Aesthetic ideal would be an ideal response to something - it has nothing to do with appearances per se - aesthetic is not a thing it is a reaction - so when we talk about an artists aesthetic it is the "how and what gets organized in a given manner" with the intention of provoking or eliciiting a given experiential response
On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 6:18 PM, William Conger <[email protected]>wrote: > Do I have an aesthetic ideal and can i point to an artwork that best > expresses > it. > > I'll take this question seriously and admit that it's almost impossible > for me > to answer it succinctly. Why? I had an excellent undergraduate and > graduate > education in art history (allied to my art practice education). When I > began > teaching and for twenty years afterward before I went to Northwestern Univ > to > teach painting for another 25 years, I taught many art introduction and > survey > type art history courses. I must have memorized thousands of artworks and > maybe > more than a thousand artists and discussed all of that at length with > thousands > of students. The peculiar aesthetic appeal of each artwork was what my > students > and I tried to discover and that engaged us in broad, sometimes deep, > analysis > of culture and historical contexts. Of course, much of my knowledge was > learned > from others but I also learned how to examine art on its own terms, mostly > by > beginning with a physical description of it. The point of this is that I > can > probably adapt to a very wide variety of aesthetic expressions and can > appreciate them. That means I can appreciate them independently of my own > 'preferences' although when I do appreciate an art work I have no other > preferences in mind or I try to erase them. I can find a lot to admire > aesthetically in the work of very different artists. I try not to bring a > template with me to project onto their work. > > As an artist there is an aesthetic, I suppose, I deal with. I don't > really know > what it is because each artwork I make is an attempt to discover an > aesthetic > and I pretend to embody in it. If I knew what aesthetic presentation I > fully > wanted then I could make it. But every artwork is a struggle for > discovery and > I can't know beforehand what aesthetic it might evoke. That last sentence > could > be regarded as disingenuous. Because my work has a look-alike quality over > many > works,there must be an aesthetic that guides me. Maybe. But the role of an > artist is often to subvert what he or she does and thus obtain some > 'distance' > from the so-called aesthetic of the work. I think artists don't have an > aesthetic ideal; they try to invent one and then treat it very warily, even > ruthlessly. Someone once told me that most artists are 'imprinted' by an > aesthetic experience with art in youth and that remains. A famous > psychiatrist > (John Gedo, who worte on creativity) once told me that a child's fetish > object > constitute the source of later aesthetic experience (a subconscious > yearning to > recapture it). The psychologistWinnicott said that the fetish is 'a > transitional object' used by the infant to begin a negotiation with the > real -- > other than self -- world. > > > WC > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: joseph berg <[email protected]> > To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> > Sent: Thu, August 23, 2012 2:30:50 PM > Subject: Re: Aesthetic Ideal > > On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 12:32 AM, joseph berg <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Do you have one? > > > > Over time, did it change? > > > > If so, in what way? > > > > Is there a work of art that you can point to that best expresses your > aesthetic ideal? > > -- S a u l O s t r o w *Critical Voices* 21STREETPROJECTS 162 West 21 St NYC, NY 10011 [email protected]
