On Mar 12, 2012, at 6:34 PM, William Conlin wrote:
> Do I determine the quality of my experience by allowing myself
> to be in the moment, or does the work have to be powerful enough to pull
> me into a peak experience without my consent.
Why qualify it as a "powerful" and "peak" experience? Can't you have a
"mundane" or "prosaic" aesthetic experience?
This reminds me of the quip, "My, we've had a lot of weather this year." I've
actually heard this said, and the speaker seemed to mean that we've had a lot
of strong or powerful or dramatic weather--thunderstorms and tornados and the
like--not the boring everyday stuff, which is, nonetheless, still weather.
Often members of this list assert that some images rise to the level of art as
distinct from mere illustrations or pictures. I believe this is an erroneous
qualitative delineation between two items that are categorically the same.
It's equivalent to focusing on the snow cap of Kilimanjaro, which is easy to
see and acclaim, and ignoring the moment when the upsloping terrain of the
plains changes into the base of the mountain. That's where the "mountainness"
of K is to be determined, not the snowy summit. You pass the point of
mountainness going up and coming down Kilimanjaro, just as one passes the
"aesthetic" point before one reaches the crescendoes of the Ninth or Finlandia
or Fingal's Cave.
I believe there is a categorical difference in the aesthetic experience of
walking in the snow on a slate-gray day and looking at Breughel's "Hunters in
the Snow." That difference is produced by the difference between an actual
event whose components happen or occur without design (walking in the snow)
and an event that is invented, chosen, and designed ("Hunters in the Snow").
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Michael Brady
