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For this Discussion Board assignment, please respond to the following questions:
What in the lesson and readings did you find most intriguing?
What in them did you find most challenging?
What did you learn the most about?
Read below to answer the above questions:
We turn this week to philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952) and his aesthetics (theory of art) of the everyday. Note: unless otherwise indicated, the excerpts in this section are from Chapter One of Dewey’s Art as Experience (1934).
The continuity of aesthetic and ordinary experience
“Dewey proposes that there is a continuity between the refined experience of works of art and everyday activities and events, and in order to understand the aesthetic one must begin with the events and scenes of daily life.” (“Art as Experience,” Wikipedia) His primary task is to put into philosophical relief the need of “recovering the continuity of aesthetic experience with normal processes of living.” His concern is that the art
“somehow became isolated from the human conditions under which it was brought into being and from the human consequences it engenders in actual life experience. … Art is remitted to a separate realm, where it is cut off from that association with the materials and aims of every other form of human effort, undergoing, and achievement.”
The task, Dewey writes, “is to restore continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute experience.”
Objects of such scale as cathedrals and as small as domestic utensils and furnishings that we now consider and revere as worthy of preservation as or in museums were, “in their own time and place … enhancements of the process of everyday life. … They were part of the significant life of an organized community.”
Consider the example of the Parthenon, the Temple of Athena on the Acropolis in Greece (follow this LINK for information on the Parthenon). There, architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry were a single manifold in service of religion and religious experience. The temple houses the monumental sculptural representation of the goddess, Athena. The sculpture was given life with vibrant paint. The congregation gathered before her and were galvanized as a community in music and hymn. This was significant since, aside from festival days, citizens of Athens were separated each in their own civic corner of specialized labor. The occasional gathering at the temple (four times a year) served as a periodic reminder of their common bond and the justification of the sufferings of separation for the sake of labor, for the sake, that is, of providing the goods upon which we mutually depend to satisfy our basic needs but are unable to supply of our own accord – food, clothing, shelter – at least not in any degree of excellence.
Consider also the continuity of aesthetic and ordinary experience in Balinese culture. (The following excerpt is from “Balinese Culture and Art”)
“Bali is arguably one of the world’s most artistic culture. The Balinese are skillful painters, musicians, flower arrangers, wood carvers, dancers and weavers. In Bali sometimes it seems like everyone is an artist but the notion of art for art’s sake and the idea of an artist was only recently introduced. There are no words in the Balinese language for art and artist until they were brought to the island by Westerners. This is partly because art is so infused into everyday life that no one had ever thought of making a distinction between the two. A lot of what Westerners consider art is produced for temples and ceremonies. Artists are often farmers or people with other jobs, who don’t consider their artistic skills to be anything special. Painters generally don’t sign their works. Artistic, religious and ritualistic life are often all intertwined.”
These creative expressions of communal experience would not “retain their significant character” were they “torn from this setting” as isolated works of art.
“Their segregation from the common life reflects the fact that they are not part of a native and spontaneous culture. …As works of art have lost their indigenous status, they have acquired a new one – that of being specimens of fine art and nothing else. … Objects that were in the past valid and significant because of their place in the life of a community now function in isolation from the conditions of their origin. By that fact they are also set apart from common experience, and serve as insignia of taste and certificates of special culture.”
Industrialization and the Arts
Now, let’s look at the contemporary condition of industrialization in relation to the arts. “Because of changes in industrial conditions the artist has been pushed to one side from the main streams of active interest. …He is less integrated than formerly in the normal flow of social services.” Because of this a
“peculiar aesthetic ‘individualism’ results. Artists find it incumbent upon them to betake themselves to their work as an isolated means of ‘self-expression.’ In order not to cater to the trend of economic forces, they often feel obliged to exaggerate their separateness to the point of eccentricity. Consequently artistic products take on to a still greater degree the air of something independent and esoteric. … Put the action of all such forces together, and the conditions … create a chasm between ordinary and aesthetic experience.”
Art, Design, and Craft
Dewey proposes that “the work of art develops and accentuates what is characteristically valuable in things of everyday enjoyment.” We see this at work in the Bauhaus, an art, design, and craft school “founded in 1919 in the city of Weimar by German architect Walter Gropius (1883–1969).” The “core objective was a radical concept: to reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of all the arts. Gropius explained this vision for a union of art and design in the Proclamation of the Bauhaus (1919), which described a utopian craft guild combining architecture, sculpture, and painting into a single creative expression. Gropius developed a craft-based curriculum that would turn out artisans and designers capable of creating useful and beautiful objects appropriate to this new system of living.” “The Bauhaus, 1919–1933”
Let’s have a look at some of these useful and beautiful objects. Please click on the links provided below to view these objects.
Marianne Brandt, Tea Infuser and Strainer
Anni Albers, Textiles (various)
William Wagefeld, “Kubus” Stacking Containers”
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “MR” Armchair
It is the male members of the Bauhaus – Josef Albers, László Moholy-Nagy, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and others – who have historically received most of the attention for work undertaken at the institution. Recognition of the work of female members, though late in coming, has been well-documented, as is evident in the articles below.
“The Women of the Bauhaus”
Artists / Bauhaus / Women
For more information about design, a major component of the Bauhaus school, click of this LINK for optional reading. This article is also provided in the Resources and Readings section above.
The Ordinary Object
Let’s also take a moment to consider the ordinary object. The ordinary object is not a mere object but also a sign signifying a cultural, historical, and poetic depth. Consider the history of the humble suitcase. (The following excerpts are from “The History of the Humble Suitcase,” Smithsonian Magazine)
“Most people care about containers much less than they care about the things containers contain—the pairs of pants, the paperback books, the miniature bottles of shampoo. But the history of the suitcase spans every major transportation revolution since the steamship. And this means that suitcases carry a lot more than spare socks and underwear—they carry in their design a subtle history of human movement.
“[The suitcase is also] a literary symbol for both mobility and mystery.
“1969: the year that set records for the most hijackings in a year, with an astonishing 82—a fact which contributed to increasingly strict baggage checks that funneled passengers through longer lines on the way to centralized security checkpoints.
”Whereas formerly luggage would be handled by porters and be loaded or unloaded at points convenient to the street, the large terminals of today, particularly air terminals, have increased the difficulty of baggage handling. Thus, it is often necessary for a passenger to handle his own baggage in an air, rail, or bus terminal. Further, where the passenger does handle his own luggage, he is often required to walk very great distances.”
Consider also the poetic depth of such a suitcase. (The following excerpt is from “The Suitcase” by Francis Ponge in Selected Poems)
“My suitcase accompanies me to the Vanoise mountains and already its nickleplate shines and its think leather exhales. I handle it, I caress its back, its neckline and flat surface. For this chest resembles a book of full of a treasure of white sheets: my jockey shorts, my favorite reading and my most simple kit, yes, this chest like a book is also like a horse, faithful against my legs, which I saddle, I harness, lay on a little bench, saddle and strap, strap and girdle or ungirdle in the proverbial hotel room. Yes, for the modern traveler his suitcase remains like the remains of a good horse.”
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