The Christian Vanguard

What color is the chair? I say it is red. Someone may say that to a colorblind person, it is not red. We have different sense experiences of the objects, and why favor one perceiver over another? So this kind of perceptual relativism is true. The case may be over stated. To speak of colorblindness is still to use reference to our own perceptions to describe others and their perceptions. So one cannot appeal to relativism, which is an attempt to detach from one's own perceptions, without appealing to the abandoned perceptions. The color blinded example is still explained in terms of our own perceptions, and so is self contradictory. Use and apply to insects, aliens, etc.  For more, see here . 

I recently found out that there is a Rothko Chapel . Apparently, Rothko intended on arousing a religious experience when you looked at his paintings, and it inspired some to build a chapel in his honor, where there would hang some of his work (different panels of the same project). Looks cold, sterile, and somewhat dystopian.  Two years ago, I wrote about how realism is necessary for art, which you can find  here . It was a reaction against Pollock and Rothko, and I still agree with what I said there. I did qualify myself as saying realism may not have been alone a sufficient reason, but it was definitely a necessary one. I want to add that abstraction is also necessary, which wasn't a view I held at the time. My reaction against the radical abstractionism of Rothko and Pollock inclined me against the view that abstraction was a necessary condition. I mean, look at the "chapel" and you could see why I believed it. It was nothing but abstraction.  But in a con...

The iconic soup can. What is the big deal? Well, it's not really a big deal, and that might be the point. This paper on Andy Warhol's possible Eastern Christian aesthetic has helped me see that. It's an interesting paper, and I think it's worth a read, especially if you are Catholic or Orthodox. The basic idea is this: the aesthetic style of icons, no context and no space, is present in some of Warhol's work, as evidenced by the soup can, Golden Marilyn Monroe, and Silver Liz. Okay, I see that. I think that's pretty plausible. And I didn't really see that before, but I did have some vague sense of it. I just never really unpacked it because...it's a can of soup. Icons help us encounter a transfigured and holy person. That is why icons lack space and context. Is Warhol trying doing this too? Well, if he is, it doesn't work. Yes, in some sense, all of creation is good, and goodness is convertible with beautiful, so in some sense, all of creation is b...

People are confused about art, or if not confused, willfully ignorant. You see people trying to be edgy or avant-garde by looking at garbage and calling it art. I don't mean art that is bad in technical skill (like a child's finger painting) or even immoral (I'll use my better judgment and not cite anything here), but literally a thing that doesn't belong to the category of art but that some people want to claim it is. What art actually is, I won't explore in depth here, but I do want to say that realism is a necessary condition for something being art.  I have to be careful about the word "realism" because that's somewhat technical in the art world.  By realism I mean that whatever the subject is in the artwork, it has to capture (or at least attempt to capture) the essence of the thing. And this presupposes that things have real knowable essences. So I mean metaphysical real essentialism. The image must be trying to take a form, something like a...

What is the difference between pornography and art, if there is one at all? It may be difficult to define, but easy to recognize.