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THE AESTHETICS OF VIOLENT EVENTS
| A catharsis of the aesthetic response is
the transformation of affects, the explosive
response which culminates in the discharge
of emotions. Vygotsky.Psychology of Art. (1925) |
Art as a Catharsis.
INTRODUCTION
For many people discussions regarding
the
aesthetic response to violent occurrences
and human tragedy seem inappropriate.
Intrusiveness
at a time of death, painful loss and
trauma
appear to be in bad taste and even
ghoulish.
Over-invasive photo-journalistic media
reports
of murder, aviation and vehicle wreckage,
terrorist bombings, natural disasters
and
warfare are often resented as tasteless
or
sickening attempts to make money out
of the
morbid appetites of the pathologic.
There
are those who have an unwholesome interest
in death. Such people derive a vicarious
pleasure from second-hand horror experienced
safely via the two-dimensional surface
of
a newspaper, a TV screen, computer
monitor,
or art gallery exhibit. In this essay
I examine
the aesthetic or anti-aesthetic characteristics
of the artistic representation of violent
accidents from the perspective of John
Dewey's
experiential view of the aesthetic.
The method
is by way of a re-examination of one
of my
own historical canvasses - a collage
produced
forty-three years ago as an emotional
response
to a traumatic experience. I have been
careful
to restrict the account of my own aesthetic
Deweyian type experience which led
to the
production of the artwork referred
to in
the text. References to the central
artefact
and examples of other works of art
depicting
a similar subject are made strictly
within
the context of the Deweyian aesthetic
approach.
CHAPTER ONE
1. 1 Experience as the Aesthetic of
Accidental
Horror
Many years ago my friends and I were
driving
home from another city when we were
rapidly
overtaken by an erratically driven
speeding
car. Within minutes its swaying red
tail-lights
had disappeared into the winter blackness
ahead. Some time later we spotted a
broken
roadside fence and a car that lay upside-
down in the field below with its lights
still
on and its wheels still spinning. Having
parked in a lay-by, we dropped down
into
the field and sprinted towards the
stricken
car. I stumbled over something solid
in the
long grass but hurried on.
 |
| figure. 1. Author's personal archive item. |
The roof was flattened but inside the
squashed
metal, above the sound of music from
a still
functioning radio, a young man's barely
audible
voice whispered 'How's our kid?' In the Liverpool dialect this term does
not refer to a baby or child, but to
a brother.
Someone, it might
have been me, mouthed the lie, 'He's alright - don't worry.'
Later to our utter horror it became
apparent
that the object I had stumbled upon
some
time earlier was the severed head of
one
of the occupants. The next evening's
newspaper
reported that there were only two people
in the car that night. Our kid, the
young
driver had been killed outright, and
his
older brother had died later in hospital.
For the rest of this essay I shall
only refer
tangentially to the upsetting details
of
the accident that happened that dreadful
night.
Chapter 1. 2 Catharsis
It is said we that we benefit pyschologically
and experience a degree of relief by sharing
our experience of horror and tragedy with
others. The concept of catharsis was introduced
by Aristotle, who maintained that
| Drama excites emotions which are purified
by a purging of emotional tensions. [1] (Aristotle. Poetics chpts. 9,24,25) |
Pragmatist aesthetics can be said to
have
originated with John Dewey. His goal
was
to breach the suffocating dominance
of the
art galleries and museums which he
accused
of separating the objects of high art
from
real life into isolated compartments
or categories.
Hickman quotes Dewey's complaint that…
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Our present museums and galleries to which
works of fine art are removed
and stored
illustrate some of the causes
that have operated
to segregate art instead of finding
it an
attendant of temple, forum, and
other forms
of associated life.
[2] (Hickman. 1980. p. 394) |
Whereas the aesthetic approach of disinterestedness
or personal detachment characteristic
of
aesthetic contemplation by Kantians
and others
recommended a certain emotional distancing
in the quest for perceptions of form
and
beauty, for Dewey, the essence and
value
of art is not to be found in such artefacts
and works of art themselves, but in
the dynamic
and developing experiential activity
through
which they are perceived, generated
and created..
Hence a Kantian style esoteric disengagement
from the perceived object as a feature
of
aesthetic methodological discipline
was not
a feature of Dewey's philosophy of
aesthetics.
Chapter 1. 3
Creating an Aesthetic Experience
I was a car salesman for the Main Ford
Dealership
in the city. By a quirk of fate, a
breakdown
truck arrived dragging behind it the
wreck
of the very car we had seen in the
field
the night before. The company were
engaged
in a marketing project at the time
which
consisted of a Public Art Competition.
A
new car was offered as a prize to the
budding
artist who submitted the winning entry
depicting
a work on the theme of road safety.
The manager
suggested a member of staff should
submit
something to demonstrate an interest
amongst
the personnel on the understanding
that as
an employee if I won I would be willing
to
donate the car to the winner of the
second
prize.
I feel sure that Dewey would have agreed
with me as I stared at the rectangular
collage
with its symbolic representations and
shattered
fragments of the wreck that its intended
message could not be circumscribed
by the
wooden frame.
Chapter 1. 4
Disinterestedness and the Deweyian
Aesthetic
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Something beautiful arises from being
conscious of this representation
with an
accompanying sensation of delight.
[3] (Kant. 1973. p. 43)
|
The recommended Kantian criterion of an austere
or strong form of judgemental disinterestedness
as an approach to art is an aesthetic attitude
far removed from Dewey's more subjective
conception of the products of human creativity.
This strong form which confines attention
exclusively to the internal relations of
the work of art is the variety most often
associated with Kant. It is claimed that
there is also a more moderate version which
intellectualises the association between
the intrinsic and extrinsic and external
aspects of the artefact. There is a weaker
version of disinterestedness where more latitude
is allowed regarding the artefact and the
real world to which the viewer is exposed.
For the classical Kantian individual the
engagement with the beau arts was a formalistic
renunciation of the worldly experiential
appetites and desires of everyday life in
favour of a contemplation of the work's formal
properties.
This curiously remote approach was entirely
different - almost a mirror image - of the
Deweyian aesthetic, in which the appreciation
for objects of art emerges from our everyday
life encounters with the world as we experience
the environment. Such Deweyian aesthetic
occasions are often very emotional experiences,
rich in personal significance and nostalgic
implication symbolising wistful aspects of
our present or former lives. Our encounters
with the aesthetic are sometimes accompanied
by tears or laughter and are frequently linked
to a mood of à la recherche du temps perdu in which we associate a song, a film, a
play, a work of art, a building or a landscape
with a person, (perhaps a lover) or treasured
place or thing.
For John Dewey, there is no tight- lipped,
buttoned-up aesthetic approach. I see his
main endowment to art as grounding the natural
locus of a humanising aesthetics in the domain
of philosophy. Much of his approach is redolent
of an existentialist connection to the world
in which we find ourselves. A world of the
individual rather than the institution, in
which the aesthetic is all around us and
not confined to authorised establishment
foundations where we enter and speak in subdued
voices to pay homage to artefacts pronounced
beautiful or meaningful by a small coterie
of the stipended artistic cognoscenti.
Dewey continually reminds us that what
differentiates
the aesthetic is what marks off an
experience
from experience in general.
Franke underlines Dewey's experiential
aesthetic
when he writes…
|
In short, art, in its form, unites the very
same relation of doing and undergoing,
outgoing
and incoming energy that makes
an experience
to be an experience. [4] (Franke. 1999. p. 246)
|
The tense state of mental or emotional
strain
or suspense of the experiential activity
is in an aesthetic process of re-creation
that brings a Deweyian style consummatory
closure of which he wrote so much.
The nature
of the experiential consummative closure
differs from artist to artist. For
the mentally
disturbed Van Gogh it was the therapeutic
colourful sunflowers and fields of
poppies,
for the spiritually disturbed Hieronymus
Bosch it was scenes of the utmost devilish
depravity.
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Karel van Mander concluded that Bosch's paintings
are, often less pleasant than
gruesome to
look at. [5] (Gibson. 1973. p. 9)
|
The intensity of Kant's distain and
the gulf
that exists between the two aestheticians
can be judged from some of Kant's pronouncements.
What he judged tasteless has been pin-pointed
by Diane Collinson who writes that…
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Non-formal properties, on Kant's account,
are therefore not objects of
the judgement
of taste.[6] (Collinson. 1995. P. 144.
To drive the point
home Kant
again writes.
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In painting, sculpture, and in fact all the
formative arts. In architecture
and horticulture,
so far as fine arts the design
is what is
essential. [7] (Kant. 1973. p. 67)
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Regarding Dewey's differentation of what
he calls 'an experience' (rather than mere
experience) D. W. Prall, one of the many
critics of Dewey, has picked that up and
pointed out that it is more difficult to
isolate particular unique experiences than
Dewey claims.
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Everything that is perceived takes on some
degree of interest, is emotionally
toned;
that therefore nothing in the
world of science
lies outside the experienced,
and hence art
as experience is just art as
art. [8] (Prall. 1935. p. 388)
|
I disagree with Prall. I am completely persuaded
that Dewey makes out a convincing case for
the importance of the aesthetic as an individualising,
pervasive, unique experiential singularity
which stands out from our ordinary experience.
Mathur makes a point similar to Prall, regarding
the difficulty of separating-out experience.
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Without the control of this individualizing
pervasive quality the whole aesthetic
situation
will fall apart and render aesthetic
essence
unintelligible. An experience
blends in an
imperceptible manner descriptive
and normative
elements, giving rise to misinterpretations
of his theory of art. [9] (Mathur. 1966. p. 321)
|
Again, I dispute this accusation. Dewey drives
home the point that AN EXPERIENCE is distinguished
as to its apartness from the stream of lesser
or non-events encountered amongst the day
to day of the existential continuum.
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Experience in this vital sense is defined
by those situations and episodes that we
spontaneously refer to as being real experiences;
those things of which we say in recalling
them, that was an experience.
[10] (Dewey. 1980. p. 37)
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My own intention was to offer of warning
as to the dangers (particularly for
young
men) of reckless driving. With regard
to
didacticism in art, Rosalind Hursthouse
poses
two pertinent questions. I will answer
her
points in a formal manner:
Question
1. Hursthouse: Can art be morally educative
or formative by conveying moral
truths, or
by aiding our grasp and understanding
of
moral truths, and hence give
us moral knowledge? [11] (Hursthouse. 1995. p. 241)
Answer
Yes. Art can be educative in
conveying the
oughts and ought-nots of the
majority opinion
regarding how we should conduct
ourselves
in the world.
Question
2. Hursthouse: Can art truly represent reality
(and hence convey moral truths
and yield
moral knowledge?) [12] (Ibid)
Answer
Yes. Art can represent what is
objectively
real in the world and didactively
communicate
the nature of prevailing public
opinion regarding
the way we ought comport ourselves
in relation
to others
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CHAPTER TWO
2. 1 Is the Depiction of the Circumstances
of Violent Death Art?
The more obliging Mather thinks differently.
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Ugliness is not in things…in states of mind.
So that when art takes the morally
ugly it
transforms it into kind of beauty.
[14] [Mather. p. 255)
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Encouragement indeed from Mather for someone
whose motivation is neither money nor acclamation.
Nevertheless there is a view that sees ugliness
as a form of insincerity engendered by an
artist manipulating the viewing public to
his or her advantage for extra-aesthetic
(i. e., financial) or other purposes. Is
Stella Vine's above use of Princess Diana's
car as a work of art by in bad taste? She
could of course claim the similar ethical
motive of didactic road-safety as I did.
But, in view of the princess's public prominence
are we persuaded of this? Sadly I am not
totally convinced. Fellow pragmatist aesthetician
Richard Shusterman who is sympathetic to
Dewey's ideas and makes a case for a modern
re-evaluation of aesthetics in the context
of pragmatic philosophy also identifies a
slight tendency in Dewey to make conciliatory
gestures towards modern art, but of not personally
becoming involved in any in-depth discussion
of contemporary artefacts:
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Dewey vaguely gestures toward a revalidation
of popular art, complaining that popular
arts were not thought of as art because they
obtained no literary attention. Yet he himself
fails to give popular art more than the most
fleeting mention. While his text does contain
aesthetic analysis, with illustrations of
works of high art and of non-Western folk
art, there is no real discussion of contemporary
popular arts. [15] (Shusterman. 2002.)
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Chapter 2. 2
The Deweyian Experience
What would Dewey have made of Stella
Vine's
painting of Princess Fdiana's car crash
or
Andy Warhol's rendition of the burning
crashed
car? Would he have considered it kitsch?
Prall seems to answer the question
in this
quote,
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Dewey claims that art is more moral that
moralities, that indifference
to praise and
blame constitutes 'moral potency.' [16] (Prall p. 389)
|
Dewey contrasts such an experience
with incipient
experience in which we are distracted
and
do not complete our course of action.
An
experience for Dewy is also marked
off from
other experiences, containing within
itself
an individualising quality. Dewey believes
his theory of an experience is in accord
with everyday usage. For Dewey, life
is a
collection of sequential histories,
each
with their own scenarios beginnings
and conclusions.
Dewey's message is a plain one. Empirical
methods can just as easily be applied
to
art and the aesthetic as they can be
to science
or any other domain of human enquiry.
The
fact that my experientially engendered
canvas
was in the form of a three-dimensional
collage,
and in that sense it was (what at that
period)
would be called popular art leads me
to suspect
that it is doubtful if Dewey would
have approved
of the piece. Nowhere in his writings
have
I been able to a find him refer to
such a
medium.
I am not of course claiming that he
would
have either rated it highly or dismissed
it out of hand. But after what Shusterman
wrote of Dewey, that he only gestured
towards
popular art, I doubt if he would have
been
very impressed. He may perhaps have
approved
of its experiential genesis and the
novelty
of its scavenged materials. For him
works
of art are important examples of an
experience
where separate elements are fused into
a
unity, although, rather than disappearing,
their identity is enhanced. In that
sense
- if only in that sense, the great
man may
have nodded his approval.
Did I have what Dewey would have described
as a sublime experience? For me, sublimity
is experienced in many ways. To undergo
an
emotional sensation can range from
the contemplation
of a beautiful sunset, a romantic dinner
with the beloved, an awe-inspiring
revelation
of the presence of God, or a realisation
of the indeterminacy of life, as in
my experience
of the aftermath of that car accident
demonstrated.
Art reveals to us how those experiences
may
be profoundly meaningful.
Holderbrand records a reply to Santyana
criticism
of Experience and Nature in The Journal
of
Philosophy, vol. XXIV of 1927
Dewey writes,
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Everything which is experienced has immediacy,
and ... every natural existence,
in its own
unique and brutal particularity
of existence,
also has immediacy, so that the
immediacy
which characterizes things experienced
is
not specious. [18] (Holderbrand. 2003. p. 84.)
|
Chapter 2. 3 Conclusion
The debate about what is and what is
not
appropriate to show to the public is
frequently
as interesting as the images themselves.
During the direct observation of an
horrific
accident event the spectator is exposed
to
the sickening presence of elements
of reality
that have no defined location according
to
his or her every-day environmental
coordinates.
The opposite number of culture is not
nature
but horror. The natural usually has
a clean
and distinct conceptual outline in
a culture.
Dewey had his critics amongst whom
probably
the most prominent was the Italian
idealist
Benedetto Croce. Others go to far further
extremes than the Italian's rather
malicious
remarks suggesting that Dewey's ideas
were
old ones and not original,
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An Italian reader is pleasantly surprised
to meet on every page observations
and theories
long since formulated in Italy
and familiar
to him. [19] (Croce. 1948. p. 203)
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Thierry de Duve is one of them, though
he
does not single out Dewey individually
as
the target for his ire,
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Anything visual can be called art ... the
sentence this is art is a convention.
Historical
knowledge alone is required to
make and judge
art, some intellectual curiosity
or interest
for the logic of Modernism, some
strategic
desire or interest to see it
further extrapolated
and tested on mere institutional
grounds.
Art fades into art theory.
[20] (Thierry de Duve. 1993. p. 254)
|
Thierry may well have a point. But
as most
of us see an unmade bed every morning
of
our lives, I doubt whether it is true
that
we see judge the artist Tracey Emin's
unmade
bed as a work of art. Could it be that
our
surprise and delight at the sight of
the
unkempt exhibit resides in the wonder
and
astonishment that an unmade bed could
be
considered by the art establishment
as a
creative artefact in the first place?
Does
the bed conceal covert clues and messages
we are not equipped to detect, in the
sense
that Picasso's Guernica assumes an
entirely
different significance once the obscure
allusions
to the Spanish Civil War are explained
to
us? If Dewey's pursuit of those aims
has
sometimes provoked accusations of a
lack
of clarity then I make allowances.
I am sympathetic
to his humanity, generosity of spirit
and
lack of elitism and his general commonsensical
peoples approach to aesthetics.
Dewey claims that what he calls an
experience
is one in which the material of experience
is fulfilled or consummated in art,
as for
example when a problem is solved, or
a game
is played to its conclusion. His theory
was
not borne out completely as far as
I was
concerned. The collage depicting the
aftermath
of the accident did not entirely expunge
the horror from my soul. It was AN
EXPERIENCE
classically and qualitatively distinguished
and individualised in strict compliance
with
the Deweyian classification, but the
Deweyian
paradigm of consummation did not work.
He
writes of knowledge being transformed
in
aesthetic experience so that,
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It becomes something more than knowledge
because it is merged with non-intellectual
elements to form an experience worth while
as an experience. [21] (Dewey, 1958, p. 290).
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That last quote makes sense to me for
researching
his theory with its explanation of
the link
between experience and aesthetics has
afforded
me a second chance to exorcise the
ghosts
that have disquieted me all these years.
I owe a debt to Dewey. Thanks to him
for
me the spirits of those two boys have
finally
been laid to rest. It did not happen
in the
execution of the collage but in the
writing
of this account.
My own fretful spirit is now
finally at ease.
REFERENCES AND IMAGE SOURCES
[1] Aristotle. Poetics chpts. 9,24,25.
Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/aris-poe.htm
accessed 30.03.2008.
[2] Hickman. Larry. E. Essential Dewey:
Pragmatism,
Education, Democracy..1998. p 394 Indiana
University Press, 601 North Moreton
Street,
Bloomington. USA
[3] Kant. Emmanuel. Critique of Judgement.
1973. p. 43. Tran. J. C. Meridith.
Oxford
University Press.
[4] Franke. Astrid. Pragmatism and
Literary
Studies p. 246. Ed. Winfried Fluck.
Pragmatism
and Literary Studies. Vol. 15. 1999.
Gunter
Narr Verlag, Tubingen. Germany.
[5] Gibson. Walter S. Hieronymus Bosch.
1973.
p. 9. Thames and Hudson. New York.
[6] (Collinson.
Aesthetic Experience. 1995. P. 144.
Philosophical
Aesthetics. Rd Oswald Hanfling. Blackwell
Publishers. Basil Blackwell Ltd. I08
Cowley
Road, Oxford. OX4
1JF.
[7] Kant. Emmanuel. Critique of Judgement.
1973. p. 67. Tran. J. C. Meridith.
Oxford
University Press.
[8] Prall. D. W. Untitled Review. Jul.
1935.
p. 388. The Philosophical Review, Vol
44,
No. 4.
[9] Mathur. D. C. Consummatory Experience"
in Dewey's Aesthetics. p. 321. The
Journal
of Philosophy, Vol. 63, No. 9 (Apr.
28, 1966),
pp. 225-231
[10] Dewey. John. Art as Experience.
p. 37.
1980 [1934]. New York: Perigee Books.
[11] Hursthouse. Rosalind. Truth and
Representation.
1995. p. 241. Philosophical Aesthetics.
Rd
Oswald Hanfling. Blackwell Publishers.
Basil
Blackwell Ltd. I08 Cowley Road, Oxford.
OX4
1JF.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Garvin. Lucius. The Problem of
Ugliness
in Art p. 405. Philosophical Review.
Vol.
57. No 4. Jul. 1948. pp. 404-409.
[14] Mather. F. J. Concerning Beauty.
1935.
p. 255. Princeton University Press.
41 William
Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
USA.
[15] Shusterman. Richard. On Pragmatist
Aesthetics.
2002 Fathom Knowledge Network. http://www.fathom.com/feature/35630/index.html
16] Prall. D. W. Untitled Review. Jul.
1935.
p. 389. The Philosophical Review, Vol
44,
No. 4.
[17] Kundera. Milan. "The Unbearable
Lightness of Being."1982 [ 2004.]
Harper
Collins Publishers, Westerhill Road,
Bishopbriggs,
Glasgow G64 2QT
[18] Holdebrand. David. Dewey and Idealism.
P. 84. 2003. Beyond Realism and Antirealism:
John Dewey and the Neopragmatists .
Vanderbilt
University Press. 2014 Broadway, Suite
320
Nashville, TN 37203.
[19] Croce. Benedetto. On the Aesthetics
of Dewey. The Journal of Aesthetics
and Art
Criticism, Vol. 6, No. 3. 1948), pp.
203-207.
[20] Thierry de Duve. 1993. p. 254
Journal
of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.
[21] Dewey. John. Experience and Nature,
1958, p. 290 New York: Dover Publications,
Inc. [originally. 1925]
IMAGE SOURCES
Fig. 1. Private archive element.
Fig. 2. Private archive element.
Fig. 3. Munch. Edvard. The Scream.
1893.
Oil, tempera and pastel on cardboard.
Nasjonalgalleriet,
Oslo. Source. Web Museum at ibiblioPage:
Fig. 4. Anna Davis, Evening Standard
16.07.07.
Painting of Princess Diana's Car Crash.
The
canvas shows paramedics surrounding
the mangled
wreckage of Diana's car - with the
words
from Chris De Burgh's hit Lady In Red
written
over the top - goes on display tomorrow,
nearly 10 years after the fatal Paris
crash.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/
Fig. 5. Harris Johnson, "A Car
Crash,
Somewhere", watercolor and gouache
on
paper, 2006 Car-crash Somewhere. two-car
smash painting. August 10, 2007 http://ugallery.blogspot.com/2007/08/car-crash-somewhere.html
Fig. 6. BBC - Thursday, 17 May 2007.
Warhol
Car Crashes Sales Barrier. The 1963
painting
Green Car Crash. A new record was set
for
work by Andy Warhol when a painting
of a
car crash sold for $71.7 m (36.3m)
in New
York.
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Evans Experientialism 
