Philosophy of Art Monroe Beardsley's Aesthetic Definition of Art Essay

Philosophy of Art Monroe Beardsleys Aesthetic Definition of Art - Essay ExampleThe paper will review the min c erstwhilepts and definitions of fine fine art proposed by Monroe Beardsley, and then, critically review the proposed concepts. In this, its ultimate role is to provide a critique of its own conditions of possibility. And, as is well known, for Beardsley this became a matter of artists acknowledging the slackness of the picture plane as a way of asserting what they took to be the essential fact about the nature of painting.Beardsley defines art drub as something produced with the intension of endowment it the capacity to satisfy the authentic interest (Beardsley 57). Beardsley has in mind such audience responses as noticing details, recognizing patterns, making interpretations, filling in the deform, etc (Beardsley 55). It is against this understanding of avant-garde art, the honest art of the contemporary world, that Beardsley articulates his understanding of modern ar t. new wave art is abstract, whereas modern art ostensibly favors representation. Avant-garde art is reflexive, whereas modern art is generally imitative. Avant-garde art is introverted -- it is about itself (it is about its medium). Modern art is extroverted it is about the world. Moreover, in being introverted, avant-garde art is detached from practical personal business and disinterested, whereas by representing the world, modern art is implicated in practical concerns (Beardsley 55). In order to accomplish this, accepted art must be difficult, whereas Beardsley believes that modern art can be enjoyed without effort. Moreover, this emphasis on the active response of the spectator in genuine art is what leads Beardsley to nominate avant-garde art as the genuine art of our times, since avant-garde art requires an active spectator to fill in its open structures. Thus, avant-garde art can be said to preserve the underlying value of art properly so-called. For art properly so-call ed has always been dedicated to engendering active spectatorship. Indeed, commitment to this role, it would appear, is a necessary feature of art for Beardsley, as it is for many other modern theorists of art. On the other hand, Beardsley maintains that art involves unreflective enjoyment. It abets passive spectatorship -- of the assortment putatively evinced by couch potatoes -- whereas Beardsley, with the authority of a long tradition behind him, presumes that a necessary feature of genuine art involves a commitment to active vowing (Beardsley 56). Avant-garde art accords with this profile. In order to appreciate it, a certain sort of knowledge and background information will have to come into play, if, for example, one is to identify the reflexive comment that an abstract array makes on the nature of painting. Beardsley argues once we know what things are artworks in a particular society, we can identify artistic activities by discovering which activities involve interaction wit h artworks (Beardsley 57). To interpret such a work one must be initiated into a certain discourse and, even after one assimilates the relevant art discourse, a great deal of subject field will still be required in order to apply that discourse with understanding to the painting at hand. Such painting demands intellectual work from the spectator because of its hermetic structure, which serves as a difficult obstacle, or puzzle,