Art And Engagement

Introduction

Introduction AESTHETICS IS A STUDY WITH A LONG HISTORY AND A SHORT IDENtity . Like its root discipline philosophy, aesthetics has struggled to establish both itself and its subject matter, its material and its methodology , its proper problems and its structure, its order of working and its order of work. Yet aesthetics differs from some other regions of philosophical inquiry in that neither its origins, its data, nor its concepts are exclusively philosophical. The very existence of aesthetics as a discipline emerges from the effort to understand the activities and occasions of the arts and the appreciation of nature. And the aesthetician can only work by having traveled among their many regions, sometimes as a sophisticated observer, sometimes as an anthropologist, sometimes as a scholar, but most of all as a participant in artistic-aesthetic activities. Yet aesthetics has not supplied the premises for the world of art, nor has it received its own from the study of the arts. Nor again can aesthetics claim independence as a discipline, for many of its leading ideas have been transplanted from broader philosophical ground. Moreover, for a variety of reasons the study we call aesthetics is not exclusively philosophical. Historical, psychological, sociological, and anthropological modes of inquiry also contribute information on how art is practiced and experienced, as well as methodologies that Copyrighted Material 1 are necessary supplements to the conceptual and dialectical ones of philosophy. More than in most fields of study, we must begin with diversity. There are, however, certain basic and persistent circumstances that provide us with stable points oforientation. Among these are the occurrence ofart in every known culture, a presence that is pervasive and diffuse, and its appearance at every stage of human history, including the most ancient. Indeed, certain of the earliest extant examples, such as the cave paintings at Lascaux, Font de Gaume, and Altamira, and many prehistoric votary figurines, are not "primitive" attempts to be regarded with amused indulgence, but highly sophisticated renderings that reveal a mastery of hand and eye and suggest a lengthy history. Furthermore, an irrepressible impulse impels people toward the aesthetic and the artistic. Sometimes called an aesthetic need, it may appear as small sensory pleasures and attention to perceptual details, which seem inessential and unnecessary to the practical minded, or it may take the form of full devotion to a life in art. The aesthetic, then, is omnipresent, perhaps even necessary. Not only are these experiences distinctive and valuable; they cannot be excluded from any consideration ofhuman culture. And while we now commonly identify a mode of experience we call aesthetic, we cannot at the same time ignore its ties to the affectional, the religious, the social, the practical, and the technological. The aesthetic dimension penetrates both human history and culture. Even though the beginnings of both art and culture in general are incompletely known, they certainly were not abrupt. There is no reason to doubt that aesthetic awareness emerged as part of the lengthy process of cultural evolution rather than appearing, like Venus, fully formed at some late stage in human development. But as the arts evolved into historical time and people became more deliberately conscious and curious about them, questions of origins, forms, meanings, and significance were articulated and refined, and various explanations were offered. This is where difficulties arise, not so much with the arts or the experiences related to them as with the accounts that propose to define, explain, and judge the arts. It is here that this book finds its place. For even if the problems of aesthetics lie more with the explanations than with the experiences of art, the two cannot be separated, since experience and understanding exert a mutual influence. An alternative theory alone 2 Introduction Copyrighted Material is not sufficient: in this field no theory can hope to be self-justifying. As an empirically grounded discipline, aesthetics must establish itself on the evidence of artistic activities and aesthetic experience. Yet is not a theory required in order to determine and select the evidence? Facts, aesthetic or otherwise, do not hang about ready to be plucked; they are concretizations in experience that are shaped, recognized, and ordered by the implicit presuppositions in human being and acting and by the demands of particular circumstances. On the other hand, what we select as identifiable and relevant is guided, consciously or not, by the conceptual frame we employ. Are we not trapped in a...