‘AESTHETIC’ AND

AESTHETICS
• The term ‘aesthetic’ was coined by Alexander
Baumgarten (1714-1762) in 1750.
• It comes from Greek word aesth‘tikos meaning
‘sense perception.’
• After Kant (1724-1804) in the 18th century, aesthetics
is one of traditional five main branches of philosophy
- with logic, epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics.
Kant’s Critique of Judgment is published in 1790.
 AESTHETICS, PHILOSOPHY,
AND PHILOSOPHY OF ART
• Aesthetics and the philosophy of art are treated
as the same thing by some philosophers, and as
different by others.
• Aesthetics is traditionally concerned with the
investigation of the kinds of object which
produce aesthetic experience.
• These kinds of object include at least certain
artworks and certain parts of nature.
 DIFFERENT KINDS OF OBJECT CAN
PRODUCE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE
• Works of art such as paintings, sculpture,
architecture, literature, poetry, drama,
music, film, dance, etc.
• Natural objects such as the Grand Canyon,
waterfalls, cliffs, trees, mountains, fields of
wheat, etc.
• Thus, not all aesthetic objects are works of
art.
AESTHETICS AND SUBJECTS
AND OBJECTS
• According to Baumgarten, ‘aesthetics’ designates
a special area of philosophical investigation.
• It is an analysis of beauty based not on objects of
perception, but on the perception of objects.
• As Marcia Eaton points out, this is a shift from
object to subject - to what people experience
when experiencing an object aesthetically.
 NATURE, ARTWORKS, AND
AESTHETIC OBJECTS
• Not all aspects of nature are beautiful or
aesthetic.
• Not all artworks are aesthetic objects - at
least not if ‘aesthetic’ means ‘beautiful’ in
the traditional sense.
• The class of beautiful objects, and the class
of artworks overlap in the class of beautiful
or aesthetic artworks.
 ARTWORKS AND
BEAUTIFUL OBJECTS
Artworks which are not
beautiful. Are there any? If so,
why, and if not why not? If not,
then what sense of ‘beauty’ are
we using? If so, then do they
then have some value which is
not aesthetic?
Beautiful artworks.
Is the beauty of any
artwork perceptual?
If not, must it still
rest on a perceptual
object?
Beautiful objects. How
many kinds of beauty
are there? On what would
any assessment of beauty
depend?
 BEAUTY AND PHILOSOPHY
• In a broad sense, philosophy is concerned with truth,
goodness, and beauty.
• The question what is beauty? goes back to the Greeks:
Socrates, Plato.
• Can beauty be defined? According to Aquinas: “Beauty
is that which pleases in the very apprehension of it.”
• Socrates/Plato thought that beautiful things all have the
same thing in common, the form of beauty.
• Wittgenstein said that beautiful things do not have a
single thing in common, but have overlapping
similarities.
• What kinds of thing can or cannot be beautiful? Can
anything be prohibited a priori from being beautiful?
 ARTWORKS, NATURE, AND
AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE

A Norwegian Fjord
• Is aesthetic experience of art the same
as the aesthetic experience of nature?
• Do we experience art aesthetically
through nature, or nature through art?
• Is aesthetic experience of different arts
the same?
Landscape, Chaim Soutine
 AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE, THE
MIND, AND THE SENSES
• Is all aesthetic experience addressed to or dependent on the
senses, or is there such a thing as aesthetic experience which is
intellectual?
• Albert Einstein on the general theory of relativity: “It is too
beautiful not to be true.”
• Paul Dirac: “It is more important to have beauty in one’s
equations than to have them fit experiment.”
• There is no a priori reason why the value of an artwork could
not be intellectual in addition to being perceptual, or even
intellectual rather than perceptual. If intellectual objects can be
thought beautiful, then doesn’t the experience which results
from the apprehension of such objects deserve to be called
‘aesthetic?’
BEAUTY AND AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE
• Does aesthetic experience mean only the experience
of beauty, or are some kinds of experience aesthetic
which are not the experience of beauty?
• Does an object have to provide for the possibility of
aesthetic experience in any sense of the term
‘aesthetic’ before it can be considered a work of art?
• If so, must the aesthetic experience be of the
traditional kind, that is, that artworks are experienced
as beautiful objects, and/or provoke a kind of emotion
to which the term ‘aesthetic’ may apply?
• Do we mean by “a work of art” only one which has or
could enter art history, or should we give that
designation a wider latitude?
ARTWORKS, AESTHETICS, AND VALUE
• If not all artworks provide aesthetic experience in the
traditional sense, and yet have artistic value, then either:
• a) Some artworks can be valuable for other than aesthetic
reasons; or
• b) Any property or properties in virtue of which an artwork
has artistic value which is not a property which is thought
to be valuable in the traditional sense of artistic value
deserves to be called ‘aesthetic’ in virtue of having that
value.
• If the latter is the case, then, as the arts change, so can the
notions of the ‘aesthetic’ and ‘aesthetic experience’ change
in virtue of new art forms creating new kinds of property
of value to experience.
 BEAUTY AND EXPERIENCE
• Experience is indispensable in aesthetics.
• It is unintelligible to speak of the beauty of something if it
is not possible for beings who are capable of experience to
experience or be aware of its beauty. How could we
speak of the visual beauty of an object if it is not possible
to see it, the auditory beauty of something which it is not
possible to hear, or the intellectual beauty of something
which it is not possible to apprehend?
• Take away all possible experience of an object, and you
take away any meaning which the‘beauty’ of that object
can have.
ARTWORKS AND SUBJECTS
• Artworks are related to subjects in two
ways:
• a) An artwork presupposes an artist who
conceived of and intentionally produced it;
• b) An artwork presupposes the possible
experience of subjects to whom it is
intentionally directed.
 ART, BEAUTY, AND MINDS
• Both ‘art’ and ‘beauty’ are concepts tied to minds or
consciousness: no minds no beauty/no minds no art.
• Objects may exist apart from minds, but it is
meaningless to call them beautiful apart from a
possible relation to a mind which can experience them
as beautiful.
• Objects may exist apart from minds, but it is
meaningless to call them art apart from a possible
relation to a mind which can experience them as art.
 ARTWORKS, ARTISTS, AND
AUDIENCES
• Artworks presuppose artists who produce them,
and audiences which can be aware of them.
• Essential properties of making and apprehending
works of art are consciousness and agency.
• Artists act as conscious agents in making art, and
viewers act as conscious agents in experiencing
art.
 ARTWORKS AND ARTISTS
• An artist must be conscious of the intent to do
something which she means to be understood to
be a work of art.
• And her intention must end in the production of
something which she means to be understood to
be a particular work of art.
• This understanding is something of which she is
conscious.
ARTWORKS AND AUDIENCES
• An object meant to be understood to be a work of
art is one of which it must be possible for
someone to be aware as art.
• An object so meant is one of which a viewer can
choose to be aware.
• In choosing to be aware of an artwork, a viewer
chooses to attend to it from a certain angle and
distance, with a certain degree of critical attention,
and for a certain length of time. Therefore, a
subject is related both consciously and agentially
to any artwork to which he is attending.
 BEAUTY AND OBJECTS I
• Beauty depends on natural and/or artificial
objects in addition to subjects.
• Experience of beauty has to be experience
of something and that means an object.
• To experience something aesthetically, or
as beautiful, depends on properties of the
object in virtue of which it can be
experienced in either way.
 BEAUTY AND OBJECTS II
• However, since the beauty of an object depends as
well on a subject who can experience the beauty,
the property in virtue of which an object is found
to be beautiful or aesthetic is a relational property
– it is a property of the object, but one which
depends on something in addition to the object.
• In this case, the object must be related to a subject
who can experience the property in virtue of
which the object is said to be beautiful.
 INTENTIONALITY, BEAUTY AND
AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE
• Since experience of beauty is experience of something as beautiful,
experience of beauty is Intentional.
• Intentionality = df. mind’s directedness towards an object. Those
states of mind which are about or represent things are Intentional.
• Franz Brentano said that consciousness is always consciousness of
something; consciousness cannot lack an object.
• When we are conscious of beauty, we are conscious of some thing
as beautiful.
• Aesthetic experience is experience of some thing as aesthetic.
Aesthetic experience is Intentional.
 INTENTIONALITY AND
WORKS OF ART
• An artwork is an object of which we must
be able to be conscious as an artwork.
• Consciousness is directed in the experience
of an artwork to an object with which the
artwork is meant to be identified.
• All experience of art is Intentional, since all
experience of art presupposes objects which
the experiences concern.
 NATURAL BEAUTY AND
SUBJECTS AND OBJECTS
• Experience of natural beauty depends on properties of
a subject and properties of an object.
• Properties of the subject include sense perception,
thought, and feeling.
• Properties of the object are its perceived properties -
sense data such as colors and shapes.
• Properties of both the subject and the object come
together in the experience of natural beauty.
ARTWORKS AND SUBJECTS AND OBJECTS

• Artworks depend on and are directed to experience. The

experience of art depends both on properties of an
object and properties of a subject.
• An object o meant to be an artwork has apprehensible
properties determined by the artist who has produced it.
• A subject s who is aware of o has the properties of
perceptual and mental apprehension, of agency, and has
the capacity to respond to things aesthetically.
• Together o and s combine in the experience of an
artwork a. Thus there is no artwork a apart from both o
and s.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH
HEGEL (1770-1831)
HEGEL’S THESES ABOUT ARTWORKS

• People produce artworks, they are not

natural objects.
• Artworks are created by people for people.
• Artworks are “delivered from a sensuous
medium.”
• Artworks are addressed to the senses.
• An artwork “contains an end bound up with
it.”
 THE ARTIST AND TWO
SENSES OF ‘INTENTIONAL’ I
• ‘Intentional’ can concern a subject’s relation to an
object in two senses.
• In one sense, ‘Intentional’ concerns apprehension
or consciousness.
• In the other sense ‘intentional’ concerns agency or
deliberate action.
• That mind is Intentional means that it is directed
towards objects when conscious.
• Or that an event of awareness is Intentional means
that it has, is directed to, or is about an object.
• An action is intentional when it is deliberate.
 THE ARTIST AND TWO SENSES
OF ‘INTENTIONAL’ II
• An artist is I/intentionally related to an artwork she makes
in two senses:
• a) She is aware of [attending to, Intentionally related
to] the object on which she is purposely working;
• b) She is purposely working on [intentionally acting
to produce or alter in a satisfying way] an object of which
she is aware [attending to].
• An artwork is an Intentional object as it is an object of
consciousness. An artwork is the product of an intentional
event when it is something which the artist who is
responsible for it meant to produce – it results from a
deliberate action.
 THE OBSERVER AND TWO
SENSES OF ‘INTENTIONAL’
• An observer is I/intentionally related to an
artwork he observes in two senses:
• a) He is aware of [attending to,
Intentionally related to] an object to which he
has decided to attend;
• b) He decides to attend to an object [the
attention is the result of an intention to
attend] of which he is aware [attending to].
HEGEL AND ART AND NATURE

• A work of art differs from nature in being

a creation of a human mind.
• Art reflects interests vital to man more
than does nature, and does so with
“greater purity and clarity” than nature.
• Because nature has not “passed through
the mind,” as art has, nature is inferior to
art.
JOHN DEWEY, ART, AND NATURE
• Artworks depend on artists
who are responsible for
producing them. Artworks
are products of human
creative actions.
• For Dewey, all artworks are
artifacts. Natural objects
are not artifacts, so natural
objects cannot be works of
art.
• Artifacts are objects
intentionally produced by
human beings.
(1859-1952)
 ART, SENSE PERCEPTION, AND FEELING

• For Hegel, art is produced for sense perception.

• Hence an artist is restricted by the nature of the
medium in which he works.
• Hegel: “The function of fine art is to arouse
feeling.”
• Hegel: “Feeling is the undefined obscure region
of spiritual [mental] life.”
 GENERAL QUESTIONS
ABOUT ART AND FEELING
• Can art communicate feeling as language can
communicate thought?
• Can an artist reproduce a feeling or complex of feelings
she has in a medium?
• Or can an artist only manipulate a medium that can/will
produce feeling as a result of that manipulation?
• In the first case, the artist has a feeling prior to
beginning the work which she wants to communicate
through work.
• In the second case, the artist has no feeling prior to
beginning the work, but is able to manipulate the
medium to produce feeling.
HEGEL AND THE POINT OF ART

• For Hegel, the point of art cannot be imitation

since art can only imitate nature imperfectly.
• The point of art is to bring something to
consciousness which is not found in nature.
• The power of the artist is the power of
creation, not imitation.
• Hegel: the function of art is “to reveal truth
under the mode of art’s sensuous or material
configuration.”
 DANTO, ART, AND THE
AESTHETIC I
• One must have a concept of ‘art’ or ‘artwork’ in
order to appreciate some works of art.
• This is because not all works of art have “material
counterparts” which are beautiful.
– A material or natural counterpart of a painting of a
sunset would be a sunset in nature, and we would
judge the beauty or aesthetic success of the painting in
terms of its resemblance to such a material counterpart
which we find beautiful.
 DANTO, ART, AND THE AESTHETIC II

• Because it is false that all artworks which we find beautiful or

aesthetically successful have material counterparts which we find
beautiful, appreciation of artworks which lack material counterparts
depends on them being “perceived first as artworks,” and so
appreciation of such objects presupposes that we have a concept of art
in addition to a notion of material or natural beauty.
 DANTO, ART, AND THE
AESTHETIC III
• “[T]hough there may be an innate aesthetic sense,
the cognitive apparatus required for it to come
into play cannot itself be considered innate.”
• This indicates that we must learn how to
appreciate artworks which lack aesthetic material
counterparts; that taste in art can be educated, and
that it does not simply copy nature.
PAINT AS PAINT
• Here Jackson Pollock is
engaged in what Harold
Rosenberg termed ‘action
painting,’ where “the artist uses
the canvas as an arena” for
creative exploration. Two
major concerns here are with
seeing the physical act of
painting as a “basic artistic
action,” which, for Pollock, was
a route to the unconscious
mind, and with “the physicality
of paint itself,” so that “paint
was the subject.”
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
 DANTO ON ABSTRACT
EXPRESSIONISM (AE)
• AE is concerned with “the physicality of paint itself;”
it is no longer disguised in favor of some subject
matter. Thus paint becomes the subject of an AE
painting, and is not meant to represent or to refer to
something beyond itself.
• AE focused on the act of painting itself as “the most
basic artistic action.” One must paint to represent
something visually, but one need not represent in
painting. Painting as painting then becomes
fundamental.
• Danto calls this a “metaphysics of basics” in that only
the fundamentals matter.
Willem de Kooning
FRANZ KLINE
MARK ROTHKO
CY TWOMBLY
THE DRIP I
• According to Danto, the
drip best represents the
concerns of AE with
recording the action of
painting and paint as paint,
and it illustrates how, in
AE, paint is allowed to
have a life of its own. In
AE, paint is made
conspicuous, whereas it
had been made
inconspicuous in
traditional painting.
 THE DRIP II

Danto: “Drips . . . Are monuments to accident, spontaneity, giving the paint its
own life . . .” and, in AE, “it could almost be supposed that the function of
painting was to provide an occasion for drips.” “[T]he drip is . . . evidence of
the urgency of the painting act, of pure speed and passion.” Danto says that,
since, in AE, the artist “merely executed the will of the paint to be itself, the
artist had nothing of his own to say.”
JS: Notice how the presupposition here is that art must be at least quasi-literary
or representational in having something to say. However, the necessity and
legitimacy of a literary aesthetic need not be presupposed, and AE’s defeat of
such an aesthetic may be part of its artistic strength.
 THE DRIP III

Danto: “A drip is a violation of artistic will and has no

possibility of a representational function . . .”
JS: Whereas it is true that, in traditional AE, the drip
is employed in a non-representational manner, that is
not the case with these paintings by Pat Steir, since
she has used her knowledge of paint and skill as a
painter intentionally to employ the drip in a
representative capacity to suggest waterfalls and
falling water.
LICHTENSTEIN’S PAINTINGS OF
AE TYPE PAINTINGS I
• Lichtenstein’s paintings of brushstrokes
and drips do not have the properties of
brushstrokes and drips. For instance,
“the brushstrokes do not consist . . . of
brushstrokes.” Thus there is a kind of
incompatibility here between what is
shown, and how it is shown.
• Danto says that these strokes seem almost
printed rather than painted, and because
of the association of print with the media
in which the arts are criticized, that
graphic quality would suggest a kind of
critical commentary on the subject matter
represented which is possible to conduct
in paint.
• That would suggest in turn an ironic
comment on the conscious retreat from
language which characterized AE.
LICHTENSTEIN’S PAINTINGS OF
AE TYPE PAINTINGS II
• Danto says that, by
imprisoning the brushstrokes
in heavy black outlines,
Lichtenstein makes them
inconsistent with what they
picture. In addition, the paint
of AE results from “an
impulsive gesture” whereas
the painting of a brushstroke
by Lichtenstein is calculated
and “is shown almost
mechanically.”
LICHTENSTEIN’S PAINTINGS OF
AE TYPE PAINTINGS III
• Danto: “The
brushstrokes of [AE]
were not meant to
represent anything,
simply to be: fresh
created realities. And
Lichtenstein has treated
them as artists have
always treated reality,
namely as something to
put into works of art.”
 LICHTENSTEIN AND THE BEN DAY DOT I

Danto: “[T]he Ben Day dot has a profound symbolism . . . in that it

encodes the manner in which we perceive the major events of our time
through the wire-service photograph and the television screen . . .” And
the use of the dots draws attention to the fact that “our experiences are
modulated through the medium.”
 LICHTENSTEIN AND THE BEN DAY DOT II

Danto notes that the use of the dots has artistic importance in terms of people
who know about their use in media, and so can reflect on what their use by
Lichtenstein might suggest. That means that appreciation of the work is
partially dependent on an understanding which an observer of the work brings
to observation of the work. One could not properly appreciate or understand
Lichtenstein’s work without understanding the use of Ben Day dots by the
media.
OTHER LICHTENSTEINS I
OTHER LICHTENSTEINS II
 DANTO’S CONCLUSIONS I
• “To see something as art at all [depends on]
artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art.”
• Art depends on theories: “without theories of art,
black paint is just black paint and nothing more.”
• An artist can “detach objects from the real world
and make them part of a different world, an
artworld, a world of interpreted things.”
 DANTO’S CONCLUSIONS II
• “[T]here is an internal connection between
the status of an artwork and the language in
which artworks are identified as such,
inasmuch as nothing is an artwork without
an interpretation that constitutes it as such.”
• Artworks “are what they are because [they
are] interpreted as they are.”
 REMARKS ON DANTO’S CONCLUSIONS

• That all artworks depend on interpretations to be works of art

underlines the relation of the object to the subject, since an
interpretation presupposes a being who can interpret. This is in
line with Baumgarten’s shift from object to subject.
• Danto also emphasizes that proper appreciation of a work
depends on a level of understanding which an observer brings
to the work, and understandings are properties of minds/brains,
and so once again this serves to emphasize an artwork’s
dependence on and relation to a mind.
• Danto suggests that we view a work of art as “an externalization
of the artist’s consciousness.” An understanding or
interpretation of such an externalization depends in turn on
conscious beings other than the artist, and so we have the
relation of art to consciousness here in a double sense: artist and
audience.
 THE CENTRAL PROBLEM OF
THE AESTHETICS OF NATURE
• Santayana: The natural landscape is diverse and
indeterminate. Accordingly, we have great flexibility
in choosing to what to attend and how to attend to
what is singled out for aesthetic attention in nature.
• According to Santayana, to be appreciated, the natural
landscape “must be composed.” Yet, because of its
richness and diversity, the question becomes one of,
as Carlson puts it, “what and how to select,
emphasize, and group, of what and how to compose,
to achieve appropriate appreciation.”
 AESTHETIC APPRECIATION
OF ARTWORKS I
• Carlson: We don’t have the problem of what and how
to select, emphasize, and group when we attend to an
artwork such as a painting of a landscape rather than
the natural landscape itself.
• Carlson: “With traditional works of art we typically
know both the what and the how of appropriate
aesthetic appreciation. We know what to appreciate in
that we know the difference between a work and that
which is not it nor a part of it and between its
aesthetically relevant qualities and those without such
relevance.”
 AESTHETIC APPRECIATION
OF ARTWORKS II
• Carlson: “We know how to appreciate works of art in that
we know the modes of appreciation that are appropriate
for different kinds of works” – that we look at a painting
and listen to a string quartet in order to appreciate them.
• We know what and how to appreciate artworks because
they are created by us. “In making an object we know what
we make and thus its parts, its purposes, and what to do
with it.”
• However, nature is not created by us, and so we do not
have this causal connection to nature which facilitates
appreciation which we have with works of art.
 ACTS OFASPECTION
• Paul Ziff’s notion of aspection relates observers of art to works of
art, and notes that different ways of attending to the object, or
different acts of aspection, “are appropriate for works of different
types: to contemplate a painting is to perform one act of aspection;
to scan it is to perform another; to study, observe, survey, inspect,
examine, scrutinize, are still other acts of aspection,” or ways of
attending to the object.
• Carlson notes that, in understanding under which classification a
work or art falls – sculpture or opera for instance – we know what
and how to appreciate the work appropriately, and hence what
kinds of acts of aspection are appropriate to appreciation of the
work.
ASPECTION AND BOUNDARIES
• Different kinds of artwork have different kinds of
boundary – where the work ends and that which is not
the work begins – and so can have different centers or
areas of focus.
• Different kinds of boundary and areas of attention will
“demand different acts of aspection.”
– For instance, paintings and sculptures have different kinds of
boundary and demand different kinds of attention: you can
typically take in all of painting from a single position in space,
and so can contemplate it from that location, but you must
walk around and view a sculpture from several points in space,
and so are required to survey and inspect it from a variety of
locations and in which its parts are surveyed and inspected
sequentially rather than simultaneously.
 ART AND NATURE
• We know how to appreciate art because art is our
creation, but, as nature is not our creation, we still have
the problem of what and how to appreciate nature.
• We live in as we form part of nature, and the question is
how to appreciate the nature of nature – its size and
complexity. How do we establish limits within which
we can appreciate parts of nature? On what are we to
focus and what should we ignore? What are the right
ways to appreciate nature, or which acts of aspection or
ways of attending to it are the correct ones?
• Finally, “what are the grounds on which we can
justifiably base answers to such questions?”
THE OBJECT APPRECIATION
MODEL (OAM) OF NATURE
• In OAM we appreciate
nature in the way in which
we appreciate works of art.
In Brancusi’s Bird in Space
(1919) we attend to
“sensuous and design
qualities and certain abstract
expressive qualities.” An
artwork like this is
consciously isolated from its
surroundings so that we can
attend to the object itself and
its artistic properties.
 NATURE AND THE OAM
2. Thus, in OAM we
appreciate natural objects as
we appreciate art objects,
and hence attend to them in
isolation from their natural
environment. We might
attempt to judge the
aesthetic quality of a rock,
for instance, by attending to
its perceptual features as we
would attend to the
corresponding features of a
sculpture.
1. In the object appreciation model of nature (OAM) we “actually or
imaginatively remove the object from its surroundings and dwell on its
sensuous and possible expressive qualities.”
PROBLEMS WITH THE OBJECT
APPRECIATION MODEL I
• Nature is indeterminate, whereas
artworks typically have
determinate boundaries – we
know where it ends and thus to
what we are to pay attention and
to what we are to ignore. And
when appreciation is directed to
natural objects with determinate
boundaries – such as trees or
rocks - they become isolated
from their natural environment,
and so they are no longer being
properly appreciated as natural
objects, but become like
readymades or found art.
PROBLEMS WITH THE OBJECT
APPRECIATION MODEL II
• Duchamp produced his
readymades by a simple selection
of a preexistent object which is
exhibited within a fine art context
and so is made to be understood
to be a work of art by him.
• When natural objects are treated
as readymade natural objects,
they are selected for appreciation
by isolating them from the
environment in which they
naturally occur. But then they are
being treated like artworks, and
not as the natural objects which
they are.
 PROBLEMS WITH THE OBJECT
APPRECIATION MODEL III
• Carlson: “OAM does not have to treat natural objects as
art objects,” we do not have to treat an object like a rock
or a branch as a readymade sculpture, but can merely
attend to it “as an aesthetically pleasing object.”
• However, OAM is still defective since it involves actually
or imaginatively removing a natural object from its natural
environment. But “natural objects are a part of and have
been formed within their environments, thus to view them
in their natural environments is “aesthetically relevant” to
proper appreciation of the object. Thus, where a natural
object is seen will affect how it is seen.
PROBLEMS WITH THE OBJECT APPRECIATION MODEL IV

• A natural object like a rock

has “connections between it
and its environment. It is
expressive of the forces that
shaped and continue to
shape it.” And it may not
express these forces if taken
from that environment.
• In addition, it may take on
qualities when exhibited in a
non-natural context, such as
great size, which it does not
have in relation to other
objects in its natural
environment.
PROBLEMS WITH THE OBJECT APPRECIATION MODEL V

• If a natural object is
actually or imaginatively
removed from its
environment, then OAM
tells us what and how to
appreciate the object, but it
“results in appreciation of
a limited set of aesthetic
qualities.”
• However, if the object is
not actually or
imaginatively removed,
then OAM does not tell us
how to appreciate the
object.
THE LANDSCAPE OR SCENERY MODEL (LSM) I

• In LSM, nature is to be
appreciated as if it were a
landscape painting. As
such, we are supposed to
attend to it “from a
specific position and
distance” in space. And
we are to attend to
“scenic qualities of line,
color, and design,” such
qualities as we would
attend to in a landscape
painting or photograph.
THE LANDSCAPE OR SCENERY MODEL (LSM) II
• In LSM “the natural
world is divided into
scenes, each aiming at
an ideal dictated by art,
especially landscape
painting.
• In scenic viewpoints
we place ourselves in
relation to nature as we
locate ourselves in art
museums in relation to
landscape paintings, to
appreciate them from
the proper distance and
perspective.
 PROBLEMS FOR THE LANDSCAPE
OR SCENERY MODEL I
• Some ecologists find LSM to be ethically wrong
since it tends to suggest that, as Rees puts it,
“nature exists to please us as well as to serve us.”
This invites abuse of environments not deemed to
be aesthetic.
• Carlson also says that the model has aesthetic
problems since it views nature as static and
essentially two-dimensional, and nature is neither
of these things.
 PROBLEMS FOR THE LANDSCAPE
OR SCENERY MODEL II
• Carlson says that LSM requires that we
appreciate nature not as what it is “with the
qualities it has, but as something it is not
and with qualities it does not have.”
• Accordingly, it “unduly limits appreciation”
of nature to qualities found in landscape
painting, and so takes us away from
appreciation of nature as nature.
 THE HUMAN CHAUVINISTIC
AESTHETIC (HCA)
• According to HCA, nature cannot be aesthetically
appreciated at all. This is because aesthetic appreciation
“involves aesthetic evaluation, which entails judging the
object of appreciation as the achievement of its creator.”
Since nature is not a human creation we cannot
appreciate it aesthetically.
• Problems: Many thinkers maintain that “everything is
open to aesthetic appreciation,” and “some instances of
appreciation of natural things . . . constitute paradigm
cases of aesthetic appreciation.”
 THE AESTHETICS OF
ENGAGEMENT (AOE)
• For Arnold Berleant, AOE demands recognizing that we
are not simply observers of nature, but that we live in
nature as participants. For AOE, both OAM and LSM
falsely isolate and distance humans from aesthetic
appreciation of nature by viewing nature as objectively
separate from subjects. This represents a false subject-
object dichotomy in which nature is viewed as something
separate from humanity. But the truth is that we form part
of as we interact with nature.
• For AOE proper appreciation of nature comes from a “total
engagement” with and “a sensory immersion in the natural
world.”
 PROBLEMS WITH THE AESTHETICS
OF ENGAGEMENT
• Carlson: “Some degree of the subject/object dichotomy seems
integral to the very nature of aesthetic appreciation,” so AOE
may end up rejecting the possibility of aesthetic experience of
nature as does HCA. It also seems to be unacceptably subjective
in its emphasis on the subject’s engagement with nature.
• For Carlson, neither HCA nor AOE tell us what or how to
appreciate nature. For HCA the answer to what is nothing, and
for AOE it is everything.
• But we do appreciate nature, and so ‘nothing’ is wrong, and it is
impossible and misguided to attempt to appreciate everything.
• As to how, HCA gives no answer, and one can ask AOE what
‘total immersion’ in nature means, and why this should be
preferable to other models of appreciation which are more
limited in scope and involvement.
 THE NATURAL ENVIROMENTAL
MODEL (NEM) I
• NEM stresses that “the natural environment is both
natural and an environment.”
• It recognizes that nature and art are different, at the
same time that it takes appreciation of art as a model for
appreciation of nature, “making such adjustments as are
necessary” in view of nature’s difference from art.
• This is the view defended by Carlson, and, for him,
“natural and environmental science” is the key to
appreciating nature aesthetically. Thus both “common
sense and scientific knowledge” of nature can aid in our
appreciation of it.
 THE NATURAL ENVIROMENTAL
MODEL (NEM) II
• For Carlson, just as knowledge of art helps us
better to appreciate art, so knowledge of nature
can help us to appreciate nature more thoroughly.
• For nature to be more than “just raw experience . .
. it must become what Dewey calls a
consummatory experience.”
• A consummatory experience is “one in which
knowledge and intelligence transform raw
experience by making it determinate, harmonious,
and meaningful.”
 THE NATURAL ENVIROMENTAL
MODEL (NEM) III
• Carlson: “Common sense and scientific knowledge of
natural environments is relevant not only to the question
of what to appreciate, but also to that of how to
appreciate.”
• “Knowledge of [a particular environment] indicates how
to appreciate [and] indicates the appropriate act or acts
of aspection.”
– Thus appreciation of a desert and of a forest will be different,
and each will be different in turn from appreciating the ocean
on a windy day from a rocky coast.
 THE NATURAL ENVIROMENTAL
MODEL (NEM) IV
• For Carlson, aesthetic appreciation of anything
must focus on the object of appreciation.
• This is the opposite of Baumgarten’s emphasis on
the subject and his experience as the focus of
aesthetics.
• Also, NEM’s emphasis on the relevance of
knowledge to aesthetics means that other areas of
philosophy should become increasingly relevant
to philosophical aesthetics.
QUESTIONS FOR CARLSON I
• Carlson says that “NEM bases aesthetic appreciation [of nature]
on a scientific view of what nature is and what and of what
qualities it has,” and that “aesthetic appreciation of nature has
scientific underpinnings.” And he says these things at the same
time that he says that “NEM does not reject the general and
traditional structure of aesthetic appreciation of art as a model
for aesthetic appreciation of the natural world.”
• Whereas common and scientific knowledge may constitute part
of our appreciation of nature, are not perceptions of nature as
aesthetic also schooled by knowledge of art? That is, does not
art serve as more than a model for appreciation, but also
provides artistic knowledge which informs our perceptions of
nature as much as common and scientific knowledge, and
therefore shapes our appreciation of nature as much as they do?
QUESTIONS FOR CARLSON II
• The emphasis for NEM is knowledge. But how much
and what kinds of knowledge do we need in order to
respond to nature aesthetically?
• Granted that a geologist may appreciate the Grand
Canyon in ways in which someone else may not for
lacking his knowledge, but could they not simply be
different kinds of appreciation, each of which is
nevertheless aesthetic?
• If we have an innate aesthetic sense, then would this
not come into play in perception of such a natural
object, a person’s level of particular knowledge
notwithstanding?
QUESTIONS FOR CARLSON III
• NEM and Dewey’s notion of a consummatory
experience, are very much in the western
intellectual tradition, and implicit in the notion
that “knowledge and intelligence transform raw
experience by making it determinate, harmonious,
and meaningful” is the superiority of thought over
feeling and uninformed or non-conceptual
experience.
• This is the legacy of the Greeks and should also
remind you of Hegel. But the view and its
assumptions can be questioned.
 QUESTIONS FOR CARLSON IV
• Isn’t it possible that aesthetic experience of nature does
not presuppose the level of knowledge of NEM, but that
that level of knowledge simply provides for a different
kind of aesthetic experience?
• The view seems simply to assume, rather than to prove,
that that kind of experience is superior aesthetically to
uniformed experience of nature. But can we make that
assumption?
• It also seems to be a tacit assumption of the view that
knowledge and intelligence are superior to feeling, or that
aesthetic feeling must be based on knowledge. Is there any
general philosophical justification which can be given of
this view?
OSCAR WILDE (1854-1900)
 WILDE’S THESES I
• “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates
Life . . .” “Life holds up the mirror to
art . . .”
• “The basis of life . . . is simply the desire
for expression, and Art is always presenting
various forms through which this
expression can be attained. “Life seizes on
them and uses them . . .”
 WILDE’S THESES II
• “What is nature? Nature is no great mother
who has born us. She is our creation. It is
in our brain that she quickens to life.”
• “Things are because we see them, and what
we see, and how we see it, depends on the
Arts that have influenced us.”
• “Nature follows the landscape painter . . .
and takes her effects from him . . .”
 WILDE’S THESES III
• "What art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design,
her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her
absolutely unfinished condition.“
• "To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing.
One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then,
and only then does it come into existence."
• "People see fogs, not because there are fogs, but because
poets and painters have taught them the mysterious
loveliness of such effects. There may have been fogs for
centuries in London. I dare say there were. They did not
exist until Art had invented them."
JOHN CONSTABLE (1776-1837)
J. M. W. TURNER (1775-1851)
CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926)
VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853 –1890)
 SEEING NATURE THROUGH
AMERICAN ABSTRACTION

Jackson Pollock (1912 –1956) Arshile Gorky (1904-1948)

Abstract painting can also affect our perceptions of nature. Think of looking at a
shallow depression of water through which you can see a mass of intermingled leaves
and sticks. Couldn’t it come to look like the Pollock? And might we not read shapes,
colors, and patterns such as that seen in the Gorky into hilly desert terrain? This does
not mean, on Wilde’s thesis, that these paintings resemble natural objects and vistas
with which we are already familiar, but that perception of these familiar things
changes as a result of knowledge of art.
 WILDE ON ART AND
EXPRESSION
• For Wilde, art “never expresses anything
but itself.” Accordingly, it does not express
the moral or social conditions in which it is
created, the intellectual temper of its age, or
the spirit of its time.
• “Art reveals her own perfection . . .” and
does so through a “vital connection between
form and substance.”
 WILDE ON ART AND
REPRESENTATION
• Art is not symbolic of any age, and “develops purely on
her own lines.”
• Art is about art, and “the more abstract, the more ideal an
art is . . .”
• “No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he
did, he would cease to be an artist.”
• “All bad art comes from returning to Life and Nature,
and elevating them into ideals.”
• “Life and Nature . . . must be translated into artistic
conventions.” Hence art must be imaginative, not
imitative.
 CRAWFORD ON ART AND NATURE
• Donald Crawford says that pure nature is hard to
find. Most nature which we experience is shaped
or affected in some way by artifacts and/or human
labor.
• Arnold Berleant: "[T]he environment can no
longer be regarded as an external location but as a
physico-historical medium of engagement, a
dynamic field of forces continuous with human
life."
• Crawford: The relationship between the natural
and the artificial is diverse, and is often
aesthetically significant.
 DIALECTICAL RELATIONSHIPS
• Crawford: “In a dialectical relationship,
two terms of a relation designate
conflicting forces.“
• It is common that the conflicting forces
bring into being a third object.
• The bringing into being of a third object
comes from the dialectical interaction of
conflicting forces.
 THE INTERACTION OF ART
AND NATURE
• According to Crawford, “the relationship
between nature and artifact is best called
'dialectical.’’
• And the conflicting interaction of nature and
artifact may produce an object of aesthetic
appreciation.
• A dialectical object appreciated would not
result except for the interaction of opposing
things.
 CLASSICAL AND
NEOCLASSICAL AESTHETICS
• a) Nature is historically the model for art – artists are
told to “copy nature.”
• And art's composition reflected a harmonious
relationship between itself and nature.
• b) But conversely, painting is sometimes thought to
provide the model for how to respond aesthetically to
nature. (Carlson’s LSM and Wilde.)
• Here the aesthetic perception of nature follows from
the aesthetic perception of landscape painting.
 EARTHWORKS
• Earthworks are a good illustration of a working
dialectic between art and nature.
• Such works “move outside the physical confines
and artistic conventions of the gallery.”
• In earthworks, nature interacts with the physical
manipulation of the environment due to artist. The
product of this dialectical interaction is the work of
art.
• The dialectical interaction of nature and artifact
produces aesthetic experience.
ROBERT SMITHSON (1928-1973) I
ROBERT SMITHSON II
ROBERT SMITHSON III
ROBERT SMITHSON IV
 RUINS AND EARTHWORKS
• A ruin is a kind of object which results from the
interaction of the natural and the artifactual, and
can be an object of aesthetic appreciation.
• Ruins differ from earthworks in two important
ways:
• a) Ruins are aesthetically unintended; and
• b) Ruins have past histories filled with meanings
and associations.
 THE RUIN AS A
DIALECTICAL OBJECT I
• A ruin does not belong
in either the world of
nature or the world of
artifacts, but in a
combination of two.
This is why it is a
dialectical object.
 THE RUIN AS A
DIALECTICAL OBJECT II
• Ruins point to both the
past and the future.
• A ruin is an object in
process.
• Its exhibition of
dialectical interaction
is a source of aesthetic
appreciation.
 CHRISTO (1935- )
• Crawford: Some of Christo's work has important
similarities to ruins:
• a) Their size is monumental size – like that of
many ruins – and this increases their
expressiveness.
• b) The site of the work has associational
properties – just as the site of a ruin has
associational properties.
• c) Christo’s works are ephemeral - like ruins,
they do not last.
 CHRISTO I

Wrapped Coast, Little Bay, Australia 1968-1969

 CHRISTO II

Valley Curtain, Rifle, Colorado, 1970-1972

CHRISTO III
CHRISTO V
 CHRISTO VI

Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California

1972-1976