I accept Saito's expansion of the concept of the aesthetic to include these kinds of responses. There is a dialogue going on here since Saito may have been partly inspired in this by an early article of mine on neatness and messiness as aesthetic qualities: “Everyday Surface Aesthetic Qualities: 'Neat,' 'Messy,' 'Clean,' 'Dirty',” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53:3 (1995) 259-268. This was reprinted in The Aesthetics of Human Environments ed Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (
One difficulty here is that Saito associates contemplation and disinterestedness and with rejection of the proximal senses of taste, smell, and touch. This is not my approach: I see contemplation as applicable to multi-sensory experience. Contemplative aesthetic experience of sexual intimacy for example is the preferred mode. Thus, on my view, one can take an aesthetic attitude towards everyday phenomena, and this can be a more valuable, actually is generally a more valuable, way to approach such phenomena, as long as it does not interfere with getting the job done.
Actually, then, I disagree with the notion that actions such as cleaning, discarding, and purchasing without any contemplative dimension are "typically the way in which aesthetics functions in everyday life." They may in fact be typically the way in Western alienated capitalist society. But they may not be in other societies, for example in Denmark or Bhutan. Moreover, a better society would be one in which the contemplative or disinterested dimension of aesthetic experience of the everyday would be enhanced. So, to put the point in another way, when Saito says that she wants to include not only aesthetic experiences of art, however broadly defined, but also "those responses that propel us toward everyday decisions and actions without any accompanying contemplative appreciation" (11) I would count this domain as, yes, aesthetic, but only at the very lowest level, and not something to be encouraged. It is at the mid-level, where responses such as cleaning and choosing are not "almost automatic" as Saito puts it, but are mindful and at least minimally examples of contemplative appreciation because mindful of aesthetic qualities, that a happy life is constituted. (I also think that other things that Saito says in her first chapter are actually more in accord with this position.)
I understand the motive behind Saito's dichotomy: the need to move away from the hierarchy in which everything is seen in terms of Western fine art. Saito eloquently demolishes that position. What I am offering is hopefully the dialectical next stage. As with Saito, I also think my approach is more in accord with a multi-cultural, global viewpoint. But this is because I think that in most traditional or tribal cultures, and in many other non-Western cultures, the middle, mindful, aesthetic domain, plays a more important role in life. I agree with those people who believe that we should be more like the Navajo or the Bali people in their approaches to aesthetic experience, as much as we can given the Western-based world that surrounds us. It is the Western mindset that promotes the dichotomy of humdrum practical vs. high art aesthetic. I think that ultimately both Saito and I wish to undercut this dichotomy.
I also agree with Saito in attacking the tendency to see the aesthetic either as "highly specialized and isolated from our daily concerns, namely art, or else something trivial and frivolous, not essential to our lives, such as beautification and decoration" (12) and I agree that the low-level experiences that we are both interested in are important for practical purposes.
However, although we both want to "restore aesthetics to its proper place in our everyday" lives (12), and reclaim its status in shaping the world, I wish to do so by encouraging and enhancing mindful and contemplative approaches to the everyday, whereas Saito is concerned that these approaches are too associated with an art-centered approach to aesthetics. I agree that art-centered aesthetics can "compromise the rich diversity of out aesthetic life" but am not convinced that it always does. Nor am I convinced that what she calls "experience-oriented aesthetics" (12) is detrimental to a sound everyday aesthetics as long as "experience" is not just understood in such a way as to privilege the distal senses or extreme forms of disinterested approaches to aesthetic objects.
I also agree with Saito that "art is almost always regarded [in Western aesthetic theory] as the quintessential model for an aesthetic object" (13) and I believe that she is absolutely right to pursue this line. (This makes me consistent with her quote from my 1995 article in support of her position.) Saito presents an excellent discussion of the problems of art-centered aesthetics in the section with that name.
My only caveat would be a response to Korsmeyer's approach to the aesthetics of food. Saito quotes Korsmeyer with approval as saying "the addition of taste and food to the domain of established aesthetic theory presents problems: both inevitably come off as distinctly second rate, trailing the distance senses and fine art." I just cannot agree that it is never right to understand food in terms of fine art: my own view that something like the El Bulli dining experience is at the same level of high art as the best example of Japanese tea ceremony, and for the same reasons. We must not turn our Western prejudices against the proximal senses into a determination of what makes fine art: i.e. that fine art must use the distant senses.
Nor do we have to see all food preparation as fine art in order to concede that some is. Those who see the highest level Michelin star type dining experiences as somehow second-rate in relation to fine art painting are missing the point. Saito further quotes Korsmeyer that "the concept of art, dominated as it is today by the idea of fine art, is a poor category to capture the nature of foods and their consumption." (17) This just seems a category mistake since food as a category is broad like photography as a category. Most photography is not art, and even less is fine art, and yet this does not mean that photography cannot be fine art. Similarly if we want to broadly capture the nature of foods and their consumption it would be best to focus not on El Bulli but on the vast number of practices involving food. I would venture to say that virtually any social practice: dance, food, music, video games, advertising, religious ritual, etc., can have a fine art manifestation (can be a product of genius, in Kant's sense). But most dance, food, music, etc. is not fine art. In any case, I would not want to, as Korsmeyer puts it, "divert attention from the interesting ways in which the aesthetic importance of foods diverges from parallel values in art." (18) Of course one of the things that food as fine art does is focus our attention on such "interesting ways" just as dance as fine art focuses our attention on features of dance that differentiate it from other art forms.
Saito further quotes Wolfgang Welsh as holding that sport, for example, "cannot substitute for Schonberg, Pollock, or Goddard" which, in my view, is just plain silly, since (1) no one is calling for substitution, and (2) the correct comparison class is master artists. It is not sports against Pollock, but Pollock compared to the El Bulli master chef, Adria.
Saito is also excellent in his list of various things that are associated with the paradigms of classical Western art and which do not apply to everyday aesthetics. Putting the point negatively, she says that there are various features that make certain everyday aesthetic phenomena non-art, like "absence of definite and identifiable object-hood and authorship, our literal engagement, transience and impermanence of the object, and the primacy of practical values of the object" (17) although I am somewhat concerned about the notion of "primacy of practical values" which can be interpreted in different ways.
Saito's discussion of frames as unique to art as opposed to everyday aesthetics is of particular interest. Ronald Hepburn had once noted that non-art objects are frame-less and that we then become the creator of the aesthetic object: the frameless character can, as Saito puts it, "be compensated by exercising our imagination and creativity in constituting the aesthetic object as we see fit." (19) I agree with this, but then I also think that this means that we are then virtually framing the object and thereby treating it as if it were a work of art at least in respect to being something that is now unified and has an imaginative/creative dimension, although this time introduced to some extent by ourselves as viewers. This is why I say in my book that artists are the greatest experts in the aesthetics of everyday life. They are constantly seeing landscapes for example as if they were works of art by framing them and exercising their imaginations in the process. It is interesting in this regard that Saito's examples of such framing (a baseball game, the streets of New York, and drinking tea) read like a poet's appreciation of these things. She has a fine poetic sensibility. But poetry is an art form. Moreover, when she says "in appreciating the smell and taste of green tea, I may incorporate the visual and tactile sensation of the tea bowl, as well as the sound of slurping" I note that this is exactly how one ought to appreciate tea in the setting of the Japanese tea ceremony, which Saito elsewhere recognizes to be an art form. (15)
Saito admits that "In constructing the object of our aesthetic experience in these cases, we do select and specifically attend to certain ingredients in our perceptual field, just as we do when we appreciate art as art." (19) The difference in her mind is that, in art, we determine this based on social convention and "institutional agreement" not on the basis of "our personal preference, taste, and inclination." And she is right at least in that there is some greater degree of institutional agreement in the realm of art, but it strikes me that this is only a matter of degree and that there certainly a lot of relying on "our own imagination, judgment, and aesthetic taste as our guide" in art as much as in everyday life. Moreover, as Saito herself has described, there are some everyday practices that involve a lot of institutional agreement, for example sports and cat beauty contests.
So I agree with Saito when she says "We can appreciate the aesthetic value of a chair, an apple, a landscape, and rain as if the were a sculptural piece...[etc.] by becoming a pure spectator/listener. However, more often than not, we experience a chair not only by inspecting its shape and color, but also by touching its fabric, sitting in it, learning against it, and moving it, to get the feel for its texture, comfort, and stability." (20) I just think that this just is what aesthetically contemplating what a chair is, what it is to be a "pure spectator" and that seeing it as if it were art must also take into account that in looking at a painting, for example, we, as Dewey observed, are subliminally aware of all of the other senses, and that the intensity of the color is that all of that other information is in some way contained in the color, and then seeing it as it functions in life, is also part of the background information subtly contained in great art. It is just that, here, that stuff is no longer backgrounded. One of the most poetical and best said passages in Saito's book is her description of eating an apple, except that she starts wrongly by saying that it is "our typical experience of an apple." It is not your typical experience in alienated Western perception. Here is what happens to Saito: it is perceptual experience of eating an apple that is mindful: "starts by beholding its perfect round shape and delicate colors ranging from red to green and holding it in our hand to feel its substantial weight and smooth skin. Then we proceed to engage all of our senses and enjoy the crunching sound when we first bite into it, the contrast between the firmness of its contents and the sweet juice flowing from it, and, of course, its smell and taste." This is the approach to an apple that a great chef would take, as well as a great poet. It is an approach consonant with the tea ceremony approach to drinking tea. It is a deeply contemplative approach to eating an apple very unlike the ordinary way we just consume food.
There is also the issue of conventions. It is not as though there are no conventions in the experience of non-art. Saito experiences three ways of appreciating raindrops. One of them is "we may experience rain by sitting under the hanging roof of a Zen temple, looking out on its attached rock garden, attending to the way in which the surface of each rock glistens with wetness and nothing the elegant movement of raindrops..." She stresses that, of the three way of appreciating rain, one the "singing in the rain" approach, and the third being that of John Muir in Yosemite, all are legitimate. I agree, and yet each is a convention, and the one associated with the Zen temple is very immersed in the entire Zen aesthetic and even in a certain architectural aesthetic interestingly similar to what Heidegger speaks of when he describes a Greek temple experienced aesthetically. So, it is wrong to say that "in all these examples, there is no institutional or conventional agreement" and that the only guide is what is more rewarding: this sort of business is not as individualistic. Finally, it is also just plain false that "experiencing a chair or an apple as a piece of sculpture ...is likely to be less interesting and satisfying than more normal ways of experiencing them" since all of the power of an Edward Weston photograph is based on the way in which doing so can be very interesting and satisfying, and, again, largely because he manages to capture, using only visual means, what it is to touch and eat the vegetable he photographs. Again, although Saito is right that it does not matter when or under what light I observe a painting by Cezanne of Mt. Sainte-Victoire and it does matter when I view the actual Mt. Sainte-Victorie, I know this especially now because i have spent a lot of time looking at Cezanne. Cezannes's painting of the mountain would not make any sense if it were not the case that he could paint it over and over again because it has different aesthetic qualities at different times. (25) Again, it is the dynamic relationship between the aesthetics of the everyday and the aesthetics of art that is most evident here.
But where our area of disagreement comes up the most is exemplified when Saito says "We clean our kitchen and bathroom for hygiene, cook and eat food for sustenance, and pick our clothes for protection and comfort." (26) Maybe the word "for" is ambiguous here, but my immediate reaction is that this is just false. I spend a lot of time doing all of these thing and I can only think of hygiene, sustenance, protection and comfort and some of the functions served by these activities...often not the most important ones. I clean my kitchen mainly for the pleasure of getting it clean, and because I have been influenced by Nhat Hanh, secondarily for the pleasure in the rhythm of the process and the attendant aesthetic qualities, then thirdly because I want my wife to be happy with the results, and maybe fourthly for hygiene - sure, of course, you want to eliminate the germs that might give you food poisoning....this is in the category of unimportant precisely because so obvious.
So now to Kant. I don't want to get deep into Kant interpretation here, and there is a lot of room for disagreement, but it strikes me that Saito's disapproval of his notion of the disinterested attitude in application to everyday aesthetics seems based largely on her understanding of what Kant means by "pure." She thinks that Kant means that pure or "free beauty" is "more legitimate" than dependent beauty. And yet Kant does not say so. We Americans have associations with "pure" that Kant may not have had with the German word it translates. Saito admits that Kant also has a concept of dependent beauty but thinks that he requires us to "surgically remove" functional value in order to appreciate the everyday. But this is not how he treats architecture, or any of the arts, all of which he sees as examples of dependent beauty, with the possible exception of music without words. Although I wholly agree with Saito that "in our everyday, normal interaction with a utilitarian object, the aesthetic and the practical are experienced as fully integrated" I am not convinced that Kant would have held otherwise. (26) Going beyond Kant, I think it would be better to say that in approaching the everyday aesthetic object we need to bracket practical considerations to see it as purposeless, to capture the "pure" aspect of the experience in free play, but that we need also to toggle between that and the other, dependent, aspect of the aesthetic object when it is an artifact and not a free beauty of nature. (How we ought to appreciate nature is not under consideration here.)
Kant however was notoriously disregarding of the near senses, color (which he called mere "charm") and of the pleasures in practical activity. Dewey, however, with his anti-dualist stance, would not have disregarded these things. So this is why I join Saito against Kant when she says "the aesthetic value of a knife consists not only of its visual qualities, but also of its feeling in my hand, determined by its texture, weight and balance, but also of its feeling in my hand, determined by its surface texture, weight, and balance, but most importantly by how smoothly and effortlessly I can cut an object because of the material, shape, length, texture, and weight of the blade and handle." (27) Saito here stresses not the fact that the knife functions well but "the way in which all the sensuous aspects converge and work together to facilitate his use." (27) All of this, and the entire paragraph in which it appears, is, I think, a major contribution.
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