@Book{CsikszentmihalyiRobinson1990,
ALTauthor = {Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly & Robinson, Rick. E.},
ALTeditor = {},
title = {The Art of Seeing: An Interpretation of the
Aesthetic Encounter},
publisher = {The J. Paul Getty Museum and The Getty Education Institute for the Arts},
year = {1990},
OPTkey = {},
OPTvolume = {},
OPTnumber = {},
OPTseries = {},
OPTaddress = {},
OPTedition = {},
OPTmonth = {},
OPTnote = {},
OPTannote = {}
}
"Another way to look at value involves recognizing that the essential point of existence is not established by criteria such as how much people own or how much power they weild but by the quality of their experiences. According to this view, objective standards such as money are ephemeral, because they do not directly affect how we feel; in comparison with them, experiences are real. The value of a person's life--whether it was filled with interesting and meaningful events or whether it was a sequence of featureless and pointless ones--is determined more by the sum of experiences over time than by the sum of objective possessions or achievements. By this measure, aesthetic experiences are important indeed." [1,2]
Visual illiteracy: being unaware of the range of of enjoyable experiences possible through visual stimuli.[2]
Baumgarten said that the aesthetic value of a work of art depended on its ability to produce vivid experiences in its audience. [7]
Beardsley said an aesthetic experience must have the first and one of the other four of the following themes:
These criteria are not debated much. People disagree on why it's valuable or pleasurable.[10] Theories are naturalistic: aesthetic experiences are good because they are good for the audience.
The authors summarize the views on why people seek out aesthetic experiences under four categories: cognitive, perceptual, emotional, and transcendental.
Parson's five stage development
Samuels and Ewy 1985: babies as young as 3 months prefer to look at faces rated as attractive by adults.
Explanations regarding why certain stimulus configurations are
pleasing to the eye are based on evolutionary theories:
Gestalt approach: a preference for order is conducive to a better
overall adaptation ot the environment.
Dewey 1934: recognition of organic wholeness as a model for the
highest forms of organization.
Jenkins 1958, Dissanakaye 1974: art prepares people for what is
crucial for them to deal with in their real lives.
Collingwood 1938: art expresses things concepts cannot convey
Freud 1905: art is sexually stimulating
Eysenck 1940, 1941: Extroverts prefer simple colors, forms, and more expressive paintings.
Knapp et al 1962: people with a high need of achievement prefer colors on the cool end of the spectrum.[15] Sensation seekers prefer red.
In spite of all this, the findings are sometimes contradictory (ahmad 1985).
According to Marxist and other theories, art functions to emancipate one from social boundaries. [16]
The religious approach is that art shows us another world, possibly the true reality or a potential, better reality.
**Anwar and Child 1972, Haritos-Fatourous and Child 1977: those with training in western traditions have different aesthetic preferences than those without.[17]
Experimental Aesthetics focused on perception and psysiology, and it now looks too reductionistic to fully account for the aesthetic experience. [19]
The study was semi-structured interviews.
The museum professionals seemed to respond in aesthetic experiences in some of four ways: perceptually, emotionally, intellectually, and communicatively. [28]
Most remarks concerned form, line, color, and surface.[30] Some also used terms like harmony, order, and balance. Beauty tended to be mentioned by those who attend to classical art, not contemporary.
Some appreciated perceptual aspects because they had a vivid idea of what the artist's hand was doing during its creation (e.g. a violent stroke). [33]
Several mentioned that the intellectual appreciation can get in the way of the appreciation, and/or should come after the immediate, visceral, emotinal reation. [42]
Some try to find a "solution" to the work of art, others use the intellectual dimension to open up interpretation-- some call great works "bottomless." [45]
The historical dimension is a sub-dimension of the intellectual. [50] Some think it should be timeless and not historically bound. Three quarters thought that understanding the historical context in which a piece was made was an obstacle to appreciation, but one worth conquering. The historical context is a means to the end of understanding a work's timeless value.
[57] Someone mentioned how knowledge of the thought process used by the artist enhances appreciation. Another suggested that work should be timeless, and mean new things to each generation.
Communication with an era or culture [63]
This focuses either on similarities or differences with the current time and culture.
Three viewed it as a vehicle for stimulating the imagination.[66]
Communication with an artist
Communication with the viewer
"...the structure of the aesthetic experience seems to be universal: regardless of one's background or approach to art, what matters when one faces a work of art is to use formal and emotional skills within the context of goals and feedback, to unravel the complexities of the work." [94]
The focus of attention was the "single most highly agreed-upon aspect of the nature of the aesthetic encounter." [119]
Haritos-Fatouros & Child 1977: People from different cultural backgrounds respond to the same work very differently.
Many mentioned that seeing works of art is a active process, and that laypeople have trouble because they are passive viewers. [159]
aesthetic experience: an intense involvement of attention in response to a visual stimulus, for no other reason than to sustain the interaction. [178]
Museum curators agree on the structure of the experience (the four categories) but they weight them differently. [179]
The experience might be pleasurable because of the adaptive nature of curiosity. [183]
"Without skills to recognize the possibilities contained in the artwork, the experience will remain shallow. [186]