Pre-Release Notes
Art as Experience
To the cynic, it would seem that art is nothing but an enterprise bent on generating uninhibited value by sticking a price-tag onto not necessarily an object, but its associated discourses. The worth of a work of art is largely dependent on the institutional effort exerted in its conservation, estimated significance to previous patrons, as well as its academic utility. Although it is a transparent conclusion to come to, it’s one that’s been deeply assimilated into, even more so than our interpretive experience, the immediate perception of a work of art in its physical entirety.
This takes on a certain form in the context of the accessibility of digital information; one can stroll into a museum and pull out a smart device in the event that they come across visual ambiguities or feelings of distaste. One then comes across a well-documented network of research from experts who have all pitched their two cents on the significance of a certain symbol or stylistic gestures in the artist’s work. The experience of a work of art then becomes an informatic race that dictates whether or not you ‘get what something is trying to say and why it is valuable to do so.’ And as certain thematic questions are raised again and again in the history of art, it seems as if the works that raise these concerns are worth what they not only for their aesthetic resonance, but also because of what appears to be a pre-existing hierarchy of visual languages and subject materials that guarantee a lucrative and curated flow of cultural approval. At this point, what does it mean to say that art personally speaks to us, when our eyes and ears are filled to the brim with opinions on what the artwork has already communicated?
Rather than putting forward a critique of art’s institutional histories, it is also just as valuable to take a step back and ask ourselves what it may mean to even experience or come across a work of art. As the thinker John Dewey points out:
“[Art] is solvent union of the generic, recurrent, ordered, established phase of nature with its phase that is incomplete, going on, and hence still uncertain, contingent, novel, particular; or as certain systems of esthetic theory have truly declared… a union of necessity and freedom… a reconciliation of sensuous and ideal.” (Experience and Nature, 359)
Although a dense and sweeping claim, we can see that Dewey’s appeal to the constant flux present in nature is vital in this argument. We all inhabit the same world, and upon experiencing anything, we all notice patterns that arise as well as certain dissimilarities; experience affirms or calls into question what we have perceived before in nature. For Dewey to say that art joins both the human tendency to regulate what we know and our ability to confront change, suggests that art presents to us a friction in our instinct to conceptually assimilate that which refuses to be subsumed by both unpredictable change and abstract generalization. A work of art is compelling not necessarily because it captures a universal feeling or because of its individuality. It insists on and codifies a specific configuration of the natural change we are a part of as its own profound body of knowledge that grants us a myriad of insights to the world we inhabit. To overcome this friction, we should feel comfortable with leaning into what we take to be our own immediate experience to see if it leads us to new realizations. And perhaps what we gain from approaching art as an experience of the simultaneously familiar and alien, may at times be more valuable to ourselves than sifting through external interpretations.
All of us inevitably come to terms with how we personally register new visual information; and we at Alexandria hope to foster not just self-discovery, but also the means to which we can come to it. We hope that this brief questionnaire tells you a little more about yourself, and what exactly it might mean for you to wrestle with new art as a previously unexamined horizon of experience.
“For all art is a process of making the world a different place in which to live, and involves a phase of protest and of compensatory response.”
