Aesthetics and the Arts of Engagement

Abstract

In an earlier study I suggested that the study of aesthetics, rather than being derived from first principles, would benefit, in particular, from knowledge of contemporary developments in the arts. Over the last two centuries, social, technological, and cultural changes have had a transformative effect on the arts and on aesthetic experience. Such fundamental changes called for a new account that would explain them and rationalize their occurrence. I proposed integrating aesthetic experience into a perceptual field that combined the creative, appreciative, objective (i.e. focused), and performative functions in what I called aesthetic engagement. Over the past half century, trends in the arts and their experience have moved more emphatically away from discrete objects and disinterested contemplation, fulfilling the transition to an aesthetic of active engagement of artist, appreciator, object and performer in an experiential aesthetic field