The Aesthetics of Everyday Life

243 Pages·2005·1.01 MB·English

by  Professor Andrew Light

The Aesthetics of
Everyday Life

The Aesthetics of
Everyday Life
Edited by
Andrew Light and
Jonathan M. Smith
Columbia University Press
New York
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
Copyright © 2005 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The aesthetics of everyday life / edited by Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–231–13502–5 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 0–231–13503–3 (pbk : alk. paper)
1. Environment (Aesthetics) I. Light, Andrew, 1966– II. Smith, Jonathan M.
BH301.E58A37 2004
111(cid:2).85—dc22 2004056133
Columbia University Press books are printed on
permanent and durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Jonathan M. Smith
Introduction ix
I. Theorizing the Aesthetics of the Everyday
Tom Leddy
1. The Nature of Everyday Aesthetics 3
Arnold Berleant
2. Ideas for a Social Aesthetic 23
Arto Haapala
3. On the Aesthetics of the Everyday: Familiarity,
Strangeness, and the Meaning of Place 39
Michael A. Principe
4. Danto and Baruchello: From Art to the
Aesthetics of the Everyday 56
II. Appreciating the Everyday Environment
Pauline von Bonsdorff
5. Building and the Naturally Unplanned 73
Allen Carlson
6. What Is the Correct Curriculum for Landscape? 92
vi contents
Andrew Light
7. Wim Wenders’s Everyday Aesthetics 109
III. Finding the Everyday Aesthetic
Wolfgang Welsch
8. Sport Viewed Aesthetically, and Even as Art? 135
Yuriko Saito
9. The Aesthetics of Weather 156
Emily Brady
10. Sniffing and Savoring: The Aesthetics of Smells and Tastes 177
Glenn Kuehn
11. How Can Food Be Art? 194
About the Authors 213
Index 217
Acknowledgments
Chapter 6, “What Is the Correct Curriculum for Landscape?’’ reprinted by per-
mission of the University of Illinois Press from Journal of Aesthetic Education 35
(2000).
Chapter 7adapted from “Wim Wenders and the Everyday Aesthetics of Technol-
ogy and Space.’’ Reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press
from Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism55.2(Spring 1997): 215–229.

Introduction
Jonathan M. Smith
Our subject matteris everyday aesthetics, both as an extension beyond the tra-
ditional domain of the philosophical study of aesthetics, usually confined to more
conventionally understood works of art, and as a step into a new arena of aes-
thetic inquiry—the broader world itself. This introduction summarizes the con-
tents of the papers that follow, aiming to guide the reader on the common themes
arising in the chapters and explaining the reasoning behind the organization of
the volume.
The chapters in the first section of this book make general arguments for ap-
plication of aesthetic criticism to objects and events that have been, until recently,
exempt from this sort of scrutiny. In chapter one Tom Leddy offers an outline of
the field of everyday aesthetics. This chapter admirably provides an overview of
this topic in relation to traditional work in aesthetic theory and thus stands in for
such a discussion that could have been provided in this introduction. Looking at
colloquial usage of aesthetic terms, Leddy proposes that everyday aesthetics be tak-
en to include inquiries into all aesthetic experiences that fall outside of existing do-
mains of aesthetic theory, such as aesthetics of art, aesthetics of nature, and aes-
thetics of mathematics. Everyday aesthetics is not, in other words, limited to study
of the aesthetic experience of humble objects and quotidian acts, although such are
often of interest to everyday aesthetics. It is concerned with all of the undeniably
aesthetic experiences that do arise when one contemplates objects or performs acts
that are not traditionally categorized as aesthetic objects or acts, be they rare or fre-
quent, fugitive or profound. What sets the everyday aesthetic experience apart is
the fact that it seems to be prompted by something that should not be able to cause
such an experience, at least according to conventional aesthetic theory. Leddy
maintains that this is because the aesthetic properties of everyday aesthetic experi-
ence inhere in the fusion of sense and imagination that is the experience itself, and
not in the object of the aesthetic experience. The question for everyday aesthetics
therefore becomes not what are the formal properties of this object that make it