Aesthetics for the Contemporary Artist

Leonardo, Vol. 6, pp. 361-364. Pergamon Press 1973. Printed in Great Britain AESTHETICS FOR THE CONTEMPORARY ARTIST A1Ian Shields,Corresponding Editor Readers are invited to draw attention to articles on aesthetics appearing in English language journals that are o f special interest to studio artists and art teachers for review by: Allan Shields, Philosophy Department, California State University,San Diego, CA 92115, U.S.A. G. Dickie, Psychical Distance: In a Fog at Sea, Brit. J. Aesth. 13, 17 (Winter 1973). Dickie confidently announces his objective: ‘I shall try to show that Bullough’s theory is fundamentally wrong and that it has misled aesthetic theory’ (p. 17). One might expect him to be somewhat less sure, for by his own bibliographical count, he has undertaken to dispatch the theory of psychical distance on five other occasions, apparently without complete success. Bullough‘s ghost haunts Dickie. Nor does he offer any particularly new grounds for others to be quit of psychical distance. We are told (again) that he (Dickie) ‘. ..cannot recall committing any action which suspends practical activities. . . .’ (p. 22). And we have read before that distancing and underdistancing are merely names for attention and inattention. He does offera new emphasis. Bullough should have taken less dramatic, exceptional cases and dwelt on common aesthetic experience, before generalizing. It seems that the contentions of attitude theorists will be around for a while. G. H. Douglas, Croce’s Expression Theory of Art Revisited, The Personalist 54, 60 (Winter 1973). Douglas assesses Croce’s unfavorable reception in the English speaking world and finds it unfortunate that Croce’saesthetics isevaluated on his middle and late statements. Had critics paid closer attention to his earliest Aesthetic, he maintains, Croce would not be taken as paradigmatic of romantic expressionism. Douglas excoriates English speaking critics of Croce for misreading and misconstruing his theory of intuition and for failing to propagate Croce’s views fairly. Douglas and Beardsley have a difference: (Beardsley, Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present, p. 318-319), ‘. . . Benedetto Croce (1866-1952), unquestionably the most influential aesthetician of our time’. Beardsley goes on to make Douglas’ main point emphatically, that Croce’s aesthetics must be taken within the larger philosophical system. Mrs. Langer’s views, in passing, are given an unfortunate and inadequate reading unnecessary to the author’s main objective. Noticeably missing is a reaction to Beryl Lake’s trenchant criticism of Croce’s view in A Study of the Irrefutability of Two Aesthetic Theories, in W. Elton, Aesthetics and Language, 1959. P. P. Fehl, On The Representation of Character in Renaissance Sculture, J. Aesth. & Art Crit. 31, 291 (Spring 1973). An artist and art historian, Fehl argues and describes in graphic and illustrated detail that in the Renaissance ‘. . . . the relation between physical appearance and character was based . . . on the recognition that character is made manifest in action and thus gives meaning to form’ (p. 307). He discusses ancient Greek sculpture to show the centrality of the principle that greatness in art results not from a strict depiction of physical likeness of a model but also ‘, . . their character, and thus made evident the disposition of their souls’ (p. 292). How does the artist do this? In two ways, the first being unacceptable : (1) by careful , literal measurement, (but this produces exaggeration and caricature) and (2) recording the mind in action or inaction (‘negative action’). Where the artist succeeds ‘. . . we can learn as we look instead of merely being reminded of what we already know’ (p. 295). There are many illustrations of Renaissance sculpture in the article. E. Fischer, Georg Lukacs and The Theory of Reflection, Phil. Forum 3, 326 (Spring-Summer 1972). This Marxist writer extols the virtues of Lukacs in this article about the Marxist aesthetician -philosopher Lukacs, shortly after Lukacs death and just before his own. Containing the tiresome and familiar jargon of an idea-starved conception that wasbetter expressed by Hegel and Marx, we are assured by Fischer that ‘whoever is stimulated by a great Marxist thinker like Lukacs, must not relinquish criticism and contradiction. There is no final Marxist aesthetics. There is only the method of Marxism applied to aesthetic phenomena ’ (p. 339). As though suiting the action to the...