The Art of Seeing: An Interpretation of the Aesthetic Encounter.

224 Pages·2012·3.51 MB·English

DOCUMENT RESUME
SO 025 569
ED 388 602
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly; Robinson, Rick E.
AUTHOR
The Art of Seeing: An Interpretation of the Aesthetic
TITLE
Encounter.
Getty Center for Education in the Atts, Los Angeles,
INSTITUTION
CA.; J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, CA.
ISBN-0-89236-156-5
REPORT NO
PUB DATE
90
NOTE
224p.
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Aesthetic Education; *Aesthetic Values; Art; *Art
DESCRIPTORS
Appreciation; Art Criticism; Audience Response;
*Critical Viewing; Higher Education; Museums;
Perception; Professional Education; Sensory
Experience; Skill Analysis; Visual Arts; *Visual
Literacy; Visual Stimuli
ABSTRACT
This study attempts to gain information concerning
the receptive, as opposed to the creative, aesthetic experience by
talking to museum professionals who spend their working lives
identifying, appraising, and explicating works of art. The study is
based on an underlying assumption that rules and practices for
looking at art exist and must be mastered if success is to ensue. The
anthropological research approach uses semi-structured interviews and
subjects the responses to systematic analysis. Major conclusions
emphasize the unity and diversity of the aesthetic experience. The
structure of the aesthetic experience is found to be an intense
involvement of attention in response to a visual stimulus, for no
other reason than to sustain the interaction. The experiential
:lvolvement are an intense
consequences of such a deep and autotelic
enjoy,lent characterized by feelings of personal wholeness, a sense of
discovery, and a sense of human connectedness. The aesthetic content
requires two sets of preconditions that make the experience possible:
the challenges contained in the object and the skills of the viewer.
While the structure of the aesthetic experience is rated similar in
terms by all the respondents, the challenges, or content stimuli that
triggers the experience vary considerably. These challenges of art
impact, the
are the formal structure of the work, its emotional
intellectual references it carries, and the opportunities it creates
for a dialogue among the artist, his time, and the viewer. Without
this content challenge there would be nothing to arrest the viewer,
and consequently no experience. Level of skill is critical.
Challenges and skill must be nearly in balance for the attention to
become focused. A complex work of art will engage only a person who
has developed complex visual skills. The book is divided into six
chapters and concludes with appendices. "Interview Questions for
Museum Professionals" and "Aesthetic Experience Questionnaire Form."
Contains approximately 100 references. (MM)
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The Art of Seeing
.-In Inteipirtation qf the Aesthetic Encounter
RICK F. ROBINSON
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joint publication of the J. Paul Gett NItn,euni and
the Gett Center for Education in the Arts
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I.ibrar of (:ongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Csiks/entmihali,
'I'he art of seeing : an interpretation of the aesthetic
encounter
Mihab. Csiksientnnhal i and Rick E. Robinson
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Contents
FOREWORD
PREFACE
CHAPTER 1
,A Conceptual Model of the Aesthetic Experience
"l'he Major Dimensions of the Aesthetic E \perience
A Quantitative Analvis of the .Aesthetic Experience
'rhe Form and Qualit of the \esthetic Experience
I
Facilitating the Aesthetic Experience
39
CHAPTER 6
Conclusions
I
APPENDIX A
Intervie\ Questions fig
luseum Professionals
I 89
APPENDIX B
Aesthetic Experience Questionnaire Form
93
REFERENCES
199
111
lOixed me like a statue a quaner ol an hour. or half an hour,
I do not know which, for I lost till ideas of time, ezTll the
my existent-I%
11I
rriumAs
ji-J-14.R,-,(rvs account of his response to Drouais's large can-
which he saw in Paris in 1-8-, is a
Marius Imprisoned at ilinturnae,
vas
classic description of what is generally understood bv the term "aes-
thetic experience.- Compare Jetl'erson's account with the following
skilled rock climber discussing a
excerpt from an interview with a
'good climb-:
hat's going on around him,
One tends to get immersed in
search fiff
in the rock, in the moses that are ins olsed .
.
,
proper position of the bodyso ins °lye(' that
handholdN .
he might lose consciousness of his own identit\ and melt
into the rock.
Obviously rock climbing and looking at pictures arc very ditYerent
pursuits Yet, at least in the two cases just cited, the mental states in-
Jef-
duced by these disparate activities have a good deal in common.
exis-
ferson relates that he lost "even the eonsciotisness oil his I own
of his
tence-; the climber felt that "he might lose consciousness
that
identity and melt into the rock.- Both describe a state of mind
"loss
others have characterized as "loss of ego,- "self-forgetfulness,-
and
of self-consciousness,- and even "transcendence of individuality-
consciousness of
"fusion with the world.- The heightened state of
sub-
hich this egoless condition is a central featurc has long been ;I
In
Beyond I?om/om and
ject of interest to \ lihaly Csikszenrmihalvi,
The F\penente of Play in florA and Game.% (1.)-i).(:sik,icot-
Oki- 11 ORD
%HI
mihalyi reported on an inquiry into the nature of autotelic (self-
rew arding) activities.
The goal was to focus on people who were having peak
ex-
periences, who were intrinsically motivated, and 'a ho were
involved in play as s% ell as real life activities, in order to
tind out whether I could detect similarities in their experi-
ences, their motivation, and the situz zions that produce
enjoyment. (xiin
Looking at art was not one of the autotelic activities examined in
this pioneering study, but Csikszentmihalyi and his associates
at the
University of Chicago did investigate a broad range of skill-based
ac-
tivities including (in addition to rock climbing) chess playing, musical
composition, dancing, and playing amateur basketball. The\ discov-
ered that despite the vast differences among the outward forms ot'
these activities, at the experiential core of each (insofar
as that can be
glimpsed through accounts by participants) there is a cluster of related
sensati6ns that is essentially the same for all. 'Phis cluster constitutes
a heightened state.of consciousness Csikszentmihalyi calls "the How
experience- or, simpl, "How," "a term used frequently by the intim--
mants themselves to describe the experience.-
The evident similarities between "How- and aesthetic experience
as traditionally conceived were what first (1rew our attention to Pro-
fessor Csikszentmihalyi's work. Both the .1. Paul Getty Museum and
the Getty Center for Education in the Arts are concerned with finding
ways of helping non-specialists understand and enjoy art. Insight into
the nature of' aesthetic experience is central to those etiOrts. Anec-
dotal accounts. like Jefferson's, of powerful aesthetic
responses are not
difficult to find in the literature of' art, but they tend to be tantalizing
fragments that do not lend themselves to systematic analysis. We felt
that it' the apparent parallels between aesthetic experience and How
could be shown to be more than mere analogies. Csikszentmihaly i's
research might shed new light on an issue of great importance to
art
museums and art education. For if aesthetic experience is taken to be
1 o