Aesthetic Value

Alan Goldman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429982170
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

This book focuses on the question of aesthetic value, using many practical examples from painting, music, and literature. Alan Goldman argues for a non-realist view of aesthetic value, showing that the personal element can never be factored out of evaluative aesthetic judgments.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

The Primacy of Value

Imagine that you are in Paris (always nice to begin a book with a pleasant thought), in the Musée d’Orsay, standing before Whistler’s famous portrait of his mother. You are moved by the quiet power of the work, feel its poignancy, and express to yourself surprise that the subdued, almost dull, gray and black colors and the stable, seemingly tranquil forms of the woman seated in profile against the partially curtained wall could have that effect. The nature of this positive evaluation of the work that you have just expressed to yourself is philosophically controversial. It is different from a straightforward judgment of fact, an empirical judgment, because, for one thing, evaluations of artworks are likely to prompt more disagreement from others than straightforward judgments of fact. Your judgment addresses the value in this painting and perhaps expresses your own taste. But although it concerns value, it is not a moral judgment; it does not concern Whistler’s behavior toward other persons (which was itself rather controversial). You have made an aesthetic judgment, and the logic of such judgments, how they are alike and different from empirical and moral statements, is a main topic of this book.

Throughout most of its history aesthetics has been concerned with judgments like yours and with the values that can be derived from the appreciation of works of art. That this branch of philosophy should address itself primarily to the evaluation and value of artworks is not surprising. Other branches of philosophy are also concerned in large part with norms or standards of evaluation, whether of claims to knowledge, sound reasoning, or right actions. But the domain of discourse about art is different because judg merits about artworks themselves are more often answers to questions about value. In other areas of discourse concern with value is not as central or direct. When we seek empirical knowledge, we try to get hooked up in the right way to independent facts or states of affairs. Although such inquiry is guided by those values it might ultimately serve, empirical judgment itself is not directly a matter of evaluation. Whether something is the case is independent of our wanting or needing it to be so. In contrast to empirical judgment, moral judgment, narrowly construed, is concerned with evaluating actions. But the primary concern here is to censure those acts that are unacceptable to the community because they are incompatible with peaceful and cooperative endeavors. Aesthetic judgments, again by contrast, typically aim to express those positive values that viewers appreciate in artworks.

If you are not a present-day philosopher, your very concept of art is probably evaluative. If you were across town in Paris at the Pompidou Center, you might well wonder whether what’s on display is really art. If you did, you would rightly dismiss as irrelevan-cies the philosopher’s recent definitions of art. According to the institutional definition, whatever is on display is necessarily art because it is deemed so in the art world.¹ According to the historical definition, whatever is intended to be viewed as art in the past was properly viewed is necessarily art, again making your question senseless.² But your question, which makes perfectly good sense, is why these objects in the Pompidou Center should be on display or should be viewed in the way the Rubens or da Vinci paintings in the Louvre deserve to be viewed. Your concept of art may be grounded in certain accepted paradigms, such as the Mona Lisa, but certainly under the assumption that these works are worthy of serious contemplation for the ways they reward such sustained attention. Only an aesthetic theory will make explicit and explain the sources of aesthetic value, but analytic philosophers often forget that the ordinary concept of art, reflected in your bewilderment at some contemporary exhibits, includes implicit reference to this sort of value or valuable experience. Whether there can be bad art (or bad fine art) is at least controversial given the ordinary concept. But even if this category were granted, genuine art should still be intended by its producers or judged by its displayers to afford valuable experience or insight to those who give it their serious attention.

Like the ordinary present-day concept, the traditional philosophical theories or definitions of art (as opposed to the more recent definitions by analytic philosophers) appealed to sources of value in artworks—representation, expression, and formal structure (all of which contribute to the value of the Whistler portrait).³ Although the theories in question assumed that their central concept referred not only to the central function but also to the primary source of value in art, they did not always meet the burden of explaining why the function in question is valuable. But if the concept of art is an evaluative concept, then there is this burden of explaining how the central features of artworks, whether representational, expressive, or formal, contribute to the values derived from contemplating and appreciating the works. For example, theories of the nature of representation and expression, which abound in contemporary aesthetics, typically try to show how artworks represent objects or express emotion. But they should also show why, if their accounts are correct, these functions of artworks are valuable. A theory of expression that holds that artworks express by arousing emotional states in audiences must indicate why audiences should want such states aroused and why other stimuli that do so should not thereby have equal artistic value. A theory that holds that artworks are expressive not when our emotions are aroused but when we can recognize analogues of emotional states in the works themselves (for example, the resignation in Mrs. Whistler’s face) should indicate why such recognition (without engagement of our emotions) should be of any value. Similarly, a theory of representation must show why mere copies of objects should have value beyond that of perceiving the objects themselves, a burden that Plato thought could not be met. And any acceptable theory of art as a whole must account for the importance of art in people’s lives, whether that importance derives from the aforementioned features of artworks taken separately or from some other source.

The pervasiveness of evaluative concepts in discourse about art is clear not just from the ordinary concept of art itself but also from the terms we typically use in describing artworks. I have had you describe Whistler’s portrait as poignant; you might also say serene, almost devout. Other works in Paris museums might be described as stirring, bold, concise, graceful, true to life; yet others (because there are so many) might be described as insipid, derivative, awkward, groping, loosely woven, and so on. Such terms obviously have an evaluative dimension: They express evaluative responses of viewers to the objective properties of the works described. In general, critics as well will pick out those properties of works that are worth attending to, those that contribute to the positive or negative values of the works. They too will use descriptive terms such as those mentioned, but they will at the same time indicate explicitly those objective properties of the works to which they are responding, so as to guide the perceptions of viewers toward greater appreciation of the works’ values.

The objective properties to which one responds when one calls a work tightly knit, poignant, true to life, subtle, or bold are once more formal, expressive, representational, and symbolic features of the work, now together with properties (referred to by such terms as ‘bold’ or ‘original’) that relate the work to prior art or artistic traditions (historical properties). This returns us to the problem of explaining how these properties evoke the evaluative responses they do, why they are sources of value for viewers of art. This, as indicated, is no mean task.

Certainly there have been suggestions in the literature of aesthetics. A theory such as Tolstoy’s, for example, which views art as a means to communicate or arouse emotions, can cite the human need to communicate feelings, the communal bonds created when emotions are shared, the elevation of spirit when these feelings are of the higher or “religious” kind,⁴ or the cathartic effect of experiencing negative emotions from artworks. Nonarousal expressivist theories can hold that we learn about our psychological natures by recognizing analogues of our emotional states in artworks. Formalist theories have tended to emphasize the pleasure derived from the contemplation of beauty or the immediate appeal of “significant form.”⁵ Suggestions regarding the value of representation have been diverse, including the instinctual enjoyment of imitation (linked to learning), the exemplification of properties that might otherwise go unnoticed and that might lead us to perceive in new ways,⁶ the insights to be gained about objects or characters from revealing representations of them, and the formalist suggestion that realistic representation creates a kind of “unity in diversity.”⁷

None of these suggestions can be developed into a complete theory of aesthetic value, a theory that indicates a value that great artworks share that is not to be readily found outside art. First, most of them point to an instrumental value of artworks; the feature of art on which they focus is seen as a means to some goal that can be achieved in other ways as well. We communicate feelings, appreciate beauty, teach about objects and persons, and learn about our psyches outside art, and we need to know how art is special in these regards. Surely, there are more direct ways to communicate emotions, for example, and better ways to study psychology. Second, if these features are valuable in the ways described, then artworks that have them should be judged by the degree to which they satisfy these descriptions. They should be better the more beautiful they are, the more lifelike their representations, the more clearly they communicate emotions, and so on. Yet many great works deliberately eschew beauty, distort their representations (Whistler’s shapes, for example, are quite flat), or communicate emotions (of the nonreligious variety) subtly and ambiguously. Third, and more obviously, many great artworks lack certain of these features altogether. If we are to find a kind of value that great works of art share, then we cannot do it by trying to construe all music as representational, for example, or all paintings as clearly communicative of particular emotions.

Nevertheless, it must be admitted that some of these features are of value in themselves in particular works and in some of the ways indicated. In the next two chapters I will have more to say about the evaluative aesthetic terms by which we typically describe artworks, the objective properties that ground their correct ascriptions, and the ways in which these properties can be separate sources of value and, more important, can contribute to the overall value of the works that instantiate them. The value of historical properties such as originality, the value of a work that derives from its influences on later works, and in general the problems created for evaluation by relations among works in historical sequences and narratives will require separate treatment in a subsequent chapter.

Interpretation

I mentioned above that critics pick out those features for description that are worth attending to, that contribute to the values of the artworks described. We can say equally that description and attention to particular properties are guided by interpretations of artworks. Critics focus on the features of works that enter their interpretations as explananda (elements to be explained) or explanans (elements of explanations). This equation suggests a theory of interpretation that will be spelled out and defended in Chapter 4.

All interpretation in any domain aims at understanding, and understanding in art and elsewhere requires explanation. To interpret a feature of a work of art is to explain why it is present there. Why, for example, did Whistler place light flecks in the dark curtains or highlight the old woman’s hand? In answering these questions an interpreter shows how these features contribute to the overall value of the work. Thus understanding a work of art is being able to appreciate its artistic values. Interpretations that produce such understanding aim to enhance the values of artworks for those audiences who follow them, whose understanding and perception are guided by them. An explanation of how some formal or representational property of a work contributes to its aesthetic value will produce understanding of why that property is present in the work, will guide attention to that property and its relations to others in the work, and will enhance appreciation of the values to which it contributes. Such are the functions of interpretations.

Since different and sometimes incompatible values can be realized by the same artworks under different interpretations, there can be incompatible but equally acceptable interpretations of the same works. A literary work such as The Turn of the Screw might afford greater psychological insight under one interpretation but be more expressive or atmospheric under another. If interpretation aimed at truth, if it were a form of empirical inquiry, then the claim of equally acceptable but incompatible interpretations would be incoherent. But interpretation instead links descriptions of artworks to their evaluations, aiming not at truth but at enhancing appreciation of the works they explain. To limit always the acceptable interpretations of an artwork to one would be to deprive audiences guided by them of potential values in the work. Such values are the goal of aesthetic appreciation.

An Overarching Value

Interpretations link descriptions to evaluations. Following the chapters on the description and interpretation of artworks will be a chapter on the values and evaluations at which the former aim. I hinted above that the importance of art in people’s lives might be explained by a kind of value that great artworks share across their very different media.⁸ This thesis is highly controversial, although implicitly endorsed by some of the best writings in the history of aesthetics. Many contemporary aestheticians would claim instead that an inquiry into aesthetic value should limit itself to a particular art form or era, that we should not expect the benefits derived from reading Moby Dick to be at all similar to what we might gain in the experience of listening to a Haydn symphony or viewing the Sistine Chapel.

It can be claimed more narrowly that not only each artistic medium but also each style within an art form sets its own problems and ideals that determine success or failure for works within that style. There is much truth to this claim, and I will make use of it later in discussing problems of evaluation across historical eras. Nor do I want to claim that all art shares the same values or serves the same functions. The concept is too broad for that idea to be plausible. But if the ideals and goals of specific genres are open to criticism, if it is more than an accident of history and language that various art forms are grouped together under the evaluative concept of fine arts (and if this grouping is not based on an obvious mistake such as thinking that all music is representational), if terms we use for representational, formal, and expressive properties are applied across different media, then it is not implausible that at least many great works or paradigms share a kind of value that in large part explains the importance of art for many people. This value ought to be also more or less unique to art if its importance cannot be explained by features it has in common with many other institutions and kinds of objects. Finally, an explanation of this value ought to indicate at the same time how many great works are best perceived and appreciated.

If the primary value we seek is shared by many great artworks but more or less unique to art, then some of the sources of value of particular works and forms mentioned earlier are ruled out of this category. Certain novels, for example, teach us much about history, psychology, and ethics, but their doing so is not something they share with symphonies that might equally explain the importance of both types of artworks. Likewise, the tight and well-defined structures of classical symphonies would find only loose analogues in most good novels. Since not all artworks are representational or clearly expressive of emotion, these separate sources of value for particular types of works cannot be the primary target of our present inquiry either. At the same time, they cannot be ignored as main contributors to the values of many great works. One problem, then, is how to acknowledge these value-producing features of great artworks without overemphasizing their separate contributions. I will argue that our answer lies in the ways that these separate sources of value interact in relating different elements within works. This interaction creates fully engaging and intensely significant experience of these elements and works.

Elements or parts of artworks, whether spatial, temporal, or otherwise, become significant when perceived in terms of their relations to other parts of the works. When these are related via form, representation, expression, or symbol, and when it is further recognized, for example, how form determines representation and representation determines expression in a work, all this makes for an experience or appreciation of the elements of the work that is cognitively, perceptually, and affectively very rich. Recognition of such interaction also generates a different understanding of the separate sources of value we have discussed. Visual representation, for example, can now be appreciated for the way that it allows perceivers to grasp and relate larger spatial units within paintings, facilitating appreciation of formal structure. It is also, of course, a bearer of symbolic content and method of expression.

When all our faculties are so fully absorbed in the attempt to appreciate a great work of art, it is natural for us to view the work as a separate world that attracts and demands our complete engagement. The challenge of great works to our perceptual, cognitive, and affective capacities, and their full occupation and fulfillment in meeting that challenge, removes us entirely from the real world of our practical affairs. It is in the ultimately satisfying exercise of these different mental capacities operating together to appreciate the rich relational properties of artworks that I shall argue the primary value of great works is to be found. This value of providing us alternative worlds to which we must fully attend will also explain many of the subsidiary values rightly ascribed to works of art. It also provides an alternative way to draw the distinction emphasized by some expressivist theories between art and craft.⁹ We all sing, dance, and tell stories, and many of us pursue various other crafts. What distinguishes fine works of art is not simply the degree of skill involved in their production. Nor does the distinction lie in the fact that art but not craft expresses emotion, since many works of art do not do so, at least not at all obviously. There is clearly a distinction, however, in the challenges that great works present to our various mental capacities united in their appreciation and in the pleasure or satisfaction derived from meeting those challenges.

It is common to speak of the world of a novel, the fictional world created by taking all its proposition...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 INTRODUCTION
• 2 EVALUATIVE AESTHETIC PROPERTIES
• 3 BASE PROPERTIES
• 4 INTERPRETATION AND HISTORY
• 5 EVALUATION
• Notes
• Bibliography
• About the Book and Author
• Index