Ten reasons for examining everyday aesthetics

Photo by Bruce Muller 

Life is filled with opportunities, as well as their accompanying risks, uncertainties, and inevitable pitfalls. If we do not accept them, life is not worth living. We can jump in and make life an adventure, risking the challenge of overcoming setbacks or potential failure, or we can step back and live a safe and anaesthetic life. The problem is, anaesthesia brings the deepest pitfall of all, an apathy that swallows opportunity and breeds monotony.

At times the choices we make, even when they at first seem good and rewarding, lead to situations that dissipate our spirit. They can leave us feeling burned out--an idiom that recalls the hollowness of a charred and empty home, with only the walls and open window frames remaining, vulnerable to the wind and whatever it brings. Investment in life has this risk if we are not equipped with the required resilience.

Burnout can result from many things: endless demands, a pace that leaves no time for thoughtful reaction, lack of appreciation for our efforts, unnecessary roadblocks and detours, effort without challenge, and meaningless or futile tasks. These situations can seem as inescapable as monotony, perhaps leading us to seek anaesthesia in the many addictive forms available--chemical alteration, excessive consumption, media overload, closed-minded beliefs for the sake of belonging, or mindless routine.

Photo by cmiper, copyright Creative Commons

This is where art and everyday aesthetics can help.

The opposite of anaesthesia, aesthetic experiences help us avoid and build resilience against burnout and monotony. They offer an outlet for our expressive energy and an infusion of meaning. Aesthetics is often thought of as applying to objects or events that we engage with just for pleasure, not needful and productive activities. But it is more useful, and more cohesive, to think of aesthetics as describing those particularly engaging and rewarding types of experience that can emerge in almost any realm-- those that are optional and primarily pleasurable, or those absolutely necessary. (For a larger discussion, see the post, What makes an experience aesthetic?) Art is a special case--a refinement of the everyday. As explored in the post, The Purpose of Art, some of the key values of art that have been identified by philosophers over the centuries relate to its potential for therapeutic cleansing, healing, celebrating, distracting, instructional, or transcendent qualities. These values relate to everyday aesthetic experiences as well.

Engaging in an activity as simple as a vigorous walk, tending the garden, creating a photo album, or preparing a special dinner can bring meaning lost during the more mundane efforts of the day. Taking an extended trip to an exotic destination can provide a lifetime of resilience through the memories gained and things learned. Completing a marathon that was long trained-for can bring a new sense of power and the will to do more with life. Learning to play a musical instrument, writing a book or completing a PhD can do the same. These are special not just for the final products, but for the experience as a whole, from initial frustration, to learning, to challenge, and to culmination.

Photo by Patrick Parrish

Resilience to burn out comes not by relaxing and dropping out, but by going through experiences that engage us, challenge us, and push back, but also finally give back and reward us with the realization that we can have an effect on our lives and on the world. Art is evidence of that need. Art is the distillation of life experiences, and experiences in and of themselves, helping us to see the aesthetic potential around us. We seek art in its many forms for the wide variety of reasons already mentioned (cleansing, healing, celebrating, distracting, learning, transcending), and we seek everyday aesthetic experiences for exactly the same reasons. This blog is devoted to short essays demonstrating how everyday experiences can do this.

This rest of this post will expand on the reasons for this line of study, which is currently rising in popularity among philosophers. For example, see Practicing Pragmatist Aesthetics (Malecki, Ed., 2014) and Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (Shusterman, 2000). But the discussion is wasted if it stays within the discourse of philosophers. It is a useful topic for all of us.

Why bother examining the aesthetics of everyday life? Why not just enjoy them without trying to dissect or classify them? I will offer a few reasons below.

1. Increased acceptance: Art is both idealized and berated for being so idealized. The same is true for many everyday aesthetic activities like team sports, gourmet cooking, extreme sports, and others. Those who aren’t interested do not understand how others might be so enthusiastic about activities that they feel are pretentious, shallow, or reckless. So, one reason to examine these phenomena together is to embrace the varieties of aesthetic experience, to know that aesthetics is not an elitist concern, but something we all engage in everyday, each in our own ways. It is OK to be disinterested in some forms, but we should realize that the reason we enjoy our own chosen experiences is fundamentally the same reason others enjoy theirs. All should be admired as human expressions arising from the same needs.
2. More engagement: Understanding and accepting the similar foundations of aesthetic experiences might encourage us to engage in more of these life-enhancing activities. We might see more opportunities, and these might bring us more power to affect our lives in positive ways to resist burnout, even bringing increased happiness by avoiding pitfalls or helping us climb out of them more easily.
3. New sensitivities: Routine binds us, but aesthetic experiences open our doors of perception. They ask us to see with new eyes, listen with new ears, taste and touch with new sensitivity. They expand the abilities of our senses, allowing us to notice things we would otherwise miss. They help us find beauty where we might otherwise miss it. Conscious practice of aesthetic activities can expand the powers of our senses. Logic and analytical understanding are particularly valued in most societies today, but aesthetic experience, while often built upon these, also reveals that sensory experience is also an important source of knowledge on its own (Baumgarten). This expansion of knowledge into the sensory realm helps us to bring more to bear.
4. Deeper learning: Aesthetic experiences are also learning experiences. They teach us about the world through deeper examination of its many aspects, including what we can offer to it. They build knowledge about the world through greater exposure, and can bring insights that build perspective on our roles in the world. They help us to grow, and to develop the skills to be more resilient in life. The provide new strategies to give and receive more.
5. Expanding viewpoints: Life is full of non-obvious qualities that stay that way due to our habits of compartmentalizing, rather than synthesizing. Exploring everyday aesthetics is a synthesis that can bring new qualities to light by exercising our synthesis capabilities.
6. Connection to others: Even though aesthetic experience is in some perspectives personal, we all share in having them. The experiences we engage in are more often than not collective ones--things done in teams, groups, or with partners, or as part of an audience. Connecting with others with similar interests helps us to be more connected to life in general, and to grow from what we learn from one another.
7. Connection to our environments: Moreover, aesthetic experiences connect us to the natural and built environment as well. One of their properties is developing the power to interact in our environments--to build, climb, hike, travel, throw, fly, represent, qualify, quantify, collect, explain, etc. They help us appreciate our surroundings for what they can offer, and give life new meaning in these ways as well.
8. Curiosity: Understanding brings power. Understanding is a fundamental path to, or at times synonymous with, finding meaning. Any knowledge is empowering, but more so when it challenges our status quo. Knowledge of everyday aesthetics, which tells us about the common source of art and so many everyday activities, brings an especially deep cutting knowledge about life. The pursuit of a deeper understanding of this pervasive aspect of human experience is in itself, like all other ventures into the unknown or not-well-understood, an aesthetic experience.
9. Appreciation of art: Art surrounds us, and it can be empowering to know that art enhances experience, not by lifting us above or distracting us everyday life (although it can be used this way), but by distilling life to uncover its essences. In the end, art is not an escape, but a confrontation of life. It can bring a particularly powerful aesthetic experience.
10. Designing experiences for others: The final reason is perhaps the most important for many of us. Aesthetic experience brings change, and those engaged in professions that aim to change others, help them grow, overcome personal challenges, make decisions, and overcome oppressive circumstances, can use a knowledge of aesthetic experience to ensure that happens. Whether you are in marketing; a teacher, trainer, coach, or mentor; a manager, politician, or social activist; a therapist, a preacher, … a parent, … or an artist, you have the potential to use a knowledge of aesthetic experience to support your work.

A nice, round, ten reasons. Enough to keep us going in the exploration.

John Muir, the famous naturalist, has been quoted as saying that “when one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” The exploration of aesthetic experiences, a natural phenomenon certainly, has this potential. Once we know what we are looking for, we see how pervasive aesthetic experiences actually are. Today during my hike, a large and dripping wet dog ran up to me with a large stick in his mouth, his lips pulled back into a grin. He had just been retrieving thrown sticks from the Versoix River and was proud of his accomplishments, so I congratulated him with a pat on his head. As I walked on up the trail, I found a short stick on the ground similar to the one the dog was carrying. I picked it up and threw it as far as I could up the trail, for no immediately apparent reason.

What makes an experience aesthetic?

All the time we are awake life is marked by experience. The world gives us sensations and situations to respond to, we react, and the world reacts back. This ongoing transaction fills our days.

But some experiences are more rewarding than others. Experiences tend to run the spectrum from boring and barely worth our attention—to scattered, incomplete and unsatisfying—to routine (whether mindless routine or pleasantly familiar routine)—to busy and focused (with various levels of challenge and satisfaction)—to those that are the most engaging, even radiating with meaning and purpose, lifting you up, making you feel truly alive. These are the kind you want to keep with you.

The experiences filled with meaning are the ones we can refer to as aesthetic. These set the bar. In fact, they inspire the practice of art (which, fundamentally, is our way of distilling experience), inspire people to strive for the highest achievements in all domains, and keep us going through the routine, hard work, or boredom we inevitably experience along the way. Just knowing aesthetic experiences are out there to be had can be inspiration enough to resisting slipping into the doldrums.

The connection of engaging everyday experiences to art and aesthetics was made most famously by philosopher John Dewey in his 1934 work, Art as Experience. There, he explored the question of the source of art in human behavior, and saw it as originating in everyday experience, ranging from “how the tense grace of the ball-player infects the on-looking crowd; . . . the delight of the housewife in tending to her plants . . .; the zest of the spectator in poking the wood burning on the hearth and in watching the darting flames and crumbling coals.”

Photo by Lukas Riebling

What can these everyday experiences have in common with the David of Michelangelo, Picasso’s Guernica, Debussy’s Preludes, Malick’s Days of Heaven, or Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina? The answer has to do with a few critical qualities of experiences that drive us toward the reward of meaningful engagement.

Including the encounters with works of art that we love, but definitely not restricted to these, aesthetic experiences have a coherence—a beginning, middle, and end—that sets them apart from the normal flow of experience. This begins with an intention based on (a) a need, desire, tension, or puzzlement that stimulates attention, an attention that is further driven by (b) the anticipation of a meaningful outcome that makes the experience compelling—winning the game, a garden full of flowers, a warm fire. These experiences are also colored by (c) deep engagement and concern for (d) immediate actions and sensual details, and not just thoughts about reasons and purposes, which may in fact be temporarily forgotten, like time itself. Finally, unlike much of our experience, which can feel incomplete or lacking in some way, an aesthetic experience includes (e) a conclusion or consummation, a resolution that ties all the moments of the experience together--gives it coherence--and makes the effort (which often includes hard work) worth it. Moreover, the resolution often feels profoundly meaningful. Nearly all good narratives have such a pattern, and non-narrative art can create the same experience within us, but many everyday experiences show this pattern as well.

Each of these qualities require more unpacking and exploration, as does the overall quality of coherence, and might be the subject of future posts. But for now, let’s conclude by examining a couple experiences to show how one is aesthetic, and one is definitely not, and also look at the contributing factors.

It would be easy to choose two highly contrasting situations, like climbing a mountain and washing windows, for example, but let’s choose very similar situations in an environment where where experiences tend to exhibit a wide range of aesthetic engagement—the workplace. The situations described below are fictitious, and any resemblance to real situations, current or past, is purely coincidental.

1.
You are asked to take on a new work assignment. You have no lack of work, so at first you wince at the request. But you trust the person asking for it (manager or client, take your pick), know that the assignment is not a whim, and as you study the details, you agree it has value and will bring multiple benefits. You also see some interesting challenges that will offer you an opportunity to learn new things, so you say yes. Your first task is to decide on the approach you will take, which will require buy-in by the stakeholders. Through careful examination of the goals, the stakeholder needs, the constraints, and similar assignments taken on by colleagues, you are able to develop both a good plan and a good argument for it. The buy-in is achieved after a series of challenges that force you to defend the approach. As you begin to implement the plan, you become convinced that the outcome would be improved if you adapt your approach, and this creative problem solving is enjoyable enough to compel you to work late many nights. When you deliver the final result, it is well received, but not without some additional modifications. You think back to when you were first given the assignment and how it has evolved, and it gives you a sense of accomplishment to know that you were able to see it through this evolution. You also look forward to seeing how what you learned during the project will help you in future efforts, and perhaps win you additional interesting and challenging assignments.

I hope this scenario was not too unfamiliar, but certainly most workplace experiences don’t reach this level. Let’s rewind and look at the other end of the spectrum.

2.
You are asked to take on a new work assignment. You have no lack of work, and so you wince at the request. The person asking you (manager or client, take your pick) has a reputation for quickly responding to upper management requests with half-baked ideas for the sake of quick compliance. You feel that this might be one of those black-hole assignments, one that will take excessive time and energy, but give back little and have little chance of success. You are told the plan and given little leverage to adapt it with your own ideas, so you cannot help but feel a lack of conviction when you have to present it to the stakeholders. Predictably, it is shot full of holes by the skeptics who offer no alternatives, and equally so by supporters who have completely different (and better) ideas that might have more impact. Trying to please everyone, you allow the plan to become a mélange that will hopefully address everyone’s input. Before the plan can be implemented, management stalls, unable to see how it could address their original goals, which have changed anyway. No one cancels it, but no one pushes for it either, and so it withers away and is eventually forgotten. You move on to hopefully better projects.

I suspect we have all had such experiences in our work, unfortunately. Aesthetic experiences are hard to come by, especially when critical contributing factors are lacking. What are these factors?

Some have to do with things that are mostly outside our control, the Situational qualities, and some have to do with the ones we bring to the experience, our Individual qualities. The diagram below depicts a rather good day/week/month without boredom or scattered activity, and lists the qualities that make it good. But note that, as novelists since modernist times have shown us, experience is not really a timeline, and aesthetic experiences are not just moments we can mark in time. Sometimes only with time does it dawn on us how meaningful an experience has become, perhaps even long after the events have concluded.

From Parrish, Wilson, and Dunlap (2010)

Qualities of Situations

Immediacy. Some situations absorb us their details--not just sights and sounds to perceive, but also ideas to comprehend, emotions to feel, and tasks to accomplish. Immediacy takes our focus away from ourselves and to the world itself.

Malleability. Some experiences allow give and take–the opportunity for us to color the experience, to shape it with the tools we bring to it, and to contribute to its unfolding. The most powerful situations are provisional, with the final meaning and outcomes to be determined at least partly by us.

Compellingess. A compelling situation contains intrigue and uncertainty. It makes us curious about what happens or can happen next. We are reluctant to let it go.

Resonance. Some experiences both connect to our present lives and leave a residue of thoughts and feelings that have an impact on future experiences. Sometimes they recast the past with new understanding. Aesthetic experiences create reverberant echoes in all directions.

Coherence. When life moves from one thing to another without connection, the disjointedness is unraveling. Coherence, on the other hand, is almost synonymous with meaning, and it is most powerful if it emerges when we are following through on an intention. In fact, the most rewarding kind of coherence is one that is not just given--like an easily perceived symmetry, but one that requires a struggle before being revealed.

Qualities of Individuals

Intent. Each of us has individual goals and interests, as well as unique attitudes, values, hopes, beliefs, likes, dislikes, and assumptions about our role in the world. All of these are subsumed by the concept of intent by phenomenologists like Husserl (1982/1999). While our intentions exist in any case, when we are aware of and honest about our intentionality, we are also more open to the influence of experience and more able to gain from it. This is perhaps especially when it challenges us.

Presence. As Woody Allen aptly put it, 80 percent of success is showing up. I agree, but to achieve an experience that reaches aesthetic proportions we need something beyond physical and mental presence. The other “twenty percent” includes empathy and being genuine, which are a little bit harder to achieve. These three types of presence are called being-there, being-with, and being-one’s-self by philosopher Martin Heidegger (1962). Presence makes us more responsible, able to draw on our pasts and utilize our will to imagine and change our future.

Openness. In American politics, openness is called being a flip-flopper, as if it is shameful to admit you can still learn from experience. Aesthetic experiences, if we want them, demand an openness to submit to the challenges offered and draw upon the opportunities of the situation and the perspectives and support of others to learn new things. This is not flip-flopping, this is integrity.

Trust. To fully engage in a situation, we need to trust that it has something to offer. This includes faith that positive outcomes can occur – along with the willingness to suspend disbelief when these outcomes are in doubt – and forgiveness when the experience falls short of expectations, knowing that with effort, it can be turned around.

This list of aesthetic-potential qualities is probably not exhaustive, and the qualities are certainly not independent of each other. But hopefully they are compelling and coherent enough to keep this line of inquiry going, which is all that is needed. Do your favorite works of art have these qualities? When you enjoy them, do you bring your individual qualities to the experience? Does your work ever rise to this level?

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Portions of this post are based on Learning Experience as Transaction: A Framework for Instructional Design (Parrish, Wilson, and Dunlap, 2010)

Learning is an aesthetic experience

1

Do you recall when you learned to ride a bicycle? At first, accomplishing the feat may have seemed impossible—the balance required, the embarrassing and potentially dangerous threat of falling, the frighteningly unfamiliar speed required to stay upright (a lot faster than walking, and even faster than running). Riding in a car was faster, but completely different. On a bike, it was just you and the simple but still amazing contraption beneath you, completely under your control. Your legs did the peddling, your arms did the steering, your sense of balance—that finely tuned sensation of how your body was positioned within gravity, kept the both of you vertical, at least until the speed took over. Then some magical gyroscopic synthesis took over, but only gradually did you discover this synthesis.

Photo by C.Schubert, copyright Creative Commons

While you learned, at least after the training wheels were removed or your parent stepped back, you fell. Probably more than once. But each time you got on the bike, it felt a little more comfortable. You gained a little more confidence, greater balance, and the distance before you crashed increased. Eventually, you wondered what the big deal was, why it seemed so hard. It became second nature, just another one of the growing number of skills that increased your opportunities. The world became bigger now that you could get places faster. Even if your parents insisted you stay in your neighbourhood at first, you could now navigate it like never before. You felt invigorated!

Now think about your mastery of your mother tongue or tongues. You probably do not remember mastering speech and understanding your parent’s speech. It was too much a part of your growing consciousness to be separated from you becoming you. Your speech and your awareness in general came about together. But you probably do remember learning to read and write.

This was much harder than learning to ride a bicycle. It took much more time to feel any sense of mastery. In fact, like most of us, you are probably still learning new reading skills, new subtleties of language that increase your mastery—new words, things about usage you overlooked, differences in dialect, etc. At first, you learned how to spell single, common words, and the association between the letters L-O-O-K and the word that describes the intentional act of seeing was perhaps a revelation even greater than balancing a moving bicycle.

Learning to read and write took concerted effort, and for many of us, external motivation in the form of a demanding parent or teacher. But once you had mastered the basics, like being able to read the children’s books that up to that point had to be read to you by another, you may have experienced a profound curiosity, knowing that all those books surrounding you on bookshelves in your home, at the library, and in bookstores represented new worlds to explore. So you pushed yourself to be able to explore them. There were newspapers, magazines, novels, and works of non-fiction. For many there were also religious texts, more difficult with their archaic language. There were the notes left to you by your parents and teacher or passed to you by friends in class. Slowly, you developed the skills to enjoy the classics or just the more advance works covering your hobbies or other areas of interests. With effort came rewards.

Photo by Lynn Friedman, copyright Creative Commons

2

Can such learning experiences be considered aesthetic? What do they have in common with the things that typically come to mind when we hear that word? Well, consider your favorite books or movies, and although it might take more effort, also think about your favorite paintings. While your experiences with them might have felt effortless, it was deep engagement that made them feel that way. Learning and the effort it entails is an essential aspect of any aesthetic experience, even if the learning sometimes has a subtler and abstract nature, and is not related to developing practical skill or knowledge.

Most of these experiences with fine arts, if not all, were also acts of learning. The content they offered represented processes of learning, and your experience of enjoying them was also a process of learning. This might be most obvious in the popular mystery and detective fiction genres, where the act of discovery is an explicit plot device. Just consider the lasting popularity of Sherlock Holmes, due in large part that we learn as Sherlock learns, with his special powers of deduction guiding us and encouraging us. It is also obvious in much older forms, like fables and fairy tales, with the moral and practical lessons they offer. And consider the enjoyment we get from learning about foreign places and historic times (or speculations of the future) from other genres.

Let’s also consider some less obvious examples. Narratives are often diagrammed by the use of an incline that depicts rising action or rising plot complication, building through three acts (based on Aristotle’s Poetics). This rising action is almost without fail also accompanied by, or created by, increasing knowledge. For Aristotle, a prime example is Oedipus Rex, the story of an overconfident king who slowly learns how his pride or hubris is a large contributor to the playing out of his fate.


But the incline is just as apt in explaining more contemporary works, like the international best-seller, The DaVinci Code (Brown, 2003). There is a clear, rising complication in Act One as the main character, Langdon, becomes the key suspect in a mysterious murder and he and his colleague, Sophie, begin following puzzling clues to get at the truth. In Act Two (the “Acts” are being defined by me, not the author), the complication deepens as the purpose and machinations of a conspiracy become apparent. In this act, the protagonists must work to protect themselves, but also find proof of the unexpected story of the Holy Grail. In Act Three, an even deeper conspiracy is revealed, and the protagonists learn they have a critical role to play in resolving the situation. The plot of The DaVinci Code is carried forward by a series of revelations—the supposed truth of the Holy Grail, the existence of a conspiracy (at two levels), and the truth of Sophie’s identity. In other words, increasing knowledge drives the action as much as outward events.

		Act 3
		The conspiracy is foiled. The Sophie and Langdon learn a final truth about the Grail in Scotland, and decide not to reveal it.
	Act 2
	Further clues are discovered in London. A larger conspiracy is revealed. We learn of Sophie’s potential link to the Grail.
Act 1
A mysterious and gruesome murder is discovered at the Louvre. The protagonist, Langdon, is the main suspect, but escapes to follow clues in search for the true murderer.

Now, it might be argued that The Da Vinci code is merely detective fiction in disguise, but consider a more subtle work of fiction. In another recent novel, Never Let Me Go (Ishiguro, 2005), the author uses a first-person narrator whose initial naiveté allows a satisfactory understanding of the situation to be only slowly revealed. There are no dramatic moments of revealed truth as there are in The DaVinci Code—only a growing and never complete understanding of truth. This is probably a more realistic depiction of how we come to answers to the big questions of life, and it is what gives the novel its surprising power and narrative sophistication. The narrator’s knowledge grows during three parts, separated chronologically by several years, and if the novel engages us, this process of deepening knowledge deepens our appreciation.

Most theorists, critics, and creative writing instructors would argue that without some growth in the characters, meaning some increasing knowledge about themselves and/or the world they live in, a narrative is flat. The most exciting action-laden plot does not make up for a lack of character development. Even clichéd character growth pasted onto to an otherwise shallow, action-laden plot can sometimes work with audiences. Can you think of a successful narrative plot that does not involve learning of some sort, or at minimum, an explicit accusation of the failure of a character to learn?

Finally, let’s consider a work of visual art with much less obvious connections to learning. Monet’s series of haystack paintings provide a good example. Monet was fascinated with how the changing quality of light during the day and across seasons changes the colors we see. He and the other Impressionists learned through experiment that what we see (physically) and what we perceive are not exactly the same. We might not register the color changes of a scene through the day, but they are there. His paintings, especially those like the haystack series helped to demonstrate this, beautifully. He also noted that we do not see pure colors, but distinct colors mixed to form the final colors we perceive. Grey is never grey exactly, but can be a mixture of many colors that our eyes perceive together as grey, so artist are free to create the perception of a color by juxtaposing very different colors. Monet learned about colors by making the paintings, and we learn about colors by observing them.

Every good painting or work of visual art is in a way an experiment designed for learning. This might appear especially true in today’s era of conceptual art, but even commercial portraitists learn about their subjects’ appearances as they work. A landscape painter is exploring the landscape and her perception of it through painting, not just reproducing it. We begin to see our world in new ways based on the work artists show us. Our opinions of what makes a beautiful landscape are influenced largely by the works of art we have seen.

In a similar way, music provides many of the rhythms of our lives, and we learn pacing at least partially from which music we choose. Melodies, like narratives, let us know how to find closure. Music also teaches us emotion, and maybe not always the reverse, as is assumed.

The Purpose of Art

What is the purpose of art? Why do people invest time and money to make and enjoy aesthetic objects and events?

For many people, engagement with the arts, whether in the form of the things we hang on our walls, the books we choose to read, the films and programmes we see in theaters and on our TVs, the music we listen to in so many different contexts, and the visits we make to museums or theatrical performances, accounts for significant amount of their time. The question of why we invest this time has been the stimulus for a lot of thought over the centuries, even though most people don't feel the need to ask it. For many, art is enjoyable--and perhaps there is nothing to gain in dissecting a good thing.

Photo by Patrick Parrish

But many do ask, and I think that this asking is a reflection of the best answer to the question. Let me back up and offer some of the many purposes proposed over the years for art.

First, there have been strong arguments that art in fact serves no purpose, or more specifically, that we derive no personal gain from aesthetic things—and that this is at least partly the source of their enjoyment. This is the “disinterest” theory of art, that we take pleasure from art precisely because it serves no practical purpose. Kant argued that disinterest (not in the sense of “not interested,” but in the sense of “providing no profit”) is essential for being able to see something as aesthetic--that as soon as a practical purpose becomes a driver, aesthetic value is squashed. However, most of us would agree that pleasure is not without value, and although the value of pleasure is not as direct as sustenance, it might be a sign of other gains.

In contrast, some have said that art is our way of making aspects of our world “special,” or distinct from everyday experience, in order to celebrate our humanity. Art allows us to give human meaning to things (Dissanayake, 1995). Baroque and Rococo visual art, for example, emphasized the pleasures and drama of being human. But stories and rituals offer more universal and fundamental examples. Whether captured as literature or related over dinner, stories put a frame around a certain experience and provide it a structure; they define relationships and uncover motives. Stories distill plots and themes from the ongoing flow of experience. In other words, stories make life special in a critical way--they help us make sense of our lives when everyday experience fails us (Burke, 1945; Bruner, 1985). The “making special” purpose is also clear when we consider the universal drive for social rituals, some of which are not only filled with decoration and elaborate works of art, but become art forms in themselves.

Others offer that the function of art is to to create a distraction for the miseries we encounter in everyday life (Connor, 1999). It can be argued that art disguises the true state of the world--its messiness, inconclusiveness, seeming randomness, or worse, malignancy. Some people use television and Internet entertainment excessively, preventing potentially more productive behaviors that require more effort and helping them forget their troubles. Some read adventure, intrigue and romance novels to make up for the lives they see as mundane otherwise.

This distraction argument is very similar to Plato’s assertion, in The Republic, that art is merely imitation, and a negative influence on one's ability to live a good life. In Plato’s case, and the case of those that have interpreted him, art does not disguise misery, but prevents the discovery of a more beautiful truth that can be discovered only through philosophy and other intellectual disciplines, leaving it concealed under a pleasant, easier, and therefore addictive veneer.

The concept of catharsis has some similarities to the “distraction” argument, but instead suggests “redirection,” in that art, especially in forms that evoke powerful emotion, can be therapeutic in helping us work out issues and anxieties that are otherwise difficult to address directly. Some argue that dreams function in the same way, so art might be seen as a form of dreaming in waking life. Catharsis is seen as both emotional purification (relieving harmful emotions) or as building emotional resilience (a sort of emotional practice). But in both cases it is suggesting that art is still a substitute, or imitation of life.

Art has a more direct positive impact if it is assumed to be instructive--showing us life as it is or ought to be (in direct contrast to Plato's concern about imitation). Realism is an approach to art that strives to depict the life we know, reassuring our communal perceptions and at the same time impressing us with the artist's skill in reproduction. But more than just being realistic, artistic realism also intends to help us see aspects of life that might otherwise be difficult to see. It might depict a social ugliness often ignored, or celebrate the everyday beauty of life we sometimes forget. In other words, art may function to point out what we should see and value, but too often miss.

But some suggest that art is much more significant, even capable of transcending everyday life. Romanticism saw artists as having a special connection to nature or spiritual dimensions, as being conduits to the truth that lies beneath the surface of everyday life (Emerson, 1844). From this stance, artists are especially sensitive to the symbols that nature offers instead of revealing its truths directly. They have the ability to understand and use these symbols, or metaphors, in ways most of us cannot. Some see artists as voices for god and nature, as offering expressions of the divine. Medieval artists also held this role, although the church itself was the conduit to the divine, and the artist merely the church’s servant.

Coming perhaps full circle, back to the belief that art is primarily without purpose, others have recently claimed that art has no inherent purpose or value, but that it is merely what a privileged social group calls “art” (Dickie, 1971). In other words, a particular art work, art form, or artist gains status through visibility (in the right places) or word-of-mouth (from the right sources). Awards, critical reviews, gallery openings, and even political support are in control, and can permit the emergence of widely disparate examples of modern and postmodern art, or, on the other hand, narrow perspectives. From this perspective, aesthetic value may not exist until it is institutionally designated, for whatever reason (even one of the above). Art is not the product of a personal judgment or experience, but a socially contrived one. So in this case the ultimate purpose of art is simply a way to show your sophistication, through group membership, to others.

Photo by Patrick Parrish

Given the diverse purposes of art that have been proposed, all of which contain a grain of truth, some have questioned the value of any theory of art that attempts to define it (Weitz, 1956). What is more useful is to view art as an open concept, one that has multiple references and evolves as new uses of the concept emerge. I began this post not with the question, “What is art?,” but “What is the purpose of art?” The "What is art" question creates lots of conceptual problems, and can force us to prematurely assign a purpose and context in order to get the answer we want. The answer might be very different if you feel art should instruct, provide distraction, or have no purpose. It might be better to explore what broad category of things serve all the purposes we attribute to art.

In various situations, art can function in any the ways mentioned so far--to cleanse, heal, distract, celebrate, instruct (or obstruct), transcend, or simply impress, all of which suggest that everyday life somehow holds us back. As Picasso rather dramatically put it, the purpose of art is "washing the dust of daily life off our souls." But art has another critical function that fully embraces everyday experience as being without dust. This function is engagement--appreciation and participation in life, even everyday life, in ways that strengthen our involvement and help us to derive not just more pleasure, but more meaning. The meaningful engagement hypothesis helps to explain each of the other purposes, but casts them in a new light. Under this light, art is not trivial by any means, but neither is everyday life. And the conceptual problem of defining what art IS is made simpler. In fact, it is all around us.
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References
Dissanayake, E. (1995), Homo Aestheticus
Burke, K. (1945), A Grammar of Motives
Bruner, J. (1985), Actual Minds, Possible Worlds
Connor, S. (1999), What If There Were No Such Thing As The Aesthetic?
Dickie, G. (1971), Aesthetics, An Introduction
Emerson, R.W. (1844), The Poet. Essays, Second Series
Weitz, M. (1956), The Role of Theory in Aesthetics. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15: 27–35