----- Original Message ---- From: john m <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thu, March 15, 2012 2:27:55 PM Subject: descriptive / empirical aesthetics?
Hi everyone, I'm new to aesthetic theory (and to this list) so please bear with me a while - I need some educated opinions! I'm facing the unenviable task of putting into writing my personal approach to aesthetics - which naturally seems solid and incontestable to myself - and I'd be very grateful if anyone here could a) point me towards any established theories that might be roughly on the same lines with my idea (I haven't found any), and b) point out any significant flaws in my approach. What I'm getting at is a "descriptive" (as opposed to "prescriptive") aesthetics, one that instead of trying to explain what makes art good or bad (prescription), tries to explain how and why the aesthetic experience comes about (description). As I see it, any valid criticism of any artwork must seek to transcend subjectivism (personal taste), if it is to avoid the cul-de-sac of subjectivism/solipsism. I think I'll save everyone the embarrassment and post only a very crude outline of my main points: 1. A "work of art" is any thing produced by an artist with the explicit intention of producing a work of art. No narrower definition is possible without prescribing what is and isn't "art" This claim is refuted by the obvious fact that much art in the world has unknown own authors and thus unknown intentions. Further, the intentionality of the artist's actions may be necessary to make the object or identify the art concept it is by no means sufficient to ensure something being considered a work of art. 2. The physical form of an artwork is an accumulation of intentional choices (operations of imagination) of the artist. Choices made during the creative process are encoded in the physical form of the artwork; they could be called information, or evidence. Again, the intentionality issue undercuts your argument. Many artists claim that they 'intended' one thing but actually did another. sometimes they say that 'accident' was an unintended benefit. Whole movements in art history in the 20thC were based on randomness or a throw of the dice or were uncharted and unknowable (current situational art is an example) See the Intentional Fallacy. 3. The essence of an artwork - the PRIMARY source of aesthetic experience - is located in this information about the creative process of the artist (and nowhere else). The evidence is an interface between the physical appearance of the work and the creative process. (This point seems to me crucial, as serious problems will arise as soon as we try to locate the essence anywhere else - say, "significant form", ideal proportions, likeness to ideas, etc.) Appearance of the work to whom? What's the creative process? What's an essence that is stable enough to be examined objectively? You are probably not able to avoid the 'solipsistic conclusion. Once you agree that art is a social construct and not a universal condition of something then you can examine how social constructs alter how art is perceived, not only in different times but in interlaced distinctions within one era. The bottom line here is that nothing is beautiful or art until someone says so and for that to be art in a cultural sense a lot of people with 'authority' need to say so. See The Institutional Theory and Foucault (on power). We've all heard the stories about artists who go to their graves insisting that their work was great art but fully ingnored then and forever. Less remembered are the many artists who dismissed or threw away their work as failed only to have some 'authority' rescue it and put it into a serious 'great art' context. 4. In order to understand a work of art, we must renounce (at least part of) our own subjective taste and seek identification with the subjective aesthetic of the artwork (that is, the subjective aesthetic of the artist during his creative process). Otherwise our taste judgements will interfere in the process of familiarizing ourselves with the work. This sounds like Tolstoy whose aesthetic theory was based on communication, meaning the communication of the artist's expression or feeling to the beholder. It also mimics the correspondence theory. But a little analysis shows that nothing is communicated intact or that any assurance can be found that the artist's expressive feelings are actually embodied in the work (I say no). After all, the beholder's response might be more effulgent that the artist's feelings or intentions, etc. And what does it mean to understand an artwork? Cheerskep will come running and declaring yet again that you can't rely on presumed meanings for words (I agree that words have no meanings at all outside of specific, unstable contexts) and thus you must carefully define each and every concept you mention hoping to "stir similar notions" in the minds of your readers. 5. The intense familiarization of oneself with an artwork results in aesthetic judgment (taste) being replaced with empirical knowledge: to "like" a work then becomes equivalent with being well acquainted with it. Failure to derive aesthetic experience from a work typically results from inadequate familiarization (and that usually results from taste judgements interrupting the process). There are a whole range of aesthetic theories based on strangeness or puzzle or problem, etc. For those theories, it's the strangeness itself, its provocative, incomprehensible propositions that constitute the aesthetic. You would need to show how your view accounts for those opposite views and why your view is better. There's the old saw, too, about familiarity breeds contempt. sometimes, perhaps most of the time, when we become very familiar with this or that artwork we no longer experience the buzz of the first excitement with it. As for replacing the aesthetic feeling or A-Ha moment, what Kant regarded as involuntary, with empirical knowledge, one may be more involved with appreciation or connoisseurship instead of the aesthetic. I could go on but I'll stop here for now... I'm sorry if my language is muddy, inarticulate or tautological - I'm not well-read on the subject, and all this is very much a layman's attempt at describing empirically what happens when I look at / listen to / experience art. Any thoughts / criticism / recommendations? I admire your efforts in doing this and I do think that one can devise a theory of art that in general terms can stand alone. But aesthetics as a philosophical topic is a very busy place and conflicted with many theories and a deep questionable genealogy. It might be better for you to find a theory that already matches your own more or less and then show how your views contribute to it, reinforce it, or remove some of its faults. My guess is that you are more into a phenomenological approach or one that posits Imagination as a central concept. I suggest Collingwood's Principles of Art. Actually, your questions sound a lot like a school assignment. Is that true? If so, I have to wonder why any teacher would ask students to compose their own aesthetic theories without examining other theories or even one theory in depth. That's like asking students to invent their own psychoanalysis without bothering to examine the' literature ' The teacher gets a F. You get an A- for confronting something akin to the Russian Army in philosophy. Are you in Canada? (For spelling judgments as judgements). WC
