Eye, Matter and Interpretation (original) (raw)

Perception and Interpretation in the Aesthetic Experience of Art

The present paper discusses the possibility that aesthetic perception and interpretation reveal themselves as mutually inclusive within the same aesthetic experience of art in a non-trivial way. It will take its point of departure from Hans-Georg Gadamer and Nöel Carroll. Although they belong to different traditions, both philosophers nonetheless coincide in their indication that the experience of art overflows the region of perception and enjoyment of the aesthetic qualities of works of art. Yet while Gadamer subordinates aesthetic perception and maintains that the experience of art is necessarily hermeneutical, Carroll proposes that the aesthetic and the hermeneutical are two equally genuine responses to art. My claim is that perceptual elements in a work of art are decisive for interpretation, and that this should be properly considered when examining the aesthetic experience of art.

Art, Empathy, Truth : On The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience by Mikel Dufrenne

2013

This thesis discusses Mikel Dufrenne's view presented in The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience (1953) that the aesthetic experience is a fundamental aspect of human existence, which is valuable in its own right because it conveys truth. According to Dufrenne the aesthetic experience is the reading of, and contemplation on, the expressed meaning of an aesthetic object. The expressed meaning is purely sensuous and its comprehension is bodily. In the thesis I pose three questions to this view. First, if the aesthetic experience is a bodily comprehension of sensuous expression, what separates it from empathy? Second, if it is said that the expressed meaning of the aesthetic object is true, what is aesthetic truth? Third, if it is held that the aesthetic experience is fundamental, and thus necessary and universal, how does it relate to its socio-cultural context? Briefly put, I argue that the major difference between aesthetic and empathic experience, is that aesthetic experience conveys truth. According to Dufrenne, truth is a meaning that illuminates the real. The expressed meaning of the aesthetic object is such an illumination, and it can be described as being structured by an a priori principle. Therefore, the expression of the aesthetic object is not a result of the spectator's projection, but is an aspect of the aesthetic object itself. However, I argue that even though the aesthetic experience always occurs within a socio-cultural context, it can nevertheless not be reduced to be a product of this context alone. Finally, I present three contemporary approaches to aesthetic meaning, and discuss their merits in light of Dufrenne's theory, and briefly propose how it can be relevant for further interdisciplinary work between art history, theory and philosophical aesthetics. VI VII Thanks to Bente and Arnfinn for interesting conversations and excellent supervising, Vandad for proofreading, and my parents and friends for support. VIII

Phenomenologies of Art and Vision: A Post-Analytic Turn

British Journal of Aesthetics;Oct2014, Vol. 54 Issue 4, p504 Paul Crowther, Phenomenologies of Art and Vision: A Post-Analytic Turn, Bloomsbury, 2013. Paul Crowther has created an important body of philosophical writing about visual art. The present work develops it further. Crowther argues that the analytic and phenomenological traditions of philosophy need one another if visual art is to be understood in ways going beyond the spectatorial viewpoint alone. He shows this through critical discussions of a range of relevant thinkers. He shows their strengths and weaknesses, and gradually develops his own position in the course of doing this.

What Drawing and Painting Really Mean - The Phenomenology of Image and Gesture

The bulk of this document is the Introduction to a book called 'What Drawing and Painting Really Mean: The Phenomenology of Image and Gesture' . The book was published by Routledge in its 'Advances in Art and Visual Studies' series on 26th April 2017. IT IS NOW AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK ! The book’s main theme is as follows. There are as many meanings to drawing and painting as there are cultural contexts for them to exist in. But this is not the end of the story. Drawings and paintings are made, and in their making embody unique meanings that transform our perception of space-time and sense of finitude. (These are even found in drawings and paintings done by computers) Such intrinsic meanings have not been addressed by art history or visual studies hitherto. Indeed, the dominant tendency has been to reduce the visual image to models derived from literary theory. This amounts to a kind of existential mutilation of drawing and painting. Some philosophers (notably in the phenomenological tradition) have addressed the meanings of these practices more insightfully, but mainly by assimilating them to their own general philosophies rather than by offering a genuine phenomenology of what is involved in the very making of an image – pictorial or abstract. By explaining and developing this, our understanding of art practice can be significantly enhanced.

Art and Interpretation a Qualitative The

After the art forms of the second half of the 20th century it is not possible to define art based on the aesthetic in the traditional sense. Thus, the whole discipline has fallen into a trap, a cul-de-sac, from which there is no escape. Therefore, the aesthetic has to be redefined. This essay is an attempt to find a way out. This article analyzes the possibility of finding a definition of art and the work of art, especially the so called modern art, concentrating on visual art and specifically on painting. First, I briefly analyze some previous attempts and suggest a novel approach that would make it possible to define art as a special form of brainwork. To be able to do this, terms like beauty, aesthetic, and art and their mutual relations are first redefined, concentrating especially on the nature of aesthetic experience as the fundamental aspect of all life in general. Next, I suggest a distinction between craft and art and, based on this distinction, provide a definition of art in the traditional sense of the word, such as art was seen from prehistoric times to 19th century Europe. Thereafter, I suggest a definition of a work art as the realized intention of the artist in nonconceptual form. Finally, I analyze the possibility of interpretation of art according to this theory, concluding that while it is possible to interpret works of art, it is not possible to interpret art because art is the quality of the artwork, and that can only be experienced, not conceptually understood.

Origins and Ends: Understanding the Medium of Painting According to Heidegger's Truth

The Object as a Process: Essays Situating Artistic Practice (book), 2022

The aim of this investigation is to consider the extent to which the processes and material stuff of painting work as enablers of meaning. Within writing that supports painting, the role played by the medium of paint(ing) is too often sidestepped—sidestepped within writings that take as their starting point the interdisciplinary assumption that the message owes little of consequence to the medium by/through which it becomes disclosed. I will consider the idea of truth – and of an origin to the work of art – developed by Martin Heidegger in his essay of 1936, and its implications in respect of notions of material, picture and medium. In particular, this will involve a clarification of Heidegger’s classification of being, so as to enable the ontological character and function of the medium of painting to attain visibility. I will position the central paradoxes of Heidegger’s exposition and address his re-situation of the prerequisite of truth as a challenge to notions of formalist aesthetics, reflecting on his attempts to provide questions the artwork’s spatial, temporal and linguistic constitution. With Hegel’s end of art thesis providing the backdrop to this inquiry, I will engage with Heidegger’s reading of Hölderlin’s river poems, and reflect too on Eva Geulen’s analysis of the Hölderlin Lectures. I will address the idea of a preservational modality prior to providing an account of the necessity of poetising the end of art as a means of circumnavigation, with important implications for the beginning too. The point is to permit the structural particularities of paintings to attain centrality in respect of the work’s meaning. I will consider Hölderlin’s reliance on rumour and double-directedness, approached through his poem The Ister, which signals in the direction of a new ontological model for painting. The medium will be presented as equipment. The mechanism of the caesura will re-surface as a holding bay, in which picture and material are suspended. The result: that the medium-aspect of a painting might, within a Heideggerian and Hölderlinean framework, become re-situated—its functionality made visible through its embeddedness in language and history.

« Indiscernible gestures: for a phenomenological aesthetics »

, The International Journal of Humanities, Volume 3, Issue 5, p. 1-7., 2006

If you had a bird's eye view of contemporary art, you would notice the overwhelming presence of ready-made objects, everyday gestures, aesthetic banalities and poetics of the quotidian. If this situation could be interpreted as the dissolution of art, it leads instead to a new aesthetic paradigm. Such a paradigm is paradoxical: art affirms itself via its indiscernability with ordinary life. This is particularly evident if one considers contemporary body practices. Post-modern dance, happening, body art and Fluxus inaugurated a kind of democracy of the body by means of which the conventional authority of the artist, the object and the context disappeared within the work itself. Nevertheless, the integrity of art is preserved under this paradigm. To investigate such a paradoxical process, I propose to analyse procedures of re-enactment, walking art, and performances in public spaces through Wittgenstein's idea of language games. Following Wittgenstein, one can hypothesize that if the meaning of these works does not reside in their content, perhaps it inheres in their syntax.