Posted by Steve Price on January 27, 1999 at 07:41:04:
In Reply to: Re: The Real Beneficiary Of This Exercise posted by Marvin Amstey on January 26, 1999 at 20:56:11:
Dear Folks,
Let me begin by confessing that I have been unable to apply the rules. My poor, addled brain simply cannot decide on what the correct answer is to many of the questions in most instances. They are simply too ambiguous for me.
As for the real beneficiary of the exercise, I disagree with the notion that those who design commercial rugs can make much use of it. Their customers, after all, are precisely those thought to be culturally tainted in such a way that they think things like undecorated space can be beautiful. The rug collectors, whose tastes presumably could be described by the rules (at least, by someone able to apply them), don't buy many new commercial weavings even if those weavings are beautiful by their own criteria.
I believe the correct way to see the exercise is as academic or an attempt at scholarship. The objective is to understand something about how we make aesthetic judgments, and the beneficiary is anyone who cares about this question. Some appear to be convinced that the question is intrinsically unanswerable, but I get the feeling that at least part of the basis for this opinion is that they find it very uncomfortable to believe otherwise. It wouldn't prove them wrong even if that's true, of course.
Steve Price