Aesthetics

Fine . . . . An inflection . . . . The tone . . . . Broad spaciousness?

Certain weight or the depth of substance . . . .?

The clarity of spaces in-between . . . . ?

Theory of proportion?

Ease and the absence of technical or stylistic presence?

A matter of interval and silence . . . ?

Range in tone --Clarity of hue?

Does something aesthetic have meaning . . . . Must it be deliberate or ingenuous . . . . Is it a measure?

Freshness . . . . Presence . . . . The relationship?

Is an aesthetic mostly emotional or a sensation?

Should the aesthetic experience be purely Intellectual . . . . Disciplinary?

What are the theories . . . . ?

Are forms of visual concepts an abstraction of the aesthetic? What lies in relationship to such an abstraction?

Is sentiment valid?

Something familiar?

Something new . . . . or changed?

Must an aesthetic be formally addressed as a Principle. Maybe it is a matter of how something is communicated? Maybe this aesthetic or communication is achieved through strict principles of relationship?

Is it something predominating within materials and processes - the handling of materials? Perhaps an aesthetic denotation is applied through highly technical and synthetic materials and procedures--a technical revolution?

Or is it the process . . . . how it is achieved?

How are the aesthetic qualities specific to traditional disciplines --in ceramics --in ancient cylindrical seals --in Chinese landscape painting --in illuminated manuscripts?

There must be many causes or orientations or motivations . . . . in personal, conceptual, theoretical, social, cultural, traditional, historic works . . . . Geographic. Seasonal.

Does that diminish the significance of aesthetic goals or strengthen them?

What are the common denominators if any?

Does an aesthetic experience exist before or beyond particulars or a context?

What represents a change in taste? Does development occur through range of interests or focus or practice?

Are aesthetic experiences of particular use? How would the value be determined?

Practical / Functional . . . . Refined / Disciplinary . . . .

How is an aesthetic Known? Realized? Shared?

The focus here is on 'Aesthetics.'

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Developments may in this way proceed through an appreciation of the arts and art works on a very general level . . . . or . . . . through engagement in materials, processes and methods . . . . through work with visual relationships . . . . . through consideration of aesthetic theory and practice . . . . through an interpretation of a specific discipline . . . . through reference to tradition . . . . . through a review of history or attention to cultural norms or through the development of specific topics, events, or issues . . . .

C  O  N  S  I  D  E  R  A T  I  O  N  S

To perceive

Pertaining to a Sense of the Beautiful

Characterized by a Love of Beauty

Qualities - Study of Qualities

Relationship of Mind & Emotions to Sense of Beauty

Abstraction of Principles - Idea, Theory, Philosophy of what is Aesthetically Valid.

Form, Space and Vision
Aesthetic: A word with a variety of connotations concerning the whole experience of the arts.

a) It refers to that quality in a work of art which we describe as beauty or perfection of form.

b) It implies the meaningful nature of art--the feeling and thought which is aroused, whether the form be beautiful or not.

c) It alludes to the imaginative nature of artistic statements: That the "aesthetic" element springs from a deeper level of consciousness. [Collier, Graham. Form, Space & Vision, An Introduction to Drawing and Design. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1985.]

Oxford Dictionary Of Art br>Aesthetics: Term defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as 'the philosophy or theory of taste, or of the perception of the beautiful in nature and art'. It was first used about the middle of the 18th cent. by the German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-62), who applied it to the theory of the liberal arts or the science of perceptible beauty. The scope and usefulness of the term have been much discussed, and in Gwilt's Encyclopaedia of Architecture (1842), it was still described as a 'silly pedantic term' and one of 'the useless additions to nomenclature in the arts' which had been introduced by the Germans. In the 20th cent. there is no general agreement about the scope of philosophical aesthetics, but it is understood to be wider than the theory of fine art and to include the theory of natural beauty and non-perceptible (e.g. moral or intellectual) beauty in so far as these are thought to be susceptible of philosophical or scientific study. [Chilvers, Ian, Harold Osborne, and Dennis Farr, eds. Oxford Dictionary Of Art. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.]

Oxford Dictionary Of Art
Aestheticism: A term applied to various exaggerations of the doctrine that art is self-sufficient and need serve no ulterior purpose, whether moral, political, or religious. Both the doctrine and its exaggerations have found expression in the phrase 'art for art's sake' (l'art pour l'art), which was apparently first used by the French philosopher Victor Cousin (1792-1867) in his lectures on Le Vrai, le Beau et le Bien (1818, first published in 1836) at the Sorbonne. In England "art for art's sake" became the catchword of an exaggerated Aestheticism which was satirized as early as 1827 by Thomas de Quincy in his essay On Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts. The affected dandyism and extravagant cult of the beautiful that characterized the 'Aesthetic Movement' in late 19th-cent. England was brilliantly parodied by Gilbert and Sullivan in Patience (1881). In 1870's and 1880's the hyper-sensibility cultivated by certain followers of the Pre-Raphaelites obtained a sanction that was almost official in Walter Pater, who in the conclusion to The Renaissance (1873) advocated a sensibility which finds the most precious moments of life in the pursuit of sensations raised to a pitch of 'poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for art's sake'. Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) expressed the same primacy for the aesthetic experience. Reaction from the tendency to regard the artist and connoisseur as specially endowed individuals whose role was to withdraw from everyday life and remain shut off in what the critic Sainte-Beuve (1804-69) first (1n1829) called the 'Ivory Tower' came from the Arts and Crafts Movement of William Morris and Lethaby. Ruskin, despite his enthusiastic worship of beauty, threw in his weight against an art which was out of touch with common life, and his controversy with Whistler on the 'art for art's sake' doctrine has become famous. The would-be emancipation of fine art from moral standards and the common man was challenged by Tolstoy in What is Art? (1898).

The exaggerated one-sidedness of the doctrine that art may have no ulterior motive, religious, political, social, or moral, hardly survived the turn of the century, though an echo of the implied emphasis may be seen in the extreme version of the 'Formalist' doctrine advocated by Clive Bell, who maintained that the values of visual art reside solely in its formal qualities to the exclusion of subject or representation. But the more moderate form of the doctrine, in which it is held that aesthetic standards are autonomous, and that the creation and appreciation of beautiful art are 'self-rewarding' activities, has become an integral part of 20th cent. aesthetic outlook. [Chilvers, Ian, Harold Osborne, and Dennis Farr, eds. Oxford Dictionary Of Art. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.]

R  E  F  E  R  E  N  C  E  S 

Aesthetic 1. pertaining to a sense of the beautiful or to aesthetics. 2. having a sense of the beautiful or characterized by a love of beauty. 3. pertaining to, involving, or concerned with pure emotion and sensation as opposed to pure intellectuality. -n. 4. aesthetics. 5. a theory or idea of what is aesthetically valid. Also esthetic. [< NL aesthetic(us) < GK aisthétés = aisthé- (var. s. of aisthánesthai to perceive) + -tés agent suffix]