NFL Draft Day: My predictions

Just a short post here on the first day of the NFL draft. The top two picks are obvious: Luck and Griffin III. The rest, not so much. It seems the Vikings are waffling between Claiborne, Kalil, and Blackmon (less so Blackmon).

I think that by far the best thing for the Vikings to do would be to see if they can trade down and pick up even an extra 5th round or 4th round pick. Teams over-excited about Tannehill might be interested, or perhaps Tampa might want to leap over the Browns to get Trent Richardson. Either way, if the Vikings can trade that pick, they absolutely should do it as fast as they can. If they can swap down to 5 or even 8 they will likely still get one of their top 3 and still get value by adding a pick to bolster their horrendously bad team.

If not, they should take Kalil, hands down. They already signed Simpson at WR for one year and so they should pass on Blackmon, who I’m not convinced is a top 10 talent anyway (I’d like to be proven wrong here). Claiborne fills a huge need but I don’t think is as much a value as Kalil, who can lock down their left tackle position for a decade. Christian Ponder, their QB, was on the run for his life much of last season, and to improve he needs more than just an extra weapon, he needs protection.

Whatever they do, if the Vikings aren’t able to trade down I am fairly convinced the Browns will take Richardson. They might surprise us all and take Justin Blackmon instead just to try to give another weapon to Colt McCoy, but I think Richardson is a bigger need. RBs are, in some ways, a dime a dozen now though, so I wouldn’t be shocked to see the Browns go for Blackmon. From there, I suspect Claiborne to go to Tampa, assuming the Vikings don’t snag him. If not, then look at Blackmon here.

Lots of excitement about this draft. I don’t think I’ll be able to watch the first few picks, though. Oh well.

 

Is Philosophy of Art Normative?

I’ve been reflecting on philosophy of art, which I admittedly know next to nothing about.

Philosophy of art is an entire field about which I know almost nothing. It studies aesthetics and questions like “What is art?”; “What is beauty?”; and the like.

Now it seems to me that if one were to say “Art should reflect reality” or “Art should ____” or “Beauty is ____” then they’re making a normative statement. They’re making a statement which suggests that whatever fills in the blank reflects reality, and whatever does not is not reality. Thus, if someone says “Beauty is that which attracts us,” then they’ve made a statement about the world. Yet how can philosophy of art dictate such truths? How can a statement about art be normative?

It seems to me that beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder–it has a subjective nature. But it also seems possible to say that the overarching idea of “beauty” is a universal.

These are the questions on which I have been reflecting. I admit already that I know little to nothing about philosophy of art and don’t really have time to investigate it. But I would be very curious if anyone had some thoughts or ideas about these questions.

Transition into a different, but related topic: The image I’ve included here reminds me very much of an experience I had during my undergraduate studies on my history internship. My task was to track down names of people who showed up in various pieces (not art, but rather just random items like irons, stirrups, and the like) which had been given to a museum of local history. Basically, I spent much time trying to track down names online and see if I could find anything at all about them. I failed to find many, but one I did find was from a painting. I discovered that a landscape painting they had been given was by a rather well known painter in the Midwest. It was a pretty awesome feeling to track this guy down and tell the museum that they had an artwork by a guy who had painted for the White House. I don’t remember his name, but I will never forget the awesome feeling of uniting artist to background, art to artwork.