Customer Reviews

Art as Experience

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As a reviewer below stated, this is a very interesting book that treats art as a means of recapturing the experience of life and trasmitting that experience to the audience. He captures a number of concepts established earlier by Leo Tolstoy in his "What is Art?" and delves deeper into them, expounding on their more practical and less esoteric uses.

Dewey, however, certainly earns his title as a pragmatist. His wording is complicated and, at times, careful. It is difficult to pin specific sayings or doctrines to him. However, once the task is completed, he has a great deal of important things to say about art and artistic experience.

Although somewhat dated in that what Dewey novelly stated long ago, we now accept as obvious, this is a great book to gain an understanding of art both as a producer and as a spectator.

The central theme is that life is an experience, and that the goal of art is to recapture that experience. Hence, a painting of a flower is only valuable in the way that it captures the essence of a flower, or the experience of viewing a flower. The viewing of a painting must also provide some of the experience of making that painting ( its process ).

If you can manage to finish the book ( the style is a bit archaic ), the experience is worth the effort.

Dewey discusses making art and viewing art are not unique activities -- that discipline, engagement and commitment are basic to art in the same way they are basic to other work.

The book undermines the notion that Art is somehow arcane and academic. It's not, the book suggests. It takes work to make art, it takes work to appreciate it, but it is a democratic sort of work, and good art stands up, even when it is not cosseted in museums or galleries.

I read this book for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of art. John Dewey in his book "Art as Experience," proves to be a modern day Aristotle. He questions the modern model of aesthetics. He situates art in the wider context; art is not a separate sphere of culture. Aristotle said art imitates or impersonates natural power of nature, thus, a technē which means something crafted by humans. Dewey says art is experience, not fundamentally different from other human experiences. Fine art is continuous of our past in culture and natural to human experiences. The capacity for technē is a natural capacity for humans. Imitation is natural. Art is embedded in natural capacity, not a special sphere. Dewey recognizes that the historical artworld model, is important and all part of the art phenomena.

Thus, Dewey refuses to isolate art as aesthetic appreciation or only as art. Art is not a separate sphere of experience. For example, the Parthenon is in situ in life of the Athenians, religion, and culture, and is not just an artistic work. Experience is shaping of a meaning. Greek works functioned as zones of reality for Dewey. Even for Plato or Aristotle did Mythos=myth never mean something false for the Greeks. To understand how myth operated in the Greek world is to understand their culture, it is not a fiction. Dewey says experience is an ordering of other experiences, sort of a plot or continuities.

Dewey's key philosophical issue is in his reaction against certain contemporary modern conceptions of art. When thinking about the Greeks Dewey calls the ancient experience a detour. Thus, in order to get over the prejudices of the modern conceptions of art we have to take what Dewey calls a "detour" to look at earlier modes, not to simply return to them, but to try to see them differently. Thus, Dewey's idea of "experience," which had a practical meaning and not just a theoretical or cognitive base, so he wants to use these ideas to reorient how we would be thinking about art and artworks. Again, a key target in this is subjectivity. The modern emphasis on subjectivity, that art is an experience of the subject. However, that idea screens out the responsiveness of the self to a world. As Martin Heidegger would put it ancient works are world disclosive, they are not simply subjective appreciations or experiences. Thus, what I like about Dewey is that he gets down to this very hardscrabble concrete reality on how art all ties in with the early "experiences," whether it is early cultures or early childhood.

Dewy makes an interesting point that art in modern times has become this refined precious tier, "art is put on a pedestal," out of its cultural context. Dewey is very astute when he says, "this is capitalism" that differentiates art and sets the standard. Thus, Dewey sees that the common people wind up turning to movies, jazz, and comics as art. Dewey observes that capitalism is the modern turn to subjectivity. Dewey looks for a common thread between practical arts and crafts and fine art. One he sees is technical mastery for both is essential. Art as an experience is an accomplishment. Not bothered by fundamental gap between art and craft. A craft work can have aesthetic features, therefore you can experience a pot as art, and it is useful as well. The question then becomes, "what is the difference? This interpretation is the model of multiple ways of seeing. Therefore, it is possible to simply shift within one object to do a shift between an artworks utility and its aesthetic qualities. Now whether or not the craftwork that has aesthetic qualities could rise to the level of a fine artwork that is another question. However, it certainly is the case that you can have one in the same object with both technical and utilitarian features, and artistic qualities. Dewey points out that this is the reason why we tend to value most of these found objects from ancient cultures, because they are interesting and not just because they are old. We do this in our homes, we don't just buy a table, we buy one that looks interesting.

Dewey defines experience. "Experience is the result, the sign, and the reward of that interaction of organism and environment, which when it is carried to the full, is a transformation of interaction into participation and communication." This is a very Aristotelian thought.

I recommend this work for anyone interested in philosophy, and philosophy of art.

It's a little thick, but you have to consider it's based off of his lectures. From the point of view from a philosopher, he gives insight into things that we as artists might already know, but have never realized, and even other stuff that's impossible to see that only someone from the outside could see.

John Dewey was an American philosopher of the late 19th and 20th century best known for his espousal of a "pragmatic" philosophy and progressive political ideas, but he also wrote about Art. Art as Experience is not a book per se, but rather a rewriting of a series of lectures he gave on the "philosophy of art" at Harvard in 1931.

Dewey's pragmatic philosophy emphasizing social relations between humans was hugely influential in social sciences like sociology, where he clearly inspired writers like Erving Goffman and anthropology (see Roy Rappaport) His influence has been less notable in the field of aesthetics and art theory, and that's a shame, because in my mind, Art as Experience is the best book about the role of Art in human experience ever written.

Art as Experience starts from the observation that there can be no Art without an Audience- the two are intertwined because humans are social creatures and none of us exist in isolation. This statement about the nature of Art stands in direct contradiction to the two main schools of art philosophy: Classicism, which holds that Beauty is an objective truth that exists outside the experience of any single person and Romanticism, which postulates that the Artist stands alone in the world, without reference to his human environment.

Much of the argument of Art as Experience takes the form of the language philosophy strategy of being extremely precise about the terms being used. This gives the actual text of Art as Experience a tedious feel, even as the ideas expressed dance and sparkle with the light of discovery. Dewey works his way through defining, having an experience, the act of expression, the expressive object, substance and form, etc. I won't lie- it's dry. Boring even.

BUT, it's a book that every art critic, blogger, etc should be forced- AT GUN POINT- to read. That's because to read Dewey is to understand that Artists and Critics are on the same side- they both care and appreciate art and artistic products, and they both want to share their love/interest in art with a larger audience.

This idea of critics attacking Artists for some real or perceived "failure" is revealed by Dewey to actually be a failure of the critic- for failing to understand that his or her own experience is intruding on their understanding of the subject of their criticism. It's a wonder to be that Dewey's Art as Experience isn't more commonly read and loved by Artists and Art critics, but I suppose he only has himself to blame- that man was not a prose stylist.

I would say that if you were going to read a single book on the subject of the "Philosophy of Art" it would be this book- and that there isn't another book you need to read after this one. Particularly, while reading Art As Experience I thought of conversations I had with my friend/business partner- Brandon Welchez of the Crocodiles. Brandon often espoused the opinion- common to Artists that "Writing about music is like dancing about Architecture- i.e. pointless" and my response was basically, "Um..." but now I would reply that when a critic really understand the purpose of writing about art- to help clarify, illuminate and publicize worthy artists- and sharing one's interest in a specific art and artists with the wider world- art criticism can help to create an appreciative audience for a specific artist or art product where none existed before.

Dewey is the inspiration behind my PhD so as an owner of his collected works in print and electronic form I can offer a few words on Art as Experience. The 1934 first edition is a handsome object in itself. Written by a mature Dewey, this book is about art in its broadest sense, and experience in its particular sense as our primary way of engaging the world. It is a book about the wonder of experiencing life in context. And that is what makes it as relevant today as it was in 1934 - both eras are marked by significant socio-cultural development, received at such a pace it is hard to keep pace or pause to reflect. When was the last time you stopped think about the meaning of experiences in your life? Have you ever thought of yourself and the people near you as the shape and form of expression in this world?

This book by Dewey will take you to many places well worth travelling to in print and in person. Read it alongside Wayne Booth's 'Writing as Thinking: Thinking as Writing' The Harper and Row Rhetoric: Writing as Thinking, Thinking as Writing and let Dewey, through his journey with Vernon Lee's ideas on page 101-102, in the chapter entitled 'The Expressive Object' inspire you to explore the rich writing of Violet Paget (aka Vernon Lee, The Beautiful). The high point of the book is the discussion of empathy. Here is Dewey quoting Lee, which is in tune with the sense Dewey is talking about in his book The Beautiful: An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics (Classic Reprint):

"The various and variously combined dramas enacted by the lines and curves and angles take place not in the marble or pigment embodying the contemplated shapes, but solely in ourselves..."

This book is a good read. I needed this book for as reference for my thesis paper. I can identify with a lot of Dewey's ideas.

This book is invaluable for artists and non-artists alike, and it is definitely a primer for all serious practitioners! From the first sentence of Chapter One, you know you about to take a journey through one of the most thought provoking and serious discussions of art to be published: "By one of the ironic perversities that often attend the course of affairs, the existence of the works of art upon which formation of an esthetic theory depends has become an obstruction to theory about them."

I read this book for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of art. John Dewey in his book "Art as Experience," proves to be a modern day Aristotle. He questions the modern model of aesthetics. He situates art in the wider context; art is not a separate sphere of culture. Aristotle said art imitates or impersonates natural power of nature, thus, a technē which means something crafted by humans. Dewey says art is experience, not fundamentally different from other human experiences. Fine art is continuous of our past in culture and natural to human experiences. The capacity for technē is a natural capacity for humans. Imitation is natural. Art is embedded in natural capacity, not a special sphere. Dewey recognizes that the historical artworld model, is important and all part of the art phenomena.

Thus, Dewey refuses to isolate art as aesthetic appreciation or only as art. Art is not a separate sphere of experience. For example, the Parthenon is in situ in life of the Athenians, religion, and culture, and is not just an artistic work. Experience is shaping of a meaning. Greek works functioned as zones of reality for Dewey. Even for Plato or Aristotle did Mythos=myth never mean something false for the Greeks. To understand how myth operated in the Greek world is to understand their culture, it is not a fiction. Dewey says experience is an ordering of other experiences, sort of a plot or continuities.

Dewey's key philosophical issue is in his reaction against certain contemporary modern conceptions of art. When thinking about the Greeks Dewey calls the ancient experience a detour. Thus, in order to get over the prejudices of the modern conceptions of art we have to take what Dewey calls a "detour" to look at earlier modes, not to simply return to them, but to try to see them differently. Thus, Dewey's idea of "experience," which had a practical meaning and not just a theoretical or cognitive base, so he wants to use these ideas to reorient how we would be thinking about art and artworks. Again, a key target in this is subjectivity. The modern emphasis on subjectivity, that art is an experience of the subject. However, that idea screens out the responsiveness of the self to a world. As Martin Heidegger would put it ancient works are world disclosive, they are not simply subjective appreciations or experiences. Thus, what I like about Dewey is that he gets down to this very hardscrabble concrete reality on how art all ties in with the early "experiences," whether it is early cultures or early childhood.

Dewy makes an interesting point that art in modern times has become this refined precious tier, "art is put on a pedestal," out of its cultural context. Dewey is very astute when he says, "this is capitalism" that differentiates art and sets the standard. Thus, Dewey sees that the common people wind up turning to movies, jazz, and comics as art. Dewey observes that capitalism is the modern turn to subjectivity. Dewey looks for a common thread between practical arts and crafts and fine art. One he sees is technical mastery for both is essential. Art as an experience is an accomplishment. Not bothered by fundamental gap between art and craft. A craft work can have aesthetic features, therefore you can experience a pot as art, and it is useful as well. The question then becomes, "what is the difference? This interpretation is the model of multiple ways of seeing. Therefore, it is possible to simply shift within one object to do a shift between an artworks utility and its aesthetic qualities. Now whether or not the craftwork that has aesthetic qualities could rise to the level of a fine artwork that is another question. However, it certainly is the case that you can have one in the same object with both technical and utilitarian features, and artistic qualities. Dewey points out that this is the reason why we tend to value most of these found objects from ancient cultures, because they are interesting and not just because they are old. We do this in our homes, we don't just buy a table, we buy one that looks interesting.

Dewey defines experience. "Experience is the result, the sign, and the reward of that interaction of organism and environment, which when it is carried to the full, is a transformation of interaction into participation and communication." This is a very Aristotelian thought.

I recommend this work for anyone interested in philosophy, and philosophy of art.