Q5 - Art Critic: The aesthetic value

[yusangmin]

ok what exactly does impart a stimulating character to the audience's experience of the work mean?

i hate it when LSAT is kinda in the grey area about this stuff.

does this mean that in the minds of the audience they remember a particular character from the artwork? what the FREAK does this mean?

E seems right because it seems like having little impact has a very broad meaning and thus it might imply that the audience got nothing out of it.

However couldnt it have little impact yet leave some kind of memory of a character on the audience?

dont know. help please!

[sgorginian]

I sense your frustration, and I completely agree with you.

I can't tell you what these words mean, but I can show you how I eliminated my answers. Hope this helps...

"Aesthetic value of art lies in the arts ability to impart (reveal) a stimulating character to the audience's experience of the work"

Here's how I see it. Have you ever been to the HardRock Hotel? If not, the HardRock hotel has memorabilia of past and present superstarts. For instance, they have Michael Jacksons shiny white glove that he wore when he sang at the Grammys. When I see that glove, I tell myself, "oh my Gosh! This is THE GLOVE that MJ actually wore??? Wow, he had this on his hand and now I am standing right next to it!? Wow....phew..amazing".

The point is...the aesthetic value of that glove (art) lies in it's ability to reveal a stimulating character ("omg, this is the glove he wore?!") to my experience with the work of Michael Jackson.

Now, if you break down the argument again, here's how it goes.

If it has Aesthetic Value ---> it has both stimulating character AND audience experience.

More compact....and abbreviated...

If Aesthetic Value ==> SC and Audience Exp.

(A) painting is not aesthetically beautiful because it is exact copy of painting done 30 years ago.

I say, So what? Where does it talk about the stimulating character??? Eliminate it...

(B) symphony is beautiful (aka has aesthetic value) it is competently performed (stimulating character) but doesn't excite audience.

Wait, but we said that we need it to Both stimulating and excite the audience. Eliminate it....

(C) sculpture is beautiful because it is from rare marble.

So what? Where does this tell me about the audience experience with the sculpture. It tells me that the sculpture has a stimulating character but it doesn't tell me about the audience experience. Eliminate it.....

(D) this painting is aesthetically valuable bc it was painted by a controversial artist.

Again, so what? So it was painted by a controversial artist. Big deal, whoopie. It's telling me that the art is aesthetically valuable because it has a stimulating character (ie painted by a controversial painter), but we need another requirement for it to be aesthetically valuable and that is that the art needs to have a connection with the audience experience of the work. It never mentions that... So eliminate it....

Now, that is how I eliminated it all and came to (E).

Remember the question...which of the following judgments most closely conforms with the principle?

We deduced the argument down to:
If Aesthetically valued ==>then it has Stimulating char. AND audience experience

Contrapostive of that statement is....

- stim character OR - aud experience ==> -aesthetic value

Notice how And switched to Or on contrastive...

Look at what (E) says...."Poem is aesthetically deficient because it has little impact on audience".

So (E) is saying... NO Audience Impact ==> No aesthetic value.
BINgoooo!


I sincerely hope this helped. I didn't intend to spend my Saturday night writing this novel for one problem, but I wanted to help out.

Good luck
Sevan

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

I just wanted to post a quick comment on the LSAT's "grey area." I agree the LSAT is sometimes very picky about language and then at others not picky at all. In this case having little impact on an audience does not preclude imparting a stimulating character.

However, answer choice (E) is clearly the only viable candidate. So the question is, "why so loose on the language?"

Over the years I've developed certain flexibilities to help me cope with the changing exactitude the LSAT asks for.

First third = very loose on the language, grant the LSAT writer room to work with
Second third = tighten up on the language
Final third = very tight with the language and use concepts to formulate an understanding of the argument core

Concepts include things like conditional logic, refutation of a claim, reasons + explanations, etc...

[mitrakhanom1]

sgorginian says:

"We deduced the argument down to:
If Aesthetically valued ==>then it has Stimulating char. AND audience experience

Contrapostive of that statement is....

- stim character OR - aud experience ==> -aesthetic value

Notice how And switched to Or on contrastive..."

How did you know to put AND in between stimulating character and audience experience?

I picked C. So if E is correct because of the contrapositive, how would I have figured that out if I didn't know about placing AND in between stimulating character and audience experience or how else could I have figured this out?

[rinagoldfield]

Hi Mitrakhanom1,

I actually disagree with sgorginian’s interpretation above. I don’t see “stimulating character” as separate from “audience experience.” This argument is basically saying that aesthetic value is determined by an artwork’s ability to create a stimulating experience for the audience.

This argument isn’t really a conditional argument; rather, it gives us framework with which to evaluate artwork.

(C) doesn’t use this framework. It discusses rarity rather than stimulating experience.
(E) applies the framework to a poem, and finds the poem deficient.

Best,
Rina