Prior to these readings, I’d never given much thought to what makes taste “good” or “bad,” instead believing, like Mothersill seems to, that if judgements of beauty don’t adhere to a priori principles, there being no such principles, taste would be a wildly subjective concept and not worth much to anyone. Presumably, what is good or what is beautiful would not be discernible through the lens of taste, taste being only a matter of preference, tied more to considerations of pleasure than of appreciation (however linked these may in fact be). I likewise was of the opinion, like Margolis as cited by Mothersill, that “it is altogether conceivable that one likes what one judges to be artistically poor or fails to appreciate what one knows to be excellent”- that taste was the unimportant matter of me liking “The Room” (which I find to be a terrible work of art), and disliking “Lost in Translation,” (which I found to be quite a strong work of art, all together). But this formulation of the definition of taste it appears was misguided and undeveloped, for after clarification, I’ve come to the conclusion that philosophers critical of some of Kant’s widely accepted aesthetic claims (such as Dickie) have more enlightening and useful ideas to offer.
Dickie’s opposition to the notion of “aesthetic attitude” opens up the realm of meaningful art appreciation to more than just critics or the highly trained, breaking down barriers of elitism which have subjugated ordinary people in their attempts to identify with or come into more respected relations with artwork. If the aesthetic attitude is only a misconception which can only really be called focused attention, then anyone can engage in it. However, this could be seen as devaluing the attention paid to an artwork, since if anyone can engage it, some psychic results will be “lesser” (consider the example of the poem and the rugby forward). Dickie can account for these “lesser” interpretations of artwork while still retaining the egalitarian stance he has adopted by claiming that though anyone can engage an artwork in with focused attention, indubitably there will be those who are distracted without knowledge of their own distraction, leading to subjects who describe their own experience as focused attention incorrectly. Taste to Dickie is then not a sliding scale of bad and good taste, but in its normative identity residing only in the non-distracted judgements of an artwork, and I believe this to be quite hopeful.
Dickie also allows for artwork to encompass a moral element, something which imbues artwork with more meaning, instead of less. While Kant would preclude a fully realized artwork from being seen as art if there is moral interest in it, Dickie makes the compelling case that an artwork can still be evaluated as an artwork even after considerable intellection. According to him,(channelling Pole), the aesthetic experience extends beyond the mere moment of recognition. This is certainly a more tenable idea when considering more thematically complex works such as films or novels. In order to be stricken by the beauty of a well constructed novel, one must contemplate it. When I finished McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, I was not immediately stricken by a sense of beauty- in fact, it ends horrifically with the hero defiled and the villain triumphant- but after days of thinking endlessly of the implications of its plot and themes I have no doubt that it is the most beautiful novel I’ve ever read. According to Kant, this aesthetic experience of mine is illegitimate, and the object of that experience unworthy of being called beautiful. Dickie, by allowing that our initial experience is not complete until full contemplation has occurred, allows for more complex works of art (works which I find incredibly compelling) to be allowed into the artistic fold, and he does this by allowing Kant’s realm of the good to necessarily enter into our considerations. The allowance of considerations of the good also can help us appreciate less complex works, such as paintings of songs. The beauty of Rage Against the Machine’s “On Rodeo” (controversial, I know) can come not only from the form of the song and the relation of its parts, but from the political, social, and ethical messages of the song as well, making our experience of the beautiful all the richer.
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