This is just more Tolstoy: Art as Communication. I reject it. No one can assure the communication of an idea or feeling from one person to another. I've come to reject the notion of intention. My intentions may be necessary for me to act but they are not sufficient to be communicated. I may intend to act in such and such a way for such and such purpose but there's no guarantee that I can do that. wc
----- Original Message ---- From: saulostrow <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, August 24, 2012 7:25:23 AM Subject: Re: Aesthetic Ideal 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]
