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Aesthetics
 

Aesthetics, esthetics or æsthetics is both the study of beauty and a term that denotes those properties of an entity that appeal to the senses.

Aesthetics is also the domain of philosophy that ponders art and such qualities as beauty, sublimity, and even ugliness and dissonance. An aesthetic is the concept of a particular school of philosophy that appraises art, beauty, and associated concepts by certain standards (e.g., the aesthetic of minimalism).

The word aesthetics was not widely used in English until the beginning of the 19th Century, as referenced by J. H. Bernard's 1892 translation of Immanuel Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment. The term entered the German lexicon with the philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten.

Aesthetics in history and philosophy

Although thinkers and sages have pondered beauty and art for thousands of years, the subject of aesthetics wasn’t set apart as an independent philosophical discipline until the 18th century by German philosophers. Before this period authors viewed the study as inseparable from other main topics, such as ethics in the Western tradition and religion in the Eastern tradition.

Ancient Greece

Greek philosophers initially felt that aesthetically appealing objects were beautiful in and of themselves. Plato felt that beautiful objects incorporated proportion, harmony, and unity among their parts. Similarly, in the "Metaphysics" Aristotle found that the universal elements of beauty were order, symmetry, and definiteness.

18th and 19th century Europe

In 1750, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten published the book "Aesthetica," in which he took the term to encompass a science of sensual recognition. Baumgarten tried to create a place for this new "lower" science of aesthetics with the "higher" science of logic, so that a discussion of the beautiful would not be reduced to a mere discussion of taste ("Geschmack").

In his 1790 book Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant called Aesthetics "the science which treats of the conditions of sensuous perception". Kant emphasized beauty, taste, transcendence, and the sublime. Beautiful art might fall into the category of what we think today as pretty, pleasant, or pleasing to the eye. Sublime images on the other hand were awe-inspiring. Dramatic scenes from nature such as vast mountainscapes, the dazzling sea, or light shining through forested trees might produce an experience of the sublime. The Irish philosopher Edmund Burke also made an important contribution on the question of the sublime and beautiful. Kant insisted that aesthetic judgment is always singular, of the form "This rose is beautiful." He denied that we can reach a valid universal aesthetic judgment of the form "All objects possessing such and such qualities are beautiful."

The German Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and later French philosophers J. Cousin and Jean Charles Leveque developed an elaborate system of aesthetics regarding it as spiritual in nature. The several beautiful characteristics of an organic body (the principal ones of magnitude, unity and variety of parts, intensity of color, grace or flexibility, and correspondence to the environment) may be brought under the ideal grandeur and order of the species. These are perceived by reason to be the manifestations of an invisible vital force. Similarly the beauties of inorganic nature were to be viewed as the grand and orderly displays of an immaterial physical force. Thus all beauty was in its objective essence either spirit or unconscious force acting with fullness and in order.

Modern philosophy

The field of aesthetics has enjoyed a rebirth in recent years. Modern art -- particularly up through the 1980s -- strongly reacted against notions of beauty. Some theorists (Hal Foster) have described this as an "anti-aesthetic." Since artistic media were deconstructed and explored to their very foundational or essential elements, creating an aesthetically beautiful work was no longer the key. Instead, artists focused on conceptual questions such as 'what is art?' or 'who defines art?' For instance, the artist Joseph Beuys used materials such as heavy dark felt, dirt, logs, bones and sticks, all of which might be considered to be quite "ugly" by traditional understandings of beauty and aesthetics.

Art today might be said to be more embracing, or at least better engaged with current notions of the beautiful or sublime. The critic Clement Greenberg, whose reputation was made through his early support of the artist Jackson Pollock, produced a series of essays and lectures in the 1970's that were published posthumously in 1999 in the book "Homemade Aesthetics." In it, he provides an accessible redux of Kant's 'Critique' as well as offering a definiation of art which effectively sublates it into judgements of taste (that is to say, art is nothing but this judgement). Theorists such as Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe have discussed how the intensification of capitalism and new technologies might be developing a new notion of sublimity. Visual culture theorist Johanna Drucker proposed that contemporary artists recognize their complicity with the dominant ideologies of beauty and aesthetics, and may both critique and embrace these aesthetics simultaneously.

Aesthetics in the arts

Visual arts

Aesthetic considerations within the visual arts are usually associated with the sense of vision. A painting or sculpture however is also perceived spatially by recognized associations and context, and even to some extent by the senses of smell, hearing, and touch. The form of the work can be subject to an aesthetic as much as the content.

In painting, the aesthetic convention that we see a three-dimensional representation rather than a two-dimensional canvas is so well understood that most people do not realize that they are making an aesthetic interpretation. This notion is the basis of abstract impressionism.

Some aesthetic effects available in visual arts include variation, juxtaposition, repetition, field effects, symmetry/asymmetry, perceived mass, subliminal structure, linear dynamics, tension and repose, pattern, contrast, perspective, 3 dimensionality, movement, rhythm, unity/Gestalt, matrixiality and proportion.

Music

Music can affect our emotions, our intellect, our body and our psychology; lyrics can assuage our loneliness or incite our passions. As such, music is a powerful art form with an aesthetic appeal that is highly dependent upon the culture in which it is practiced.

Some of the aesthetic elements expressed in music include lyricism, harmony, hypnotism, emotiveness, temporal dynamics, volume dynamics, resonance, playfulness, color, subtlety, elatedness, depth, and mood (see Musical development). Aesthetics in music are highly sensitive to their context: what sounds good in modern American rock would sound terrible in the context of the early baroque age. Some people do not think so, however.

Performing arts

Performing arts appeal to our aesthetics of storytelling, grace, balance, class, timing, strength, shock, humor, costume, irony, beauty, drama, suspense, and sensuality. Whereas live stage performance is usually constrained by the physical reality at hand, film performance can further add the aesthetic elements of large-scale action, fantasy, and a complex interwoven musical score.

Literature

Encompassing poetry, short stories, novels and non-fiction, authors use a variety of techniques to appeal to our aesthetic values. Depending on the type of writing an author may employ rhythm, illustrations, structure, time shifting, juxtaposition, dualism, imagery, fantasy, suspense, analysis, humor/cynicism, and thinking aloud.

In literary aesthetics, the study of "effect" illuminates the deep structures of reading and receiving literary works. These effects may be broadly grouped by their mode of writing and the relationship that the reader assumes with time. Catharsis is the effect of dramatic completion of action in time. Kairosis is the effect of novels whose characters become integrated in time. Kenosis is the effect of lyric poetry which creates a sense of emptiness and timelessness.

Gastronomy

Although food is a basic and frequently experienced commodity, careful attention to the aesthetic possibilities of foodstuffs can turn eating into gastronomy. Chefs inspire our aesthetic enjoyment through the visual sense using color and arrangement; they inspire our senses of taste and smell using spices, diversity/contrast, anticipation, seduction, and decoration/garnishes. In regard to drinking water, there are formal criteria for aesthetic value including odour, colour, total dissolved solids and clarity. There are numerical standards in the USA for aesthetic acceptability of these parameters. .

Aesthetics in the sciences

Information technology

Aesthetics in information technology has focused upon the study of human-computer interaction and creating user-friendly devices and software applications; aesthetically pleasing "graphical user interfaces" have been shown to improve productivity. Software itself has aesthetic dimensions ("software aesthetics"), as do information-technology-mediated processes and experiences such as computer video games and virtual reality simulations. Digital culture is a distinct aesthetic to judge the appeal of digital environments such as browsers, websites, and icons, as well as visual and aural art produced exclusively with digital technologies. The notion of cyberspace has sometimes been linked to the concept of the sublime.

Mathematics

The aesthetics of mathematics are often compared with music and poetry. Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős expressed his views on the indescribable beauty of mathematics when he said "Why are numbers beautiful? It's like asking why is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony beautiful." Math appeals to the "senses" of logic, order, novelty, elegance, and discovery. Some concepts in math with specific aesthetic application include sacred ratios in Geometry, the intuitiveness of axioms, the complexity and intrigue of fractals, the solidness and regularity of polyhedra, and the serendipity of relating theorems across disciplines.

Neuroesthetics

Cognitive science has also considered aesthetics, with the advent of neuroesthetics, pioneered by Semir Zeki, which seeks to explain the prominence of great art as an embodiment of biological principles of the brain, namely that great works of art capture the essence of things just as vision and the brain capture the essentials of the world from the ever-changing stream of sensory input.

Aesthetics in engineering

Industrial design

Beyond providing functional characteristics, designers heed many aesthetic qualities to improve the marketability of manufactured products: smoothness, shininess/reflectivity, texture, pattern, curviness, color, simplicity (or usability), velocity, symmetry, naturalness, and modernism. The staff of the Design Aesthetics section focuses on design, appearance and the way people perceive products. Design Aesthetics (DA) is interested in the appearance of products; the explanation and meaning of this appearance is studied mainly in terms of social and cultural factors. The distinctive focus of the section is research and education in the field of sensory modalities in relation to product design. These fields of attention generate design baggage that enables engineers to design products, systems and services and match them to the correct field of use.

Architecture and Interior Design

Although structural integrity, cost, the naature of building materials, and the functional utility of the building contribute heavily to the design process, architects can still apply aesthetic considerations to buildings and related architectural structures. Common aesthetic design principles include ornamentation, edge delineation, texture, flow, solemnity, symmetry, color, granularity, the interaction of sunlight and shadows, transcendence, and harmony.

Interior Designers, being less constrained by structural concerns, have a wider variety of applications to appeal to aesthetics. They may employ color, color harmony, wallpaper, ornamentation, furnishings, fabrics, textures, lighting, various floor treatments, as well as adhere to aesthetic concepts such as feng-shui.

Urban life

Nearly half of mankind lives in cities; although it represents a lofty goal, planning and achieving urban aesthetics (beautification) involves a good deal of historical luck, happenstance, and indirect gestalt. Nevertheless aesthetically pleasing cities share certain traits: ethnic and cultural variety, numerous microclimates that promote a diversity of vegetation, sufficient public transportation, a range of build-out (or zoning) that creates both densely and sparsely populated areas, sanitation to foster clean streets and graffiti removal (or co-ordination), scenic neighboring geography (oceans or mountains), public spaces and events such as parks and parades, musical variety through local radio or street musicians, and enforcement of laws that abate noise, crime, and pollution.

Landscape design

Landscape designers draw upon design elements such as axis, line, landform, horizontal and vertical planes, texture, and scale to create aesthetic variation within the landscape. They may additionally make use of aesthetic elements such as pools or fountains of water, plants, seasonal variance, stonework, fragrance, exterior lighting, statues, and lawns.

Schools of aesthetics

Different schools of philosophy have different aesthetics from each other. Some of them are:

References

  • A History of Six Ideas: an Essay in Aesthetics, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1980.

See also

External links

Aesthetics | Branches of philosophy | Design | Glossary_of_rhetorical_terms | Social philosophy

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