Aesthetic Judgment Research Articles

The Trouble with Literature

The Trouble with Literature

“Nobrow”: Harmony Between Aesthetics and Com mercialism? (Review of the books American Crime Fiction: A Cultural History of Nobrow Literature as Art by Peter Swirski, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016; When Highbrow Meets Lowbrow: Popular Culture and the Rise of Nobrow, ed. by P. Swirski, T.E. Vanhanen, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017; and Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form by Sianne

“Nobrow”: Harmony Between Aesthetics and Com mercialism? (Review of the books American Crime Fiction: A Cultural History of Nobrow Literature as Art by Peter Swirski, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016; When Highbrow Meets Lowbrow: Popular Culture and the Rise of Nobrow, ed. by P. Swirski, T.E. Vanhanen, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017; and Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form by Sianne

A systematic review of brain functions underlying visual aesthetic judgements

A systematic review of brain functions underlying visual aesthetic judgements

Aesthetic Virginity, Ethical Liberty and the Autonomy of Beauty: Possessions and the Poetics of Postcolonialism in the Aspern Papers

Abstract I argue that The Aspern Papers takes up the question of aesthetic chastity in terms of the unnamed narrator’s pretended courtship of Tina when he was a lodger in her home, through which she finally achieves aesthetic-ethical freedom as a single woman. Like Isabel in The Portrait of a Lady, Tina at first does not appreciate her suitor’s self-interestedness, but then manages to establish her aesthetic-ethical autonomy by rendering her virginal spirit proof against its objectification and exploitation by the lodger, in a Kantian parable of freedom. Juliana’s jealous possession of Jeffrey Aspern’s papers and her imperious guardianship of Tina prompt a sustained exploration of Kantian and Saidian notions of interest and disinterest, in which Juliana’s machinations are generally comparable to Madame Merle’s. Kant’s idea of interest refers to bias in the formulation of aesthetic judgement, lacking the disinterest of a truly dispassionate judgement of beauty. Edward Said’s notion of interest represents imperial prejudice. From these two complementary perspectives, Tina’s struggle to transform her presumed feminine interest in masculine sponsorship allows her finally to attain complete disinterestedness in relation to the sexual, familial, historical, and political forces that press on her. On the other hand, the lodger’s ardent pursuit of Aspern’s private papers, tokens of the poet’s aesthetic achievement, involves an imperial agenda to wrest control of them for his own interest as a man of letters and connoisseur of poetry.

Aesthetic Judgement and Human Growth: The Way of Seeing and the Way of Living Interim Inspection of Art Education during a Pandemic

우리의 보는 방식은 우리를 어떻게 살게 하는가? 보는 방식과 삶의 연결이 미술교육의 목적을 근본적으로 점검하고 이를 구체적으로 실현하는 기준을 제시할 수 있는 이유는 무엇인가? 팬데믹이 장기화 되고 있는 현재 미술교육은 보다 근본적인 목적을 되찾을 수 있는 위기이자 기회의 시기를 겪고 있다. 미술교육이 교육으로서 ‘인간을 인간답게 성장하도록’ 하는 본래의 역할을 미술교육의 고유한 방식으로 실현해야 할 의무를 다하기 위해서는 미술교육의 원리를 기준으로 현실을 파악하고 이를 새롭게 볼 수 있는 개념과 방식을 점검할 필요가 있다. 먼저 현재 학습자들이 처한 내, 외적 현실을 점검하며 가장 크게 대두된 ‘수동적 태도와 무기력한 상태’의 점검과 분석을 통해 미술교육의 맥락 안에서 ‘보고 – 생각하고 – 살아가는’ 원리의 연결을 재검토한다. 비대면 온라인 플랫폼에서 대부분의 주요 활동을 하고있는 학습자들이 이러한 연결에 대한 자기 점검에 이어 미적 경험의 일상 속 실현을 시도한 수업 사례를 제시하고 여기에서 재발견되는 미적 판단력 개념을 검토한다. 보는 행위에 내재 된 원리가 자신의 삶을 주체적으로 살 수 있는 내적 능력과 어떻게 연결되는가를 찾을 수 있는 개념으로서 재발견한 칸트의 미적 판단력 개념은 미술교육의 역할과 그 이행 방식을 점검하는 구조를 제공한다.

Foreword. Finalism and Judgement

What does it mean to “judge” something? What are the preconditions and the necessary prerequisites for the formulation of a judgement (be it a cognitive judgement, a moral judgement, or an aesthetic judgement)? Is there a special relationship between finalism and judgement and, if yes, in what sense? The relationship between finalism and judgment has been typically understood along two main lines of interpretation: on the one hand, as the finalism attributed by judging to certain objects or phenomena; on the other hand, from the point of view of the finality of judging itself, i.e., the teleological orientation of judging in the global dimension of life.
 This issue of Aisthesis includes a selection of highly relevant contributions to the topic “Judgement and finalism”, with the aim of bringing to the fore the circular movement that seems to characterize every judgement in itself – from nature, and from the nature of our mind, to the objects, structures, natural kinds etc. that populate the world, and reversely from the world to the mind. Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgement plays, in this respect, a very fundamental role, as the papers by Stefano Velotti, Luigi Filieri, Lorenzo Sala, and Antonio Branca show brilliantly. Andrea Lanza and Barbara Santini discuss the interconnections between teleology and judgement in the frame, respectively, of Husserl’s phenomenology and Friedrich Hölderlin’s poetic philosophy. The idea that finalism and the dynamics of judgement have much to do with each other opens new links to disciplines other than philosophy and to an interdisciplinary approach to the activity of judging in research fields such as psychology, cognitive sciences, biology. This is the perspective adopted by Francesco Vitale, in his paper on Ernst Mayr’s teleonomy, and by Onerva Kiianlinna, in her a paper on epigenesis and modularity in Evolutionary Aesthetics.
 This present issue is further enriched by a substantial focus on images and the aesthetic experience in the digital age (Fabrizio Desideri, Francesca Perotto, Caterina Zaira) and by a multifaceted and intriguing “Varia” section, with contributions by Ricardo Ibarlucia, Mariya Veleva, David Alvaro Gonzàlez, Carmelo Colangelo.

AESTHETIC TRAINING IS AN IMPORTANT FACTOR OF A FUTURE DOCTORS' PROFESSIONAL FORMATION

Nowadays, a stream of various information, including hybrid information, is aimed at young people. That is why students are most focused on the virtual environment, and the sensuality of the individual goes back to the periphery of their spiritual life. Such a reality requires the use of complex efforts directed at returning a person to their essence.
 The relevance of our study is due to the young people's need to develop a sense of taste as an aesthetic category and the formation of criteria that would allow them to distinguish between the verity from distorted reality and the good from evil.
 The purpose: to confirm the need for aesthetic education in future doctors' training because it strengthens students' active national and civic positions. Aesthetic education lays down self-consciousness, self-determination, and individualization. It helps to find life landmarks and affects relations with the outside world. Aesthetic education is the essence of the humanization of the individual, their socialization. It is a necessary basis and prerequisite to realize the individual abilities in the process of real life.
 During lectures and practical classes at the departments of Ukrainian Studies and Linguistics, as well as during extra classes, teachers pay considerable attention to the aesthetic education of IFNMU students. The methods of aesthetic education, which are used in the classroom discussion of artworks are as follows: respect for the individual, appeal to feelings, conversations and debates, problem situations, individual and group creative work. In particular, respect for the individual is especially needed when discussing ethical issues.
 For the formation of the aesthetic culture of youth, the basic thing is the sincerity of the student, the appropriate attitude of the teacher and the team. It is the expression of one's impressions, experiences, and thoughts, rather than a blind repetition of the view imposed by the teacher. Thus it enables the teacher to direct the aesthetic development of the personality in the right direction. Every opinion should be heard and discussed because this is how the teacher will be able to see the real level of students' development. This approach enables correcting erroneous judgments on time.
 Addressing the feelings of future professionals (conscience, dignity, and empathy) involves a thoughtful contemplation of works of art, which is preceded by the disclosure of cultural and historical conditions of the work. This process should be accompanied by a discussion and teachers' explanation. Conversation and debate presuppose a free exchange of opinions, a collective discussion of aesthetic problems, as a result of which aesthetic views and judgments are formed. During the debate, students defend their position. The reasoned speech of the future doctors is based on their level of awareness, erudition, and culture. The exchange of ideas and facts develops logical thinking, the ability to analyze, generalize and make conclusions.
 There are various ways of humanization and enrichment of future specialists' potential, but aesthetic training is the main one. Society pays attention in the critical periods of its development on aesthetic training. It acts as a final element in the higher education system, giving completeness and saturating the whole structure with the main content. The process of studying in a higher education institution is the moment in a young person's life when they should understand and realize their life meaning following their moral and aesthetic ideals.

Naturalist Methods in the Sociology of Creation: The Case Against Reductionism

The Sociology of Culture has much to say when it comes to the ever-changing general consensus on what constitutes legitimate culture and definitions of creativity. The naturalistic studieson cognition in social and cognitive sciences show this empirically (Bourdieu, 1979: Becker, 1982, 2002; Sennett, 2012; Author, 2014). Creative cognition is part of an institutional context. However, the influential culturalist branch of cognitive sociology (CCS) reduces creativity toa cognitivist psychological level (Lizardo and Strand, 2010). We start from the conjecture that the Sociology of Culture can draw on the naturalistic paradigm of cognition to explain creativity without falling into reductionist or atomist positions. The authors take the diversityof theoretical-empirical proposals into account in identifying the starting points for focusing the debate at both the macro and micro levels. The body of the article comprises a literature review which, while not exhaustive, offers a full picture of the pragmatic and integrated models of creativity. The studies analysed present inter-subjective processes of creationand the transmission of variable legitimate criteria concerning cultural consumption such as categorisations, evaluations and aesthetic judgments. The sociological perspective offers scope for strengthening critical tools for examining creativity.

Further exploration of anti-realist intuitions about aesthetic judgment

ABSTRACT Experimental philosophy of aesthetics has explored to what extent ordinary people are committed to aesthetic realism. Extant work has focused on attitudes to normativism – a key commitment of realist positions in aesthetics – the claim that aesthetic judgments/statements have correctness conditions, invariant between subjects, such that there is a fact of the matter in cases of aesthetic disagreement. The emerging picture is that ordinary people strongly and almost universally reject normativism and thus there is no strong realist tendency in ordinary people’s thinking about the aesthetic. This has been taken to dissolve the traditional puzzle in aesthetics of how to best account for the fact that (a) aesthetic judgments seem intersubjectively valid, while (b) aesthetic experience seems subjective. This paper presents studies which further enrich our understanding of ordinary thinking about the aesthetic: ordinary thinking about the aesthetic may not be so vehement in its rejection of normativism; and where previous results suggested that, in many cultures, the dominant trend is to reject correctness conditions for aesthetic judgments, the current results suggest participants think aesthetic judgments have correctness conditions (albeit perhaps very finely relativized to specific circumstances of judgment).

The golden ratio as an ecological affordance leading to aesthetic attractiveness.

The golden ratio (GR) is an irrational number (close to 1.618) that repeatedly occurs in nature as well as in masterpieces of art. The GR has been considered a proportion perfectly representing beauty since ancient times, and it was investigated in several scientific fields, but with conflicting results. This study aims at investigating if this proportion is associated with a judgment of beauty independently of the type of the stimulus, and the factors that may affect this aesthetic preference. In Experiment 1, an online psychophysical questionnaire was administered to 256 volunteers asked to choose among three possible proportions between the parts of the same stimulus (GR, 1.5, and 1.8). In Experiment 2, we recorded eye movements in 15 participants who had to express an aesthetic judgment on the same stimuli of Experiment 1. The results revealed a slight overall preference for GR (53%, p < .001), with higher preferences for stimuli representing humans, anthropomorphic sculptures, and paintings, regardless of the cultural level. In Experiment 2, a shorter dwell time was significantly associated with a better aesthetic judgment (p=.005), suggesting the possibility that GR could be associated with easier visual processing, and it could be hence considered as a visual affordance.

Sensing gourmetization and gastronomy as organizing practices

ABSTRACT This article aims to understand the role of ‘senses in action’ and how they become forms of organizing gourmetization and gastronomy in a texture of practices based on the ‘Festa Junina’ in Campina Grande, Paraíba State (Brazil). The ‘Festa Junina’ is the largest Saint John’s Festival in the world. Drawing on the perspective of practice theories, we present how the gourmet culture influences gastronomy practice in the festival, focusing on aesthetic judgments and sensible knowledge. We performed sensory ethnography during two years of the festival (2017 and 2018). Our results show that gourmetization and gastronomy practices involve sensing: (a) the artisanal, (b) the enactment of quality in dish preparation, (c) materiality, and (d) taste-making. We conclude that gourmetization is an emerging phenomenon in gastronomy practice, highlighting the role of the senses in contemporary forms of organizing and culture.

Building global art infrastructure from Nigeria: ART X Lagos and Lagos Biennial 2019“We Are Our Own Sun”

The paper argues that developments in art infrastructure on the African continent strengthen African perspectives within the global art ecosystem. Although dichotomies of centre/periphery have been much critiqued, the ascendant contemporary African art market of the last two decades (Enwezor & Okeke-Agulu) continues to be valorised in Euro-American art capitals under hegemonic systems of aesthetic value judgment and critique based on Western positions (Corrigall). Case studies of two institutional interventions, ART X Lagos (art fair) and Lagos Biennial (both 2019), demonstrate a shift in the focus of art narratives and histories to Nigeria and provide examples of a re-shaping of global art infrastructure from the African continent. Based on ethnographic research including participant observation, interviews with curators and artists, as well as interpretations of art venues and artworks, the article intertwines an empirical and theoretical approach grounded in post/decolonial critique, an approach heavily engaged with art and curatorial practice. The article contributes to empirical knowledge about art events in Nigerian spaces and understanding creative contexts on the continent. It concludes that collaborative efforts by Nigerian and African diaspora artists are focused on strengthening Lagos as an art centre — its ‘own sun’ — in a regional and continental art ecosystem. Ultimately this draws the attention of Western art institutions and realigns international circuits of contemporary art towards Nigeria.

Pre-school teaching for creative processes in education for sustainable development – invisible animal traces, purple hands, and an elk container

Living in the anthropocene requires addressing several challenges. New forms of teaching where experiences of problem solving, creativity and innovation strategies are needed and considered important. This Swedish study contributes with knowledge on pre-school children’s creativity processes when working on an authentic, child-initiated sustainability problem about consumption. Teachers’ careful listening was important when forming the teaching context for the sustainability problem. A pragmatic perspective on learning and meaning-making is used to identify the significant features of the different phases in the creativity processes. The empirical results show: the importance of affording a creative context with uncoded material for children to transact with; previous experiences have a prominent role when imagining and reaching beyond the ordinary; the importance of teachers’ positive aesthetic judgments for sustaining the creative process. In alignment with the idea of learning as participation, the children broadened the consumption topic to contribute with creative outcomes for animals’ welfare.

On Conceptual Revision and Aesthetic Judgement

AbstractThis paper calls into question the view typically attributed to Kant that aesthetic judgements are particularist, resisting all conceptual determination. Instead, it claims that Kant conceives of aesthetic judgements, particularly of art, as playing an important role in therevisionof concepts: one sense in which aesthetic judgements, as Kant defines them, ‘find a universal’ for a given particular. To understand the relation between artistic judgements and concepts requires that we consider what I call Kant’s diachronic account of aesthetic ideas, or how such judgements unfold in the course of communication and reflection. My reading draws Kant much closer to debates in the philosophy of art on the semantic dimension of artworks. Here, illuminating the way in which aesthetic judgements about art can play a role in conceptual revision allows us to make sense of the way in which modern artworks contest concepts rather than merely presenting or expressing them.

Visual Art and Pragmatic Truth: Georgia O’Keeffe at the Helm

Abstract This essay examines an oil painting by Georgia O’Keeffe, Ritz Tower (1928), applying the terms of William James’s pragmatic conception of truth and the ideas that play a part in it, for example, pluralism and spiritualism, along with assistance from Martin Heidegger’s notion of Wohnung (dwelling). This is not only a fruitful way to look at her painting but paintings in the same or similar genre. Aesthetic judgments made about Ritz Tower are true if they work (in the pragmatic sense) for those who make said judgments if they find them successful in fitting in with other ideas and beliefs in their aesthetic experience of the painting or other artworks.

Conceptual Art and Aesthetic Ideas

AbstractThis paper considers whether Kant’s aesthetics withstands the challenge of conceptual art. I begin by looking at two competing views of conceptual art by recent philosophers, before settling on an ‘inclusive’ view of the form: conceptual art includes both ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ non-perceptual art (NPA). I then set out two kinds of conceptual complexity that I argue are implicated by all aesthetic judgements of art (as art) on Kant’s view: the concept of art itself, and the idea the work is meant to express (dependent beauty and aesthetic ideas, respectively). I go on to demonstrate the applicability of Kant’s aesthetics to conceptual art by considering two works by Lawrence Weiner, which I take to be a work of work of weak and strong NPA respectively.

Affective Responses to Image Color Combinations

Abstract Responses to colored patterns were collected for a group of 60 naive participants. We explicitly aimed at affective responses, rather than aesthetic judgments, so this is not ‘color harmony’ proper. Patterns were mainly spatially highly structured compositions, the color palettes reminiscent of what is found in generic ‘colorist’ art. Color combinations systematically cover mono-, di-, and trichromatic chromatic chords, whereas there was always an additional achromatic component. This sets the research apart from the bulk of the mainstream literature on ‘color harmony.’ Various ways of analysis are compared. Clustering methods reveal that the responses are highly structured through the teal–orange (cool–warm) dimension. Clustering reveals a large group of mutually concordant participants and various small, idiosyncratic groups. When the data is coarse-grained, retaining only a limited red–blue–yellow palette, the group as a whole appears quite concordant. It is evident that responses are systematic, thus the notion of a universal affective response to color combinations gains some credibility. The precise affective responses are specific because constrained by the seven categories used in the experiment. Thus, the systematic structure is perhaps to be understood as the generic result. We discuss tangencies with various traits found with ‘colorist’ art styles.

Zwischen Ost und West: Franz Liszts nationale Identität in der Wiener Musikkritik (1857–1900)

Abstract In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Habsburg Monarchy was a political entity giving home to great numbers of people of different nationalities and ethnicities. However, the dominant power in the structure of this multi-ethnic state was reserved for the Germans. Yet, the ever more emphatic demands of ethnic groups of other origins for more autonomy had a serious impact on the political and cultural supremacy of the Germans. Based on this recorded background, I will examine in the context of my paper to what extent Viennese music criticism of Franz Liszt’s symphonic programme music proves to be influenced by the reception of his national facets of identity. To do justice to this concern, the first step is to gain an overview of what statements were made during the journalistic discourse on Liszt’s symphonic programme music regarding its nationality. Building on this, it will be determined what function these statements had in the argumentative mediation of the aesthetic judgement on Liszt’s programmatic compositions. Against the political background outlined above, the question arises as to whether the Hungarian-national facet of Liszt’s identity in particular was instrumentalized by Viennese critics in order to strengthen negative judgments about his œuvre by means of a politically motivated German-nationalist narrative.

Global Public Art as a Phatic Interaction of Multiculturalism

From the break of the millennium, the massification of visual practices, in particular global public art, formed under the influence of multicultural processes, has been interpreted in academic circles and by the media as the success of the paradigm of contemporary art, which finally abandoned the traditional experience of aesthetic judgment, focusing instead on a phatic function of transnational interactions dependent on the market ideology of capital. Meanwhile, the formal simplification of art expression is not a new event, despite the fact that this process of mass designisation is taking place in the context of global digitalization and dissemination of public relations marketing strategies in a multicultural context. Similar inversions of spiritual culture-creating into the completely materialist optics of the creative worldview — if we consider the description of “global-local” art acts in endearing articles by engaged art critics — have occurred before, which is reflected in Foster’s important critical work Design and Crime. However, such critical assessments are silenced by the cultural industry, although the current crisis of theory and practice has entered a state of prolonged hysteresis, producing a massified phatic product and, in such a way, increasing the entropy of socio-cultural relations of nations, and at the same time exposing the inviability of global public art.

What Makes Heavy Metal ‘Heavy’?

AbstractIn this article, I raise a simple but surprisingly vexing question: What makes heavy metal heavy? We commonly describe music as “heavy,” whether as criticism or praise. But what does “heavy” mean? How is it applied as an aesthetic term? Drawing on sociological and musicological studies of heavy metal, as well as recent work on the aesthetics of rock music, I discuss the relevant musical properties of heaviness. The modest aim of this article, however, is to show the difficulty, if not impossibility, of this seemingly straightforward task. I first address the difficulties of identifying the defining features, or “Gestalt,” of heavy metal that would allow us to treat heaviness as a genre concept. Next, I discuss both the merits and the limits of analyzing heaviness in terms of an aesthetics of “noise” in rock music developed in recent philosophy of music. In the remaining sections, I consider other nonaesthetic features relevant to aesthetic judgments of heaviness and show that the term ‘heavy’ is conceptually inarticulable, if not irreducible. This, I conclude, has partly to do with the radically different, sometimes incompatible, musical properties present in the perception of musical heaviness.