ASAGE - American Society for Aesthetics Graduate E-Journal
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Review - The Aesthetics of Design, by Jane Forsey
No full textBenjamin Evans reviews Jane Forsey's new book
From Restoration to Redemption
No full textI argue that apart from special circumstances, works of art cannot be restored since any change to the work’s aesthetic properties entails a change in the work’s identity. I argue that in a “restoration,” the work’s aesthetic properties are changed since (as I argue) the historical and authorial properties of a work are aesthetic properties. But I further argue that it is entirely possible for the new work created in a “restoration” to have greater aesthetic value than did the original work. This is because of the richer aesthetic impact that the work can possess in virtue of the more evocative story attached to it. In such a case, I argue that the damage or deterioration that necessitates the “restoration” is actually redeemed as it is incorporated as aesthetic properties into a greater work than what existed before. I illustrate my arguments and claims with numerous historical examples
Digital Instances
No full textThe way we access dance is changing as the form is now widely viewed via digital transmission and documentation. This paper considers the ontological impact of this cultural shift. It sets out to challenge the view that dance works are accessible only through live performance (Carr, 1987; McFee 1992, 2011). Adopting a non-realist ontological perspective, (Davies 2009; Thomasson 2005), I suggest that the way we relate to screenings and recordings of dance works impacts on the ontological status of the form, thus problematising existing schemata and calling for further philosophical consideration.
Is it Art or Not? A Husserlian Phenomenology of M.C. Escher’s Art
No full textAesthetic pleasure enjoyed while looking at M.C. Escher’s art is undeniable, but what is its character? There is a realistic precision that reflects the artist’s talent. In true Escher-esque style however, the realistic depiction is just enough to lure perception into confounding and disorienting landscapes. How can stairs both ascend and descend, at the same time, for a stair climber going in one direction? This paper will acquaint the reader with phenomenological terminology that Husserl develops in his aesthetic theory, such as the components in image-consciousness, its use of phantasims, interest, immersion and investment, all characterizing what is required to have an aesthetic feeling from fine art. These explications would seem to render art such as Escher’s as incapable of sustaining aesthetic pleasure, however in our final conclusion Escher’s art will prove unlike disqualified art that either remains un-interesting to its perceiver, or relies on a fraudulent semblance of reality. Furthermore, Husserl’s phenomenology of the aesthetic experience only describes the components of image-consciousness but does not account for why an aesthetical feeling can begot from an arrangement of representations, leaving the possibility of various types of aesthetic modes open, such as Escher’s beautiful work that pleasantly disorients aesthetic contemplation
Ceteris Paribus Hedges in Critical Principles
No full textI argue that principles need to be appealed to in criticism especially when critics deliberate and determine the consistency between their verdicts on individual artworks. Following Frank Sibley, we can take principles as identifying properties with inherently positive or negative polarities that can be reversed in interactions with other properties. I contend that we should understand the character of such principles as having ceteris paribus hedges that restrict the scopes of the principles to artworks in which the inherent polarities of cited qualities are not undermined or reversed. This is to adopt Michael Strevens’ ‘narrowing’ approach to interpreting ceteris paribus clauses. A consequence of such hedges is that the conditions of application of critical principles—when certain polarities are not undermined or reversed—may be partly opaque and unknown. Unpacking the opaque truth conditions of such principles, then, helps to make sense of how critics go about working out the consistency between their verdicts. This view of critical principles is consistent with and even predicts Arnold Isenberg’s particularist intuition that verdicts can be directly perceived without the need to infer them from principles. After all, opaque truth conditions mean that sometimes critics may not know whether an inference from a principle to verdict is valid. Ultimately, this view of hedged principles helps to make sense of critical aesthetic practice and accords with both the generalist intuition that critical reasons, to be reasons, require principles and the particularist intuition that inferences to verdicts can be short-circuited by direct acts of perception
Weitz's Legacy
No full textOne common way of framing the recent history of definitional theories of art has it that Wittgensteinian challenges to the definitional project were not successful in establishing the impossibility of a successful definition, but they were successful in providing limits on the kinds of theories that can work. A key part of this story concerns Morris Weitz’s argument that “art” is indefinable because art is – as he calls it – an “open concept”. The argument has since been refuted by definitional theories that account for art’s openness. Doing so, in fact, has become something of a motivation for and a requirement of subsequent theories. I argue here, however, first that accepting (explicitly or implicitly) Weitz’s premise that art is open has led to an unfortunate pessimism about providing thoroughly informative definitional theories, and second that such pessimism is unwarranted. Art is not, in fact, open in the way Weitz suggests. Recognizing this should enable us to once again seek more informative definitional theories.
