Jerome Stolnitz “The Aesthetic Attitude” 1960
1) Aesthetic perception will be explained in terms of aesthetic attitude which directs and controls
perception.
a) We only pay attention to some things.
b) Humans are not passive receptors.
c) Attention is dictated by purposes.
2) Attention prepares us to respond, and keeps us from being distracted.
3) An attitude can be positive or negative, positive attitude will sustain the object and continue to
perceive it.
4) Attitude organizes and directs our awareness.
5) We usually see things in terms of their usefulness for our purposes.
a) Objects used as signs, for example, are only guides for future behavior.
b) Our attitude is practical when we perceive things as means to some goal.
6) Thus our perception of a thing is usually limited and fragmentary.
a) Usually perception is identification of the kind of thing.
b) The adult recognizes almost at once.
7) It is astonishing how little of the world we see.
a) We hardly see the things themselves.
b) We need to do this for the work of the world.
c) Other societies differ from our own in this respect.
8) Nowhere is perception exclusively practical.
a) Sometimes we pay attention for the sake of enjoying the way it looks, sounds, feels.
b) This is the aesthetic attitude.
c) Being interested in a play, novel, music.
d) And in practical perception, for example in the tourist’s holiday glance.
9) Definition only a point of departure.
a) “disinterested and sympathetic attention to and contemplation of any object of awareness
whatever, for its own sake alone.”
b) The truth of the account must be found in the total analysis.
10) “disinterested” do not look at the object out of concern for any ulterior purpose
a) The only purpose is that of having the experience.
b) Our interest comes to rest on the object alone, not on some future event, like the dinner bell
[not bed!]
11) Many other interests, for example owning a work [not world!] of art for pride or prestige.
a) Another non-aesthetic interest is cognitive, in gaining knowledge, for example a meteorologist
on clouds or a sociologist on art [notice possible conflict with Freeland and with Parker and
Pollock]
b) Another case: percipient is interested in passing judgment: so the attitude of the art critic is
significantly different from the aesthetic judgment [this is highly controversial]
12) All non-aesthetic interests involve eye to the origins and consequences of the object.
a) The aesthetic attitude isolates the object and focuses on it, i.e. the look of the rocks.
b) The object is not then seen in a fragmentary or passing manner. [interesting]
c) Painting as covering a wall stain vs. seeing it as a delightful pattern of colors and forms [Clive
Bell]
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13) For the aesthetic attitude things are not classified or judged.
a) They are in themselves pleasant or exciting to look at.
b) So “disinterested” is not being “un-interested”
c) We can be intensely absorbed, and so even more interested than in practical life.
14) “Sympathetic” prepare ourselves to respond to the object
a) Relish its individual quality, whether charming, stirring, vivid..
b) Must accept the object on its own terms.
c) Set ourselves to accept what it may offer.
d) Must inhibit unsympathetic responses, i.e. rejecting a novel because it conflicts with our way of
thinking.
e) Interposing moral responses of our own alien to the work disrupts the aesthetic attitude.
15) This is not easy: we have deep-seated values as well as prejudices.
i) We may be biased against the artist or his native country.
ii) The problem may be acute with contemporary art.
iii) Milton’s “On the Late Massacre..” was a protest but the questions are remote to us now.
iv) Give it a chance to show how interesting to perception it may be.
16) “attention” is not just looking or a blank cow-like stare, or simple exposure.
17) Music and novel: sitting on the edge of our chair is not passive.
a) We want to make the value of the object come fully alive.
b) We key up our capacities of imagination and emotion to respond to it.
c) Attention is a matter of degree, of intensity.
d) Experience is aesthetic only when it holds our attention.
18) Aesthetic attention is accompanied by activity.
a) It is either evoked by or required by the object.
b) This may include muscular, nervous and other feelings.
c) It is not non-aesthetic to tap ones feet to music.
d) In empathy we feel into the object.
e) Muscular response to a sculpted figure.
f) The direction of attention itself is activity.
g) Walking around the sculpture or through the cathedral.
19) To savor fully we must attend frequently to complex and subtle details [Hume]
a) Discrimination
b) Seeing all that is of significance in the work: not seeing all symphonic work as the same, for
example
c) The value of an able teacher, as in literature.
d) Often requires knowledge about allusions or symbols in the work, repeated experience of the
work, even technical training in the art form.
20) Discriminating attention: the work comes alive
a) Keep in mind the chief themes of the movement of a symphony, how developed and altered,
gain in experience [News Hour on Porgy and Bess]
b) Our experience then has greater richness and unity.
c) Without discrimination the listener pays attention to only scattered passages, and is not aware
of the structure: his experience is only intermittently aesthetic.
d) Developing the capacity for appreciating richness and profundity.
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e) Keep us from drowsy revery and nervous thrills.
21) Aesthetic attention is alert and vigorous
a) Contemplation: danger of seeing it as aloof unexcited gaze.
b) The word sums up our discussion, direction to the object in its own right, not concerned to
analyze it or ask questions about it.
c) With absorption and interest.
22) Can be adopted to any object, no object is inherently unaesthetic.
“Locating the Aesthetic” Marcia Muelder Eaton 1989
1. Stories of artists who are ahead of [or behind] their times. Intarsia, decline of interest from 15th
century Florence.
2. We are seeing changes in what is valued for aesthetic appreciation.
a. What properties matter aesthetically is changing too.
b. Formal properties were previously seen as sole vehicles of aesthetic value.
c. References to subject matter or artist’s life etc. seen as a fallacy [Beardsley]
d. Attention to what is extrinsic viewed as polluting the experience.
3. Many critics attack literary discussions of painting.
a. Elinor Fuchs: a new kind of world in which there is no longer anything out there to
represent.
b. Trochtenburg: suppression of what is denoted allowed photography to be art.
4. This suppression of subject matter is no longer characteristic of all or most critics.
a. Impressionist painting are no longer just seen as studies in light.
b. We can read it with interest in subject matter says Bretell.
5. John Berger: moves away from formalist discussion of art.
a. The medium is aesthetically important, but for ideological reasons.
b. Oil allowed painters to depict the lavishness of possessions.
c. Hals: his figure may see life as absurd.
d. We are able to talk of characters and artist’s intentions.
e. Berger’s descriptions are more interesting to most people than formalist ones.
6. Eaton: subject matter is truly an aesthetic property [?]
a. Theorists have considered it so in some periods and not in others.
b. Might lead to believe that “aesthetic” cannot be defined: no necessary and sufficient
conditions.
c. What is aesthetic remains constant though specific features of what is considered
aesthetically valuable may change.
7. Raymond Williams: changes when people learned to read, Joseph Epstein: changes with
Freudian theories; social changes bring changes in conceptions of art and the aesthetic.
a. Arnold Hauser: no changes in the Middle Ages
b. William Fleming: interest in different properties in other cultures. The Romans wanted
grandeur and instruments bigger: louder our notes the more glorious
c. Being big and loud were a source of delight.
8. Wedding feast in Normandy in eleventh century: uproar in the hall
a. Naming an aesthetic property.
b. Delight taken in features in the performance.
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9. Veronese: festivity, conviviality of large social gatherings and love of sumptuous surroundings
a. His note on a painting.
10. 17th century Holland: patrons wanted to say “my rug”: part of a positive aesthetic description.
a. Pointing out a lack of standard icons would describe a feature in his paintings worth
attending to.
11. What is special about the aesthetic?
a. The particular features pointed to (big, loud, shows Christ, shows a rug) may vary over
space and time, but what we do when our experience is aesthetic retains a common
element.
b. We attend to intrinsic features in the belief that this attention will be rewarded with
delight: a mark of the aesthetic generally.
12. Relevance for artists
a. We delight in creative skills of artists.
i. For example we delight in imitation.
b. We value not only what we see but how it came about.
c. A legitimate part of what we value lies beyond the created object, i.e. in artistry.
d. But even then the appreciation is directed back to the object.
13. There are different claims to certify an artist’s genius: to say that something took a week or
even several months draws attention to particular properties of particular objects: we value
things done quickly and things done meticulously.
14. Something may look as though done quickly, but is not: Mondrian in months: only looking
carefully with that knowledge yields aesthetic appreciation.
15. Stories about artist abilities: marked for success vs. fate or being in the right place at the right
time.
a. The legend I ascendancy shows the cultural interest of time.
b. Connects what the artist did with what is valued in the object.
c. People valued the sponge-throwing incident as they came to value invention in art.
16. David Summers: the Cinquecento valued invention over imitation.
a. What is of value comes by imagination.
b. Artistic ecstasy is appreciated.
c. Aretino: the unfinished is highly appreciated, e.g. the slaves by Michelangelo.
d. Unfinishedness is an intrinsic property worthy of attention
17. Legends and myths about artists reflect the milieu of the viewer
18. Dichotomy of artist as faithful copier of nature vs. as surpasser of nature
a. Zeuxis story relates to the lifelike illusionistic qualities
b. Story of the boy.
c. What is constant is that the stories we choose to tell are tied to features we find
delightful.
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