Art and the Tyranny of the Aesthetic.

Abstract

My dissertation discusses the relationship of art to the category of the aesthetic. Conceiving of art as an institutional practice held together by norms and traditions, I suggest that the category of the aesthetic is best understood as a norm for response that enjoys considerable popularity in the practice of art. I discuss the various ways we can respond aesthetically to works of art, including avant-garde works, and suggest that aesthetic response is more ubiquitous in the artworld than some critics suspect. I distinguish, however, between artistic and aesthetic activity, whose conflation has been responsible for errors in aesthetic theory. This mistake has prompted a number of normative theories about how we ought to respond to art, including theories concerning the role artists' intentions should play in our interpretation, appreciation and evaluation of artworks. By dissociating the artistic from the aesthetic, I am able to isolate a feature of art that is more basic than its incorporation of the aesthetic norm for response. This feature concerns the independence of the practice of art from the direct control of such institutions as politics, religion, science, etc. With this structural autonomy comes the possibility of artists' using artistic media to their own varied ends. I argue that the value of art lies in this freedom, which is inhibited by the institution of the aesthetic norm as sole or privileged norm for artistic response.