Practical Form: Abstraction, Technique, and Beauty in Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics

Abstract

Hands are notoriously hard to draw. To compellingly capture their detail, proportion, and movement is generally considered a mark of an artist’s mastery of technique and concentrated effort. Reflecting the challenge it poses, mastering the technical practices, the skill to draw a hand well gives the artist great artistic pleasure in producing it. In contrast, the aesthetic pleasure of a well-drawn hand is thought to simply strike the appreciative beholder. Despite its striking effect, the aesthetic appreciation of the drawing is not necessarily effortless nor without mastery of formal practices. Rather we take it that the pleasure elicited in producing a beautifully drawn hand is just not the same as that in judging it to be so. Typically, the difference between these pleasures—artistic and aesthetic—is recognized by their diverging interest and purpose in relation to the artwork. The artist’s purpose is to produce a beautiful work and, as such, their artistic pleasure is elicited in the interests of producing that work, whereas—according to philosophical aesthetics’ eighteenth-century origins—the critic’s purpose is to aesthetically appreciate or judge the work for its own sake, where the pleasure elicited by a work’s beauty is disinterested.