What is Art? A Question of Meta-aesthetics

I'd like to continue with my theme from last week, which I guess is to disturb and annoy my readers. I didn't plan this theme, but let's just say it emerged. Thank you for both your patience and your participation in the comments.

As you watch the clip above, you may think: "But is it art?"

The answer is yes and no. And this is what niggles people: Art is whatever you say it is.

I can hear the mutters about relativism. But to explore this idea further, let's start not with aesthetics, i.e. questions about the nature of the beautiful, the interesting, or the artistic. Let's start with meta-aesthetics, or questions about the nature of the experience of the beautiful, the interesting, or the artistic.

The experience of any value whatsoever lies not in objects in the world (or pixels on a screen), but in the breast of the subject. Consider the best argument for subjective valuation ever made:

Jack sprat could eat no fat,
His wife could eat no lean,
And so betwixt the two of them,
They licked the platter clean.

It's this insight -- subjective valuation -- that makes exchange possible. But then again you probably knew that. Still, a lot of people -- especially classical liberals -- have trouble transferring this insight across domains. In other words, the value of art is an experiential phenomenon. There is no essential or "intrinsic" value to a work of art or landscape or any subject matter whatever. And yet this fact makes aesthetics diverse, alive and rife with interesting dimensions.

The other day I remember commenting on my private Facebook page that I didn't understand the interest in Mark Rothko, much less the millions just one of his paintings will command in auction. I tend to appreciate art that triggers multiple centers of my brain. I can understand (even appreciate) that, prior to Rothko, no one had ever evoked a mood or experience like his careful, fuzzy color fields can evoke. But I tend to appreciate work that demonstrates organic unity, or, "unity in diversity." A typical Rothko is not diverse enough in its properties to compel me or challenge me in ways I like. But others will find different things -- different subtleties -- that I cannot. Others may simply elevate the Rothko mood-experience. Or it may be that mood-experience resonates within some people more powerfully than in others, and that tuning into that experience or cultivating it is something others can do better than I can. Perhaps they simply enjoy it more.

"But Max, you're reducing artistic experience to something like whether people like chocolate or vanilla ice cream. You're opening the door to people who think that X is art." (X = Rothko or Thomas Kincaid or Mr. Brainwash).

I cannot totally disagree. But those who value more intellectualized art, or art that speaks as much to the intellect as to the emotions, may find a common community with me about the work of artists other than Rothko (inter-subjective agreement.) Whatever happens, there is no such thing as artistic Truth. There is only agreement or solidarity in one community or another based on shared experience and interests. And even within some community, people will still experience art in different ways.

Our tendency is to try to universalize aesthetics. Some want there to be Aesthetic Truth because they want to determine the canon -- an aesthetic monopoly. Others want aesthetic truth because they want to think they have a special insight into the ultimate experience of beauty. Others don't like the idea that, without a subject (a valuer), the object has no value. How, after all, can we experience sublimity without the art -- itself -- being sublime? But a world with naturally occurring aesthetic properties (beauty particles? art quarks?) would be a very strange universe, indeed.

The best we can hope for is the possibility of overlap due to the fact that we are all human. In that common humanity we find similarities in the modes of our experience -- eyes, neurons, neurotransmitters -- that we evolved. These are similar enough to allow us to have correspondingly similar experiences. And that gives us plenty to talk about without committing to aesthetic truth.

But then again, so do our differences.

Comments

Very interesting thoughts, Max. I agree that value in art lies primarily in the experience of it, and that experience is highly subjective, but I don't entirely agree that there is no level of universality -- what I mean is that some works of art have greater potential than others to powerfully impact a larger number of people. Inherent qualities (perhaps mysterious, perhaps identifiable) of the work of art might more greatly reward a greater number of individual experiences. Some of my thoughts on the subject are on my blog: http://awayofhappening.blogspot.com/2010/08/thoughts-on-value-in-art.html

Posted by: Awayofhappening.blogspot.com | 01/24/2011 at 08:40 AM