Aesthetic Description and Realism in Art Education.

Abstract

In its appeal to common sense it is easy to imagine that the preferred object of study in art education would be one derived from a realist metaphysics of art. However, the intuitively identifiable properties which would appear on the surface to make real art works seem so accessible have proved inappropriate for the accommodation of aesthetic and representational qualities. This paper looks at the usefulness of a stable realism for questions related to the description and understanding of art works and briefly explores two theories which the author believes promise to resolve the antagonism between representational meanings and their assertion as true properties of the work. The explanatory power of descriptions is largely determined by their capacity for representing objects convincingly and significantly to belief. What we know in the aesthetic or otherwise by way of description is largely determined by the manner in which our descriptive representations have been circumscribed. One of the most demoralising intuitions art teachers have arises from the suspicion that what can be said about the aesthetic character of objects, in particular art objects, will in many instances turn out to be self evident and relatively trivial