That was a good posting, Brady, it displayed for me both braininess and
sensibility.
Michael wrote:
" The sine qua non of a WoA is its fictitiousness, not its aesthetic
qualities. Those qualities and the feelings they provoke come from the
fictitious
work, they don't precede it or inform it. Works of art are made from the outset
as
fictions, as proposals and probationary things. That is, they are made from
the outset to be what they are (painting, song, dance, story, etc.).
"A work of art, is free from the contingencies of actual existence and can be
anything. When I try to [consider] the connotations and references of the
pictorial subjects, what is at play is specifically the non-contingent quality
of
a WoA."
"A work of art can be anything. A football pass can only be that."
Recall: I deny the "existence" of a genus of work or activity, "art". My
focus here is on our experience when we contemplate a "WoA" and other
objects/events.
Re my telling the story of Montana as Nemesis in a football game: First, let
me report what I've been told about Joe DiMaggio as an outfielder. I've heard
him praised for his ability to cover ground, get to balls hit where few other
outfielders could touch them. But I've also quite separately been told about
the marvelous form with which he did it. "He was the embodiment of grace out
there!" He sped like a gazelle and bounded like a ballet dancer as he did
extremely difficult things while showing no effort at all. In other words, the
accomplishment -- "He caught it! The game is over! We win!" -- was one thing.
But
sophisticated spectators who saw him convey they got something else also,
something very like an a.e. from watching him in motion. FWIW I've received
such
reports from people who hate the Yankees, and who knew enough about DiMaggio to
despise him as a man. For them it was, "He caught it! We lost! Damn!" So they
hated the event -- but they could not miss the grace.
Second -- the thing about Montana throughout those three minutes was
something other than a DiMaggio-like "beauty" to his passes. Indeed, it wasn't
anything that any of the five senses could observe directly: It was the
"drama", the
unfolding of inevitable doom, very like a theatrical experience that has been
compelling from Sophocles to "Death of a Salesman". Fans of both teams -- the
Bengals and the Niners -- watched, with a mounting "experience", this
near-mythic athlete. "He's going to do it. He's GOING TO DO IT!"
But what I seem to be arguing there is that the alleged a.e. from theatrical
drama is closer to sports than to a painting. As is the a.e. from dance.
Similarly the a.e. from music is closer to that from dance than to the one from
a
painting. And are the a.e.'s from DiMaggio and from music closer than either
is to the a.e. from a painting?
That's what I seem to be arguing -- without anything like a firm
"understanding" of experiences I'm inclined call "a.e.'s".
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