Aesthetic Disinterestedness Analysis

Kant’s theory of art calls for us to view art in a way where we

Aestheticism was a popular dogma in the late 1800s that centered on the belief that art should exist for beauty alone. This doctrine is defined as an “exaggerated devotion to art, music, or poetry, with indifference to practical matters” and “the acceptance of artistic beauty and taste as a fundamental standard, ethical and other standards being secondary” (“Aestheticism,” def. 1 and 2). In Oscar Wilde’s sole novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, aestheticism is a fashionable belief accepted by society at the time. Oscar Wilde uses the moral deterioration and ultimate destruction of Dorian Gray in The Picture of Dorian Gray to emphasize the negative effects of society’s preoccupation with aesthetics and offer a moral for the reader.

Modernism is the heartbeat of culture, or as Clement Greenberg (1992:754) states, modernism involves of what “is truly alive in our culture” and it includes more than just art and literature. Western civilization began to interrogate their foundations and progressed into a self-critical society (Greenberg 1992:754). This notion began with the theories of the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804); he criticized the means itself of criticism (Greenberg 1992:754). Therefore, Greenberg (1992:754) perceived Kant as the first real Modernist.

In moving away from the objective property-based or perfectionist theories of the medieval and early modern periods to this sort of subject-based aesthetic, Kant did not intend to give up the idea that judgments of beauty are universalizable. Accordingly, much of the first part of the Critique is given to showing how one person’s reflective aesthetic judgments can be legitimately "imputed" to or expected from all properly-situated human subjects.(3) The famous "Deduction of Judgments of Taste" (§ 38) provides a sketch of this argument. Very briefly, Kant argues that since the faculties under consideration are "required for possible cognition as such," it follows that all who (through communicating with others reveal their ability to) cognize anything are susceptible to the same experience of faculties in free harmony, and to the concomitant aesthetic pleasure. As long as the subject takes himself to be conscientiously beholding the object under appropriate circumstances (e.g. without interest, prejudice, etc.) he can take his judgment of taste to imply in an "a priori" fashion that under similar circumstances other well-functioning human beings likewise will be pleased by it.(4)

As art slowly develops through the twentieth century, moving past voyeurism and historical art where it promotes passive spectatorial consumption, the role of the audience has evolved too. From the traditional historical passive visitor in perspective and panoptic spaces, art has gradually evolved into turning the spectator into an active contributor who not only engages with the work but also becomes the co-author in its creation and completion. Claire Bishop points out, “art must be directed against spectatorship, against the passivity of the masses paralysed by the spectacle of modern life”. This not only applies to art but to objects, image, stories, films etc.

This bids fair to a maxim erroneously accredited to Friedrich Nietzsche — that aesthetics, in art or science, is no longer a question of "I do my thing, you do yours." Yet, in point of fact, integrating artistic verdict with truth, prettiness, and forthrightness is, in the times we now live in, more than utterly obligatory than ever before. Not only because the US, or our world, has woken up to actuality and vowed to exterminate Frankenstein monsters that it once created, or encouraged.

This theory provoked my insight about contemporary art itself. One’s observation could be right, could be wrong, this is the etiquette beauty of art. For if one thinks about it what is the norm? We can't possibly apply our prototypes of norm towards art, because are our norms even norm? Contemporary art is a statement, a reaction, an attempt at breaking free, an expression of the issues wrapped up to define the lifestyle of today.

As exhibitions do not represent a neutral position on a subject matter then the opinion and the process by which this opinion was formed should be defined and made transparent to the viewer. Our understanding of art is for the most part prescribed, Ferguson states “the ways in which art is talked about, understood and debated are largely determined through the medium of exhibitions” (Greenberg, Reesa, Bruce W. Ferguson, and Sandy Nairne 1996, pg.180). As exhibitions seek to benefit and promote the desires and values from within this “network of interests” then we as viewers are simply told how to understand art, what is valuable and what is to be discarded. The way in which we come to understand art is laid out for us, with little room to draw our own conclusions.

Art and beauty are synonymous to one another. Vocabulary.com defines art as the expression of ideas and emotions through a physical medium, like painting, sculpture, film, dance, writing, photography, or theatre. Vocabulary.com also defines beauty as “A noun depicting an incredibly pleasing or harmonious quality or feature, beauty is hard to describe.” These definitions refer to art as a definite object, physical or metaphysical while beauty is subjective. It is open to interpretation, thus implicating, that since the two are synonymous that art is also open to individual interpretation. With Elaine Scarry’s “On Beauty and Being Just” she defends beauty from the political arguments against it but also argues that beauty does indeed press us

‘It is an empirical judgement [to say] that I perceive and judge an object with pleasure. But it is an a priori judgement [to say] that I find it beautiful, i.e. I attribute this satisfaction necessarily to everyone.’ (Kant, 1790, p. 165)

In the second section of Neale’s essay, he identifies two modes of looking: voyeuristic and fetishistic looking. Taking his cues from Mulvey, Neale explains the necessity of distance between spectator and spectacle in terms of voyeurism. Neale states that this distance “allows the spectator a degree of power over what is seen” (16). While, according to Ellis, fetishistic looking “implies the direct acknowledgement and participation of the object viewed” and “has much to do with display and the spectacle” (17). Neale states that “physical beauty is interpreted in terms of the female body,” and the female body is the “recipient of the spectators looks” (17). Meanwhile, Neale states that “the spectacle of male bodies [are] unmarked as objects

Christopher Crouch wrote “Modernism in Art, Design and Architecture” in 1999, in order to acquaint his audience to the concepts of Modernism and the Post-Modern evolution, through a concise and captivating argument, which effectively ties to the advancement of contemporary visual culture, and to the socio-political conditions in which it is composed of. Crouch investigates the diverse ways in which visual culture emulates its conceptual and physical provenance in elite, mass, and cultural practices.

A mother sits on the cold metallic examination table of her doctor’s office, feet crisscrossed and tightly held together. Her doctor walks into the room, head heavy, and breaks the news; prenatally screening has shown that the mother’s future bundle of joy has a genetic disorder, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, CAH. The mother in bewilderment asks what the course of treatment would look like and what exactly CAH is, she seeks a plan, a way to ensure the health of the child. The doctor lays out what CAH is and the implications that will be presented after birth, but sidesteps and introduces a new topic to the conversation, appearance of genitals.

In his text entitled “Modernist Painting”, Greenberg focuses on the development of painting between the 14th and 19th century and emphasizes on what distinguishes Modernist painting from previous forms of painting, particularly those of the Old Masters. Greenberg begins by relating Modernist art to Kantian philosophy claiming that, the same way Kant used reason in order to examine the limits of reason, Modernist art is when art became self critical because it uses the technique of art to draw attention to its status as art. Indeed, he explains how without this self-examination similar to that of Kant’s reflection on Philosophy, art would’ve been “assimilated to […] therapy” like religion, because

This paper is an explanatory paper by a cultured gentleman on Avant-Garde art and the challenges facing Avant-Garde. More specifically, it comes off as a rant against the bourgeois and proletariat for failing to appreciate Avant-Garde art and instead preferring to art he calls the rear-guard art or Kitsch. This work was printed by the Parisian review during fall, 1939.