Indian and Western Aesthetics Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The author of Critique of Judgement (1790) is Immanuel Kant. The work is the third of his Critiques and sets out his aesthetics, including the judgement of taste and the sublime, which is why it is read in art history and aesthetics courses.

Hegel wrote on aesthetics in his Lectures on Fine Art and in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Archibald Alison wrote Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste, and David Hume wrote the essay Of the Standard of Taste. None of them wrote the Critique of Judgement.

Answer: C

The six limbs (Shadanga) of Indian painting, in the order given in the Sanskrit texts, are Rupabheda (distinctions of form), Pramana (proportion), Bhava (emotion), Lavanya Yojana (grace and artistic representation), Sadrishya (similarity) and Varnikabhanga (use of colours). The first four are therefore Rupabheda, Praman, Bhava, Lavanya.

The options that begin with Bhava, with Praman, or place Bhava before Praman, reverse this standard order. The option Rupabheda, Bhava, Lavanya, Praman puts Praman after the others, and so is wrong.

Answer: D

Both statements are correct. Plato held that art is imitation: in the Republic he calls the painter and poet imitators of appearances, and in his philosophy the things of the perceptual world are themselves copies of the eternal forms, so art is a copy of a copy. The reason, that art is merely a copy of form existing in the perceptual world, states that view. Options A, B and C each reject one or both statements, which does not match what Plato said, so option D is the keyed answer.

Answer: D

Both statements are correct. The view that art should refine and contribute to human progress is a familiar one in the philosophy of art, and the reason, that art enlightens the mind with certain aspects of truth, is the usual way of supporting it. Options A, B and C reject the assertion, the reason or both, which the key does not accept. So the keyed answer is that both are correct, option D.

Answer: D

The correct chronological order of the western thinkers on aesthetics is Aristotle, St. Augustine, Croce and Clive Bell. Aristotle lived in the fourth century BCE, St. Augustine from 354 to 430 CE, Benedetto Croce from 1866 to 1952, and Clive Bell, author of Art with the idea of significant form, from 1881 to 1964. Options A, B and C each place Clive Bell or Croce before Aristotle or St. Augustine, which is impossible, so option D is right.

Answer: B

The matching is: Croce with the theory of intuition (iv), Aristotle with the theory of imitation (iii), Tolstoy with the theory of communication (i), and Collingwood with the theory of imagination (ii), giving iv iii i ii. Croce held art to be intuition and expression, Aristotle described art as imitation of nature, Tolstoy said art communicates feeling from one person to another, and Collingwood in The Principles of Art linked art with imagination. Options A, C and D pair one or more of them with the wrong theory.

Answer: B

The matching is: A. K. Coomaraswamy with Rajput Painting (iii), Herbert Read with Art and Society (i), Mulk Raj Anand with An Album of Indian Painting (iv), and P. N. Mago with Contemporary Art in India (ii), giving iii i iv ii. Coomaraswamy's Rajput Painting was published in 1916, Read's Art and Society is a study of art in its social setting, and Mago's Contemporary Art in India is a survey of the modern period. Options A, C and D mispair at least two authors, and option A has the repeated code ii, which cannot be right.

Answer: B

Clive Bell said that art is significant form. In his book Art (1914) he argued that what separates a work of art from other things is a particular combination of lines, colours and shapes that stirs aesthetic emotion, which he named significant form, whatever the subject depicted.

I. A. Richards is wrong: he is known for literary criticism and a psychological theory of poetry. Collingwood is wrong: his Principles of Art treats art as the expression and clarification of emotion. Suzanne Langer is wrong: she defined art as the creation of forms symbolic of human feeling, not significant form.

Answer: B

The key gives the assertion as correct and the reason as not correct. The statement that great art grows out of a unifying ideal is a standard view of art, but the reason fails because of the word only: great art does not evoke life only, it also expresses ideas, forms and feelings beyond depicting life. So the reason is not a correct account of why. Option A reverses the verdicts, option C calls both correct, and option D calls both wrong. The answer is option B.