Art History and Image Studies
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Browsing Art History and Image Studies by Subject "Aesthetics"
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Item Open Access Beyond spectatorship: an exploration of embodied engagement with art(University of the Free State, 2014-10) Lauwrens, Jennifer; Van den Berg, D. J.English: According to proponents of the so-called ‘sensory turn’ the varied layers of a person’s experience of the social and material world produced via the senses of taste, touch, hearing and smell have largely been neglected in academic research on art. It is precisely because a person’s embodied and sensual engagement is increasingly being recognised as co-constitutive of the dynamic relationship occurring between people and art that dealing with the visual alone has been found to be insufficient and has brought about a shift in interest toward the other senses. Working between the disciplines of art history and visual culture studies, this research engages with art in ways that exceed the visual in order to understand the embodied and engaged interactions at work between a person and art. I argue that scholarly investigations of the visual field have, until recently, often avoided explorations of the affective, multisensorial body of a viewer in relation to what s/he sees even though many art practices invite the engagement and participation of the whole body beyond spectatorship only. In a close analysis of two installations, a land art piece, one video and one entire participatory exhibition the possible ways in which to theorise the involvement of the whole person in aesthetic experience and not only the mind, intellect or consciousness are explored. It is argued that a re-conception of art and spectatorship as embodied interaction provides a far more nuanced understanding of people’s experiences of art than ideologically and interpretative driven ‘readings’ only. The theme of embodied spectatorship and contemporary art is approached in particular through the lenses of the sensory turn, the pictorial turn, the corporeal turn, empathy theory, affect theory, phenomenology and aesthetic embodiment and engagement. By placing various examples of contemporary art in dialogue with these theoretical perspectives the limitations of traditional notions regarding aesthetic spectatorship are exposed. This leads to the beginning of a broader conversation about the role and status of a whole embodied sensual being in her/his encounter with specific materialities of art. My basic theoretical standpoint is that a person’s embodied and engaged experience is the starting point from which investigations of art can productively proceed. In other words, by means of a predominantly phenomenological approach that describes aesthetic situations and encounters, it is argued that direct experience does not simply contribute to, but rather has a primacy and authority in encounters with art, and should, therefore, be investigated.Item Open Access Kreatiwiteit as sistemiese faktor in die visuele kuns: 'n kritiese kunsteoretiese besinning(University of the Free State, 2004-11) Janse van Vuuren, Lukas Marthinus; Van den Berg, D. J.English: The aim of this project is to develop an art theoretical model which can be applied in higher education context in order to give an account of the way according to which creativity is established as a systemic factor in the visual arts. The purpose with this model is: (a) to critically analyse the disparate contents attributed to creativity in the visual arts and (b) to formulate sober ideas and categories in opposition to the deficiencies of existing or conventional speculations regarding creativity. The resistance of modern and post modern art practices to systemic forms of analysis results in a detachment of subjects and objects, events and conditions from their relational binding. As an alternative to these art practices and in reaction to present research on creativity in the visual arts, this project focuses on a hermeneutical approach in order to account for the interactive nature of creativity. Instead of linking it to the productive powers of the individual, creativity is viewed as systemically dependant on networks, based on creative interaction between artworks, artists and viewers as well as the ideological alliances of these parties with world views and traditions. Relational analyses of this systemic dependency, demonstrate how artists in the production of their works are interactively involved in the finding and transformation of visual imagery with metaphoric potential, the revision of intentions and the discovery of new alternative and creative communicative strategies. Contrary to modernist beliefs concerning the artist as autonomous creator of meaning in works of visual art, individual analyses conducted in this research project rather gave evidence of the artist acting as an kind of attendant, finally bringing together the various causal links surrounding the artwork. The multiplicity of changing and competing combinations of insights being actualised in the artwork during the creative process, is indicative of creative mutual interactions between the artist and the evolving artwork, in stimulation and in anticipation of viewers’ re-creative responses. Relational analyses also showed that the appreciation of products destined for creative interaction demand appropriate re-creative responses in the tracing of the implicit artist’s supposed creative strategies. Results of the analyses subsequently confirmed among others that viewers’ participation in the actualisation of the imaginary component, product or action require the finding, appropriation and critical consideration of unforeseen possibilities, as well as the ability to improvise with limited information and to ingeniously transform visual ideas. In reply to the passive aloofness endorsed by the traditional aesthetic principle of disinterestedness, this study establishes viewers’ creative participation in the actualisation of the aesthetic object as a complimentary equivalent of the artist’s creative making process. As participants in these mutually complimentary processes artists and viewers are ideologically influenced by their respective world views, determining the nature of their creative discourse. In anticipation of humankind’s predictable inclination to furnish artworks with their own cultural burden, interests and prejudices, artists’ creative initiatives are realised in the way that they ironize, expose and challenge this self-interest by means of strategies like contradiction, indefiniteness and an abundance of alternatives. Creative participation in the imaginary worlds of artworks among others also requires flexible divergent thinking, tolerance for disparate visual statements, an ability to distinguish ideology-laden interests from aesthetic interests, and to critically and introspectively reflect on the limitations of self-centred ideologies. This study subsequently establishes that creative participative relations in the visual arts surpasses cultural boundaries and enables participants involved in these relations to achieve self-understanding on the basis of moral understanding attained through the viewpoints of others.