Art Criticism and Aesthetics, Part 4

Question 1: Aldous Huxley, writing in “The Art of Seeing” characterized the act of seeing as consisting of three simultaneous activities – sensing, selecting and perceiving. Explain.

Answer 1: Huxley theorized that sensing occurs in the eyes and nervous system and that it does not vary substantially among normal, healthy individuals. Alternatively, our selecting and perceiving faculties exhibit a much greater variance.Selecting is the process of narrowing one’s focus to a single area or part of the total visual field. Through psychological processing the eye is able to record its clearest images at the focal point of the retina. The individual’s own decision and interest allow for the discrimination of something within the visual field more clearly than other elements.Perceiving is the mental activity that occurs between sensation and thought that gives meaning and significance to sensation. Visual perception is sensing which occurs as a function of the structure of the eye.Memory can affect perception. The way the world appears to the individual is a factor both of sensing and recollection. When sensing the familiar, it’s thought that recollection plays an even larger role than sensing.

There are lots of good resources about Aesthetics that you can find available.

Question 2: Author Herbert Read developed a theory of modes of perception that correspond to the four basic types of mental activity (thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition). These are realism, super-realism, expressionism and constructivism. Provide a brief overview of each.

Answer 2: Realism – occurs when the artist perceives his world and the objects it contains as objective facts and attempts to render what is seen as exactly as possible, although sometimes through his own stylistic lens; Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Raphael and Botticelli should be considered realism artistsSuper-realism – occurs when objects of visual origin are rendered in an independent reality sometimes creating ‘unreal’ relationships or juxtapositions; Dali, Chagall, Rene’ Magritte and Georgia O’Keefe often employed the technique of super-realism Expressionism – involves the projection of one’s own consciousness into the object of perception creating a personal and subjective rendition; Van Gogh, Matthias Grunewald and Seymour Lipton used the expressive technique.Constructivism – this method forsakes imitative elements in favor of attempting to evoke an aesthetic response on the part of the viewer by manipulating the formal relationships of space, mass, color and sound; Pollack, Jose’ de Rivera, Reinhardt and Albers are or were constructivist artists.

Question 3: Explain the classically accepted explanation for differentiating craft from fine art and the ideology behind a more softened view on the part of contemporary critics.

Answer 3: A craft, by definition, is a technique or skill considered apart from the aesthetic aspect of a creation often involving a constructive manual activity. The craftsman is rendering a finished product and is not engaging in an active process of aesthetic expression. Over the last century, an attempt at such a sharp distinction has been recognized as largely futile – “craft” as it were – essentially the construction of practical objects with artistic embellishment (jewelry, kitchenware, etc.) has been found to evoke comparable aesthetic response on the part of the viewer.Ancient processes continue to see widespread use by modern craftsmen. Many have leveraged them to produce works of impressive individuality.Today, the term “Fine Art” is still frequently reserved for the classic modes of painting, architecture and sculpture.Ultimately, defining and differentiating art is one of common opinion and subjectivity.

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