Aesthetics of Everyday Life: East and West 1443860298, 9781443860291

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Aesthetics of Everyday Life

Aesthetics of Everyday Life: East and West

Edited by

Liu Yuedi and Curtis L. Carter

Aesthetics of Everyday Life: East and West Edited by Liu Yuedi and Curtis L. Carter This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Liu Yuedi, Curtis L. Carter and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-6029-8, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-6029-1

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction .............................................................................................. vii Liu Yuedi and Curtis L. Carter Part I: Aesthetics and Everyday Life Chapter One ................................................................................................ 2 Transformations in Art and Aesthetics Arnold Berleant Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 14 “Living Aesthetics” from the Perspective of the Intercultural Turn Liu Yuedi Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 26 Everyday Aesthetics and Happiness Thomas Leddy Chapter Four ............................................................................................. 48 The Dilemma of Everyday Aesthetics Allen Carlson Chapter Five ............................................................................................. 65 Foucault’s Aesthetics of Existence and the Ethics of Authenticity Heinz Paetzold Part II: The Arts in Everyday Life Aesthetics Chapter Six ............................................................................................... 80 Art Photography and Everyday Life Curtis L. Carter Chapter Seven........................................................................................... 96 Theatre and the Everyday: Three Models Susan L. Feagin

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Chapter Eight .......................................................................................... 115 The Found Avant-Garde Adile Jale Erzen Chapter Nine........................................................................................... 124 The Aesthetics of Adornments Stephen Davies Part III: Eastern Wisdom and Everyday Life Aesthetics Chapter Ten ............................................................................................ 134 Damask Napkins and the Train from Sichuan: Aesthetic Experience and Ordinary Things Mary B. Wiseman Chapter Eleven ....................................................................................... 145 Everyday Aesthetics in the Japanese Tradition Yuriko Saito Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 165 The Modern Issue of the Living Aesthetics of Traditional Chinese Scholars Pan Fan Chapter Thirteen ..................................................................................... 173 The Transition of Aesthetics in China and a New Paradigm of Living Aesthetics Wang Que Editors .................................................................................................... 181 Contributors ............................................................................................ 183

INTRODUCTION LIU YUEDI AND CURTIS L. CARTER As a recent trend of aesthetics worldwide, the aesthetics of everyday life rejects a narrow, art-centred methodology for aesthetics, and points to the continuities between aesthetic/artistic experience and everyday experience. Following this development, the subject matter of aesthetics and aesthetic engagements ceases to be merely about artworks or nature with a focus on a narrowly construed canonical set of aesthetic properties. The notion of aesthetic experience has also been expanded to accommodate a wider range of human experiences. Under the influences of the aesthetics of everyday life, aesthetic analysis has extended to all areas of living world, significantly broadening the range of studies in aesthetics. Given these developments, it is not difficult to see that the aesthetics of everyday life is beginning to prosper in both western and eastern aesthetics.

The Rise of Aesthetics of Everyday Life: West and East Since its inception, the aesthetics of everyday life has become a stream of thought with a global ambition. This interest has led to numerous systematic and in-depth works on this topic, some of which were conducted by the authors represented in this volume. 1 However, these developments still need to be sorted out and subjected to critical examination. This is one reason for the appearance of this anthology, focused on this new development of aesthetics, with essays by nine Western philosophers and another four from the East. In their discussion of the aesthetics of everyday life, these scholars offer concepts and theories necessary to the understanding of this approach to contemporary studies. The subtitle “West and East” signals an interest in the global scope of the 1

Andrew Light & Jonathan M. Smith eds., The Aesthetics of Everyday Life (Columbia University Press, 2005); Yuriko Saito, Everyday Aesthetics (Oxford University Press, 2007); Katya Mandolin, Everyday Aesthetics: Prosaic, The Play of Culture and Social Identities (Ashgate, 2007); Thomas Leddy, The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life (Broadview Press, 2012).

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views to be considered here. A salient feature of this book is that it not only represents the recent developments of the aesthetics of everyday life in the West, but also highlights the interaction between scholars in the West and the East on this topic. Thus, the project is intended as a contribution toward mutual progress in the collaboration between Western and Eastern aesthetics. What distinguishes this book from other anthologies and monographs on this topic is that it attempts to reconstruct the aesthetics of everyday life through cultural dialogue between the West and the East, with a view to building a new form of aesthetics of everyday life, as seen from a global perspective. In September 2012, an international conference on the “Aesthetics Towards Everyday Life: East and West” was held in China, the first everinternational conference on the subject matter. During the conference, over eighty scholars from across the world discussed a range of topics including “the relation between aesthetics and everyday life,” “the boundaries of art and life,” “Eastern wisdom and everyday life aesthetics,” “the relation of modern and contemporary arts to everyday life aesthetics,” “environmental aesthetics and new media and everyday life aesthetics.” The conference also provided opportunities for discussions on “urban life aesthetics” and the “contributions of Chinese history to everyday life aesthetics.” This book comprises a collection of the papers presented at the conference, with invited essays by four additional scholars whose work is important to the subject. Unlike previous developments in aesthetics focused on the arts or on nature and contemporary environmental aesthetics, which mainly had their origins in the West followed by their introduction to aestheticians in the East, the aesthetics of everyday life appeared concurrently in both the West and the East. As a result, their common interest in this topic offers the basis for scholars in the West and East to proceed as equal partners in forging new territory for investigating the theoretical and practical dimensions of the aesthetics of everyday life. Since Eastern aesthetics is traditionally concerned with the art of living, Eastern philosophers may prefer to use the term “living Aesthetics” or “Aesthetics of Living.” 2 “Everyday life” tends to designate only an aspect of human existence, while “the Art of Living” acknowledges the presence of the aesthetic throughout human experiences. This amounts to saying that there is a deep-rooted tradition of living aesthetics in the East. 2

Liu Yuedi, Living Aesthetics: Critique of Modernity and Re-construction of Aesthetic Spirit (Hefei: Anhui Education Press, 2005); Liu Yuedi, Living Aesthetics and Art Experience: Aesthetic as Life, Art as Experience (Nanjing: Nanjing Publishing House, 2007).

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Whether it is Chinese literati art or folk art, Japanese chado or gardening, or Korean porcelain or folk painting, all are part of the artistic expression of living aesthetics. For that matter, aesthetic traditions as such in many cultures have been passed on, without discontinuity, since ancient times, and today these traditions have undergone a creative transformation with heightened attention to living aesthetics in everyday life experiences. More importantly, Chinese Confucian/Taoist aesthetics and Indian Zen aesthetics, among others, are essential sources of living aesthetics in East Asian cultures. The same can be said of aestheticians from the East, who believe that Chinese, Japanese and Korean traditional aesthetics offer a “prototype” of living aesthetics. For example, it is important to note that, living aesthetics, or the idea of artful life, constitutes the fundamental paradigm of Chinese classical aesthetics, whose primary sources are Confucian aesthetics and Taoist aesthetics, with Zen aesthetics as a later addition. However, building on these roots of Chinese classical aesthetics since Lao Zi (circa 604-531 BC) and Confucius (551-497 BC), Chinese aesthetics has been on the path toward living aesthetics. Here, the point is that Chinese aesthetics is, at the outset, oriented towards everyday life, a most profound difference from European classical aesthetics. Some Western scholars agree that the “art of living” centres on a “spiritual tradition” such as Zen, and in its construction has the human experience of the ordinary as its core.3 Hence, the idea of “artful life” also exists in Western aesthetics, to a lesser degree, traceable to the aesthetics of Nietzsche, and finds expression in Foucault’s postmodern notion of “aestheticization of existence,” even it is a Socratic reflection from Plato to Foucault. 4 In his recently published Life as Art: Aesthetics and the Creation of Self (2012), Zachary Simpson defines “life as art” as follows: [it] is the persistent attempt to actualize the aesthetic in and through one’s living, seeing and thinking. This means integrating the essence of the work of art into how one shapes the contours and dimensions of one’s being … what emerges in the artful life, just like in all successful works of art, is an autonomous creation, which bears within it the traces of its production … .5

3

Crispin Sartwell, The Art of Living: Aesthetics of the Ordinary in World Spiritual Tradition (State University of New York, 1995), 1. 4 Alexander Nehamas, The Art of Living, Berkley: University of California Press, 1998. 5 Zachary Simpson, Life as Art: Aesthetics and the Creation of Self (New York: Lexington Books / Roman and Littlefield, 2012), 284. See also Bruce Fleming, The

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Simpson’s account of life as art carries aesthetics forward into everyday life aesthetics. However, his view assumes that aesthetics, as it functions in respect to art, remains the prototype for how aesthetics might relate to other aspects of everyday life.

Social Background: the Aestheticization of Everyday Life Why is the aesthetics of everyday life becoming popular today? The answer lies in part with recent developments in global society. 6 “The aesthetics of everyday life” has become a common concern for aestheticians across the world in that it represents a reaction to the profound worldwide changes in contemporary culture and art. In the context of globalization, there exists a two-way pan-aesthetic movement across the world, including a movement of “life as art” (drawing elements of everyday life into art) with a expansion of aesthetics into everyday life relatively. The corresponding element consists of a movement of “art as life” (dissolving art within everyday life), in which art loses its “aura” in Walter Benjamin’s meaning and is identified with everyday life. This latter development also includes the efforts of contemporary artists to escape the confinement of the aesthetic and create works on the borders of art and non-art. However, it is also noteworthy that in terms of its interior structure the aestheticization of everyday life is complex. It occurs on at least two levels: one is on the surface, and the other at depth. While the former refers to the superficial aesthetic transformation of material living, the latter goes deeper into the aesthetic experience of inner worlds. Respectively, these processes bring about exterior cultural change and alter individual features from consciousness to unconsciousnesss. The expectation is that the aesthetics of everyday life will unseat two fundamental hypotheses of traditional aesthetics, namely: the concepts of “aesthetic disinterestedness” and the “autonomy of art,” which represent core notions in classical aesthetics. Classical aesthetics in the European tradition had assumed that it was necessary to differentiate art and aesthetic experience from the everyday world of the senses. Hence, it was necessary to construct a theory of disinterested aesthetics to separate the aesthetic from ordinary life. With the possibility of a clear-cut dividing line between fine arts and popular arts, and the former being limited to Aesthetic Sense of Life: A Philosophy of the Everyday (University Press of America, 2007). 6 Mike Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (London: Sage Publications, 1991), 65–72.

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only a few select members of society, art and aesthetic were essentially separated from everyday life. In the contemporary Western and Eastern aesthetics, new conceptions that bring the aesthetics of everyday life to the forefront have challenged the hegemony of traditional aesthetics. A focus on discovering the aesthetics of everyday life replaces aesthetic disinterest, and there is no longer an insistence on sharp distinctions between art and the other, as found in everyday experience. Thus, continuity replaces isolation in these domains. At times, aesthetics in its contemporary forms takes on the character of anti-aesthetics, as with the followers of Marcel Duchamp. At the same time, the distinctions between high and low taste that relied upon separating art from ordinary experience are now questioned.

Philosophical Sources: Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Dewey Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Dewey argue against the dichotomy between the subjective and the objective in western philosophy. In their discussions of aesthetics, these philosophers reflect an interest in its application to everyday life. In his writings of the early 1920s, Heidegger advocated the idea of “diefaktischeLebenserfahrung” (“real living experience”). Later, this theme reappears in the concept of “Dasein” as in his Being and Time, published in 1927. Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations contains the term “Leben Form,” where art is seen as a “form of life.” Again, Wittgenstein in his 1848 note refers to music as an expression of human life. 7 John Dewey’s aesthetics is also concerned with the connection between art and other life experiences. He aims to “restore continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute experience.”8 As Dewey uses the term experience in Experience and Nature, he allows for no sharp division of the subjective and the objective, or between action and substance, and as such there is no clear gap between art and everyday life in Dewey’s aesthetics. Experience, in its consummation in everyday life, becomes art. Although Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Dewey have influenced the twentieth-century development of aesthetics, including analytic, continental, and pragmatic aesthetics, not all of which would necessarily 7

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, ed. Anthony Kenny (London: Blackwell, 1984), 80. 8 John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: The Berkley Publishing Group, 1934), 3.

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support our concern with the aesthetics of everyday life, these philosophers’ contributions to this newer development remain substantial. For example, all three philosophers reject the subject-object dichotomy in philosophy, thus clearing the way for considering everyday activities of persons as art. Of course, they differ in their understanding of how this might occur. Heidegger distinguishes between authenticity and non-authenticity in art in his calling for a return to everyday life, and while Dewey seeks to find art in the stream of experience, the followers of Wittgenstein prefer to understand art in terms of social institutions, such as the art world. Apart from their differences, it seems that Heidegger’s phenomenology, Wittgenstein’s analytic philosophy and Dewey’s pragmatism are in some respects sympathetic to everyday life aesthetics. Dewey’s theory of consummate experience is especially useful for its relevance to everyday aesthetics, as his ideas are cited in recent research by aestheticians as offering a model for the idea of promoting “artful life.” Although Pragmatic aesthetics and the aesthetics of everyday life differ in some ways, they share certain common interests—pragmatic aesthetics advocates “Art as Experience,” while the latter is concerned with “Experience as Art.” The reversal of this phrase, though seemingly simple, underscores an important difference in direction. The idea of “Art as Experience” aims at restoring the continuity of art and everyday life, its focus being on how art is integrated into everyday experience. However, the idea of “Experience as Art” has its footing in experience, emphasizing that art is merely a part of human experience, and that human experience itself possesses “aesthetic” qualities. The latter points in the direction of building a new form of living aesthetics based on everyday life.

The Aesthetics of Everyday Life: Issues and Challenges Three prevailing trends can be found in international aesthetics today: aesthetics as a philosophy of art, natural aesthetics (i.e. Anglo-American environmental aesthetics), and aesthetics of everyday life. These trends suggest that art, environment and everyday life represent the major concerns for aesthetic investigation today. Based on the analysis offered in this introduction and the research in the essays of this volume, it seems clear that the aesthetics of everyday life holds a promising future in both Western and Eastern aesthetics. Given the rapidly growing interest and its potential for attracting new audiences extending beyond the more narrowly focused traditions of twentieth-

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century analytic and environmental aesthetics, it stands to command its own share of attention in the future of aesthetic studies. As a new trend in aesthetics appearing concurrently in the West and the East in the last ten years, the aesthetics of everyday life points to a growing diversification among existing methodologies for pursuing aesthetics, alongside the shift from art-based aesthetics. The cultural diversity manifest in global aesthetics offers common ground for the collaborative efforts of aesthetics in both the West and the East. Already, there are signs of productive outcomes from the collaboration of Western and Eastern scholarly traditions on the subject of everyday aesthetics. One area where this collaboration is especially beneficial is in finding ways to connect aesthetics with a wider range of life experiences. Aesthetics in the West is generally based on the notion that aesthetics relates almost entirely to art, or to an idealized nature. Moving aesthetics beyond the limited sphere of life (the arts) that traditional Western aesthetics addresses remains a challenge. It seems that aesthetics in the East is already more closely engaged with the concrete rhythms of life than aesthetics in the West. Hence, Western aesthetics can benefit from this tradition as it seeks to develop effective approaches to bringing aesthetics into the concrete realms of everyday life. Whereas aesthetics in the West tends to focus on the extraordinary, Eastern aesthetics already understands that the aesthetic may populate both the extraordinary and the ordinary forms of experience. At present, the aesthetics of everyday life as a newly emergent approach to aesthetics may encounter skepticism among aestheticians accustomed to the rigors of analytic philosophers who prefer to discuss aesthetics at the level of abstract concepts and argument, and who tolerate the particulars of experience mainly as illustrations. For example, it may be argued that the concept of the “aesthetics of everyday life” itself is too broad for meaningful philosophical discourse. It is true of course that “everyday life” does not have clear-cut borders, but this can hardly be a significant objection given the seemingly endless debate over the concept of art itself that has taken place in aesthetics since the mid-twentieth century. The parameters of the other main target in Western, environmental aesthetics are also subject for debate in contemporary circle of aesthetics. Even if “everyday life” further opens the reference field, this is not in itself a reason to dismiss the current efforts to pursue this investigation. A related objection might be that everyday aesthetics renders problematic any efforts to identify or differentiate particular aesthetic qualities. Against this form of objection one need only recall the endless

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arguments posed as to whether it is possible to identify a discrete category of aesthetic qualities. If there were agreement on a particular set of aesthetic properties, there would be no reason to assume that their application is limited to works of art or nature. Indeed many of the aesthetic properties identified in Western philosophy, such as beautiful, pleasurable, harmonious, attractive, elegant and graceful, all seem applicable as aesthetic properties to a wide range of everyday life experiences and objects. Hence, there is no reason to abandon the pursuit of the aesthetics of everyday life in the face of such objections. On the contrary, there are many benefits to gain in bringing aesthetics to bear on a wider sphere of human life, made possible through efforts to show the relevance of aesthetics to a broader range of human actions.

Dialogue and Consensus: between East and West The essays in this book approach these questions from a variety of perspectives in Western and Eastern aesthetics. Arnold Berleant discusses the dramatic broadening of the scope of aesthetic inquiry today as extending beyond the arts and natural beauty to include environmental aesthetics in recent decades, not only of the natural but also of the social. Along with environmental ethics, aesthetics has become part of the broader scope of environmental studies and the environment includes the social as well as the natural. Aesthetics has been applied to social relations and political uses, and now most recently to the objects and situations of everyday life. Berleant views the dramatic shift from classical aesthetics as formulated by Baumgarten’s Aesthetics in 1750 as offering greater inclusiveness and also a fundamental alteration in aesthetic inquiry. This changes the nature of scholarly inquiry in aesthetics from an inquiry into aesthetics of objects to aesthetics of experience and sensibility. Liu Yuedi traces the shift in contemporary aesthetics from its recent grounding in post-analytic philosophy, with an emphasis on examining aesthetics in the context of an art world, to a renewed interest in exploring everyday life aesthetics as seen from a Chinese perspective (he called it Living Aesthetics). In their embracing of the aesthetics of everyday life including environmental aesthetics, contemporary scholars find new interest in the impact of globalization and the “natural aesthetics” of particular environments, such as the search for a new understanding of being Chinese in the contemporary arts and culture as seen by Chinese and global aesthetics.

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Thomas Leddy argues that understanding the relation of ethics to aesthetics is a necessary component for a theory of everyday aesthetics. With references to Aristotle’s theory of happiness and Confucius’s understanding of the conditions necessary to a well formed life, Leddy offers the thesis that “everyday aesthetics is important because our lives have a fundamental aesthetic dimension in so far as they are happy or not, and this dimension is one on which aesthetics overlaps with ethics.” His analysis divides contemporary theories of everyday aesthetics into two categories. The first (right) includes those (Alen Arvid Carlson, Parsons, Downey and others) who argue that aesthetics in everyday life should be treated similarly to how aesthetics is considered in reference to art. The (left) theorists (Leddy, Uriko Saito, Richard Shusterman, Arto Haapala and others) break down important distinctions between aesthetics in art and everyday life. Happiness in Leddy’s theory extends to virtually all aspects of life including nature, bodily and social experiences, as well as the activities of the mind. Allen Arvid Carlson finds a dilemma of everyday aesthetics originating in “an inherent tension between the traditional Western notion of aesthetic experience and the typical experience of everyday life.” This tension opposes the traditional aesthetic experience as “abstracted and disinterested” against the “engaging and active” features of mundane ordinary experience. Carlson examines six strategies aimed at easing the tension between the aesthetic and the everyday, only one of which he finds plausible (a cognitive approach focusing on the “interesting details, complex workings, and subtle functionings” of everyday life). Heinz Paetzold examines the relationship between aesthetics and ethics in the formation of human individuality and sociability by juxtaposing Michel Foucault’s aesthetics of existence and Charles Taylor’s ethics of authenticity. Paetzold argues that aesthetics, which focuses on the individual, helps to prevent them from being subordinated to the universal. Aesthetics discloses new perspectives on the world and stimulates us to experience the world in new ways. The experience provided by aesthetics thus draws attention to aspects of life ignored in everyday life. According to Paetzold’s understanding, Foucault posits an aesthetics of existence as a solution to the shortcomings of modern society. This new understanding of the contemporary world calls for an updated societal model replacing the Greek polis, and based on Foucault’s contemporary aesthetics of existence. Foucault identifies the key elements of attention to the details of the world around us, viewing the world from different perspectives, and the acknowledgment of aesthetics as a form of knowledge. Individuals should thus dedicate their lives to the art of living,

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which entails connecting aesthetic existence and the ethics of authenticity while overcoming the separation of art and everyday living. Curtis L. Carter examines the aesthetics of everyday actions and objects as experienced through various stages in the evolution of art photography with examples from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present including “pure photography,” staged, altered, and appropriated photographs. With philosophical references grounded in the writings of Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes, the essay traces changes in the understanding of everyday life aesthetics as seen from the eye of the camera. With the aid of the camera, photographers, from Edward Weston and Man Ray at the beginning of the twentieth century to Ed Ruscha and Jeff Walls at present, continue to show new possibilities for understanding aesthetics in human experience. Photography thus offers a window into the connections between aesthetics and everyday life. Susan Feagin approaches the aesthetics of everyday life from the perspective of theatre arts where ordinary actions may constitute portions of a theatrical performance as well as appreciation of a theatre performance. Using Allan Kaprow’s “happenings” and Antonin Artaud’s theory of audience participation as examples, Feagin demonstrates how the actions of everyday life become the materials of theatre art. Emotional responses common in everyday life thus constitute both the materials of theatre and represent an important element in audience engagement. Adile Jale Erzen finds the street objects of Istanbul as similar to those of avant-garde or arte povera, which she labels “found avant-garde.” Such objects from different areas of Turkey were not meant as art but nevertheless were produced with a sense of aesthetics that generates experiences close to the experiences afforded by the avant-garde art object. Her strategy in the search for aesthetics in everyday life is to transform street objects into art, or objects that generate aesthetic interest comparable to the experiences afforded by other recognized forms of art. Stephen John Davies examines the origins of human adornment and ornamentation, such as jewellery, in reference to the aesthetics of everyday life. His analysis suggests that personal adornments are neither trivial nor meaningless with respect to their social functions. Davies explores the connections between the aesthetic character of such adornments and their functional purposes. Mary Bittner Goldstein explores the transitions from Kantian aesthetics, in which the emphasis is on the aesthetic experiences of nature and art, and analytic aesthetics to the study of the aesthetic qualities found in everyday life. How, for example, does the aesthetic experience attained from attending to the formal and expressive qualities of a work of fine art

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differ from the appreciation of the decoration of a living room or the agreeable aroma of freshly brewed coffee? Yuriko Saito offers an account of everyday aesthetics with reference to traditional Japanese texts, in which the aesthetic, in both its positive and negative states, is found to be pervasive throughout all aspects of the everyday, including the quality of sounds, bodily movements and ritual ceremonies such as the tea ceremony, domestic chores, food, the work environment, responses to changes in seasons, and personal and social interactions. Awareness of the aesthetic in Japanese culture is grounded in a heightened sensibility, and Saito’s essay contrasts the importance of the negative aesthetics found in Japanese aesthetics with its relative absence in Western aesthetics. Negative aesthetics is considered important because it participates in shaping our worlds as well as in forming individual experiences. Pan Fan sets forth the everyday life of the traditional literati extending from the scholar’s study to outdoor poetry gatherings. This view of the aesthetics in the everyday life of the Chinese traditional scholar is set in contrast to the aesthetic features of everyday life in contemporary China. The solution of transforming aesthetics in the direction of everyday aesthetics is to return to the broad perspective found in traditional Chinese classical aesthetics. Wang Que’s methodology for aesthetics embraces both art and all levels of everyday life, including the lives of every social class. His view dispenses with aesthetics as an independent system of modern knowledge or a certain aesthetic theory, replacing them with aesthetic explorations concerning the quality of worldly life. Body, desire, consumption and pleasure replace transcendental concerns in his view of everyday aesthetics.

PART I AESTHETICS AND EVERYDAY LIFE

CHAPTER ONE TRANSFORMATIONS IN ART AND AESTHETICS ARNOLD BERLEANT Introduction Recent decades have witnessed a dramatic broadening in the scope of aesthetic inquiry. No longer focused exclusively on the arts and natural beauty, the mainstream of aesthetics has entered a delta in which its flow has spread into many channels before entering the oceanic expanse that is Western civilization. Several decades ago, environmental aesthetics began to attract interest and has grown to be an important focus of present-day inquiry. Along with environmental ethics, it has become part of the broader range of environmental studies and the environmental movement in general. This expansion has continued, interpreting environment not only as natural but also as social. Aesthetics has been applied to social relations and political uses, and now, most recently, to the objects and situations of everyday life. The course of the arts has displayed a similar succession of changes over the past century and a half, increasingly rejecting traditional paradigms of representation and incorporating into their subject matter and practices the everyday world, along with active participation by their audience. It would seem that art has overstepped all boundaries—between art and non-art, between artist and perceiver, and between art and life. Some might say that it has lost its identity entirely. Scholars committed to the study of the fine arts and traditional forms of natural beauty may consider this enlargement of the arts and extension of aesthetics a corruption of the traditional standards of those endeavours. This, of course, ignores the fact that, as an area of scholarship, aesthetics is of comparatively recent origin, only beginning with Baumgarten’s Aesthetica in 1750. Less dogmatic scholars may take these changes as worthy of inquiry in their own right, perhaps signifying a change in the condition of aesthetics. I should like to follow the second course here, for I think that these developments reflect not only greater inclusiveness but a fundamental alteration in the nature of aesthetic inquiry. Put most directly

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and succinctly, this expansion changes the field of aesthetics from an aesthetics of objects to an aesthetics of experience and sensibility. This essay proposes an account of how this has come about and what it signifies.

The Transformations of Art Developments in the visual arts since the late nineteenth century display a fascinating succession of movements and styles. Among the most notable movements are Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism, Dada, Abstract Art, Pop Art, Op Art and Conceptual Art. These have provided a surprising array of treasures for the museum-goer and rich material for the art historian. The changes seem to puzzle the mind much as they dazzle the eye, posing seemingly bizarre innovations that present insoluble obstacles to efforts at understanding the meaning of modern art and frustrating attempts at determining its boundaries. This history is, however, more than a series of changes in style, and these changes display more than degrees and variations in representation and abstraction. Let us look more closely at this succession of movements to see if there is some underlying logic to their sequence. Impressionism, to begin with, is usually explained as an attempt at capturing the fleeting effects of light, especially sunlight, on objects and landscapes. Things seem to lose their solidity and appear to vibrate with solar energy, dissolving into vaguely-defined, multi-coloured hues as the atmosphere is charged by sunlight. With Post-Impressionism, objects regained solidity and radiated a strong presence, while Fauvism flourished with untamed brushwork and intense hues. In Expressionism objects were coloured in the rich tones of powerful emotion, but this was then replaced by the dissolution of solidity into the geometrical structures of Cubism, sometimes broken up into their parts, rendered as if from multiple perspectives, or made transparent by displaying their inner structure. Futurism, in contrast, transmuted the solidity of objects into the disconcerting dynamism of frenetic motion. The iconoclasm of Dada cast ridicule at the once noble objects of artistic idealization and bourgeois contentment by introducing the prosaic and irreverent into the sanctorum of art, while Surrealism transformed the world of ordinary objects into the bizarre distortions and irrational juxtapositions of dreams. As the visual arts became emancipated from the constraints of representation, the figurative centre of art was increasingly abandoned. Its representational subject-matter became unimportant and the purely

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pictorial elements of hue, texture, form and composition became the source of rich originality. Artists forsook any attempt at capturing the world of objects, and used colour and form for their visual effect alone. One could consider Pop Art the antithesis of abstraction, where common objects and commercialized forms take centre stage, larger than life, or it could be the apotheosis of abstraction, presenting stylized illustrations as pure pictorialism. Abstraction reappeared in the subtle variation of repeated simple forms for their pulsating effect on the eye, ingeniously exploited by Op Art, while in Conceptual Art the object disappeared from space and became only an imaginative construction. This kaleidoscopic survey of the modern course of the visual arts verges on caricature, but it nonetheless reveals a fascinating process of transfiguration. In this succession of movements one may see imaginative transmutations of the art object under the influence of light, of the eye, of emotion, and of dreams, along with varying degrees of manipulation of the object’s structure, its solidity, and its variability under the influence of thought and imagination. This is often seen as a history of the iconoclasm of the modern artist, constantly defying conventional expectations and traditional modes, turning it into an account of art movements that increasingly reject traditional paradigms and incorporate the everyday world and the participation of the viewer. This history could then be read as an account of the vagaries of artistic imagination coupled with the unbridled irreverence of the artist. To be sure, one can often find such expressions in the manifestations of the artistic temperament and its inclination to notoriety. However, I should like to suggest another, very different reading, which is considering the course of modern art as a narrative of transformation, not of objects, but of experiences. Indeed, these developments signify a shift from object-based art to experience-based art. The account displays not so much a sequence of distorted or abandoned objects as a progressive sequence of ways of seeing. The object becomes less important as the visual effect increases in significance until, in abstract and conceptual art, the object disappears entirely. From its dissolution into light and colour in Impressionism, the tactile sense of its pure physicality and weight in Post-Impressionism, its transformation into a stimulus for evoking an emotional response in Expressionism, its structural dissolution in Cubism, its physical dissolution into movement in Futurism, its transition into parody in Dada, its oneiric transmutation in Surrealism and into an ocular stimulus in Op Art, its disappearance in abstract art in favour of the sensibility of pictorial qualities, the lampooning effect of its parody in Pop Art—all these have made the object

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less important or not important at all. In its place is art’s effect on the spectator. But to put it this way is actually misleading because it masks a crucial difference—the audience in art is no longer a spectator but has become a participant and co-creator, absorbing the visual or textual materials, responding physically at times to its stimulation, and intellectually as well as emotionally to its social critique, as in Futurism’s glorification of war and Dada’s critique of bourgeois society, and by its participation in the creative process, activating the art object. It is essential to understand that this transformation in the arts did not turn appreciation into pure subjectivity, into psychological effects disconnected from the body, the art work, and the situation. Rather, these arts demanded sharpened awareness and acute perceptual attention to their sensible qualities. They required recognizing the effects of art as conscious body experience—physical as well as mental. Often this was required by the perceptual demands of the art work for active participation in an appreciative process that collaborates with the artistic one. Indeed, these traditionally separate functions were fused in experiencing art. We have, in short, the transformation of an art of objects into an art of experiences. What does all this signify? To respond to this question, let me turn to the scholarly analogue of the artistic process.

The Transformations of Aesthetic Inquiry While art has undergone a series of transformative changes, aesthetic theory has largely remained mired in the framework and concepts of the eighteenth century, grounded mainly in Kant’s aesthetics. I have written at length about the persistence of obsolescent concepts such as aesthetic disinterestedness, contemplation, purposiveness without purpose, the quest for universality, and the subjectivity of aesthetic judgments, as well as questioning distinctions such as pure and adherent beauty, the sensible and the supersensible, and aesthetics and morality. 1 Important as these ideas may have been two centuries ago in establishing aesthetics within the framework of a systematic philosophy and giving legitimacy and independence to the arts, these concepts have become increasingly irrelevant to the actual practices of artists and the appreciative experiences of the art public.

1

Most of these ideas, characteristic of traditional “modern” aesthetics, find their support in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1790, 1793).

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Despite being constrained by outmoded and irrelevant aesthetic concepts, aesthetic inquiry has, in recent decades, pursued a number of directions that reflect the expanded scope of the arts and aesthetic appreciation. Alongside this, the art public has been increasingly willing to accept the use of innovative art materials and the widening range of art experiences that extend beyond the museum or concert hall and into the home, the workplace, the street, and the field. More significant still is the complete alteration of aesthetic appreciation from the receptive contemplation of objects to an active aesthetic engagement with the materials and conditions of art works. Nor is it any longer clear or even possible to separate aesthetic value from moral value, as the social significance and uses of art and the aesthetic have come into greater prominence. Further, the increasingly political applications of the arts belie their traditional exclusivity. Along with the innovative approaches of the arts has come an enlargement of the scope of aesthetic experiences, and new scholarly interests have emerged over recent decades. Among these are environmental aesthetics, the aesthetics of politics, social aesthetics, including relational aesthetics, and everyday aesthetics. The progressive broadening in the scope of aesthetic inquiry and away from the conventional venues of art began, I think, largely by focusing attention on the aesthetics of environment. 2 It started with a return of attention to nature and an exploration of modes and conditions of appreciation that differ greatly from the disinterested contemplation of distant scenes. Walking in the woods, paddling in a stream, hiking in a wilderness, driving down a highway or along a rural road in an agricultural landscape and sailing a boat became recognized as occasions for aesthetic pleasure, where an intrinsic part of the enjoyment lay in entering into some activity 2

The literature here has become extensive. Some of the influential works include R. W. Hepburn, “Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty,” in Wonder and other Essays (Edinburgh: The University Press, 1984); R. W. Hepburn, The Reach of the Aesthetic (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001); Arnold Berleant, The Aesthetics of Environment (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992); Arnold Berleant, Living in the Landscape: Toward an Aesthetics of Environment (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997); Arnold Berleant, Aesthetics and Environment, Theme and Variations (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2005); Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment (New York: Routledge), 2000; Allen Carlson, Nature and Landscape: An Introduction to Environmental Aesthetics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Yrjö Sepänmaa, The Beauty of Environment: A General Model for Environmental Aesthetics (Environmental Ethics Books, Denton, TX, 1993); Emily Brady, Aesthetics of the Natural Environment (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003).

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in the landscape. At the same time, recognition grew that aesthetic engagement in environment embraces more than the appreciation of nature, for a large part of environmental experience in the developed world takes place in cities. Urban aesthetics began to enter into environmental discourse, and including the built environment expanded the conditions and possibilities of appreciation. Even outer space became a subject for aesthetic awareness.3 Recognizing an aesthetic interest in the environment has had powerful implications for aesthetic inquiry more generally, for aesthetics has become concerned not only with art objects but with aesthetic situations. And this shift was not only a conceptual one but a material one—the focus of appreciation was no longer on a discrete object but on a situation, and the traditional dualistic assumption of Western philosophy that considered appreciation a subjective response to an external object became increasingly inappropriate and challenged. I have proposed replacing this model with the concept of aesthetic engagement to reflect the embeddedness of the appreciator in every environmental context. A related development is the formulation of ecological aesthetics or eco-aesthetics, primarily by Chinese environmental aestheticians.4 Once the environment gained aesthetic legitimacy, it led to other enlargements of the venues of aesthetic appreciation. One of these lies in discerning aesthetic values in social contexts, where the aesthetic is found in situations involving different forms of human relationships, such as friendship, family and love. Aesthetic values are present in other associations as well, but often in negative forms. Indeed, negative aesthetic values are common in commercial situations, voluntary associations and, indeed, even forms of social relations. Such contexts have led to recognizing perceptual experiences that are common in social situations as negative in character. Identifying such forms of aesthetic negativity as aesthetic affront, aesthetic pain and aesthetic depravity has led to broadening the scope of aesthetics to include negative values. Because these values identify harmful practices, aesthetics merges with ethics to form a basis for social criticism.5 3

See “Designing Outer Space” in Berleant, The Aesthetics of Environment, 99– 113. 4 Zang Fan-ren, An Introduction to Ecological Aesthetics, A Review of the Relationship between Eco-aesthetics and Environmental Aesthetics (Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2010), in Chinese. “Eco-aesthetics” is the term Zeng and his followers use as a shortened form of “ecological aesthetics.” 5 The literature here is small but growing. See Arnold Berleant, Sensibility and Sense: The Aesthetic Transformation of the Human World (Exeter, UK: Imprint

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A similar development is the idea of relational aesthetics developed by the French critic Nicolas Bourriaud.6 Applied to the work of a number of contemporary artists, relational aesthetics recognizes that their art creates a social space, a context for human relationships. The art work then becomes an occasion for human interactions and the audience is turned into a community.7 This is a development in the understanding of aesthetic experience, but under the influence of traditional aesthetics, the art world has co-opted the insight of relational aesthetics through the practice of replacing the term “relational aesthetics” with “relational art,” thus turning a situation into an object and entirely missing the point. Despite this, the insight of relational aesthetics remains valid. Political aesthetics is yet another broadening of inquiry closely allied with social aesthetics. Jacques Ranciére has called attention to the political implications of sensibility: its distribution, its control, and its uses, and he has developed this in the service of an argument for radical democracy.8 Going about this from another approach, Crispin Sartwell has interpreted the force of political ideology from the fact that it is actually an aesthetic system, and he sees politics promoting its goals by creating an aesthetic environment. 9 Employing similar materials, Davide Panagia has related the force of an idea to the bodily sensations that accompany it. He finds sensation at the source of political thought and the aesthetic as the source of political action.10 My own recent work has joined both the social and the political implications of the aesthetic. Recognizing that the heart of the aesthetic lies in sensibility, I have claimed that developing the awareness and capacity of aesthetic sensibility leads to immensely broader and richer social experience. At the same time, through an awareness of negative aesthetics and the negative sublime, aesthetic sensibility provides a

Academic, 2010); Arnold Berleant, Aesthetics Beyond the Arts (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012); Miyahara Kojiro & Fujisaka Shingo, Invitation to Social Aesthetics; Exploration of Society through Sensibility (Kyoto: Minerva Shobǀ, 2012), in Japanese. An extended discussion of negative aesthetics occurs in Berleant, Sensibility and Sense, 155–192. 6 Originated by the art critic Nicolas Bourriaud in his 1998 book, Esthétique relationnelle (Relational Aesthetics). Bourriaud later associated this idea with the effects of the internet on mental space. 7 See Ibid., 113, 13. 8 See Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans. Gabriel Rockhill (Continuum International, 2004). 9 Crispin Sartwell, Political Aesthetics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010). 10 DavidePanagia, The Political Life of Sensation (Duke University Press, 2009).

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powerful tool for criticism by recognizing the human consequences of exploitative commercial and political practices.11 Perhaps the most recent direction to emerge from the liberation and expansion of aesthetic experience is what is known as the aesthetics of everyday life. Although there is presently a flowering of work on everyday aesthetics, prevalent philosophical theory has long known the possibility of aesthetic gratification in ordinary objects and events, although it has degraded it. Widely valued by poets, especially Romantic poets and those in Asian traditions, the aesthetic in everyday situations has also been recognized by novelists.12 It may be most convenient, though, to locate its contemporary intellectual origins in John Dewey’s Art as Experience.13 In that book, Dewey argued against the separation of art from life by basing aesthetic experience on the biological and cultural conditions of human life. He located the aesthetic not in an internalized awareness of sensation and feeling, but in “a complete interpenetration of self and the world of objects and events.”14 Further, Dewey maintained that “the esthetic… is the clarified and intensified development of traits that belong to every normally complete experience.”15 I shall not attempt a chronology of the development of the present interest in the aesthetics of everyday life. Instead, let me mention some significant stages in its emergence. An important source came from the innovations occurring in the arts in the mid-twentieth century. A prime influence was the work of the American composer and theorist John Cage. 11

Arnold Berleant, Sensibility and Sense: The Aesthetic Transformation of the Human World (Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2010), Arnold Berleant, Aesthetics beyond the Arts (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012). 12 Consider, for example, this passage from Daniel Deronda (1876): “[U]nder his calm and somewhat self-repressed exterior there was a fervor which made him easily find poetry and romance among the events of everyday life. And perhaps poetry and romance are as plentiful as ever in the world except for those phlegmatic natures who I suspect would in any age have regarded them as a dull form of erroneous thinking. They exist very easily in the same room with the microscope and even in railway carriages: what banishes them is the vacuum in gentlemen and lady passengers. How should all the apparatus of heaven and earth, from the farthest firmament to the tender bosom of the mother who nourished us, make poetry for a mind that has no movements of awe and tenderness, no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the distant, and back again from the distant to the near?” George Eliot, Daniel Deronda (1876) (New York: Knopf, 2000), 221. 13 John Dewey, Art as Experience (1934) (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1958). 14 Ibid., 19. 15 Ibid.,46.

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Experimental and innovative, Cage’s interest in aleatoric (chance) music became widely known through his piano work of 1952, 4’33”, which consists entirely in the chance occurrence of audible sounds that occurred during that interval of time. Happenings, a predecessor of present-day performance art that originated in the 1950s, eliminated the separation between the art work and the viewer, who became a participant in the work, which often comprised the unscripted, chance events of an ordinary situation. Such innovative developments in the arts had a profound effect on concurrent work in aesthetics. Beginning in the 1990s, a series of steps in the expansion of aesthetic appreciation were taken that resolutely rejected the traditional separation of art from life activities, in the conviction that the scope of the arts has no limits. Two books published in 1992 made an extended case for a broader and more inclusive understanding of the aesthetic that incorporated all activities within the purview of art. David Novitz’s The Boundaries of Art16 abjured all limits to art and extended the aesthetic to personal and social relationships, and from these to politics. My book, Art and Engagement,17 extended an argument I had first made in 1970 for reconstructing aesthetics under the influence of innovative developments in the contemporary arts. 18 The argument explored the philosophical implications of considering aesthetic appreciation in both traditional and contemporary arts as active perceptual engagement. Two decades later, my book elaborated a theoretical position for the enlargement of aesthetic experience that would include the objects and events of daily life based on the practices and experience of the arts themselves. Since these publications there has been a proliferation of work developing and detailing the unbridled extension of the aesthetic. The aesthetics of everyday life is the most recent stage of this progressive broadening in the scope of aesthetic inquiry which began with environmental aesthetics, and important work has already appeared. The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, a collection published in 1995, includes 16

David Novitz, The Boundaries of Art (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992). 17 Arnold Berleant, Art and Engagement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992). 18 Arnold Berleant, “Aesthetics and the Contemporary Arts,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism XXIX (2) (Winter l970): l55–l68. Reprinted in The Philosophy of the Visual Arts, ed. Philip Alperson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), and in part in Esthetics Contemporary, ed. Richard Kostelanetz, 1978.

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essays on such topics as social aesthetics, the aesthetics of place, unplanned building, landscape, sport, weather, smells and tastes, and food. 19 Katya Mandoki’s Everyday Aesthetics of 2007 was the first extended treatment of the subject. 20 An English-language version of a book that had originally been published in Spanish in 1994, Mandoki’s Everyday Aesthetics is a far-reaching study of aesthetic theory of unusual scope and originality, centring around the crucial role of aesthetics in the contemporary, highly technological and complex societies in which we now live. This was soon followed by another volume with the same title and an equally distinctive and original focus, Yuriko Saito’s Everyday Aesthetics.21 Richly informed by the author’s native Japanese culture and her long experience teaching at a school of art and design, this book details the pervasive presence and influence of the aesthetic over the many facets of everyday life, remarkable and unremarkable alike. The most recent addition to these extended treatments is Thomas Leddy’s The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life.22 Leddy develops an extensive critical review of much of the literature, as well as the current scholarly debates, leading to his own contribution in the form of a phenomenologically-oriented approach to aesthetics. He proposes the concept of “aura” to identify the quality an object can have when experienced as aesthetic, a quality not confined to art objects but to the culturally-conditioned experiences of daily life.

Conclusion: The Transformations of Aesthetic Theory I have depicted a broad landscape on these pages, rather like one of Constable’s wall-sized canvases, and I hope it shares their realism in its theoretical and historical perspective on developments in art and aesthetics. For besides the greater range of interests and applications in aesthetics, these developments have demonstrated the obsolescence of traditional concepts. Let me suggest some implications that seem to emerge from the trends in aesthetic experience and theory I have been detailing here. Although the authors I have mentioned may not subscribe

19

Andrew Light & Jonathan M. Smith eds., Aesthetics of Everyday Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). 20 Katya Mandoki, Everyday Aesthetics: Prosaics, the Play of Culture and Social Identities (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). 21 Yuriko Saito, Everyday Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 22 Thomas Leddy, The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life (Peterborough, Ont: Broadview, 2012).

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to all of the ideas I offer in my conclusion, I think that the developments to which they have contributed support this transformation of aesthetics. To begin, it is clear that there is a sharp dislocation between the practices of many contemporary artists, their art works, and the experience and behaviour of the art public, and also with modern aesthetic theory, especially as it has been formulated under the influence of Kant. That theory is grounded in a separation between the subjectivity of aesthetic experience and the objectivity of the art object, in a separation between beauty and utility, and in the sequestering of the arts and natural beauty in museums and privileged views and away from the ordinary course of human life activities. While such a theory may be thought to honour the special aesthetic forcefulness of the noblest artistic creations, it does so at the expense of severely constricting the scope of aesthetic appreciation, and that belies the prevalence of aesthetic value in human cultures. Is it possible to have a theoretical frame that retains the validity of the sacred experience of great art and awesome natural scenes while, at the same time, recognizing and accounting for the fact that aesthetic interests pervade every domain of human experience? I believe that it is possible and that we need concepts that can accommodate both in proper proportion which can be developed by enlarging the scope and understanding of aesthetics. First, we need to overcome the fragmentation that results from the many divisions drawn by traditional theory, such as between the appreciator of art and the art object, between beauty and utility, and between cognitive and non-cognitive experience. We need, in fact, a unifying concept that can admit connections, mutual influences, and reciprocity without losing the aesthetic altogether. Such a concept may be found in the notion of an “aesthetic field,” an idea that embodies the understanding that the presence and functioning of aesthetic values occur in a context that encompasses the principal factors in the experience of aesthetic value. The aesthetic field can accommodate artistic innovation and expanded occasions for appreciation along with traditional arts, for it enfolds the four functional constituents present in all: the objective, the appreciative, the creative, and the performative, none of which can be taken independently of the others.23 The central idea in appreciation now becomes “aesthetic engagement,” which recognizes the participation that active appreciation requires and that the contemporary arts increasingly demand. We also need to recognize 23

A further sign of the extension of the aesthetic may be seen in the annual French observance in Marseilles of a Semaine de la Pop Philosophie. See www.lesrencontresplacepublique.fr (accessed August 14, 2012).

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that the art object is no longer the sole repository of aesthetic value and to accept that it need not occupy an elevated status. For now, the art work can be something of ordinary use or no object at all but a perceptual experience, or even only an idea, and neither need it be complete and polished, but a simple processive event like much of daily life. The context of appreciation has also changed along with the unity of the art object, both of which now share the incompleteness of ordinary experience. That is why the human environment has become the wider locus of the aesthetic and the context in which specific questions need to be asked and considered. We need to discern this new landscape of aesthetics.

CHAPTER TWO “LIVING AESTHETICS” FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE INTERCULTURAL TURN LIU YUEDI In the second half of the twentieth century the mainstream of analytic aesthetics was, in essence, a philosophy of art, but at the end of the century global aesthetics ceased being solely interested in art, turning to nature and lifeworld. And since the turn of the century, aesthetics has become broader with its concerns for the “environment” (following nature) and “lifeworld.” Correspondingly, new trends of “environmental aesthetics” and “aesthetics of everyday life” have appeared alongside “art philosophy.” Initially, environmental aesthetics belonged to natural aesthetics in a narrow sense, but later became aesthetics of the human environment in a broad meaning. Aesthetics of everyday life was initially only interested in art, but later returned to the broader “living world.” In this sense, “contemporary art,” “environment” and “lifeworld” have constituted three new trends in global aesthetics.

Global Aesthetics and Interculturality: East and West Meanwhile, with the introduction and advancement of the Intercultural Turn of global aesthetics, the dialogues between the West and the East— also between the West and the West, and the East and the East—are bound to be more frequent. For both the Western and Chinese aesthetics, these dialogues will undoubtedly contribute to understanding the issues of contemporary art, environment and lifeworld. It is important to note that, with the boundaries between art and everyday life being dismissed by contemporary artists, and the environment turning into the environment of human life, contemporary philosophy of art and environmental aesthetics have taken

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on a tendency to fuse into aesthetics of living. The aesthetic is acknowledged to be the “profound standard” for the quality of human life and the development of the environment and lifeworld. In intercultural interaction, a type of living aesthetics with “Neo-Chineseness” can provide great insights into a contemporary philosophy of art, environmental aesthetics and the aesthetics of everyday life, fostering the mutual development of Chinese and Western aesthetics.1 In the 18th International Congress for Aesthetics, held in China for the first time, the main trends in contemporary global aesthetics carried on. “Art philosophy,” “environmental aesthetics” and “aesthetics of everyday life” continued to be the most popular topics for participants across the world. Yet, two sections on “aesthetics of everyday life” and “tradition and contemporary: the rebirth of living aesthetics,” mainly consisting of Chinese scholars, also attracted much attention. It is widely known that there is a deep-rooted tradition of aestheticizing everyday life in Chinese culture and art. As a matter of fact, like its Western counterpart, Chinese culture maintains a subtle connection between beauty and life, and art and life. This makes it possible to work on an “aesthetics of everyday life” to bridge the Chinese and Western aesthetics.2 The newly-emerged “living aesthetics” does not merely belong to the West, but more to the East, in particular to India, China, Korea and Japan, due to the contributions they make. Note that in the West the aesthetics of everyday life is “reflexive,” or in other words is a reaction against a certain tendency in Western aesthetics itself, while in Oriental aesthetics it is a reaction against “the Other,” namely the invading heterogeneous elements of Western aesthetics. In a sense, the aesthetics of everyday life in the West is coloured by artificiality, while in Oriental aesthetics it merely draws on the local aesthetic traditions, hence a natural construction. Today, to echo the call of the world aesthetics for an intercultural turn, Chinese aesthetics is trying to engage itself in global dialogicalism, and with its living aesthetics in “Neo-Chineneseness” is making important contributions to the two-way expansion of Chinese and Western aesthetics.3 Yet, the concept of “interculturality” does not merely imply 1

Liu Yuedi, Aesthetics in Everyday Life (Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2011), 132–136, 138–145, 235–242. 2 Liu Yuedi, Living Aesthetics: Critique of Modernity and Re-construction of Aesthetic Spirit (Hefei: Anhui Education Press, 2005) 407–409. 3 For more about “Neo-Chineseness” see Mary B. Wiseman & Liu Yuedi (eds.), Subversive Strategies in Contemporary Chinese Art: Western Criticism and Chinese Aesthetics (Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2011), 73–75.

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meeting and understanding “the Other”; it also implies that any aesthetic or artistic discourse must be apprehended from the perspective of different cultures so as to create a new pattern of development of world aesthetics. With further development of the intercultural turn in international aesthetics, there will be more frequent dialogues between the West and the East, as well as between the West and the West, and the East and the East, and this will undoubtedly foster the development of both Chinese and Western aesthetics in the directions of art philosophy, environmental aesthetics and aesthetics of everyday life.

From Art Philosophy, Environmental Aesthetics to Aesthetics of Everyday Life Over half a century after analytic aesthetics’ dominance, global aesthetics finally abandoned its focus on art and began to deal with “nature” and “life.” It became broader, and more vital. Now, “art,” “environment” and “lifeworld” constitute the three greatest fields of interest of philosophical aesthetics, which in turn leads to three new trends in global aesthetics, namely: “art philosophy,” “environmental aesthetics” and “aesthetics of everyday life.” Why these three new trends? It is important to note that, in the 1960s and 1970s, when Mikel Dufrenne was a leading figure in world aesthetics, these trends were not as clear in aesthetics and the study of art.4 However, after analytic aesthetics was dominant in world aesthetics, art became all but the only object of aesthetics. Analytic aesthetics itself was even construed as “art philosophy.” It was only after analytic aesthetics had ruled Western aesthetics for over half a century that philosophers began to break free of the study of art, either in analytical or non-analytical traditions, and that “nature” and “everyday life” became the new concerns of aesthetics.5 Afterwards, environmental aesthetics and aesthetics of everyday life were formed. Initially, environmental aesthetics belonged to “natural aesthetics” in a narrow sense, but later turned towards “aesthetics of the human environment.” Aesthetics of everyday life was initially only interested in art, but later returned to the broader “living world.” Now, the aesthetics of everyday life has attracted more attention. It is acknowledged 4

See Mikel Dufrenne, Main Trends in Aesthetics and the Science of Art (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1979). 5 See Andrew Light & Jonathan M. Smith, eds., The Aesthetics of Everyday Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 39.

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by authors such as Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith that “in contemporary aesthetics, when philosophers have wanted to expand their field of interest, it has mainly been in two directions, popular culture and the aesthetics of human life.”6 Clearly, this confirms “art,” “environment” and “lifeworld” as the main trends of contemporary global aesthetics; on the other hand, it also seems to imply that in future the focus of global aesthetics will shift from popular culture to the aesthetics of human life. So, the trend of “everyday aesthetics” has appeared in post-analytic aesthetics, whether in the West, where everyday life was far from an important field of interest, or in the East, where great store was set by everyday life. In any case, it is justifiable to say that aesthetics of everyday life has become a new cornerstone of both Chinese and Western aesthetics. Today, with the boundaries between art and everyday life being dismissed by contemporary artists, and the environment turning to the environment of human life, contemporary philosophy of art and environmental aesthetics have presented a tendency to fuse into the aesthetics of everyday life, since the aesthetic is believed to be the profound standard for the quality of human life, and the development of the world. Into this new field, Chinese living aesthetics provides peculiar insights.

Since the “End of Art” and the Beginning of “Living Aesthetics” The rise of the aesthetics of everyday life owes a debt to the shift of interest of philosophical inquiries from art to human life—while the “environmental aesthetics” shifts its focus on nature to the human environment, aesthetics of everyday life is formed in breaking free of the confinement of art and returning to life. That is, the aesthetics of everyday life has its starting point in the perspective of art and the artworld, in particular in Arthur Danto’s thesis with regards to the end of art history, which, “involving the idea that art is finally liberated from its exile by philosophy, is richly suggestive of an aesthetics of everyday, for it would seem that such liberation would make art in some way a significant or relevant part of the world.”7 With its open-ended analysis Danto theory of the art world is also a forerunner of everyday aesthetics. In 1964, in a symposium on “The Work of Art” at the 61st Annual Eastern Meeting of the American Philosophical 6 7

Ibid. Light & Smith, The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, 56.

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Association, Danto delivered his address on “The Artworld,” which already forecastshe return of art to everyday life. 8 For Danto, the identification of an artwork is a process in which it is attributed to a certain atmosphere, as part of history. Danto concluded that “to see something as art requires something the eye cannot decry—an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld.” 9 Here, he brings the artwork back to the artworld, and in so doing broadens the concept of “art.” In his definition of art, Danto actually establishes the “artworld” as the focus of philosophical inquiry, and in so doing relocates the artwork within life. Later philosophers, in particular George Dickie, regard art as institutional in nature.10 Note, that to define art in terms of the “artworld” is in essence to anticipate the emergence of aesthetics in the “lifeworld.”11 Danto’s philosophical aesthetics begins with his theory of “artworld” and culminated in his thesis with regards to the “end of art.” From the perspective of Chinese living aesthetics, in order to work out new hypotheses it is reasonable to follow the steps of Danto and Hans Belting, a German art historian who advocated the end of art history in 1984. In an age of globalization, the issue concerning the end of art is not merely relevant to the development of art itself so that it only refers to the end of art history. As a matter of fact, the end of art is not only indirectly related to the end of a “macro” history, but is also directly related to the end of a “micro” history—Euro-American modernity. Before and outside of the Europe-dominated modernity, the concept of art hadn’t been “created.” That is to say, before the Age of Enlightenment the concept of “fine arts” as a general class hadn’t appeared; on the other hand, at that time the concept of “art” hadn’t been in use outside of European culture, whether in old Asia, Africa or the Americas. An art history includes the pre-modernity’s times simply because its author(s) acquired a “reflexive” artistic perspective. Similarly, the old Asian, African and Latin American arts, which began to appear at the beginning of the modernity’s times, are credited with an “artistic perspective” with which to view “the Other.” From the perspective of Oriental wisdom and culture,

8

Arthur C. Danto, “The Artworld,” The Journal of Philosophy 19 (1964): 571–584. Ibid., 580. 10 George Dickie, Art and Aesthetic (London: Cornell University Press, 1974), 29. 11 For a more detailed discussion of “lifeworld (Lebenswelt), see the late works of Husserl. My idea is that a sort of “living aesthetics”can be constructed on the basis of lifeworld. See Yuedi, Living Aesthetics, 139–174; Liu Yuedi, Living Aesthetics and Art Experience, 105–127. 9

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whether before Euro-American modernity (a temporal relation), or outside of it (a spatial relation), the problem of “art” did not yet stand out. Nevertheless, with the end of art the aesthetics of everyday life stands out. Conceptual art, performance art (or body art), and land art (or earth art) can be said to represent three directions of the “end of art”: (1) art ends in concept; (2) art returns to body; and (3) art returns to nature. Naturally, they lead to three branches of aesthetics, namely: the aesthetics of conceptualism, the somaesthetics, and the natural aesthetics. These branches of aesthetics further correspond to the conceptualism of the Chinese traditional Zen Buddhism, the syntheticism of Confucianism, and the natural aesthetics of Taoism. Chinese traditional aesthetics is in nature an aesthetics of living, and due to its insights is greatly conducive to reexamining the issue concerning the end of art. If we combine these directions of art we have the “identification of art and life.” That is, art finally returns to life, whether in the sense of “life as art” or in the sense of “art as life.” For the artists, as well as for the audience, the identification of art and life makes a better human existence possible. As indicated above, conceptual art aims to return to the “concepts in real life,” performance art to return to the “living body,” and land art to the “natural environment as the background of human life.” Combining them, we have a new and more vital living aesthetics in view. Art ends in life; further, art ends in everyday life, and this is one of the most important lessons from art philosophy and aesthetics of the second half of the twentieth century. In the future, living aesthetics is likely to be the mainstream of aesthetics. Perhaps living aesthetics only arises where art is thoroughly dissolved within life, or where life is thoroughly aestheticized. In any way, the return of art to life—in reality a return to a broader lifeworld—helps to bridge the gap between the Chinese and Western aesthetics, and to pave the way for intercultural interaction.

Environmental Aesthetics integrating into Living Aesthetics Environmental aesthetics mainly has its origin in the English-speaking world and some continental countries, against the background of analytic aesthetics being the dominant form of aesthetic inquiry in the second half of the twentieth century. As we know, “nature” was an important category in Kantian aesthetics, but when Hegel treated aesthetics as purely a philosophy of art, and in so doing expelling “nature,” the fields of interest of aesthetics began to narrow. More devastatingly, the later dominant analytic tradition showed little interest in nature and life. It is acknowledged

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that Ronald W. Hepburn’s paper, 12 “Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty” (1966), published in the British Analytical Philosophy, is the forerunner of environmental aesthetics. However, to be more precise, early environmental aesthetics mainly dealt with “nature.” A radical turning point came when the “aesthetics of human environment” was put high on the agenda, marking an important shift of the object of environmental aesthetics. Such an inner change in environmental aesthetics was led by Arnold Berleant and Allen Carlson. Their pioneering works, which include Berleant’s Living in the Landscape: Toward an Aesthetics of Environment, Carlson’s Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture,13 and his paper, “On Aesthetically Appreciating Human Environment,” 14 set the keynote of human environmental aesthetics. It seems safe to say that the radical change that environmental aesthetics has undergone occured on two levels: (1) in terms of its object of study, it shifted from the aesthetics of the natural environment to the aesthetics of the human environment; (2) in terms of object of appreciation, it shifted from nature to the human environment. Interestingly, there is an intrinsic tension between environmental aesthetics and living aesthetics. While aesthetics of everyday life is regarded by many as a part or a branch of environmental aesthetics, the inverse is also true. That is, environmental aesthetics can also be considered a part of living aesthetics, in that we all “live” in the environment. Thus, a question arises—is living aesthetics included in environmental aesthetics or in living aesthetics? In other words, is life within the environment, or is the environment subject to human life? For the environmentalists, the idea that the environment is centred on human life inevitably leads to anthropocentricism. However, the environment is only meaningful in relation to human life. Without the human, who cares whether the environment exists or not? So, the environment is always the environment for the human—as individuals or as a species—though different environments (say, the housing environment, and the earth’s atmosphere) are more or less distanced from 12

Ronald W. Hepburn, “Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty,” reprinted in Allen Carlson & Arnold Berleant, eds., The Aesthetics of Natural Environments (Ontario: Broadview Press), 2004. 13 See Arnold Berleant, Living in the Landscape: Toward an Aesthetics of Environment (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997). 14 Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture (London: Routledge, 2000); Allen Carlson, “On Aesthetically Appreciating Human Environment,”Philosophy and Geography 4: 9–24.

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the human. It can be argued that, as a consequence of human transformation over ten thousand years, especially modern industrialization, the environment on earth has wholly been “humanized.” As a matter of fact, the environment and human life are inseparable, interdependent and define each other. Inasmuch as the environment as a whole consists of the natural environment, the urban environment and the cultural environment, it is more natural as the environment of human life. The interdependence of, and interaction between, the human and the environment in which they live will inevitably enable the environmental aesthetics to fuse into aesthetics of living. Today, environmentalaesthetics is advancing in three directions. In the first place, it is shifting from theoretical environmental aesthetics towards the applied environmental aesthetics, trying to achieve a balance between the dynamic development and innovation of future environmental aesthetics, or carry out a constructive interaction between theory and application. In brief, environmental aesthetics is moving towards collaboration between theoretical and applied environmental aesthetics, as it makes it possible to integrate various aspects of environmental aesthetics. Second, it is shifting to ecological aesthetics, in a cultural rather than biological sense. Here, “ecology” is not a biological concept, but a crucial notion in understanding the relationship between the human and their cultural environment. Hence, it is in fact a new “cultural ecology,” concerned with the human ecosystem that is intimately related to life. The basic emphasis of ecology on the dependence of the organism on the ecological system also applies to the human organism, which amounts to saying that the human being as a natural existence is in continuity with other beings in nature, an idea close to Oriental wisdom. Third, environmental aesthetics is shifting towards social aesthetics. That is to say, it not only deals with issues of art and nature, but also with human sociality, because the environment is not merely natural, but also social. As the most complex “ecological system,” the environment itself contains social, cultural, political, legal and economic elements, apart from its physical and biological elements. So, aesthetic activities involve both the natural and the social worlds. Yet it is important to emphasize that the applied environmental aesthetics, ecological aesthetics and social aesthetics all lead to the same goal—living aesthetics. Why then must the environmental aesthetics fuse into living aesthetics? The reason is that the environment and life have the same aesthetic standards. According to Arnold Berleant, the aesthetic not only constitutes high standards for judging the goodness of the environment, it is also the measurement of the quality of our everyday life.

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A consensus is being formed among the environmentalists since the problems they deal with are mostly about the environmental aesthetics centring on human life, in theory or in practical application, that environmental aesthetics must be able to “make the world better.” Yet, while they claim that aesthetics is capable of changing the world, their subtext is that all forms of life cannot make the world better. For them, only an “aesthetic life” can change the environment, and such a life is also the standard for measuring the quality of life and the goodness of the environment. However, the proclamation that environmental aesthetics makes the world better entails an ethical appeal, just like the “Positive Aesthetics” advocated by Carlson and others that tries to provide an ontological foundation for environmental ethics. 15 In fact, an ethical motivation is lurking deep in environmental aesthetics. Just as Holmes Rolston ċ puts it, “aesthetic experience is among the most common starting points for an environmental ethic,” and “if beauty, then duty.”16 Yet, it is noteworthy that environmental aesthetics and environmental ethics are after all two distinct disciplines. So, while environmental protection is merely the bottom line of ethics and morality, the aesthetic perspective makes the world more beautiful, and makes an ecological interaction between human and environment possible. The aesthetic simply constitutes the inherent criterion for environmental protection and the mutual development of the human and environment.

The Aesthetics of Everyday Life and Living Aesthetics with “Neo-Chineseness” The contemporary post-analytic period has witnessed a new trend of living aesthetics in both Chinese and Western aesthetics, and is obviously, this is a new project for both Chinese and Western aesthetics. It can be said that living aesthetics is becoming a new landmark in the development of global aesthetics.17 Of course, the most important reason for the rise of living aesthetics is the inclination of analytic aesthetics to take art as the 15

Liu Yuedi, “Natural and Environmental aesthetics: Its Background and Philosophical Contributions,” World Philosophy 3 (2008). 16 Holmes Rolston III, “From Beauty to Duty: Aesthetics of Nature and Environmental Ethics,” in Arnold Berleant, ed., Environment and the Arts: Perspectives on Environmental Aesthetics (London: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2002), 127. 17 Yuriko Saito, “Everyday Aesthetics,” 87–95; Tom Leddy, “The Nature of Everyday Aesthetics,” 3–22.

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only field of interest that needs to be corrected. For global aesthetics, this means a return from art to everyday life. In 2005, The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, an anthology, was published by Columbia University Press, echoing my monograph, Living Aesthetics: Critique of Modernity and Re-construction of Aesthetic Spirit.18 This book, edited by two ethicists, Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith, contains recent philosophical inquiries into the “aestheticization of everyday life.” In 2007, in her new book Everyday Aesthetics, Yuriko Saito, drawing on the wisdom in traditional Japanese aesthetics,19 claims that the aesthetic experience of everyday life is an important part of aesthetic life, and some Japanese traditions of life that she articulates has it origin in China. So many aestheticians in the East show how human aesthetic experience largely influence the development of the world as well as the quality of life. The Euro-American countries need living aesthetics because they want to go beyond analytic aesthetics, while China needs living aesthetics because it tries to rediscover the tradition of Confucianism, Taoism and Zenism. Regardless, in turning to everyday life, both the Chinese and Western aesthetics underline the necessity of appreciating art by way of living aesthetics, and looking at everyday life by way of art. Why is living aesthetics becoming a common project for both the Chinese and Western aestheticians? The reason is that profound changes have taken place in contemporary culture and art, such that living aesthetics rises as a direct reaction against them. More specifically, in an age of globalization, there is a two-way, pan-aesthetic movement sweeping the world: on the one hand, there is a movement of “life as art” (i.e. drawing elements of everyday life into art), a continuation and expansion of the “aestheticization of everyday life”; on the other, there is a movement of “art as life” (i.e. dissolving art within everyday life), in which art loses its “aura” and is identified with everyday life. So, the historical elements that foster living aesthetics do not only include the aestheticization of contemporary culture on various levels, but also include the fusing of aesthetic elements into culture and society. More importantly, living aesthetics depends upon contemporary artists to get out of the scope of the aesthetic and work on the border of art and non-art. In such a new historical situation, the rising living aesthetics is expected to undo two fundamental hypotheses of traditional aesthetics, namely: the conception of “aesthetic disinterestedness” and the “autonomy of art.” As we know, these two conceptions nearly define classical 18

See Light & Smith, The Aesthetics of Everyday Life; Liu Yuedi, Living Aesthetics. 19 See Yuriko Saito, Everyday Aesthetics.

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aesthetics. In classical aesthetics, culture was deemed “sacred,” so it was legitimate and valid to construct a “disinterested” aesthetic judgment. And, in a traditional, hierarchical society, there was a clear-cut dividing line between “fine arts” and “popular arts,” with the former being limited to only a few elites, inaccessible to the great masses. As a consequence, art and the aesthetic were separated from everyday life. However, in contemporary society and culture the hegemony of traditional aesthetics has been challenged by new conceptions: (1) the traditional conception of “aesthetic disinterestedness” is challenged by the “aestheticization of everyday life”; (2) the traditional conception of “purposeless purposiveness” is challenged by the “purposive purposelessness,” resulting from the industrialization of art and culture; and (3) the traditional “isolationist perspective of aesthetic experience” is overwhelmed by the “continuity of everyday experience,” brought about by the trend of “turning the aesthetic to everyday life.” On the whole, aesthetics in its contemporary form has an anti-aesthetic character which requires that traditional (especially Kantian) aesthetic theories be re-examined. So, an important reason why living aesthetics plays an essential role in building a new type of global aesthetics is that it argues against the “autonomy of art” and the “disinterestedness in aesthetic experience.” Yet, in this process the value of Chinese aesthetics should not be neglected, for it can lead to a type of living aesthetic with “Neo-Chineseness” that is largely conducive to the construction of new global aesthetics.20 To get to the roots of the matter, Chinese classical aesthetics is in essence a real living aesthetics, and provides an ideal of human life. Contemporary living aesthetics cannot come from nothing; rather, it must be built on the foundation of traditional aesthetics, a “fusing of Horizons.” Take Confucianism for example. It can be defined as a “living aesthetics” that centres on the concept of “qing” (emotion/feeling). Nowadays, Confucian aesthetics is unduly understood as a concept system from the perspective of European philosophy, but it may be more appropriate to read it as a living aesthetics to better get at the essence of Confucianism, namely, the unity of “li” (rituals) and “yue” (music). Confucius suggested a return to the traditional harmony of rituals and music and proposed the idea of “perfect beauty” and “perfect goodness” as

20 See Liu Yuedi, “The Rise of ‘Living Aesthetics’ and The Decline of Kantian Aesthetics,” Literature and Art Forum 3 (2010); “Dewey’s ‘Copernican Revolution’ and the Revival of Chinese Aesthetics,” Literature and Art Forum 5 (2010); “Confucian and Taoist Living Aesthetics: the Origin and Basis of Chinese Classical Aesthetics,”Literature and Art Forum 7 (2010).

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the unity of beauty and goodness. 21 Rituals and music, redefined in terms of the unity of beauty and goodness, are expected to play a double role as the “guide of joy” and “guide of morality” in daily life. As we know, in his times Confucius upheld the ideal of li and yue as complementary, but with the decline of yue, the unity of li and yue gave way to the unity of li and qing. The latter became the new Confucian ideal. Here, qing refers to the affections that arise from the nature of man encountering things external to it. So, qing comes from human nature and li from qing. Rituals not only comes from emotions and gets encourage, but also are performed out of human emotion. All this considered, it is feasible to re-define Confucianism in light of living aesthetics and the “ontology of qing”. 22 At the same time, it is noteworthy that Taosim, the other foundational element of Chinese traditional aesthetics, is also a Chinese living aesthetics. In terms of their ideological sources, both Confucianism and Taoism resulted from the “awareness of the sufferings of life,” though they differ in their motivations—Confucianism strived to correct the illness of the society, while Taoism advocated non-action to achieve spiritual freedom. In other words, out of their dissatisfaction with the social reality that the rituals have collapsed and the music has gone corrupt, Confucianism was ethical in character, being concerned with the value of human life in the society, while Taoism was cosmological, being more concerned with the place of the human in the universe. However, the movement of Heaven inevitably points to the Way of the human. So, just like Confucianism, Taoism is also a philosophy of life—it comes from life and never severs itself from it. As a peculiarly Chinese living aesthetics, Confucianism and Taoism complement and complete each other, leading to a dialectics of sorrows and joys, and Zenism participated into it later.23 To conclude, living aesthetics is one of the main trends in global aesthetics. But living aesthetics is not particular to Chinese aesthetics, or any other single philosophical tradition; rather, it involves the world aesthetics. Anyway, with the boundary between art and everyday life being dismissed, and the environment turning to the human environment, contemporary philosophy of art and environment aesthetics have been fusing into living aesthetics. The reason for this historical trend is simply that the aesthetic must be the “profound standard” for the quality of human life, and the development of the environment and the world. 21

Confucius, Analects, 3. 25. About “ontology of qing”, see Liu Yuedi, “Rethiking Emotions in Confucian Political Philosophy”, Journal of East-West Thought, 4 (1) (2014): 43–57. 23 Liu Yuedi, Boundless Wind and Moon: Chinese Traditional Aesthetics of Everyday Life, (Chengdu: Sichuan Publishing House, 2014): 8–120. 22

CHAPTER THREE EVERYDAY AESTHETICS AND HAPPINESS THOMAS LEDDY Perhaps the most important issue in the rapidly growing field of everyday aesthetics concerns the relation of everyday aesthetics to ethics. This touches on the larger issue of the relationship between aesthetics and ethics generally. However, there is a way in which the issue becomes particularly pronounced when talking about the everyday, perhaps because art is more easily separated from ethics than the everyday. Also, discussions on the relation between art and ethics usually come down to the question of whether or not the individual art work is unethical in some way, whereas when we think about the everyday and ethics we can focus on behaviours, experiences or entire ways of life, as well as individual items. I wish to situate this discussion in terms of a current debate in the field of everyday aesthetics. This debate is largely between those who would prefer that everyday aesthetics be treated in a way that is very similar to the aesthetics of art and those who would not. At the end I will make some suggestions concerning how these issues might be illuminated by way of looking at the ethical theories of Aristotle and Confucius, both of whom provide us with a theory of the good life in which aesthetic experience plays, or at least could play, a fundamental role. Although I have said that the current debate concerns the centrality of the aesthetics of art in general aesthetics, it actually ranges more widely than this shorthand description would indicate, as the two sides disagree on several issues. Drawing from political theory (but without any implications about the actual political views of the contestants), I will refer to the two camps as the aesthetic right and the aesthetic left. Those on the aesthetic right wish not only to retain the primacy of art in aesthetics (and the model of appreciation we find in art in aesthetic appreciation generally) but also to insure that the aesthetics of everyday life are submitted to strict standards of evaluation. The aesthetic right is concerned about a possible descent into radical relativism, or even to anarchism, that may result from the legitimization of everyday aesthetics,

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at least as it is understood from the perspective of the aesthetic left. For example, those on the aesthetic right often worry that everyday aesthetic experiences do not have obvious frames (unlike, for example, paintings) or determinate limits, and that this leads to subjectivism if not countered in some way, e.g. by conceptually or perceptually framing the object according to certain objective standards. They also worry, along similar lines, that everyday aesthetics may lead to the disintegration of important distinctions between art and everyday life and between aesthetic pleasure and ordinary pleasure. Usually, members of the aesthetic right argue for something like Kant’s distinction between the agreeable and the beautiful, relegating everyday aesthetics to the agreeable (in which, for Kant, there is no disputing about taste), or distinguishing between an acceptable everyday aesthetic realm associated with the Kantian beautiful (for example when talking about the aesthetics of furniture design) and another that is trivial because it is associated with the merely agreeable or pleasant (for example when talking about a good shower). They also commonly have a problem with the proximal senses of smell, taste and touch, arguing that aesthetic experiences are traditionally only had in relation to the distal senses of sight and hearing, and that this tradition should be continued. Usually, the aesthetic right favours a limited form of everyday aesthetics, as long as it is constrained by norms of evaluation and restricted to the objects of the distal senses. So, for example, they favour an everyday aesthetics in areas where we can talk about functional beauty, as in design aesthetics. Leading advocates of the aesthetic right are Allen Carlson, Glenn Parsons, Christopher Dowling and Jane Forsey. There are, of course, many areas in which these people disagree—after all, the distinction I am making is rough and mainly for the purpose of discussion. Members of the aesthetic left hold, roughly, the opposite positions to those on the right, and in my typology they would include Yuriko Saito, Richard Shusterman, Sherri Irvin, Kevin Melchionne, Arto Haapala and myself.1 Again, there are some disagreements amongst these philosophers; for example I disagree with Saito that the aesthetics of art is to be detached in a strong way from the aesthetics of everyday life. Also, Melchionne has recently raised criticisms concerning my approach to defining everyday aesthetics. However, in most of the issues mentioned above, there is agreement among members of the aesthetic left. There are, of course, many other philosophers working in the field (for example, Katya Mandoki and Liu Yuedi) and I do not mean to downplay their valuable 1

My own book on the matter is The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2012).

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work by leaving them out of the typology, I just do not have a clear idea of how they would fit, one way or another.2 Jane Forsey, in a recent book on the aesthetics of design, devotes a chapter to everyday aesthetics in which she argues that the new sub-field, at least as it is currently presented, has certain weaknesses (based on not treating aesthetics as an autonomous domain) and that it tries to overcome these weaknesses by making a turn to ethics. She is concerned that everyday aesthetics has lost sight of the unique role that aesthetics plays in our lives, by which I take her to mean that everyday aesthetics has lost sight of the way in which aesthetics is distinctively different from morality. She also holds to a radical distinction between the world of art and design and the world of embodied experience. This, plus the fact that she tends to quote from Carlson/Parsons and Dowling, as well as Kant’s distinction between the agreeable and the beautiful, in support of her views, place her firmly on the aesthetic right. Forsey also addresses her arguments mainly against Saito, Irwin, Melchione, Haapala, and in a recent unpublished paper, me. In my book I did not address the relationship between everyday aesthetics and ethics, but since its publication, and unlike Forsey, I have come to believe that this relation is essential to understanding the field. In this respect, I see myself as moving closer to the other members of the aesthetic left. My approach, however, will be somewhat different from 2

Examples of work referred to include [alphabetically]: Christopher Dowling, “The Aesthetics of Daily Life,” British Journal of Aesthetics 50 (1) (2010): 225– 242; Kevin Melchionne, “Aesthetic Experience in Everyday Life: A Reply to Dowling,” British Journal of Aesthetics 51 (4) (2011): 437–442; “The Definition of Everyday Aesthetics,”Contemporary Aesthetics (January 7, 2013) http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=663; Jane Forsey, The Aesthetics of Design (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Arto Haapala, “On the Aesthetics of the Everyday: Familiarity, Strangeness, and the Meaning of Place,” The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, eds. Andrew Light & Jonathan M. Smith (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005) 39–55; Sherri Irvin, “The Pervasiveness of the Aesthetic in Ordinary Experience,” British Journal of Aesthetics 48 (1) (2008): 29–44, and “Scratching an Itch,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66 (1) (2008): 25–35; Allen Carlson & Glenn Parsons, Functional Beauty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Yuriko Saito, Everyday Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Katya Mandoki, Everyday Aesthetics (Aldershot UK: Ashgate, 2007); Richard Shusterman, Thinking Through the Body: Essays in Somaesthetics (Cambridge University Press, 2012); Liu Yuedi, “New Trends of International Aesthetics and the Rebirth of Chinese Living Aesthetics: A Perspective of Intercultural Turn,” unpublished paper.

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theirs (with the possible exception of Shusterman) insofar as it focuses on the concept of happiness rather than on the morality of individual everyday aesthetic choices.3 To explicate this difference let us look at the ways that the aesthetic leftist (in the person of Melchionne) has responded to the charge, first brought by Dowling, that the leftist position leads to a trivialization of aesthetics. Dowling insists that an aesthetic judger must expect critical engagement from those who will hear their judgment, and that this does not happen in regard to statements about, for example, cooking. Melchionne admits that cooking is rarely the subject of debate. However, he contests the charge of triviality by arguing that everyday aesthetic phenomena, while seemingly trivial (because it is fleeting, for example, or idiosyncratic) when taken alone, can be quite significant when seen as practices or routines or as aspects of such. It is the network of choices we make, day after day, that is important, not the individual slices of experience. The key issues, as Melchionne sees it, are the pervasiveness of everyday aesthetic phenomena (they are more pervasive, for example, than fine art experience) and the relative unimportance of debate over evaluation within everyday aesthetics. With respect to the first point, Melchionne says that the pervasiveness of the agreeable makes it more than trivial. In support of the second, he observes, first, that our everyday aesthetics experiences are mostly private and without discursive mediation, and, second (drawing from psychological studies), that this doesn’t matter so much since debate and discourse can actually distort experience. He even suggests that debates and discourse are also overrated with regard to the arts. Melchionne’s main point is that, when looking at everyday aesthetics, we shouldn’t just be looking at autonomous objects or moments of daily life. When a writer pauses in their study to contemplate the comfort of a breeze coming through a window (an example taken from Sherri Irvin), this may seem trivial to some, but this is only because the moment is cut off from the rest of everyday life. Yet, as Melchionne argues, this aesthetic experience is surely part of an extended ritual of study and reflection that the writer has honed over many years and, he suggests, it should then be taken as non-trivial. He concludes that ordinary experiences derive significance from their roles as daily life patterns.

3

Other thinkers who have addressed the relation between everyday aesthetics and morality include Roger Scruton, “In Search of the Aesthetic,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 47 (2) (2007)232–250, and Arnold Berleant “Ideas for a Social Aesthetic,”in Light & Smith, The Aesthetics of Everyday Life.

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I find inspiration in Melchionne’s idea that we need to look at everyday aesthetics in terms of patterns of life, but I think that the non-triviality of everyday aesthetics goes beyond its quantitative pervasiveness. Briefly, my claim is that everyday aesthetics is important because our lives have a fundamental aesthetic dimension, insofar as they are happy or not, and this dimension is one in which aesthetics overlaps with ethics. I will develop this notion later in this essay when I discuss Aristotle’s theory of happiness. I do have one small disagreement with Melchionne in that I do not believe individual slices of life taken out of the context of practices are in themselves non-aesthetic. There is much to be said for sometimes focusing on things and experiences in ways independent of contextual considerations. This kind of focus gives us one kind of aesthetic experience, one that Kant classically referred to as “pure beauty.” Kant also mentioned an alternative type of beauty—“dependent beauty”—in which function and context count. Kant’s distinction is troubling for those wanting a unified conception of beauty, but I think it correctly captures two very different aspects of beauty. Problems only arise when it is thought that pure beauty or dependent beauty are the only legitimate sorts for a certain type of thing, for example flowers can only be pure beauties or horses dependent beauties. Unlike Kant, I hold that anything can be seen either in a pure way or a contextual way, and further that alternating between an attitude that brackets out context and one that does not provides a richer aesthetics experience overall. Kant refers to a flower as a pure beauty of nature and believes that a botanist should bracket their knowledge of flowers to appreciate such things. Allen Carlson, by contrast, believes that the flower can only be properly appreciated by a botanist when he or she does not bracket out such knowledge. My view splits the difference, arguing that both Kant’s and Carlson’s strategies are valuable, not only with flowers but also with art and everyday aesthetic phenomena. Pure and dependent beauty need to work together to provide a complete experience of beauty—we need to both experience the flower independently of scientific knowledge and, alternatively, with that scientific knowledge (we cannot do both at once.) Also, in response to Melchionne, and as I have argued elsewhere, I think we do in fact engage in critical discourse in the everyday realm.4 For example, when we say that something is “pretty” or “pleasant” we expect at least some others to agree with us. I am not even sure that Melchionne is 4

Thomas Leddy, “Defending Everyday Aesthetics and The Concept of Pretty,” Contemporary Aesthetics 10 (2012), http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=654.

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right that we have relatively less critical discourse here than in the fine arts, although of course itis not formalized or of the sort that appears in critical journals. It might just be an argument between friends over what is “cool” or “good eating” and what is not. And, although Melchionne is right that critical discourse can be distorting, it can also be enhancing, both in art and everyday aesthetics, for example, when a book one has read is more interesting after discussing it in a book group, or when discussion of a dance craze illuminates its value for the participants. Although discourse may not be as important as we thought in establishing aesthetic value it still may be essential to the distinction between the agreeable and the beautiful, or between the merely pleasant and the aesthetic, and this is where the real problem lies (I will address this below.) Nonetheless, Melchionne points us in the right direction by emphasizing the role that everyday aesthetics plays in life as a whole and by pointing to larger patterns and practices. Everyday aesthetics is nontrivial because it has to do with entire styles of life, with entire ways of being, and perhaps even with debates over which of these are to be preferred as examples of the good or happy life. Nietzsche, by the way, could be seen as pioneering this issue by talking about the concept of “unity of style” in an early essay in which he criticizes the Germans of his time for having a dis-unified style, for example in their daily lives, and particularly in the chaos of styles in their clothes, rooms, homes and streets. 5 This point leads me to Aristotle and Confucius and their conceptions of the good life, and this may be the basis for a wider integration not only of everyday aesthetics into aesthetics generally, but also aesthetics into ethics generally, although not, as usually happens, in a subordinate way. Saito also holds that everyday aesthetics is not trivial. However, in her case, this is because the choices we make in our everyday lives, such as having a green lawn that is not environmentally sustainable, have large ethical implications. As she puts it, everyday decisions have consequences. She also discusses what she calls moral-aesthetic judgments, i.e. ones in which our judgment is based as much on moral considerations as on aesthetic ones. I think that she is right that there are consequences to even seemingly trivial aesthetic choices and that there are moral-aesthetic judgments. I also agree that these are both reasons for holding that everyday aesthetics is non-trivial. More recently, and largely in so-far unpublished writings, Saito has turned to the ways in which aesthetic 5

Friedrich Nietzsche, “David Strauss, the confessor and the writer,” Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

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decisions contribute to what she calls “world-making,” also encouraging us to find ways to be better world-makers.6 World-makers include not only professional architects and designers, but everyone in their everyday lives. Moreover, world-making involves not only the creation of spaces and objects, but various activities, for example cleaning up and painting a derelict building. Saito adds that some strategies of world-making move us towards a good life and some do not. The ones that do so involve the nurturing of certain virtues, such as thoughtfulness and respect. These moral virtues, conversely, may be embodied through artistically-inspired practice. I agree with Saito that what constitutes the good life does not lie outside the realm of aesthetics. Since the current essay shares with Saito an emphasis on the closeness of ethics, the good life, and the virtues, with a choice of everyday aesthetic style, the differences between Saito’s view and my own are minor. However, I place more emphasis on the way in which the good life is the happy life, where happiness is a function, to a large extent, of pervasiveness of distinctively aesthetic pleasure. I agree that environmentalist issues are immensely important in our age of global warming, resource mismanagement and environmental degradation. In addition, we need to look at ways in which everyday aesthetics deconstructs the rigid distinction often maintained between ethics and aesthetics (and the consequent downgrading of aesthetics) within philosophy itself. Here, I will bring in yet another contemporary actor. Richard Shusterman has been a long-time player in the field of everyday aesthetics and has made many important contributions, for example, his recent book Thinking through the Body.7 He also contributes something important to the issue of the ethical role of everyday aesthetics. Also significant in the context of this chapter (insofar as it is written with an eye on comparative philosophy) is his discussion of everyday aesthetics in relation to various Asian traditions, and most notably, here, in relation to Confucianism.8 Shusterman’s most important contribution to everyday aesthetics is arguably his theory of somaesthetics. Somaesthetics is a new sub6

One unpublished paper is “Everyday Aesthetics, Artification, and WorldMaking,” given at Artification Conference: Ideas and Practices, Finland, 2012). Some information is taken from her paper abstract located at http://www.artification.fi/conference%20abstracts.html. Other information is taken from a grant application Prof. Saito has made available to me. 7 Shusterman, Thinking through the Body. 8 Shusterman mentions Confucianism at several points in Thinking through the Body.

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discipline of aesthetics which stresses improving our lives through mastering our bodies. Whereas other everyday aestheticians have not much talked about happiness, Shusterman has stressed the relationship between somaesthetics and happiness, arguing that few have recognized the role that somatic experience plays in happiness as the end or goal of life. For Shusterman, educating and cultivating our somaesthetic awareness enhances our ability to get joy from life. At the end of an account of an experience he had studying at a Zen monastery (which appears in a chapter explicitly devoted to the aesthetics of everyday life), Shusterman refers to it as one in which he felt “pure somatic happiness.”9 Clearly, the aesthetics of everyday life is concerned with something more than simply a series of aesthetic judgments made outside the realm of art. It is also concerned with the quest for self-improvement, and in particular the larger quest for human well-being. An important indicator of human well-being and happiness itself is the feeling of happiness. What, then, is this feeling, and how is it related both to pleasure and happiness in general? A large issue in everyday aesthetics, perhaps the most important, is whether everyday aesthetics reduces aesthetics to mere pleasure. Jane Forsey speaks, for example, of the threat of collapsing aesthetic experience into bodily pleasure10 (this is related to the worry that everyday aesthetics collapses the distinction between art and life.) Like Carlson and Parsons, she thinks that the pleasures of exercise, taking a bath, drinking lemonade and sexual activity should not be considered aesthetic (Shusterman, by contrast, devotes an entire article to the aesthetics of sexual activity—he is perhaps unique in this.)11 Unlike Carlson and Parsons, however, Forsey does not attack the proximal senses as sources of aesthetic experience since to do so would be to exclude the role that smell, taste and touch play in our appreciation of designed artifacts. For example, she believes that the proximal senses are important in the appreciation of a kitchen knife, but she does set up a strong distinction between sensual and aesthetic pleasure. Of course, many sensual pleasures, taken as they usually are, are not particularly aesthetic (for example, just enjoying drinking water when one is very thirsty). However, I think Forsey misses the force of the ameliorative 9 See Shusterman, “Somaesthetic Awakening and the Art of Living: Everyday Aesthetics in American Transcendentalism and Japanese Zen Practice,” in Thinking through the Body. 10 Forsey, The Aesthetics of Design, 209. 11 See his “Asian Ars Erotica and the Question of Sexual Aesthetics” in Thinking through the Body. See also Arnold Berleant, “The Sensuous and the Sensual,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 23 (2) (1964): 185–192.

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approach to aesthetics shared by those on the aesthetic left. 12 Everyday aestheticians are not just engaged in description or analysis of concepts, they are encouraging us to look at the world in a different way, to change our habits of perception. In my book I have argued, further, that learning how to attend to everyday aesthetic phenomena transforms those phenomena from something ordinary to something extraordinary. Doing this on a regular basis may have significant benefits for individuals and for societies. This issue is nicely illustrated by some objections Forsey has to a description Saito gives of eating an apple. Forsey thinks that Saito errs in saying that the typical experience of an apple begins with looking at its round shape and delicate colours, feeling its substantial weight, and feeling the crunching sound of the first bite. 13 Forsey asks: “But is this an aesthetic experience or a subjective hedonic (gustatory) response from someone who simply enjoys eating an apple?” She thinks that subjective hedonic gustatory responses cannot be aesthetic and that this is an either/or situation. However, the dichotomy is a false one. The eating-of-an-apple experience that Saito describes is aesthetic and hedonic, and there is no reason to separate these elements. It is subjective on one level but sharable through being described. Moreover, it is related to an object, and therefore is objective on another level. I would agree with Forsey that the description Saito gives is not of a typical experience of eating an apple: it is, indeed, somewhat aestheticized. However, following the lead of Shusterman, one could say that the experience is an improved one; that, for example, it is the result of certain practices and a certain sort of training. Forsey is right that we do not all eat apples with this kind of attention, and right to the extent that Saito’s description of eating an apple is aestheticized, just as is Irvin’s description of petting her cat. However, she is also wrong in a way, since many aesthetic experiences in everyday life are only semi-conscious, and it may be that Saito is just articulating something that we experience in this semi-conscious way. In any case, as soon as one attends to such ordinary experiences the experiences themselves are intensified and aestheticized (or further aestheticized). This is an inescapable truth about everyday aesthetics. Forsey goes on to ask (perhaps only rhetorically) whether drinking lemonade can in any way be considered aesthetically great, meaningful or profound. She implies that it cannot, and thus cannot be considered 12

Another advocate of the ameliorative approach is Scott Stroud, John Dewey and the Artful Life: Pragmatism, Aesthetics, and Morality (Penn State University Press, 2011). 13 Saito, Everyday Aesthetics, 20.

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aesthetic under any circumstances. In The Extraordinary in the Ordinary I argued that aesthetic experience of such things can be profound, as shown by Proust in his reaction to the taste of a small cake.14 However, even if it could not be, would that exclude drinking lemonade from the domain of the aesthetic? After all, things can be meaningful in small ways too. Moreover, there are lower grades of beauty, for example “the attractive” and “the pretty,” which should not be neglected simply because of their lesser intensity.15 Something does not have to be at the highest level of aesthetic experience to be aesthetic. Let us return, for a moment, to the issue of profundity. In the recent movie Promised Land, Matt Damon’s character (Steve Bulter) buys a lemonade from an entrepreneurial little girl and, after drinking it, seems to have a profound revelation which leads him to turn on his deceitful oil company employer. We cannot see into his mind, but one is tempted to say that the moment of authenticity and naïve honesty (the girl refuses to “keep the change”) is a profoundly moving one for Steve, marking a turning point in the movie. On this interpretation, the incident would fall nicely into what Saito has called moral-aesthetic judgments. Matt Damon’s character makes such a judgment in the very act of drinking the lemonade. Perhaps such an experience can be beautiful, meaningful and profound. I agree with Forsey that a satisfying head scratch (to refer to one of Irvin’s examples) might not be particularly aesthetic, and yet if we contemplate the experience, or focus on its aesthetic properties (in the ways Shusterman sets out), it might well become so. That is, I admit a distinction between mere enjoyment and aesthetic enjoyment, the latter involving an element of contemplation and heightened experience. I do not, therefore, disagree that there is a difference between aesthetic satisfaction and mere sensual satisfaction or, more specifically, between a pleasure in scratching an itch that is aesthetic, and one that is merely sensual. However, when Forsey also says that everyday aesthetics “will need to maintain a robust conception of what the aesthetic amounts to as distinct from the delicious, the comfortable, the sexy and the physically pleasurable in general,” 16 I disagree. For all of these things can be aesthetic, and the terms mentioned (e.g. “delicious” and “sexy”) can be aesthetic terms, especially if they have the quality of what I refer to as “aura.” 17 I particularly oppose Forsey’s call for a strong distinction 14

Leddy, The Extraordinary in the Ordinary, Chapter 8. Leddy, “Defending Everyday Aesthetics and the Concept of Pretty.” 16 Forsey, The Aesthetics of Design, 211. 17 Leddy, The Extraordinary in the Ordinary, Chapter 4, “Aesthetic Experience as Experience of Objects with Aura.” 15

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between bodily and aesthetic pleasure, as though any aesthetic pleasure is not bodily. If there are supposed to be pleasures that are not bodily, what are they supposed to be, metaphysical? Is there an implicit mind/body dualism tied up in this conception? Or is “non-bodily” simply code for “brain-induced without reference to the senses”? What is the point of this distinction between bodily and non-bodily pleasures? We have to get used to the idea that the brain is part of the body too. Forsey raises another issue when she observes that framelessness is vital to everyday aesthetics. This leads to the thought that everyday aesthetics is overly subjectivist and relativist. I do not think that everyday aesthetics calls for framelessness so much as for a recognition that everyday aesthetic experiences can be framed in different ways. As Saito has implied, one does not have to frame a baseball game so as to exclude other aspects of the overall experience, for example the smell and taste of the hot-dogs served in the park. Everyday aesthetics allows for different framings. Forsey joins Parsons and Carlson in worrying that framelessness leads to an inability to judge everyday aesthetic experiences. Again, the issue isn’t framelessness but flexibility of framing in how one composes the experience. It is true that some framings of the baseball game allow the use of clear and concise standards of judgment, whereas others do not. You might, for example, be able to say exactly what makes a pitch graceful based on certain explicit criteria. And even if this does not happen in baseball we know that in certain sports contests, such as in figure skating, there are explicit criteria for judgments of aesthetic quality. But this does not disallow other aesthetic experiences that cannot be so judged. Forsey worries that if she finds the smell of hotdogs disgusting, there is no way to resolve the dispute between herself and Saito, and so we are left with subjectivity and relativism. She thinks, like Carlson and Parsons, that the issue can be resolved simply by focusing on the baseball game qua baseball game. Conflicting judgments can be better or worse relative to the game, framed in a certain way, but this is not to deny the legitimacy of broader or different framings. A painter can portray a baseball game without any knowledge of its rules and still capture something valuable. The problem goes back to Plato’s insistence that if a painter fails to have knowledge of a cobbler’s art then the painter cannot possibly frame the experience in a valuable way. 18 However, we have many valuable paintings of craftsmen and artists which do not fit these criteria at all. There should be no real competition between those who wish to appreciate a baseball game qua baseball game and those who wish to appreciate something else (for example, a lovely day at the baseball park), 18

Plato, Republic, Book X.

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of which a baseball game forms a part. There are domains that seem to straddle the fence between everyday aesthetics and art aesthetics. Sports are very much like art forms and, like the arts, they operate according to their own rules and institutions. Whether sports fall, or should fall, under the rubric of everyday aesthetics is of little interest—we can go either way on this. I have sometimes favoured their inclusion simply because they are left out of both art and nature aesthetics. Yet, perhaps sports aesthetics needs its own domain. Sports games are important aspects of the daily lives of many. However, art appreciation and nature appreciation are also parts of daily lives, and we do not want to define everyday aesthetics just in terms of what goes on in daily life. On this view, if you understand a baseball game under the concept of baseball then you are in the domain of sports aesthetics, but if you understand it as part of something larger, for example a lovely day at the park, then it is part of everyday aesthetics. That’s one way to go, at least. Ron Moore, in unpublished comments about my book, has posed the following question: “In one’s aesthetic awareness of a Gehry edifice, a monumental beech tree, a broken coffee cup on a curbstone, should one’s frame exclude or include the sound of traffic?” The answer is yes, it should exclude it, but not always. Inclusion might be just the thing to give a tired experience new life. (Think of the “art video” maker’s decision of whether or not to include the sound of street traffic when making a documentary on a work by Frank Gehry—the street sounds might give it a raw energy it would not otherwise have. Think also of Heidegger’s inclusion of the sounds of waves in his discussion of a Greek temple in his The Origin of the Work of Art.) It might be that looking at the beech tree in relation to the garage on the right, instead of in relation to the other beech tree on the left, is going to produce the more powerful or interesting aesthetic experience. This is known well by flâneur photographers who frame things in unusual ways to capture aesthetic features not otherwise seen. What they do captures how non-photographer flâneurs might frame things in everyday aesthetic experience. The main worry on the aesthetic right is that if everyday aestheticians are allowed to frame aesthetic experience as they wish (for example, including the hot dog experience within the experience of the baseball game) then “anything goes.” The worry is doubled, however, when we consider possible uses of imagination in aesthetic experience. Particularly disturbing for Forsey is the claim by Saito that “the aesthetic price we pay for the frameless character of non-art objects … can be compensated by exercising our imagination and creativity in constituting the aesthetic

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object as we see fit.”19 Forsey asks “Just what are we analyzing, when the parameters shift according to the imaginations and preferences of the individuals engaged in the experience?”20 She is worried that we will no longer be able to identify a shared aesthetic object over which we can argue, since each has his or her own object based on his or her own imaginative contribution. However, I believe that allowing for different frames and for imaginative engagement does not in any way lessen the possibilities for criticism, dialogue or aesthetic education. We know this because we do both all the time—we use our imaginations when reading novels, for example, and this enhances our experience of it, but somehow we are also able to criticize the novels and have dialogues about them with other people. For Forsey, “the onus is on everyday aesthetics to explain what fidgeting, cleaning, and serving tea have in common that singles these activities out as aesthetic phenomena that also distinguishes them from, perhaps, drinking lemonade, engaging in sexual intercourse, or folding laundry.”21 Yet everyday aesthetics has no such obligation and should not take this path. She thinks that not doing so shows a “lack of ontological commitment.” I suspect her worry is that theorists on the left show little concern for the kinds of entities that their theory entails, and presumably no concern for the alleged strict dividing line between that which is aesthetic and that which is not. This leads to her idea that “What comprises the everyday is so broad and so inclusive as to threaten to become virtually meaningless,” 22 and that the leftist approach perhaps leads to the “aestheticization of absolutely everything.” The biggest issue is, for Forsey, that aestheticians on the left “run together subjective hedonic responses to objects with those that can withstand critical assessment.”23 To this, the everyday aesthetician must reply that although there are many differences between the aesthetic experience of fine art and such ordinary aesthetic pleasures as those associated with folding laundry, these phenomena form points on a continuum rather than exist in isolated and rigidly separated domains.24 Moreover, the points on this continuum are dynamically related, in that something that appears at first to be merely a matter of pleasure with no aesthetic dimension can be mediated (via 19

Saito, Everyday Aesthetics, 19. Forsey, The Aesthetics of Design, 213. 21 Ibid., 217. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., 218. 24 I also develop the idea of a continuum in “Defending Everyday Aesthetics and The Concept of Pretty.” 20

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changes in attitude, actual manipulation, or re-contextualization) in such a way as to enhance their aesthetic nature. Something ordinary can become the object of contemplation in which it is framed in such a way as to bring out or enhance a certain aura (for example, of elegance or grace). I should add that Forsey overstates the rejection of aesthetic theory in everyday aesthetics, thinking that everyday aesthetics seeks to dissolve the distinction between art and daily life, which is hardly true. Although Forsey’s main interest seems to be in maintaining aesthetics as something that is “rich-yet separate–aspect of human lives,” i.e. separate from moral issues, she also recognizes the idea of a continuum that stretches from the mundane to fine art, placing “the mundane and familiar on a continuum, with fine art, perhaps, at its other extreme.”25 Where we would disagree is that Forsey wishes to take that continuum as only containing things with “autonomous and aesthetic texture” similar to that of fine art, thereby incorporating objects of design. She thinks an “alternative normative framework” is being offered by those on that aesthetic left that is non-aesthetic, but the alternative framework is one that ultimately synthesizes the aesthetic and the moral. To discuss this, and to show that it is false to say that everyday aesthetics “leaves the aesthetic behind,” it will be helpful to go briefly into the theories of Aristotle and Confucius.

Aristotle Following Aristotle, it makes sense to say that the good life is a life that has happiness as its goal. Happiness, in his view, was activity in accordance with excellence of the highest part of ourselves. For Aristotle, this activity is contemplative (involving contemplation of truth), and this implies a radical dualism that seems to go against everyday aesthetics. We do not, however, need to accept Aristotle’s theory of the mind or his metaphysics in order to apply his ideas here. What is valuable in a contemporary context is the notion that happiness is not simply a feeling, as in pleasure, but an activity done well, actually done with excellence, although always accompanied by pleasure. Whereas Aristotle saw the contemplative aspect as a matter of contemplating truth, one could see it more pragmatically as an activity in which the contemplative aspect might well be aesthetic. Rudolf Arnheim took this approach when, in an article on the aesthetic implications of Aristotle’s ethics, he wrote: “the contemplative life calls for the utmost enrichment of the daily occupations, 25

Forsey, The Aesthetics of Design, 221.

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which are so commonly reduced to thought-less routine.”26 He associated this with the notion of the aesthetic attitude, or one could see contemplation as aesthetic by understanding “truth” in a broader way than is commonly considered under science-based notions of truth. It could, for example, include the kind of intuitive truth that Nietzsche describes in On Truth and Lies in the Nonmoral Sense.27 There is no reason to believe that the objects of everyday aesthetic experience could not be in some sense what Aristotle calls “objects of intellect” (as long as intellect is not always tied to abstract concepts, reason and argumentation). However, contemporary pragmatist aestheticians like Shusterman and myself would not be able to accept his idea that the contemplation that gives rise to happiness must be independent of action, even of inquiry.28 Aristotle understood happiness in terms of living well, which he then associated with doing things well. Interestingly, he often uses the practices of artists as examples, for example a flutist, whose function is to play a flute well, and therefore whose happiness is in that. There is no reason, in principle, why this could not also include doing things well in one’s everyday life activities, including dressing, cooking, and having sex. All of these things can be done well, and even, I think, in a contemplative way. Moreover, happiness, as a rational activity in accordance with virtue, understands virtue in terms of a mean. The very idea of a mean can be aesthetic, for example when associated with the idea of that which is “just right” in the sense of looking, sounding or tasting right. However, when Aristotle speaks of temperance as a mean, we see that he is not always a friend of everyday aesthetics, at least with respect to the objects of the proximal senses. Here, he considers self-indulgence the extreme, and temperance the virtue. He distinguishes between bodily pleasures and those of the soul (e.g. love of honour and learning), which 26

Rudolf Arnheim, “Pleasure to Contemplation,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51 (2) (1993): 195–197. Arnheim joins Shusterman, and departs from Aristotle, when he says in the same article: “since the human body is one of the main instruments of art, a constant awareness of its form and functions is a requirement of contemplative daily living” (197). 27 Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870s, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1999), 79–91. In section 2 Nietzsche distinguishes between the “rational man”and the “intuitive man,” the latter guided by intuitions rather than concepts, although requiring the constructions of the rational man as a jumping off point (90). 28 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book X, Chapter 7, 1177a24, in A New Aristotle Reader, ed. J. L. Akrill (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).

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presumably cannot be self-indulgent.29 He also notes that those fond of hearing and telling stories are not called self-indulgent. Temperance and self-indulgence, rather, are concerned with bodily pleasures; however, they are not concerned with all bodily pleasures. Those who take delight in objects of vision, “such as colors and shapes and paintings,” are called neither temperate nor self-indulgent, although Aristotle suggests they should be evaluated in this way since there could be excess or deficiency in this delight. Presumably, this is also the case with hearing. With respect to odour, however, some delights can be self-indulgent and some cannot be. As he puts it: We do not call those self-indulgent who delight in the odor of apples or roses or incense, but rather those who delight in the odor of unguents or of dainty dishes; for self-indulgent people delight in these because these remind them of the objects of their appetite.

So, it is self-indulgent to take delight in what reminds one of something that one needs as an object of appetite. Temperance and selfindulgence “are concerned with the kind of pleasures that the other animals share in”—that is, pleasures of touch and taste. In short, if you are self-indulgent you are animal-like, or to put it more severely, “brutish.” Aristotle then asserts that animals actually make little use of taste, since this faculty is mainly for discrimination. As he puts it, “the business of taste is the discriminating of flavors, which is done by wine-tasters and people who season dishes.” He then states, quite surprisingly (given that we naturally think of Hume here), that such tasters “hardly take pleasure in making these discriminations.” He immediately qualifies this, saying “or at least self-indulgent people do not.” Rather, the self-indulgent take pleasure in what he calls “the actual enjoyment.” In all cases, for example in food, drink and sex, actual enjoyment comes through touch. Thus, the pleasure of the gourmand (who is, by definition, self-indulgent) is not in the smell or taste, but in the contact with the throat. (This of course goes contrary to what we know today about the importance of taste and smell in gourmet cooking. It is not even clear that “contact with the throat” plays any role in gustatory pleasure.) For Aristotle, self-indulgence is a matter of reproach because the self-indulgent are brutish in delighting in such things. With respect to appetites, which are natural after all, self-indulgent individuals delight in things they ought not to delight in, or delight in appropriate things more than they ought to. So, if you have excessive 29 Ibid., Book III, Chapter 10. All quotes in this paragraph are from that chapter, 403–405.

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pleasure you are self-indulgent. One can also be self-indulgent in being pained more than one ought to, i.e. in not getting certain pleasures. In the end, the self-indulgent person chooses pleasant things at the cost of everything else. The temperate person, by contrast, will desire the things conducive to good health and condition moderately, as well as other pleasant things not contrary to what is noble. There is one passage in Aristotle which seems, however, to point to the possibility of an aesthetics of everyday life. He says: Since every sense is active in relation to its object, and a sense which is in good condition acts completely in relation to the most beautiful of its objects … it follows that in the case of each sense the best activity is that of the best-conditioned organ in relation to the finest of its objects. And this activity will be the most complete and pleasant. For, while there is pleasure in respect of any sense, and in respect of thought and contemplation no less, the most complete is pleasantest, and that of a wellconditioned organ in relation to the worthiest of its objects is the most complete; and the pleasure completes the activity … all men desire pleasure because they all aim at life; life is an activity, and each man is active about those things and with those faculties that he loves most; e.g. the musician is active with his hearing in reference to tunes, the student with his mind in reference to theoretical questions, and so on in each case; now pleasure completes the activities, and therefore life, which they desire.30

So, pleasure in any object based on any sense organ in which both are the best or the finest is part of the best life, i.e. the happy life. Nonetheless, one could easily understand Aristotle as being opposed to the aesthetics of everyday life. For example, he makes a strong distinction between the activity of happiness and “pleasant amusements,” and one could argue that Aristotle would consider many of the things that fall under everyday aesthetics as falling into this category. Moreover, he observes that most people considered as happy in society indulge in these amusements. Many crudely believe that happiness simply involves having many pleasures with no contemplative dimension. Aristotle distinguishes, in the same place, between “pure and generous pleasure” and “bodily pleasures,” only the former having to do with excellence and thought.31 However, this seems to contradict the quote about sense pleasure given above. The main point must be rejection of mere amusement. For 30

Ibid., Book X, Chapter 4, 1174b15–1175a18, 464–465. Arnheim (1993) takes this to be Aristotle’s account of how to achieve happiness. 31 Ibid., Book X, Chapter 6, 468.

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Aristotle, happiness does not lie in amusement since to exert oneself throughout one’s life for amusement would be childish, although amusement as a sort of relaxation is acceptable. However, the everyday aesthetician may be in accord with Aristotle in distinguishing between mere amusement and the kind of pleasurable activity that has an intellectual or contemplative dimension but which is not directed to philosophy, science or mathematics. There can be a contemplative mode or aspect of everyday pleasurable experience itself. Further, one could argue that a contemplative moment or aspect is required for an aesthetics of everyday life so as to distinguish aesthetic pleasure from other sorts of sense-based pleasure. If happiness, for Aristotle, is the activity of wisdom, and has pleasure intermingled with it, then why not consider everyday aesthetic experience as having its own wisdom? And to say that the life according to intellect is best and pleasantest, as Aristotle does, might include perception of everyday phenomena that could be said to be “wise” because it is attentive, contemplative and deep (I am thinking here once again of Shusterman’s description of his Zen induced experiences in his chapter on everyday aesthetics.) Of course, Aristotle would insist that the good life include virtuous activity and noble acts, and should come out of such virtues as temperance, justice and bravery. Although these acts can have aesthetic quality, their value appears to be independent of that. My thesis is simply that happiness includes everyday aesthetic experience as a fundamental factor. Nor would I limit this to everyday aesthetics. The aesthetics of art, nature and good design may also be seen as components in the good life. Again, activity according to virtue is interpreted here in terms of achieving excellence in various activities, with a contemplative and pleasure component to this activity as experienced. The excellence might even be in what some people consider to be “mere amusement.” Certainly gastronomy, which Aristotle seems to reject as self-indulgent, could be an example. I am not, of course, suggesting that Aristotle would be happy with these results. As I suggested earlier, his final word on the contemplative life requires that we act like gods, and this implies a metaphysics most philosophers would not accept today.

Confucius Confucius did not say much about happiness in his Analects, but did provide us with a notion of the good life based on the cultivation of

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virtues, much like Aristotle.32 These virtues, as Shusterman has observed in many of his writings, have a close connection with what we would consider to be aesthetics—not only art aesthetics but also the aesthetics of everyday life. 33 Shusterman finds important similarities between Confucius and American pragmatist John Dewey, especially in their practical orientation. This is particularly important here since Dewey is pretty much the grandfather of everyday aesthetics. As Shusterman says, “Pragmatism shares with Confucianism an insistence that philosophy be primarily directed to the aims of preserving, cultivating, and perfecting human life, and thus that philosophy should be closely connected with ethics and politics.”34 Dewey and Confucius share the view that art has not only a personal dimension but also a social dimension—it is “a practical way of giving grace and beauty to the social functions of everyday life” (20). Art is not separated from everyday life. For Shusterman, what is important about Confucius is the idea of selffashioning. The Confucian philosopher, he believes, “works to make her life aesthetically attractive by thoughtfully sculpting her thoughts and actions, her mind and body, her character, and her personal history into an aesthetically integrated whole” (23). For Confucianism, “the ideal of aesthetic life tends more toward complexity and sophistication, where ritual and music are advocated as crucial tools of self-regulation and selfdevelopment to perfect one’s ren” (24). Although Tom Alexander, in responding to Shusterman, has found it hard to see either the notion of experimentation or the impulse to make one’s life aesthetically attractive in Confucius, I agree with Shusterman that self-fashioning is important to Confucian aesthetics.35 As Shusterman observes, Confucius himself is described as engaged in daily court practices in such a way that he is set up as not only an ethical but also an aesthetic ideal. We find the following description of Confucius in the tenth book of Analects:

32 Useful in this is Lily Chang, Aristotle on Happiness: A Comparison with Confucius (VDM Verlag Dr. Mueller e.K., 2008). 33 For the purposes of this paper I will be working with Roger T. Ames & Henry Rosemont Jr., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Tradition (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998). 34 Richard Shusterman, “Pragmatist Aesthetics and Confucianism,”The Journal of Aesthetic Education 43 (1) (2009): 18–29. 35 Tom Alexander, “The Music in the Heart, the Way of Water, and the Light of a Thousand Suns: A Response to Richard Shusterman, Crispin Sartwell, and Scott Stroud,”The Journal of Aesthetic Education 43 (1) (2009): 41–58.

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When summoned by his lord to receive a guest for the court his countenance would change visibly and his legs would bend. He would salute the others standing in attendance, gesturing his clasped hands to the right and to the left, and with his flowing robes swaying front and back with his movements, he would glide forward briskly. (10.3)

This is a vision of a graceful performance, not literally a ritual, but ritual-like, with admiration of some of the same features, as in a dance. A second passage follows: On passing by the empty throne, his countenance would change visibly, his legs would bend, and in his speech he would seem to be breathless. He would lift the hem of his skirts in ascending the hall, bow forward from the waist, and hold in his breath as though ceasing to breath. On leaving and descending the first steps, he would relax his expression and regain his composure. He would glide briskly form the bottom of the steps, and returning to his place, would resume a reverent posture. (10.4)

Whoever wrote this showed great admiration for the full-bodied grace of Confucius as a person. We do not often think of the look on someone’s face or the changes in their breathing patterns as matters of aesthetics, but these things can dramatically express emotion and have a variety of aesthetic qualities. Mencius, the second most famous of the Confucian philosophers, later wrote: “the basic nature of the exemplary person (chuntzu) his capacities for authoritative humanity (jen) ritual action (li), and realization (chih)—are rooted in his heart-and-mind and manifested in his countenance such that a sheen is seen on his face.”36 One of the things Confucius may teach us is that aesthetics and ethics are tied more closely than we think. Although most passages in the Analects seem to have only ethical bearing, some imply something more. The ethical terms ren, yi and dao are so closely tied to the more aesthetic wen, li and yue as to form an ethical/aesthetic whole. There are commonly two meanings for the word “ethics” in the Western tradition. One refers to such things as rules of morality, competing systems of morality, theories of rights and duties, and the study of the virtues. The other deals with the theory of how we ought to live our lives. Unfortunately, the two are often confused. Also, we find that professional philosophy tends to focus on the first, whereas popular philosophy tends to focus on the second. There has, however, been increasing interest in the second even amongst professional 36

David L. Hall & Roger T. Ames, Thinking through Confucius (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1987), 91.

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philosophers, as in the work of Foucault, as well as a recent revival of interest in the Hellenistic Philosophers who saw ethics as an art of living. Once we start talking about ethics in the second sense, however, aesthetic values become as important as moral values and the distinction between ethics and aesthetics becomes less rigid. Roger Ames also refers to Confucianism as “a fundamentally aesthetic tradition that takes as its basic premise the uniqueness of each and every situation, and in which the goal of ritualized living is to redirect attention back to the level of concrete feeling.”37 He thinks of Confucianism as an aestheticism that is “concerned with appreciating the world … through the cultivation of a meaningful, communicating human community.” 38 The idea of harmony is one traditional area in which ethics and aesthetics seem to overlap both in Eastern and Western thought. Harmony in music is something aesthetic, but what about within the individual, the society or the cosmos? As Hall & Ames have argued, “the ‘aesthetic’ Confucian order is understood to be both intrinsically moral and profoundly harmonious.”39 Once we speak of harmony in life we are close to the idea of unity of style brought up earlier in relation to the thought of Nietzsche. Much more could be said about Confucius, Confucianism and everyday aesthetics. What I have sought to do here is connect. Finally, Liu Yuedi has taken a similar approach to Confucius as that of the American philosophers mentioned above.40 He writes that Confucian aesthetics can be defined as a “living aesthetics” that centres on the concept of “qing” (emotion/feeling). Rather than reading Confucian aesthetics as a conceptual system, he believes that it may be more appropriate to see it as a living aesthetics in the unity and complementary nature of “li” (rituals) and “yue” (music), followed by the unity of li and qing as a new Confucian ideal. Yuedi takes qing to refer to the affections that arise from “the nature of man encountering things external to it,” thus leading to a possible redefinition of Confucianism in terms of this idea. 37

Ibid., 5. Roger Ames, “Confucianism and Deweyan Pragmatism: A Dialogue,”Journal of Chinese Philosophy 30 (3 & 4) (2003): 403–417. http://www.phil.pku.edu.cn/zxm/pdf/spec17.pdf (accessed February 15, 2011). 39 Jeffrey Richey, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/confuciu/ (accessed February 15, 2011); Hall & Ames, Thinking through Confucius. 40 Liu Yuedi, op. cit. Also sympathetic to everyday aesthetics is Qingping Liu, “The Worldwide Significance of Chinese Aesthetics in the Twenty-First Century,” Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 1, no. 1 (2006), 33-40, who writes “the ‘beautification’of human life itself is the metaphysical basis of both aesthetic objects and aesthetic experience.” 38

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The concept of qing as described by Yuedi once again recalls Aristotle’s notion of the complete perception which gives rise to happiness, i.e. the one in which man and object perceived are both perfected.

Conclusion In the debate between the aesthetic right and the aesthetic left I have thrown my support to the left, arguing that everyday aesthetics should recognize an important connection to the ideas of ethics and rejecting the idea that certain phenomena and predicates need to be excluded from everyday aesthetics to achieve non-trivial status as a new sub-discipline. Whereas Saito has stressed the connection between ethics and everyday choices I have focused on the idea that happiness is the goal of human existence. However, following Saito, I associate everyday aesthetics with the question of the good life and world-creating to that goal. I have argued, contra Forsey in particular, that the everyday aesthetics does not seek to avoid or attack aesthetics or reduce it to ethics, but rather to expand our recognition of the importance of aesthetics, not only in life but in philosophy. Finally, in a preliminary way I have drawn from both Aristotle and Confucius in an attempt to develop a notion of everyday life aesthetics that is closely associated with the idea of happiness and a notion of contemplation that is associated with close attention to everyday life as it happens, for example, in the Confucian concept of ritual.

CHAPTER FOUR THE DILEMMA OF EVERYDAY AESTHETICS ALLEN CARLSON The aesthetics of everyday life, or everyday aesthetics as it is frequently called, is a subfield of aesthetics that has roots in environmental aesthetics and in research done in the last part of the twentieth century.1 In the first decade of the twenty-first century the area has blossomed.2 However, the field is not easily delineated by its methods, procedures or theoretical structures; rather, it is best demarcated by its subject matter, which is, of course, the events, activities and objects of everyday life. However, one must be clear what this means, for it does not include the focus of the dayto-day lives of any particular individuals, for such could be a symphony 1 The research done by Arnold Berleant and Thomas Leddy is especially noteworthy in this regard. Many of Berleant’s earlier essays on everyday aesthetics are collected in two volumes: Arnold Berleant, Living in the Landscape: Toward an Aesthetics of Environment (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997) and Aesthetics and Environment: Variations on a Theme (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). Leddy published two articles on everyday aesthetics in the 1990s: Thomas Leddy, “Everyday Surface Qualities: ‘Neat’, ‘Messy’, ‘Clean’, ‘Dirty’,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53 (1995): 259-268 and “Sparkle and Shine,” British Journal of Aesthetics 37 (1997), 259-273. 2 The blossoming has resulted in two important anthologies, two major monographs, and a number of influential articles. The two anthologies are Andrew Light & Jonathan M. Smith, eds., The Aesthetics of Everyday Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), and Arnold Berleant & Allen Carlson, eds., The Aesthetics of Human Environments (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2007); the two monographs Yuriko Saito, Everyday Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) and Thomas Leddy, The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2012); influential articles include Yuriko Saito, “Everyday Aesthetics,” Philosophy and Literature 25 (2001): 87–95; Sherri Irvin, “Scratching an Itch,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66 (2008), 25–35; Sherri Irvin, “The Pervasiveness of the Aesthetic in Ordinary Experience,” British Journal of Aesthetics 48 (2008), 33–44, as well as the articles collected in the two above-mentioned anthologies.

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conductor or a circus performer, in which cases the relevant events, activities, and objects would be unique and extraordinary. Rather, the subject matter of everyday aesthetics is exactly the opposite. It is those events, activities, and objects that are common and ordinary—the mundane, routine stuff of daily life. In contrasting everyday aesthetics with the aesthetics of, for example, mathematics or religion, Thomas Leddy, in his introduction to the field, made the following point: “we are thinking instead of the home, the daily commute, the workplace, the shopping center, and places of amusement.” 3 In his recent book, he expands this list to include “online ‘places’ of experience,” adding that “everyday aesthetics considers such things as personal appearances, interior decorations, the workplace environment, sexual experience, appliance design, cooking, gardening, hobbies, and play.”4 It is the common, ordinary, mundane, and routine nature of the events, activities and objects that are the proper subject matter of the aesthetics of everyday life, giving rise to what I call the dilemma of everyday aesthetics. The dilemma stems from the fact that there is an inherent tension between the traditional Western notion of aesthetic experience and the typical experience of everyday life. The traditional notion calls for appreciation of an aesthetic object that is experienced in an abstracted and disinterested fashion. Historically in the West, aesthetic experience has at times been defined in terms of disinterestedness. By contrast, the normal experience of everyday life, although sometimes engaging and active, is typically a mundane, ordinary experience, as is appropriate given the mundane, ordinary nature of its subject matter. Thus, there is a tension between the two—the aesthetic pulls in one direction and everyday life in another. I am not the first to note this dilemma. In her monograph Everyday Aesthetics, Yuriko Saito encounters the dilemma in arguing for a place for everyday aesthetics within contemporary aesthetic theory. She demonstrates the ways in which neither traditional “art-centered” nor “special experience-based” theories fully accommodate our aesthetic experience of everyday life and how each misses and/or misconstrues the nature of that experience. Concerning “art-centered” theories, she diagnoses the problem in terms of certain characteristics of paradigmatic art, such as the spectator mode of appreciation, the privileging of the higher senses, and the importance of authorial identity. Concerning “special experience-based” theories, such as, for example, the disinterestedness tradition, she finds the 3

Thomas Leddy, “The Nature of Everyday Aesthetics,” in Light & Smith, The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, 3–22, quotation at 3. 4 Leddy, The Extraordinary in the Ordinary, 12, 18.

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problem in the very specialness and rarity claimed for such experiences, which thereby sharply separate them from the “humdrum of everyday experience.”5 Saito explores attempts to expand each of these approaches to include the aesthetic experience of the everyday, the former by reference to activities, such as environmental art, everyday art and the Japanese tea ceremony, that take the substance of everyday life as their subject matter, and the latter by focusing the special mode of aesthetic experience directly on the everyday. However, it is here that she confronts the dilemma, which she characterizes as a paradox—such attempts ultimately fail to capture or at least compromise “the very everydayness of the everyday.”6 Everyday aesthetics, she suggests, should be the aesthetics of “everyday life ordinarily experienced.” 7 Leddy is also aware of the dilemma: It would seem that we need to make some sort of distinction between the aesthetics of everyday life ordinarily experienced and the aesthetics of everyday life extraordinarily experienced. However, any attempt to increase the aesthetic intensity of our ordinary everyday life-experiences will tend to push those experiences in the direction of the extraordinary. One can only conclude that there is a tension within the very concept of the aesthetics of everyday life.8

In Everyday Aesthetics, Saito emphasizes the importance of attempting to overcome the dilemma of everyday aesthetics, but also demonstrates the difficulty of doing so. Concerning the importance of overcoming it, she writes: why is it so important … to attend to ordinary objects and environments ‘ordinarily experienced’? … One of the main theses of this book is that such seemingly trivial, innocuous, ordinary, mundane, or even frivolous aspects of our aesthetic life do have surprisingly serious, pragmatic consequences: environmental, moral, social, political, and existential.9

Yet Saito’s work shows the difficulty of overcoming the dilemma, for it itself is to some extent caught in it. For example, although Saito initially 5

Saito, Everyday Aesthetics, 44. Ibid., 50. 7 Ibid., 48. Saito’s recognition of the dilemma is also noted by Christopher Dowling in his article raising a number of concerns about the whole everyday aesthetics enterprise. See Christopher Dowling, “The Aesthetics of Daily Life,” British Journal of Aesthetics 50 (2010), 225–242, see 233. 8 Leddy, “Nature of Everyday Aesthetics,”18. 9 Saito, Everyday Aesthetics, 52. 6

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characterizes the “objects that we use everyday” as “kitchen utensils, furniture, clothing, toys, houses, office space,” she offers relatively little discussion of such ordinary everyday stuff.10 Instead, she focuses on things like carefully designed and innovative artifacts, for example, wind farms and “green” architecture, as well as Japanese examples, such as Japanese gardens, the tea ceremony, and special ways of packaging. These cases are interesting, but not the paradigmatic stuff of everyday life, such as kitchen utensils, furniture and clothing. Highly designed artifacts and aestheticizations of life pull away from ordinary everyday things ordinarily experienced. Thus, Saito ultimately does not fully come to grips with the aesthetic appreciation of truly ordinary stuff experienced in a truly ordinary way. However, if Saito’s careful and thoughtful study does not resolve the dilemma of everyday aesthetics, perhaps it is useful to survey some other approaches, both traditional and recent, that offer methods, procedures or theoretical structures for understanding the aesthetic appreciation of everyday life. A traditional approach for understanding the aesthetic appreciation of everyday life is classic formalism. As is well known, art critics Clive Bell and Roger Fry advanced the formalist position for the visual arts at the beginning of the twentieth century.11 Formalist theoreticians, such as Bell, took aesthetic appreciation as directed only toward what Bell called “significant form,” that is, aesthetically moving combinations of lines, shapes and colours. Bell focused almost exclusively on art, but he entertained the possibility of seeing landscapes as, in his words, “a pure formal combination of lines and colours.” He asked: “who has not, once at least in his life, had a sudden vision of landscape as pure form? For once, instead of seeing it as fields and cottages, he has felt it as lines and colours.”12 Bell would not, I believe, accept the idea of an aesthetics of everyday life, but it is a small jump from “fields and cottages” to the events, activities and objects that are the proper subject matter of everyday aesthetics. Consequently, a formalist approach to everyday aesthetics is certainly a possibility.13 10

Ibid., 1–2. Clive Bell, Art [1913] (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1958); Roger Fry, Transformations (London: Chatto and Windus, 1918). 12 Bell, Art, 45. 13 To my knowledge, no philosopher currently defends classical formalism as an approach to the aesthetic appreciation of everyday life. In recent times, formalism has not been widely accepted in the West, although Nick Zangwill defends what he calls moderate aesthetic formalism for both art and organic nature and extreme aesthetic formalism for inorganic nature. It is not clear to me what Zangwill thinks 11

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Moreover, not only is a formalist aesthetics of everyday life a possibility, it initially looks like a promising approach. Bell was seemingly correct in thinking that we can and do appreciate landscapes in the formal manner he described. Indeed, such appreciation appears to be a common dimension of much popular aesthetic experience. Moreover, the appreciation of formal beauty can be a first step toward the aesthetic experience of landscapes thought to be lacking in aesthetic value, especially when certain kinds of landscape art guide it. This approach has been explored as a means of attempting to appreciate the unsightly and unattractive in everyday life. For example, elsewhere I considered (and ultimately rejected) the idea that somewhat formalist aesthetic appreciation could be a way of dealing with, for instance, roadside clutter, which would certainly be less expensive than cleaning it up. 14 Moreover, several contemporary artists successfully use the formalist approach to the appreciation of everyday life to transform the unsightly, the squalid and the ugly into things of beauty. For example, landscape photographer Edward Burtynsky demonstrates the remarkable aesthetic experiences found in the combinations of lines, shapes, and colours of the devastated aftermaths of industry, manufacturing and resource extraction.15 However, although formalist aesthetic appreciation of everyday life may be a way of addressing our guilt about the aesthetic wastelands we have created, it is ultimately not a satisfactory approach. First, there are philosophical difficulties in determining the formal aesthetic properties of about formalism concerning everyday aesthetics. However, in Nick Zangwill, “Formal Natural Beauty,”Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 101 (2001): 209– 224, he rejects arguments against formalism in nature aesthetics that would apply equally well against formalism in everyday aesthetics. Moreover, in Nick Zangwill, “In Defence of Extreme Formalism about Inorganic Nature: Reply to Parsons,”British Journal of Aesthetics 45 (2005): 185–191, he seemingly endorses a formalist understanding of aesthetic properties in general, claiming: “Beauty, ugliness, and other aesthetic qualities pertain to appearances. They are a matter of how things look or sound. They are not a matter of how things are, apart from appearances …By contrast, both science and morality are mostly about how things are and not about appearances. Aesthetics is indeed relatively superficial by comparison. Anti-formalists, I suspect, cannot come to terms with this, and they want Beauty to be something else”(191). 14 Allen Carlson, “Environmental Aesthetics and the Dilemma of Aesthetic Education,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 10 (1976): 69–82. 15 See, for example, Edward Burtynsky, with essays by Michael Mitchell, William E. Rees and Paul Roth, Burtynsky Oil (Göttingen: Steidle/Corcoran, 2009), as well as the film by Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky:Manufactured Landscapes (National Film Board of Canada, 2007).

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the events, activities and objects of everyday life. Such items are typically frameless or frame-relative, and in many instances formal properties depend upon framing. 16 Moreover, there is something essentially trivial about formalism. For example, concerning landscapes, the approach is not simply encouraged by landscape art, but is also in a subtle method imposed on the landscape by many popular presentations, such as postcard and calendar images, in which only dominant shapes, strong lines, and striking colours are emphasized. Such images can promote a misleading and superficial aesthetic appreciation of the events, activities and objects of everyday life. Most relevant here, moreover, is the fact that the formalist approach does nothing to resolve the dilemma of everyday aesthetics. Rather than constituting, to use Saito’s words, an aesthetics of “everyday life ordinarily experienced” that captures “the very everydayness of the everyday,” formalism reduces the everyday to a shadow of itself, to a shallow veneer. Closely related to formalism is an approach to the aesthetic appreciation of everyday life that I call aesthetization. The basic idea of this approach is that the events, activities and objects of everyday life are “manipulated” in such a way as to make them proper aesthetic objects. One form of manipulation that has been much discussed recently is called “artification,” a process in which exposure to art and artistic practices is the method by which ordinary events, activities and objects are opened to aesthetic appreciation. In an issue of Contemporary Aesthetics dedicated to artification, Ossi Naukkarinen clarifies the concept as follows: …“artification” refers to situations and processes in which something that is not regarded as art in the traditional sense of the word is changed into something art-like or into something that takes influences from artistic ways of thinking and acting. It refers to processes where art becomes mixed with something else that adopts some features of art.17

16

Allen Carlson, “Formal Qualities and the Natural Environment,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 13 (1979): 99–114. See also Glenn Parsons & Allen Carlson, “New Formalism and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (2004): 363–376. 17 Ossi Naukkarinen, “Variations in Artification,” in Contemporary Aesthetics: Artification, eds. Ossi Naukkarinen & Yuriko Saito, Special Volume 4 (2012), http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/journal.php?volume=49 (accessed August 7, 2012).

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Artification can obviously contribute to the aesthetic quality of the world at large.18 However, as a program for everyday aesthetic appreciation, and especially as a means of addressing the dilemma of everyday aesthetics, it holds out little promise. For example, Arto Haapala points out that “in the context of art the everyday loses its everydayness: it becomes something extraordinary,” but the “aesthetics of everydayness is exactly in the ‘hiding’ of the extraordinary,” and therefore processes such as artification have ultimately “contributed to the neglect of the aesthetics of the everyday.”19 Saito echoes these concerns, commenting that “the ultimate paradox of contemporary art that appropriates, emulates, or aspires to be integrated with the everyday is … [that] the everyday-ness that they try to capture eludes their works.”20 A second, more traditional form of aesthetization, by which the events, activities and objects of everyday life are manipulated such as to become proper aesthetic objects, is what I call rituralization. Rituralization is the process by which quite ordinary events, activities and objects are preformed or observed in special ways, such as in rituals, ceremonies, sacraments and other formal practices.21 The point of such practices is to separate, highlight and give meaningfulness to certain selected events, activities and objects, resulting in, sometimes only as a secondary effect, their becoming sources of aesthetic pleasure. One paradigm example of such rituralization is the Japanese tea ceremony, which elevates having a comforting cup of tea to a complex ritual. Saito points out that the tea ceremony “consists of the most mundane and practical activity that we all engage in everyday—drinking tea and eating a snack”; it is a “‘ceremonious’ occasion to savor mundane activities [that] isolates them from the flow of everyday life.” 22 However, rituals such as the tea ceremony fare no better than artification in addressing the dilemma of everyday aesthetics. Saito continues her description by pointing out that the ceremony “contributes to transcending, even for a short while, the worldly activities and concerns,” and by “the extreme care given to the 18

See Yuriko Saito, “Everyday Aesthetics and Artification,” in Naukkarinen & Saito, Contemporary Aesthetics: Artification, for a detailed discussion of the positive aesthetic advantages of artification, as well as some reservation about the process. 19 Arto Haapala, “On the Aesthetics of the Everyday: Familiarity, Strangeness, and the Meaning of Place,” in Light & Smith, The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, 39–55; quotations at 51, 52. 20 Saito, Everyday Aesthetics, 39. 21 Compare Crispin Sartwell, The Art of Living: Aesthetics of the Ordinary in World Spiritual Traditions (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). 22 Saito, Everyday Aesthetics, 34, 38.

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minutest details” achieves an “aesthetically appreciable result [that] makes the whole occurrence not our everyday affairs,” concluding that “the tea ceremony, while consisting of the most mundane activities … is an inherent paradox.”23 In short, since the point of aesthetization processes such as rituralization and artification is to raise the events, activities and objects of everyday life above the humdrum of day-to-day existence, they do not resolve the dilemma of everyday aesthetics. Their goal is not to aesthetically appreciate “the very everydayness of the everyday,” but to transcend it, to escape it. A third approach to the aesthetic appreciation of everyday life, which seemingly has more success concerning the dilemma of everyday aesthetics than either formalism or aesthetization, turns diametrically away from the general drift of these approaches. It attempts to find aesthetic satisfaction directly in the simple, down-to-earth comforts, pleasures and sensations that are at the heart of everyday life. For lack of a better label, I call the approach “home and hearth,” a phrase that evokes warmth and security and recalls Haapala’s remark that the “aesthetics of everydayness is exactly in … feeling homey and in control.”24 Although elements of this kind of approach can be found in the work of Arnold Berleant, Saito, and Haapala, it is especially clear in two articles by Sherri Irvin. Irvin argues that even the most basic sensations such as “itches and scratches can be the objects of appropriate aesthetic experiences” and that even in the most tedious of moments, such as at philosophy department meetings, “there is a texture of experience in those moments that it is possible to appreciate aesthetically, to gain a real satisfaction from.”25 Moreover, Irvin’s position is especially noteworthy in clearly rejecting the temptation to see such moments as special or extraordinary, a temptation to which some other accounts succumb. She submits that such “experiences are not experiences of exultation; they do not transport me to another realm, but neither are they boring or ho-hum. Aesthetic attention to the realm of basic, everyday experiences … offers the prospect of considerable reward.” 26 Thus, it seems that, unlike formalism and aesthetization, Irvin’s account rises to the challenge posed by the dilemma of everyday aesthetics by truly being, to use Saito’s words again, an aesthetics of “everyday life ordinarily experienced” that does indeed capture “the very everydayness of the everyday.”

23

Ibid, 38. Haapala, “Aesthetics of the Everyday,” 52. 25 Irvin, “Scratching an Itch,” 32, 33. 26 Ibid., 32. 24

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However, the issue that remains for any account like Irvin’s concerns the other horn of the dilemma. Although such approaches may capture “the very everydayness of the everyday,” a question arises concerning their credibility as accounts of genuine aesthetic experience. Irvin does not overlook this point, arguing for considering experiences such as scratching an itch to be aesthetic, referencing current accounts of aesthetic experience by aestheticians such as, for example, Robert Stecker, who holds that a “minimal conception” is “the experience of attending in a discriminating manner to forms, qualities, or meaningful features of things, attending to these for their own sake or for the sake of this very experience.” 27 Moreover, Irvin, like Saito, gives pragmatic reasons for considering such experiences to be aesthetic, in that doing so “may enhance our selfknowledge, increase the availability of certain kinds of aesthetic satisfaction, and, in particular, provide motivational support for projects undertaken in pursuit of moral and other values.”28 Irvin’s considerations are persuasive, but they are not conclusive. First, she does not address the time-honoured distinction between the so-called “distal” senses of sight and hearing and the proximal senses of taste, smell and touch, nor the equally venerable view that only the former are involved in paradigmatic aesthetic experience. 29 Perhaps she thinks that this view is no longer tenable.30 Second, she does not seem very concerned about the claim that 27 Ibid., 27. The quotation is from Robert Stecker, “Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Value,” Philosophy Compass 1 (2006): 1–10, quotation at 4. 28 Irvin, “The Pervasiveness of the Aesthetic in Ordinary Experience,” 43–44. 29 Glenn Parsons and I consider this topic in some detail in Glenn Parsons & Allen Carlson, Functional Beauty (Oxford: Clarendon Oxford University Press, 2008), Chapter 7, “Artefacts and Everyday Aesthetics.” In that chapter we conclude that the view we defend “does not entail an exclusion of the sensual, bodily pleasures of the proximal senses from our aesthetic encounters with the everyday. It does entail that these pleasures, like the pleasures we may take in the feel of a classical sculpture or in the smell of a wild flower, are adjuncts or admixtures to aesthetic appreciation, and not elements of it, strictly speaking. But, although these pleasures are not themselves aesthetic pleasures, they may be compatible with aesthetic pleasures and may add something valuable in their own right, yielding an agreeable and desirable overall experience. This conclusion, of course, is in line with the traditional view, which although it insists on a distinction between bodily pleasures and aesthetic pleasures, does not hold that the two must be completely and at all times isolated from one another. In the case of everyday objects, events, and activities in particular, this conclusion means that the pleasures of the proximal senses, while they ought not to be disregarded, also ought not to be made into something they are not” (194–195). 30 There has recently been considerable argumentation for the aesthetic credentials of the proximal senses of taste, smell and touch. Emily Brady, for example, argues

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the experiences she considers to be aesthetic are in fact only pleasurable. Christopher Dowling charges that while the experiences Irvin discusses “seem to have a pleasurable or enjoyable character, it is not clear what is achieved by appropriating the term ‘aesthetic’ here,” adding that Irvin is “equivocating between ‘aesthetic value’ and ‘pleasure’” and “appears to use ‘pleasurable’ and ‘aesthetic’ interchangeably when attempting to provide additional motivation for attending to those ‘ordinary pleasures’ which animate our day-to-day lives.”31 In light of such difficulties, it is tempting to agree with Haapala when he concludes his discussion of everyday aesthetics by remarking: “I think we should simply become more aware of the pleasurable aspects of the everyday without making them objects of aesthetic appreciation in the traditional sense.”32 The three approaches to everyday aesthetics discussed above characterize the aesthetic appreciation of the events, activities, and objects of everyday life by focusing on, respectively, certain aspects (formal), their manipulation (aesthetization), or their kind (simple pleasures and sensation). Although each has certain advantages, each yet fails to resolve the dilemma of everyday aesthetics, in that the first two fail to capture the ordinary, everydayness of everyday life while the last possibly fails to remain within the realm of the aesthetic. Since these approaches concentrate on the actual for “the legitimacy and importance of smells and tastes in aesthetic appreciation,” holding that smells “can be appreciated as having aesthetic qualities in themselves.” See Emily Brady, “Sniffing and Savoring: The Aesthetics of Smells and Tastes,” in Light & Smith, The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, 156–176, quotation at 177. Likewise, Carolyn Korsmeyer takes up the sense of gustation, arguing that our experience of tastes can be aesthetic experiences. See Carolyn Korsmeyer, Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), Chapter 4, as well as Carolyn Korsmeyer, “Delightful, Delicious, Disgusting,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60 (2002): 217–225. An excellent, albeit ultimately unsympathetic, review of the traditional line of thought can also be found in Making Sense of Taste, Chapter 1. Berleant, Saito and Leddy also accept the idea that aesthetic experience can involve senses other than sight and hearing. Leddy, for example, takes the idea as almost beyond dispute in The Extraordinary in the Ordinary, 68–73. Also of interest is Frank Sibley, “Tastes, Smells, and Aesthetics,” in Approach to Aesthetics: Collected Papers on Philosophical Aesthetics, eds. John Benson, Betty Redfern & Jeremy Roxbee Cox, 207–255 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 31 Dowling, “Aesthetics of Daily Life,”226, 228. 32 Haapala, “Aesthetics of the Everyday,” 52. However, Haapala is somewhat ambivalent about this, which can be seen from how this passage continues: “Perhaps we could give new meaning to the phrase ‘the aesthetics (or the art) of living,’ that is, to value the particulars of the everyday. This adds a new dimension to our aesthetic thinking, a dimension that is indeed dominant in our daily life.”

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events, activities and objects of everyday life without successfully overcoming the dilemma, it is useful to turn to a second set of positions. These approaches focus not on the object of aesthetic experience, but rather on the mental state of the subject of such experiences. Of such approaches, the limiting case is the Western idea of disinterestedness, a mental state by which anything whatsoever, when perceived accordingly, can be transformed into a proper aesthetic object. However, this limiting case is of little interest here, since, as noted, it is the disinterested analysis of aesthetic experience that generates the dilemma of everyday aesthetics in the first place. Recall that Saito finds a source for the dilemma in the specialness and rarity claimed for such experiences, which she believes separates them from the “humdrum of everyday experience.” Consequently, if any approach that analyzes aesthetic experience in terms of the mental state of a subject hopes to resolve the dilemma of everyday aesthetics, then it must develop an account that is either more subtle than or different from that of traditional disinterestedness. In the recent literature on everyday aesthetics, the most fully developed account of aesthetic experience is somewhat akin to, yet perhaps more subtle than, the disinterestedness position is offered by Leddy. His approach is to study everyday aesthetics in terms of aesthetic properties, paying special attention to properties such as neat, messy, orderly, tidy, cute, decorative, sparkly, nice, cozy, and comfortable, to name only a few of those he mentions. However, this approach by itself will not provide an account of the aesthetic appreciation of everyday life, for, as Leddy rightly points out, “it is difficult to find properties that are exclusively applied to any of the particular fields of aesthetics, whether everyday, art or nature.” 33 Consequently, he supplements his account with some ideas related to disinterestedness. His basic idea is that “an aesthetic property is one in which the aesthetic object takes on ‘aura’ within experience,” and he describes aura as, following Husserl, a phenomenological characteristic of an object that “is not in the object as an external thing and is not merely the result of the physical character of the object.”34 In this sense, from “the phenomenological perspective, aura is an aspect of the noema or intentional object of any experience characterized as aesthetic.” 35 To unpack this idea, Leddy returns, by way of Benjamin, to the tradition of disinterestedness as it was developed in the first half of the twentieth century, relying on Edward Bullough’s notion of “psychical distance” and the associated idea of the aesthetic attitude, claiming that “there is such a 33

Leddy, The Extraordinary in the Ordinary, 90. Ibid., 128. 35 Ibid., 129. 34

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thing as the aesthetic attitude, a matter of looking or otherwise sensing in a certain way, and that this attitude tends to generate aesthetic experiences when we take it in approaching everyday phenomena.”36 The upshot is that when the aesthetic attitude is taken, and consequently when “something has aura it is experienced as having heightened significance … it seems to go beyond itself or be greater than itself … it seems more real, more alive, …[and] there is an intensification of that thing or its qualities.”37 In short, what is normally experienced as ordinary is experienced as extraordinary. Consequently, Leddy’s account is explicitly not an aesthetics of everyday life ordinarily experienced. Indeed, that his account cannot resolve the dilemma of everyday aesthetics is suggested by the title of his book, The Extraordinary in the Ordinary. Perhaps he should have heeded Haapala’s observations that aesthetics “does not have to be only about the extraordinary,” and that the “aesthetics of everydayness is exactly in the ‘hiding’ of the extraordinary.”38 As noted, any approach that hopes to resolve the dilemma of everyday aesthetics by analyzing aesthetic experience in terms of a mental state of the subject must be either more subtle than or different from that of disinterestedness. The next approach does the latter by completely abandoning the whole tradition of disinterestedness, distance, and the aesthetic attitude. This is Berleant’s theory, the aesthetics of engagement, which simply rejects these traditional ideas about aesthetic experience. Berleant argues that the theory of disinterestedness involves a mistaken analysis of the concept of the aesthetic and that disinterested appreciation, with its isolating, distancing and objectifying gaze, is out of place in aesthetic experience, for it wrongly abstracts both objects and appreciators from where they properly belong and where appropriate appreciation is achieved. Thus, he replaces disinterestedness and related notions with engagement as the criterion of aesthetic experience. Berleant further challenges the importance of traditional dichotomies, such as between subject and object, and claims that appreciators must immerse themselves in objects of appreciation, reducing the distance between themselves and such objects as much as possible. Using the case of nature appreciation, he summarizes his position as follows: The boundlessness of the natural world does not just surround us; it assimilates us. Not only are we unable to sense absolute limits in nature; we cannot distance the natural world from ourselves. Perceiving 36

Ibid., 131. Ibid., 132, 133, 134, 135. 38 Haapala, “Aesthetics of the Everyday,”52. 37

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The engagement view provides an account of aesthetic experience in all of its realms, not only nature and art, but also everyday life. Moreover, it seems especially relevant to the aesthetic experience of the latter, and Berleant presents it as a model for the aesthetic appreciation of just about everything in everyday life. He elaborates the aesthetic dimensions of large and small environments, such as small towns and large cities, museums and theme parks, as well as all kinds of everyday events, activities, and objects that are involved in home, work, travel, recreation and even human relationships.40 Consequently, it seems that the aesthetics of engagement may be an approach that can resolve the dilemma of everyday aesthetics. If we accept the engagement analysis of aesthetic experience, then our aesthetic appreciation of ordinary everyday events, activities and objects may indeed be experiences of them as, to once again use Saito’s words, “everyday life ordinarily experienced,” complete with “the very everydayness of the everyday.” This is because there is nothing in the concept of engagement itself that requires the items with which one is engaged to be other than ordinary, mundane, common, routine, humdrum, banal, and even just downright uninteresting. However, in light of this, the aesthetics of engagement, although it may solve the dilemma, faces a new, related problem—that of how to sustain engagement with, and thus aesthetic experience of, the ordinary. This new problem is really the dilemma of everyday aesthetics arising in a new form. In the initial formulation of the dilemma, there seems to be a conceptual tension between the aesthetic, given the traditional commitment to it as a special, extraordinary experience, and everyday events, activities and objects, given the commitment of everyday aesthetics to the appreciation of the everyday in all of its banal ordinariness. The new dilemma is somewhat less of a conceptual and more 39

Arnold Berleant, The Aesthetics of Environment (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 169–170. Berleant’s general theory of engagement, especially as applied to the appreciation of art and nature, is developed in Arnold Berleant, Art and Engagement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991) and The Aesthetics of Environment. 40 Berleant’s application of the aesthetics of engagement to issues in everyday aesthetics is found mainly in Arnold Berleant, Living in the Landscape and Aesthetics and Environment, as well as Arnold Berleant, Sensibility and Sense: The Aesthetic Transformation of the Human World (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2010).

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of a practical problem. It is the problem that, if we abandon the idea of aesthetic experience as a special, extraordinary experience (by means of the engagement approach or, for that matter, any other comparable approach), when we turn our aesthetic appreciation away from that which is in itself special and extraordinary, such as great art and magnificent nature, and toward that which is truly ordinary in itself, such as everyday life, there is little or nothing to motivate, maintain and ultimately sustain aesthetic appreciation. Since this is the dilemma of everyday aesthetics arising in a new form, perhaps the dilemma is ultimately inescapable, showing the whole enterprise of everyday aesthetics to be incoherent. However, there is an additional approach to the aesthetic appreciation of everyday life that may offer a way of addressing this new formulation of the dilemma of everyday aesthetics. This approach also conceptualizes aesthetic experience in terms of the mental state of the subject, although it remains uncommitted concerning ideas such as disinterestedness, distance and engagement. Instead, it stresses a different dimension of the subject’s mental resources—the cognitive—holding that knowledge is central to appropriate aesthetic appreciation. For example, in appropriate aesthetic appreciation of works of art, it is essential that we experience works as what they in fact are and in light of knowledge of their real natures, given by art history and art criticism. Thus, for instance, appropriate appreciation of a work such as Jackson Pollock’s One (#31) (1950) requires that we experience it as a painting and moreover as an action painting within the general school of 1950s American Abstract Expressionism, and therefore that we appreciate it in light of knowledge about paintings in general, and 1950s American Abstract Expressionism and action painting in particular. Concerning nature, this approach is sometimes labelled the natural environmental model or scientific cognitivism. 41 It holds that just as serious, appropriate aesthetic appreciation of art requires knowledge of art history and art criticism, such aesthetic appreciation of nature requires knowledge of natural history, provided by the natural sciences such as geology, biology, and ecology.42

41

I use the label “natural environmental model” in Allen Carlson, “Appreciation and the Natural Environment,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 37 (1979): 267–276; Parsons introduces “scientific cognitivism” in Glenn Parsons, “Nature Appreciation, Science, and Positive Aesthetics,” British Journal of Aesthetics 42 (2002): 279–295. 42 I develop the cognitive position in Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture (London: Routledge, 2000). For further discussion of the cognitive view of aesthetic

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The basic idea of aesthetic cognitivism is also applicable to the aesthetic appreciation of everyday life. However, in this case the relevant knowledge is not that given by art history and art criticism or primarily by natural science. Rather, for larger human environments, such as rural and urban landscapes or the landscapes of agriculture and industry, what is relevant to appropriate aesthetic appreciation is information about their histories, their functions, and their roles in human life. It is common sense knowledge and knowledge provided by history and the social sciences.43 Some cognitively oriented accounts also stress the aesthetic potential of cultural traditions in the aesthetic experience of human environments.44 Such traditions seem especially relevant to the aesthetic appreciation of cultural landscapes, ones that constitute important places in the cultures and histories of particular groups of people. For example, ideas from folklore, mythology and religion frequently play a significant role in the aesthetic experience of such landscapes. Moreover, the same approach applies to the smaller dimensions of everyday life—the events, activities and objects that comprise the main focus of everyday aesthetics. The aesthetic experience of such day-to-day things is driven, informed and enriched by knowledge of what they are, how they work, and their place in human life. It is a matter of knowing about their histories and traditions as well as about their fascinating details, their complex operations, and their subtle functioning.45 appreciation of nature, see Allen Carlson & Arnold Berleant, eds., The Aesthetics of Natural Environments (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2004). 43 For the application of the cognitive view to issues concerning human landscapes and everyday aesthetics, see, for example, Allen Carlson, “On Appreciating Agricultural Landscapes,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 43 (1985): 301– 312; Allen Carlson, “On Aesthetically Appreciating Human Environments,” Philosophy and Geography 4 (2001): 9–24; Allen Carlson, Nature and Landscape: An Introduction to Environmental Aesthetics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). 44 For this kind of development of a cognitive view, see, for example, Yrjö Sepänmaa, The Beauty of Environment: A General Model for Environmental Aesthetics, Second edn. (Denton: Environmental Ethics Books, 1993) and Yuriko Saito, “Appreciating Nature on its Own Terms,” Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 135–149, reprinted in an expanded form in Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty, eds. Allen Carlson & Sheila Lintott, 151–168 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). 45 The role of knowledge of function, in particular, in aesthetic appreciation is explored in Parsons & Carlson, Functional Beauty. It is worth noting that the cognitive view developed there also addresses criticisms claiming that the aesthetic appreciation of the everyday lacks the depth or substance of the aesthetic appreciation of art and nature. See, for example, Dowling, “Aesthetics of Daily

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How does cognitive aesthetics help to solve the new dilemma of everyday aesthetics? How does it address the worry that when we turn our aesthetic appreciation away from that which is in itself special and extraordinary, such as great art and magnificent nature, and toward that which is truly ordinary in itself, such as everyday life, then there is nothing to motivate and maintain, indeed nothing to sustain, aesthetic experience? The answer is simple: it is that knowledge of the workings of the everyday world makes it interesting and, moreover, interesting enough to both motivate and sustain aesthetic appreciation. The point is nicely made by an example given by Saito—the aesthetic appreciation of a classic everyday event, such as a game, and in this case a baseball game: …the appreciation of a baseball game may include the noisy cheers of the fans, the hot sun beating down our neck, the smell of the hot dogs, in addition to the quasi-artistic elements such as the players’ body movements, the thrill of a tight competition, and the drama of the recordbreaking home run.46

Saito’s description of the aesthetic experience of the game is compelling. However, even if we accept the inclusion of the proximal senses of touch Life,” 229, who describes his position as the “insistence that an investigation of the aesthetics of daily life should follow the standards upheld in the aesthetics of art (and perhaps nature).” One common form of the criticism goes as follows— although it is intuitive to think of there being better and worse, or more and less correct, judgments about the aesthetic value of portraits or sonatas, it is harder to think of there being better and worse, or more and less correct, judgments when it comes to the aesthetic appeal of, for example, cranes or cars. This is manifested, the argument continues, in the absence of a substantive critical discourse about the aesthetics of everyday items, and also in the lack of any body of knowledge that might be brought to bear in justifying particular aesthetic judgments. Whereas there is expertise on the aesthetic appreciation of portraits and sonatas, drawing on disciplines such as art history and art criticism, it is argued that there is no analogous expertise on cranes or cars, The cognitive view we develop, however, provides exactly the kind of knowledge source required to address such criticisms. On that view, our knowledge of the functions of everyday objects, and of how they fulfil those functions, is required for appropriate appreciation of those objects. To the extent that aesthetic judgments of everyday objects are based upon true beliefs about their functions and how they fulfil them, they are better or more correct judgments. For example, the judgment that an object looks bulky and lopsided is less correct than the judgment that it is visually striking if the former is based upon the mistaken belief that the object in question is a radio antenna, whereas the latter is based on the true belief that it is an industrial crane. 46 Saito, Everyday Aesthetics, 19.

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and smell as well as the “quasi-artistic elements” of the players’ movements in the overall aesthetic experience, appreciation will be difficult to motivate and impossible to maintain unless we have knowledge of the game. Aesthetic appreciation of a baseball game requires some knowledge of the history of the game, its place in human life, and especially its traditions and rules.47 This should be evident to anyone who has ever endured a cricket match without knowing anything about the game. I conclude that, in this way, cognitive aesthetics helps to resolve the new dilemma of everyday aesthetics. Moreover, if a cognitive approach is coupled with one of the positions that successfully addresses the original dilemma of everyday aesthetics—perhaps, for example, the engagement analysis of aesthetic experience—then we may have the basis for, to use Saito’s words once more, an aesthetics of “everyday life ordinarily experienced” that captures “the very everydayness of the everyday.”48

47

This is only to claim that knowledge such as this is typically necessary for motivating and maintaining the aesthetic experience of many of the events, activities and objects of everyday life, not that it is sufficient for doing so. 48 In spite of the fact that in Everyday Aesthetics Saito does not come fully to grips with the dilemma of everyday aesthetics in such a way as to resolve it, I think that of the different alternatives surveyed in this chapter, Saito’s position has the greatest potential for resolving both the original dilemma and the new dilemma of everyday aesthetics. Her position has similarities to the aesthetics of engagement, but also has a strong cognitive dimension. Her commitment to cognitive aesthetics comes out clearly in her research on the aesthetic appreciation of natural environments. See, for example, Saito, “Appreciating Nature on its Own Terms.”

CHAPTER FIVE FOUCAULT’S AESTHETICS OF EXISTENCE AND THE ETHICS OF AUTHENTICITY HEINZ PAETZOLD My essay concerns the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. Regarding ethics, my starting-point is that we are in need of an ethics that takes heed of the aspects of human existence, the individuality of the human, as well as the sociality of humankind. The current socio-cultural situation of the world is determined by the ongoing processes of globalization and individualization. The first part of this chapter concentrates on the aspect of the individual without losing sight of the social, and an ethical-moral-political re-orientation is required that can cope with these two edges. This is becoming urgent since people increasingly have to find a balance between the two poles. A strictly universal ethics as suggested by Kant and the Neo-Kantians in our time must be complemented by an ethics that centres on individuality. Aesthetics, more precisely, the aesthetic experience, could be used to make the individual aspect of ethics stronger though the justification of ethics as a whole is a task of philosophy. I will begin by sketching the outlines of the ethics of authenticity as developed by Charles Taylor. Since Taylor does not focus enough on the individualism today, in the second part of this chapter I will refer to Foucault’s later concept of the “aesthetics of existence.” Finally, I will sketch an extended Taylorian model.

Part I The current socio-cultural situation of most people worldwide can be characterized as a process of ongoing individualization. One aspect of the matter can be paraphrased in the following way—people want to pursue their own “way of life.” They want to lead their lives in the way they wish to do it, saying “it’s my life, and nobody has the right to intervene.” If such a right were to exist, this would amount to invading my individual domain.

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In the given context, the questions must be—How are life plans constituted? How do we build them up? We have to introduce lots of differentiations to handle the case in a satisfactory way. One point to make is that we draw up a life plan not as isolated individuals, but rather create it in contact with others. Of course, there is a moment when the individual has to decide, but this decision is embedded in an ongoing stream of moral-ethical thinking, and this stream is far from irrational. That is to say, moral matters can be talked about and discussed by considering the various different possibilities. They are neither irrational nor hyperrational, like the solving of a mathematic problem. In the words of Charles Taylor, “Reasoning in moral matters is always reasoning with somebody.”1 In the discussed example, two principles of the ethics of authenticity are touched upon: that we can and ought to argue about moral issues and life plans, and that moral reasoning can only happen when we become involved in dialogical interactions. Dialogicality is of constitutive importance. It has a bearing on a person’s identity, and is not just something of becoming a grown up. Dialogicality is an element of principal and constitutive relevance rather than an ingredient of genesis, and I need the other to find and disclose my own identity. Dialogicality does not imply the corporeal presence of the other. I can lead a severe dialogue with a figure of the past; for example, if I am a socialist then Rosa Luxemburg could be such a significant other. In order to reflect upon my conduct I ask myself—how would Rosa have acted in similar situations to those I am living through? The significant other, to refer to George Herbert Mead, is constitutive for my personal becoming. The significant other could also be a figure out of literature, say, a Brechtian Puntila or Matti. We always form our own personal identity in view of the other. The hermit in isolation and the lonesome artist in their studio are no exception from the rule of dialogicality—the first is in continuous dialogue with God, and the latter anticipates a dialogue with their future public.2 Two further systematic perspectives have to be introduced to give meaning to the ethics of authenticity. The first is that while morally reasoning we always assume that there are significant horizons as points of reference. Dealing with moral matters is neither just a joke nor a pure game. The “fundamentally dialogical character”3 of the condition humaine makes sense only if one presupposes that there exist meaningful, 1

Charles Taylor, Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge Mass. London England: Harvard University Press, 1992), 31. 2 Taylor, Ethics of Authenticity, 35. 3 Ibid., 33.

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significant horizons within which the peculiarity of the “I” is established and against which it stands out in relief. The others have a share herein since they once introduced horizons to us within which we now situate ourselves.4 This is valid even if I reject the horizons taught to me in my childhood. In this case, the new horizons are motivated through the neglect of those in which I have been instructed. The ethics of authenticity secondly implies that I want to be consistent and at the same time remain the person I have chosen to be. I want to be true to myself. “Being true to myself means being true to my own originality, and that is something only I can articulate and discover.”5 Such an ideal can be traced back to Romanticism, especially to Johann Gottfried Herder and Friedrich Schleiermacher. The ethics of authenticity does not break with the egalitarian drift of modernity. It adds, however, something to the universalism implied in modern egalitarianism. The Kantian orientation in ethics stresses the universal, that I have to act in such a way that the maxim of my conduct can be universalized. The ethics of authenticity does not fall back behind such a universalism. Rather, it complements universal claims by introducing the particularity of the individual. The norms to which an individual conforms are neither arbitrary nor fortuitous. As norms they are demanding. Individuality and sociality are to be brought into a balance that remains very precarious, and it is to be rethought and readjusted over again. It should have become clear that the ethics of authenticity stresses the individual without giving up the ties of the individual with the social. The factors which indicate the reliance of the individual on the societal are dialogicality, intersubjectivity in moral reasoning, and the disclosure of meaningful horizons.

Part II This is an adequate place to throw a first glance at aesthetics. From its very beginning in modernity, European aesthetics stressed concern with the singular, the individual, and the distinct. There is a chain of theorizing, reaching from Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, emphasizing aesthetics in the sense of the logic of the individual all the way through to Theodor W. Adorno argued that the aesthetic rescues the “particular” and the “singular” from the societal power of homogenization, making the particular subordinate to the universal. 4 5

Ibid., 37. Ibid., 29.

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A methodological corollary, then, is that the ethics of authenticity, due to its centeredness on the individual, can profit in many ways from aesthetics, or to say it better, from the aesthetic experience. The aesthetic experience is attendant to aspects that are ignored in the everyday, disclosing new perspectives on the world. It opens our eyes or ears by refreshing, activating and stimulating them, stimulating us to experience things and social relations in a new way. Since all these aspects relate in one way or another to the individual, the singular, and since the ethics of authenticity needs to renovate the moral sensibilities, the ethics of authenticity is dependent upon aesthetics.

Part III I will now point to two new elements, neither of which are to be found in Taylor nor in the main current of aesthetics, to come closer to our time. In the 1980s, the nimbus of epistemology as the founding instance of philosophy lost its convincing force. Whereas for Kant philosophy had its firm ground in logics and epistemology, ethics and aesthetics seemed to have the status of corollaries. In the last decade of the twentieth century, ethics and aesthetics captured the formerly privileged position which knowledge held. One instance of dethroning epistemology was without doubt Richard Rorty’s book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979).6 Here, we find in the thesis that there is no definitive description of the world. Another contention is that knowledge cannot be preferred to acting or aesthetic experience. Knowledge has no special spiritual value. This, however, was a conviction in the period of Enlightenment through to Kant, when knowledge was ascribed socially liberating strength. Against this outlook, Michel Foucault fervently argues the thesis that knowledge and power are one, and that power is an ingredient of knowledge.7 We have to say farewell to a tradition of thought led by the idea that knowledge is possible only in the state wherein the powerrelations are suspended. We probably have to abnegate the belief that power results in madness and that we can become an upright intellectual only through transcending power-relations. Rather, we have to assume that power creates knowledge. Power and knowledge are mutually inclusive. There is no power-relation without the constitution of a field of knowledge, and there is no knowledge that does not presuppose and 6

Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). 7 Michel Foucault, Der Wille zum Wissen. Sexualität und Wahrheit 1.Übersetzt von Ulrich Raulff und Walter Seitter (Frankfurt am Main: SuhrkampVerlag 1977), 94.

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constitute power-relations. These relationships of power and knowledge are not to be analyzed from the perspective of an epistemological subject who can be totally free or, at any rate, can be free with regards to power systems. 8 The individual is something produced through the “power technology” of the “disciplines,” says Foucault. 9 Power can only be exercised upon free human beings. Since power-relations are ultimately based on freedom they can be turned around. Those without power can challenge those in power, and successively introduce new codes of powerrelations. This distinguishes power-relations (relations de pouvoir) from states of domination (états de domination).10 Both Rorty and Foucault agree in their neglecting to ascribe any spiritual value to doing science, but they draw different conclusions from this. For Rorty the case is clear. Since there is no final vocabulary which would match reality accessible, philosophically one can only demand to shift from one vocabulary to a successive one. In consequence, then, art assumes a decisive role to renew the culture by offering again and again different descriptions of the world. Now, at this point Rorty introduces a new element. With regard to ethics there remains only one commandment. Rorty does not call it this, but his idea comes close to it. Human beings have to do all they can to avoid cruelty. Science cannot help us in the struggle for emancipation as the Enlightenment philosophers thought. Ours is still to extend the “We” in that the scope of solidarity is amplified, and the group of “They” are minimized step by step, in that they are increasingly included. Though the world and society are to be conceived of as contingent, solidarity becomes a kind of obligation. The central figure who helps the societal culture to keep going and who is constantly shifting is the ironist. Due to the activity of the ironist, the stagnation of culture is foreclosed. It’s role is to interpret art, literature and documentary features to the extent that the moral sensibility of the public is kept alert.

8 Michel Foucault, Überwachen und Strafen. Die Geburt des Gefängnisses. Übersetzt von Walter Seitter (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1976), 39. 9 Ibid., 250. 10 Michel Foucault, Ästhetik der Existenz. Schriften zur Lebenskunst. Herausgegeben von Daniel Defert und François Ewaldunter Mitwirkung von Jacques Lagrange. Ausgewählt und mit einem Nachwort von Martin Saar. Übersetzt von Michael Bischoff, Ulrike Brokelmann, Hans-Dieter Gondek und Hermann Kocyba (Frankfurt am Main: SuhrkampVerlag 2007), 96–97; Vgl. Wilhelm Schmid, Philosophie der Lebenskunst. Eine Grundlegung (Frankfurt am Main: SuhrkampVerlag 1998), 150.

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Part IV Whereas Rorty’s neo-pragmatist model works with literary art works whose aesthetic experience and understanding can improve culture by piece-meal engineering, in that the scope of solidarity is widened later, Foucault projects an aesthetics of existence as a solution to the shortcomings of modern society. His central idea is that contemporary men and women should fashion their lives as works of art. This would amount to recreation of an ethics based on the individual rather than on a morality that is decreed either by the state or by the church.11 Such pastoral power, as was characteristic of medieval times, has gone. Foucault notices in the contemporary period that the shaping power of the state providing the individual with a firm moral orientation has lost its strength. What is there to say about the morality of the aesthetics of existence? For Foucault, the situational flexible performance of ethical rules, rather than a petrified code of behaviour, is at stake—not an ascetic way of life, but using the desires and therefore integrating eroticism and corporeal sexuality into the aesthetics of existence. Foucault thinks that the stylizations of sexual behaviour are necessary as part of a new type of life conduct. Moral and aesthetic components are to be combined and fused.12 The aesthetics of existence consists in a practice that leads to the transformation of the existence, the being fashioned in such a way that a work originates. The ephemeral life receives a style that epitomizes the freedom of the individual, and peculiar aesthetic values emerge, such as beauty through proportion, the delimiting boundary through form, visibility for others, the attractive and the pleasing.13 All this, as Foucault concedes, is to be seen in the context of the ancient Greek Polis, which implies the rule of men as superior to women. From Foucault one can derive only a few hints with regards the contemporary art of existence. It is interesting that, according to Foucault, after the ancient Greek model of the aesthetics of existence had declined the aesthetics of existence became virulent during the period of the Renaissance and the Dandyism of the nineteenth century. These are stages of a genealogy of the aesthetics of existence, and today a new model is anticipated.

11

Ibid., 282. Michel Foucault, Der Gebrauch der Lüste. Sexualität und Wahrheit 2. Aus dem Französischen von Ulrich Raulff und Walter Seitter (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1989), 122–123. 13 Foucault, Gebrauch der Lüste, 118–119, 120, 122, 132–134. 12

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If we follow some of the interpreters of Foucault, such as Wilhelm Schmid, the concept of the aesthetics of existence systematically encompasses at least three dimensions.14 (1) The aesthetics of existence asks us to pay thorough attention to the details of our world. To strengthen the aesthetic experience as a mode of sensual knowledge is a requirement of our time, with its shifting scenes and its abrupt political changes. We have to learn to look at the world from different perspectives, train our capabilities to easily switch between various modes of perceptions, and heighten our sensibilities of experiencing the world in new ways. Here, aesthetics as a kind of knowledge is involved. Aesthetics is a tool for coming to grips with the actually existing world. In Foucauldian terms, the care for oneself requires a “special form of attention, of viewing.”15 Foucault refers to an instruction of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, according to which we should not be content with established evidences but engage in shifting the “forms of sensibility and the thresholds of toleration.” 16 For the aesthetics of existence it is of decisive importance that one has a multiplicity of views and polygonal perspectives at one’s disposal, rather than that one sticks to only one point of view.17 (2) “The Greek ethics is centered around a problem of personal choice, around an aesthetics of existence.” 18 This is the second aspect of the aesthetics of existence. Such an ethics does not ask for universal norms, the focus being on an ethics centred on the individual. “The ethics of an aesthetics of existence is … something of a personal decision.”19 But here one has to be careful. The Foucauldian aesthetics of existence contains nothing of the lonely individual since it is exercised and performed before the eyes of the others.20 This constellation is decisive. Such an ethics does not rest on the question of normatives, but rather is based on the life plan 14

Wilhelm Schmid, Auf der Suche nach einer neuen Lebenskunst. Die Frage nach dem Grund und die Neubegründung der Ethikbei Foucault, 2nd edition (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992), 280–304. 15 Quote from Helmut Becker & Lothar Wolfstetter, eds., Freedom and Selfcare (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), 32. 16 Débat avec Michel Foucault. Table ronde du 20 mai 1978, in Michelle Perrot, ed., L’impossible prison, Paris 1980; quoted in Schmid, Auf der Suche nach einer neuen Lebenskunst, 285. 17 Schmid, Auf der SuchenacheinerneuenLebenskunst, 286. 18 “On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress,” in Hubert L. Dreyfuß& Paul Rabinow, eds., Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 235. 19 Schmid, Auf der Suche nach einer neuen Lebenskunst, 288. 20 Ibid., 289.

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of an individual and acted out accordingly. At stake is the choice of one’s own form of existence, one’s individual way of leading one’s life. It is, however, far from arbitrary. The rule of conduct derives from the individual, not from obligations of the society. (3) Whereas the first dimension of the aesthetics of existence could be called “aesthetics as a form of knowledge,” and while the second dimension of the aesthetics of existence could be labelled as “aesthetics as a form of justification [Begründungsform],” the third dimension is “aesthetics as a way of living [Lebensform].”21 Here, one’s own existence receives aesthetic values, such as formation, design and transformation. The aesthetics of existence presupposes the will to form. At issue is the “existence … not as subjectivity but as work of art,” as Gilles Deleuze said. 22 Whereas Charles Baudelaire, in his essay “Le peintre de la vie modern” (1863), argued that it is the exclusive task of the artist to make of his/her existence a work of art, Foucault interprets this activity as a societal practice and a political exercise. The shaping of one’s life as a work of art, for Foucault or for Baudelaire, is not an act of revealing inner human truth. Rather, it is a practical ethics consisting in the fact of giving rules of conduct to oneself. By these rules the modes of being of an individual are changed, and life becomes a work with “aesthetic values.” The targets of the aesthetics of existence, forming the point of view of the art of living, are to instigate the act of choice within the systems of complexity, and the disclosure of different ways of looking at things. As Schmid shows, for Foucault the personal entrance into aesthetics occurred during his encounter with the music of Olivier Messiaen (Mode de valueurs d’intensités), Pierre Boulez and Jean Baraque.23 This indicates, I would like to argue, that Foucault’s idea of aesthetics is an emphatically modern one, comparable with Adorno’s or Arthur C. Danto’s. In consequence of this sensibility, for Foucault the movement of Formalism in the 1920s and later was a European (Russian, German, Austrian and Middle European) protest against dogmatism and universalism, attitudes which fuelled the ideologies of the twentieth century, leading to despair and destruction. Formalism was not something restricted to the fine arts but encompassed also architecture, music, philosophy, linguistics and mythology. The emphatic work with the “system of forms” was the decisive content, as Foucault wrote in his essay 21

Ibid., 280. Quoted in Schmid, Auf der Suche nach einer neuen Lebenskunst, 298. From Gilles Deleuze, La vie commeun oeuvre d’ art (conversation with Didier Eribon), in: Le Nouvel Observateur 29 August, 1986. 23 Schmid, Auf der Suche nach einer neuen Lebenskunst, 299–300. 22

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Pierre Boulez ou l’écran traverse (1982). The reduction to the formal in the artistic and scientific fields corresponded to a way of living on the side of the artists that was brought to its concentrated essence. This latter reductionism to the “elementary of existence” had its historical parallel in the practices of the ancient Greek cynics. The common denominator was to reduce life to its basic elements and by doing so practicing “otherness” and exposing “eccentricity.”24 The art of living obviously presupposes creativity, but this creativity is neither to be understood as the product of a “genius” nor is the creative potential of the individual to be equalled with authenticity in the Heideggerian sense, if authenticity excludes self-technologies. The connection between art and the art of living could be identified with the artistic avant-gardes. Indeed, Rimbaud’s ethical-aesthetic creed was the call “to change life.” Furthermore, the notion of the aesthetics of existence could mean taking the work of the avant-garde artists seriously, for instance John Cage’s concept of the intertwinement of art and everyday life. One of the purposes of the aesthetics of existence surely consists in the overcoming of the separation of art and everyday life, indicated in the isolation of the world of the museums. Foucault’s aspiration goes even further; his concept of the aesthetics of existence asks that everyone be requested to make a work of art of their life. In Foucault’s text On the Genealogy of Ethics (1984) we find the following statement, though it is put in the form of a question: What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is related only to objects and not to individuals, or to life. That art is something which is specialized or which is done by experts who are artists. But couldn’t everyone’s life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life?25

All that has been said with regards to the systematic structure of the aesthetics of existence can be summarized by a quote from Foucault’s book Use of the Pleasure, where the aesthetics of existence is paraphrased as the “reflected art of a liberty conceived as power game.” 26 The aesthetics of existence is thus an art. It is reflective and that means it is decidedly related to the actuality, pointing at liberty. This art is embedded in power relations, which says that the aesthetics of existence as a work, if 24

Schmid, Auf der Suche nach einer neuen Lebenskunst, 300–301. Hubert L. Dreyfus & Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault. Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 236. 26 Quoted Schmid, Auf der Suche nach einer neuen Lebenskunst, 294; Foucault, Gebrauch der Lüste, 318. 25

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confronted with others, pleases or challenges them. Here, we would have to refer to an idea of the great thinker of liberalism, John Stuart Mill. In his famous essay On Liberty (1854), Mill discovers a danger for modern democracy, namely the tyranny of the majority, leading to political and social stagnancy. For Mill, only daring actions and thoughts by what he calls “eccentrics” can break the threatening immobility. The eccentrics challenge or please the others in that they have to ask themselves whether they are on an adequate path. As a result, the others are motivated and even stimulated to change their life style or to reaffirm it with reasons. This idea can easily by transformed into Foucault’s power game. The aesthetics of existence of a given eccentric is a challenge to the others, and since power presupposes freedom, as Foucault believed, the challenge in the given context is a challenge through the lived example.

Part V Rorty does not offer any justification of his ethics. He avoids efforts to demonstrate and to prove, since such undertakings would amount to falling back to metaphysical foundationalism. He only tries to show and to appraise the democratic society. His main argument herein is that the USreality has proven to be stable, with regard to the democratic institutions, the necessary background for small social and political improvements. Foucault’s idea of the aesthetics of existence is more an idea or a project than a realized concept. Both approaches, Foucault’s and Rorty’s, add something to a Taylorian ethics of authenticity. Rorty delivers interpretations of more contemporary works of art. Foucault points to the floating, flexible and mobile character of the aesthetics of existence if it is introduced into the project of an ethics of authenticity. The Taylorian mode of phenomenological-procedural justification of ethicality has to remain a necessary standard, in my view. Taylor has pointed to two weaknesses of the US political system, which often tends to become an affair of legal conflict. Many political controversies are basically fights between different “law schools.” In the public debate the “procedural liberalism of neutrality” is a widely held opinion within social philosophies in the US. On that view, the people are not really involved in political struggles. It would be better to reorient politics by linking them to programs so that people can discuss, identify or reject. By doing so they become much more involved as actors in the political arena rather than remaining in the role of a mere spectator or in the position of voting for political elites in accordance with individual interests. Since in the US the people are no longer really included in active politics, the danger of the slope to “soft”

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despotism, as described by Alexis de Tocqueville, cannot be underestimated.27 The Taylorian approach is able to rectify or clarify aspects of Foucault. As I said at the beginning of this chapter, the ethics of authenticity enables us to bring together the two poles of human existence: being an individual and a social being. We have to argue about our ethical conduct with others and are shaped by our references to significant others. The question is, how does a Foucauldian aesthetics of existence make the step toward the intersubjective dimension? Even if my conduct is flexible with regard to its leading rules, these nevertheless have to be discussed and legitimized in the communication with others. This is Taylor’s suggestion. On the other hand, I propose to understand the performance of the aesthetics of existence as a challenge to others, and introduce a kind of implicit dialogue. This would be an argument using a Millian concern. Of course, Foucault rejects the ideology of democracy if understood as contract, and by doing so he seems to leave behind the atomistic view of society. It sometimes appears as if Foucault is led by the idea that the performative practice per se would enable us to reorganize politics and also enable the aesthetics of existence.

Part VI In this chapter I have understood Foucault’s stimulating idea of the aesthetics of existence as a valuable complement to Taylor’s ethics of authenticity. In clarifying at least three points, I hope that I can put forward my own position more clearly. First, authenticity is not to be understood from the concept of “Eigentlichkeit des Seins,” in a Heideggerian sense. In Being and Time (1927), young Heidegger thought among other things that a human being (“Dasein”) can only reach the state of adequate being—“Eigentlichkeit” in Heidegger’s terminology—in that “Dasein” leaves behind the state of inauthentic being (German “Man”), which means for Heidegger being as public being. Remaining in the state of public being means staying in a devalued state. The step from the “Uneigentlichkeit” of “Dasein,” from the “public impersonality of the One” [das Man] to the “Eigentlichkeit” is conceptualized by Heidegger as an exclusively individualized rather than social act. In that “Ego” runs “afore” to his or her own death, the state of “Eigentlichkeit” is attained. Here, Heidegger considers the adequate being as something completely individualized and atomized. Neither a 27

Taylor, Ethics of Authenticity, 9-10, 110-112, 115-120.

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Taylorian“ethics of authenticity” nor Foucauldian“aesthetics of existence” are exclusively individualized, lonely undertakings. Heidegger, however, conceptualizes the “authentic being” (“eigentliches Sein”) as a grasping of the “individual” in its complete possibilities of being. Authenticity in the sense of the “ethics of authenticity,” however, means foremost to follow one’s own life plan. Authenticity is no return to origins; it means sticking to one’s own finite ideals and hopes. Authenticity is not moral perfection. Authenticity points to my way of living, and the concept of authenticity has received a new topicality within postcolonial studies. Think, for instance, of Enrique Dussel. Second, we have to read Foucault’s concept of power as an implicit mode of reasoning. Power struggles, as their condition of possibility, presuppose arguments of whatever form. It must be possible, however, to develop the utterance into arguments. In one way or another, Foucault’s concept of power implies communication, dialogicality and interactivity. For me, the concept of Taylor presupposing dialogicality brings Jürgen Habermas’s and Karl-Otto Apel’s communicative rationality or communicative community (“Kommunikationsgemeinschaft”) down to earth. Dialogicality is a many-layered form of inter-subjectivity. Communication in the sense of linguistic intersubjectivity, with argument and counter-argument, is only one layer among others, not the exclusive and decisive one. Arguing can have rather diverse forms, reaching from the use of posters and pictures to essays, conversations, media-statements, theatre-plays and explicitly political contributions in the public arena, such as in parliament, newspapers and television-interviews. Third, we should make a difference not found in either the writings of Foucault himself or in the texts of Wilhelm Schmid, which is the difference between the artist in the role of an artist proper and their role as the publicly acting individual. As far as an artist, a Joseph Beuys or a Neo Rauch or a Cindy Sherman, is concerned and is engaged in the aesthetics of existence, they use their recognition within the art world to progress the position of the public individual. The shaping of the life of the artist becomes clear in that we reconstruct their life plan in its intertwinement with the artistic works. Wilhelm Schmid argues that the autobiography of artists per se belongs to the material, which epitomizes the “aesthetics of existence.”28 In opposition to such an opinion I would like to argue that the autobiographies and biographies of artists draw their interest from the fact 28

Schmid, Suche, p.302 with reference to the text “Entretien de Berkeley surl’esthétique de l’existence“, Transcript, 1. Wilhelm Schmid, Philosophie der Lebenskunst. EineGrundlegung, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1998), 253, 255, 236-237.

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that they are already recognized within the “art world” and that they are for that reason exemplary, to a certain extent. Beyond any cult of genius we want to know how these men and women have lived and how their artworks have been embedded in their personal lives. In this case, we are interested in autobiographies or biographies because here we find the material for understanding the process of shaping the art of living. Another possibility is our interest in the biography of a person I was intimately acquainted with. In this case, I want to know how the works I know and the life, the details of which I do not know, fit together. Yet a third case is the biography of a person who lived through extreme and terrifying circumstances, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto or someone who survived the cauldron of the besieged Sarajevo, perhaps. In this case, I can be strongly moved by the descriptions of the sufferings and the heroism of that person. The thesis behind this is that the art of living must be objectified in cultural works (art-works, TV-features, novels, life stories etc.) to become accessible. Otherwise, the art of living remains a rather vague category.

Part VII In summarizing, we can argue that the ethics of authenticity integrates aesthetic experiences and aesthetic attitudes to give shape to the ethicality of the individual. Individualization, however, in its proper sense, would amount to localizing the individual within an emancipated sociality. To realize the latter is and remains a foremost political task.

Part VIII A kind of afterword—I am personally very much interested in the subject of the aesthetics of existence because it rearticulates a problem which has fascinated me since my dissertation on “Neomarxist Aesthetics” (1974). Discussing the aesthetics of Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, I was attracted by the idea that in an emancipated society art would lose its character of being just an element of the superstructure to a given economic base. Adorno, Benjamin and Marcuse were driven by the idea that the promise given by the work of art, namely “le promesse de Bonheur,” to use the formula of the French writer Stendhal, is realized in an emancipated society in that its content becomes sublated (“aufgehoben” in the sense of Hegel that is “negated,” “saved” and “brought onto a higher level”). Life, then, would have a style. It would bear a form. Whereas critical Marxism envisions this sublation of

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art as a collective process of liberation, Foucault gives a different turn to it in that he projects the aesthetics of existence as an individual process which, however, has a bearing on the societal. Critical Marxism projects the aesthetics of existence as something mankind would enjoy after collective liberation. Foucault, on his part, thinks of the aesthetics of existence not as the deed of the cultural elite, but as an egalitarian philosopher he imagines the art of living as something open to everyone.

PART II THE ARTS IN EVERYDAY LIFE AESTHETICS

CHAPTER SIX ART PHOTOGRAPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE CURTIS L. CARTER By their very nature, most human beings are curious about every day subjects and actions as such, as well as objects and the relationships between them. Even for the shallowest of minds, “An original, moving, shapeless or undifferentiated world must be brought to rest and given stable form … .”1 Not every human being can be a philosopher bent on solving such relationships by analytical thinking or a scientist who traces the constancies and transformations of change in both human and natural phenomena using empirical strategies. Even among those philosophers charged with examining the major concerns of aesthetics today, accustomed to thinking of aesthetics in terms of concepts applicable to the arts or nature, it is not always easy to focus this mode of thinking on the everyday objects and actions. Is it demanding too much of philosophers whose pleasures and interests are mainly bound up with a life of contemplation, and to whom analysis and introspections are understood as the pre-requisites for a proper understanding of the world, to appreciate a world that is largely non-intellectual, non-artistic in the common sense, which often relies on discharges of physical vitality or simple and naïve expressions of emotion? It is, I think, precisely the call of this volume that challenges us to engage in this task. My approach will be to look to photography as one means of facilitating our inquiry into the aesthetics of everyday life. Its accessibility to all makes photography seem the most suitable art medium to aid in understanding the aesthetics of everyday life. The aim of this chapter is to look at the role of photography in everyday life as seen through its developments in art photography. I propose two related hypotheses: first, that the experiences offered through art photography are integrally connected to everyday life experiences, and 1

Quoted in Joseph Campbell’s The Flight of the Wild Gander (New York: The Viking Press, 1969), 61. From Paul Radin, Primitive Man as Philosopher (Appleton, 1927; Dover, 1957).

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second that art photography is, perhaps more so than other art media, useful for examining the aesthetics of everyday life. I will be using examples from different approaches to art photography of the past century to show how photography addresses the aesthetics of everyday life. Since the mid-nineteenth century, photography has become an increasingly popular medium both for the public and for artists. A reference to photography in one of Henry James’ 1892 short stories, “The Wheel of Time,” affirms the role of photography in everyday life and in literature even before the beginning of the twentieth century: “The young man had only one marked taste, with which his mother saw no way to deal—an invincible passion for photography. He was perpetually taking shots at his friends … .”2 Maurice remarks: “I don’t ask for much, but I ask for beauty … My eyes must be gratified—I must have a wife I can photograph. As the relationship progresses, Maurice’s mother becomes increasingly worried that it is in trouble when she notes that her son has dropped photography. With respect to our concern with aesthetics, it is interesting to note that James links beauty with photography in this scenario. From the time of its inception in the mid-nineteenth century, photography began to invade every corner of everyday life, from fashion to surveillance, popular entertainment to industrial production. Alexander Rodchenko, Sergei Tretyakov and their Russian colleagues engaged in lively debates over photography and its role in the everyday life of the post-revolutionary era of the 1920s.3 Today, photography is available to virtually everyone to investigate everyday objects and happenings. Our technologically driven cultures worldwide offer access to making personal photographs. News media, including the internet and television, rely extensively on the photograph, as do the popular magazine industry and museum publications. Today, even most cell phones and computer screens have the potential to create and instantly distribute photographic images. Hence, the photograph has become a key means of supplying and communicating images to help bring some visual and conceptual order to an undifferentiated world, bringing it to rest for contemplation, documentation, remembrance and appreciation. Theorists initially met photography with mixed reactions, as Walter Benjamin’s 1931 essay “Little History of Photography” shows. Baudelaire’s 2

Henry James, “The Wheel of Time,” The Complete Tales of Henry James (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1961), Vol. 8, 457, 458, 470. 3 See Christopher, Phillips, ed., Photography in the Modern Era: European Documents (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Aperture, 1989), 211– 286.

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indictment of photography in his Salon of 1857 is twofold. He fears that photography reinforces the view that “art can be nothing more than the accurate reflection of nature,” while his second argument links photography to the taste of the masses: “If photography is permitted to supplement some of art’s functions, they will forthwith be usurped and corrupted by it thanks to photography’s natural alliance with the mob.”4 Quite the opposite view is rendered by Antoine Wiertz. He predicted that in the future, photography (daguerreotype), which already “amazes the mind and startles the eye,” would assume a major role in the development of art.5 Benjamin’s views on photography are mainly affirmative of its importance, in the sense that in this essay he declares that the “illiteracy of the future will be not of reading or writing but of photography.” However, he observes that some uses of photography, for example in fashion and advertising, reveal nothing about the actual reality of things except their saleability. Despite any reservations, Benjamin readily affirms the possibilities of the camera to reveal the connections of all aspects of human activity, thus enhancing both the understanding and appreciation of human actions from taking a step, experiencing the first steps a child, or enjoying the steps of a dancer in motion, to the ability to gain access to the images found in Egyptian hieroglyphics. 6 Atget, a master French photographer during the early twentieth century, offers intimate readings of Parisian architecture and street scenes. In a different setting, health care providers and scientists working in laboratories also make use of photography in their investigations. Benjamin subsequently finds a key to a fundamental change in the future of art in the reproducibility of photographic images. This shift would abandon aura (the unique spiritual quality that is characteristic of traditional art) in favour of art that is accessible to the masses and useful for political purposes. Benjamin’s

4

Walter Benjamin, “The Little History of Photography,” Selected Writings Vol. 2, 1927–1934 (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1999), 527. 5 Walter Benjamin, “The Little History of Photography,” Selected Writings Vol. 2, 1927–1934 (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1999), 526, 527. 6 Walter Benjamin, “The Little History of Photography,” Selected Writings Vol. 2, 1927–1934 (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1999), 520-526.

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well-known thesis is developed in a later essay, “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility.”7 Thus, from its beginnings in the nineteenth century, as the commentaries of Wiertz and Baudelaire indicate, photography has been of great interest to artists who see the possibilities for moving art beyond the limits of painting, drawing and printmaking. In turning to photography, the artists bring the connections between the physical world and human perception into sharper focus, forcing a re-examination of traditional mimetic understanding of the relation between image and other forms of the real. Roland Barthes’ writings on photography, “The Photographic Message” and Camera Lucida, offer a useful theoretical beginning for approaching the role of photography in understanding the aesthetics of everyday life. Barthes hypothesizes that photography offers a perfect analogical description of reality that is continuous with what is being depicted. This means that photography does not translate what it depicts into a symbol system like language, or a connotative system like the brush strokes of painting. In effect, its message is transmitted without a code. However, when linked with captions and other cultural devices, photography also acquires connotative meanings. For example, staging, posing and other procedures undertaken in structuring the photograph, such as trick effects, manipulation of the pose, lighting, exposure, shutter speed, variations in lens, as well as darkroom manipulations of the negative and print all contribute the connotative understanding of a photograph. In Camera Lucida Barthes distinguishes two dimensions of photographic participation in everyday life: studiumandpunctum. Studiumrefers to the context of cultural, linguistic and political interpretations that rely on a level of polite but not deeply personal engagement, based on recognizing the photographer’s intentions without becoming personally engaged. The stadium relies on an informal social contract linking the viewer to the photographer’s intentions, in part through shared cultural connotations. For example, a newspaper photograph of a sports figure draws upon the connotative frame provided by the role of athletes in a culture.8 Punctum is the personal response to details of the photograph invoking direct interest, sympathy, curiosity and attraction in the spectator, apart from the

7 Walter Benjamin, “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility,” Selected Writings Vol. 2 1927–1934 (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University). 8 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, translated by Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 27, 28.

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connotative.9 The lightning-like punctum experience engages both bodily and mindful responses in the spectator and often carries over into the aesthetic. Barthes supports his thesis concerning the punctum with a myriad of photographic examples throughout Camera Lucida. For example, A. Kertéz’s 1921 image of a Hungarian violinist playing in the street with an audience of two young children captures a glimpse of life in a struggling post-war East European village.10 In another example, Robert Mapplethorpe’s “Young Man with Arm Extended” catches the spectator’s direct interest with its exacting degrees of openness and abandonment.11 My aim in citing Barthes’ account of photography is to relate photography to the aesthetics of everyday life. It is not my plan to engage in a critical analysis of Barthes’s position here (though this might be a fruitful option), but rather to accept the main thesis he offers as a starting point. From this point I will look to developments in the art of photography in the past century to see how these developments may or may not inform us as to the role of photography in the aesthetics of everyday life. A brief look at some of the changes photography has undergone since its inception in the mid-nineteenth century is useful for understanding photography’s role in the aesthetics of everyday life. Initially, the aesthetics of photography focused on common elements and differences between photography and painting. Later, photography emerged in two distinct forms: as autonomous art and a medium that serves practical ends. One of the current questions of interest for the aesthetics of photography is—how do these different roles function in respect to photography’s role in everyday life? Our main concern here will be on the role of autonomous art in contributing to everyday aesthetics. However, autonomous art and art that serves practical ends in advertising and commerce and other cultural roles are not inseparable. Not all artists agreed on the status of photography as an art form at the beginning of the twentieth century. Perhaps no one has been more explicit in refusing to accept photographs into the domain of art than the early twentieth-century Futurist painter and theorist Umberto Boccioni: “We have always rejected with disgust and contempt even the most distant relationship with the photograph because it is outside the boundaries of

9

Ibid., 42–51. Ibid., 48. 11 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, translated by Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 58. 10

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art.”12 Boccioni had initially explored the time-lapse based photographic experiments of Étienne Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge, but later rejected photography as art. In the sections that follow I will discuss various approaches to photography including pure photography, staged photographs, altered photographs, appropriated photographs, photographs as social critique, and conceptual photographs. These changes represent the main developments of the past century.

Pure Photography Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, art photographers such as Francis Firth insisted on a sharp disjunction between photographs and painting. Firth argued that photography must develop its own aesthetic outside the painterly tradition, viewing photography as an art medium with its own unique properties based on the camera, lens and photo-printing processes. Such earlier developments lay the foundations for the widely diverse approaches to experimental photography now available for our consideration. In 1932, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and a group of like-minded American photographers formed Group f64 and became a strong nucleus for proponents of “pure photography.” This group understood photography as art consisting of two-dimensional representations taken with the camera and without manipulation of the images with painterly or graphic devices. Although their individual works cover a wide diversity of approaches, these photographers argued that manipulating or altering photographs resulted in loss of purity of tone and other unique properties of photographs. Representing the point of view of f64, Weston stated that: “a photograph should be sharply focused, clearly defined from edge to edge, from the nearest object to the most distant. It should have a smooth or 12

Umberto Boccioni, “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting,” 1910, quoted in Aaron Scharf, Art and Photography (Middlesex, England, 1974), 258. Ironically, Boccioni’s Futurist colleagues substantially undercut his views on photography. Giacomo Balla’s paintings reflect the influence of Muybridge and Maurey’s photographic experiments, as illustrated in Dessin (1896), a satirical anti-clerical composition using serial repetition of the human figure to simulate motion. Moreover, there exists a substantial body of Italian Futurist art photography, which I will refer to later on, that runs contrary to Boccioni’s attempts to exclude photography as art. See Giovanni Lista, Photographie Futuriste Italienne 1911– 1939, exhibition catalogue (Musee D’ArtModerne de la Ville de Paris, Paris: 1981–1982), 6.

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glassy surface to reveal the amazing textures and details to be found only in the photograph. Its values should be clearcut, subtle or brilliant, never veiled.”13 In the 1960s, John Szarkowski, curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, restated the distinctive visual and pictorial characteristics of a photographer’s medium. He argued that photography is concerned with the actual, significant detail, in a particular moment of time, framed by the photograph’s edge, and seen from the artist’s unique vantage point. According to Szarkowski, photography provided a radically new picture-making process, which encourages new habits of seeing. This view emphasizes description and formal discoveries over narrative meaning.14 With respect to our subject, the photographers of this movement from Weston to Szarkowski exemplify the use of photography to enable its viewers to deepen and personalize their experiences of the details of the world surrounding them with the aid of the camera. Their photographs emphasize clarity of vision and appreciation of surroundings from the barn roofs of the Midwest USA to western scenic rivers and mountains. At the same time, there is agreement that the photograph is something more than what it depicts.

Staged, Altered and Appropriated Photographs In her 1987 book Fabrications, photography historian Anne Hoy classified the developments of contemporary photography into the categories of staged, altered and appropriated photographs. 15 These categories are useful in gaining a perspective on some of the important developments in the photography of the late twentieth century. The examples in each of these categories will suffice to indicate some of the main developments.

Staged Photographs Italian Futurist photographers such as A. G. Bragagalia, Pietro Boccardi, Amedo Ferroli, Vinicio Paladini, Ferrucio A. Demanins, Tato (Guglielmo Sansoni) and others, working during the period of 1911 to 13 Edward Weston, Photography 11C (Pasadena, California: Esto Publishing Co., 1934), 12. 14 John Szarkowski, The Photographer’s Eye (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966), 6–12. 15 Ibid.

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1939, helped lay the groundwork for later developments in staged photography. 16 These artists introduced constructed sets for use in developing their photography. For example, Tato’s Le Parfait Bourgeois (1930) is based on a meticulously constructed set. His photograph features a headless business suit seated at a table. Two hands protrude from the sleeves while grasping, respectively, a wine glass and a dining fork. Thematically, the figure projects a measure of Marxist social critique. Pacetti, another Italian Futurist, based his photograph Freudiana (1933) on psychoanalytical theory. This image consists of a dream-like fantasy with images of human figures acting out a scene. The photographs of these Futurists visualized and thus brought the ideas found in Marxist and Psychoanalytic theories closer to everyday experience. Joel-Peter Witkins’ Las Meninas (1987) offers another example of staged photography. Witkin’s LasMeninas transforms Velasquez’s painting created in 1656 into the language of twentieth century photography. Using a constructed set containing key elements of the original painting, he invites us to reflect afresh on its meaningas interpreted by a twentiethcentury artist. Witkin’s photograph retains key elements from Velazquez’s masterpiece: the painter at his easel, the five-year-old princess in the foreground, the paintings on the rear wall, and the mirror image of the king and queen. He replaces the court official in the doorway of Velaszuez’s painting with a longhaired contemporary male in a bathing suit. Another young male figure lying on the floor at the foot of the painter’s easel signifies the presence of the contemporary artist (Witkin), who is orchestrating the scene. The doll-like princess is perched on a wire construction that follows the contour of the princess’ hoop skirt as it appeared in Velazquez’s painting. Just to the right of the artist and his palette a camera is strategically placed on a small draped table. The camera’s presence in Witkin’s photograph reinforces the transformation that has taken place in the change of mediums. Perhaps it is also intended as a commentary on the independence that photography has achieved from painting since Velasquez made his picture. Witkins’ Las Meninas thus recontextualizes Velasquez’s painting by making the painting’s images available in a medium more accessible (photography) to everyday experiences of the contemporary viewers. This picture also serves to link contemporary photography to art history through its referencing and reinterpreting an important historical painting for contemporary understanding.

16

Ibid.

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Altered Photographs Despite the warning of the esteemed American historian of photography, Beaumont Newhall and other advocates of pure photography, some contemporary art photographers have reinstituted in their practices an exploration of the affinities between photography and painting. Arguments against mixing the processes of the two media, or otherwise tampering with the photographic image, have failed to persuade artists of the coming generations. Before looking at contemporary developments in altered photographs, it is useful to recall earlier experiments with altered photographs. For example, photographic journals of the 1890s describe various experimental techniques for altering photographs. Among the techniques used to alter photographs were the use of sprays, the air brush, the pneumatic pen, and the gum-bichromate method of introducing colors into the emulsion.17 In the 1880s, Eadweard Muybridge introduced animal and human motion studies into photography. Both Muybridge’s and Étienne Jules Marey’s chronophotographic studies of animal and human locomotion offered new possibilities for the artistic development of photographs. These experiments also focused attention on the aesthetic features of both human and animal behaviour in everyday life. Elsewhere in Europe and America during the 1930s, the artists Herbert Bayer, Max Ernst, Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray experimented with photomontage (a composite photograph made by joining multiple images in the process of creating the photograph), rayograms (camera-less pictures made by placing objects on light sensitive paper), and solarized prints (made by exposing a print or negative to a flash of light resulting in both positive and negative components in the print). For example, Bayer’s photomontage Blickins Leben (1931) depicts a nineteenth-century pictureframe suspended by a cord in a landscape photograph of water and sky.18 In this work, Bayer reverses the usual roles of picture frame and image by locating the frame within the boundaries of the image itself. John Heartfield’s expressionist photomontages made in the 1920s and 1930s employ photographic means to undercut realism and the painterly character of prior art photographs. At the same time, his images render a devastating social critique of Nazi Germany.19

17

Lista, Photographie Futuriste Italienne 1911–1939. Illustrations cited, 89, 121. Ibid. 19 John Heartfield, Photomontages of the Nazi Period (New York: Universe Books, 1977). 18

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Barbara Morgan’s experiments with light drawings and photomontage in the late 1930s and 1940s further extended the development of manipulated photographs. 20 In Morgan’s words, “Unlike painting, the negative permits the making of … prints of any desired size and these may be cut up, cropped, silhouetted, painted upon, and combined with other materials, and used with great flexibility.”21 Morgan’s 1939 photomontage, “Hearst Over the People,” responds to the distortion of the news found in newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst’s publications. Says Morgan: “I undulated the enlager paper for portrait distortion, made an imaginary octopus cut-out and interrelated the two images over a May Day crowd photograph I had shot from a seventh story window in New York.” 22 The result was a photograph that addresses the concerns of newspaper readers interested in truth in their daily newspaper reading.

Appropriated Photographs Appropriation, which means the incorporation of images generated by other sources into one’s own, has become a standard practice among certain postmodern photographers. The sources of appropriated images may include art works, photographs, commercial advertisements and logos, album sleeves, and other elements of popular culture. Among the leading artists using appropriated images are Sherry Levine and Richard Prince. Levine bases her originals on photographs by other art photographers such as Walker Evans (depression era poor), Eduard Weston (nudes), and Eliot Porter (landscapes). 23 In contrast with modernist photographers, Levine contends that originality, based on individual artistic invention, has been made irrelevant by the new industrialtechnological processes available for the mass production of images. Levine would argue that there is no need to limit art to originals in a world already overpopulated with images. 20

Curtis L. Carter, “Barbara Morgan: Philosopher/Poet of Visual Motion,” in Curtis L. Carter, Barbara Morgan: Prints, Drawings & Photographs (Milwaukee: Haggerty Museum, Dobbs Ferry: Morgan & Morgan, 1988), 11–14. 21 Barbara Morgan, “Photomontage,”in Miniature Camera, Willard Morgan & Henry M. Lester, eds. (New York: Morgan & Lester Publishers, 1938), 145–147. 22 Barbara Morgan, “My Creative Experience with Photomontage,”Image 14 (5–6) (1971): 19. 23 See essays by Abigail Solomon Godeau, “Living with Contradictions: Critical Practice in the Age of Supply Side Aesthetics,” and others in Carol Squiers, ed., The Critical Image: Essays on Contemporary Photography (New York: Bay Press, 1990).

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Levine’s appropriated photographs differ from the modernists’ images. Evans, Weston and Porter share certain core beliefs with modern artists working in other media. The modernists hold that the artist relies on originality as a condition for creating art, and attends to the unique qualities in the respective artistic media. For these artists, the photograph is a unique aesthetic object featuring formal, expressive or self-reflexive qualities. As such, the photographs of modern artists are meant to be studied and enjoyed for their aesthetic properties. Levine’s appropriated images were presented in a retrospective in 2012 at the Whitney Museum in New York, raising again the issue of appropriation as an artistic device in photography.24 Richard Prince’s appropriated photographs differ from Sherrie Levine’s directly re-photographed works of earlier photographers. Unlike Levine, Prince abstracts his images from magazine advertisements. The most famous of Prince’s appropriated images are his “Marlboro Series” (1980– 1992), featuring a man on horseback riding through a western-style landscape. One important aim of appropriated photographs is to get audiences to reconsider the nature of photographic images, and especially to reflect critically on their roles in contemporary culture. Both Levine and Prince challenge the commonly held view that originality is a necessary condition of creating works of fine art. Their efforts also contribute to a greater acknowledgment of the distinction between multiiples as works of art and mere copies or mass reproductions found in everyday life. However, treating appropriated photographic images as works of art raise additional questions concerning the identity of art works. For example, is a re-photographed work a violation of intellectual property rights, and thus a question for the courts? Or is the act of recontextualizing an existing image and placing it in the context of the contemporary art world sufficient to constitute a new freestanding work of art? The related question of copyright protection affects not only the aesthetic and commercial activities of artists, but extends to the use of images in the everyday world of advertising and branding rights for commodities. For example, when does a brand name such as a brillo box or Campbell’s soup can become eligible for free use by artists in the public domain?

24 Sherry Levine, “Mayhem,” Whitney Museum of Art, New York, November 10, 2011–January 29, 2012.

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Changes: Critical Theory and Photography In contrast to what Boccioni might have predicted at the beginning of the twentieth century, photography by the mid-1980s had in fact become a central focus of visual artistic practices encroaching upon virtually all aspects of the two dimensional visual arts. Moreover, during this era, photography commanded the attention of critics, art theorists and aestheticians alike as never before in its near two century history. The result is a significant body of writings that takes photography well beyond the shadow of painting, as well as beyond the “pure photography” of Weston and Szarkowski.25 Twentieth century art theorists and critics such as Susan Sontag, Victor Burgin, Max Kozloff, Rosalind Krauss, Alan Sekula and Jeff Walls have made photography one of the liveliest topics in contemporary visual aesthetics. By applying neo-Marxist, psychoanalytic, semiotic, postmodern and culture theories to this medium, the theorists have focused unprecedented attention on photographs.26 The earlier writings of Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, Roland Barthes and subsequent photography theorists had already forced us to think in new ways about art photographs. Psychoanalysis, semiotics, Marxist aesthetics, and most recently neuroscience have all contributed to rethinking the role of photography in everyday life. Now it is necessary to consider more fully the aesthetics of photography in relation to its sociopolitical functions in capitalist societies, as well as in post-colonial and non-Western cultures. In these contexts, photography participates in the projection and critical examination of changing societal attitudes toward issues such as gender roles and sexuality in the contemporary world. It also contributes to the understanding of issues raised by the changing economic and political landscapes rendered by globalization. Following upon such developments in critical theory, artist photographers began to deconstruct their own and others’ images in an 25 Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography, revised and enlarged edition (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1964); John Szarkowski, The Photographer’s Eye. 26 See for example, Victor Burgin, ed., Thinking Photography (London: Macmillan, 1982). The winter 1986 issue of October contains a representative sampling of articles reflecting contemporary photographic theory along these lines. It includes essays by Alan Sekula, Abigail Solomon Godeau and Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, applying neo-Marxist and neo-Freudian analyses to past and present photographic practice. See also Hal Foster, Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics (Seattle, Washington: Bay Press, 1987) for an analysis of these developments.

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effort to disclose hidden social and political codes. Among the photographs most obviously motivated by conceptual or ideological themes, Louise Lawler’s are of particular interest. Lawler assaults the very art institutions that sustain her own and virtually all other art photography. Her photograph of an installation with benches in the Museum of Modern Art, Untitled 1950–51 (1987), illustrates especially well a strategy aimed at analyzing and offering up for critical assessment the habits and conventions of presenting and experiencing art in a museum setting. Lawler’s Woman with Picasso, 1912 (1986) depicts a collector at home in a typical upper class setting holding a Picasso-like object. Lawler’s intent is to provide a deconstructive political analysis of the identification of art with economically privileged social settings in homes and museums.27 Her art is intelligent in its sophisticated application of social critique, but is, nevertheless, confronted by certain ironies. Her own photographs are destined for display in the very types of homes and museum spaces that she supposedly “exposes” by constructing a visual economic Marxist analysis. The efforts of Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Barbara Kruger and others to incorporate certain anti-capitalist ideological concepts into their works represent different approaches of the use of photography to interpreting everyday life experiences.

Photo Conceptual Art and the Persistence of Depiction in Photography While undergoing continuing developments into the twenty-first contury, photography has introduced notable changes in both its theoriesand practices. One of the areas drawing critical attention is art photography based on photojournalism. Photojournalism has been a practical enterprise driven by the media industries since the 1920s. It now is also of interest to contemporary art photographers. Photojournalism represents photography as a “collaboration between a writer and a photographer.” Photojournalist art presumes that “art can be created by the practice of imitating photojournalism.”28 This approach to art photography emphasizes reportage and is influenced by the needs of the press for capturing and recording key moments connected to the dramas of 27

Claudia Hart, “Louise Lawler: Museum of Modern Art,” (review) Art Scribe (January/February 1988), 70, 71. 28 Jeff Walls, “‘Marks of Indifference’: Aspects of Photography in, or as, Conceptual Art,” in Reconsidering the Objects of Art, 1965–1975, exhibition catalogue, Ann Goldstein and Anne Rorimer (Los Angeles Museum of contemporary art, 1995), 249.

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everyday life. It documents the monumental events of an era as seen by photojournalists and gives them a permanent place as a part of everyday life.29 The introduction of photojournalism into art photography thus draws attention to the persistence of depiction as a tenacious motif in art photography. Photographic depiction points in a different direction from that of abstract modernist art by emphasizing, again, the distinctive features of the camera and its focus on actions taking place in everyday life. In its recent conceptual phase, photography nevertheless attempts to escape its connection to representation by adopting the position of selfreflexive visual commentary on the medium itself. For example, Ed Ruscha’s Twenty-Six Gas Stations (1963) introduces amateur photographs as photographic art. Ruscha’s photographs bear no perceptual differences from ordinary pictures of amateur camera users. The point of this approach is to redefine photography as a form of conceptual, idea based art where dull, descriptive documentary or journalistic photographs are employed to critically examine the technical and social processes that take place when the camera becomes an integral part of everyday life. Seemingly dull pictorial characteristics that might render the photographs boring thus function to convert the interest in these works away from their representational functions to conceptual art. Jeff Wall, contemporary artist and theorist, argues against current theories that attempt to reduce photography to social commentary, art criticism, or conceptual art because these interests detract attention from the fact that depiction and object-making are indispensable features of photography. Unlike painting, photography cannot participate in the reductionism that the modernist art critic Clement Greenberg sought for modernist abstract paintings. Greenberg argued that, “Photographs constitute a depiction not by the accumulation of individual marks (as in painting) but by the instantaneous operation of an integrated mechanism. All the rays permitted to pass through the lens form an image immediately, and the lens by definition creates a focused image at its correct focal length.”30 For Wall the kinds of images formed by the camera lens thus establish critical differences between photography and painting. One key difference is this: because photography cannot avoid depiction, the experience rendered through a photograph is closer to the way we experience the visible world in everyday experience apart from art.31 29

Ibid., 248, 249. Ibid., 261. 31 Ibid., 266. 30

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Wall’s reflections on contemporary photography bring our discussion of the subject full circle back to the origins of photography. His analysis does not negate the multifarious changes in the objecthood of photography that we have witnessed since the mid-nineteenth century. On the other hand, he reminds us of the need to reflect again on the persistence of depiction as ongoing in debates concerning the nature of photography. The works cited here suggest that photography has indeed undertaken quantum leaps throughout the century. Some might argue that these developments signal the death of photography as it has been classically understood. Gary Indiana’s words aptly express these sentiments: The importance of photography in our everyday lives ensured the doom of a hermetic “art of photography” … A photograph that claims, on one hand, superior insight into reality, and, on the other, transcendent indifference to it, cannot compel serious attention when other photographs virtually flood the collective sensorium. In art the shift in interest from the unposed, naturalistic photograph to the elaborately staged tableau, the “defective print,” and the emphatic deployment of photographs as objects, reflect a widespread disbelief in “innocent representation.”32

Conclusion The role of photographs (whether original or appropriated images) is now firmly established in the cultural codes of contemporary life. It is generally agreed that a photograph, rather than being a mere representation of something external to the medium, consists of an artistic object or event in its own right. At the same time, Walls makes a strong argument for the view that photography has not found a replacement for depiction: “It is in the physical nature of the medium to depict things.”33 This means more than photography as picture-making, which represents some aspect of the the world. As we have seen in the works of Rusha and Walls, for example, the medium itself has become an object for depiction in its own photographic languages. Given the radical phases of its development thus far, through the stages of painterly photographs, modernist “pure photography,” photojournalism, photography as a means of social commentary, and photo-conceptualism, we may expect that photography and the changes in its objecthood will continue to develop alongside new developments in technology and the ongoing evolutions of understanding in other spheres of culture—philosophical, economic and political. Up to 32 33

Gary Indiana, “Imitation of Life,”The Village Voice, April, 29,1986. Jeff Walls, “Marks of Indifference,”247.

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this point, photography has embraced and drawn new energies from all of these enterprises. There is no indication that it will soon become an obsolete medium so long as it continues to adapt to change. Finally, let us return briefly to the question of photography’s dual identity as autonomous art and functional enterprise. Do these roles continue to perform independently, or have they now arrived at a different relationship with respect to art photography? Judging from what has been shown here, photography has enjoyed its periods of autonomous art, as in the pure art modernist era of photography. At the same time, photography’s successes in serving media industries in advertising, medicine, propaganda and virtually every aspect of contemporary life have become the core of our image-driven society. What has changed with respect to art photography is that some art photographers create their work with no intentional boundaries between the activities of everyday life and their works, as witnessed in this chapter. Like other art media, photography has found ways to challenge a presumed separation between art and life, as previously projected in autonomous art. Photography’s roles in social commentary, photojournalism or commercial labelling, for example, offer it an expanding role in everyday life. For example, artist Dennis Adam’s photo-installations “Bus Shelter,” installed in Munster, New York, Toronto and Houston, function both as an artistic statement and as a working bus stop on the street simultaneously. Given the practices emerging in other arts, where artists move out of the studio into scientific laboratories and other social arenas to develop their art, it should be no surprise to find photography testing these boundaries while maintaining its place among the arts. Photography has long since established its status as an autonomous art. It is time to recognize that, having moved beyond its status as autonomous art, it is free to explore other ways of contributing to the aesthetics of everyday life. There is no reason to think otherwise. Thanks to digital imaging, virtually every cell phone is able to take and instantly transmit photographs on the internet, TV and social media networks across the world and into every aspect of everyday life.

CHAPTER SEVEN THEATRE AND THE EVERYDAY: THREE MODELS SUSAN L. FEAGIN The stage and theatre have frequently served as metaphors for life, perhaps most famously in William Shakespeare’s lines from As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Shakespeare’s metaphor is rich with potential and reflected in many ways in numerous languages. In English, the verb “to act” (and its variants “actor” and “acting”), for example, refers to the skills of professional (or amateur) actors and to people who perform ordinary, everyday actions. We play roles in a play and in life: we rehearse and we practice; we have our entrances and our exits on stage; and we enter and exit a room in life. Many performing artists and art theorists have not been content with mere metaphor, however, and have instead sought literally to break down the boundaries between art and life in various ways. In what follows, I discuss two models developed by two different mid-twentieth century artist-theorists of how to break down the divide between the artwork itself—where the artwork involves performance—and ordinary life. Allan Kaprow, in his “happenings,” a precursor of today’s “performance art,” sought to bring ordinary life into works of visual art with the objective of transforming art. Augusto Boal’s “theater of the oppressed,” an early form of participatory theatre, created different types of theatrical performances, making them components of ordinary life with the objective of transforming ordinary life. I conclude with a third model, one that speaks to the appreciator or perceiver of art rather than the artwork itself, again focusing on live theatrical performance. On this model, appreciation involves components from everyday life, in particular everyday assumptions, decisions, practices and interests about how to behave in relation to other members of one’s community. Unlike the other two models, the objective is not to transform either art or life, but to explain a particular mode of the appreciation of art, one where the concerns of

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ordinary life become part of the process of perceiving and appreciating an artwork.

Allan Kaprow and Happenings Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) was a major figure in the New York art scene of the 1950s and 1960s. He read John Dewey’s Art as Experience as an undergraduate, studied art history with Meyer Schapiro at Columbia University, and, while teaching in the art department at Rutgers University in New Jersey, travelled to New York City to take classes with the composer John Cage. He is best known for his “happenings,” the first of which occurred in 1958. Also called “unconventional theatre pieces,” they were events that embodied a set of views about the nature of the visual arts and their relationship to everyday life.1 Each happening was an amalgam of oddly related or unrelated visual materials, sounds and performances. The environments in which happenings were performed were constructed out of discarded, everyday materials such as piles of old tires rather than from traditional art materials such as paint and canvas. Only partially scripted (some were more scripted then others), they lacked discernible structures or traditional narrative forms. Typically, they were performed by numerous people, none of whom were professional performers, doing a jumble of different things, often distributed in the environment in such a way that it was not possible for anyone to perceive the event as a whole. As a consequence, each person, whether performer or (apparent) spectator, would of necessity experience the event differently. Kaprow was influenced by many of John Cage’s ideas about art, especially those illustrated by his “Theater Piece #1” (1952), commonly called “the event.” It was a combination of stage, dance, performance and music—“time and space filled with co-existing but unrelated events”— much like human life.2 At this event, many people—mainly artist friends, but chosen deliberately because they were not professional actors— performed everyday actions, creating a kind of sensory overload that traded on the human tendency to figure out how to unify or structure and thereby understand what we see and hear, even if those efforts are bound to fail. Cage is probably most famous (or infamous) for his piano piece 4’33’’ (four minutes thirty-three seconds). In this work, the performer sits 1 A useful source for his ideas about happenings is Allan Kaprow, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, ed. Jeff Kelley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 2 Jonathan Fineberg, Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1995), 175.

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at a piano for four minutes and thirty-three seconds, while the audience listens to the ambient, random sounds that occur during that time. His works call for a heightened perceptual sensitivity to randomness and chance, eschewing the educated ear that is tuned to the carefully trained, technically adept and expressively nuanced performances of professional musicians. Cage’s study of Zen Buddhism led him to promote the individuality of each person’s experience and to deny the existence of any permanent reality that human beings could perceive; such views grounded his commitment to the futility of any attempt to articulate permanent boundaries or distinctions between types of entities. In his book Silence he writes: “The situation must be a Yes-and-No not either-or.”3 Cage’s experiments embodied many ideas later utilized in Kaprow’s happenings, though there are some notable differences between them. A case in point is the profound influence that Zen Buddhism exercised over Cage, leading him to thematize chance as a feature of the universe; Kaprow, in contrast, was interested in the potential that chance had for creating unique artistic events. The art object that constituted a happening was not the script but the unrepeatable time-specific event; there was no enduring work. 4 In general, Kaprow’s motivations and objectives were more specifically about the nature and possibilities of art, especially the visual arts, and were less concerned with general metaphysical issues and the nature of “the world.” In addition to subverting the idea of timeless value built into the traditional concept of fine art in the West, Kaprow, like Cage, wanted to eliminate equally traditional distinctions between specific art forms or media, such as painting, music and theatre.5 Experiences in ordinary life do not fall into specific genres or types. We do not at one point in time 3

John Cage, Silence (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1939). Cage also believed in the interconnectedness of all things, which provided another role for randomness, since he marveled at our search for coherence in the midst of such apparent disconnectedness. Kaprow diverged from Cage on randomness, seeing perception as passive and emphasizing action rather than constructive perception. 4 There is some equivocation in Kaprow’s writings on the ontological point (see footnote 207 below). 5 This rejection of traditional art media is in sharp contrast with “medium specificity” as advocated by such critics as Clement Greenberg, who took painting, for example, to be essentially two-dimensional and evaluated according to whether it fulfils its purposes as painting, which have to do with achieving flatness. It has also been influential in film theory. For a critique, see Noël Carroll, Theorizing the Moving Image (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), chapter 1, “Questioning Media,” and The Philosophy of Moving Pictures (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), chapter 2, “Medium Specificity.”

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have a visual experience of something two-dimensional, at another time a visual experience of something three-dimensional, at another a visual experience of motion or an event, and at another an auditory experience, and so on. We live our lives coordinating experiences and information from all our senses, selectively making sense of what we experience according to our background knowledge and current interests. It is thus important that happenings are understood to be works of visual art (rather than theatrical performances, which they superficially resemble). They are visual artworks that are events and hence have duration, they take place in environments constructed of materials that are not conventional artistic materials, and they involve people as performers who do not have any special training.6 In these ways, happenings flaunt distinctions between art and ordinary life as well as traditional distinctions between categories or types of art. Kaprow also broke down barriers between art and audience in declaring that there are no spectators at happenings—apparent spectators are actually participants in the event that constitutes the happening. People who “happened” to be in the area became part of the work, sometimes without ever coming to know that they played this role. As in everyday life, we do things that are unintended and descriptions of an agent’s actions may apply to those actions without the agent knowing it. A person may easily do something for the last time without being aware of the finality, or utter something that is perplexing without realizing it. Further, in his view it is not possible to remain a “disinterested” spectator of a work, since “spectators” are, by definition, like it or not, personally involved in the creation of the work. There is a harmony here with the then popular existential idea that we are thrust into the world so that we cannot avoid making certain kinds of choices, where choosing not to act is still making a choice. In happenings, as in life, what happens is a combination of chance and preparation (what for theatre performers is called “rehearsal”); events do not always go as planned and are unrepeatable.7 6 In their use of unconventional materials, happenings drew on the practices of assemblage sculpture of the sort made by Robert Rauschenberg and Louise Nevelson, which in turn drew on the legacy of Duchamp and Dada. 7 Kaprow was equivocal about the role of rehearsal. The 1958 event involved about two weeks of rehearsal, but in his manifesto of 1966, “The Happenings Are Dead: Long Live the Happenings!”, he says that they “should be unrehearsed.” (Allan Kaprow, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, 63.) There have also been “revivals” or “restagings” of happenings, a phenomenon which raises interesting ontological conundrums. Whether a “restaging” of his 1958 piece is a new performance of the same happening or a new but similar happening is similar to

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Because a happening was not under the control of any individual (in part because it incorporated chance), it had no overall unity other than what spectator-participants create. Denying the possibility of an overall unity for works of this type—either as a way of separating off the work as “the work” it is, or as a criterion for evaluating it—undermines ideas at the very core of the traditional distinction between the timeless value of art and the temporary nature of non-art. Kaprow writes: The fine arts traditionally demand for their appreciation physically passive observers, working with their minds to get at what their senses register. But the Happenings are an active art, requiring that creation and realization, artwork and appreciator, artwork and life be inseparable.8

Part of what motivates the denial that there could be perceivers, much less “disinterested” ones, and hence the view that so-called perceivers are actually participating in the creation of the work is the idea that in perceiving something one is merely passively receiving what is given or imposed on the perceiver. That perception is merely passive is a widespread yet ultimately mistaken idea. Philosophically, it manifested itself in Kaprow’s time in the doctrine of sense data, the view that we are directly aware of the immediate contents of our sensory experience— colours, size, shapes—and we infer that real objects, external to us, exist in the world on the basis of these sense data whose nature we know because our experience of them is direct or immediate. But the doctrine of sense data has been discredited both psychologically and philosophically. Both the eye and the mind supplement, delete, integrate and organize what stimulates our sense organs before we have a “sensory experience.” The only thing “passive” may be an unchallenged belief (which one need not accept) that experience provides us with reliable evidence of the way things are and that if others’ sense organs are functioning properly they will have the same experience we do. Indeed, in some of his own writings Kaprow recognizes that people actively strive to integrate what they see and experience both visually and conceptually. In his view, however, this activity makes them participants in the creation of the work. For him the work is the process of experiencing it—something unrepeatable and available only to the individual having the experience—and not a separately existing object in the world that could, in the debate over whether revivals of particular productions of theatre pieces are new performances of the same production or new productions. 8 Kaprow, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, 64.

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principle, be experienced in the same way by anyone. Tellingly, one finds the same claim in John Dewey’s Art as Experience, which Kaprow read as an undergraduate student. Dewey argues that having an experience is a process, a dynamic interaction between people and their environment, both a doing and an undergoing. The process of living involves both flux and stability, and nothing is experienced in isolation but always in relation to past and future, causes and consequences, personal feelings and social context.9 For Dewey, having an experience is both a part of ordinary life and stands out from ordinary life as something distinctive or special. Kaprow incorporated ordinary experiences into art, not to set the art off as something separate from life, but as “the meaning of life” itself.10

Augusto Boal and the Power of Expression Augusto Boal (1931–2009) was a Brazilian theatre director who also spent his formative years in New York City during the 1950s. He obtained a degree in chemistry in his native Brazil and arrived in New York in 1952 to do graduate work at Columbia University. He had been interested in theatre since the age of ten and in New York he became familiar with Stanislavski, “method acting” and the Actors Studio, the work of Bertolt Brecht, and various experimental theatre groups. After completing his graduate work in chemical engineering in 1956, he returned to Brazil and began his life-long career in the theatre with a position at the Arena Theater in São Paolo. 11 He is most well-known for the “theatre of the oppressed,” which can also be used as exercises for actor development,

9

There appears to be an inconsistency in Dewey’s views between the early chapters of Art as Experience, where he argues that art is experience, and chapter 13, on criticism, where he proposes that the art object is a vehicle for communication between the artist and perceiver. The idea of art as communication between a privileged individual who is the creator and a suitably experienced observer was alien to both Kaprow and Cage. See John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Capricorn Books, 1934/1958). Nevertheless, Kaprow is likewise not always consist in the way he represents the ontological character of the artwork, that is, as an experience or as an event that takes place during a particular time in a particular place. 10 See Jeff Kelley, “Introduction,” in Kaprow, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, xiii. Kelley’s introduction clearly brings out many interesting relationships between Dewey and Kaprow. 11 Augusto Boal’s autobiography provides an engaging picture of his own life and times in Hamlet and the Baker’s Son: My Life in Theatre and Politics, trans. Adrian Jackson and Candida Blaker (London: Routledge, 2001).

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and the concept of the “spect-actor,” where the spectator becomes an actor in the performance. Boal’s family was financially comfortable, but he deplored the poverty and the political repression that he witnessed in Brazil and other Latin American countries. His awareness of the needs of the indigent and uneducated fuelled his commitment to exploring the personal and political potential of theatre as art. He also accepted the view that perceivers or spectators are merely passive recipients of what is provided through sense experience. He shared Kaprow’s opposition to the traditional conception of the aesthetic as the pleasurable perception of an independently existing object or event in the world. His views were not based on general metaphysical grounds, but on his knowledge of what an active engagement in making art could do to transform a life. The main objective of his “theatre of the oppressed” is to transform people from passive spectators into active agents, breaking down barriers between art and life in virtue of adopting the types of interested, motivated attitudes towards the types of situations presented in theatrical works of art—attitudes that are appropriate in day-to-day life. The objective is not to transform spectators into creators of artworks, and thus to say something about the possibilities of art, as with Kaprow, but to transform people from spectators into active agents who become empowered to change their own lives. Kaprow was concerned with the state of art and made ordinary actions into components of artworks; he turned life into art. This is the essence of the first model of how to break down the boundaries between art and life, in which art benefits. Boal, in contrast, was concerned with the state of people’s lives and devised a type of theatre art where participating in theatrical performances both taught and constituted ways of taking charge of one’s life; he thus turned art into life.12 This is the essence of the second model, in which the benefit is to people’s lives. Most of Boal’s works, like Kaprow’s, are only partially scripted or consist of loosely described “performance plans,” but they are focused on setting up problem situations rather than combining seemingly random actions, as Kaprow’s works do. They may be performed on a stage or used as training exercises for actors. Numerous videos of such training exercises are available on YouTube, and tend to be supremely uninteresting to watch. This is not surprising, since they are not made to be

12

See, for example, Gianpaolo Maiocchi, “Performing Democracy in the Streets: Participatory Budgeting and Legislative Theatre in Brazil,” in A Boal Companion: Dialogues on Theatre and Cultural Politics, eds. Jan Cohen-Cruz & MadySchutzman (New York: Routledge, 2006), 78–87.

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watched.13 They are made for the benefit of the participants, with different potential benefits to different participants, depending on their own roles, perspectives and interests. Understanding and appreciating the value of any given work requires active engagement in the performance, most clearly by those who have personal needs related to the problem situation and hence something to gain through participation. Disinterested spectators are not in a position to experience what the event has to offer. This conception of theatre overturns the traditional notion of aesthetic experience because it makes interestedness a qualifying condition and disinterestedness a disqualifying condition for appreciation. Art may turn into life even for people who have not chosen to participate in a theatrical performance and who may not even know they are doing so. Forum theatre is a genre created by Boal which typically takes place in ordinary, everyday public places. In Forum theatre, the scripted action of the play leads to a problem and both the performers (who are typically not trained actors) and other participants—people who happen to be in the space where the piece is performed—must figure out how to resolve the problem. The scripts force the fact that a problem arises and require a decision be made. In one piece, a performer dines at an expensive restaurant but does not have the money to pay his bill—a situation that is scripted but is, in fact, also real. Explaining his predicament to the waiter, he appeals to the other diners in the restaurant to help figure out how to settle the problem in a way that is practical and fair. During the discussion, information comes to light that reveals deeper reasons for the existence of the problem that have to do with the structure of the economy itself. (The performer-customer offers to work to pay off the bill as a dishwasher or busboy, but he would be taking away someone else’s job if he did so, and even if it were possible to work off his bill in this way, given the average worker’s hourly wage in Boal’s Brazil, he would have had to work for weeks to earn enough to pay for a single meal. The waiters themselves were unable to afford a meal at the restaurants where they worked.) Forum theatre is simultaneously consciousness-raising and an exercise in actual, not merely fictional, practical problem solving. The theatre pieces are designed so that participants act as constructive agents of change rather than mere complainers or perpetuators of the status quo. Actual problem solving requires expanding the number of participants in 13

Such works would not be theatre according to Paul Woodruff, who proposes that it is the art of making human actions worth watching. See The Necessity of Theater: The Art of Watching and Being Watched (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008).

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the work beyond the performers, who intentionally engage in Forum theatre. Indeed, people in the public space where the piece is occurring may never find out that that they have been participating in a work of art. Similarly, passers-by may never realize that they are participating in one of Kaprow’s happenings, though, unlike in Boal’s pieces, the experience may never touch their everyday lives and interests. Learning how to bring relevant social problems to light along with how to create real-life solutions for the problematic situations they create is enhanced through “rehearsal,” that is, through (practicing) doing what one is attempting to learn how to do. As Boal writes, a performance “is both action in itself, and preparation for future actions.” 14 In Forum theatre, there is no distinction between the theatrical performance and the rehearsal, or between art and life, because art becomes part of life. Kaprow had a conflicted attitude to rehearsal, which was clearly distinguished from the artwork itself, the happening. Rehearsal was important in part because the timing and sequencing of events that are in the script are important to the character of the work, even though the script leaves room for chance. And even though the types of actions performed during a happening did not require special training, they were decontextualized and removed from their ordinary utilitarian settings and were, at least in this respect, clearly distinguishable from something one does in ordinary life. Boal, by contrast, would not have endorsed the popular saying “life is not a dress rehearsal,” which endorses a distinction between rehearsal and life, the latter of which would be the actual performance. For Boal, life is an endless series of rehearsals— opportunities for trying out ways of taking an active and constructive stance toward the problems that confront each of us in our lives. Life and theatrical performance both point beyond what they are at that time, to the future, to something better. In Boal’s view, only in “bourgeois theatre” is a theatre piece a finished product to be seen and studied for what it permanently “is.” Numerous philosophers and theatre theorists have taken empathy or sympathy to be the foundations of moral feeling, or at least as fundamental to our meaningful relationships with other people. Boal stands with Brecht in being suspicious of empathy as a subservient, submissive abdication of

14

Augusto Boal, The Aesthetics of the Oppressed, trans. Adrian Jackson (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 6. The aesthetics of the oppressed extends the objectives and techniques of the theatre of the oppressed to other art forms, specifically those involving words, sounds and images (Ibid., 4).

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responsibility for thinking and feeling for oneself.15 It counts as a kind of passive perception or mere absorption of or “resonance with” the feelings of others. Yet it is still not enough, in Boal’s view, for the audience to think and feel for themselves, as Brecht would have us do; rather, he wants socalled spectators to act for themselves, so that they become “spect-actors” instead of “spectators.” He writes: Aristotle proposes a poetics in which the spectator delegates power to the dramatic character so that the [character] may act and think for him. Brecht proposes a poetics in which the spectator delegates power to the character who thus acts in his place but the spectator reserves the right to think for himself, often in opposition to the character … But [in] the poetics of the oppressed … the spectator delegates no power to the character (or actor) either to act or to think in his place; on the contrary, he himself … changes the dramatic action, tries out solutions, discusses plans for change.16

Theatre uses human bodies, the actors’ bodies, as the vehicle of expression; as Boal puts it, bodies make thought visible. 17 Spect-actors engage in public actions that are visible to and have effects on other people. It is important for Boal that people engage in the overt expression of their thoughts, ideas and feelings; his “theatre of the oppressed” also includes techniques for enhancing people’s knowledge of how to make their own bodies more expressive. In “Image theatre,” for example, one is provided with a scenario, a problematic situation. One moves or “sculpts” other people’s bodies into positions that represent how things are, and then moves them, by stages, into an “ideal” situation to represent how it would be good for things to be. The most difficult part of all is to conceive of how to make the transition from how things are to how they ought to be in a way that is sufficiently concrete such that bodies can be “sculpted” to show the stages of the transition. According to Dewey, no force acts in isolation. There can be no expression without “compression,” without pressure from the world that “presses out” or “ex-presses” a person’s own feelings and actions. 18 Expression takes the form it does in part because of the character of one’s surroundings and in part through one’s own impulses to act, which are 15 Boal was influenced by Antonin Artaud’s “Theater of Cruelty” where actors would provoke audience members into having hostile rather than empathic reactions to the characters. 16 Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, trans. Charles A. and Maria-Odilia Leal McBride (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1979/1985), 122. 17 Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, 137. 18 Dewey, Art as Experience, 66.

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clarified and ordered through interaction with the environment.19 Though we have no reason to believe that Boal read Dewey, we can nevertheless see certain similarities in their views. For Boal, political oppression, augmented by other people’s points of view, provides the “compression”; one’s own ideas and actions are shaped by one’s needs and interests, generating interactivity between self and world that, as Dewey would say, characterizes the “living creature.”

Audience Appreciation and Expression Both Kaprow and Boal removed the boundary between art and ordinary life by turning audience members into actors or active agents, people who do things. For Kaprow, people’s ordinary actions become part of works of art; for Boal, the same people act in a theatre piece as they act in real life, taking control over their own everyday lives in the way they analyze a situation and interact with other people. I propose here a third model for removing boundaries between art and life, one that incorporates the everyday into a more traditional account of appreciating an artwork, rather than the work’s creation or its identity. This third model applies to many types of theatrical works, not just participatory theatre as developed by Boal, and does not depend on the works being only partially scripted. This model recognizes the contributions of Kaprow and Boal to the idea of making appreciators participants in a practice (not merely observers), but in this case the practice is one of appreciation, not of art creation, that involves, at the same time, making actual ordinary life decisions. According to both Kaprow and Boal, being “merely” a spectator is a bad thing because it entails a passive, uncritical, unthinking acceptance of the status quo, whatever that may be. But as I previously indicated, perception is not a passive process; it is an activity of distilling, organizing, supplementing, and cognizing what is provided through sensory receptors. Indeed, the multiple ways in which different people experience what is apparently the same object or event—variations that are not attributable merely to people being in different physical relationships to what is perceived—are themselves testimony to the individual’s contribution to experience. The third model for removing boundaries between art and life recognizes this creative, synthesizing activity of perception, but goes beyond it, also recognizing an overt, active component of theatre appreciation without making it a component of the

19

Dewey, Art as Experience, 61.

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work. This active component of appreciation is the overt expression of one’s responses to the work. Boal’s model, in order to make theatrical performances into the kinds of actions whose primary purpose is to further a practical goal, the liberation of the oppressed, situates them in settings where people carry out ordinary, everyday activities. Neither the performers who initiate the theatrical event nor the people who become unwitting participants need to be trained actors in any traditional sense, since the main idea is that performance itself is empowering or provides direction for future actions and a disposition to act in empowering ways in the future. Thus, there is no room for perceivers in his model, only active agents or participants in an ordinary, everyday setting. The third model recognizes that a theatre space is also, in some respects, a place that calls for certain activities of ordinary life, in particular, the ways we act towards and interact with other people. This is especially true of theatre spaces that are relatively small, that is, those that seat fewer than one hundred people.20 Because of the small size of the theatre, one is likely to experience the actors and other audience members as embodied presences, so that any given individual’s overt, expressive behaviour (such as facial and vocal expressions and minor bodily movements) can be seen and heard by others. At least partly because of this fact, theatres are especially suited to become not merely spaces in which to perform, but places with a social significance that exploits a certain intimacy with others, in particular one that involves ordinary, everyday concerns about how I want to present myself to others, how my behaviour may affect others, and hence about the control I have and should exercise over my own overt, expressive behaviour. The traditional distinction between performer (or work) and perceiver is maintained, but 20 I am not claiming that what I propose here happens only in small venue live theatre, but it is in small theatres that the relationships between each and every member of the audience and of the actors are likely to be as I describe them below. So, for example, people who sit relatively close to the stage in large theatres may experience something like what I describe, but it is unlikely for those sitting far from the stage. Yet, the design of the theatre can also affect one’s feelings of proximity to others, which are not dependent solely on actual distance. Directors sometimes attempt to generate such feelings of proximity of audience members to actors by sending actors up the aisles of the audience, or positioning them at the rear of the audience or even within the seating area itself. Such attempts are often successful, but the feelings are produced primarily in those sitting near where the actors are. The participation of some audience members is observed by others. In small venues, paradigmatically, all of the individual members of an audience are in the relevant physical proximity to the actors.

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the perceiver is also a participant in practices involving other persons who are present in the theatre space, including actors and other audience members. Many of the emotions experienced at a theatrical performance reflect how one thinks and feels about the characters, situations and events of the play. Whether and how one overtly expresses these emotions at least implicitly reflects how one thinks and feels about other members of the audience and about the actual human beings who are the actors. What is implicit becomes explicit if one approaches going to the theatre with an attitude of awareness of the relevance and significance of one’s overt behaviour, and this awareness colours the character of one’s overt responses (which may also potentially affect one’s own subsequent feelings or emotions). It is a widespread assumption in the Western world, for example, that overt expressions of one’s responses to what occurs on stage at a professional theatrical performance (and even more so at a classical music performance) should be, if not avoided completely, at least kept to a minimum. The main exception to this assumption is when attending comedies, where laughing out loud is accepted as part of the effect that the work is supposed to have and not thought of as something that will disturb or distract other perceivers (though even laughter can be too loud and continue too long). Indeed, there is such a thing as contagious laughter; rather than interfering with others’ appreciation, an audible chuckle might enhance it instead. So, overtly expressing the fact that one finds something in a comedy to be funny—allowingoneself to do this—is generally thought of as being justified and appropriate. Such reasoning applies to comedy, something that is supposed to be funny, but does not justify laughing at how badly a tragedy is performed, for example; such laughter would be rude to the performers and distracting to the other audience members who may not be so bothered by the poor performance. As with many everyday activities in publicly accessible spaces, one’s expression of emotion will involve implicit assumptions, explicit decisions, or simply be in accord with a set of practices (or not) with respect to how one is to interact with other people. There are two ways to see the role of these assumptions, decisions or practices. One way is to see them as conventional proprieties that are distinct from appreciation itself but that create the conditions that enable the actors to do their job and each person in the audience to appreciate what the actors do, unfettered by inappropriate influences from others. In this case, they constitute background conditions for maximizing both performance potential and each individual’s appreciation of it. I am proposing here that we see them

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as functioning in a second way, as making for a different type of appreciative practice, one that does not take the overt expression of emotions as something to be tolerated as long as it doesn’t get in the way of “true” appreciation, but as potentially informing one’s experience of a performance, as partly constitutive of appreciation itself. Assumptions, decisions and practices concerning how one is to behave in relation to other audience members and performers during a performance can help to form one’s attitude towards the performance. Such attitudes not only can, but also likely to change the character of the experience one has, at least to some degree (and sometimes quite dramatically). Most obviously, change occurs because taking a different attitude results in different patterns of salience and significance in what one perceives. In addition, actually expressing (or not) one’s emotions can change the emotions themselves, to a degree, and in (at least) two ways. One way is because of feedback from the overt activity (such as facial expressions), and the other is because of the effect of adopting the attitude that one is not merely an observer of a performance but a participant in a particular type of cultural practice that has a social component. It is something one cannot do alone, both in the sense that it cannot be done if there are no other people present and in the sense that it cannot be done if others are not engaging in some aspect of the practice also. One behaves as part of a community, with potential reciprocal consideration and influence. (In addition, when overtly expressing one’s emotions becomes “automatic” because in accord with certain assumptions or practices—as a participating member of the community—it can issue in different experiences from when one makes a conscious decision to allow oneself to express them on a particular occasion.) As with interactions with others in social places in general, one’s attitude will, to some degree, be self-interested in deciding how one wants to present oneself to others, and to some degree guided by the interests of others, for example, according to whether one is willing or eager to have one’s responses potentially affect theirs. I may be not only amused by the witty dialogue but also disposed to smile and laugh out loud. I may be not only emotionally moved but also shed a tear, revealing my own sensitivity. The overt responses show the actors and other audience members that I recognize and appreciate the work’s goodness and implicitly endorse such responses. Though my overt, physical behaviour may alter the character of my own appreciative experience while, say, viewing a movie in private, I do not thereby reveal anything to others or provide any kind of endorsement of them. Nor am I in a situation where others’ responses potentially affect me. In the case of live theatrical performance, one

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engages in expressive behaviour in public, where there is always an element of how one chooses to present oneself to others and how others may be affected by one’s behaviour. One can see such an overt expression as independent of appreciation but occasionally justified, as in the first way described above, or as partly constitutive of the appreciative experience itself, including its self-interested and other-regarding components, as in the second way. In the second way, one becomes a participant in a social practice that has a social component in the sense that it requires the presence of other people and particular types of engagement with them. There are at least four factors that encourage making the overt expression of one’s responses a significant part of appreciation in the second way, in the case of small venue theatrical performance. All of them have to do with how the shared space becomes a place for social interaction in some way. First, the performance is live; second, it takes place not merely on a stage, where the performers are separated from the audience, but in a theatre, a place where performers and audience members are both present. More specifically, third, audience members share this space with the actors; and fourth, they share the space with other members of the audience. First, in live theatrical performance the actors perform in the same place at the same time the audience is there to appreciate it. There is an important distinction for actors between acting in the presence of an audience and acting when there is no one listening to or watching what one is doing, even it is being recorded for later broadcast.21 Any sort of live performance in front of others calls for different kinds of talents and skills from acting when one is alone. It is a sad fact that there are many excellent musicians who are incapable of performing in front of an audience. Similarly, acting live calls for different skills from, for example, acting for a camera for a television show or movie, though obviously there is overlap. Paul Woodruff writes in his book The Necessity of Theater that the art of performing is the art of making (live) human actions worth watching.22 Live theatrical performance, with the possible exception of a few anomalous cases (such as when one believes that members of an audience are present even though they are not), thus involves the copresence of perceivers.

21 I argue that the distinction undermines Peter Kivy’s view that reading a novel silently to oneself is to perform it in “Critical Study: Reading and Performing,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 48 (1) (January 2008): 89–97. 22 Paul Woodruff, in The Necessity of Theater, Part II, makes a strong connection between theatre, paying attention to other people, and ethics.

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Philosophers and theatre theorists debate whether having someone in the audience is a necessary condition for a live theatrical performance, but there is no comparable question from the side of the audience member: there has to be a live performer for an audience member to perceive or experience a live performance. Performances do not, however, need to be live, and audience members bear a different relationship to live performances than to film or performances on tape, even if they are “live on tape.” The fact that performers and appreciators are present at the same time in the same place is crucial for the role of overtly expressing responses in the appreciation of live theatrical performance. Second, live theatrical performances take place in a theatre (or other social space), not just on a stage. A theatre (or “performance space”) is not merely a location or a space, but a place that has a “cultural meaning,” contingent on the expectations and activities of those who go there for a social or cultural gathering. 23 Because audience members are in a particular type of social place—not at home reading a book by themselves, for example—their appreciative experiences are potentially inherently social. As in any social place, we are responsible for our behaviour and make choices on how to present ourselves to others. We can choose to display how we respond to a performance, our appreciation of it or our distain for it, or we can choose to display as little as possible. But it is not a matter of one’s own choice whether others, both the actors and other audience members, will see our overt behaviour or its absence. That all of these people—actors and audience members—are in the same place together is a fact about life, not merely a fact about the art. One may well recruit the presence of these other people into the character of the appreciative experience. Augusto Boal developed a style of theatre where performers take charge of their own lives; appreciators likewise take charge of their own lives with respect to how they comport themselves, as audience members, during a live theatrical performance. Third, in relatively small theatres each and every member of the audience is in physical proximity to the actors. The physical relationships of audience members to actors affect their perceptual, conceptual and affective orientations to them. In particular, in small theatres audience members are close enough to perceive the actors as actors, as living persons, and not just as the characters they portray. This fact about human perception affects the nature of one’s experience, encouraging a kind of 23

I argue for the significance of place for appreciation with respect to paintings in “Paintings and their Places,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 73 (1995), 260268; repr. In Art and its Messages: Meaning, Morality, and Society, ed. Stephen Davies (Penn State University Press, 1997), 17-25.

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“twofoldness,” seeing performers as both actors and as characters. And though the characters do not see how audience members respond to what they do, the actors certainly can see how audience members respond. It is well known that actors can be affected by the responsiveness, or lack of responsiveness, of the audience. Audience members make choices about how to behave in light of a fact that is not a matter of choice. Fourth, relatively small theatres place audience members in close proximity with each other. Spatial proximity to other audience members increases the potential for any individual member of the audience to affect how others respond. Yet, the significance of overt responses does not rest merely on their actual or possible effects. Woodruff proposes that there is a kind of bonding that occurs among members of the audience, but “bonding” strikes me as too strong a social tie for what goes on. Audience members may all engage in a social activity, with the relevant social dimension, without “bonding” with each other. Rather, audience members become part of a community, even if they do not feel particularly close to any other members of that community. The boundaries between art and life are partially broken down when overt expressions of one’s emotional responses to a theatrical performance are part of appreciating it, in the second way described above. There is an inherently social role for overt human behaviour in a public place. One is part of a community of appreciators and actors, and the character of one’s own appreciation can be affected by the presence and overt behaviour of others. One doesn’t have to be a creator or participant in the performance to be a participant in a social practice of appreciation that recognizes the relevance of both interested and other-directed concerns. This social component of appreciation also raises some tantalizing possibilities. It likely helps to explain what is special about experiencing live performance, first because actors are experienced as the people they are and as characters—and this is reflected in one’s attitude towards overt expression of one’s responses and hence in one’s experience—and second because other audience members are in the same place and hence are the object of our concerns and constitute possible influences on ourselves. The fact that we are “all in it together” can affect each person’s experience of participating in such a community. Yet, like experiences in ordinary life, the effect will obviously not be the same on everyone and an aspiration that one’s own experience—replete as it is with self-interested and otherdirected concerns—necessarily be intersubjectively shareable, much less actually shared, would be misplaced. Not every member of a community should be expected to experience the same thing. Nevertheless, it is an experience of the performance, guided by and focused on it. What is

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different from a traditional conception of appreciation is the relevance of one’s and others’ participation in practices of overtly expressing one’s emotional responses in ways that are guided by what one does as a member of a community. On a traditional view of artistic appreciation, one’s attention is focused on a particular art object that can in principle be appreciated in the same way by everyone. The object is “framed” by devices that are designed to separate it out as an artwork from everyday life events, in part because the latter could bring our own idiosyncratic perspectives and experiences to the fore. One goes to a special place, a theatre, to view the performance, which is framed by curtains or other markers to indicate where and when the artwork begins and ends, and what about it represents some other action, by people with special training, wearing special costumes and make-up for the purpose. Furthermore, though there are inevitably other people in the theatre, the traditional view is that to appreciate the work each person will be focused on the performance and oblivious to the presence of the others. In principle, one could be the only person in the audience space (though not the only person in the place, if it is a live performance). This experience is different from everyday life, where we are expected to be aware of others around us and act in ways that show concern for what happens to them and what they are doing. I have discussed three models for how the boundaries between art and life may be broken down. Allan Kaprow’s happenings incorporate ordinary actions into the artworks, and Augusto Boal’s “theatre of the oppressed” makes the theatre part of ordinary life. They both dissolve the boundaries between art and life in a number of ways in the use of non-traditional materials, by untrained participants, doing things that lack a standard narrative, in a way that is unrepeatable, using chance, the lack of control by a single individual, the presence of interests, and consciousness of being a participant in art and in life. Yet, in both cases, perceivers become partial creators of the artwork itself, something needed, in their view, because of what they took to be the essential passivity of perception. I have suggested that the boundaries between art and ordinary life can be broken down in a fruitful way even when perceivers remain appreciators and do not become creators. Perception is not a passive process, but beyond that, the appreciation of live theatrical performance may be informed by assumptions, decisions and practices regarding the overt expression of one’s emotional responses along with the responses themselves. When theatre is performed live, in a social place, in physical proximity to actors and other audience members, any individual’s experience of the performance can be informed by the inherent sociality or

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community of the appreciative situation. This inherent sociality involves both self-regarding and other-regarding concerns, breaking down barriers between the concerns and activities of ordinary life and those involved in the appreciation of art.

CHAPTER EIGHT THE FOUND AVANT-GARDE ADILE JALE ERZEN One of the developments most peculiar to twentieth-century art is the notion of the avant-garde that has made it necessary, throughout the century, to reconsider concepts of aesthetics and creativity. The avantgarde brings into question a great variety of artistic issues, such as artistic expertise, public taste, form, content, autonomy and individuality. However, the one thing that distinguishes avant-garde art from other artistic approaches of the twentieth century is its being, at first sight, and for the public at large, not recognizably like an art object. Not only were the first Impressionist works seen to have forms unfit for works of art, but abstract art, such as Malevich’s minimalist work White on White, was often not considered by the public to have any formal relation to art. Although most twentieth-century art, from Cubism to Action Painting, fits the description of avant-garde, some examples, such as the Bicycle Wheel (1913) of Duchamp or the Three Flags (1958) of Jasper Johns, appear much more removed from a conventional understanding of art than a painting by Kandinsky or Dali. In other words, the ready-made object assimilated into the art world, or established images from totally different quotidian contexts used in unexpected ways, can be considered to more readily fit the description of the avant-garde. In our day, the notion of the avant-garde is both problematic and controversial, and becomes even more so when used in contexts such as the Third World, or non-Western cultures, where the necessary conditions for the appearance of the avant-garde do not exist and never have. On the other hand, many artistic terms, definitions or names have acquired new uses and applications. Under hybrid and pluralist cultural conditions and influences, even the most definable contexts have become blurred and have lost their assumed homogeneity. Therefore, I believe that many concepts such as avant-garde, or aesthetic, which are interpreted in varied ways, are, and can be, used for modified situations today.

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The problem introduced in this chapter has to do with objects, settings from the everyday, or with situations that provoke aesthetic responses without being intended as works of art. In fact, they are reacted to as “artistic discoveries” found within the quotidian. These are objects I have been stumbling upon for many years, and are amongst the things that intrigue me most in Turkey. What are they? For some they may not seem worthy of any attention and are just there to be of some use. They are intriguing because, besides the fact that they are intended to have some purpose and function, they give one the impression that there was some aesthetic or strange taste that went into their making. I would like to call them ready-made avant-garde objects. The general feeling today is that the avant-garde does not, and cannot, exist in the true sense any longer. Yet there can still be objects which disturb us, make us think about social and aesthetic values from new perspectives, objects which insist on attracting one’s attention and on a metamorphosis of their identity. Their presence in the environment makes one reconsider concepts of creativity and art, and aesthetic value. The ready-made as an art product, taking the place of the artist’s creative work was, at the beginning of the century, one of the most conspicuous novelties in the art world. It introduced something deeply problematic and incomprehensible into the art world, especially when viewed through the nineteenth-century romantic notions of art. What we have here is different, as it also confronts us with qualities that are problematic in terms of definition. Many of the aspects or qualities found in the objects or settings from everyday situations, to which I will refer, create enigmas; they can be unacceptable purely from a design or formal point of view, and are also incomprehensible from a merely design or aesthetic viewpoint. With “traditional” avant-garde the artist’s intention assumes priority. It is not what they do or their action and production that count, but their thought, evaluation and interpretation, or their ability to transform something ordinary into something precious and meaningful that elevates the object to the position of art, as in the works of Duchamp. With the objects I am presenting here there are no artists, although there are people who have created them or created the situation in which they become noteworthy. There are, so to speak, two creators of the object, because often these objects are not like the Fountain of Duchamp which, before the artist touches them, are just ordinary things. In the situations I am talking about, a person has already created a strange object, but without an artistic intention. Then comes the spectator who transforms it into something worth experiencing as an artwork through his or her gaze

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and appreciation. As mentioned, for this to occur the object has to have certain characteristics. What happens here—only when we accept the artistic value of the thing that is presented—is that interpretation, evaluating, discriminating and seeing become more important than “doing,” and the difference between the artist and the beholder is eliminated. This is not new. Throughout history, the technical and work aspects of art have always been seen as inferior to its mental value. However, there is also a contradiction. The ready-made thing that I call avant-garde is made by someone, often not without some aesthetic concern. Yet, this concern is not aimed at creating art, or creating something without practical value, but it is aimed at a practical end. It is there to attract attention because it is meant to have some commercial value. It is often the result of a bricolage that has some commercial intent. Many of these examples are either things that take on an artistic aspect when looked at “as if they were art,” or are things that have been made by putting together objects or things in the absence of appropriate tools. Such things cannot be fabricated in industrialized places or contexts, or in areas where such necessities have been taken care of with appropriate technologies and productions. In other words, they are often the products of the Third World, of the world of limited economic and technological means. When they are produced in places where there are the technologies and means, then they would become truly avant-garde because they would not be intended as merchandise of a sort. On the other hand, they can only become artistic through the evaluation of a gaze that is familiar with the contemporary art world. However, if, as it is claimed, all marginality is eradicated in the First World and if the avant-garde is no longer possible because everything is consumed and commercialized, then the original conditions of the First World that made the avant-garde happen are no longer necessary. In fact, it may be the impossibility of turning everything into a commodity that creates the primary condition for emergence of the avant-garde in the economically poor Third World. It is also the displacement of the gaze that partly creates such objects. Besides, even if these objects appeal as “art” or as “some kind of avant-garde” only to some people, this is not a very different situation from the way many objects made with the intention of being art were viewed in the early twentieth century. These objects can be classified into three groups. First are those which can be found any place, like a group of chairs in light violet colour, placed on a balcony and scattered in a way that implies a certain dialogue or meeting. However, it is exactly the reason of their being in a “provincial,” “disorderly” or by Western standards non-sterile environment that they

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attract attention to their strange order. One can make this clearer by pointing to the fact that in the First World, which is the real context of the avant-garde, the sterile, orderly, mechanical environment does not allow any such “misfits” or objects that are out of context. Those kinds of objects are created as works of art in most cases. Even when we find “out of context” objects in the First World, the sterile and orderly atmosphere cancels their enigmatic effect. An object that disturbs the order is discarded without much delay.

Fig. 8.1

Another group of objects, settings or implementations that we find fascinating in Third World cultures consists of ways of doing things which belong to pre-industrialized epochs and which have a ritualistic aura about them for people who have forgotten these kinds of practices. One of the examples I find extraordinary is the picture I took of a group of workmen who have drawn the plan of a house on the ground in white chalk, and are in the process of digging trenches where the foundation walls will be built. The drawing on the ground, the digging of the trenches and the simple fact of starting to build a house by hand, stone by stone, seems so out of date, so manual, that it looks as if there is an art practice going on. Because such examples are becoming rarer, witnessing them becomes similar to witnessing an extraordinary, and for that reason avant-garde, art performance.

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Fig. 8.2

The third are situations, practices and objects created in the lack of better mechanical equipment or technological facilities. These are intended as mercantile objects or settings designed to attract the attention of possible clients. Often, they prove to be novel ways of earning money, such as lotteries or exhibits for better sales. Sometimes there are also situations, habits or expressions which are peculiar to a culture and which, although they may be understood within their specific environments, seem strange and perplexing to someone from a different context. One can cite a strange lottery device that is an assemblage of strange dolls, small bull figures carved of wood, metallic shiny trimming, mirrors, etc., hauled through the streets of squatter settlements on a handcart. Another example is an installation of balloons which are to be shot with a rifle.

Fig. 8.3

Another attractive situation I witnessed was a rope tied from a house to a tree across the road, on which hung bed linen of similar floral designs. Underneath, children were playing and cars were passing. The trees had

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just been pruned, looking like strange sculptures, and the linen with the pinkish and orange floral motifs made the whole environment look like an art installation.

Fig. 8.4

Amongst other examples I can cite the roadside sale of watermelon or oranges, according to the season. Next to these extravagantly framed cheap paintings showing views of mountains, riverbeds and quaint houses are often sold, and besides which one can sometimes even see exaggeratedly made-up women sitting and smoking, also presumably there for some kind of traffic. Another wonderful example I witnessed was a brand new red truck, parked on a small neighbourhood street, in front of a modest house. It contained a cargo or huge bales made of scraps of coloured textiles that looked beautiful. A year ago the Istanbul Biennial had exhibited a similar red truck loaded with colourful balloons. The association made this truck, which seemed out of context, look even more artistic. Another example was a metal bed that had been discarded, again in a squatter settlement neighbourhood, standing on a heap of hay, looking bizarre and beautiful. An example often seen in provincial settings are the decorated windows of simple grocery shops. Since the packaging is often of simple and colourfully printed cardboard or paper, a window profuse with such articles can look like a special artistic display. Some

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environmental or settlement solutions in these poor environments can also look like “primitivist” art which was in fashion during the heyday of “artepovera.” Scrap materials attached together to cover a leaking roof, or to create a balcony or a storage place, can sometimes by chance have the appeal of raw colour contrasts etc., such as in the work of Tapies or Alberto Burri. Two very intriguing examples are from Eastern Turkey where concepts of art and public monuments are still very conventional. The municipality of DiyarbakÕr, a city with a large Kurdish population, has erected a monument of a watermelon (because DiyarbakÕr is known for its delicious watermelons) in the middle of the central street crossings. One may at first think this is ironic or funny, but one can also say “why not?” This can be seen as another version of the “Pissoir,” but even more daring by being erected in the town centre.

Fig. 8.5

Fig. 8.6

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Fig. 8.7

Figs. 8.6 and 8.7 belong to a highway installation made by the Traffic Bureau in one of the Eastern provinces of Turkey, warning drivers of the hazards of speeding. The very exaggerated graphic simulation reminds one of “Naïve Art,” yet its placement creates an ironic situation, a kind of kitsch-art. What tempts us to call these examples avant-garde? First of all, we can take any one of them and place it in a biennale or a gallery without any difficulty; it would be viewed as unexpected, new, interesting, provoking, etc. Within heterogeneous cultures, such as those that exist in the Third World, there are several status quos. Therefore, these objects easily change identity, and this is also what creates their fascination. They are unlike all other objects around them. They do not relate to the environment, they stand out. They are alien, unfamiliar and unexpected. They have two faces: one that the public in that particular Third World environment accepts as practical, and another that they present to someone who comes with aesthetic intentions. Thus, they have constantly alternating identities, and they have a hidden meaning, an ambiguity. They create discomfort. Often, like Jasper Johns’s Flashlight, they become integrated with a different material that has transformed them for us into something to be viewed rather than something practical. One can sense that there was also an aesthetic concern in their making, even if they were made for practical purposes. These are truly “uncanny” objects, even if they are produced for practical reasons. It is impossible to call them only “art” or “aesthetic” objects. Although the concept of the “avant-garde” is problematic for the Third World, and even problematic in the present times for the whole world, unless we can find a new category of “misfit” aesthetics for the

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Third World, the label “ready-made avant-garde” seems to be the most suited. To conclude, I would like to offer a few remarks about the general notion of the avant-garde that would fit my examples. If the classical avant-garde developed with an intellectual backing, my argument is that here the observer furnishes this intellectual backing. The observer, obviously coming with an aesthetic and artistic perspective, sees these objects as avant-garde because they are somewhat alienated from the environment in which they are discovered. As Alan Colguhoun has pointed out in regard to the avant-garde, the ready-made or found object, as in the case of Duchamp, is used as a critique of the art institution. The readymade object or the objects chosen from the everyday also relate to the vernacular where there is no author, no intentional artist and which were also used as a critique of the artistic establishment with its hierarchies. As the avant-garde was criticizing the isolation from the rest of life, these examples, belonging to the quotidian, take on special meanings, attacking the “system”of art. According to Alan Colguhoun, these examples defy the established hierarchical values of the First World and make us see certain qualities as if “for the first time.” Colguhoun has said that they are: also very much against functionalism because functionalism has a clarity of intention … these objects, which are clearly unworkable, at least according to the mentality of the First World, derive their value from precisely the effect that they are incomprehensible, that there is something curious about them … they defy all the claims to the superiority of the First World and discover a new world, which exists independently of the First World. The value of art is also to make people see things as if for the first time. And this of course involves, essentially, the mechanism of alienation. That mechanism is absolutely necessary for that effect to take place … One of the things that seem to me to be valued in these strange and, in a sense, incomprehensible objects is that they seem to resist corn-modification, which is very interesting, if you consider this an essential aspect of the avant-garde.1

This chapter was initially presented in a preliminary form at an International conference organized by the Sanart Association of Aesthetics and Visual Culture, 2000, in Ankara, Turkey.

1

Alan Colguhoun, remarks made after the presentation of this chapter in its initial form in an international conference in 2000.

CHAPTER NINE THE AESTHETICS OF ADORNMENTS STEPHEN DAVIES Twenty-eight thousand years ago in Sungir, Russia a sixty-year-old man and a child were buried. The man had nearly 3,000 beads and fragments about him and twenty-five mammoth-ivory bracelets on his arms. The child had 4,900 beads and a belt decorated with 250 polar fox canine teeth.1 It’s possible, but probably unlikely, that all these personal ornaments were worn in the course of daily life. If the full set was reserved only for auspicious occasions, this signifies the importance of burial with full tribute. Also, it’s possible but probably unlikely that the ornaments were owned by the group rather than any individual. In any case, the buried pair were obviously deemed to be the final recipients.

1

The figure of 250 fox teeth is from Steven J. Mithen, The Prehistory of the Mind: A Search for the Origins of Art, Religion, and Science (London: Thames & Hudson, 1996), 175, and Richard G. Klein, The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009, third edition), 694; Randall R. White gives a total of 200 fox canines with 150 on the belt in “A social and technological view of Aurignacian and Castelperronian personal ornaments in S. W. Europe,” in El Origin del Hombre Moderno en el Suroeste de Europa, ed. V. Barera Valdés, 327–357 (Madrid: Ministerio des Educacion y Ciencia, 1993), 338. For more on the Sungir grave, see Evan Hadingham, Secrets of the Ice Age: The World of Cave Artists (New York: Walker, 1979), 75–7. John E. Pfeiffer, The Creative Explosion: An Inquiry into the Origins of Art and Religion (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), 65–67. Randall R. White, Prehistoric Art: The Symbolic Journey of Mankind (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003), 141–145, and Chris Stringer Lone Survivors: How We came to be the Only Humans on Earth (New York: Times Books, 2012), 105, 137. The date of 28 thousand years ago is from Y. V. Kuzmin, G. S. Burr, et al., “AMS 14C age of the Upper Palaeolithic skeletons from Sungir Site, Central Russian Plain,” Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B 223–224 (2004): 731–734.

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There is an important moral to draw from this striking example. Personal adornments are neither trivial nor meaningless so what did the grave ornaments at Sungir signify? Social standing, of course. Imagine the effort that went into this collection. At four canines per fox, 250 canines represent an enormous investment, as did the collecting, piercing and polishing of so many beads. Assembling and making these decorations called for energy, time, skill and resources. It is probable that the items were traded or collected over a geographical spread of areas, and if not all the work was done by the final owners of the ornaments, they must have been wealthy or have been owed expensive tributes. Ochre has been in use for as much as 300,000 years.2 Though it has a variety of potential uses, many have thought that it was employed to decorate the body.3 The earliest examples of worked ochre date to 164 ka in South Africa.4 Meanwhile, beads date to 130 ka and their first use as personal decorations may date back 90–75 thousand years ago. 5 The 2

See Kathryn Coe, The Ancestress Hypothesis: Visual Art as Adaptation (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002), Iain Davidson, “The Archaeological Evidence of Language Origins: States of Art,” in Language Evolution, eds. S. Kirby & M. Christiansen, 140–157 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), and Lawrence S. Barham, “Art in Human Evolution,” in New Perspectives on Prehistoric Art, ed. G. Bergaus, 105–130 (Westport: Praeger, 2004). 3 For example, Camilla Power in “Women in Prehistoric Art,” in New Perspectives on Prehistoric Art, ed. G. Bergaus, 75–103 (Westport: Praeger, 2004) suggests that, between 500–100 ka, ochre was extensively used by female hominins as personal decoration in ritual contexts; see also Coe, The Ancestress Hypothesis. 4 See Curtis W. Marean, Miryam Bar-Matthews, et al. “Early human use of marine resources and pigment in South Africa during the Middle Pleistocene,”Nature 449 (2007): 905–909, and Clive Finlayson, The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals died out and we survived (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 5 See Christopher S. Henshilwood, Francesco d’Errico, et al., “Middle Stone Age shell beads from South Africa,” Science 295 (2004): 1278–1280, Marian Vanhaeren, “Speaking with beads: The evolutionary significance of personal ornaments,” in From Tools to Symbols: From Early Hominids to Humans, eds. F. d’Errico & L. Blackwell, 525–553 (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 2005), Marian Vanhaeren, Francesco d’Errico, et al., “Middle Paleolithic Shell Beads in Israel and Algeria,” Science 312 (2006): 1785–1788, Abdeljalil Bouzouggar, Nick Barton, et al., “82,000-year-old shell beads from North Africa and implications for the origins of modern human behavior,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 104 (2007): 9964–9969, Steven L. Kuhn & Mary C. Stiner, “Body ornamentation as information technology: Towards an understanding of the significance of early beads,” in Rethinking the Human Revolution, eds. P. Mellars, K. Boyle, O. Bar Yosef, & C. Stringer, 45–54 (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2007), “Systems of

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undisputable use of adornments is clearly apparent from more than forty thousand years ago. To highlight the significance attached to cost, prehistoric humans added value to already costly items. For instance, they reserved the difficult-to-work ivory for beads and sculptures.6 Moreover, the most valuable materials were sometimes forged, using cheaper ones. Common or large-scale items, such as mammoth ivory, were sometimes carved to resemble scarcer or less easily obtained items, such as red deer canines.7 Often, value attaches to rare or difficult to collect items, such as the canines of animals, but the point needs to be qualified that it’s unlikely that the teeth of a rare species of rat would be valued in necklace making. Typically, rareness adds to items already possessing initial aesthetic appeal, especially minerals and gems. Value also attaches to displays of skill, for instance in the working of difficult materials, but again a qualification is in order. The exercise of skill has to be seen to be proportional to the final effect, and time and labour spent on something that is not aesthetically improved by it, or that does not reward that effort in its final appearance, is time wasted. personal ornamentation in the Early Upper Paleolithic: Methodological challenges and new observations,” in Rethinking the Human Revolution, eds. P. Mellars, K. Boyle, O. Bar Yosef, & C. Stringer, 287–302 (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2007), João Zilhão, “The Emergence of Ornaments and Art: An Archaeological Perspective on the Origins of ‘Behavioral Modernity’,” Journal of Archaeological Research 15 (2007): 1–54, Francesco d’Errico, Marian Vanhaeren, et al., “Additional evidence on the use of personal ornaments in the Middle Paleolithic of North Africa,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 106 (2009): 16051–16056., Daniella E. Bar-Yosef Mayer, Bernard Vandermeersch & Ofer Bar-Yosef, “Shells and ochre in Middle Paleolithic Qafzeh Cave, Israel: indications for modern behavior,” Journal of Human Evolution56 (2009): 307–314, Finlayson, The Humans who went Extinct, and João Zilhão, Diego Angelucci, et al., “Symbolic use of marine shells and mineral pigments by Iberian Neandertals,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 107 (2010): 1023–1028. See also Jane Balme & Kate Morse, “Shell beads and social behaviour in Pleistocene Australia,” Antiquity 80 (2006): 799–811, who discuss not only the European record but also the use of beads in Australia from 30,000 years ago. 6 See Randall R. White, “La parure en ivoire des hommes de Cro-Magnon,” Pour la Science 43 (2004): 98–103 and Johan De Smedt & Helen De Cruz, “A cognitive approach to the earliest art,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 69 (2011): 379–389. 7 See Randall R. White, “Toward a conceptual understanding of the earliest body ornaments,” in The Emergence of Modern Humans, ed. E. Trinkhaus, 211–231 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

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Part I What should be counted as falling under the heading of personal adornments? As well as the previously mentioned jewellery, amulets, belts etc., we should include clothing, for instance. And again, we can note the prestige signalled by skilfully worked (handwoven) rare or difficult to obtain fine materials (such as silk, pelts, skin) and materials laced with gold thread and the like (such as songket). Also deserving comment is the use of the body as a medium for ornamentation, as in scarification, tattooing, body painting and make-up,8 which can also be costly in terms of pain or time and may involve rare materials and skilful, intricate patterns. It would be appropriate to also include material possessions. In the modern context, a house and its contents—cars, watches, cell phones, iPads, handbags and luggage—serve as accessories that are meaningful beyond their primary functions. In this regard, notice how we add embellishment to adornments, layer on layer. Our houses already have an ornamental status in their own right, but we add to this, adorning them with artifacts and materials, some of which are primarily decorative (pictures on the walls, vases of flowers), and others that are more directly functional often selected, at least in part, for their aesthetic character (rugs, carpets, drapes, furniture, lighting fixtures). We add garnishes to food, pictures to plates, patterns to wallpaper, and we often design functional objects to perform their functions not only efficiently but also sometimes in a fashion that is appreciably beautiful (such as a Saarinen tulip chair).

Part II In what respects is personal decoration meaningful? In themselves, adornments might be purely decorative, but they also add meaning. They mark, symbolize and distinguish.9 In the case of the Sungir burials, I speculated that they stood for wealth and social status (I don’t regard these as separable; they go together). Such collections of ornaments involve large investments of labour, resources and skills. If the possessor is the maker, they show that person to have the fitness to spend time and resources on items without direct survival value. Alternatively, if 8

The use of cosmetics dates back at least 6,000 years, see Maggie Angeloglou, A History of Make-up (London: Studio Vista, 1970). 9 In “Speaking with beads,” Vanhaeren lists thirteen (sometimes complementary) functions for beads, in addition to their aesthetic appeal.

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the ornaments were purchased or bartered, they show the wealth of the would-be owner. Or again, if they were given as courtship gifts or tributes, they inevitably acknowledge the elevated position of both the recipient and the giver. Expensive adornments are often used to mark rank. Consider the braid that distinguishes the navy admiral from lesser officers and other ranks, or the elaborate, fine clothes of senior priests of many religions. However, the significance of adornments need not depend on their cost. Of 138 societies investigated by Bobbi S. Low, 99 distinguished single from married women by ornament or garment, and 49 showed women’s family wealth in this manner. 10 Typically, the dress of single women is more revealing and that of married women less so. For example, single Zulu women traditionally did not cover their upper body but married women were required to do so. Many conservative religions impose dress codes on women who appear in public, one example being the burqa. By contrast, with women’s decorative paraphernalia, ornaments showed men’s wealth or status in eighty-seven of the societies and only four indicated men’s marital status this way.11 Marital status is sometimes signalled by rings and the like, however. More generally, adornments often serve to show group membership or solidarity. They can be used to mark a person’s profession (bakers, judges, soldiers), ethnicity (folk costumes), religious affiliation (Jews), tribal membership (sing-sing groups), club association (bikers), or cult identification (goths). In addition, modes of ornamentation are often associated with rites of passage and particular occasions. Women wear corsages when they go to coming-out-balls, for example, and carry posies at weddings, and particular kinds of clothing are associated with weddings and funerals. Adornments and decorations can also serve as ritual objects, charms, talismans, curatives and, as we saw in the Sungir case, grave offerings. Finally, where variation is tolerated, adornments can be used to express personality and individuality (fashion clothes, bling). Beautiful natural items can be appropriated to this use, not only gems but also flowers, ferns, feathers and shells. Even living animals are sometimes co-opted into this role. Notice that highlighting individual difference can be consistent 10

Bobbi S. Low, “Sexual selection and human ornamentation,” in Evolutionary Biology and Human Social behavior: An Anthropological Perspective, eds N. A. Chagnon& W. Irons, 462–87 (North Sciutate: Duxbury Press, 1979); see also Vanhaeren Ibid., 529–530. 11 Bobbi S. Low, Why Sex Matters: a Darwinian Look at Human Behavior (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

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with preserving the emblems of group membership, for instance where Islamic women wear hijabs of different styles and colours.

Part III Evolutionary psychologists discuss the different strategies of men and women with respect to mate selection.12 Women prize status and resources in men who might become the fathers of their children, as well as a caring disposition, intelligence and humour. They also value markers of masculinity and health, such as upper body strength and a prominent jaw. As well as genetic quality, women want men who will support their children. Men seek similar personality traits in the future mothers of their children, but place more emphasis on physical attractiveness and youthfulness than on status and resources. Attractiveness and youthfulness signify a history of health and the promise of fertility. If these views are correct, we would expect them to be revealed by the adornments adopted by the sexes. Men will display the accoutrements of wealth, prestige and status, including special titles and medals. Women will accentuate their beauty and mitigate signs of age. Both sexes will attempt to appear healthy and vigorous. More particularly, when it comes to physical appearance we can predict that both sexes will adorn themselves in ways that make a display of secondary sexual characteristics, these being appealing to the other sex. As much as the accepted social conventions allow for it, young women 12

For instance, see Donald Symons, The Evolution of Human Sexuality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979) and his “Beauty is in the adaptations of the beholder: the evolutionary psychology of human female sexual attractiveness,” in Sexual Nature—Sexual Culture, eds. P. R. Abramson & S. D. Pinkerton, 80–118 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995). See also Bruce J. Ellis, “The Evolution of Sexual Attraction: Evaluative Mechanisms in Women,” in The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, eds. J. H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby, 266–288 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), David M. Buss, The Evolution of Desire (New York: Basic Books, 1994), Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty (New York: Doubleday, 1999), Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (London: Penguin Books, 1999), Geoffrey F. Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (New York: Doubleday, 2000), Uta Skamel, “Beauty and sex appeal: Sexual selection of aesthetic preferences,” in Evolutionary Aesthetics, eds. E. Voland& K. Grammer, 173–200 (Berlin: Springer, 2003), Viren Swami & Adrian Furnham, The Psychology of Physical Attraction (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), and Simon Hampton, Essential Evolutionary Psychology (Los Angeles: Sage, 2010).

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dress and make themselves up to show off their hair, lips, breasts, slim waists, buttocks and legs. Notice that, growing at about ten centimetres per year, long and glossy hair testifies to prolonged health. Smooth skin is an indicator of extreme youth, which is why women in some societies pluck and shave some of their body hair, and men present themselves to show upper body strength, flat stomachs and firm buttocks. In some societies they may also draw attention to their genitals with codpieces or penis sheaths, for instance. Often, for both sexes, a great deal is achieved by subtle suggestion and supportive, tight-fitting garments, rather than by near-naked show. These views are plausible and are surely borne out in many cultures, but they do tend to distort the overall picture. Most people, most of the time, are not looking to attract a mate. They are, however, always concerned with social performance and presentation—their own and that of others. Clothing and adornment play an important role here. And it is generally assumed that, as an aspect of social competence, people will try to present themselves well, insofar as this is permitted by their occupation, the circumstances at hand, and so on (this is not to say that we expect uniformity or conservatism, however). Differences of sex matter a great deal to us when we engage socially with others, so it is only to be expected that sex-based distinctions in the use of adornment and ornament will be fostered and preserved within societies. As a result, the standards for social attractiveness are likely to align with those for sexual attractiveness. If a man is to present himself well to society, he will do so as a man, making use, if he chooses, of the embellishments and enhancements of masculinity. Similarly for a woman, the decorations of femininity may be appropriated to the end of selfpresentation. But where the focus is on social performance generally, much more than the sexual character of these displays is taken into account, and we also consider personality, outlook, cooperativeness and values.

Part IV How does the aesthetic character of personal adornments relate to their function? The aesthetic character of some adornment or ornament might be incidental to its social meaning. For instance, the group adopts some colour or insignia as its marker, but without special regard to its aesthetic character. But if a decoration is beautiful or aesthetically striking, this is rarely ancillary to its function. In other words, it is unusual for such items

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to be functional and, incidentally, beautiful as well. More often, the aesthetic character of an ornament promotes its function or meaning. Soldiers’ uniforms can indicate imposingness (beefeaters) or threat (combat soldiers, samurai), which are aspects of the sublime, and a person might be decorated in ways that are intentionally shocking or ugly. Consider heavily pierced or scarified individuals. Famously, Immanuel Kant regarded Maori faces as disfigured by tattoos, even if the designs and patterns of the tattoos were pleasing in themselves.13 But the line between disfiguring and highlighting is not an agreed one, and generally ornaments aim to beautify and thereby enhance and intensify their social message, whatever that is. A striking case is provided by the Balinese religion, a distinctive form of Hinduism. The Balinese must make daily offerings to gods, ancestors and variously good and bad spirits of the air and earth. The bad gods are placated with food and blood sacrifices, and the good gods are connoisseurs of beauty, so they must be presented with beautiful things. That is, the Balinese have a religious obligation to dress and decorate themselves to be beautiful, especially for attendance at the temple or presentation of offerings. Usually, it is the women who make and present offerings, but at temple ceremonies everyone wears appropriate clothing (pakaianadat). Also, there are dances and other entertainments for the gods at these religious festivals, and some of these dances are unstructured and informal (rejang), while others are intricately choreographed and involve rich costumes (baris, legong) and complex music. The Balinese case is one in which the beautifying function of decoration and embellishment is at its most pronounced and seriously functional, but it differs from more mundane examples only by a degree. The functional efficacy of adornments and ornaments often contributes significantly to their aesthetic character.

13

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J. H. Bernard (New York: Haffner, 1951, first edition 1790) at §16, 66. For discussion see Robert Wicks, “Kant on beautifying the human body,” British Journal of Aesthetics 39 (1999): 163–178.

PART III EASTERN WISDOM AND EVERYDAY LIFE AESTHETICS

CHAPTER TEN DAMASK NAPKINS AND THE TRAIN FROM SICHUAN: AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE AND ORDINARY THINGS MARY B. WISEMAN The centrality of art to aesthetics in contemporary philosophy raises at least three questions: One, what is the difference between the aesthetic appreciation of a work of art and the appreciation of a damask napkin or the taste of tea? Two, how much does the difference between works of art and mere real things matter to our aesthetic experience of each? Three, what reasons have we for attending to the aesthetic qualities of everyday things? Much of the interest in everyday aesthetics lies in its characterization of the effects on the subject of attending to the aesthetic in everyday life, which raises questions about what the good life is and what virtues one ought to cultivate to live it, along with questions about our relations to things, manmade and natural, and what it might mean to respect them. I address only the first two. The first part characterizes aesthetic experience in terms of the clarity and distinctness that Descartes required of ideas to be true. Its object can be some everyday object, event or artwork. The second part looks at the increasing porousness of the boundaries between art and everyday life in the work of several Chinese artists.

Aesthetic Experience The word “aesthetics” comes from the Greek aisthanomai, meaning to perceive, feel, or sense. In 1735 the philosopher Alexander Baumgarten co-opted it to mean “taste,” as the ability to judge according to the senses rather than the mind, where judgment is based on feelings caused by the stimulation of the senses. I want to characterize aesthetic experience in a

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way that hews close to the Greek meaning and to what Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) expressed when he defined beauty as “that which pleases upon being seen,” where the pleasure is higher than mere sensual pleasure, and the eye that sees is an intelligent eye. But first a word about the aesthetics of something other than art—in the past decades in the West, the field has expanded to include the aesthetics of nature, the environment, popular culture and, most recently, everyday life, whose scope can be as broad as living a life or as narrow as having a heart attack. When I recently heard talk of “the aesthetics of a heart attack,” I supposed that this could only refer to the texture or feel of the experience of having a heart attack; that is to say, what it is like to have one. This is to have knowledge by acquaintance, a knowledge that is subjective because it is about an experience and available only to one who has had that experience. My thought is that “aesthetic” in “the aesthetics of” something refers first of all to a manner of attending to an object presented to the senses rather than to certain features. The manner is careful and focused, and its object is the whole of what is sense-presented and only what is presented—the careful scrutiny of all and only what the senses present and the mind focuses on. How does this fare with other characterizations of this kind of experience in analytic aesthetics? Robert Stecker, in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art (2010), lays out neatly the important nouns to which “aesthetic” applies. He says: “aesthetics is the study of a certain kind of value. This value derives from certain kinds of experience, and is identified in judgments that an object possesses this value in virtue of its capacity to deliver the experience”1 (emphases added). He goes on to describe aesthetic experience as “attending in a discriminating manner to forms, qualities, or meaningful features of things, attending to these for their own sake or for the sake of this very experience”2 (emphasis added). Noel Carroll proposes instead a content-oriented approach that “identifies an aesthetic experience in terms of what it is an experience of, rather than in terms of some supposed, universally recurring quality of the experience, such as intrinsic valuation.”3 He goes on to say that aesthetic experience is “attention with understanding to the work’s formal and aesthetic [and expressive] properties and their interaction with each other and to the ways in which

1

Robert Stecker, Aesethetics and the Philosophy of Art: An Introduction (Lantham, MD., Rowman& Littlefield, 2nd ed., 2010), Preface. 2 Ibid. 3 Noel Carroll, “Art and the Domain of the Aesthetic,” British Journal of Aesthetics 40 (2000): 191–208, 207.

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they engage our sensibilities and imagination.”4 Carroll is right that there is more to aesthetic experience than the eye’s seeing and the ear’s hearing—the experience includes sensations sending data to the imagination and engaging the understanding. This is about the experience, which is where I want to concentrate, not about its content. Carroll argues persuasively that Stecker’s characterization of aesthetic experience, in terms of its being valued for its own sake, is flawed because art is valued for far more than what it presents to the audience’s senses. Art has evolutionary value, and many artworks have instrumental as well as intrinsic value. The evolutionary value lies, for example, in training us to recognize designs that help to orient us in space and expressive properties that help us to communicate with our fellows. Its instrumental value lies, for example, in teaching religious stories to the illiterate, inspiring devotion in believers, expressing outrage at a bombing or an execution, or raising awareness of the plight of women or racial and ethnic minorities. Carroll notes correctly that aesthetic experiences are in fact valued not just for their own sake but also for what they bring in their wake. However, there is a way to recast Stecker’s claim about aesthetic experience’s being valued for its own sake that should satisfy Carroll. Instead of saying that attention to the experience and its object is valued for its own sake, say that its value derives from attention being paid to the experienceexclusive of its causes or contexts or expected consequences. Radically de-contextualize the experienced object in order to focus on it alone. The aesthetic properties of what immediately presents itself are the source of the object’s further evolutionary, educational, motivational or political ends. The object has aesthetic value for bringing about these ends and for bringing them about in the way that it does, as well as for having properties that repay careful scrutiny. This scrutiny makes the experienced object clear, and de-contextualizing, that is, taking the object out of its frame, makes it distinct.5 The idea that to be experienced aesthetically an object should be engaged as though context-free is, however, open to the objection that to take things out of their contexts or the milieu in which they naturally occur is to destroy their identity. A debate about the role of context in the identity 4 Noel Carroll, “Aesthetic Experience Revisited,” British Journal of Aesthetics 42 (2002): 145–168. 5 Descartes: “I call ‘clear’ that perception which is present and manifest to an attentive mind: just as we say that we clearly see those things which are present to our intent eye … On the other hand, I call ‘distinct’, that perception which, while clear, is so separated and delineated from all others that it contains absolutely nothing except what is clear.”

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of artworks arose around the African artifacts exhibited in “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art (1984) at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. One side said they were intended for use in tribal rituals and away from that context, as they were in MoMA, they were but empty forms, empty of the power that Picasso said had captured him. There are two ways to answer this. One is to say that the viewer can look at the ritual object mindful of how it was meant to be used or can imagine being present at a ceremony in which it is being used. Another is to say that neither of these is necessary, as one can sense the power of the piece even if they are ignorant of what it was made for. The power Picasso felt in the works was not likely to have come from his knowledge of their use in tribal ceremonies. He opened himself to the work, by forgetting himself and focusing fully on it, just looking at the object and letting it speak for itself. One gets the same impression from looking at Byzantine images of sacred beings—one sees and senses that there is more there than meets the eye How does one decide this matter? Are there empirical data that show that people tend to identify themselves and almost everything in terms of their place in society? Is it a matter of conceptual decision? Regardless of how this is settled, we are each unique individuals conscious of ourselves and our world, and our conscious experience of what our senses deliver is what is at the centre of the aesthetic. A further objection to the requirement that the object of an aesthetic experience be considered out of it contexts is implicit in Kevin Melchionne’s response to a claim that an experience has aesthetic value only if it is of interest to others; that is, only if the experience is the possible “subject of agreement, amendment, and critical discussion.” 6 Otherwise, the experience is trivial, agreeable only, and not aesthetic. Melchionne argues against this that examples cited as trivial—tying a necktie, washing a window—are so only because they are considered outside the routine or pattern of which they are a part. They are slices of experience and as such do not reveal the aesthetic in everyday life, as practices like the art of dressing and homemaking do. “Built into the fabric of everyday life, the moment or habit [tying a necktie or washing a window] takes on greater aesthetic value. It becomes part of a perceptual or creative routine, a way of composing our experience by acting upon our environment or controlling how we move through it”7 (emphasis added.) 6

Christopher Dowling, “The Aesthetics of Daily Life,” British Journal of Aesthetics 50 (2010): 240. 7 Kevin Melchionne, “Aesthetic Experience in Everyday Life: A Reply to Dowling,”British Journal of Aesthetics (September 12, 2011).

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For Melchionne the aesthetic in the everyday seems to lie in the deliberateness and self-consciousness with which we compose our experience, which is consistent with my claim that the experience of the aesthetic is the result of paying a certain sort of attention. He could extend the routines or practices to which he refers to the whole of a life and then talk about the art of living aesthetically, where the rule that governed the art would be to focus, as far as the exigencies of life allow, on particular activities, experiences, objects or occurrences with exquisite care. Presumably, he would say that the larger the context in which a given act or object is experienced, the greater its’ aesthetic value. The value lies in its being part of a greater whole, rather as the value of an African artifact is thought by some to get its value, and identity, by being part of the life of its tribe. I argue that, on the contrary, the aesthetic value of an act or object derives from the experience of paying it careful and focused attention. How does one decide this issue? Asking this is like asking how one decides whether the state or the individual is the more important. Whether socialism or democracy is the better form of government? Here it is a matter of political choice, as one might say the decision as to whether to concentrate on composing a life or focusing on the moment is an aesthetic choice. The claim that experiences like tying a necktie are trivial because they are not the subject of critical discussion is challenged by Sherri Irvin’s objection to the art-centeredness of this requirement for an experience’s being aesthetic—were “aesthetic experience restricted to encounters with art and nature,” most of us would be found to “live lives rather lacking in aesthetic texture. But I submit that this is false—our everyday lives have an aesthetic character that is thoroughgoing and available at every moment, should we choose to attend to it.”8 This is to say, as I do, that we can impart an aesthetic character to virtually any aspect of our lives by examining it closely (to achieve Cartesian clarity) and focusing only on it (for Cartesian distinctness). Such difference as there is between art-aesthetics and everydayaesthetics is that we know that we are expected to attend to the aesthetic character of art, but not to that of life. We have to choose or to make some effort to attend to the aesthetic character of everyday experiences. To favour an art-centred account of aesthetic experience is to take ordinary life to be a servant to art and to suppose that the more like its mistress a life is, the more aesthetic its character will be. Everyday-centred accounts 8 Sherri Irvin, “The Pervasiveness of the Aesthetic in Ordinary Experience,” British Journal of Aesthetics 48 (2008): 29–44.

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treat art as but a servant to life, as an aid to our living well, helping us to understand our place in the natural and social worlds. Before I turn to an increasing closeness of artworks to everyday life in the second part, however, I want to redescribe a characterization of how Stecker and Carrol describe aesthetic experience. They say that the objects of aesthetic attention are the properties of things rather than the things themselves. If, on the contrary, one attends to the whole thing that is sensegiven, then the thing’s aesthetic, expressive and formal properties will reveal themselves, quietly and insistently. We do not, for example, simply confront nearly unbearable loss when we look at Michelangelo’s Pieta in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, we confront this particular expression of it. The representation of this woman and this son dramatize such a loss as words cannot. So it is with art, you might say, but art is not life. However, all objects of experience are alike in being utterly particular. When I attend to the damask napkin that I am ironing, it is my experience of this design of strong lines made up of delicately curving flowers and vines as it presents itself on the ironing board. What difference does it make whether we say we attend to the elegance of the napkin’s pattern or to the napkin? It is that there is in things a deep-down richness that we rarely appreciate, apt as we are to focus on the defining or familiar characteristics of things. But they are never its all—its “all” is what the Welsh poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) called “inscape, the distinctive design that constitutes individual identity. This identity is not static but dynamic. Each being in the universe ‘selves,’ that is, enacts its identity.”9 Or, as Hopkins put it in Kingfishers Catch Fire, each thing in the universe “finds tongue to fling out broad its name,” whether or not the thing is a work of art.

Art and Everyday Life In the early years of the twenty first century, artists in China used particular material events and objects in a way virtually unknown in the west. Xu Bing made a work out of dust from the explosion of the twin 9

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráwfláme; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

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towers in New York on 9/11, while Zhang Huan exhibited a train damaged in the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province. This is art as history.10 The engagement is with the material of the world, including the everyday objects the material affords. Xu Bing wrote these lines from a Zen poem in the dust from the twin towers: “As there is nothing from the first, Where does the dust itself collect?”, and called the work Where Does the Dust Itself Collect? (2004). Shortly after the earthquake on May 12, 2008, Zhang Huan learned about the railroad disaster caused by the earthquake when “the earth, in a sudden outpouring of fury, buried both a loaded freight train and the arrogant idea that human beings can somehow conquer the forces of nature.” 11 Freight train 21043, carrying twelve tanks of aviation fuel through tunnel number 109, collided with a boulder dislodged by the quake. The train was derailed and the fuel tanks exploded, engulfing the train in flames. Zhang said he remembered thinking that he should get the train and the oil tanks and preserve them. The tanks had been destroyed, but he was able to buy the train. His technical director, a photographer and a documentary team drove from Shanghai to Xi’an and brought two train cars to Shanghai where it was cleaned up. They were exhibited in Beijing under the title Hope Tunnel (2010) with this statement: As a monumentally important ‘witness to history,’ the train is worth preserving. At a time when the whole world is looking toward the future, preserving the past seems more important than ever. Reflecting on the disaster, investigating the causes, mitigating future dangers and finding ways to live in harmony with our environment rather than trying to conquer it—that’s where the real future is, the tunnel of hope that leads to tomorrow.12

The events from which the train was rescued were the cause of their being in the condition in which Zhang found them, and for this reason can be said to be part of a work of art made from it. The viewer pays attention to the events by paying close and focused attention to what is presented to their senses, such as the words written in the dust and the cleaned and patched up train. What the eye sees the mind thinks on and the heart feels. The object of aesthetic attention, then, is the dust on the gallery floor in 10

“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.” Aristotle, Poetics IX.1. One need only look at the physical objects and events artists use in their art to read a history of the present time. 11 Website: ZHANG HUAN–HOPE TUNNEL. 12 Website: zhanghuan: hope tunnel at UCCA.

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Cardiff, Wales and the train in Ullens Gallery of Contemporary Art, Beijing, together with the events they recall. Where Does the Dust Itself Collect? and Hope Tunnel treat the acts of terror and of nature in such a way that even if you did not know the history they recall, you would have an intimation of it. The lines written in the dust from the destruction of the towers say, in effect, that since there was nothing from the first, there is nothing now and therefore nowhere for the dust from the destruction to settle. Let the worst happen or be done, there is nowhere for its effects to settle. If you think hard on the words written in the very dust said to have no place to collect, you will get an inkling of what it would be to be beyond being touched or threatened by catastrophe. Hope Tunnel is simpler. The train bears witness to destruction. If even this massive steel structure designed to transport us distances we could never walk is vulnerable, then how much more are we? The train speaks of the power that destroyed it, and the words in the dust that has nowhere to settle speak of the senselessness of the action that caused it. Each artwork “finds tongue to fling out broad its name,” and their names are “what the earthquake caused” and “what the fall of the Twin Towers caused.” These works are exhibited in an art space and their viewers know that what is called for is the focused attention that can bring clarity. What about distinctness? What about the requirement for attention to be aesthetic that it considers an object by itself or for its own sake? I have said that the object of the aesthetic experience of what is sense-presented in the art space includes the event of which the dust and the train are relics— terrorists flying planes into two buildings in New York on September 11, 2001 and an earthquake’s derailing of a fuel train in Sichuan Province on May 12, 2008. To be distinct each is to be considered by itself, not weighed down by speculation about its causes or ramifications; just the events whose effects the eye sees, each of them aesthetic objects that are dramatic instances of the power of human beings and nature to destroy. My characterization of aesthetic experience is so broad as to allow any clear and penetrating attention paid to what one senses as counting as aesthetic. An individual sitting in a dentist’s chair focusing only on the pain the drill is causing is having an aesthetic experience. Clearly, not all aesthetic experiences please. Some cause disgust, others horror, others any of a whole range of human responses. There is an interesting feature of all aesthetic responses—the person in the dentist’s chair can focus so intensely on the pain that they are absorbed into it and no longer feel it. It is as though the pain is all there is. So can attention to beauty, such as the sweetness of a breeze on an early May morning, or the pathos in

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Michelangelo’s Pieta, or the words in the dust in Xu Bing’s Where Does the Dust Itself Collect?, take one out of oneself? The recent works by the Chinese artists apply an everyday-centred conception of the aesthetic. The aesthetic experience at the heart of these two works is the texture and the feel of what it would have been like to witness the 2001 destruction in New York or the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan. One can fully appreciate what happened only by taking its aesthetic measure, by imagining what the events were like. By bringing what was there, as most of us were not, into the gallery in the form of a work of art, Xu and Zhang metonymically bring the events home to us. The works are everyday-centred in a literal sense, and their material is important because it is real and a part of history. The dust and the train are relics, not representations, of the events to which they point. Paintings of historical events also point outside of themselves to what they are about and invite their viewers to respond to the real events the paintings represent. But they are representations only and have no material connection with the events portrayed. Picasso’s Guernica brought home to its viewers at the 1937 world’s fair in Paris the bombing on April 26, 1937 of a village in northern Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). It is an expressive representation of war that had a temporal connection since it waspainted and first exhibited as the war raged. But having no material connection with the war, Guernica maintained art’s distance. Liu Xiaodong had a material connection with Hotbed (2005), a loosely painted five-panel two-by-ten metre work made on site at the Yangtze River where the Three Gorges Dam was nearing completion. It was painted in three weeks on the roof of a building around which the water was rising. Liu painted from 3 pm until sunset each day as a film documented the process. Liu said that when he goes on site, as he did for the very first time to paint Hotbed, he opens his eyes and looks, rejecting all fixed knowledge. He said that while there “I can rid myself of all of it, including the influence of [Western art] history.”13 He sought immediate connection with the subject he was to paint, without the intrusion of history or theory, on the one hand, or his studio and the photographs he used to use, on the other. Liu was one of four artists who made art for an exhibition called Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art (2008–2010). The subject of their work was the material effects of the dam that flooded archaeological and cultural sites, displacing some 1.3 million people and causing significant ecological changes. The dam also had good 13

Wu Hung, Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art (Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2008), 135.

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effects, and the artists responded to the complexity by translating their real-life aesthetic experience of the Three Gorges Dam Project into art. In the same way, Liu Xiaodong is currently translating his aesthetic experience of life among the jade miners in Urumqi in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, northwest China, into art, where rioting among Uyghurs (Turkic muslims) and Han Chinese broke out on in July 5, 2009 and continued for days, leaving 156 people dead. This is from a press release for the Hotan Project, exhibited in Urumqi from August 25 to October 8, 2012. Liu: prefers to penetrate into and reside within the ordinary lives and surroundings of the working class in Hotan, one of Xinjiang’s most sensitive regions … During early June of 2012, he and a small team moved into the area and initiated a two-month project of documenting the lives of the local jade miners … Liu Xiaodong sets up his temporary studio under a tent and carries on with his enduring project to document what he witnesses of the scenes of labor and of the local workers themselves, observations which manifest themselves in drawings, diaries, oil painting, photography and other media and genres. A film crew works side by side with him to document the entire process.14

This is making the boundary between art and real life increasingly fluid as artists intervene in society by drawing attention to its inevitable challenges and contradictions. The art encourages its audience aesthetically to experience the world seen through an art that is no longer maintaining the distance from ordinary life, insisted on and celebrated by Western modernism.

Conclusion To experience something aesthetically is to pay careful and focused attention to, for example, tasting tea, looking at the pattern on a Damask napkin or Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, listening to rain on a tin roof or a Bach Cello Sonata, imagining what it would be like to live through the attack on the twin towers in New York or the earthquake in Sichuan Province, or what it would be like to have your home displaced by the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River or to be a jade miner in northwestern China. Aesthetic experience consists in paying attention to the experience of tasting, looking, listening, imagining; these transitive verbs all name experiences whose objects in the examples are tea, the pattern in a napkin, a painting, a sonata, an attack, an earthquake, being 14

Chinawww.todayartmuseum.com E-flux.

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displaced, being a jade miner. In the more complex cases you are paying aesthetic attention to imagining what it would be like to do or suffer or be thus and so. To the first two questions with which the chapter began, the answer to the first is that there is no difference between the aesthetic appreciation of art and of the world of the everyday. The answer to the second is that even though works of art are vehicles of meaning created to invite interpretation and everyday things are not—although they clearly do have meaning— that difference does not affect our aesthetic experience of each. Aesthetic imagination—the faculty of discriminating, appreciating and being alive to what the senses deliver to our imagination and understanding—is apt to be more finely honed in artists than in others. The responsive transformation into art of what it is like for an individual or group to live through the complexities of the newly global world makes the work of Chinese artists who are, as Wang Chunchen put it, intervening in society and working out a new relationship with it, original, timely and worthy of attention.15

15 Wang Chunchen, Art Intervenes in Society: A New Artistic Relationship (Hong Kong: Timezone 8, 2010).

CHAPTER ELEVEN EVERYDAY AESTHETICS IN THE JAPANESE TRADITION YURIKO SAITO One of the recent developments of Western aesthetic discourse is everyday aesthetics. It follows the trajectory set by environmental aesthetics and the aesthetics of popular arts by expanding the domain of aesthetics beyond fine arts to include all aspects of daily life. Everyday aesthetics includes subjects such as various artifacts, domestic chores, workaday environments and human interactions, among other aspects of daily life. The aesthetic dimension of these ingredients of our everyday life may lack the intensity of aesthetic experience often gained from our encounter with art and nature. However, their pervasiveness makes their presence in our aesthetic life not easily dismissible. Despite some reservations recently expressed against granting “aesthetic credential” to everyday aesthetics,1 I maintain that we only lose by ignoring its influence on our lives. In what follows, I am going to explore the ways in which cultivating an everyday aesthetic sensibility helps improve the quality of life and the state of the world. The Japanese aesthetic tradition is particularly rich in suggesting this dimension of everyday aesthetics. Although many examples I cite are culturally and historically specific, I believe that the possibility of everyday aesthetics as a tool for improving the quality of life and the state of the world is not confined to the Japanese tradition.

1

Christopher Dowling challenges the “aesthetic credential”of everyday aesthetics, primarily by pointing out that many examples do not lend themselves to the possibility of inter-subjective judgments. My discussion here is not a direct response to this challenge, but I think that the notion of negative aesthetics in Section 2 can be developed into a response.

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Cultivation of Aesthetic Sensibility One characteristic of the Japanese aesthetic tradition is a hypersensitivity regarding details of one’s experience. This is most apparent in the careful observations and judgments over natural objects and phenomena such as seasons and weather, reflected in much of the classical literature, both in prose and poetry.2 The most well-known is The Pillow Book (ᯖⲡᏊ) by a court lady, Sei Shǀnagon (Ύᑡ⣡ゝ), a collection of essays and anecdotes written from the end of the tenth century to the beginning of the eleventh. It starts with identifying the time of the day, weather and activities which best represent each season. Many subsequent sections also treat minute details of weather accompanying a certain occasion. The main thrust of her appreciation is directed toward savouring the way in which a particular kind of weather, no matter how unpleasant in itself, can be appreciable for fitting the mood or representing the occasion or season. For example, she praises a very cold winter morning when “the attendants hurry from room to room stirring up the fires and bringing charcoal” by admiring “how well this fits the season’s mood.”3 Similarly, she declares that “summer is best when it is extremely hot; winter is best when it is excruciatingly bitter cold.”4 The same kind of appreciation of the quintessential character of each season, including what would otherwise be a cause of discomfort, is expressed by Yoshida Kenkǀ ( ྜྷ ⏣ ව ዲ ) in his Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa ᚐ↛ⲡ), written between 1330 and 1332. In it, he declares 2

There is no shortage of commentaries regarding the Japanese aesthetics and nature. Of note among recent scholarship is Haruo Shirane’s Japan and the Culture of Four Seasons: Nature, Literature, and the Arts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). He gives a detailed account of how Japanese nature aesthetics was constructed by Heian aristocrats and how it influenced the subsequent development. For Japanese names, I follow the Japanese custom (family name first) for authors who write in Japanese. For others who write in English, as in this case, I retain the English order (first name first). 3 Sei Shǀnagon, The Pillow Book of Sei Shǀnagon, Vol. 1, trans. and ed. Ivan Morris (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 1. 4 My translation of section 114 of Makura no Sǀshi (The Pillow Book), ed. Ishida Jǀji (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1980). The Morris translation has “a very cold winter scene; an unspeakable hot summer scene,” along with “Pines, Autumn fields, Mountain villages and paths. Cranes and deer,” under the section titled “Things That Gain by Being Painted” (124). But two other Japanese editions, in addition to Kadokawa Shoten’s above, one by Iwanami Shoten, the other by Shǀgakukan, both have the phrase regarding summer and winter as an independent section, not as a part of things that gain by being painted.

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that “the changing of the seasons is deeply moving in its every manifestation.”5 The same sharpened sensibility is also evident in the multi-sensory experience of various objects and materials, related by Tanizaki Jun’ichirǀ (㇂ᓮ₶୍㑻) in In Praise of Shadows (In’eiRaisan 㝜ᙳ♩㈶), published in 1933. This work pays a kind of elegiac tribute to traditional Japanese objects which were fast disappearing during the rapid modernization process taking place at the time. Despite his indiscriminate and sometimes overblown praise for anything Japanese, and condemnation of everything Western, what interests me in this work is the deployment of a multisensory sensibility in his aesthetic experience of various objects and materials. It includes the quality of sounds (or lack thereof) made by a gas stove, crumpling paper, ceramic tableware, and urinating into a Japanese toilet lined with cedar boughs. It also includes the tactile sensation of holding a lacquered soup bowl and feeling the movement of liquid inside, as well as the tangible effect of aging and the constant touching of various materials.6 This hyper-aesthetic sensibility underlies the Japanese art of tea ceremony which is (among other things) designed to facilitate the utmost aesthetic experience. What is appreciable is not limited to obvious items like the tea hut, flower arrangements, tea bowls, implements, snacks and the host’s bodily movements. There are other dimensions usually not attended to which should also be appreciated, such as the placement of each implement against the background of geometric shape of tatami mats with the regular weave of the straw (the art of kanewari ᭤ᑻ๭), the way in which the wet surface of the water kettle dries when heated, the fine cracks on the surface of pottery such as a water jug and tea bowl (kan’nynj ㈏ධ), the pattern made by charcoal in the hearth, and the sounds of boiling water, pouring water into a bowl and hitting the bowl with a spoon when scooping tea powder into it. Yet these are only the ones experienced inside the tea hut. There are many other sources of multi-sensory aesthetic enjoyment in the garden, such as stepping stones, stone water basin and waiting pavilion. Finally, one of the well-known aesthetic values in the Japanese tradition is wabi and sabi, which essentially ascribe positive 5 Yoshida Kenkǀ, Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkǀ, trans. Donald Keene (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 18. I explore in more detail the Japanese aesthetic appreciation of weather in “The Aesthetics of Weather,” included in The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, ed. Andrew Light & Jonathan M. Smith (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 156–76. 6 These examples are scattered throughout In Praise of Shadows, trans. Thomas J. Harper & Edward G. Seidensticker (New Haven: Leete’s Island Books, 1997).

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aesthetic values to those qualities that are normally taken as aesthetically negative, such as defects, insufficiency, incompleteness and, in general, imperfection.7 All of these examples of aesthetic appreciation point to one of the predominant tendencies of Japanese aesthetic sensibility—to expand the domain of what can be a source of positive aesthetic experience. This can be accomplished by reflecting on those things that we almost never pay attention to, let alone give aesthetic attention to, such as the sound of urination and the way a wet surface dries. We may also achieve this by illuminating the aesthetically positive dimensions of things which are normally judged to be aesthetically negative. This direction of everyday aesthetics is quite familiar to those of us versed in the development of modern Western aesthetic theories. One of the guiding forces behind mainstream Western aesthetics is to analyze the nature of aesthetic experience understood as a positive experience, whether of beauty, sublimity or even disgust and ugliness, which can be powerful qualities in a work of art. Many who promote everyday aesthetics today are also primarily concerned with how to transform the otherwise mundane, humdrum, boring and ordinary experiences which constitute the bulk of our everyday life into something special, extraordinary, and meaningful. For example, Thomas Leddy claims in his most recent work on everyday aesthetics that “aesthetics has more to do with positive than with negative qualities” and “many kinds of ‘making special’…are important aspects of everyday life.”8 He further points out that contemporary art, in particular painting and photography, helps cultivate an aesthetic sensibility which renders the experience of things like junkyards, suburban malls, telephone poles, commercial strips and the like aesthetically positive. 9 According to him, “the goal of aesthetic experience is pleasure,” and everyday aesthetics should work on “encouraging more aesthetic experiences in the everyday realm, and promoting the conditions that support those experiences.”10 Another advocate of everyday aesthetics, Arto Haapala, also states that “we should simply become more aware of the pleasurable aspects of the 7

For a detailed discussion of the aesthetics of imperfection and insufficiency, see my “The Japanese Aesthetics of Imperfection and Insufficiency,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55 (1997): 377–85. 8 Thomas Leddy, The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2012), 64 and 76. 9 Ibid., 96. 10 Ibid., 114 and 116.

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everyday without making them objects of aesthetic appreciation in the traditional sense,” which would render them “strange” and “unfamiliar,” or in short, extraordinary. 11 Instead, the ordinary aspects of everyday life experienced in the ordinary context should be appreciated for qualities such as “stability” and “comfort,” making them feel “homey” and “safe,” all of which are positive and appreciable. Finally, Sherri Irvin, in her discussion of the pervasiveness of the aesthetic in ordinary experiences, including scratching an itch, also identifies aesthetics as a positive experience. She claims, for example, that “insofar as we are led to ignore it [everyday experience] or regard it as unworthy of attention, we deprive ourselves of a source of gratification,” and “if we attend to the aesthetic aspects of everyday experience, our lives can come to seem more satisfying to us, even more profound.” 12 For example, an otherwise boring meeting has a potential for a positive aesthetic experience because “there is a texture of experience in those moments that it is possible to appreciate aesthetically, to gain a real satisfaction from.”13 The assumption underlying all of these claims is that once we adopt an appropriate mindset and cultivate a sharper aesthetic sensibility, whether it be through an artistic lens or a Zen-like stance, positive aesthetic values can be found or constructed in almost every aspect of everyday life.14 This move to turn mundane everyday humdrum into an aesthetic treasure trove can be interpreted as an attempt to extend the time-honoured aesthetic attitude theory to everyday life. The ingredients that make up everyday life are taken as examples to illustrate the claims made by predecessors that “anything at all, whether sensed or perceived, whether it is the product of imagination or conceptual thought, can become the objects of aesthetic attention,” and “anything that can be viewed is a fit objet for aesthetic 11

Arto Haapala, “On the Aesthetics of the Everyday: Familiarity, Strangeness and the Meaning of Place,”The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, 52, emphasis added. 12 Sherri Irvin, “The Pervasiveness of the Aesthetic in Ordinary Experience,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 48 (2008): 41. 13 Sherri Irvin, “Scratching an Itch,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66 (2008): 32. 14 Irvin seems to implicitly endorse a Zen-like stance in maximizing everyday aesthetic experience: “Indeed, for most of us who are not Zen masters, much of our experience is like this: we receive and respond to all sorts of sensory information, but without having much conscious awareness of this process” (“The Pervasiveness of the Aesthetic in Ordinary Experience,” 35). Leddy, in contrast, finds problems with characterizing the maximization of everyday aesthetic experience as Zen-like. See The Extraordinary in the Ordinary, 199–200.

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attention,” including “a gator basking in a mound of dried dung.”15 This sharpened aesthetic sensibility deployed for enriching our everyday aesthetic experience works as a corrective to Stolnitz’s observation that “this catholicity in the denotation of ‘aesthetic object’ … has gone strangely unremarked,” as well as Leddy’s assessment that, “although many aestheticians insist that aesthetic qualities are not limited to the arts, even those thinkers generally take the arts as the primary focus of their discussion.”16 Cultivating aesthetic sensibility conducive to contemplation and reflection helps us become open-minded to recognizing aesthetic values in diverse objects and qualities. It also encourages us to live mindfully by paying careful attention to things and surroundings. 17 Furthermore, as Sherri Irvin argues, there can be moral benefits by deriving satisfaction and pleasure from things and activities which incur no moral, social, or environmental cost. For example, we can learn to take aesthetic pleasure in what we already have rather than participating in consumerism and trying to keep up with the Joneses. Similarly, we can cultivate a new taste toward vegetarian food to promote health as well as reducing our support for the meat industry, which is fraught with various environmental and moral problems.18 Thus, the Japanese tradition, with its hyper aesthetic sensibility 15

The first passage is by Jerome Stolnitz, Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art Criticism, reprinted in Introductory Readings in Aesthetics, ed. John Hospers (New York: The Free Press, 1969), 27. The second passage is from Paul Ziff’s “Anything Viewed,” reprinted in Oxford Readers: Aesthetics, eds. Susan L. Feagin & Patrick Maynard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 29 and 23. Although both passages invoke “aesthetic attention,” which can be interpreted either in a classificatory or an honorific sense, it is clear from their overall discussion that both are using it in the honorific sense–aesthetically positive. 16 Jerome Stolnitz, “On the Origins of ‘Aesthetic Disinterestedness’,” originally published in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (1961), included in Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology, eds. George Dickie & R. J. Sclafani (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), 624; Tom Leddy, “Everyday Surface Aesthetic Qualities: ‘Neat,’‘Messy,’‘Clean,’Dirty,’” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53 (1995): 259. 17 “An experience that one has every day, like drinking a cup of coffee, can become quietly exquisite and even strangely foreign when done with full attention to the feel of the cup in one’s hands, the rim of the cup touching one’s lower lip, and the sensation of the coffee in the mouth and going down the throat. Such commonplace moments of everyday experience are richly replete with qualities that we tend to neglect as we physically or psychologically multitask, giving our full attention to nothing”(Irvin, “Scratching an Itch,”32). 18 Irvin, “The Pervasiveness of the Aesthetic in Ordinary Experience,”40–44.

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toward various aspects of our daily lives, is useful in directing our aesthetic lives to embrace diversity and encourage mindful living.

A Case for “Negative Aesthetics”19 If what we can learn from the Japanese aesthetic tradition stops with cultivating a sharper and more open aesthetic sensibility, however, we are not really opening a new territory for the aesthetic discourse. I believe we can get more mileage by digging deeper into Japanese aesthetics. What has been largely absent in Western aesthetic theories so far, particularly under the influence of the aforementioned aesthetic attitude theory, is negative aesthetic values taken as negativity and not as a way of pointing to something positive, such as in the case of a work of art which aims to reveal a certain truth through the presentation of ugliness or disgust. This absence is due to the fact that the term “aesthetic” is commonly understood in an honorific sense, identifying with beautiful, aesthetically positive or artistically good, rather than in a classificatory sense which simply indicates relevance to the aesthetic realm. This confusion between the classificatory and the honorific references for a term is akin to the two uses of the term “moral.” Its honorific use is contrasted with “immoral,” so that my action of helping a friend in need is characterized as “moral”; that is, morally praiseworthy. The classificatory sense of the term is the opposite of “a-moral” or “non-moral,” in which case my action is “moral” in the sense of belonging to the kind of actions subject to moral judgments, in contrast to a non-moral action such as putting on a right shoe before the left. The direction of cultivating a sensibility to gain positive aesthetic experiences in our everyday life outlined in the previous section is familiar to us because it relies on this honorific sense of “aesthetic.” When Leddy claims that “there are … terms that denote purely non-aesthetic experience, for example ‘dull,’ ‘boring,’ and ‘ordinary’” and “the ordinary qua ordinary is uninteresting or boring and only becomes aesthetic when

19

I am using the term coined and developed by Arnold Berleant in “Negative Aesthetics in Everyday Life,” in his Sensibility and Sense: The Aesthetic Transformation of the Human World (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2010). “Art, Terrorism and the Negative Sublime”and “The Aesthetics of Politics”in this book also explore aesthetic negativity. Without referring to this specific term, however, Berleant’s previous works, particularly in environmental aesthetics, often invoke this notion.

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transformed,” it is clear that “aesthetic” is used in the honorific sense.20 The same assumption underlies the following passage: Seeing something peeling as ugly and then wanting to repaint it is not aesthetic unless it is part of an overall experience characterized by a kind of pleasure. Also, one should distinguish between ugliness that simply invites its elimination and ugliness that invites its contemplation: only the latter is aesthetic.21

Irvin encourages “attention to the aesthetic elements already present in daily experience,” because “if we can learn to discover and appreciate the aesthetic character of experiences that are already available to us, perhaps we will be less inclined to think that we must acquire new goods that make different experiences available.” Although she is not as explicit as Leddy, it is clear that she is using “aesthetic” in the honorific sense.22 If we adopt this exclusively honorific understanding of “aesthetic,” which seems to dominate aesthetic discourse, then, as Arnold Belearnt points out, “from a traditional standpoint, negative aesthetics would seem to be an oxymoron.”23 However, identifying “aesthetic” only with its honorific sense is problematic, particularly when discussing everyday aesthetics, as it precludes the possibility of attending to negative aesthetic values. When engaging in the everyday aesthetics discourse, it is crucial that we start with the descriptive or classificatory meaning of “aesthetic” in the sense of sensory perception, which can yield both positive and negative aesthetic experiences. In the descriptive sense of sensory perception, uninteresting, boring, hideous and ugly aspects of everyday life are also aesthetic, as nothing we experience can escape having some aesthetic dimensions in this descriptive sense. Furthermore, in the evaluative sense these qualities are generally aesthetically negative, particularly in the everyday context. These negative qualities should be experienced as negative, rather than, or in addition to, being a springboard for a transformative process which renders them aesthetically positive, as indicated by the aforementioned everyday aesthetics advocates. How else are we going to detect that something is amiss or wrong with our environment, the artifacts with which we interact, or social engagement? Isn’t it important to diagnose the 20 Leddy, The Extraordinary in the Ordinary, 151–2 and 112, both with emphases added. 21 Leddy, The Extraordinary in the Ordinary, 115, emphases added. 22 Irvin, “The Pervasiveness of the Aesthetic in Ordinary Experience,”42. 23 Berleant, Sensibility and Sense, 166.

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cause of the problem, think of a way to improve the situation, and ultimately act on it? In light of this predominantly honorific understanding of “aesthetic,” Arnold Berleant and Katya Mandoki stand out for exploring negative aesthetics. By identifying aesthetics as “the theory of sensibility,” Berleant rejects the “common association of aesthetics with art and its connotation of art that is good or great,” and calls attention to occasions where sensory experience “offends, distresses, or has harmful or damaging consequences.”24 These negative experiences must be distinguished from “art that exposes negativity,” such as “de Kooning’s women or Kiefer’s landscapes.”25 His promotion of negative aesthetics (needless to say, to be understood as promoting such a discourse rather than negative aesthetic qualities themselves) is motivated by his observations that there are many instances of aesthetic harm, offence, and assault in today’s environment which need to be confronted and judged as negative. We do not suffer from a lack of examples here. He organizes them into two kinds: “absence of positive aesthetic value” and “the actual presence of negative aesthetic value.” The first can be found in: the bland anonymity of suburban housing tracts and sterile blocks of low income housing, in sitcoms that pander to the emptiness and crassness of ordinary life, and pulp novels that breed on people’s dissatisfactions by offering escape into fictional romance or adventure.26

The second kind of negative aesthetics includes: The profuse vulgarity of the commercial landscapes of industrialism, the sound from music systems and television sets that infiltrates into virtually every public place, from supermarkets to doctors’ waiting rooms, airport lobbies, restaurants, bars, and even public streets.27

The list can go on and Berleant provides more examples. One may quibble over some of the examples, but the important point to be gained from his discussion is the existence of negative aesthetics in today’s world and in our lives.

24

Ibid., 155. Ibid., 171. 26 Arnold Berleant, Aesthetics Beyond the Arts: New and Recent Essays (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2012), 206. 27 Ibid., 206. 25

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Katya Mandoki also calls attention to “aesthetic poisoning.” 28 She diagnoses modern Western aesthetics as suffering from what she calls “Pangloss Syndrome,” which she characterizes as “the tendency to deal only with things that are nice and worthy, good and beautiful.” 29 According to her, this syndrome “explains why aesthetics has dealt only with art and beauty, so when other qualities that are not as pleasing become apparent, they are either only mentioned superficially or swept under the rug.” But, she observes, in our daily life, we are confronted with negative aesthetic qualities every day, such as “the disgusting, the obscene, the coarse, the insignificant, the banal, the ugly, the sordid.” When these negative aesthetic qualities are taken up in the aesthetic discourse, they are either considered non-aesthetic (as claimed by Leddy), or treated as a quality of a work of art which is justified by the overall artistic message, or become a point of contention as to whether or not a certain object exemplifies these qualities (as in the case of the presumed obscenity in Mapplethorpe’s photographs or the alleged banality of pipedin muzak). But the insight shared by Berleant and Mandoki is that whatever the specific content and examples may be we live in a world with some negative aesthetic qualities which cannot help but compromise the quality of life. I don’t think anyone would believe that the world we inhabit is aesthetically perfect with no room for improvement; unfortunately, many parts of our life and environment are simply aesthetically negative. One could take a different attitude toward those negative aesthetic qualities by utilizing the sharpened and open-minded sensibility discussed in the first section. However, doing so amounts to self-gratification, as well as deception, by surrounding oneself with aesthetically positive experiences, without acknowledging the important ramifications aesthetic considerations have in determining the quality of life not just for oneself but for the society and humanity at large. The sharpened aesthetic sensibility discussed in the previous section should thus be directed not simply to enhance one’s pleasures but, perhaps more importantly, to detect negative qualities which are impoverishing or harming the quality of life and environment. Everyday aesthetics will be derelict if it does not recognize the existence of negative aesthetics for what it is. With this in mind, I will turn again to Sei Shǀnagon’s essays, this time to a lengthy section entitled “Hateful Things.” She provides a litany of things which she hates, primarily for aesthetic reasons and lack of 28

Katya Mandoki, Everyday Aesthetics: Prosaics, the Play of Culture and Social Identities (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2007), 38. 29 Ibid., 37. The passages in the next two sentences are from 37–38.

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decorum and civility. Reflecting the living arrangement and courtship rituals of the time, many of her examples are the behaviours of male suitors who visit a lady for a night of love-making and leave the next morning. Here are some examples of “hateful,” “charmless,” “improper,” “distasteful” and “distressing” behaviours: He is so flurried … that upon leaving he bangs into something with his hat … it is annoying too when he lifts up the Iyo blind that hangs at the entrance of the room, then lets it fall with a great rattle. If it is a head-blind, things are still worse, for being more solid it makes a terrible noise when it is dropped. There is no excuse for such carelessness. Even a head-blind does not make any noise if one lifts it up gently on entering and leaving the room; the same applies to sliding-doors. If one’s movements are rough, even a paper door will bend and resonate when opened; but, if one lifts the door a little while pushing it, there need be no sound.

And A lover who is leaving at dawn announces that he has to find his fan and his paper … finally he discovers the objects. He thrusts the paper into the breast of his robe with a great rustling sound; then he snaps open his fan and busily fans away with it.30

In these passages, it is noteworthy that her attention is focused not only on the man’s hurried and careless movements but also the various noises created by his actions. His behaviour at the time of leave-taking, according to her, is such an important indicator of his worthiness as a lover that she declares that “one’s attachment to a man depends largely on the elegance of his leave-taking.”31 Should we dismiss these negative aesthetic judgments as being too cranky, picky and critical, a tantrum thrown by the author? There is a sense in which these aesthetic judgments reflect a rather self-centred attitude of the woman because, after all, in the Heian (ᖹᏳ) period’s courtship ritual, women always had an upper hand by requiring men to engage in various aesthetic rigmaroles to win their hearts. However, I think that there is more to what may appear to be excessive fussiness. What is “hateful” about the banging and rustling noises that Sei Shǀnagon refers to is the fact that such annoying sounds were created by a man preoccupied by what he must or wants to do, regardless of the effect it has on the lady. In short, he is not being considerate. The bumbling and 30 31

Sei Shǀnagon, Pillow Book; the first passage is from 45–46 and the second 49. Ibid., 49.

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commotion-causing actions of the man indicate his neglect, thus disrespect, for the lady who is subjected to the flurry of movements and untoward noise. That is, she is subjected to a negative aesthetic experience through his bodily movements and the sounds he makes. If he is considerate, he would have behaved more gently, carefully and mindfully which would result in less or no noise, as in carefully lifting up a headblind and opening a sliding door. Although separated by ten centuries, we can identify with her observations regarding these noise-making actions. How many of us are annoyed and sometimes angered by the sound of somebody slamming a door? Every parent (myself included!) who has dealt with a disgruntled teenage child, is familiar with the feeling. How many of us decry the violation of public space by a blasting car stereo and a loud cell phone conversation? All of these are aesthetic matters, not in the honorific sense explained above but rather in the way in which sensory experiences affect us, in these cases negatively. And when making these negative aesthetic judgments, I think it is important that they stay negative rather than become an impetus for adopting a different attitude which may mitigate negativity or transform it into something more positive. It is true that the noises made by lifting a blind and opening or closing a door roughly constitute a trivial part of our lives, and it certainly does not have the moral gravity like violations of human rights or the aesthetic intensity of being moved by a work of art. However, those weighty dimensions of our moral and aesthetic lives stand out precisely because they do not pervade our daily life. Our everyday life, at least for most of us, consists of trivial activities like closing the door, folding the laundry, dusting the furniture, and the like. We engage in these activities literally every day, and as such the way in which we perform them cannot but affect the quality of life and environment. The way in which they are performed cannot but have aesthetic dimensions, through the visual impression of the movement, and the sound and other sensory qualities the actions generate, despite the general absence of intense aesthetic experience. Thus, the sharpened aesthetic sensibility afforded by its cultivation discussed in the first section should be utilized not only for enriching positive aesthetic experiences in our lives, but also for detecting aesthetic harm and assault.

Negative Aesthetics as Guidance for Better World-Making However, everyday aesthetics can and should go even further than simply recognizing the existence of negative aesthetics. That is, the

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detection of aesthetic harm should provide guidance for correcting the situation and improving the quality of life and society. One of the expanded lines of inquiry everyday aesthetics suggests is the way in which all of us can be considered as makers of our lives and world. Although it may sound counter-intuitive and too grandiose, I maintain that all of us participate in the collective and cumulative project of world-making. Shaping the world is not a sole responsibility of professionals, such as architects, planners, designers and manufacturers, and neither is it limited to creating physical spaces and objects; it encompasses our engagement with these things, as well as our social interactions. All of these factors determine the quality of the world we inhabit. Aesthetics plays a significant, but often unrecognized, role in directing this world-making project.32 In the previous two sections, I argued for the importance of cultivating aesthetic sensibility, whether for enriching our positive aesthetic experience or for detecting aesthetic harm. The discussion was primarily spectatororiented. However, in everyday life we are also constantly creating the world around us through our dealings with objects, environments, and other people. Our actions regarding them cannot but affect the quality of life for all concerned and the state of the world, with their aesthetic dimensions being one of the primary agents of determination. The various aesthetic judgments, both positive and negative, based on a developed aesthetic sensibility as discussed above, can and should suggest a way for better world-making in which we all participate. In addition to focusing on aesthetically positive experience, Western aesthetic tradition treats our aesthetic life predominantly from the spectator’s and judge’s viewpoint. Rarely does discussion revolve around the experience of the creator, which led Friedrich Nietzsche to characterize Western aesthetics as “receiver” or “spectator” aesthetics.33 The relative 32

I discuss various ways in which our everyday aesthetic preferences and judgments contribute to the project of world-making, both positively and negatively, in “Everyday Aesthetics and World-Making,” Estética e interculturalidad: relaciones entre el arte y la vida, eds. Rosa Fernández, Luis Puelles & Eva Fernándezdel Campo, Suplemento 17 (2012) de Contrastes. Revista de Filosofía: 255–74. 33 “Our aesthetics have hitherto been women’s aesthetics, inasmuch as they have only formulated the experiences of what is beautiful, from the point of view of the receivers in art. In the whole of philosophy hitherto the artist has been lacking.” Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), 429, emphasis added. “Kant, like all philosophers, instead of envisaging the aesthetic problem from the point of view of the artist (the creator), considered art and the

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dearth of discussing aesthetics from the creator’s viewpoint in Western aesthetics can be explained by its focus on fine arts as the vehicle for aesthetic experience. Since few of us, including aestheticians, are professional artists, it is assumed that we are not qualified to analyze aesthetics from the creator’s point of view. Sherri Irvin does point out that everyday aesthetic experience helps us recognize that we create the aesthetic world which we inhabit: “as an appreciator I am also creative: I am constructing the very object from which I will then derive aesthetic satisfaction, and perhaps I can use that to distract myself from unpleasant elements of my experience.”34 However, this way of being a creator is still within the realm of being an “appreciator,” because the creation is conceptual rather than literal, as in rearranging objects or acting in a certain manner, although her discussion does not preclude such literal acts of creation. What I find most worrisome from the point of view regarding aesthetics’ role in better world-making is the intentional dismissal of “unpleasant elements” in favour of facilitating a positive aesthetic experience. If my point regarding negative aesthetics in the previous section is right, we should pay equal attention to those “unpleasant elements” that are parts of our everyday experience. At the very least, if we construct a positive aesthetic experience by purging unpleasant elements, we should at the same time engage in another experience in which unpleasant elements are at the centre, which leads us to diagnose the cause of their unpleasantness and spur us toward some actions to literally eliminate or minimize such elements. If the banging noise of treating the blind roughly and the clanking sound of ceramic plates are considered aesthetically negative, they suggest how we should change our behaviour and environment so that the quality of experience for me as well as for others can be improved. By judging these instances as an aesthetic offence, we have guidance as to how to conduct ourselves in order to create a better environment and improve interpersonal relationships. It may not be possible for many of us to literally reshape the world like professional world-makers, but all of us can certainly take part in the world-making project by acting in a certain way regarding the objects around us and the people with whom we interact. Once again, let us go back to Sei Shǀnagon’s criticism of the “hateful” actions of a bumbling man. She contrasts his behaviour with “a good lover” who “will behave as elegantly at dawn as at any other time” by beautiful purely from that of the ‘spectator’.” Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Genealogy of Morals,” in The Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. and ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), 539, emphasis added. 34 Irvin, “Scratching an Itch,”32.

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taking time in getting ready to leave, and lingering to indicate that he is reluctant to do so.35 She then declares that “this moment of parting will remain among her most charming memories.” The Heian court culture which is the context of her writing is dubbed by one writer as “the cult of beauty,” whereby a person’s “goodness” was measured by their aesthetic sensibility rather than moral fortitude or intellectual capacity. 36 One consequence of this obsession with “rampant aestheticism” is that it led the court officials to focus more and more on court rituals and neglect their official duties, ultimately inviting rebellion from the populace which led to the demise of the aristocratic regime. Despite this historical consequence, what we can gain from her insight is that aesthetics can be an effective means by which to judge other’s moral character or to express one’s moral virtues. Expressing respect for a person involves not only honouring both their negative and positive rights by not violating their right to life and property and lending assistance when needed and possible. My respect and consideration for her, however, can only be expressed in a certain way, conveyed by my bodily movement, facial expression, tone of voice, and the specific handling of objects, such as when closing a door and lifting a blind. If I move around gruffly while making banging noises when opening the door and lifting the blind roughly in order to satisfy my hospitalized friend’s request, I do meet her request and which is better than not doing so, but such an action differs considerably from accomplishing the same task in a gentle and careful manner. That these are all aesthetic matters is recognized by those concerned with issues related to moral character and virtues. For example, Karen Stohr remarks that in our common experience “the intention with which an action is undertaken makes a difference to whether it is respectful or not … the tone of voice in which something is said can radically change what is conveyed.”37 In her discussion of manners and morals, Nancy Sherman lists what constitutes the “aesthetic of character” or the “aesthetic of morals”: “how we appear to others as conveyed through formal manners and decorum, as well as manner in the wider sense of personal bearing and outward attitude,” specifically “voices, faces, and gestures.” 38 Finally, 35

Sei Shǀnagon, Pillow Book, 49, emphasis added. The next passage is also from the same page. 36 Ivan Morris, The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan (New York: Kodansha International, 1994). 37 Karen Stohr, On Manners (New York: Routledge, 2012), 38. 38 Nancy Sherman, “Of Manners and Morals,” British Journal of Educational Studies 53 (2005): 272, 281.

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Sarah Buss also asks us to “think of the significance we attribute to the subtlest gestures (the curl of the lip, the raised eyebrows), the slightest differences in vocal tone.”39 Here, the art of the tea ceremony is again helpful. In addition to cultivating hyper-aesthetic sensibility, the tea ceremony also offers an aesthetic strategy for cultivating moral virtues such as thoughtfulness, respect and care through aesthetic means. While some aesthetic appreciations are directed toward fortuitous occurrences, such as the way in which the wet surface of the kettle dries or in which snow accumulates on top of a stone lantern, other objects of aesthetic appreciation are orchestrated by the host whose main motivation is to welcome and provide pleasant and comfortable experiences to the guest. This other-regarding consideration guides the choice of implements and ornaments along with their placement, cooking and arranging food on a specifically selected vessel, the cleaning of the hut and the garden path, the elegant bodily movements of making and serving the tea, as well as opening and closing the sliding door of the tea hut.40 These expressions of the host’s consideration with respect to the guest in turn invite the guest’s grateful acknowledgement and appreciation of the host’s hospitality, which is also expressed by the guest’s gentle and elegant bodily movements, such as carefully cradling the tea bowl and taking time to savour its content. If the guest handles the tea bowl in a rough manner, gulps down its content and devours the food served, they are not only breaking the rules of etiquette for the tea ceremony and showing a lack of aesthetic sensibility, but also conveying disrespect toward the host who took pains in preparing the environment to provide the utmost aesthetic enjoyment to the guest. He fails to reciprocate the aesthetic expression of respect and thoughtfulness, which is both a moral and aesthetic failure. This mutual respect should linger even after the tea ceremony is over when the guest leaves the tea hut through the garden path. The guest should not converse loudly with the other guests, but rather turn around to see the host who, in turn, sees them off until they are out of sight without hurrying back to clean up.41 That is, both parties should remain focused on the other’s experience rather than on one’s own task and plan. One nineteenth century tea practitioner, who is also a noted statesman, states: 39

Sarah Buss, “Appearing Respectful: The Moral Significance of Manners,” Ethics 109 (1999): 814. 40 For example, the host opens the sliding door slowly and carefully to allow enough time to indicate their entrance without causing commotion. 41 Murai Yasuhiko, Cha no Bunkashi (Cultural History of Tea) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho, 1979), 169, my translation.

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“the host should attend to every detail to express his consideration and kindness so that there will not be any mishaps, and the guest in turn should recognize that the occasion is one time only and show sincere appreciation for the thorough hospitality given by the host.”42 A contemporary Japanese sociologist also remarks: “the host’s care and consideration is expressed through artistry of motion and gesture,” and “the guests were expected to reciprocate through their unspoken appreciation of the host’s hospitality and concern for their comfort.” 43 Ultimately, “the deepest human communication took place through silent aesthetic communion.”44 This moral interpretation of hospitality and its aesthetic communication is not unique to the Japanese tea ceremony. In discussing manners in contemporary American life, Karen Stohr also makes the same point on the notion of “virtuous hospitality”: The practice of hospitality should be oriented toward the welfare, comfort, and dignity of the guest. To be a guest in someone’s home is to hold a high status, warranting honor and special consideration. The obligations of the host are drawn from this understanding of the guest and what is necessary in order to welcome her presence and make her feel at home. It is this sense of hospitality as the virtues of promoting the welfare and happiness of guests that … gets … lost when we talk in terms of entertaining instead.45

Furthermore, she continues that the virtuous concerns “not simply a matter of the things that we do; it is also about the environment we create.”46 Finally, just as in the tea ceremony, “virtuous hospitality” must be responded to by “receiving hospitality virtuously,” which “requires unflagging cheerfulness, consideration, and cooperation, regardless of how difficult that is to manage.”47 Thus, the value of expressing moral virtues aesthetically through hospitality and its grateful reception seems to transcend historical and cultural contexts.

42

Ii Naosuke (ӅԺⴤᕬ) quoted in Ibid., 169, my translation. Eiko Ikegami, Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 226. 44 Ikegami, 227. It is instructive that meals and snacks prepared and served by the host are sometimes referred to as furumai (᣺⯙), which also means a dance-like movement, or chisȆ (㥅㉮) or gochisȆ (ᚚ㥅㉮), which literally mean “running around” (to prepare food with utmost consideration). 45 Stohr, On Manners, 148–9. 46 Ibid., 151. 47 Ibid., 164. 43

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It is noteworthy that Zen religious training which provided the spiritual foundation for the tea ceremony involved every aspect of the priest’s daily life. Washing the face, cleaning, cooking and eating were considered as important a discipline as studying scriptures and learning from the teacher. Thirteenth century Priest Dǀgen (㐨ඖ), arguably the most important Zen priest in Japanese history, left detailed instructions about cooking and eating for Zen adepts.48 In them, he lists all kinds of dos and don’ts for both the cook and the eater, ranging from how one should wash rice and chop vegetables to how one should hold the rice bowl and eat with chopsticks. The emphasis is placed on the way in which such bodily movements express sincerity and thoughtfulness invested in cooking, respect for the food’s origin and its preparation, and care taken in not disturbing other eating companions. These instructions, based upon consideration and respect for others, nurtured by Zen training and practice of tea ceremony permeate today’s Japanese daily life. For example, in food preparation cooks cut the materials in a certain way not only to provide a visually pleasing impression but also to facilitate easy eating.49 The guests are discouraged from digging some items from the bottom of a beautifully shaped serving out of respect for the cook who took care in preparing a beautiful presentation. Similarly, after picking the meat off a whole fish, the bones, head and skin should be neatly collected on the plate to avoid an unsightly visual impression of debris. The used chopsticks should also be put back into the accompanying paper envelope to hide the soiled end. 50 What interests me is that all the rules regarding how to handle the objects and move our body are motivated by both aesthetic and moral considerations. The same sensibility for avoiding an unsightly impression is behind making a neat package with tangerine membrane and outer skin after eating, stuffing a garbage bag to hide unappetizing garbage content, and hanging laundry in a discreet manner by putting underwear behind benign

48

Dǀgen, Fushuku-Hampǀ (䎤㋕伟⌅ Meal-time Regulations) and TenzoKyǀkun ( ިᓗᮉ䁃 Instructions for the Tenzo), both included in Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food, eds. Deane W. Curtin & Lisa M. Heldke (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). 49 For example, a piece of filleted squid receives a mesh-like cut to make for an easier eating of an otherwise slippery and chewy texture; it also looks decorative, like the surface of a pine cone. 50 These specifics are culled from Shiotsuki Yaeko’s Washoku no Itadakikata: Oishiku, Tanoshiku, Utsukushiku (How to Eat Japanese Cuisine: Deliciously, Enjoyably, Beautifully) (Tokyo: Shinchǀsha, 1983).

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items such as towels and T-shirts.51 In Japanese hotels and airplanes, the edge of a piece of toilet paper is often folded to make a pointed triangular shape not only to make it easy for the user to unroll it, but also to provide a more pleasing impression than leaving the torn edge dangling.52 This act of anonymous thoughtfulness encourages us to tear the paper carefully at the very least, even if we don’t take time to fold the edge into a triangular point. Consider two ways of opening a beautifully wrapped gift, which is part of daily life in a gift-giving culture like Japan. One should take care and time in opening it as if to back-trace the wrapping process, in comparison with ripping apart the packaging material to get to the item quickly. Even if unintended, the latter act cannot help but convey a failure to recognize and appreciate the thoughtful and considerate preparation by the giver, particularly because Japanese packaging is known for embodying a “deep respect for material and process, and respect too for the intended user,” as well as “care for the object inside, and therefore care for the recipient of the object.”53 Furthermore, the latter way of opening leaves an unsightly aftermath of torn papers and other wrapping materials scattered around.54 These small, and indeed trivial, gestures of thoughtfulness in avoiding or mitigating aesthetic harm and offence have a cumulative effect. Frequent encounters with these gestures make us feel that our experiences are honoured and attended to and we appreciate the thoughtfulness and consideration shown aesthetically. Once we form such an appreciation, we 51 I give a more detailed account of the tangerine skin and garbage bag in “The Moral Dimension of Japanese Aesthetics,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65 (2007): 92. 52 It is interesting that Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht refers to the same phenomenon and points out the influence of the Japanese art of origami. However, he uses this example to illustrate “a form of aesthetic experience that imposes itself as an interruption within the flow of the everyday. We pause—and see toilet paper like we have never seen it before.” In short, this is one way in which the everyday object becomes extraordinary. “Aesthetic Experience in Everyday Worlds: Reclaiming an Unredeemed Utopian Motif,”New Literary History 37 (2006): 302. 53 Joy Hendry, Wrapping Culture: Politeness, Presentation, and Power in Japan and Other Societies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 63, emphasis added. 54 My discussion of communicating care and respect through a particular bodily movement or treatment of an object is based upon what I take to be an ordinary context in which taking time and acting gently in opening a door, bidding farewell, eating food or opening a package do not cause a problem. However, in certain contexts, extenuating circumstances may require accomplishing these tasks as swiftly as possible, and in such cases the most thoughtful way of acting will have to be adjusted and modified.

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tend to feel discouraged from acting in a callous and indifferent way by creating unsightly impressions and unwanted noise. Instead, we are enticed to pay it forward by creating an equally thoughtful environment for others. If we encounter opposite expressions, that is of disrespect, indifference and inconsideration, in short, negative aesthetics, we may not act in the same disrespectful and inconsiderate way, but at least we don’t have the same kind of incentive to contribute to better world-making as in the former case. What people experience in daily life becomes a powerful, though subtle, vehicle for moral education, and it is conveyed aesthetically, whether through our bodily engagement or the treatment of objects. Looked at this way, the aesthetic dimension of everyday actions, while appearing trivial, does have an important role to play in determining the quality of life and society. The cumulative effect of small gestures that make up our everyday life and interactions with others can help provide a humane, civil and respectful environment and experience, or it can lead us away from them. Sharpening our aesthetic sensibility in everyday life, for which I have tried to show that Japanese tradition provides a rich legacy, thus plays a valuable role in humanity’s collective and cumulative project of world-making.

CHAPTER TWELVE THE MODERN ISSUE OF THE LIVING AESTHETICS OF TRADITIONAL CHINESE SCHOLARS PAN FAN The living aesthetics of traditional Chinese scholars was established by a fine attitude toward life expressed in daily life activities such as hanging paintings, burning scents and performing tea as well as floral art. These daily activities were extended from the libraries of scholars to outdoor poem collections, and the traditional spirits of Chinese humanity were prolonged by this actual living behaviour. However, the spiritual characteristic was lost after the imperial examination was cancelled and the new education system was implanted into China, and the living aesthetics of traditional Chinese scholars lost their practical base when encountering reality. This article discusses the problems encountered by traditional Chinese scholars in modern times and presents some solutions to them. The article has three parts, the first of which contains a connotation of the living aesthetics of traditional scholars, while the second examines the difficulties of traditional living aesthetics, and the third presents some possible solutions.

The Living Aesthetics of Traditional Scholars The concept and content of the “arts” expressed by today’s Eastern world originated in the West. Based on a need for the “arts,” people designed special display areas or stage performances, and the art collections or performances exhibited in the space acquired their life from the tastes of the participants. In comparison, traditional Chinese scholars practiced “Yi” in their daily life and daily behaviour. “Yi” came from their feelings and by practicing and expressing it, scholars came to know the

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mysteries of the universe. The recognition and behaviour of “Yi” in the East and the “arts” of the West are different. First of all, it should be understood that there is a fundamental difference in linguistics between the “Yi” in Chinese culture and the “arts” of the West. Traditional Chinese scholars directly combined “Yi” with their daily lives, reflecting the root of the knowledge of life. They ruled out the “art” generated from the Roman “ars” (technique) and instead adopted “no technique” as the spirit of a great artist. The scholar was both the practitioner and the viewer. Zhuangzi saw the return to the fundamental life as being rooted in great beauty. Therefore, he said that simplicity was the beauty of the world. Only those with high spiritual accomplishment could touch the root of the universe. The “Six arts” in ancient China were rites, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy and mathematics. Rites were living morals. Music was emotional education, the highest realm of which was “heavenly music.” Archery involved bowing, and charioteering was steering the cart, and are counted as physical education today. Calligraphy was history and mathematics was counting. These six arts were seen as the basic education of people in the spring and autumn periods, including physical exercise and morality according to ancient and modern principles. The art that is obviously connected with today’s art is “music.” Confucius said, Prosper with poems, establish with rites, and accomplish with music. Poems express the true feelings and music completes the personality and harmonizes education with heaven. Obviously, the purpose of “Yi” in Chinese traditional society was to acquire morals and order, and then further know the essence of heaven. It was not like Western “art,” which was closely combined with techniques after the Renaissance, and not even today’s “art collections” or “art performances” emphasize “pure art.” Based on the recognition of “Yi” by Chinese tradition, the expression of “Yi” was seen as the cultivation of the inner emotions and the expression of the perfect personality. Yang Hsiung of the Han Dynasty pointed out that the “speaker speaks the heart; the painter paints the heart.” Painting and calligraphy became the rhythm of true emotions, as well as important means to unify the self and the outer world. Through the practice of arts, Chinese finds the rhythm temple of the deepened survival meaning and infuses it with the material. He gave himself into the meaningful brushes. The thickness of the strokes and the contract or symmetry relationship between the strokes allowed him the

The Modern Issue of Living Aesthetics of Traditional Chinese Scholars 167 express the multiple sentiments: stiff and tender, excited and calm, tense and harmonic.1

The calligraphy in daily life could express the emotions and unify the inner and outer values, which is rarely seen in cultures around the world. Therefore, there is a saying that “calligraphy and paintings are of the same origin.” This perspective not only means that they share the same tools, but the same origin of art performance. Similar objects have similar outlines; similar outlines have complete moral integrity. The similarity of the moral integrity comes from the use of the brushes. Therefore, those who can paint can do calligraphy. The similar outlines and moral integrities are calligraphy.2

Calligraphy and paintings compensate each other. They are meant to grasp the truth of the universe, not the idea. In China, painting occupies the ultimate position of all arts. A painting is an object of real mysticism because, in the Chinese’s eyes, it is paintings that reveal the mystery of the universe. Compared with another Chinese culture, poetry, painting expresses the energy of the initial space. This not only seems more suitable in the painting landscape, but in the “movement” of participation.3

This kind of emphasis on an essence that lays in daily aesthetics came from the living experience of traditional scholars. Traditional Chinese scholars developed a complete system from the daily aesthetics of calligraphy to paintings, and finally expressed their aesthetic attitude in many fields, such as tea art, flora art, burning scent, and opera. The ink stone, ink stick, and containers in the library are closely connected with the aesthetic attitude of traditional Chinese scholars, who developed “Yi” as an actual behaviour and attitude toward life. They were artists and collectors who practiced art in daily life. “Yi” is not outside the living; rather, it is inside it, and it is from “Yi” that we adopt our behaviour and personality.

1

François Cheng, Vide et Plein, Le langage pictural chinois (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1991), 11. 2 Chang Yen-Yuan, Great Painting Views of Past Dynasty (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, 1964), 23. 3 Ibid., 11.

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The Task of the Living Aesthetics of Traditional Scholars Whether Eastern or Western, the term “contemporary art” is hard to define. However, it could be said that, rather than being traditional, contemporary society is creative. This issue is an interesting cultural statement. André Malreau pointed out that: Culture is the fundamental attitude when a nation faces the universe. However, today, this word has two different but compensate meanings. On one hand, it is art. On the other hand, it is the creation of life. Therefore, we mean the past in one aspect and future in another.4

This is art from the angle of the culture. To some extent, art has been defined as the past with a fixed form of cultural appearance. In comparison, self-creation is possible in real life. Therefore, contemporary art has at least two definitions, one of which is the self-named value added, while the second is the relationship with the name. Therefore, based on this point of view, it could be inferred that contemporary art often lacks examples, but there is more to it than that. When contemporary art continues to define itself, it generates regression but treats it vaguely. In the classical art period, whether it was Western “art” or Eastern “Yi,” it had a clear objective. There was no crisis of definition. Today, our attitude toward art or the aesthetic issues involved is not only multiple, but unstable. Today’s art is hard to define compared to the subject André Malreau proposed after World War II. What is worth noting is that art appears in the form of a concrete presentation of past culture and this emphasizes live creativity. Although today’s multiple cultures have surpassed the limited era, the creativity of life is still the fundamental subject of art. Therefore, the subjectivity traditional Chinese scholars encountered in living aesthetics can be reviewed. First of all, the taste of traditional scholars lost its base with the collapse of the old system. It could even be said that the attitude of the cultural aesthetic became a far and untouchable history. In the beginning of the Republic, the Principal of Beijing University and later the Minister of Education, Tsai Yuan-Pei, proposed a theory wherein “aesthetic education replaces religion.” “Pure aesthetics can cultivate our emotions and noble and pure habits. It can eliminate different opinions and thoughts of selfishness.”5 This point of view meant 4

André Malreau, La Politique, la culture (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 331. Tsai Yuan-Pei, “Aesthetic Replaces Religion,” in The Collection of Tsai Pei-Yuan, eds. Wen Di & Shui Ru. (Taipei: Shu Hsin Publication, 1990), 82. 5

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that the traditional scholars’ living aesthetics of that time had collapsed due to a lack of more general aesthetic education. Even so, aesthetic education was different from religion. This also gave the hint that the basis of common people’s education lay in religion, which promoted the principal though performance art, such as Catholic churches, the singing of holy songs or the magnificent temples of Buddhism or Taoism and chanting and instruments. These were the points of connection of religion and art. However, although the purpose was religion rather than art, they were based on real life and self-transformed through life. It is hard to describe each of the multiple definitions, forms and spaces of today’s art. These art activities are experimental, as well as creating a future form and example. Therefore, contemporary art seems to be more frequently combined with common people than the past aesthetic activities of traditional Chinese scholars. Contemporary art rejects the binding of traditional values because it is almost defined by an elite culture. Another term for contemporary art is “popular art” which shortens the distance and enables undefined audiences to participate in a banquet of art. Artists use all kinds of means, formations and techniques to express a broader concept and penetrate every level of art to make better connections. Art materials are diverse and broader. Of course, art is then trapped in a constant selfdefining and reflecting swirl. Are we then getting closer to art, or is art get closer to audiences as the main creative object? Has diverse art really become part of our daily lives? We may have attended many art events; however, our knowledge is often not sufficiently advanced to define the essence of art. Verbal descriptions are often unable to satisfy the creative content and speed of art. In the aesthetic of traditional Chinese scholars, as performers of art, they evaluated it using words. They lived an artistic life to practice art, and at the same time kept evaluating the ranking of their art. They were both creators and appraisers. Today, the double role of the past indulged scholars and is shared by artists and appraisers, and this may be the biggest crisis that traditional Chinese scholars have faced in living aesthetics, in that they have lost self-character and lack self-practice. Furthermore, the crisis of traditional Chinese scholars arose because of the lack of spiritual life experience of traditional humanity. Therefore, the exquisite form of the traditional living aesthetic had technique, but lacked self-creativity, and the main reason for this was the lack of deep recognition of “Yi” and the creativity generated. The hidden reason lies in the disappearance of the traditional “Yi.” Therefore, the creativity of traditional Chinese scholars’ living aesthetics is weaker, becoming a frozen classicism. Although there are still some “Yi” practitioners, it is hard to plan a life of great creativity.

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The Value of the Living Aesthetics of Traditional Scholars The living aesthetics of traditional scholars depended on a traditional life. Life is an abstract term of existence and is vocabulary from modern times. When traditional Chinese scholars referred to “life,” they did not mean real-time existence, but the greater meaning of life. “The circle of life is constant change”6 means that the universe is constantly changing. Chinese philosophers clearly pointed out that the reason the universe was changing was the existing attitude. Modern philosopher Fang Tung-Mei saw a moral life as the realm where the universe is connected with life.7 Seen from this angle, it might be possible to understand more about the living aesthetic of Chinese Poet Tai Yuan-Ming. “While picking asters neath the Eastern fence, My gaze upon the Southern mountain rests” was not a passive aesthetic experience, but a true emotion. At the same time, it may be possible to understand that “painting calls up the energy in the initial space it presented”8 is the experience of life. This experience was the basic attitude of traditional Chinese scholars. The initial energy is the realm of the universe artists enter when creating and the aesthetic experiences of the appraisers. The gathering of traditional Chinese scholars was different from the Western artistic salon. The purpose of the gathering was not to enjoy the physical pleasure, but a combination of life experiences. In Wang Xizhi’s “Preface to the Lanting Poetry Anthology”, he says: In the beginning of late spring, there was a gathering in Lanting, which is in the Shanyin Town of Kuaiji County for executing the Xiuxi ceremony. The talents of old and young in the county all came to attend the ceremony. There were high mountains and lofty hills, flourishing woods and tall bamboo bushes. Also, there are clear streams rushing from left to right. All guests sat by the stream and drank wine so as to wash away sadness. Although there was no grand orchestra of string and wind instruments, with some drinking and some expressing their heart feelings in verses or songs, all that was enough to express their intense emotions.9

The gathering of the scholars was full of pleasure.

6

I Ching, Sichi, I. Fu Pei-Rong, “Circle of Moral by Mr. Fang Tung-Mei,” in Philosophy and Culture 36 (6) (June 2007): 90–92. 8 Cheng, Vide et Plein, Le langage pictural chinois, 11. 9 Wang Xizhi, Preface to the Lanting Poetry Anthology (Beijing: Cultural Relics Press, 1984), 1–20. 7

The Modern Issue of Living Aesthetics of Traditional Chinese Scholars 171 This was a clear day with a comfortable breeze. Look up to the vast universe and bow down to taste the trivial things. Therefore people could enjoy the pleasure of seeing through and hearing about to the extreme. They were happy. Yet, people deal and cope with others in all their lives. When alive, they embrace each other; or talk freely to their hearts in a room; or place their emotions to others as to be unrestrained out of the formality. Although what people are interested in are different, some like quietness and some like movement, when they are happy about what they get encountered with, they could have the pleasure. They were so into the pleasure that they were not aware of aging. Until they are tired of what have been obtained and their emotions changed, they were sentimental. The past joyfulness was gone in an instance. Moreover, the length of life is destined and everything would vanish eventually. Therefore, the ancient people had said, “One person’s life and death is the most important thing for himself.” How could that not be painful? Whenever I saw the sentiment of the ancient people was the same with mine, I felt sad in front of their articles but I did not understand the reason. Thus, I knew that seeing life and death as equal is absurd.10

The Lanting Poetry Anthology describes the pleasure of the scholars gathering beside the creek and drinking. However, the gathering on March 3 came from the “Xiuxi” ceremony, the purpose of which was to get rid of bad luck. Traditional scholars treated this sacred religious ceremony as a daily event. In the gathering, Wang Xizhi mentioned the understanding of the existence of life and the relationship between humans and Mother Nature. This kind of spiritual increment can be read in First Visit to the Red Cliffby Su Shi.11 “A reed is floating on the vast river without knowing where to go.” This was accompanied by “the river flows but the essence is constant; the moon changes the forms but not the essence. If we see from the angle of changing, the universe is constantly changing; if we see from the angle of stable, the objects and I am infinity.” Riding on a boat to view the scenery seems like a daily event but breaks through the daily limitation to see the essence of the universe. These two examples form just a part of the living aesthetics of traditional scholars. The life of traditional scholars consisted of two sides, namely, daily and non-daily. Yi was expressed and practiced in daily life. However, by performing to undefined audiences, today’s art seeks their participation; yet, the traditional scholars’ gatherings were pleasurable and serious. Their attitude toward art, especially generated by the Chinese living point of view, was often close to reality and interacted with nature. Thus, they were able to establish a life made up of reality and non-reality. 10 11

Ibid., 21–70. Su Shi, First Visit to the Red Cliff (Xiling Seal Society Press, 2011), 1–28.

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Since pleasurable living was the basis of traditional Chinese scholars, they established their philosophy of life on this to increase its value. Therefore, what is lacking in today’s traditional scholarly living aesthetic is not the “Yi” bearing traditional living, or the art practice following traditional art, but the knowledge of how to reconnect art activities with the philosophy of life. We need to seriously consider whether today’s art performance or the traditional “Yi” are just hollow forms without the fullness of the “philosophy of life” being embedded in the formation. The break of tradition and reality and the lack of transcendence of daily life are the fundamental crises of today’s scholarly spirit.

Conclusion The Chinese see the “circle of morals” as a philosophy of life, which clearly states that it should have a kind of creativity energizing any form of art and tradition. Traditional scholarly aesthetics were closely tied to reality, being based not only on social class but also on a creative philosophy of life. This philosophy constantly stares at the relationship between humans and the universe, reflecting the limitations and infinity of the universe, generating the sigh of life and subsequent sentiment. Positive or passive, this kind of philosophy of life is not the meditation of the loner, but the basic attitude of ensuring a conversation between the self and the universe. If we could truly experience the relationship between humans and the universe, propose a more active attitude and statement toward constantly self-defining the status of art, and nourish the long-cut cord that connects humanity to the universe, we may find that this could be a mirror for reflecting contemporary art. Therefore, the real existence, the creativeness, and the attitude toward traditional scholars’ living aesthetics through humanity and the universe will be worth considering from today’s multiple art perspective.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE TRANSITION OF AESTHETICS IN CHINA AND A NEW PARADIGM OF LIVING AESTHETICS WANG QUE It is worthwhile to reflect upon the development of aesthetics in human history, during the course of which “aesthetic objects” are diminished in importance so as to elevate “beauty itself,” sensory values are downgraded to the level of a mere instruments for “conceptions,” and aesthetic judgments are reduced to a linkage between nature and freedom for the sake of “purposiveness.” But I propose that aesthetics is a study of sensory values which exist only in feelings, experiences and emotions found in human life. The real home for aesthetics is the living world, and the forces are generated from passionate encounters of the human body with the stream of living. Living aesthetics, therefore, is intended to rectify the aesthetics of today with the aesthetics of the past. Since the early 1990s, Chinese scholars have successively put forward such key phrases as “the aesthetization of everyday life” and “living aesthetics.” 1 Despite their different referents, I believe there is consistency in their orientations. “Living aesthetics,” which is the main focus of our discussion here, and “the aesthetization of everyday life” can perhaps be understood as connected in the sense of Wittgenstein’s “family resemblances.”2

1

In China, Living Aesthetics was introduced by Liu Yuedi in 2001. See Liu Yuedi, Living Aesthetics: Critique of Modernity and Re-construction of Aesthetic Spirit (Hefei: Anhui Education Press, 2005); Liu Yuedi, Living Aesthetics and Art Experience: Aesthetic as Life, Art as Experience (Nanjing: Nanjing Publishing House, 2007); Liu Yuedi, Aesthetics in Everyday Life (Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2011). 2 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. Chen Jiaying (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press, 2001), 49.

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The Identifying Characteristics of Living Aesthetics Aesthetics is not “beauty” but a form of narration. The transition of aesthetics results not only from changes in the understanding of beauty, but also from the shifts in focus arising from those changes. Living aesthetics is proposed as an inevitable outcome of the historic change of China’s society, of the evolution of China’s modern aesthetics itself, and of the interference and impact of traditional aesthetics in China. China’s living aesthetics in the new century thus cannot be looked at in isolation or separately from the historic progress of modern aesthetics in China. Living aesthetics should be viewed in the frame of each historic period of modern China, as well as the present and the future. Thetransitional developments of modern Chinese aesthetics can be divided into three periods. The first consists of the introduction of Western aesthetics beginning in the early twentieth century, the second of the advancement of Marxist aesthetics focused on materialism and the practical, and the third represents a shift from historical concerns and ideology, as well as the focus on the appreciation of objects, to an understanding of aesthetics in reference to the stream of life as found in China’s national and cultural development. The emergence of living aesthetics in the current century signifies an end to the history of modern aesthetics in China as previously conceived. However: Living aesthetics is not established to deny all the efforts made by classical aesthetics, but for the return of that broad vision which aesthetics once featured; the discussion of living aesthetics is not aimed at clearing the aesthetic world of those named as art in the history of modern culture, but at breaking the monopoly of self-disciplined art and including the emotional experience of art and life into the aesthetic inquiry; and the establishment of living aesthetics does not mean a construction of some aesthetic theory, but a step closer and respect towards life, admitting the aesthetic quality that naturally exists in life.3

First, it is necessary to suspend “utilitarian” or “disinterested” value judgements. Though Kant did not instigate disinterested aesthetic appreciation, he systematically elaborated the positions held by philosophers ranging from Shaftesbury to Burke. Kant understood “interest” as “any sort of

3

Wang Que, “Tea House, Business Expo, and Park: Modern Living Aesthetics in China I,” in Literature and Art Forum 3 (2010).

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pleasure that is related to the presentation of an object. Hence, this sense of interest is usually connected with the ability of desire.”4 Kant clearly distinguishes the pleasure connected to interest from disinterested pleasure,5 and this proposal is one of the key propositions in traditional classical aesthetics. In living aesthetics, however, neither the sense of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with objects nor the fulfilment of desires can be excluded from the experiences of beauty. At the same time, “the pure and disinterested pleasure” is also acknowledged. Living aesthetics in the present century thus differs from classical aesthetics, which puts disinterestedness at the core of its system of thoughts. It extends beyond the duality of material and spirit, utilitarianism and disinterestedness, or use and non-use. Instead, it represents a return of sensory and spiritual enjoyment and psychological compensation as byproducts of events in life. It is rather an aesthetic based on living experience, acknowledging the concreteness of events in life while ignoring the pre-requisites of utilitarianism or disinterestedness. Second, regarding the justification for bodily desire and pleasure, living aesthetics attempts to change the transcendental aesthetic orientation, a narrow one that deviates from living experiences and builds itself upon abstract theories. It is questionable whether aesthetics should be grounded in the myths of the heavens or earth. Plato firmly held that the sensory objects in life can only be “beautiful things” and that pure beauty is “beauty itself” and “divine.”6 The tradition of this version of transcendental aesthetics was passed on in the Middle Ages’ aesthetics and German classical aesthetics that followed. These views placed beauty in the unreachable heavens, assuming the essence of beauty to be an absolute concept that can be neither seen nor touched. Some contemporary Chinese scholars also emphasise the transcendental nature of aesthetics, regarding aesthetics as an ideal spiritual home for people to escape the hardships of life.7 Their views provide us with certain meaningful thoughts by proposing that a place for our souls can be found in imagination when the hardships of life are inescapable. But why can we not also have a home for sensory values in life alongside a spiritual home grounded in imagination? There are no grounds for the view that people must live only in the imaginary 4 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Zong Baihua (Beijing: Commercial Press, 1964), 40. 5 Ibid., 41. 6 Plato, A Collection of Literary Conversations, trans. and ed. Zhu Guangqian (Beijing: People’s Literature Press, 1963), 182–184. 7 Yang Chunshi, “Criticism of ‘Everyday Aesthetics’ and Reconstruction of ‘Transcendental Aesthetics,” Jilin University Journal of Social Sciences 1 (2010).

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space of a “spiritual home,” or to drive their spiritual and psychological needs against the present reality of life. A full aesthetic life must embrace both beauty and the aesthetic appreciation in sensory life. It is therefore appropriate to take aesthetics as a study of sensory values. And it is very hard to imagine a spiritual home for aesthetic appreciation without body and desire or the consumption of pleasure. Transcendental aesthetics does not fully abandon sensory values, but takes them as an instrument for beauty itself. Despite his otherwise arguable interpretation of aesthetics, Kant’s system of thought provided the important insight that aesthetic judgement is not merely an agent between theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy, but also functions as a prerequisite for understanding the process of reflection. Kantian philosophy thus proposes that sensory values serve as an agent between desire and freedom. In living aesthetics, desire is no longer simply denied by freedom, or set against it. Instead, desire becomes an empowering force for freedom, which in return provides space for desire to be realised. Hence, the sensory experiences of living form a connection between desire and freedom. Third is the anti-system form of existence. Sensory values in life come in a variety of forms, none of which are necessarily eternal or reducible to abstract concepts. Hence, the paradigm of living aesthetics that follows aims to de-construct grand narratives and has little concern for a systematic structure of knowledge. In this aesthetic paradigm, the original classical aesthetics becomes either simplybackground knowledge for considering the role of sensory values in life, or a concept for considering living aesthetics. Since the middle of the twentieth century, most of the boundaries between art and life, artworks and living objects, artists and the masses, and aestheticians and ordinary people have been devalued. The juxtapositions of “readymade” art and daily life objects, easel painting and behavioural art, classical music and happening music are examples of efforts to eliminate boundaries between art and life. The free space for writers on the internet can serve as a platform for ordinary people to talk about aesthetics, depriving aestheticians of any monopolised rights on speech concerned with aesthetic issues. Revisions of the press system that enable “amateur” writers to publish works, including novels, on the internet have increased opportunities for a wider range of expression. The publication of internet works such as Mingyue’s Stories in the Ming Dynasty and Wang Qiang’s Circles and Traps have strongly impacted the publication opportunities for writers. The paradigm of living aesthetics also mandates that reflections and discussions need to be in place for the experiences of the masses on

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aesthetic patterns of living in the modern age. Body make-up including hairdressing, body-building and clothes, everyday food and culture restaurants, household environment design, and the urban landscape are all part of the discourse needed for understanding the aesthetics of living. Overall, in the era of living aesthetics, aesthetics is no longer a selfdisciplined knowledge system but a collection of speeches that interpret the sensory values in life.

Living Aesthetics Paves a Wayfor Classical Aesthetics to Return Home In the early 1990s Mike Featherstone, writing from a sociological perspective, identified three types in which “living aesthetic appreciation presented itself” in the Western developed countries: (1) as a sub-culture that dilutes the boundary between art and everyday life; (2) as a design that turns life into art; (3) as consisting of signs, videos and the like that populate modern society.8 What is advanced by Featherstone here amounts to an aesthetic presentation of everyday life focused on new questions originating in the present, such as distancing, emotional involvement, and emotional withdrawal. In contrast to Featherstone’s everyday life aesthetics, living aesthetics is grounded in the aesthetic appreciation of everyday life activities, but in relation to the historic aesthetic knowledge and concepts. As a result, living aesthetics finds no clear line separating it from traditional aesthetics, though its emergence signifies a farewell to traditional aesthetics in isolation from contemporary life. In the very beginning, the concepts and knowledge of traditional aesthetics were extracted from the aesthetic phenomena of everyday life. This time, the participation of traditional aesthetics in the construction of living aesthetics represents aesthetics returning home to its original base. Nonetheless, while living aesthetics calls for traditional aesthetics to return home, it requires the existing aesthetic concepts and knowledge to be adapted to the current aesthetic and societal circumstances. This means that the returning of traditional aesthetics to living aesthetics will present itself not as an independent modern knowledge system, but as a theoretical resource for living aesthetics today. Hence, traditional aesthetics both coexists with, and also is integrated into, the living aesthetics of today. Thanks to its resilient inclusiveness, living aesthetics effectively brings the divisive barriers between autonomous systems of aesthetics and human 8

Mike Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, trans. Liu Jingming (Shanghai: Yilin Press, 2005), 95–99.

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life to a close. It abolishes support for a monopoly of speech rights in the hands of aestheticians, and makes it possible for the masses to discuss aesthetics with confidence. One important advantage of living aesthetics lies in its non-discrimination. It pays attention to all aspects and levels of life and is willing to respect all aesthetic traditions in history as well as contemporary alternative approaches to aesthetics. It views itself not as a replacement for alternative approaches but as a catalyst for synthesis.

Living Aesthetics in the Enfranchisement of Life Some scholars in China believe that living aesthetics itself implies a full approval for everyday life which, in fact, is a reality that may involve alienation. Given that alienation seems contrary to aesthetic appreciation, how are these two opposing forces to be reconciled? The questions of these scholars are primarily focused on two aspects. First is the question of to whom or to what place in history does living aesthetics belong? The fact that we now pay attention to living aesthetics does not mean that living aesthetics came into existence very recently. Rather, it is best understood as a recent discovery. The circumstances on which this discovery is based consist of at least four aspects: (1) the aesthetic elements in life have become prominent with the arrival of a consumption based society; (2) a broader range of aesthetic taste is recognised as legitimate; (3) traditional aesthetics is believed to have defined beauty in too narrow a sense; (4) the masses yearn strongly for justice in aesthetics as a result of the dual impact of an aesthetization of life and the increased consciousness of aesthetics in living. Since the discovery of living aesthetics is based on particular societal developments, the scope of living aesthetics will not merely focus on the life of the middle class, which has contributed greatly to the consumption-based society. Instead, it includes the present lives of various social classes. Although the lower classes maintain distinctive lifestyles differing from those of the middle class, there is no fundamental difference between the two concerning aesthetics. Essentially, all humans share common aesthetic needs. While the higher income citizens are able to enjoy finer aesthetic resources, they may be short of energy and time. The lower income citizens perhaps may frown at the high price of aesthetic resources consumed by middle and upper classes, yet they too possess not only aesthetic resources of their own, but also rich spiritual energy. Despite these differences in the aesthetic contexts, there is no huge gap with regard to their aesthetic impact and complexity.

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Second, how is living legitimatized? Mundane life is not a satisfactory resting place. What, then, is the role of aesthetics in addressing and seeking to correct the flaws in living, such as crime, injustice and poverty? Is social criticism a mission assigned to aesthetics? Will these flaws in life be fixed as a result of aesthetic criticism? Does human civilization preserve and support aesthetics on the basis of the effectiveness of its social criticism or its functions of spiritual relief, mental compensation and character cultivation established through the study of human sensory values and emotions? We cannot replace real life with utopia or hopeful social expectations. We cannot replace the emotional compensation in aesthetic appreciation with political passion against alienation. We cannot replace aesthetics for the masses with autonomic art. In a sense, living aesthetics approaches life in part to address its very flaws, and attempts to improve life through aesthetic appreciation. There was a time in China’s history when work suppressed life, political enthusiasm dominated aesthetic sensation, and life and beauty were both denied. In severe periods, beauty was seen as a Pandora’s Box. Living aesthetics recognises the legitimacy of life and beauty, and seeks to emancipate them. While living aesthetics is perhaps a form of emancipation allowing for criticism and denial of the imperfections in life while in search of improvements, it is at the same time revolutionary. Even the aesthetic appreciation of imperfections can contribute to the enfranchisement of life. In this respect, living aesthetics is a form of aesthetic realism which enables the masses to gain visual enjoyment even without the proper conditions to walk into an art gallery, to appreciate music even without access to a concert, and to taste the beauty of nature without the experience of a rural trip. Hence, it would be misleading to describe living aesthetics as mere decoration or a cover up for the flaws in the alienated life Arguably, the best evidence for the legitimacy of living aesthetics is its own appearance at a particular time in history. As modern Chinese scholars have argued concerning the emergence of living aesthetics: It is not a mere novelty seeking phenomenon, but a resonance in the age of globalisation caused by the tide of Chinese academics colliding with that of Western academics. In this sense, this resonance is exactly reflected in the extensive reaction of the academic field in China to “aesthetization of everyday life” and “living aesthetics.”9 9

Jin Lang, “Aesthetic Bewildering of Everyday Life: with a Discussion on Several Issues in the Transition of Aesthetics towards Living,” Literature and Art Forum 1 (2010).

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Indeed, living aesthetics bears the influence of Western aesthetic theory, and at the same time carries the tradition of Chinese culture and aesthetics. For that matter, the “worldly” quality of Chinese traditional aesthetics is one source of living aesthetics which presents itself today. It serves as the historical foundation for modern aesthetics in China. “Worldly aesthetics” essentially requires reference to mundane life in society, and a concern for the issues of aesthetic experience occurring in that sphere. This interest first aimed at responding to the human need of education in the process of China’s modern social reform. Later inquiries set up by scholars, including Wang Guowei, Liang Qichao, Cai Yuanpei, Zhu Guangqian, Zhang Jingsheng, and Zong Baihua, targeted such issues as the quality of mundane life, character cultivation, and social issues. In the second half of the twentieth century, explorations on practical aesthetics, environmental aesthetics, and living aesthetics were undertaken. While living aesthetics is in part a new paradigm of aesthetics responding to and reflecting the present times, it participates with other approaches to aesthetics at present and in the future in a “post-historic” relationship.

EDITORS Liu Yuedi is Associate Professor in the Institute of Philosophy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Delegate at large of International Association for Aesthetics, Secretary-General of the Chinese Society for Aesthetics, and Executive Main-Editor of The Journal of Aesthetics. His recent books include Boundless Wind and Moon: Chinese Traditional Aesthetics of Everyday Life (2014), Contemporary Studies of Chinese Aesthetics (2012), Aesthetics in Everyday Life (2011), The History of Analytic Aesthetics (2009), Living Aesthetics and Art Experience (2007), The History of Visual Aesthetics (2008), After the End of Art: An Aesthetic Rethinking of Art’s Duration (2006), and Performing Life Aesthetics: Critical Modernity and Reconstruction of Aesthetics (2005). He is coeditor with Mary B. Wiseman of Subversive Strategies in Contemporary Chinese Art (2011), editor of Interviews with International Aestheticians (2010), and Cultural Hegemony (2005), and translator of Art and Its Objects (2011) and Environment and the Arts (2007). He won The Second National Original Publication of Creative Book Award (China 2008). As an art critic and curator, he has mounted exhibitions in National Art Museum of China, 798 Art District and so on. Curtis L. Carter is a professor of Aesthetics at Marquette University, and founding director of the Haggerty Museum of Art 1984–2007. His recent publications include authoring Border Crossings: Essays on Art and Aesthetics (2014 in press) and editing Art and Social Change: IAA Yearbook of Aesthetics (2009). He has written numerous journal articles, including “Towarda History of Aesthetics of the Twentieth Century,” Annals for Aesthetics 46 (2010–2012), “La Philosophie et L’Art: De Nouveau Paysages Pour L’Esthetique,” Diogene January-April (2011), and essays on contemporary Chinese art and aesthetics. He has curated museum exhibitions and published catalogues on Jean Fautrier (2002), Winfred Lam (2001), Richard Lippold (1990), Barbara Morgan (1988, 2004), and over 150 others. He has also held leadership positions for national and international organizations including President of the International Association for Aesthetics 2010–2013, Secretary-Treasurer of American Society for Aesthetics 1996–2006, President of the Dance Perspectives Foundation 1988–1998, and Honorary Director of the Sunshine Museum and the Beijing Museum of Contemporary Art. Recent

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projects include Conference Organizer of Unsettled Boundaries with Philosophy, Art, Ethics, East/West with Chinese and Western Scholars at the Marquette University USA (2012).

CONTRIBUTORS Arnold Berleant is Professor of Philosophy (Emeritus) at Long IslandUniversity (USA) and the founding editor of the online journal Contemporary Aesthetics. His work ranges over aesthetics, especially environmental aesthetics, the arts, ethics, and social philosophy, andhe has lectured and written widely in these areas, both nationally and internationally. Berleant is the author of numerous articles, as wellas eight books, and his work has been translated into many languages. His book, Sensibility and Sense: The Aesthetic Transformation of theHuman World, appeared in 2010, and his most recent book, Aesthetics beyond the Arts, was published in 2012. Berleant has been active in many professional organizations and is a former president of the International Association of Aesthetics. Allen Carlson is Professor of Philosophy (Emeritus) at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. His research interests include environmental philosophy, aesthetics and especially the aesthetics of nature and landscapes. He has published numerous articles and is the author of Nature and Landscape: An Introduction to Environmental Aesthetics (2009), Functional Beauty (with Glenn Parsons) (2008), and Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture (2000, 2002). He is also the co-editor of several anthologies, including Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty (with Sheila Lintott) (2008), The Aesthetics of Human Environments (with Arnold Berleant) (2007), and The Aesthetics of Natural Environments (with Arnold Berleant) (2004). From Nature to Humanity: Essays in Environmental Aesthetics (edited, translated and with an introduction by XueFuxing) (2012) is a Chinese language collection of eighteen of his previously published articles, dating from 1977 to 2010. Stephen Davies teaches philosophy at the University of Auckland. He writes mainly on the philosophy of art and aesthetics. He is a former President of the New Zealand division of the Australasian Association of Philosophy, a former President of the American Society for Aesthetics, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. His most recent book, The Artful Species (2012) crosses into paleo-archaeology, ethology, psychology, cognitive science and evolutionary theory to consider possible

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connections between our biologically shaped human nature and our aesthetic and art behaviours. The Artful Species is his eighth book and he is the author of more than 140 journal articles and book chapters. Jale Nejdet Erzen is a full-time faculty member at øzmir University; editor of the Boyut and Dimensions fine arts journals 1980–1984; recipient of the French Ministry of Culture’s Arts et Lettres Chevalier honour; recipient of the Contribution to Turkish Architecture prize 2008; General Secretary of IAA 1995–1998; a Fulbright Scholar 1985; president and vice president of the IAA 2010–2013 and 2013-2015; organizer of the 17th International Congress of Aesthetics in 2007 and editor of two books of its proceedings; editor of the IAA Yearbook in 2003 and 2008; and president of the Turkish SANART Association for Aesthetics and Visual Culture. Recent publications include “Islamic Aesthetics: Another Way to Knowledge” in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism: Global Theories of the Arts and Aesthetics 65 (2011), “Reading Mosques: Meaning and Architecture in Islam” in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 69 (2011), and “Problematics of Contemporary Art in the Light of Enlightenment and Representation” in Facing Mental Landscapes (2011). Susan Feagin is adjunct graduate faculty in Philosophy at Temple University and formerly taught at the University of Missouri, Kansas City (1977–2003). She is currently working on a book on the philosophy of theatre, examining the relationships between reading scripts and performances given at particular times and places. She writes generally on issues in the intersection of philosophy of art and philosophy of mind, especially affective responses to literature and their role in appreciation. In addition to numerous articles and book chapters, she is the author of Reading with Feeling: The Aesthetics of Appreciation (1996), the editor of Global Theories of Aesthetics and the Arts (2005), and the co-editor of Aesthetics (1997). She was editor of the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism from 2003–2013. Thomas (Tom) Leddy is Professor of Philosophy at San Jose State University where he has taught since 1983. He specializes in aesthetics and the philosophy of art and has published extensively in aesthetics journals. He is a long-time active member (since 1974) and former Board of Trustee member of the American Society for Aesthetics. Prof. Leddy’s current main interest is in the aesthetics of everyday life and he has published a book on this topic: The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life (2012). Some of his recent publications

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include: “Defending Everyday Aesthetics and The Concept of Pretty” in Contemporary Aesthetics 10 (2012), “Aesthetization, Artification, and Aquariums” in Contemporary Aesthetics special volume (2012), “John Dewey” in Aesthetics: The Key Thinkers (2012), “Dewey’s Aesthetics” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2011), and “Creative Interpretation of Literary Texts,” in The Idea of Creativity (2009). His most recent publication is a book review of Scott Stroud’s John Dewey and the Artful Life: Pragmatism, Aesthetics and Morality, for the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (2013). Heinz Paetzold (deceased 2012) was Professor of Communication Theory at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg and Professor of Philosophy of Cultureat the University of Kassel. His publications include the books: Ästhetik der neueren Moderne (Stuttgart 1990); Profile der Ästhetik in der Postmoderne (Wien 1990); Die Realität der symbolischen Formen (Darmstadt 1994); The Discourse of the Postmodern and the Discourse of the Avantgarde (Maastricht 1994); Ernst Cassirer - Von Marburg nach New York (Darmstadt 1995); The Symbolic Language of Culture, Fine Arts and Architecture (Trondheim 1997). He was the editor of: City Life: Essays on Urban Culture (Maastricht 1997) and editor of the periodical: Issues in Contemporary Culture and Aesthetics (Maastricht 1995-1999). Yuriko Saito, born and raised in Japan, received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is Professor of Philosophy at the Rhode Island School of Design, USA. Her research fields are everyday aesthetics, Japanese aesthetics, and environmental aesthetics. Her writing on these subjects have appeared in a number of articles and book chapters, including the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, the British Journal of Aesthetics, Contemporary Aesthetics, Environmental Ethics, Environment and the Arts: Perspectives on Environmental Aesthetics (2002), The Aesthetics of Everyday Life (2005), Nature, Aesthetics, and Environmentalism: From Beauty to Duty (2008), and ReThinking Aesthetics: The Role of Body in Design (2013). Some of these articles have been translated into Finnish, Portuguese and Polish. She has also lectured widely, including in China, Japan, Finland and the Netherlands. Her Everyday Aesthetics was recently published by Oxford University Press (2008) and is included as a must-read work in “Analytic Approaches to Aesthetics” in Oxford Bibliographies Online (2011). She is currently working on its sequel, again to be published by Oxford University Press. She is Associate Editor of Contemporary Aesthetics, an

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online, free-access and peer-reviewed journal, and co-edited its 2012 Special Volume on “Artificiation.” Pan Fan is director of The Research Centre of Asian Arts, Kavalan Cultural Industry Innovation-Incubation Center and professor in the school of Art Center, FoGuang University, and at National Taiwan Normal University and Taipei National University of the Arts. His Chinese Publications and Translations include “the Barbizon School and Realism Paintings,” “Paintings of Classicalism and Romanticism,” “Greek Tragedy Theatre and Alcestis,” “Guidance to the reading of Rousseau’s Social Contract,” “Erotic of Taboo: Art History of Heresy and Immorality,” “Impressionist Paintings,” “the History of French Paintings,” “a Handbook of Art Science,” “Alphonse Mucha,” “Gedanken über die Nachahmung dergriechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst,” “Paris, La Ville Lumière,” “Fragonard,” “Dominique Ingres,” “Correspondance de Cézanne,” “William Morris” and “Ink painting of Landscapes by Image.” Wang Que is Professor of Chinese Literature and Dean of the School of Chinese Literature, Northeast Normal University, member of the Steering Committee of Higher Education in the Ministry of Education, PRC, a Standing Councillor of Chinese Council of Literary and Artistic Theories, Vice President of the Jilin Literature Council, and Vice President of the Jilin Aesthetics Council. Previous work includes researcher at Research Centre for International and Japanese Culture, Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Projects include Chief Expert in “Modern Transition of Aesthetics in China,” a national key project by Ministry of Education, and Director of “Experimental Zone for Innovative Nurturing of Comprehensive Teachers of Arts, History and Philosophy.” Publications include “Transitions of Chinese Aesthetics and a New Paradigm for Everyday Life Aesthetics,” “the Causes for Recent Consequences must Be Sought For—Observation and Reflection on the Birth of Disciplinary Aesthetics in China,” “the Forming of Aesthetic Knowledge in China—Centred on Several Aesthetic Concepts that Emerged between the End of the 18th Century and the Beginning of the 20th Century,” “Benefits and Harm in Avant-Garde Art—Art Should Be Useful to Humans,” and “Historic Legitimacy and Existing Forms of Literature Classics.” Mary Bittner Wiseman is professor emerita of Philosophy at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the co-editor with Liu Yuedi of Subversive Strategies in Contemporary Chinese Art (2011), and author of The Ecstasies of Roland Barthes (1989).

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She has published widely in aesthetics, feminism and philosophy of art, and is also a long-time member of the editorial board of the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.