Test Prep; Rhetorical Choices - Audrick

Test prep: Rhetorical choices - Audrick

Getting ready

0. Watch Prager U's Robert Florczak Why is Modern Art So Bad?

1. Identify an example of the use of each of the following by Robert Florczak in the video:

The speaker in the PragerU video, Robert Florczak states that classic art is distinguished from modern art. He criticized modern art as trashy, too simple, and takes little to no skill to create. The paintings created by Picasso, van Gogh, and Leonardo da Vinci couldn’t be compared by popular modern art nowadays, such as one word written on a canvas, or a plain white paint on a canvas and calling it an art.

Rhetorical analysis essay

Rabida, Kevin. “Why Contemporary Art Sucks.” UCreative, 14 Mar. 2015, https://www.ucreative.com/articles/why-contemporary-art-sucks/.



“Art couldn’t be scored objectively”

This article is a reply of the PragerU Robert Florczak’s video “Why is Modern Art So Bad?”. The article consists of his (Kevin Rabida, the author of this article) summary of the video, him explaining Florczak’s opinion, and his explanation on why most people think that contemporary art sucks. In summary, the article does not consist of what the author score on contemporary art, it's rather explaining the perception of what people think about contemporary art.

The first claim in this article that supports my thesis is the explanation of the philosophy of art. Quoted from the article; “According to this philosophy, there is no universal standard of aesthetic, that art is subjective and depends entirely on the individual or to the culture where it belongs.” Here he shows an opposition towards Florczak’s opinion from the video. The quoted sentence here shows that art is solely subjective. What’s good and bad is truly from what the viewers perceive out of the art piece.

The second claim in this article that supports my thesis is the part where he correlates this situation (on defining art) with a movie scene from the movie Dead Poets Society. In the scene, a professor was reading a text that explains a way to “objectify” a poem by showing a scoring system. The professor then called the text an “Excrement.” Applying this to art, in explains how one cannot simply objectify a piece of art by a scoring system, as the aspect of scores are merely subjective.

The third claim in this article that supports my thesis is the part where he explains how a piece of art will be advocated differently when given a different perception. Here, the author shows a piece of generic contemporary art. Where it doesn’t look like it has been put a lot of skill or effort to make it. Then the author explains its story and how the materials in the art piece is from an earthquake’s byproduct, the same earthquake that “more than 5,200 schoolchildren.” It is more likely that the viewer’s opinion on the art piece will change once they are given a different perception. This means that the viewers opinion on an art piece could easily be manipulated, hence, art couldn’t be scored objectively.

The last and fourth claim in this article that supports my thesis is the part where he mentioned the phenomena of selection bias. It’s a phenomena where people's opinion is mostly bias in defining something, which is bias from people around them. Many people’s lookout on contemporary art is like that. It’s where one perceive something mostly based on what they hear from other people, such as stereotypes. The psychology term in this context is perceptual set. Opinions are most likely based on stereotypes, hence, it’s subjective.

The most important thing, as far as the scoring of the essay goes in AP style, is to in some way identity what is a source or piece of evidence and give some indication of where it cam from. Next semester we'll use MLA, for this semester, any system will do that tunes the reader in. Otherwise, a fairy well laid out overview of the author's rhetorical strategies.