In this essay I intend to recognize what counts as knowledge in the arts by comparing it to another

area of knowledge, in this case the natural sciences. But first we need to clearly define what we
mean by Art and knowledge specifically.
Art is a concept that many philosophers have tried to define, but due to its inherent subjective
nature, there is currently no clear definition of what art is. The word Art comes from the latin
Ars or Artis which means practical skill, or professional skill, and was usually referred as the skill of
creating poetry and music. Later art was also used to refer to the skill in creating sculpture and
paintings. Though, the definition of art has changed as time went by. In ancient cultures art
consisted mostly on mimesis, which is the process by which we try to imitate and represent that
which surrounds us with a certain degree of similarity. A clear example would be Neanderthal cave
paintings which depicted animals and human figures. From then up to the XX century, art has been
trying to imitate real life as detailed a way as possible. Greek sculptures are still revered today for
their impressive realism in terms of anatomy and the behavior of hair and cloth. So right up until
the beginnings of the XX century we could say that art is the representation of our objective reality
through painting, writing or sculpting.
Though, right at the beginnings of the XX century, artists started straying away from the previous
concept of art as an accurate representation of reality and delved into an exploration of the
abstract; with movements such as Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism and the like. Andre Breton, a
surrealist poet and author wrote on the Surrealist Manifesto (1924):
Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously
neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of
thought.1
These artistic movements aimed to represent the intangible in everyday life, evoking feelings and
emotions. So our whole concept of art as an ever-more accurate representation of reality, which
would be consistent with more than 30,000 years of human history, was totally shattered with
these new artistic movements that emerged not more than 100 years ago. Thus making it more
difficult to pin down what we refer as Art in contemporary history. So then to define the concept
I had to find specific criteria common to all art.
It has been created with a significant degree of aesthetic interest
It is created through the exploration of form in order to evoke feelings or represent
physical reality.
It has to have an audience (Spectator)
By the exploration of the form I mean exploring different arrangements of what already exists, for
example music is the composition and arrangement of sound (different frequencies) in order to
express emotion or mood, or painting which is the use of color and line arranged in such a way as
to represent something else.

BRETON, Andre. Manifesto du Surralisme Paris, 1924

Knowledge is said to be a justified true belief, so basically it must be true, believed to be true by a
consensus of people and there has to be a valid justification behind it. A straight-forward example
of what knowledge is can be found in mathematics, using logic. The statement 2+2=4 is said to be
true and accepted by a general consensus of people, and the justification behind it is that the
number 2 is comprised by two units 1 + 1 = 2, thus, (2 + 2) is the same as saying ((1+1)+(1+1))
which gives us 4 units. Knowledge in mathematics is based on logic, since mathematics is an
almost exclusively objective area of knowledge, yet when trying to define knowledge in the arts,
using logic is not always effective, since art is said to be subjective in nature. You can tell whether
or not a mathematical equation is wrong by testing and logic. We say that the statement 2+2=5 is
wrong because we know that the number 5 is made up of five units, while a pair of twos adds up
to only 4, thus the equation is wrong. Yet if youre shown two different paintings of the same
landscape or object, one cannot tell which one is the right one, since there is no one strict logical
process by which art is created. Even trying to decide whether one is better than the other is
impossible, since the quality of art is only to be decided by each individual spectator, there is a
common saying which illustrates this idea.
Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder2
Since most abstract and contemporary art is based on suggestion rather than objective depiction
of what is trying to be shown or transmitted, the beholder plays an important role in Art, since it is
him that completes the piece of art, through his own experiences and emotions the beholder
arrives at a very personal interpretation of what he or she is watching or experiencing. Thus, the
knowledge transmitted through art cannot be measured or identified concretely since it varies
from each individual perspective. Yet, even though the audiences experience of art is completely
subjective, from the artists perspective, while creating a piece of art, there are specific aspects
relating to form and structure of the piece which might be considered knowledge.
Take for example poetry, which has different predetermined structures such as the sonnet, which
contains 14 lines only and has a strict rhyming pattern of a-b-a-b. Or the Haiku which is made up of
three lines of up to 17 syllables. Poets choose the structures which best fit what they are trying to
express. Or in music, where form is given with a variation of either repetition or alteration, and as
in poetry there are fixed structures many composers have used throughout history, such as the
Sonata or the Rondo. Artists not only have knowledge about the structure of art, but about the
different units that make it up, like the quantification of syllables in poetry, repetition, tone and
volume in music, or even physical segmentation and voice alteration in theatre. These are the
tools per se, which artist make use of when creating their art as a mean to achieve a certain
result.
Just as in the natural sciences, where knowledge is attained through the scientific method, the
Arts can also go through the same process to extract knowledge about how audiences react to the
different arrangements of the form. The scientific method consists of five steps:

HUNGERFORD WOLFE, Margaret. Molly Bawn Dublin, 1878.

Forming a question
Creating a hypothesis
Making prediction(s)
Testing & acquiring results
Analysis of results

A musician might want to explore the response of the audience to different frequencies of sound,
so he creates a hypothesis, such as The listeners attention is affected by the frequency of the
sounds Then he might predict that for example, high frequency (pitch) sounds stimulate the
listeners attention, while low frequency sounds discourage attention. Then a group of test
subjects might be placed in a room to listen to a musical piece with different variations of
frequencies. Via electrodes placed in the head of the listeners it is possible to measure their
attention, thus valid conclusions can be drawn from the experiment determining whether the
predominance of high frequency or low frequency sounds have any effect in the listeners
attention. If there is any, then this knowledge might be used by the musician as a way to create
different effects on the listener. Thus, from the artists perspective, the creation process of art, it is
possible to extract knowledge about how the elements that composes it (sound, color, form,
rhyme, etc.) function, in an objective way.
Yet, even though it is possible to extract knowledge about these concrete aspects of the form or
the behavior of the elements that constitute art, it is still impossible to predict what the audience
will draw from Art, since the experience is exclusively subjective. Two subjects will never be able
to see the same painting in exactly the same way. From the perspective of a spectator, knowledge
about the form or behavior of that which constitutes art does not make his experience more valid
or justified than that of a person with no previous knowledge of said aspects. Every spectator
views art through a different scope, molded by his own previous experiences.
The image then is a condensation where past and present impressions coalesce into a
knowledge figure.3
In conclusion, even though it is possible to study and draw knowledge from that which makes up
art, through inductivism and the scientific method, it is impossible for us to identify the knowledge
transmitted to a spectator or rather the one the spectator draws from art, since it is a completely
subjective and personal experience. Knowledge in the arts only exists in the objective elements
that compose its subjective product.

BENJAMIN, Walter. Das Passagenwerk, Frankfurt 1982.