, now get out FAG.

autism speaks

Just kill them user, they don't deserve to live.

>They keep mocking me, so I questioned what music they like
So basically you got drawn into a dumb zero-sum argument in which only Beethoven is good and pop music is worthless trash, then? Unfortunate.

For every aesthetic system you find that supports your point you'll find three others that contradict it. Sticking to one is just dishonesty which is fine if you want to win internet arguments but not fine if you want genuine insight into art or to be able to carry a conversation with specialists.

Even in intellectual circles Baroque was out of fashion until the 20th century.

They may not be remembered in 30 but they may come back into favour in 100. You're a brainlet honestly and you have no sense of history.

>aesthetics based on scientific and mathematic

It's an impossible project. People tried to come out to a perfect aesthetic system for thousand of years, all of them failed.
There is no way to ground any sort of art into objective standards, there is no real value you can appeal to when criticizing a piece of literature or music.

There's only one thing you can do: stop being a coward and start giving your opinion away regardless of wether it is based on scientific foundations, basing it instead of personal principles and values.

Timelessness is a metric of sort. The fact that Beethoven survives centuries later is proof of greatness, of something fundamental and essential to the human spirit.

There is no way most contemporary artists will endure in the same way, when their music is largely produced by machines, written by others, and designed according to a simple consumerist formula, consider that there are countless reproductions and variations available that are essentially the same, and will be even more so in the future of these 'musics' which are so lacking in musical merit they are enjoyed instead as something like celebrity identity.

It's a bit naive to think that not using machines makes music more authentic and thus more timeless. If we are still using machines and collaborative songwriting processes 200 years into the future, the music of the early 21st century isn't going to be forgotten for using the same processes.

Also who do you think musicians were writing for in the past, if not consumers? Are there not distinct styles of music that are mostly forgotten because of the greats who emerged from those traditions? Can it be that the 'greats' are remembered simply only because the records of their music survived? Are the superstar artists of the 18th and 19th centuries not as great as other counterparts on the basis of their celebrity status, even though that is a definable facet of their era?

Timelessness is one thing, reductionism is another.

Dude it's cool to love the past but that doesn't cancel the excellence of the present
>A coward dies a thousand deaths
A soldier dies but once
They say pussy and paper is poetry power and pistols
Plottin on murderin motherfuckers 'fore they get you
Picturin pitiful punk niggaz coppin pleas
Puffin weed as I position myself to clock G's
My enemies scatter in suicidal situations
Never to witness the wicked shit that they was facin
Pockets is packed with presidents, pursue your riches
Evadin the playa hatin tricks, while hittin switches
Bitches is bad-mouth, cause brawlin motherfuckers is bold
But y'all some hoes, the game should be sewed
I'm sick of psychotic society somebody save me
Addicted to drama so even mama couldn't raise me
Even the preacher and all my teachers couldn't reach me
I run in the streets and puffin weed wit my peeps
I'm duckin the cop, I hit the weed as I'm clutchin my glock
Niggaz is hot when I hit the block, what if I die tonight
If I die tonight [3X]
"Tonight's the night I get in some shit"
Polishin pistols prepare for battle pass the pump
When I get to poppin niggaz is droppin then they done
Callin the coroner come collect the fuckin corpse
He got it by killer, preoccuppied with bein boss
Revenge is the method, whenever steppin keep a weapon close
Adversaries are overdosed over deadly notes
Jealous niggaz and broke bitches equal packed jails
Hit the block and fill your pockets makin crack sales
Picture perfection pursuin paper with a passion
Visions of prisons for all the pussies that I blasted
Runnin with criminals individuals with no remorse
Try to stop me my pistol posse's usin deadly force
In my brain all I can think about is fame
The police know my name, a different game, ain't a thing changed
I'm seein cemetary photos of my peers
Conversatin like they still here, if I die tonight
If I die tonight [3X]
"Tonight's the night I get in some shit"
Pussy and paper is poetry power and pistols
Plottin on murderin motherfuckers 'fore they get you
Pray to the heavens three-fifty-sevens to the sky
And I hope I'm forgiven for Thug Livin when I die
I wonder if heaven got a ghetto for Thug niggaz
A stress free life and a spot for drug dealers
Pissin while practicin how to pimp and be a playa
Overdose of a dick, while drinkin liquor when I lay her
Pistol whippin these simps, for bein petrified and lame
Disrespectin the game, prayin for punishment and pain
Goin insane, never die, live eternal, who shall I fear?
Don't shed a tear for me nigga I ain't happy hear
I hope they bury me and send me to my rest
Headlines readin MURDERED TO DEATH, my last breath
Take a look picture a crook on his last stand
Motherfuckers don't understand, if I die tonight
This is 2pac playing a character, a true representation of people and experiences he's known, and done in the common language which they spoke. It's on par with some of Shakespeares soliloquy's. Like the tragedies of Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet, pacs character like a mercutio.

No, it isn't.

heartiste.wordpress.com/2011/11/18/a-quantifiable-objective-standard-of-beauty/

The link is scant, but the conceit is correct.

Equivocation. Visual beauty other humans is not the abstract beauty of music or literature.

AHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

Laugh all you want but just because a work speaks to the lowest class in vulgar language doesn't disqualify it from being art. Making a coherent story with a unique rhythm, rhyme scheme, and other devices fit in perfect time to a 12 bar, is as much a difficult rubric as sonnets,

I was going to add that Shakespeare often spoke to the lowest classes using vulgar language. Time has elevated many of his populist works to a reverence they never experienced in his day

>This is 2pac playing a character, a true representation of people and experiences he's known, and done in the common language which they spoke. It's on par with some of Shakespeares soliloquy's. Like the tragedies of Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet, pacs character like a mercutio.

No, just no.

Shakespeare was a master of metaphor, simile, and all the retoric artifacts. He was not only extremelly gifted with language - to this day the most gifted human being to ever write - but also learned in several techniques of language.

But ss I said, the metaphoric texture is what really sets Shakespeare appart from all the other poets: nobody was so exuberant in its use as he was. And to quote Aristotle on the subject:

>The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor; it is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in the dissimilar

Tupac's lyrics dont show any skill with metaphor (the most important and most intuitive of the poetic skills). Actually they dont show much at all, just some normal capacity to nest inside the brain and soul of people from your life experience, and also this:

>Making a coherent story with a unique rhythm, rhyme scheme, and other devices fit in perfect time to a 12 bar

that anybody with just an initial experience in poetry can do.

Tupac cant be compared to Shakespeare even in stupid posts like yours. The order of magnitude between the work of one and the other is immeasurable.

Btw, the title of the song is taken from Shakespeare. Also:

>Laugh all you want but just because a work speaks to the lowest class in vulgar language doesn't disqualify it from being

Who cares? If Shakespeare read a few articles on life in the ghetto and the experiences of young blacks and the criminal community he would produce-without ever talking to any of them or even caring in the least with their fate-songs infinitely superior to anything that any rapper has ever done. He was simply more cultured, more hard-working and more gifted genetically than these guys. It's that simple.

It does not matter who you are and what you have lived, what matters is the end product. And if you're a fucking semi-criminal from a shitty ghetto who writes shitty poetry that at least is "authentic" it matters little to the human collective achievement. It would only matter when a real writer used the life and social situation of the fucked up criminal or rapper to create a work of art where real expertise was injected.

This politically correct agenda of flattering mediocrities just to please all social groups is going too far.

>No skill with metaphor or simile
Revenge is the method, whenever steppin keep a weapon close
Adversaries are overdosed over deadly notes
Jealous niggaz and broke bitches equal packed jails
Hit the block and fill your pockets makin crack sales
Picture perfection pursuin paper with a passion
Visions of prisons for all the pussies that I blasted
Runnin with criminals individuals with no remorse
Try to stop me my pistol posse's usin deadly force
In my brain all I can think about is fame
The police know my name, a different game, ain't a thing changed
>Tell me what you think that verse refers to
Lol I bet you aren't close to right because it is cloaked in metaphor and simile in a vernacular you are unfamiliar with and this triggers you.
>Anybody can do that
But do they do it well? I can write a sonnet anybody can follow a rubric but is it done well? Write me a bar that resonates with someone right now.
>Btw the title of the song from Shakespeare
Btw why the fuck else do you think I picked that particular song, it's not even a pop single
>Shakespeare could blah blah because genetically superior blah blah /POL/ rhetoric
Lmao dude do you know how autistic you sound right now?

>This politically correct agenda of flattering mediocrities just to please all social groups is going too far.

oh it's a /pol/ comes to Veeky Forums episode. You need to go back

Hahahaha this. Everybody point and laugh at the hick masquerading as an intellectual.

shut up, check out some truly deep rap
Read these lyrics and get ready for your consciousness to enter a different dimension.

Well I was challenging op with his own examples, I'm not saying that Tupac is the best rapper and I'm certainly not saying that he is greater than Shakespeare, just that his work is of much more substantive than op makes it out to be. This is great too, I'm glad you are also pointing out the value of hip hop.