Central concepts of aesthetics: a proposal for their application

Inhaltsverzeichnis

I. Prior Attempts at Sub-Dividing Aesthetic Concepts

II. Some Preliminary Questions:
1. How Do We Use the Term “Art”?
2. What Is The Difference Between “Art Object” and “Aesthetic Object”?
3. If the “aesthetic” and “artistic” values of an artifact are not the same, what is their relevancy for original works of art and their perfect copies?
4. Can Art - In Spite Of Its Dependency On The “Art World” and On Its Recipients - Contain Generally Valid Meaning?

III. The Central Concepts “aesthetic - artistic - beautiful”

IV. Intersections Of the Central Concepts

V. The Nomenclature Of Aesthetic Qualities, Experiences, And Objects

VI. Summary In The Form Of Suggestions

I. Prior Attempts at Sub-Dividing Aesthetic Concepts

Modifying an important essay by Frank Sibley [1], we could differentiate the following groups amongst the wide range of concepts occasionally used for the description of works of art (see diagram 1):

Terms which denote the aesthetic quality of an object (usually of a work of art), and (2) such concepts which seemingly name a quality of the object but in reality, however, only name our response to the latter, e.g., “magnificent”, “moving” or “overpowering”. What is magnificent about the observed object, why and how it overpowers, is not stated. - Within the first group (1), we can discern two kinds of concepts, those which expressly relate to the aesthetic character of the work of art (1.1) and those which don’t (1.2), e.g., “well preserved”, “washed out”, “bleached” etc. Again, within the first of the latter two groups (1.1) there are terms, which describe and/or evaluate qualities of the artwork (1.1.1) and others, which only evaluate (1.1.2), especially the pairs of opposites “beautiful-ugly”, “good-bad”, and “tasteful-tasteless”. Within the first of these two groups (1.1.1), we find again two sub-groups, firstly the “aesthetic descriptives” in the narrow sense of the word (1.1.1.1) which differentiate qualities which are only discernible for sensitive recipients, and descriptives which can be verified by everyone (1.1.1.2), e.g., that a painting is “dominated by blue tones” or a sonata “consists of four movements” or a play “contains many short scenes”. The truly “aesthetic” descriptions (1.1.1.1) can either be exclusively applied with a truly aesthetic meaning (1.1.1.1.1), e.g., “graceful”, “elegant” or “sublime”, or they can have a double function, meaning they can be used with a non-aesthetic and an aesthetic, quasi-metaphorical meaning (1.1.1.1.2), e.g., terms like “unified”, “dynamic”, or “balanced”. The terms in group 1.1.1.1.1 we could name “truly and exclusively aesthetic” qualities.

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Sibley is concentrating on clarifying the logical status of our group 1.1.1 and its sub-groups (“We cannot prove with arguments that something is graceful” etc.) and does not seem to consider the group’s 1.1.2 and 2 worthy of a discussion.

Karl Svoboda [2], on the other hand, wishes to acknowledge “only one truly and purely aesthetic category, the beautiful and the ugly”, precisely those categories (1.1.2), which Sibley ignores. “The graceful constitutes a part of the Beautiful, and the other values -- the Sublime, the Base, the Tragic, the Comical, the Innovative, the Naive, the Artificial, the Realistic, the Idealistic, the Serious, the Baroque, the Classical, the Mysterious, and the Transparent -- are not categories or basic concepts, but rather styles of art, artistic convictions, or other values ... one cannot force them into a system.”

Other authors, e.g. Max Dessoir [3], differentiate within the aesthetic experience a limited number of aesthetic responses, e.g., Beautiful - Ugly, Base - Sublime, Comical - Tragical.

To my knowledge, Wolfhart Henckmann [4] attempted the most comprehensive configuration of aesthetic concepts in our time. He arranged many terms within an “open, functional system” which does not claim to be strictly systematic and is “subjugated to changes caused by interior and exterior factors” because it is “sociologically and historically conditioned”. Henckmann assumes that “aesthetic experience is constituted as a special relationship between subject and object” and therefore he posits “three rows of categories in which the subject, the object or the special relationship between those two determine the character of the individual categories”. These three rows of concepts are further subdivided “according to the ontic quality of the three determinants of aesthetic experience”: the “subject aspect” according to psychic functions like sense perception, imaginative power, emotion etc., the “object aspect” according to “material qualities, basic structures of genres or art styles”, the “relationship aspect“ according to “differences in the dynamics of aesthetic experience”, its “narrowness, width or height”. - This compilation embraces those terms discussed by Sibley as well as those excluded by Svoboda.

Henckmann also sketches the character of the “Aesthetic”, “a concept of the aesthetic which permits dividing aesthetic categories into various groups”. For that purpose, he relies on older definitions, following mainly Hamann’s [5] keywords “isolation”, “concentration”, and “intensification”. - He does not discuss the concept of the “Artistic”.

II. Some Preliminary Questions:

In order to understand the relationship between the concepts of “the Artistic” and “the Aesthetic”, we have to ask ourselves some preliminary questions.

1. How Do We Use The Term “Art” [6]?

The oldest and widest meaning derives from the Latin term “ars, artes” and resembles the English “skill” or the German “Können”, as in “the skill of baking bread”. Until the Romantic period, the “art of writing poems” was understood in a similar way (e.g., by the “Meistersänger”) and so was the art of producing music and architecture. Also the “Liberal Arts” (“Artes liberales”) at the universities have nothing to do with our new and subjective concept of art. The connotation was a tradition of rules, which have to be mastered. In Asia, this understanding was valid until the beginning of the influence of the Western striving for originality and innovation at any price. In the traditional arts (e.g., in Japanese Noh and Kabuki) it is still the rule. The breaking of rules by genius, which Western “Deviation Aesthetics” in particular has ranked as its highest value, is even in the West no older than the Renaissance.

Also relatively new is the differentiation between so-called “high” art and merely “applied”, “decorative” or “entertaining” arts. The latter are not expected to be original to the same degree. All of these differentiations relate mainly to art objects and not to aesthetic objects, the former being the material basis for the latter.

2. What Is The Difference Between “Art Object” and “Aesthetic Object”?

According to Ingarden [7], the former is simply an object produced (or selected) within the conventions of a cultural tradition (and in the West often in partial contradiction to them) intended to be experienced aesthetically. This aesthetic experience may or may not actually occur. If it does occur, then the Art Object (artifact) becomes an Aesthetic Object within the experience of the recipient. Since the artifact is only (and can only be) an “intentional object” with many “spots of indeterminacy” (no poet can tell, no painter can paint everything), the recipient is challenged in each act of art appreciation to fill in, or “concretize”, these spots of indeterminacy. S/he does that with the help of experience and imagination. This is a “quasi-creative” act (though not completely free) and therefore enjoyable. But, since each recipient has a different “horizon of expectation” (Jauß[8]), one recipient’s aesthetic object will not completely resemble another’s, even though both have the same artifact as a material basis (no two viewers in a museum see exactly the same painting).

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