> I certainly agree that if someone claims aesthetics is > justified as a > discipline by its persistent central question, which is, > "What is art?", that someone > is on a losing course. To me, the central question of > aesthetics is: What > is going on when we undergo an "aesthetic > experience"? Why does it happen?
It's circular to say that aesthetics questions what the aesthetic experience consists of. Boiled down it says: Aesthetics studies aesthetics. > Why does it not happen with most works? Because we are not sufficiently conditioned to match them to the templates society or some accepted elite group thereof uses to validate them AND/OR the cognitive structure of our brains, the neural patterns given to consciousness, or even affecting consciousness but otherwise unconscious, instinctively reject them as displeasing. I resist > William's suggestion because I > can't foresee in our lifetime any possibility that a > study of neurology will > answer that question, nor, say I, will it come from any > social study. Well, ok, then. But your limitation does not limit the scope of a study, does it? But, > again, I submit I can't be grasping William's > notion of "cultural study", or of > how a study of neural physiology will make art school > irrelevant. Cultural Studies (not culture study, which is an active practice whereas cultural studies is the subject in which the practice occurs) has been around for generations as a study of societal values and evolving practices. In its aphoristic, "folk" iterations it is as old as the Bible and Confucius. Re how a study of neurology and cultural studies will make art school irrelevant, they won't. And haven't. In fact, such studies are now quite firmly entrenched in art school curricula, both formally and informally. They always have been, too, under the older nomenclatures of aesthetics, design, visual persuasion, and techniques "tricks of the trade" however lacking in quantitative methodologies. Also, "art school" is no longer what we think of as a place of focussed applied training for predetermined practices validated by qualitative canonical standards and examples. I'm not sure what it is but it is not that alone, or even fundamentally, anymore. It might be the new 21C college of arts and sciences where all students are art students and the only graduates are artists. WC > 7 > )
