Aesthetics
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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- "Some of the meaning of aesthetic as an adjective can be illuminated by comparing it to anaesthetic, which is by construction an antonym of aesthetic. If something is anaesthetic, it tends to dull the senses or cause sleepiness [and induce boredom]. In contrast, aesthetic may be thought of as anything that tends to enliven or invigorate or wake one up."
Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is a branch of philosophy called value theory or axiology, which is the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. Aesthetics is closely associated with the philosophy of art.
Aesthetic universals
The philosopher Denis Dutton identified seven universal signatures in human aesthetics:
Denis Dutton's Aesthetic Universals summarized by Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate
- Expertise or virtuosity. Technical artistic skills are cultivated, recognized, and admired.
- Nonutilitarian pleasure. People enjoy art for art's sake, and don't demand that it keep them warm or put food on the table.
- Style. Artistic objects and performances satisfy rules of composition that place them in a recognizable style.
- Criticism. People make a point of judging, appreciating, and interpreting works of art.
- Imitation. With a few important exceptions like music and abstract painting, works of art simulate experiences of the world.
- Special focus. Art is set aside from ordinary life and made a dramatic focus of experience.
- Imagination. Artists and their audiences entertain hypothetical worlds in the theater of the imagination.
It might be objected, however, that there are rather too many exceptions to Dutton's categories. For example, the installations of the contemporary artist Thomas Hirschhorn deliberately eschew technical virtuosity. People can appreciate a Renaissance Madonna for aesthetic reasons, but such objects often had (and sometimes still have) specific devotional functions. 'Rules of composition' that might be read into Duchamp's Fountain or John Cage's 4'33" do not locate the works in a recognizable style (or certainly not a style recognizable at the time of the works' realisation). Moreover, some of Dutton's categories seem too broad: a physicist might entertain hypothetical worlds in his/her imagination in the course of formulating a theory.
Increasingly, academics in both the sciences and the humanities are looking to evolutionary psychology and cognitive science in an effort to understand the connection between psychology and aesthetics. Aside from Dutton, others exploring this realm include Brian Boyd, Joseph Carroll, Nancy Easterlin, David Evans, Jonathan Gottschall, Paul Hernadi, Bracha Ettinger (artist and psychologist), Patrick Hogan, Elaine Scarry, Wendy Steiner, Robert Storey, Frederick Turner, and Mark Turner.
Related
aesthete - aestheticism - aestheticization - aesthetic movement - art - beauty - camp - criticism - culture - grotesque - judgment - kitsch - morals - music - senses - sublime - taste - ugliness
