Reflection 2.2

Based on the evidence put forth by Wollheim, Devereaux, and Kant regarding the nature of artworks, it seems safe to say that beauty is instantiated in a physical object, but it is not a property belonging to the object itself. Rather, beauty is an evaluation on the part of the viewer based on the viewer’s unconscious reaction to the artwork.

            This is clear from the work of Devereaux attempting to critique the study of aesthetics from a feminist perspective. As she notes, the patriarchal “male gaze” is systematically institutionalized from politics to the media, and this widespread and deeply entrenched notion colors our vision of the world almost without notice. What we view when viewing an artwork, then, is not just a pure reception of the physical stimuli there. Rather, the viewer imparts a certain set of expectations to their viewing of the artwork which changes how they interpret what is presented. Devereaux dissects the different levels at which this is present in the film industry, from the creation of male-gendered content to its reception by audiences who have been brought up in a series of cultural norms reinforcing these various aspects of gender. However, if what is important here is the cultural milieu which shapes a viewing of an artwork, then this critique of artworks need not be limited to feminism, but all of the lenses and viewpoints which are brought up just by the way that various linguistic and social communities by which we are always surrounded. Thus, what we perceive in an artwork is colored by how we view it, and not by the object in itself.

            The Kantian critique of beauty follows a similar path. Kant recognizes that judgments concerning the beautiful are not made based on a sort of rational or logical grounds like judgments concerning other qualities of appearances. Rather, the aesthetic judgment is made purely on an intuitive level, and as such, it is totally in the mind of the one perceiving the object. However, what we do in asserting an object is beautiful is claiming that everyone should find that this object affects them in the same way that it affects us. Consensus about the beauty of an object does not make the beauty anymore inherent to it. It only suggests that other viewers are in fact affect in the same way as we are. Coupled with Devereaux’s use of the various lenses that we have in interpreting artworks, this consensus concerning beautiful objects is more probably a common cultural tie than an expression of some quality inherent to the object itself.

The most problematic challenge to this subjective appraisal of beauty comes from Wollheim’s arguments concerning the physical-object hypothesis of an artwork. Wollheim suggests that the artistic quality of an object somehow resides in the instantiation itself, not in the artist’s expression or the viewer’s reception. What is more confounding is that he suggests that there art can be a physical object, though it does not have to be. He appeals to the notion of tokens to try and back that up, such that there is always some physical medium, but that it is not necessarily an object that is the artwork, but rather a more ideal form (ie the difference between a copy of the Iliad and the Iliad as a work of art).

That being said, Wollheim does spend a lot of time explaining the necessity of interpretation, at least when it comes to the performance arts. What makes them artworks, he insists, is their ability to be reiterated and still retain some recognizable “essence” of the piece. Similarly, he quotes Valéry, who says that art has a “new and impenetrable element,” which leads to the “ineliminability of interpretation.” In assenting to this, however, Wollheim opens the door once again for the prospect of a multiplicity of lenses with which a work can be viewed. The fact that art requires interpretation, above and beyond the expressive nature of the art object in and of itself, necessarily means that art requires an interpreter. And, as Devereaux notes, there is no seeing (which we can extrapolate to interpreting) in a vacuum. Thus whatever is viewed in the artwork is evaluated from the standpoint of a particular individual who is plugged into a particular society in a particular way. What presents itself then is a subjective viewing of the artwork, where the beautiful is determined not by the artwork in itself, but by its active perception and interpretation on the part of the spectator.