Art and the Aesthetic Experience

Beauty is something we perceive and respond to. It may be a response of awe and amazement, wonder
and joy, or something else. It might resemble a “peak experience” or an epiphany— (It might be a
sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential  meaning  of something, usually
initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience. a literary work or section of
a work presenting, usually symbolically, such a moment of revelation and insight). watching a sunset or
taking in the view from a mountaintop—the list goes on. Here we are referring to a kind of experience,
an aesthetic response that is a response to the thing’s representational qualities, whether it is man-made
or natural (Silverman). The subfield of philosophy called aesthetics is devoted to the study and theory of
this experience of the beautiful; in the field of psychology, aesthetics is studied in relation to the
physiology and psychology of perception.

Aesthetic analysis is a careful investigation of the qualities which belong to objects and events that
evoke an aesthetic response. The aesthetic response is the thoughts and feelings initiated because of
the character of these qualities and the particular ways they are organized and experienced perceptually
(Silverman).

The aesthetic experience that we get from the world at large is different than the art-based aesthetic
experience. It is important to recognize that we are not saying that the natural wonder experience is bad
or lesser than the art world experience; we are saying it is different. What is different is the constructed
nature of the art experience. The art experience is a type of aesthetic experience that also includes
aspects, content, and context of our humanness. When something is made by a human– we know that
there is some level of commonality and/or communal experience.

Why aesthetics is only the beginning in analyzing an artwork

We are also aware that beyond sensory and formal properties, all artwork is informed by its specific
time and place or the specific historical and cultural milieu it was created in (Silverman).  For this reason
we analyze artwork through not only aesthetics, but also, historical and cultural contexts.

How we engage in aesthetic analysis

Often the feelings or thoughts evoked as a result of contemplating an artwork are initially based
primarily upon what is actually seen in the work. The first aspects of the artwork we respond to are its
sensory properties, its formal properties, and its technical properties (Silverman). Color is an example of
a sensory property. Color is considered a kind of form and how form is arranged (e.g., color) is a formal
property. What medium (e.g., painting, animation, etc.) the artwork is made of is an example of a
technical property. These will be discussed further in another module. As Dr. Silverman, of California
State University explains, the sequence of questions in an aesthetic analysis could be:

 what do we actually see?

 How is what is seen organized? And,
 what emotions and ideas are evoked as a result of what has been observed?

How We Assign Value to Art

The word art is often used to apply judgments of value, as in expressions like “that meal was a work of
art” (implying that the cook is an artist) or “the art of deception” (the advanced, praiseworthy skill of
deceiving). It is this use of the word as a measure of high value that gives the term its flavor of
subjectivity.

Does It Have to Be Visually Pleasing or Not?

Making judgments of value requires a basis for criticism. At the simplest level, deciding whether an
object or experience is considered art is a matter of finding it to be either attractive or repulsive. Though
perception is always colored by experience, and is necessarily subjective, it is commonly understood
that what is not somehow visually pleasing cannot be art. However, “good” art is not always or even
regularly visually pleasing to a majority of viewers. In other words, an artist’s prime motivation need not
be the pursuit of a pleasing arrangement of form. Also, art often depicts terrible images made for social,
moral, or thought-provoking reasons.

Francisco de Goya, El Tres de Mayo, 1808  (The Third of May, 1808). Image is in the public domain.

For example, the painting pictured above, by Francisco Goya, depicts the Spanish shootings on the third
of May, 1808. It is a graphic depiction of a firing squad executing several pleading civilians. Yet at the
same time, the horrific imagery demonstrates Goya’s keen artistic ability in composition and execution,
and it produces fitting social and political outrage. Thus, the debate continues as to what mode of
aesthetic satisfaction, if any, is required to define “art.” The revision of what is popularly conceived of as
being visually pleasing allows for a re-invigoration of and a new appreciation for the standards of art
itself.

Art is often intended to appeal to and connect with human emotion. It can arouse aesthetic or moral
feeling and can be understood as a way of communicating these feelings. Art may be considered an
exploration of the human condition or what it is to be human.

Factors Involved in the Judgment of Art

Seeing a rainbow often inspires an emotional reaction like delight or joy. Visceral responses such as
disgust show that sensory detection is reflexively connected to facial expressions and to behaviors like
the gag reflex. Yet disgust can often be a learned or cultural response, too; as Darwin pointed out,
seeing a smear of soup in a man’s beard is disgusting even though neither soup nor beards are
themselves disgusting.

Artistic judgments may be linked to emotions or, like emotions, partially embodied in our physical
reactions. Seeing a sublime view of a landscape may give us a reaction of awe, which might manifest
physically as increased heart rate or widened eyes. These unconscious reactions may partly control, or
at least reinforce, our judgment in the first place that the landscape is sublime.

Likewise, artistic judgments may be culturally conditioned to some extent. Victorians in Britain often saw
African sculpture as ugly, but just a few decades later, those same audiences saw those sculptures as
being beautiful. Evaluations of beauty may well be linked to desirability, perhaps even to sexual
desirability. Thus, judgments of art can become linked to judgments of economic, political, or moral
value. In a contemporary context, one might judge a Lamborghini to be beautiful partly because it is
desirable as a status symbol, or we might judge it to be repulsive partly because it signifies for us over-
consumption and offends our political or moral values.

Judging the value of an artwork is often partly intellectual and interpretative. It is what a thing means or
symbolizes for us that is often what we are judging. Assigning value to artwork is often a complex
negotiation of our senses, emotions, intellectual opinions, will, desires, culture, preferences, values,
subconscious behavior, conscious decision, training, instinct, sociological institutions, and other factors.
Watch the video below to hear discussion on these factors in value judgement.

Watch this video on the artwork titled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone
Living by Damien Hirst. Consider the complexity of the interpretative experience of art and how value is
assigned to an artwork.

Works Cited

Silverman, Ronald. Learning About Art: A Multicultural Approach. California State University, 2001. Web.
24, June 2008

Representational, Abstract, and Nonrepresentational Art

Key Points

Painting, sculpture, and other artforms can be divided into the categories
of representational (sometimes also called figurative art although it doesn’t always contain
figures), abstract and non-representational art. Representational art describes artworks—particularly
paintings and sculptures–that are clearly derived from real object sources, and therefore are by
definition representing something with strong visual references to the real world. Most, but not all,
abstract art is based on imagery from the real world. The most “extreme” form of abstract art is not
connected to the visible world and is known as nonrepresentational.

 Representational art or figurative art represents objects or events in the real world, usually

looking easily recognizable. For example, a painting of a cat looks very much like a cat– it’s quite
obvious what the artist is depicting.

 Romanticism, Impressionism, and Expressionism contributed to the emergence of abstract art

in the nineteenth century as artists became less interested in depicting things exactly like they
really exist. Abstract art exists on a continuum, from somewhat realistic representational work,
to work that is not based on anything visible from the real world. Even representational work is
abstracted to some degree; entirely realistic art is elusive.

 Work that does not depict anything from the real world (figures, landscapes, animals, etc.) is
called nonrepresentational. Nonrepresentational art may simply depict shapes, colors, lines,
etc., but may also express things that are not visible– emotions or feelings for example.
 Johann Anton Eismann, Meerhaven. 17th c. Work is in the public domain

This figurative or representational work from the seventeenth century depicts easily recognizable
objects–ships, people, and buildings. But artistic independence was advanced during the nineteenth
century, resulting in the emergence of abstract art. Three movements that contributed heavily to the
development of these were Romanticism, Impressionism, and Expressionism.

Abstraction indicates a departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art. Abstraction exists along a
continuum; abstract art can formally refer to compositions that are derived (or abstracted) from a
figurative or other natural source. It can also refer to nonrepresentational (non-objective) art that has
no derivation from figures or objects. Picasso is a well-known artist who used abstraction in many of his
paintings and sculptures: figures are often simplified, distorted, exaggerated, or geometric.

Pablo Picasso, Girl Before a Mirror, 1932, MOMA

Photo by Sharon Mollerus CC BY

Even art that aims for verisimilitude (accuracy and truthfulness) of the highest degree can be said to be
abstract, at least theoretically, since perfect representation is likely to be exceedingly elusive. Artwork
which takes liberties, altering for instance color and form in ways that are conspicuous, can be said to be
partially abstract.
 Robert Delaunay, Le Premier Disque, 1913. Work is in the public domain

Delaunay’s work is a primary example of early abstract art. Nonrepresentational art is also sometimes
called complete abstraction, bearing no trace of any reference to anything recognizable from the real
world. In geometric abstraction, for instance, one is unlikely to find references to naturalistic entities.
Figurative art and total abstraction are almost mutually exclusive. But representational (or realistic) art
often contains partial abstraction. As you see, these terms are bit confusing, but do your best to
understand the basic definitions of representational, abstract and nonrepresentational.