Reading Guide for Dewey,
“Art as Experience”
John Dewey, philosopher, educator, and activist, had a
major influence on many aspects of American life. As
a philosopher, he is one of the small number of people
responsible for the development of the philosophy
called Pragmatism. Like Nietzsche he made art central
to his philosophy. His philosophy of the arts is
sketched in this essay.
Art, art works, and experience
 When
we think of art we tend to think of art
objects, says Dewey.
 But this is a mistake. The real art is the
experience of making or encountering the
object.
 When the work is separated from these
experiences, it is separated from life.
 A true work of art is a refined and
intensified form of experience.
Question
 Does
Dewey think that every individual
unified experience counts as art? Or is it
only some of them that do? See if you can
find the answer to this question as you
read.
Experience in general, and having
an experience

Experience occurs continuously; but only some
experiences are complete and unified. When
“the material experienced has run its course to
fulfillment”, then we might say, “That was an
experience.”
 “In such experiences, every successive part
flows freely, without seam and without unfilled
blanks, into what ensues” (p. 206). What do you
think of this description of the experience of
making or encountering a work of art?
Question
 Do
you agree that every individual
experience is unified by “a single quality
that pervades the entire experience in
spite of the variation of its constituent
parts”? Dewey says this on page 206.
Think about some experiences of art, and
some other experiences you have had,
and see if this claim rings true.
Art making and Aesthetic
experience

The artist is a producer; the product is
experienced by the perceiver. But the art maker
must also be governed by this experience. If
not, the art is cold and dead.
 “Art denotes a process of doing or making.”
This, says Dewey, is why “the dictionaries
usually define it in terms of skilled action, ability
in execution” (is this possibly backwards? Since
maybe there were arts before there was what we
call Art.)
Art making and aesthetic
experience (cont.)
 So
art unifies “doing and undergoing”.
“The artist embodies in himself the attitude
of the perceiver while he works.”
 (But the perceiver of what? Of a
message? Of the exercise of skill? Of
beauty, or some other property? Maybe
even usefulness or efficiency?)
The Expressive Objective (p. 208)

Dewey mentions two mistakes one can make
when thinking about the work of art as an
expression. The first is to think of it as simply
expressing the maker’s emotions; the second is
to think of its expressive qualities independent of
the fact that someone is expressing something
by means of the object.
 Does Dewey avoid making these mistakes
himself? In what way does he think a work of art
is expressive?
The expressive object (continued)



Now Dewey goes on to distinguish extrinsic from
inherent meaning.
Extrinsic meaning is the kind of meaning that words and
mathematical symbols have. It is arbitrary; by a
conventional assignment, “dog” stands for a dog. But it
could just as well stand for a cat or a car. There is
nothing in the letters or the sounds that connects them
with a canine (as “bow-wow” might, if that were the word
for dog).
Inherent meaning is the kind that art works have. It is
built-in; it flows from the nature of the thing. E.g. a flower,
a snarling mouth, an embrace, a scream, even a jagged
line.
The expressive object (cont.)
 Do
you agree that all art works have
meaning in this second sense? What
about an abstract sculpture? A Calder
mobile, like the one hanging in the main
hall of the Philadelphia Museum of Art?
What about a carefully crafted teacup?
Substance and form

Dewey emphasizes that substance and form
always come together. He also emphasizes that
“objects of art are a language.” As with language
itself, the public meaning attached to the
medium means that the work can move beyond
the intent of the maker. Dewey quotes Matisse,
who said “When a painting is finished, it is like a
new-born child. The artist himself must have
time for understanding it.” (p. 211)
 The artist “assimilates [common] material in a
distinctive way to reissue it into the public world
in a form that builds a new object” (p. 212)
Substance and form
 The
material for art can be anything at all;
and there is no limit on the kinds of form
that can characterize it, either. Rather,
“form marks a way of envisaging, of
feeling and of presenting experienced
matter so that it most readily and
effectively becomes material for the
construction of adequate experience on
the part of those less gifted than the
original creator (p. 213)”
Substance and form (cont.)


Note, bottom of p. 212, Dewey refines his view: the
experienced object, not the object by itself, is the art
work. “A work of art no matter how old and classic is
actually, not just potentially, a work of art only when it
lives in some individualized experience….[It] is recreated
every time it is esthetically experienced.”
This means that works necessarily change through time,
because it’s impossible for us to experience the
Parthenon, for example, in the way that an ancient
Athenian would have experienced that building when it
was first made (p. 213).
Substance and form (cont.)

Dewey gives an argument (bottom p. 213) that
one “undefined pervasive quality of an
experience” binds it together and makes it a
whole work of art. What evidence does he give
for this conclusion. Do you think the evidence
proves the conclusion?
 What is the relationship between the unity of
some particular experience and the unity of
experience in general? Think about Dewey’s
comments on madness and on the meaning of
art, (top to middle p. 214) and see what you
make of them.
The common substance of the arts
 Notice
Dewey’s comments (top of p. 216)
about art media, means which are
incorporated in the end result rather than
being mere means to achieving it. “Media
and esthetic effect are completely fused.”
Does this seem right to you, that the
means and the end product are always
integrated in a work of art?
The common substance of the arts
(cont.)
Dewey goes on to say that “Sensitivity to a
medium as a medium is the very heart of all
artistic creation and esthetic perception” (p.
217).
 Think carefully about this. It could mean that
“sensitivity to a medium as medium”
substantially defines what art is, or that it is one
(though not the only) defining characteristic of
art. Is either of these claims true?

The challenge to philosophy

P. 218, last paragraph and following: Dewey
comes closest here to giving a definition of what
distinguishes art from other things. The work of
art, he says, works by imagination. It physically
embodies an imaginative assembly of meanings,
and challenges the perceiver to a similar
imaginative assembly of meanings.
 Finally (p. 219), Dewey indicates why he sees
philosophy of art as central to all philosophy.
Aesthetic experience is “pure experience”. If
you want to understand experience, look to the
experience that is art.
A challenge to budding
philosophers

Write out what you think are the central things
Dewey is saying about the arts and aesthetic
experience.
 Ask whether what Dewey has defined describes
and captures the essence of some obvious
examples (making or looking at a painting, a
musical performance, a dance). Ask how his
description/definition squares with some less
obvious examples (throwing a pot, preparing a
gourmet meal).
Challenge to budding philosophers
(cont.)
Does Dewey’s general approach to the arts
appeal to you? Do you think it is basically right?
 Are there any details of his approach that you
think need to be refined or corrected?
 If you accept Dewey’s views, which of the views
we’ve looked at so far would you have to reject,
if any?
 How would you compare Dewey’s approach to
that of Larry Shiner?
