An Everyday Aesthetics, Inexpensive Paintings, and the Study of Art

Abstract

Abstract An everyday aesthetics, in contrast to conventional views rooted in the fine arts, is initiated by mundane objects, such as matching a tie to a suit, and ordinary settings, like the arrangement of walkways and stores in a mall. Largely neglected by an everyday aesthetics, though, are inexpensive paintings popular with the general public, such as mass-produced works produced overseas by teams of anonymous artists. “Assembly line” paintings, despite numerous critical objections, expand the boundaries of aesthetics and their focus on masterpieces. That claim rests on studies of mass-produced paintings, summarized here, that illustrate the differences as well as the parallels between a conventional and an everyday aesthetics. The latter, as illustrated by mass-produced paintings, takes into account the relationship of colors within a canvas to those in the room in which a work hangs (rugs, furniture, walls). A conventional aesthetics, at least in Western traditions of art, emphasizes solely the colors within a painting’s frame. Aesthetics is therefore not some rare and esoteric phenomenon whose primary source lies within a narrow number of paintings in relatively inaccessible places and endorsed (if not enforced) by experts.