American Aesthetics: Theory and Practice

Description

Proposes a distinctly American approach to aesthetic judgment and practice. Although there are distinctly American artists―Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Grandma Moses, Thomas Hart Benton, and Andy Warhol, for example―very little attention has been devoted to formulating any distinctively American characteristics of aesthetic judgment and practice. This volume takes a step in this direction, presenting an introductory essay on the possibility of such a distinctly American tradition, and a collection of essays exploring particular examples from a variety of angles. Some of the essays in this collection extend pragmatist and process insights about the important place aesthetics has in molding and assessing experience. Other essays examine the place of American aesthetics in relation to such particular forms of art as painting, literature, music, and film. Three essays attend to the aesthetic aspects of a flourishing life. In each of the essays, American aesthetics is understood to arise out of deeply felt personal, historical, and cultural backgrounds. Consequently, not only are such relatively abstract notions as harmony, fit, elegance, proportion, and the like involved in aesthetic judgment, but also religious, political, and social factors become embroiled in aesthetic discernment. Thus the ongoing pattern of American aesthetics is shown to be distinguishable from such other varieties of aesthetic thought as analytic aesthetics, New Criticism, and postmodern approaches to aesthetics. Contents List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments I. Introduction 1. Toward an American Aesthetics Aesthetics—A Definition The American Background Classic American Philosophers The Kantian Framework and First Domain of Aesthetic Judgment The Second Domain of Aesthetic Judgment The Third Domain of Aesthetic Judgment The Felt Aspect of Aesthetic Judgment Characteristics of American Aesthetics New Criticism as Overly Constrained High-Art Analysis Postmodernism Conclusion Notes II. Philosophical Contributions to American Aesthetics from the Past 2 The Primacy of Aesthetic Judgments: Emerson’s Deontological-Transcendentalist Account of Tragedy Introduction Emerson’s Tragic Sense Terror and Tragedy in the Twenty-first Century Tragedy after Emerson? Notes 3 Peirce and Edwards on the Argument from Beauty I II III IV Notes 4 A Semeiotic Account of Paintings as Pure Icons that Communicate Beautiful Feelings Paintings as Pure Icons Interpretable Via Emotional Interpretants The Process of Painting and the Endowment of Paintings with Beautiful Feelings Beautiful Paintings and the Norms that Ground Aesthetic Inquiry Notes 5 The Pragmatist Aesthetics of William James II III IV Notes 6 Between Nature and Art: Some Analytical Exemplifications of Dewey’s Aesthetics Nature as Matrix and Medium The Scroll and the Smile: Experience Has No Edges Paradigms of Painting: On Representation, Expression, and Abstraction Shaping Nature: Qualities of Space-Time in Art and Life A Final Word Connecting Us to the Beginning Notes III. American Aesthetics: Contemporary Theoretical Contributions 7 Axiological Landscape Theory: Uniting Aesthetics, Ethics, and Inquiry Introduction Summary of the Hypothesis: Basic Answers to Basic Questions Background: Fitness Landscapes, Axiological Pluralism, Determinate Histories, Appraisal Dimensions Key Concepts: Value, Possibility, Virtuality, Potential, Landscape, Affordance, Engagement, Determination, Realization, Foreclos Applications of Axiological Landscape Theory Conclusion Notes 8 Experience and Signs: Toward a Pragmatist Literary Criticism Aesthetics, Quality, Possibility Literature, Sensation, Relations Criticism, Theory, Philosophy Notes 9 Music, Time, and the Egress of Possibility Part I: Possibility in Time and Music, and Being toward Death Part II: Being toward Life as the Art of Being toward Death Part III: The Hiatus as the Ground of Person Notes 10 Harmony, Existence, and the Aesthetic Harmony Goodness in Harmony Beauty and Existence in Harmony The Situation of Appreciating Beauty Beauty in Art Conclusion Notes 11 Historical-Aesthetic Complementarity: An American Philosophical Contribution to the Study of Religion Introduction Defining the Task Corrington, Dewey, and Peirce Conclusion Notes IV. Applying American Aesthetic Theory to Practice 12 An Exemplary Critic in the Tradition of American Aesthetics: Harold Rosenberg The Creative Individual Rosenberg and Greenberg Rosenberg and Aesthetic Judgment Notes 13 Experiential Immersions in Beauty: A Confluence of James Turrell’s Light Spaces and Whitehead’s Aesthetics Notes 14 Dialogue: From Rich Experience to Minimalist Expression 15 The Fabric of Thirdness: A Concert Pianist’s Peircean Interpretation of Performance Introduction: The Concert Pianist A Style of Styles: κaλόϛ as Normative Foundation, and Pianistic Abductions Realism, Categories, and Mechanical Nominalists Impediments of Nominalism, Peirce’s “Aesthetic Frame of Mind” and “Aesthetic Abduction” Notes 16 Inspiring Singers toward Emotional Communication through Aesthetic Discovery Crowd Source the Artistic Intent Engineer Their Artistic Discovery Diagram of a Rehearsal Model for Aesthetic Experience Poetry Music Combined Expressive Power of the Two Art Forms Dynamic: Feeling-Meaning versus Volume Rhythm: Implied Meaning of Eighth, Quarter, and Whole Melody and Harmony The Cumulative Effect of Crowd Sourcing the Artistic Intent Moving toward Transcendence Appendix A Notes 17 Budd Boetticher’s Transcendental Westerns, or, Schrader, Bazin, Sartre, and Neville Walk into a Saloon Introduction Schrader’s Transcendental Style Applying the Transcendental Style to Boetticher’s B Westerns Stoic Hero and Appealing Villains: Bazin and Kitses Critics Save Boetticher and Make Him an Existentialist: Sartre and the Westerns Neville, Nature, and Broken Symbols Notes V. Aesthetic Aspects of a Flourishing Life 18 Resolving the Tension of Everyday Aesthetics in a Deweyan Way Connections to Gulick’s Project of an American Aesthetics A Rereading of Clive Bell’s Aesthetics so as to Expand the Scope of Our Inquiry Experiencing the Ordinary in an Ordinary Way My Deweyan Solution to the Dilemma Ritualization Concluding Note Notes 19 The Struggle for Centering Things in an Age of Consumption Introduction Aesthetic Commodification and Aesthetic Loss The Aesthetic Appeal of Centering Things Untroubling Ourselves by Troubling Ourselves for Centering Things Notes 20 The Dynamics of Selving and the Aesthetics of Ecstatic Naturalism The Dynamics of the Selving Process Art, Ecstatic Naturalism, and Selving The Aesthetics of Ecstatic Naturalism Bibliography List of Contributors Index