On Mar 1, 2009, at 3:19 PM, [email protected] wrote:
When Michael says above "It's the (a) and (b) parts that
lead to the derivative term, "aesthetic experience," it seems to me
he's
avoiding the very question at issue, which is: Why say the music
experience and
painting experience are both "aesthetic experiences"? What does
Michael have in
mind when he says "lead to"?
Well, I thought I had made it clear enough that what I had in mind by
"aesthetic experience" was the response to the work that was unique to
it, as a WoA (or if another thing, as the thing in itself and not as
an instrument for other uses), and not the feeling that is stimulated
by the representation in the WoA. And I described my reaction to A Man
for All Seasons, and mentioned several paintings, etc. And I've
written on this forum many time before that the "aesthetic" feeling I
get from a Hockney painting is my "davidhockneypoolpainting feeling,"
which is similar to my "kitajislamistpainting feeling" and my
"breugelhuntersreturninginthesnow feeling" and my
"diebenkornabstraction feeling" and et cetera and alia. The feelings I
get from paintings are similar insofar as they are produced by the
same ilk of thing, but yet are not the feelings associated with the
subjects represented. Likewise, I get strong feelings from listening
to certain musical pieces that so stimulates me that I begin to move
-- literally move around, raise my arms, etc., or nearly so. (Didn't
Langer remark that music embodies vicarious movement? I seem to
remember that, but her books aren't handy right now to check.)
And as I pointed out in my last message, when we recognize a thing as
a WoA (the truth-test), our primary emotional response can (will) be
to the so-called aesthetic components, not to the representation.
Thus, a.e. is a term that embraces the responses to different WoA, and
they themselves are segregated into their various different kinds, so
we have the musical-a.e. and the painting-a.e. and the sculpture-a.e.,
and the literary-a.e., etc.
Let me pose this test, Cheerskep: when someone says "aesthetic
experience" to you, how do your frame or form that notion in your
mind? I'll add my comment down below a bit so you can think of your
answer without reading my comment.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Michael Brady
[email protected]
Scroll further
When someone says "aesthetic experience" to me, I almost always think
first of any previous experience of standing in front of a painting,
and then I imagine how I felt in response to the painting. Which
painting varies from time to time. Rarely do I think of a non-
painting, but if I've been thinking of a play, I think of particular
moments in particular plays or movies I've seen. And the same for
music. I have to imagine the abstract in some concrete expression,
which tells me that the term "a.e." is an abstraction derived from
individual instances, ergo, they are particular to the things that
provoke them.
