Malcolm Budd's mistake about aesthetic pleasure

In an otherwise fascinating and agreeable paper, Malcolm Budd writes "'noting something's value with pleasure' means nothing other than taking pleasure in something's possessing a valuable quality of some kind - pleasure in the reliability of one's car, the thickness of the walls of one's house, the speed of one's computer, the excellence of one's spectacles, the good fit of one's new shoes, the purity of the water, the power of the vacuum cleaner, the high level of one's IQ, the strength of the cable, the accuracy of the thermometer, and so on.  But none of these is an aesthetic pleasure, each of them being disqualified by the fact that it is a propositional pleasure - pleasure in the fact that one's shoes fit so well, for example."  (22)  This is a very rich mistake.  It is true that propositional pleasure is different from aesthetic pleasure:  we can thank Budd for this distinction.  But in most of these cases there is both propositional pleasure and aesthetic pleasure.  Yes I can be pleased that my shoes fit so well, but I can also be pleased by the way that my shoes fit so well:  the second is a sensory pleasure, not pleasure in a fact. Similarly,  I can be pleased that my car is reliable, or I can be pleased by the new feel of my car after it has been worked on, the new feel of reliability.  The second is aesthetic.  I can be pleased by the fact that my walls are thick or I can be pleased by the look and feel of the thick walls of my newly purchased (but possibly quite antique) house.  I can be pleased that the vacuum cleaner is powerful or I can find pleasure in the feel of vacuuming with my powerful vacuum cleaner. I can be pleased by the fact that my computer is fast, or I can be pleased by the feel of the speed of my computer.  I can be pleased that the water is pure or I can be pleased by the pure taste of the water.  Although I may be pleased that I have a high IQ it is not clear how there can be an aesthetic version of this.  Nor do I see room for aesthetic pleasure in experiencing the accuracy of a thermometer.  I can however both be pleased by the fact that a cable is strong and also by the way that the cable feels strong when I touch it and the way it looks strong when I look at it.  If Budd were right, there could be no such thing as everyday aesthetics, but I believe I have shown he cannot be right. The quote is taken from Budd's article "Aesthetic Essence" which appears in Aesthetic Experience edited by Richard Shusterman and Adele Tomlin (New York: Routledge, 2008)

Can children's games involve aesthetic judgments and pleasures?

Kendall Walton, in his fascinating aticle "How Marvelous! Toward a Theory of Aesthetic Value" suggests that they cannot, or at least for the most pat do not.  (in his Marvelous Images:  On Values and the Arts, Oxford University press, 2008 3-21...originally JAAC article).  He says "Participation in children's games of make-believe doesn't demand or even encourage judging the value of props, or games (types or tokens), or participants, or acts of participation....Children don't endeavor to perform well, in participating in their games;  it seems out of place to judge that one child did a superb job of playing dolls..."  (6)  This is right as it stands but perhaps a bit deceptive.  I remember back to playing games where we dressed up as pirates and turned a piece of furniture into a pirate ship.  Surely in putting together the costume or the selecting the object to serve as a "ship" we judged some to be better than others:  that looks good, that does not.  The quality of the prop might well have enhanced our playing experience:  some pieces of furniture just work better as pirate ships.  Moreover, some kids just are better at playing than others:  we know this because they select playmates.  Also, some play sessions are better and more fulfilling than others.  Following Dewey, one could say that some examples of playing games count as "an experience" and some do not.  The ones that do would count, for Dewey, as aesthetic, and the ones that do not would not.  Of course Walton doesn't say that this never happens:  he just thinks that evaluation doesn't happen, and for an experience to be aesthetic aesthetic evaluation has to be present.   This all relates to everyday aesthetics of course.  When I wrote The Extraordinary in the Ordinary I had forgotten about Walton's essay, although I must have heard him give it since I was at the Summer Intitute in the Histories of the Arts in San Francisco when it was originally given.  The work is actually quite significant for everyday aesthetics since it seeks to distinguish between aesthetic and non-aesthetic pleasure.  It doesn't exclude the possibility that everyday experiences can be aesthetic, but it does definitely draw a dividing line.

Consider what he has to say about folk art.  Walton says that many folk art traditions are like children't games of make-believe.  "People may participate in singing or dancing or acting, or watch with interest and enjoyment as others do, without it ever occuring to them to ask how good aesthetically the performance or the work performed is, or whether it is better or worse than another one." (7)  And this, on his view, would indicate that they are not having an aesthetic experience, for that would involve an aesthetic pleasure and that must have as a component "pleasure taken in one's admiration or positive evaluation of something" (13).  But surely gaining pleasure from watching someone else dance involves an implicit evaluation that the dance is worth watching.  Why does one have to consciously state to oneself that this is good or better than something else for the pleasure to be aesthetic?  I think Walton is right that there is a reflective element to aesthetic pleasure, but the reflective element might be much more widespread than he makes it out to be.

How important is positive aesthetic value in making photography art?

Louise Lawler Monogram -- Arranged by Mr. and Mrs. Burton Termaine, New York City
1984

Sherri Irvin says it is not very important. She admits (in "Artwork and Document in the Photography of Louise Lawler" Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70:1 Winter 2012 79-90) that it was crucial to photography's gaining acceptance as an art form:  the photographs of Julia Cameron being "formally stunning."  Irvin denies however that "aesthetic value is necessary" for photographs to be art.  Although I do not know whether positive aesthetic value is necessary, I was somewhat surprised (actually, rather stunned) by Irvin's key example for her case, Louise Lawler's photography of artworks by famous artists in various contexts (i.e. in collections, storage spaces, etc.).  She says "a number of Lawler's photographs do not even tempt us to think that they might be art by virtue of their formal or aesthetic features.  Some of her photographs of artworks in corporate or auction settings are, in my judgment, aesthetically ordinary, even drab or depressing.  An example is Who Says Who Shows Who Counts (1989), which shows Warhol's Wicked Witch on the wall of a boardroom... This is not a criticism of Lawler's photographs as artworks: they are designed to make us attend to and reflect on the institutional framework within which artworks circulate, and sometimes that institutional framework is a very drab and ordinary one."  (86)  You can see a good image of this work here.  What struck me when looking at Lawler's photograph was that it has strong aesthetic qualities.  The terms "visually powerful" and "striking" come to mind.  "Aesthetically ordinary" seems, in my judgment, to be way out of place.  Of course if I walked into the boardroom portrayed I would probably think it was drab (but for the prominent Warhol).  But this photograph strikes me as rich in meaning in a way that the boardroom itself could not be (for example:  the single marker pen standing up on the table seems to reverberate with the Wicked Witch theme.)  So I would opt out of the "us" in Irvin's phrase "do not even tempt us."  Perhaps Irvin and I have very different understandings of the term "aesthetic."  By her combining it with "formal" one gets the sense that she believes that the only aesthetic values are formal values, for example harmony or symmetry (I am never quite sure what falls into the category of formal values.)

Irvin goes on to give a second reason why positive aesthetic qualities are not important in making Lawler's photographs art: :  "even when her photographs clearly do traffic in positive aesthetic value, as many do, very often it is the kind of aesthetic value that creates an association with nonartistic forms of professional photography" for example evoking interior design photography.  The example she gives for this is  Monogram -- Arranged by Mr. and Mrs. Burton Termaine, New York City 1984I could not find an internet copy of the black and white version of this work, the one that  Irvin gives in her essay.  This is a shame since that version is much better than the color version I got from Artnet.com above. Although the colored version given above does look almost indistinguishable from something in an interior design magazine, the black and white version shows the hanging ropes above and the air duct grating also above the artwork (which is a Jasper Johns flag painting).  Those elements make the work far more interesting formally, especially in juxtaposition with the bed below.  In neither photograph is the aesthetic value of the work the same as the aesthetic value one would find in a very similar looking design magazine photograph.  The aesthetic value of the illustrated version for example is influenced by the title as well as by its presentation to the world as art.  Irvin thinks that the important thing that makes art art is what brings it into the institution:  "when a set of objects was created by a person who is clearly aware of and engaged with the artworld, that engagement should be the focus of our inquiry"....presumably our inquiry into how it comes to be art.  So Irvin's conclusion is "at least with regard to works of our contemporaries, positive aesthetic value is not normally a key criterion in determining that they are art."  (86)  I should also add that Irvin has no problem with outsider art being entered into the realm of art because of positive aesthetic qualities, but only as a last resort if there is nothing that connects such art to an artworld institutional context.

Is Perception Necessary for Aesthetic Experience?

Amir Konigsberg has published an article, "The Acquaintance Principle, Aesthetic Autonomy, and Aesthetic Appreciation"  British Journal of Aesthetics 52:2 (2012) 153-168  in which he argues that perception is not necessary for aesthetic experience.  This is not a controversial view when it comes to aesthetic properties of scientific laws or mathematical theorems.  However Konigsberg's interest focuses on conceptual art.  Part of the issue is whether we can trust the testimony of others with respect to aesthetic qualities.  Here, I would agree with Konigsberg that if someone I respect tells me that a movie or a work of visual art is aesthetically good then I will have some reason to believe it is aesthetically good.  If the film critics on the Rotten Tomatoes web site tell me I should see a particular film, I will take them seriously.  I will assume they know what they are talking about and will therefore assume that it is probably a good film.  Since I tend to like the same sorts of films film critics like then I'll probably like this one too.

However Konigsberg also argues that "in some domains the perception of the aesthetic object appears to be inconsequential to its aesthetic appreciation" and he believes that Conceptual Art is such a domain.  He starts with Robert Rauschenberg's "Erased De Kooning" (1953) (and I will limit my comments to this example) in which Rauschenberg spent a month erasing a work by the famous painter De Kooning and then presented the result as his own work.  The canvas, as Konigsberg observes, is almost white with faint traces of ink and crayon.  I have observed this work, which is owned by the San Francisco Museum of Art.  I should note that the work is also recognizable as a De Kooning. (You might just be able to see this if you look at the highest resolution reproduction available on the internet.)  Konigsberg thinks that we do not have to see this work to properly appreciate it.  It only needs to be described.  I feel uncomfortable with this position.  I do think that having a work of conceptual art described to me can induce in me an appreciation of the thought behind the work.  However, I am hesitant to say that I could really appreciate the work as a work of visual art without actually seeing it.  Konigsberg thinks the entire content of "Erased de Kooning" is non-perceptual.  It is true that in order to appreciate "Erased de Kooning" properly I need to know something about it.  It is also true that as I learn more about this work it comes to look different to me.  But this is true for a Rembrandt as well.  The fact is that whenever I experience a work of art the perceptual aspect of my experience is going to be influenced by what I know about it as well as what I am prompted by it to imagine.  So I do not understand Konigsberg's idea that one inquires into background knowledge to get the "non-perceptual meaning...of the perceptual object."  The background information informs the perceptual meaning of the object.  Moreover, it is a perceptual object....so to say that it has "non-perceptual meaning" does not make much sense.  So I wonder whether it is true that "there are aesthetic experiences [of works of art] in which perception is unimportant."  Konigsberg thinks that "no important information about Rauschenberg's piece is presented in the way it looks..."  But it seems to me that getting information about the piece is not the same as appreciating it.  It is important to see the piece because the way it looks (including how it looks to us when we have a lot of knowledge about its origins) is essential to the piece.  I suspect that Konigsberg has not even seen this piece since he does not mention, for example, that it looks like an erased de Kooning.  He probably thinks there is no point in actually seeing the piece.  But isn't this a problem?  I say you cannot appreciate "Erased de Kooning" until you have seen it:  just having it described to you provides nothing more than appreciation of the thought behind it.  Here is where our intuitions (Konigsberg's and mine) diverge radically.  Whereas Konigsberg thinks it would be "bizarre" to "come up close and appreciate" this work, I think it would be bizarre not to do this:  if you are really going to apprehend the artwork you need to actually spend some time looking at it...and since it is a small work, and the effects are subtle, then coming up close is necessary in this case.  That's at least what I did when I saw the work.  Konigsberg thinks it is a matter of choice between "considering the patterns left over" after the erasure and "appreciating the painting's absence."  He chooses the latter.  However, I believe it is not a choice at all:  you should consider the erasure of the original painting by de Kooning as your look at and consider the patterns left over after Rauschenberg's act of erasure.  Konigsberg thinks I am "missing the point" but in fact he is missing the point.  "Erased de Kooning" is, after all, a work of art put on display in a museum. It is related intimately to a body of work of Rauschenberg all of which is made with the intention that people perceptually contemplated it.  Such works are intended to be looked at, not just thought about.  Konigsberg says "if there is aesthetic value to de Kooning's piece, it resides in the background knowledge we have about it, not in what we see in it."  (164)  This strikes me as doubly bizarre:  first, this is not de Kooning's piece, but Rauschenberg's piece, a piece based on a former piece by de Kooning. (I suspect that this is just an editorial mistake...but it is one that reveals a lot.)  Second, if the aesthetic value would just be in the background knowledge then reading about the piece, say in Konigsberg's article, would be sufficient... but it is not.  Konigsberg asks his readers to say whether what he has said about the piece elicits an aesthetic experience of the piece and whether the aesthetic experience would be the same kind as they would get through perceptual experience of the piece.  Perhaps there would be an aesthetic experience (we can find thoughts beautiful for example) but it would not be the same kind of experience since it would not be an experience of a visual work of art.

Can an ordinary good conversation be an aesthetic experience?

Noel Carroll in "Recent Approaches to Aesthetic Experience" just published in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70:2 (Spring 2012) 165-177 puts pretty serious limits on appreciating conversations aesthetically.  In an argument against Gary Iseminger, who stresses that experiencing something aesthetically is appreciating it for its own sake, Carroll argues Iseminger would hold the following type of convivial conversation between friends would be aesthetic: "Perhaps it is a conversation about some event in the past; maybe it is about the time when they all toured Frankfurt together on their senior year abroad in college.  Suppose the conversation moves smoothly.  Suppose everyone has something interesting to recall.  Suppose that the spirit or feeling of their adolescent companionship is rekindled in the retelling of these youthful adventures, although not because they are artfully narrated, but only because they are honestly spoken." (p. 167). He thinks this is not an aesthetic experience on his "ordinary construal" of that idea.  This seems obvious to Carroll, but not to me.  From the quote Carroll seems to assume that for the conversation to produce an aesthetic experience it must be "artfully narrated."  Or at least, being artfully narrated would do the trick. Although I am not a big fan of the phrase "for its own sake" I do think that a conversation does not need to be artful in any way to be aesthetic.  The conversation Carroll suggests has many aesthetic properties.  Moreover, it fits Dewey's concept of "an experience" as described in Art as Experience.  This seems like another example of separating the aesthetics of everyday life from the aesthetics of art, or subordinating one to the other.

The Aesthetics of Fashion

I just read a delightful article by Nickolas Pappas, "Fashion Seen as Something Imitative and Foreign."  British Journal of Aesthetics 48:1  Jan. 2008 1-19.  Pappas doesn't actually discuss the aesthetics of fashion very much.  But he does speak of "the impulse towards differentiation, improvisation, variation, the free play with fashion's rules that in real life generates those new styles that wind up being imitated."  So on his view Philosophy has often been opposed to fashion because it involves imitation, but then neglects the creative dimension of fashion.  It is this creative dimension that is aesthetic.  Someone tries a new combination because it looks good to him, not in some small way, but has a certain aura of significance.  I also like the point that "fashionability begins in the home, people really can be at home in their clothes."  Pappas ends by saying that fashion will be understood better if we being with people "engaged in the self-conscious task of dressing themselves..."  (all quotes page 19).  Pappas explains the lack of interest in the inventive aspect of fashion by noting that the inventors of fashion are often seen as foreign.

Another intriguing article on this topic is  Rémy G. Saisselin, “From Baudelaire to Christian Dior: The Poetics of Fashion,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , 18: 1 (Sep., 1959) 109-115. He writes "a dress may be at some moment of its existence, a poem of form, color, and motion, and that at such a privileged instant the dress may transform the wearer into a poetic apparition." (114)

Kant on Genius

My comment here is going to be just based on the material in the textbook I am using, Goldblatt and Brown's Aesthetics, pp. 408-410. I'm sure whatever I'll say will be pretty limited, but given this material I would say that Kant has an interesting theory of genius insofar as, unlike many other aesthetic theories, it emphasizes the teacher/student relationship and stresses the idea that each of us is potentially a genius. A genius is going to be someone who is both capable of producing something original and is academically trained, i.e. trained in the skills necessary for the field. The talent needs to be trained to produce works that can be judged good. The product can't be original nonsense: it must be original but in the the sense of "original" we use when we expect a good philosophical paper to be original, i.e. to be a contribution to a tradition. In addition, the genius is someone who is in a student/teacher relationship in which "following" rather than "imitation" is the rule. The student does not imitate the teacher. Rather, the student follows the teacher by being inspired by the teacher's work, that is assuming that the student has similar abilities to the teacher's. (There are some areas in which we just don't have talent. However, it is quite possible on Kant's view that everyone is talented in some area. Since we all have the faculties of imagination and undertanding, we are all basically equal, thus capable of genius.) The good teacher then would be someone who gets the student to discover the genius within. When the student finds his or her own genius he or she using the imagination and the understanding in free play to create rules for his or her art. These rules basically constitute the style of the genius. In addition, they allow the genius to create of world of her own, as for example, when Van Gogh creates his own world in "Starry Night," one that follows his own rules.