“ What is Aesthetic Criteria? ”
As discussed by philosophersnet.com
1) The work displays great technical ability.
Interestingly, the issue of an artist's skill has not been a central one in the history of philosophical aesthetics, and does not constitute the core of any philosopher's conception of art included in Cooper's recommended anthology. Sometimes it is taken for granted that skill is required, since what was considered art always required technical skill for its creation. But since the advent of conceptual art and the possibility that an object, such as a urinal, could become a work of art merely by being conceptualised in a certain way, the role of the artist's skill in art has become a more salient issue.
On the one hand, there have been philosophers who have argued that there is no place for the artist in the appreciation of the work of art, which implies that one need not consider whether the artist was skilled. One manifestation of this is the idea of the intentional fallacy, put forward by Wimslatt and Beardsley. "The design or intention of the author," they wrote, "is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art". What they say about the author could equally be said of other artists.
In contrast, the contemporary British philosopher Roger Scruton has written that "A person for whom it makes no difference whether a sculpture was carved by wind and rain or by human hand would be a person incapable of interpreting, indeed incapable of perceiving, sculptures". For Scruton, it is vital to aesthetic appreciation to at least see the artwork as something which has been created by design by an artist.
2) The work is enjoyable.
Many philosophers have considered the pleasure that art gives us as vital to its value. But virtually all who do so insist on making some distinction between 'proper', aesthetic pleasure and other pleasures which we may feel.
This distinction is very clear in Kant. Kant...