Tuesday, 8 May 2007 - 6:16 PM EDT

Once when I was much younger I was quoted in print as saying "beauty is boring." Now *that* was embarrassing. I'd take it back if I could.

Anyone who has at some time been coerced into another's aesthetic vision, forced by power dynamics to really accept someone else's subjective experience as an objective, universal truth, knows that if the experience is repeated enough it becomes horrid and death-like. Such experience makes discussions of aesthetic judgement feel 'hot' and makes art critics' happy assertions of their own powers feel like nails on a chalkboard. It can also make discussions of spirituality quite nerve-wracking. Fight or flight! But eventually you sort of carefully get over it because you really can't have an interesting culture without emphatic-yet-subjective assertions, now can you?

Beauty is one of those subjective terms that carries an objective connotation. If I say something is beautiful it's a pretty safe bet that I mean you will find it beautiful too. So I'd prefer to qualify it somehow, saying that "I find it beautiful" or something like that. But then, if I were to embark on a life of of searching for things I find beautiful, I'd feel like I was consigning myself to an isolated, subjective existence inside my own head. Yike! So I'd be more likely to embark on a life of attempting (it's hard) to describe the beauty I encounter in ways that aren't coercive, yet are still compelling enough to convey as sense of just how wonderful those beautiful things are, if you can see them the way I see them.

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 10:21 AM EDT

I think it would be great to hear about the things you find beautiful especially the ones that are so beautiful they've become embedded the in fabric of your life. If the subject were actually to become an exchange wherein I also told you about the things I find beautiful - I think that would be truly critical. Vivifying. From what you say though, it doesn't sound like you would like that very much because I probably would be making coercive (ie strong) arguments for the beautiful things that I love. I couldn't help myself - chocolate is so delish!

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 11:06 AM EDT

coercive (ie strong)

I don't buy that. I think there are ways to make strong statements without being coercive. To my mind, aesthetic coercion comes into the picture when there is a lack of respect or recognition that each of our experiences is unique. I figure you and I could have a pretty meaningful exchange about what we find beautiful and manage to share in each other's experience without the assumption that one of us was right and one of us was wrong. But maybe you feel that such a sense of context means the discussion can't be critical?

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 11:18 AM EDT

I think that in a truly critical discussion you'd be championing your "beauties" to the hilt and so would I. 

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 11:36 AM EDT

coerce - to enclose

coercive ie  a strong or powerful arument 

Re:

Anyone who has at some time been coerced into another's aesthetic vision, forced by power dynamics to really accept someone else's subjective experience as an objective, universal truth, knows that if the experience is repeated enough it becomes horrid and death-like. Such experience makes discussions of aesthetic judgement feel 'hot' and makes art critics' happy assertions of their own powers feel like nails on a chalkboard.

As for conditions such as you describe above - I would have no problem with saying that is wrong.

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 11:37 AM EDT

I think both us would be missing a real opportunity. What you are describing just sounds to me like a fairly isolated subjective argument. But if I can try to entertain your perspective, using my imagination, and vice versa, then we are having a critical discussion, because there is an opening through which the subjective bears meaning beyond ourselves. The exchange becomes cultural.

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 11:37 AM EDT

arument - whatever that is! Geeze!

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 11:45 AM EDT

sorry - we're simul-posting. 

This is more like the definition I'm working with: 

"Coerce: To force to act or think in a certain way by use of pressure, threats, or intimidation; compel."

Maybe in the context of this dicussion, we could add rhetoric to that list.  

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 11:48 AM EDT

I mean discussion. heh.

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 11:51 AM EDT

I'm responding to what you have written - the deathlike nails on chalkboard scenario is not the kind of coercion I'm talking about. The aesthetic coercion you've written about at the top of this thread sounds something like the strong arm of Stalin, the tortuers of Torquemada etc. and etc.  Coercion, the strength of the thing - it's ability to enclose (enchant?) a person in it's rhetoric is part of all good designs, and compelling works of art. You even made mention of this yourself when you were talking about the book of fairy tales you read in one of the other questions. 

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 12:31 PM EDT

well that's an important distinction. It's good to clarify terms. I think in art practice and art criticism the use of coercion varies between the poles we've identified, and yes, I concede that using your definition, in some form it is probably necessary.

However, for the compelling part to work there needs to be someone who is willing to be compelled. It's like a chain. Say we take the model of art criticism. If I am compelled (which I like better than coerced, because there's an implication of some agency on my part) enough by an artwork to write about it for an audience of readers, then I am going to bring my own experience into the relationship with that artwork. And the readers, if they are compelled enough by what I write to entertain my perspective, are going to bring their own experience to that dynamic.

As a writer, I think that it is possible to imagine those readers, in an abstract way, not as a passive body to be coerced, but as an engaged body participating in the resulting expansion of meaning. And there is an implied reciprocation there, even if the event is not a real-time conversation. And that reciprocation, the return to the discourse of further thought and meaning, is the reason to write in the first place. It's not that I want to convince people of what I see, it's a more selfish motivation than that: I want to recieve wisdoms and experiences (and beauty, why not?) from a culture full of people talking and thinking about what they see. 

How does this relate to the life pursuit of beauty? I have had many sustaining experiences of beauty in my life: Ingres, mountains, sunsets, and plucky little weeds, but in the arena of cultural discourse, it's the sharing itself that is most beautiful. I can be utterly unmoved by a work of art, but very moved by someone else's description of it. When I return to the work I don't experience what the other person saw, but I've had an imaginative experience of its beauty. That dynamic is sustaining, generative and beautiful. 

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 12:36 PM EDT

...and, let me add, critical.

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 12:49 PM EDT

Re compelled:

"(which I like better than coerced, because there's an implication of some agency on my part)"

There is? 

Re:

"As a writer, I think that it is possible to imagine those readers, in an abstract way, not as a passive body to be coerced, but as an engaged body participating in the resulting expansion of meaning...And there is an implied reciprocation there, even if the event is not a real-time conversation. And that reciprocation, the return to the discourse of further thought and meaning, is the reason to write in the first place...."

How do you ensure this reciprocity your talking about? 

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 12:53 PM EDT

What is the people are so opposed to what you have to say - they won't even read your book?

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 12:55 PM EDT

I mean what IF the people are so opposed to whatever you are going on about taht they wouldn't even read your paper?

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 1:19 PM EDT

quoting function isn't working...

Re: compelled vs. coerced. 

I think its a matter of usage. When people say "I feel compelled" there is usually an implication that they are going along with it. With people say "I feel coerced" there is usually the implication that they are doing something against their will. 

"How do you ensure reciprocation?"

You can't ensure it. 

"What if the people are so opposed to what you say - they won't even read your book?"

It's pretty hard to make people read books they don't want to, even if you are a high school teacher. If they know enough about it to actively choose not to read it, then you're probably doing pretty well!

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 1:24 PM EDT

Sally,

I think you are great for humouring my questions. Thank you. The last word is yours because - it's lunchtime! 

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 2:12 PM EDT

 Sally,

I like this. If I'm understanding all this correctly, you're saying that beauty—and perhaps artistic value more generally—is a matter of a intersubjective give and take. If I find something beautiful, I try to express this to others, who reciprocate with their own take—both on what I say and on their experience of the work itself. This avoids the polarizing between solipsism (beauty is what I think it is and nobody can convince met otherwise) and strong objectivism (beauty is simply there whether you recognize it or not).

 On the side of objectivity, I would add though that given universals of human perception, some things are inherantly better targets for all this beauty talk. It may be that I like Pollock and you like Vermeer, fine. But I think there is only going to be so much that you can get out of Thomas Kinkade, whatever your cultural background or temperament is.

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 5:12 PM EDT

There is at least one reader of this blog with Kinkade lovin' ways....I wonder if we'll hear from that individual?

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 5:48 PM EDT

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 5:50 PM EDT

The last thing I meant to be was anonymous with that previous comment.

Thursday, 10 May 2007 - 7:08 PM EDT

Ah, I stand corrected.

Friday, 11 May 2007 - 10:12 AM EDT

Re:

"

quoting function isn't working...

Not for almost two weeks now. Aaarrgghh 

Re: compelled vs. coerced. 

I think its a matter of usage. When people say "I feel compelled" there is usually an implication that they are going along with it. With people say "I feel coerced" there is usually the implication that they are doing something against their will. 

"How do you ensure reciprocation?"

You can't ensure it. 

"What if the people are so opposed to what you say - they won't even read your book?"

It's pretty hard to make people read books they don't want to, even if you are a high school teacher. If they know enough about it to actively choose not to read it, then you're probably doing pretty well!"

The reason I asked those two questions is because I think that if you can imagine an engaged readership - it begs imagining it's opposite, a readership that is opposed or worse, indifferent. So the question is do you want to engage those gangs in your (and my) discussion?

Friday, 11 May 2007 - 11:07 AM EDT

The question remains too - Is it "... possible that spending a life, or part of a life, in the pursuit of beauty—even if only to find it, not to produce it—gives that life a beauty of its own"?