aesthetic experience and the experience of art

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Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to Self-ConsciousnessPaul Crowther

Print publication date: 2001Print ISBN-13: 9780199244973Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Oct-11DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.001.0001

Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Art

Paul Crowther

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244973.003.0003

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter attempts to articulate aesthetic experience and art in relation toontological reciprocity. Section I elaborates and comments upon Gadamer'scritique of formalism, with a view to highlighting its difficulties. It then arguesin Section II that, whilst a formalist aesthetic is indeed a valid mode ofexperiencing art, Gadamer's content-orientated approach can be modifiedand extended so as to reveal profounder and more significant aspects tosuch experience.

Keywords: Gadamer, aesthetic experience, art, ontological reciprocity, formalism

Introduction

The dominant twentieth-century conception of aesthetic experience is,broadly speaking, a formalist one. It holds characteristically that aestheticexperience arises when, say, we perceive a painting in relation to its qualitiesof line and colour and their interrelations, rather than in relation to thecontent which those lines and colours represent. Such perception will be,in essence, disinterested, that is, pursued for its own sake, rather than forsome theoretical or other extrinsic end.

This kind of approach to the experience of art first emerged in theeighteenth-century philosophies of taste and finds its earliest systematicstatement in Kants doctrine of aesthetic judgement. That it should reappearso extensively in the present century is due substantially to the trend


towards non-representational art. It is true, of course, that Edmund Bulloughproposed a very influential version of formalism in 1907; but it is with CliveBell and Roger Frys attempts to justify avant-garde developments in thevisual arts that formalist theory is really injected into modern philosophy ofart. Those working in the tradition of existential phenomenology, however,have not appeared to accept the formalist position. Sartre, for example, tellsus that

Some reds of Matisseproduce a sensuous enjoyment in thosewho see them. But we must understand that this sensuousenjoyment, if thought of (p.32) in isolationfor instance, ifaroused by a colour in naturehas nothing of the aesthetic. Itis purely and simply a pleasure of sense.1

We find here a plea for a concept of the aesthetic which ties the notion tothe perception of representational content rather than formal qualities. Hans-Georg Gadamer has argued a more subtle and extensive version of thesame thesis. He claims that when we judge a work of art on the basis of itsaesthetic quality [i.e. formal properties] something that is really much moreintimately familiar to us is alienated.2

In Gadamers terms, the something from which we are alienated isthe content made present by the artwork. Accordingly, in Section I ofthis chapter I shall elaborate and comment upon Gadamers critique offormalism, with a view to highlighting its difficulties. I shall then arguein Section II that, whilst a formalist aesthetic is indeed a valid mode ofexperiencing art, Gadamers content-orientated approach can be modifiedand extended so as to reveal profounder and more significant aspects tosuch experience.

I

A first point to note is that Gadamers critique (as advanced in Part Oneof Truth and Method)3 does not simply seek to expand our concept of theaesthetic, in the way that some theorists claim that non-representationalworks expand our concept of art; rather, he is seeking to show that authenticaesthetic experience is something different from the formalism of, ashe terms it, aesthetic consciousness. To establish this claim Gadameradopts two specific lines of attackthe logical and the normative. I shall dealwith these aspects of his argument in turn, and at length. First, Gadamerclaims that aesthetic consciousness is self-contradictory. He criticizes,specifically, the notion that such consciousness is a function of perception


in its own right or, as Kant for example (p.33) has it, the free play ofunderstanding and imagination. The reason for Gadamers objection is thatperception can never fulfil this free disinterested role, in that it alwaystends towards a universal, that is, it is always taken up with the business ofapplying or forming concepts. In practical terms Gadamer takes this to meanthat considerations pertaining to content can never be eliminated from ourperception of an artworks formal qualities. He informs us that

aesthetic vision is certainly characterised by its not hurryingto relate what it sees to a universal, the known significance,the intended purpose, etc., but by dwelling on it as aesthetic.But that does not stop us from seeing relationships, e.g.recognising that this white phenomenon which we admireaesthetically, is in fact a man.4

Now, most contemporary philosophers agree that the demand thatperception presupposes concepts is an essentially logical one. Gadamer,however, seems to take the relation as a contingent psychological fact.Hence the ability of aesthetic vision not to hurry towards a universal. It isas though we can briefly have conceptless pure perception, but that aftera few moments it inevitably converges upon a universal. This interpretationnot only fails to show that the formalist approach is self-contradictory, itactually goes some way towards illustrating one of the central tenets of suchan approach; namely that the aesthetic experience or attitude is hard tomaintain, and constantly threatens to slip into a more practically orientatedmode of perception.

Even if we tighten up Gadamers argument, and insist that the relationbetween perception and concept is a logical one, it still falls short as acritique of formalism. Gadamer seems to think that the only way conceptsget a purchase in art is in the perception of representational content. Thereis something to be said for this in a limited way, in that we tend initially tosee representational works in terms of what they are representations of.However, this is not always the case, and even when it does occur it doesnot prevent us from engaging in a more disinterested mode of perception.It is crucial, of course, to be clear about the scope of the term disinterestedperception. Harold Osborne defines it as follows: attention is fixed upon thequalities of the perceived object, not on (p.34) its usefulness or theoreticalinterest or on the pleasures deriving or expected to derive from it.5

This simple observation makes the weakness of Gadamers position clear.The formalist holds, characteristically, that whilst aesthetic experience is in a


sense reductive or highly abstract, this does not mean that it fails to involveconcepts at all, but rather that it involves a different and more reflectiveset of concepts than would be employed if we were simply perceiving anartworks content. In other words, we approach it with different intentions.The only formalist theory which Gadamers objection might conceivablyapply to is that of Kant. Yet even here the point would be open to issue, forwhilst Kant seems to say that the aesthetic judgement has no conceptualelement, he is logically committed by his general theory of judgement to acontrary view. This, however, involves complex questions of interpretationwhich I cannot go into here.

Let us now consider Gadamers normative objections to formalism. We aretold that aesthetic consciousness distinguishes the aesthetic quality of awork from all elements of content which induce us to take up an attitudetowards it, moral, or religious, and presents it solely by itself in its aestheticbeing.6

Gadamers reservations about the worth of this purely aesthetic attitudehinge upon two different, but related, points. First, aesthetic consciousnessabstracts from all conditions of a works accessibility, that is, it ignoresthose questions of purpose, function, and content which make an artworka candidate for interpretation as opposed to a mere object of sensuousappreciation. Gadamers reasoning here is founded on the presuppositionthat, through language and related forms of communication, man isengaged essentially in a quest for self-understanding. On these terms,the transmitted text (using text in the broadest possible sense) givesa historical continuity to the quest. It brings about a fusion of horizonsbetween the self-understanding of both author and audience whereby thatwhich is lasting and universal in the text, in other words that which is True,can emerge and be known afresh. Hence, it is quite understandable why inprinciple Gadamer should (p.35) see the content of the artwork as its mostaccessible aspect. It is, as it were, the productive point of contact betweenartist and audience.

This sort of argument, however, raises an enormous number of problems. Ishall confine myself to two of them. First, whilst the content of an artworkmay be its generally most accessible aspect, there is no reason why itshould necessarily be so. What is and what is not accessible in art is afunction, surely, of the capacities and intentions of the person seekingaccess. What Gadamer is really saying, of course, is that content ought tobe that to which access is sought, in so far as it is keenly relevant to the


task of self-understanding. However, whilst self-understanding may be apre-eminent concern of mankind, another defining characteristic of thespecies is our capacity to create and appreciate artefacts for their own sake.Gadamer completely overlooks, in other words, the possibility that formalistappreciation may have an important role to play in self-understandingconceived in a broader sense.

His argument also raises a second important difficulty: namely, if we stressthe importance of content in art, it is important to explain how this differsfrom content, say, in a philosophical or historical text. Now, Gadamer claimsthat the task of aesthetics is to provide a basis for the fact that artisticexperience is a mode of knowledge of a unique kind,7 but unfortunatelyhe himself does nothing to establish such a basis. We find the claim thatart is a unique form of knowledge, but with no criteria to establish what itsuniqueness consists in. One superficially promising way of providing suchcriteria would be to invoke the notion which Gadamer takes as illustratingthe ontological structure of artistic representationnamely, play. Gadamerholds that play is more than the subjective attitude of the players whoengage in it. Indeed, in so far as they commit themselves fully to the rulesof the game, that which is played achieves self-representation throughthem. Transposing this model to artworks, Gadamer holds that, in effect, thesubject-matter of the work achieves autonomous self-representation throughthe artefact-creating activity of the artist, and the interpretative activity ofthe audience. Hence, in the play of representation, what is, emerges. In itis produced and brought to the light what otherwise is constantly hidden andwithdrawn.8

(p.36) Unfortunately, Gadamers introduction of the play analogy is entirelygratuitous. No attempt is made to explain why this analogy is particularlyappropriate to art, and why it is more appropriate than other models.Even more problematic is the fact that Gadamer equates the disclosureof content, which takes place in the play of representation, with that ofrecognition of essence. In so far, however, as he holds (in Aristotelianmood) that any claim to knowledge involves a recognition of essence, thismerely returns us to the original problem of establishing how the artisticexperience gives knowledge of a unique kind. One senses that Gadamersdifficulty here arises from his play analogy finding its ultimate inspirationin Heideggers idea that language is much more than the speakers whoembody it. On these terms language is not just a tool which the particularspeaker uses to grasp realityrather, it already embodies in its structure aspecific ontological world-view which the speaker inherits. Being itself, as


it were, speaks through the speaker. Now, whether language is, in fact, soontologically committed is problematic. In relation to art the issue is evenmore contentious in that the meaning of what is disclosed by the artisticstatement is as much, if not more, a function of how the artist handles hisvocabulary, that is, his own style, than some mere aspect of Being whichhis statement serves to disclose. The nearest Gadamer comes to concedingthis point is in his observation that When someone makes an imitation, hehas to leave out and to heighten. Because he is pointing to something, hehas to exaggerate whether he likes it or not.9

Gadamer, however, fails to follow this up. This is quite understandable in sofar as it would involve the assignation of a central (though not exclusive)role to those sensuous and formal properties of which he is so wary. Oncemore, the influence of Heidegger is at work hereespecially the essay onThe Origin of the Work of Art,10 where Heidegger allows little scope for theartists style over and above the ontological function of disclosing how andwhat things are.

We find, then, that the first aspect of Gadamers normative (p.37) critiqueof aesthetic consciousness fails. It overlooks the role which formalistappreciation can play in self-understanding; and is unable to specify whatdifferentiates the knowledge yielded by artistic experience from that yieldedby our experience of non-artistic texts.

Let me now consider the second aspect of his normative critique. Gadamerclaims that the meaning which emerges in the experience of a workscontent is something objective and enduring. We perceive, say, a portrait ofCharles V, and Charles V just is the object of the experience. The object ofaesthetic consciousness, in contrast, is something much more elusive. Itis founded upon each observer who experiences a work performing an actof abstraction or differentiation which leaves the purely aesthetic surfaceor object as a pleasing residue. This disintegration of the representedobject into, as it were, a multiplicity of aesthetic appearances means thatevery encounter with the work has the rank and the justification of a newproduction.11 It follows from this that One way of understanding a workof art is then no less legitimate than another. There is no criterion of anappropriate reaction.12

Gadamer is claiming, then, that the purely aesthetic object is fragmentedbetween particular observers, and leaves no room for objectivity ininterpretation. These points can be answered by a single argument, asfollows. Although the constitution of a purely aesthetic object is a function of


the cognitive activity of those who observe an artwork, we are not entitledto say it is just a function of that activity. We are guided, surely, in formingour attitude by the perceptible formal features of the work, and are ablein principle to justify and argue the validity of our response by referenceto them. This capacity, indeed, gives a rational continuity to aestheticconsciousness.

However, whilst Gadamer might be prepared to admit that, in this sense,aesthetic consciousness is rational subjectivism, he could still claim that,in a profounder sense, it is a dangerous subjectivism. For example, hementions with approval that Kierkegaards theory of the aesthetic stageof existence is developed from the standpoint of the moralist who hasseen how desperate and untenable is existence in pure immediacy anddiscontinuity. Hence his criticism of the aesthetic consciousness is offundamental importance because (p.38) he shows the inner-contradictionsof aesthetic existence13 Whether Volume One of Either/Or is to beinterpreted in this clear-cut manner is, I think, problematic. The tentativenature of Kierkegaards chosen title and the fact that he does present twoalternative world-views without explicitly committing himself to either oneof them suggests, I think, that the important question at issue is not thecontent of the world-view as suchbe it aesthetic or ethicalbut the factthat whichever world-view is chosen must be the result of an individualsown free and authentic decision. This means, of course, that the individualis alone responsible for the consequences of his decision, and that the freelychosen world-view (even and perhaps especially the ethical one) brings withit its own dilemmas and existential contradictions.

If we were to grant Gadamers point, though, and admit that a purelyaesthetic approach to life is inherently alienated, this would still notinvalidate aesthetic consciousness as such. There would surely be groundsfor saying that whilst existence demands serious moral and social decision-making of us, there is also some room for a less practically orientated andmore relaxed engagement with Being. Indeed, this aesthetic engagement isvital if we are to have a truly integrated and balanced personality rather thanone which risks alienation through the obsessiveness of its own projects.

I have argued, then, that Gadamers attempt to refute the formalistconception of aesthetic experience is unsound or inadequate. This, however,leaves us with what Kant would have called the deductive question ofwhether we are entitled to equate aesthetic experience with a formalistapproach. The answer to this, I think, is simply yes. The term aesthetic


has gained its major philosophical and broader cultural currency throughbeing linked to the perception of formal qualities, or to activities pursued fortheir own sake rather than for practical ends. Indeed, the aesthetic is nowsynonymous with such things. This is a desirable state of affairs in so far as itestablishes a term which does enable us to immediately pick out one of themost distinctive features of our experience of art.

However, approaching these issues via Gadamers work has at least onevery salutary effect. We begin to realize that pure aesthetic experience asunderstood above is only one aspect of our (p.39) experience of art, andperhaps a rather limited one at that. It becomes clear that if we can specifywhy it is limited, and solve Gadamers problem about what is unique aboutthe way art presents its content, the road may be open to a more variegatedconcept of the aesthetic experience of art. It is to this possibility I turn in thefollowing section.

II

Clive Bell14 and many others have claimed that in approaching artisticrepresentation we are faced with two alternatives. Either we look upona work in terms of its genuinely artistic, i.e. formal qualities, or else weapproach it from the point of view of its content, i.e. as a historical oranecdotal document. This exemplifies what one might call the formalistfallacy in aesthetics; that is to say, the dogma that what is uniquely artisticabout art is simply the possession of significant form. That this view is adogma is shown, I think, by the fact that artistic representation really doesre-present. The artist creates a formal configuration not just for its ownsake, or for the simple purpose of referring to some subject-matter; but,rather uses the medium to reconstitute subject-matter or creative idea in asensuous form, that is with something of the immediacy which it has at thelevel of the artists own experience. The poet uses language, for example,not for mere description, but in such a way that his unique style preservesand articulates his or her own perception of the subject-matter. Similarly,the painter, and the novelist, not only handle their respective media in sucha way as to present a sensuous image (or images) of their subject, but intheir style of handling also articulate what the subject means to them. Thisis why Merleau-Ponty15 notes that the artists style distends the content,or throws it slightly out of focus. On these terms the unique significanceof artistic meaning lies in the fact that the meaning of its intersubjectivelyaccessible content is expanded by the individuality of the artist. We can, ofcourse, look at the (p.40) formal features of a work, and its content features,


as though they were separate levels, but to do so is to miss out on a uniquesensuous meaning that arises from the fusion and self-transcendence ofthe two, through style. It is ironic that Gadamer should miss out on thispoint, since another of his crucial sources, Hegel, advances a very similarthesis. For Hegel, the artwork has, in its content, the universality of thought,but particularized in terms of a sensuous image determined ultimatelyby the artists individuality. Hence we demand of the artwork sensuouspresencebut liberated from the scaffolding of its material nature. Therebythe sensuous aspect of a work of art, in comparison with the immediateappearance of things in nature, is elevated to a pure appearance; and thework of art stands in the middle between immediate sensuousness and idealthought.16

This unique and defining position holds several crucial implications for theexperience of art. First, it calls into question the rigid distinction betweenpractical and disinterested approaches. Bell and Gadamer, for example, asmentioned earlier, assume or imply that to be concerned with the contentof artistic representation is to be concerned with it in the practical waywhich characterizes all our contact with texts which aim at theoretical orempirical understanding. However, if we bear in mind that what we areexperiencing is a content mediated by the artists individuality, this clear-cutapproach becomes problematic. Whilst we are concerned with some aspectof the world, this aspect is distended by style, and we are thus invited towithdraw from our practical commitment to the world, and experience it froma reflective or meditative viewpoint.

Let me now illustrate this in a little more depth. First, in everyday life wedivide the world (and even other persons) into the means and ends of ourvarious projects and interests. Even the traditional forms of knowledgeaim at an appropriate contact with the world, which reduces specificphenomena into the laws and properties which determine their species orgenus behaviour. It is also true that much of our knowledge is pursued froman anthropocentric viewpoint. We wish to know those aspects of phenomenawhich will be of use in their appropriation and utilization. Art, in contrast,with its sensuous showing, does give us the possibility of a more (p.41)reflective contact with things and persons, which allows them to emergeas existents with an integrity and significance of their own. This may seemparadoxical, given the primacy I have accorded to the role of the artistspersonal style. However, it is precisely because style does make objectslook different that our attention is arrested and drawn to them in a waythat it might not be if the objects were encountered in reality. By appearing


differently, the object is, as it were, able to exist in a fuller way. This, Ithink, points to the limitations of the recent Super Realist movement inpainting. By minimalizing the function of personal style, such works attainonly the level of photography, i.e. the recording of documentary fact. Theactual sensuous presence of the subject-matter is hypostatized, and reducedto the status of visual data. It is seenbut not reflectively known.

Heidegger has taken artistic representations disclosure of how and whatthings are to be its most essential feature, and links it to the ancient Greeknotion of aletheiaunhiddenness.17 Now, whereas the aesthetic attitudewould, as Kant puts it, be indifferent to the real existence of its objects, anexperience founded upon aletheia would not. Nevertheless, we could stillclaim this experience as relatively disinterested and thence aesthetic in sofar as it involves the artworks subject-matter appearing and being knownin its own right, rather than simply as an object for practical appropriation.The current mistake of the formalist tradition is to suppose that ourengagement with artworks must be absolutely disinterested or absolutelypractical, with no distinctive ground between the two. We find, however,that just as the artwork itself lies between the sensuousness of particularphenomena, and the universality of pure thought, so the experience ofart can fall between the total disinterestedness of the aesthetic attitudeand the practical appropriativeness of theoretical understanding. I shall,in consequence, talk of the aletheic experience of art, that is, a non-instrumental aesthetic awareness of things and persons, which hingesultimately on a sense of wonder at the unique existence of specific things,and at their potential or hidden aspects which the artist has revealed.Let us define aletheic experience, then, as the wondrous apprehension ofthinghood. The philosopher can describe it, but only the artwork reveals itpar excellence.

(p.42) We can go further, and make a distinction between external andinternal aletheia. The external sense is that noted in relation to Heideggerabove, that is, the reflective awareness of a representations subject-matter.However, when a representation is particularly successful, it may alsomake us reflectively aware of its own status as a made thing. Elementsof workmanship, material, meaning, and aesthetic form cohere in a self-disclosive aletheia. We are aware, in other words, of the artworks ownthinghood, as well as that of its subject-matter. The paradigm case forthis aspect of aletheic experience is, of course, the visual artwork. It can,however, also occur in literature, although the grounds for such an assertionmay not seem readily apparent. Richard Shusterman, for example, has


drawn attention to the fact that the tendency to debar visual features fromplaying a role in our appreciation of texts is more of an inherited dogma thana well-argued contention.18 Hence, the modern critic should be preparedin certain circumstances to take into account the aesthetic possibilities ofsuch things as peculiarity of line length and spacing; colour of ink; case,size, and shape of characters; and choice of punctuation marks. Shustermanis, I think, using aesthetic in a very broad sense here, and this leads us toan immediate and rather fascinating problem. As Shusterman points out,some writers (such as Apollinaire) have, in creating their works, devotedmuch attention to aspects of the texts visual appearance. When the visualaspects are emphasized in this way, we are, in Shustermans terms, justifiedin attending to their aesthetic possibilities. Now, the strongest objectionto this view, according to Shusterman, is from the standpoint of aestheticpuritythat is to say, the idea that to take visual aspects of a text intoaccount is to disrupt the aesthetic unity of our reading of it. It obtrudesupon the sense of the text. Now, although Shusterman demonstratesthe inadequacy of this objection, he overlooks what is, I think, a morefundamental problem; namely that in many cases the visual aspects of a textcan strike us quite forcefully even when it is clear that the author himselfsimply wrote the original manuscript and was indifferent to how it wouldbe visually realized in print. The point is, that we would not have a singleunified aesthetic object consisting of the sense of the text and its visual (p.43) presentation; we would have, rather, a disunified whole composed oftwo distinct aesthetic objectsthe sense of the text (as exemplified in theauthors original manuscript) and the visual interpretation cum realizationof it, made by the printer. This, of course, opens up the rather neglectedquestion of the aesthetics of different editions of textsa question which Icannot explore here. It strikes me, however, that in some cases an editionof a text will do more than present us with two aesthetic objects, one fromthe author and one from the printer. Rather, we will find that the visualpresentation of a literary work will enhance and make manifest the contentin such a way as to present the work in totality to reflective awareness as aunified artefact. In other words, we would find that the work transcends bothits joint authorship and its two distinct aesthetic elements to become self-disclosive. We would have aletheic rather than purely aesthetic unity.

I have so far been discussing aletheic experience in relation torepresentational art. It can, however, arise in two other contexts. First,in relation to abstract painting. It is here, of course, that the notion ofaesthetic formalism (at least since the apotheosis of Clement Greenberg)seems to have a field day. However, if formal pleasures were the only


significant aspect of our experience of such works, then there would beno reason apart from institutional ones (i.e. the whims of the art-world)why we should value them more than mere decoration or non-Warholianwallpaper. However, abstract works are, of course, artefacts whose madeaspect sometimes strikes us quite strongly. Indeed, whereas somethinglike wallpaper disappears into its decorative function and is taken forgranted, the raison dtre of the abstract painting is very much more self-contained and self-revelatory. We find that many such works are not simplysensuous configurations, but unique sensuous configurations. I do notmean simply that they have the formal unity of an aesthetic object, butrather that form links up with material elements into the overt ontologicalunity of a made-thing. This unity, however, will not always show through.A great deal of op art and post-painterly abstractionism succeeds onlyas aesthetic objectand sometimes not even that. Similarly, a numberof abstract expressionist works lack formal and material unity to such adegree (e.g. Robert Motherwells Je Taime) that we have no reflectiveawareness of unified thinghood. Its more a case of heres some paint, andheres a canvas that just happen to be stuck (p.44) together. In the bestwork of painters such as Pollock, Rothko, and Morris Louis, in contrast, theontological unity of form and material stand in clear relief, to yield authenticaletheic experience.

Let me now discuss a general context outside art where aletheic experiencecan occur.

When an artefact of any sort fulfils its function in a supremely effective way,a kind of zest can overflow from its use, which I think is aletheic in character.A functional artefact has a certain definiteness of sense that is determinedby its function in getting specific kinds of jobs done. Now, it may be that acertain piece of equipment is so well made, or fulfils its function so well, thatit overflows this narrower meaning and makes us aware of it as a piece ofequipment, i.e. as a made-thing. A piece of faulty equipment may of coursedraw our attention, but this attention will not be simply a regard for thethinghood of the artefact, it will rather be framed in terms of new projectswhats gone wrong here?; how can I put it right? In other words, ourattention will be practical, an involvement with a certain narrow aspect of theworld, rather than the non-instrumental awareness and wonder which is theroot of the aletheic.

I am arguing, then, that in general terms a well-made or efficient artefactcan make us reflectively aware of its own ontological integrity. We need,


however, to make a qualification here. Richard Shusterman maintains (asnoted earlier) that when the visual aspects of a text do strike us forcefullyand are visible, those aspects are candidates for aesthetic appreciation.This, I think, parallels in some respects the distinction which Barthes drawsin S/Z19 between the conventional readerly text and modernist writerlytextwhere the interrelations of writing, reading, and language itselfbecome manifest and problematic. Now, it might be thought that suchvisible or writerly texts invite aletheic experience by their very self-referential nature. This, however, would be an unfounded assumption. Someof Mallarms later poems, for example, go far beyond the conventionalhandling of the medium, by introducing elaborate spacing of individualwords, lines, and stanzas. However, these are not merely self-referentialliterary devices. They serve to reinforce and complement an evocation ofthe transcendental which is Mallarms fundamental intention, (p.45) and itis only by their function in relation to this that the poems own ontologicalstatus as a little lyrical object becomes manifest. Works in the genre ofConcrete Poetry, or the dreary novels of Robbe-Grillet, in contrast, far frombeing self-disclosive existents, appear as mere obscurantist signs in theservice of some vague theory about poetry or fiction itself. Their ontologicalstructure is not integrated, but rather awkwardly distended towards the poleof the universal and theoretical, with their status as particular and uniqueinstances of poetic or fictional artefaas relegated to secondary importance.This is also true, I think, of a great deal of visual art, such as almost all thework of Robert Rauschenberg, and similar attempts to integrate abstract andrepresentational elements in the context of a single work.

The moral to be drawn from these points is that when an artist uses amedium in an innovatory way, or in a way which seems to call attention toitself, this will only yield aletheic experience when the innovatory devicesserve as a means in the creation of unique and unified artefacts, rather thanas ends-in-themselves. It is the vice of the writerly text, and its counterpartin painting and sculpture, to try and show what can only be said. Indeed,their ontological status as artworks becomes entirely superfluous in so faras what they attempt to say is better expressed in ordinary theoreticaldiscourse, or depends upon such discourse for its intelligibility.

Now, whilst aletheic experience is (like pure aesthetic experience) animportant aspect of our encounter with artworks, it is not, I think, themost fundamental one. As we have seen, for example, its internal modecan occur outside the context of art. There is, however, one aspect ofexperiencing art which is somewhat more profound than the aletheic, and


which occurs only in the context of art. I shall briefly expound it as follows,freely adapting ideas from Gadamer and Merleau-Ponty.

First, no embodied consciousness ever has an experience which existsin itself as a self-subsistent state. We look at things and understandthem essentially on the foundation of our previous experiences, and ourexpectations of the future. A specifiable individual experience is, thence,always given in the context of the general continuity of our lives. Now, increating an artwork, an artist is engaged essentially upon experiencingsome subject-matter or creative idea, not just with his or her body and mindbut with (p.46) the artistic medium. In creating a work, the handling of themedium is a constitutive part of an artists experience of the subject-matteror idea, and is informed by past experience, and anticipations of the finalappearance of the work. When it is complete, the knowledge gained by theartist from this specific enterprise is integrated into the continuity of his orher life, ready to inform future creations. But of course, the work itself isleft behind. It is now discontinuous with the artists actual bodily states, andyet it preserves both his or her style of experiencing the subject or idea,and, implicitly, all the experience which informed the creation of the work.It is experience become concrete, and intersubjectively accessible. It is amicrocosm of the artists own being.

Now, if artistic creation were simply the emanation of unique, indefinable,genius, we might look at the work, say how wonderful, and leave it at that.However, what the artist has done is, in general terms, far from indefinablehe or she has simply consummated, in a specific instance, what is commonto every human being. Each person qua finite embodied consciousness hasa distinctive style of relating to and articulating the intentional objects ofexperience, but the artist does so in a way which makes this stylization overtand lasting. We could say, in fact, that through its fusion of style and subject-matter the artwork exemplifies the essence of human experience as such. Iuse exemplify in Nelson Goodmans senseof possession plus reference,20On these terms, the artwork is a human experience, which transcends thepractical continuity of life, and, in so doing, returns us to the very nature ofexperience itself. Once more, it is worth pointing out that philosophers andothers can talk about the structure of the human condition, and, indeed,move us profoundly by their observations. However, to make an intellectualanalysis of a subject removes us from the sensuousness of an encounter withit. The work of art, in contrast, embodies and shows in its very structure thatwhich philosophy can only refer to.


I am claiming, then, that the experience of an artwork can bring a uniquereflective awareness of the nature of the human condition itself. This movingrevelation and celebration of the enigma of embodied consciousness iswhat I shall call empathic experience. In (p.47) a sense it marks the logicalextreme of all human self-awareness, in that the only way beyond it is toinvoke communion with a transcendental reality, i.e. religious experience.

We do well, of course, to take note of Ivor Richards warning about ARTenvisaged as a mystic, ineffable virtue.21 However, if we are going toaccount for the special significance which the artwork holds for us, and aregoing to do it in any depth, we will ultimately come up against considerationssimilar to the ones described above. Of course, I do not want to say thatevery work of art gives us apocalyptic visions of ultimate reality, but simplythat by virtue of their peculiar structure of meaning, works of art are wellappointed to one certain thingmaking us stop for a moment to see andwonder at what we have created, at what surrounds us, and what we,in essence, are. This fundamental awareness is a simple but potentiallyshattering experience that is the proper root of the aletheic and empathic.Not exactly the heights of windy mysticism, one would have thought.

I have outlined, then, in a very rough and ready way two profound aestheticaspects of the experience of art. I do not take these to be an exhaustivetaxonomy of such aesthetic experiences; indeed, it may be that both thealetheic and empathic admit of analysis into various subdivisions. There ismuch work to be done, then, in differentiating our experience of art intonew and revealing categories. If we fail to carry through this programmeand confine our discussion to the old warhorse of aesthetic experience in anarrow formalist sense then there is, I suggest, a risk of aesthetics becomingonce more something of a dreary discipline.

Notes:

This is a revised and extended version of a paper of the same title which wasoriginally read at the Annual Conference of the British Society of Aestheticsat College Hall, London, Sept. 1981. I am grateful to participants in thatConference for their comments, and particularly Professor Eva Schaper whochaired the discussion.

(1) J.-P. Sartre, The Psychology of Imagination (Methuen, London, 1972),2201.


(2) H.-G. Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. and ed. David E. Linge(University of California Press, London, 1976), 5.

(3) H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. William Glen-Doepel (Sheedand Ward, London, 1975). See esp. the section entitled Critique of theAbstraction of Aesthetic Consciousness, pp. 8090.

(4) Ibid. 81.

(5) Harold Osborne, Aesthetic Perception, British Journal of Aesthetics, 18(1978), 313.

(6) Gadamer, Truth and Method, 77.

(7) Ibid. 87.

(8) Ibid. 101.

(9) Ibid. 103.

(10) Martin Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, in Martin Heidegger:Basic Writings, ed. and trans. D. F. Krell (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London,1978), 14987.

(11) Gadamer, Truth and Method, 85.

(12) Ibid.

(13) Ibid.

(14) See e.g. Clive Bell, Art (Chatto & Windus, London, 1914), esp. 337.

(15) See e.g. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Indirect Language and the Voices ofSilence, in Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Northwestern University Press,Evanston, Ill., 1964), 3984.

(16) G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford University Press,Oxford, 1975), 38.

(17) Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 164.

(18) Richard Shusterman, Aesthetic Blindness to Textual Visuality, Journal ofAesthetics and Art Criticism, xli/1 (1982), 8796.


(19) Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (Cape, London, 1975).

(20) See Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Bobbs-Merrill, New York, 1968),529.

(21) Ivor Richards, The Principles of Literary Criticism (Routledge & KeganPaul, London, 1970), 11.

aesthetic experience and the experience of art

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