Understanding Art, Beauty, and Aesthetic Experience

What Is Art?

Aesthetic taste should be understood as a person's ability to detect beauty, and an aesthetic experience is the emotional state of someone contemplating an aesthetic object in a disinterested way.

• Art: Art is an activity oriented toward the production of objects that cause an aesthetic experience in people who have aesthetic taste. An object is created with the purpose of provoking this kind of experience in those who observe it.
• Beauty: Beauty is an aesthetic value attributed to various objects. It has been associated with objective qualities — harmony, proportion, goodness, and truth — and with subjective feelings such as pleasure or attraction.

Natural Beauty Versus Artistic Beauty

What is the difference between natural and artistic beauty? Is an aesthetic experience induced by a natural phenomenon the same as one brought about by a work of art? A work of art must be understood. We can ask ourselves: What does it mean?

Art is a system of symbols and, as such, it is a vehicle of communication between the artist and the observer. If the observer does not understand the meaning of the symbols, the aesthetic experience will not take place.

Life Projects and Business Projects

Project: A project is a structured and organized set of decisions and actions that are planned to achieve previously established objectives. A life project consists of deciding who we are or, more precisely, who we want to be. A business project is a strategic plan that requires collective effort and pursues a specific and concrete objective.

3 Key Factors

• Human factors: Everyone who actively takes part in the project's development.
• Technical factors: Business infrastructure and the knowledge of the people involved in the project that are necessary for its success.
• Financial factors: Company financial resources and loans obtained from third parties.

Business Project as a Process

A business project is a process composed of four basic phases: analysis, design, execution, and evaluation.

Analysis

Carry out analysis by asking key questions: Are there sufficient potential clients? Can the project offer competitive prices? Is there real demand?

Design

Design involves a description of the products or services on offer, internal organization, personnel required, drawing a production plan, an investment and financial plan. Finally, a forecast of profits can be made.

Execution

Execution means making the plan a reality. The entrepreneur should demonstrate leadership throughout the project.

Evaluation

Evaluation determines whether the project should be pursued further. There are two kinds of evaluation:

• Monitoring evaluation: Measures the extent to which the executed project corresponds to the plan.
• Final evaluation: Measures the profit generated by the project and assesses whether the project should continue or be abandoned.