From: Michael Brady <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Against "Good Art Exists" #2
To: [email protected]
Date: Sunday, March 1, 2009, 11:45 AM
On Mar 1, 2009, at 11:15 AM, [email protected] wrote:
The best of Mozart affords me an experience I prize;
ditto the best of Van Gogh, and best of Dickinson. But am I
justified in calling all of them instances of a sui generis
event called "aesthetic experience"?
Get rid of that "affords me an experience"
phrase. It's flabby, inexact, and dissimulating.
Instead, say, "When I listen to Mozart, I feel
_______." "When I see a Van Gogh, I feel
__________." Etc. Or say, "When I read Dickinson,
I react ______________."
Instrumental music is a good example to use here, there
being almost no notional referent to music in the way that
words or pictures have relatively clear referents, AND
referents that can be manipulated or juxtaposed in a way
that involves rules of order (syntax, composition,
exposition, perspective, spatial adjustments, etc.) that,
when applied to the words or pictures, themselves give rise
a constructed "meaning."
For myself--and I suspect for many others--the feeling I
get when I hear, say, Finlandia or Classical Symphony or
Jupiter or other work is (a) unique to the work and (b)
similar to my feeling for any other piece of music, but (c)
distinctly different from *similar* feelings caused by
other, non-musical stiumuli. It's the (a) and (b) parts
that lead to the derivative term, "aesthetic experience
[feeling, response]." Likewise for paintings: the
strong feeling I get when I see Van Der Weyden's
"Deposition" is similar, but not identical, to the
feeling I get when I see Cezanne's "View of
L'Estaque" or Motherwell's "Spanish
Elegies."
I believe the crucial, the necessary and sufficient,
property of an "artwork" is the truth-conditions
to which it is subjected. (And thus, the
'definition' of "art" is a functional
one.) If the object is offered to us--and received by us--as
a documentation or transcription of the referent, then we
judge the work by its fidelity to the referent and
(typically) derive our emotion reaction from the depicted
subject. But if the subject is offered to us--and received
by us--as a provisional portrayal, as a simulation or
recreation or contemplation of the subject, then we judge
the work, not by its faithfulness in representing the
subject, but by how well it stimulates our awareness of its
adroitness in making, of the maker's skill and insight,
and that awareness satisfies our perceptions of fitness,
relationship, and other sensory delights.
To say that one gets an aesthetic experience from seeing a
WoA, and a WoA is some thing that gives an a.e. is patently
circular. If one result of perceiving an WoA is to undergo
an a.e., then clearly a WoA must be defined by some other
criteria. (But to say that only a WoA can produce an a.e. in
me is not circular, because the definition of WoA
doesn't depend on the a.e. part.)
"I trust I make myself obscure?"
"Perfectly, Thomas."
--from "A Man for All Seasons"
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Michael Brady
[email protected]
