Can the difference between a natural and human made aesthetics illuminate what
aesthetics is ? If we see Japanese Noh theatre showing grief as a staged
event, there is no problem, per se, discussing this aesthetically. Conversely,
if I see a gory traffic accident, and a parent grieving for a dying child,
wouldn't it be heartless to respond in only aesthetic terms?
Indeed, outrage about the spangly fishing net catching fish as well as light
in the ocean echoes this sense that it would be 'ugly' to do so. This
exemplifies a logical contradiction- ' an ugly beauty' -which, for Aristotle,
is invalid rhetoric.
A purpose of aesthetics is to disentangle discourses about arts, nature and
living things from congealing in such semantic nets.
For Kant, aesthetics synergies ' imagination and understanding'; for Nietzsche
aesthetics is integral to consciousness' 'becoming'. Philosophers such as
Heidegger and Wittgenstein see an aesthetic sense as open to ineffable enigma-
which by its very terms implies not reducing being's consciousness to a
formula or mantra, not catching it in an ' ah ha' buzz word net, or swaddling
consciousness to admire aesthetically the prism of its institutionally
imprisoning netting!
One warp and weft of the netting is to jettison 'ethics'. To say everything is
relative, does not dismantle ethics; it is not an ethical position. Few of
its exponents would follow through on its implications. Everything is relative
postualtes that ethical propositions are the veneer of custom. What of customs
that contradict each other- both can not be equally valid ethical
propositions. Such a view substitutes an 'ought' from an ' is', but forgets
the custom of ethical philosophizing!
The paen to ' everything is relative' is residue from early
anthropologists pragmatically talking about their work; it has become a
reductive overgeneralisation. There are other terms to express the
heterogeneity of ethical perspectives such as proportion, balance or
imbalance, harmony or dissonance, creativity or nihilism, pleasures and pains,
eases and diseases.
So,to scaffold, not net, understanding of what aesthetics is, ask with
Aristotle: what do all the notions of the aesthetic category have in common?
For all, it is the value - and if it is not a value, then what is it - of
creative consciousness. The nett outcome of an aesthetic encounter is sensed
to be a synergising of creative consciousness, which is felt to be integral,
as most philosophers, social scientists and educational psychologists
concur, to human's
apperception. Moreover, educationalists, such as Vygotsky, appreciate creative
consciousness as the scaffolding for interpreting experiences.
What application does this have for the interactions of human and art,
humans and nature, humans in real life ' natural ' situations, and inanimate
nature with inanimate nature? Firstly, for humans and art there is a synergy
of creative consciouness; this is the category all agree is at the heart of
aesthetic discourse. Secondly, for humans and nature there is ambivalence
because inanimate nature, like canvas and paint pigments, does not have
creative consciousness. This intereaction is aesthetic because nature
inspires, whereas
excluded from the aesthetic category is inanimate nature interacting with
inanimate nature as reflexive consciousness is absent.
Thirdly, ' real life' natural situations. If I confront the grieving parent
with the ''aesthetics' of the grief, there would be a collision of
consciousnesses, the ugliness of my intrusion and lack of empathy would be a
nett loss of aesthetic consciousness. Yet, a photographer at the scene could
win an award for depicting the suffering, especially if it generates awareness
for traffic safety.
However, photographers at war or famine scenes say they are sensitive to the
effect their presence has, and do not brutally do anything for that 'a ha'
shot. Famous photographers accept responsibility for their art and presence as
intervention.
So, they understand they have two significant interactions: one, as human
being, and two, as artist. In the former the responses and responsibilities
are of the ' real world', that is illocutionary. As an artist, however,
illocutionary relations are suspended, as in the famous phrase ' suspension of
disbelief'.
This is an existential opening of how consciousness' contemplates and
refracts. For this reason, it is socially acceptable. It's value is
demonstrated by the fact that there are aesthetics for the sciences and arts.
Aesthetics has responsibility toward illocutionary situations, but recognises
that consciousness' creativeness is, like any sense, in process too.
Thereby, it is illocutionary communications that require " stable traits of
significant form"; aesthetic creativity would be suffocated by that demand.
Aesthetics does not 'exist' in that way; in Nietzsche's view it recursively '
becomes'. The 'doubling' of the artistic and the mundane of Warhol's Brillo
boxes prompts the viewer to question how they construct and impose themselves.
The further irony ensues that the brillo box design is, and the Warhol
concept art is appropriated as, commodity. Symptomatic of this irony is that
post modernist concepts of aesthetics suspend authoritative interpretations of
aesthetics. These concepts are not radical, but are about aesthetic
processes. They release aesthetics from the net that divides arts as product
in the market from art as creative process.
As William Conger writes: " art is an as - if metaphor". The aesthetic
experience, like all experience is sub/ conscious and meta/ consciousness:
just because we do not feel breathing does not mean it ceased. To identify or
stabilize 'significance' is a red herring because 'being' over saturates
experience with significance. It is then a question of what, not if,
significance attaches to form. This is Nietzsche's ' yes' for super abundance.
Regarding all has significance equals nothing has significance or ending
significance: critical thinking is the remedy.
--- On Tue, 4/12/11, William Conger <[email protected]> wrote:
From: William Conger <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Aesthetic photo?
To: [email protected]
Date: Tuesday, April 12, 2011, 3:28 PM
I've just finished an essay that argues agains the significant form theory and
suggests that is it a fallacy: the significant form fallacy. This essay
"Abstract Painting and Integrationist Linguistics will be published in
Language
Sciences and until it is, I can't attach it here. The main thrust of my
argument, aside from the scope of my essay limited to linguistics, is that
since no-one can identify stable traits of significant form either objectively
nor subjectively, it can't exist. Further, since anything at all can be said
to
have significant form, it can 't be distinguished as inherent except by
comparison to other so-called examples of significant form and can't be
distinguished from insignificant form. This is precisely why some theorists
have said that art has come to an end (from Hegel to Danto, etc.). As Danto
has
said, art can't be distinguished from the commonplace (his epiphany was seeing
Warhol's Brillo Boxes) . This has led to the 'institutional theory' which
lets
authorities decide the issue. But authorities never agree. That leads to, in
our society, money. Since money is scarce, those who have it can decide what
art is simply by paying the most for whatever they chose to be art (this is a
subset of the institutional authorities). Thus the market rules and their
decisions stick. I know it sounds crazy and very sad, but if you want to
know
what art is, officially, not necessarily experientially but it even affects
that, just look at the highest prices paid for anything labelled "art". The
modernist formalist theory is in shambles because no one can say what is
necessary and sufficient to any formal argument. My approach is to turn to
language as a mediating structure to replace formalism. It comes down to art
is
what is said about it. This can be distinguished from the
art-is-what-it-costs
theory now in place. The art-is-what-is-said about-it theory and the
art-is-what-it-costs theory do overlap when we consider that "money talks".
See
today's NYTimes lead editorial "Unfettered Money" that discusses the dubious
court decisions that equate political free speech with campaign donations.
To answer your question, I do think anything at all, human or natural, real or
imagined, can be aesthetic in the sense that the thing or idea itself is not
aesthetic but is thought to be, as a projected state of mind. The work called
art is an as-if metaphor. The interesting issue here is to what extent is
the
aesthetic stable -- how long can an aesthetic state of mind persist in the
Kantian sense of being an involuntary response. How long does the "A-ha"
moment
last? Can it be repeated at will? Bell, with his significant form theory
tried
to give it stability by saying that there is such a thing as independent
significant form.
While I could agree that we do have "A-Ha" aesthetic experiences, perhaps
involuntary or thoroughly 'prepped' by our societal contexts, I also think
that
the "A-Ha" moment is transformed by being amalgamated to larger personal
history
and memory. Thereafter, an 'artwork' is a projected manifestation or an
embodied metaphor of our own sense of selfness. If you want to know who you
are, go to your favorite artworks and experience a reassembled selfness (that
may include sublimation of your repressed rages and desires). If it happens
to
be very pricey artworks, determined by the unassailable money corner of the
