art-as-experience.html.pm

#lang pollen

◊define-meta[page-title]{Art as Experience}
◊define-meta[original-date]{2018-09-04}
◊define-meta[edited-date]{2018-09-05}

I've been reading ◊em{Art as Experience}◊note{◊format-work[#:type
"book" #:author "John Dewey" #:year "1934" #:title "Art as Experience"
#:publisher "Minton Balch & Co" #:publisher-location "New York"]} a
few pages at a time over the past year. I've needed to read it like
this because of how much is in every paragraph and how much it pulls
at ideas from elsewhere. Here, I want to share some of themes that
have come up throughout the book.

Every medium is unique. When you practice using a medium, you learn
what choices an artist is forced to make when they use that medium to
express their ideas. You can more clearly see what aspects of
experience an artist has chosen to express. What objects,
characteristics, and relationships has the artist selected and
emphasized? Those decisions work their way into expression differently
with every medium.

◊q{
For art is a selection of what is significant, with rejection by the
very same impulse of what is irrelevant, and thereby the significant
is compressed and intensified.
}

One common writing exercise is to read a piece of prose, hide it, then
try to reproduce it.◊note{◊a[#:href
"https://itchyquill.wordpress.com/2015/03/26/the-art-of-writing-practising-plagiarism/"]{The
Art of Writing; Practising Plagiarism (Or Rather,
Copywork)}.}◊note{◊a[#:href
"https://www.quora.com/Can-copying-novels-help-me-improve-my-writing"]{Can
copying novels help me improve my writing?}}◊note{◊a[#:href
"http://www.jenmanuel.com/process-tips/write-best-story-ever-one-epic-exercise/"]{How
to write the best story ever with one epic exercise}.} But not by
simply memorizing it word for word. The key to that exercise is to
imagine a set of decisions behind the text. In doing this, you become
more aware of what has been emphasized, what has been ignored, what
relationships were raised to prominence, and how the text was used to
achieve this.

A second theme distinguishes between media and mere means. Better
artists can make their chosen medium one with the expression and not
merely a means.

◊q{conversation, drama, novel, and architectural construction, if
there is an ordered experience, reach a stage that at once records and
sums up the value of what precedes, and evokes and prophesies what is
to come.}

◊q{[n]ot all means are media. There are two kinds of means. One kind
is external to that which is accomplished; the other kind is taken up
into the consequences produced and remains immanent in them. There are
ends which are merely welcome cessations and there are ends that are
fulfillments of what went before. ◊elide Sometimes we journey to get
somewhere else because we have business at the latter point and would
gladly, were it possible, cut the travelling. At other times we
journey for the delight of moving about and seeing what we see. Means
and end coalesce. ◊elide all the cases in which means and ends are
external to one another are non-esthetic. ◊elide In all ranges of
experience, externality of means defines the mechanical. ◊elide Means
are, then, media when they are not just preparatory or preliminary.}

This also comes up in Thomas and Turner◊note{◊format-work[#:type
"book" #:author-given "Francis-Noël" #:author-family "Thomas"
#:author2-given "Mark" #:author2-family "Turner" #:year "2011" #:title
"Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose" #:publisher
"Princeton University Press"]}: how words can be
used in a way that they become one with the expression. Prose becomes
art when the sentence and paragraph structures, connectives, and word
choices reflect not just the logical truth being presented, but also
the experience, the feeling, that the author is trying to share.

◊q{in [a] classic sentence, the last section is the conclusion of all
that has gone before it; the beginning of the sentence exists for the
end, and the sentence is constructed so that we can anticipate
arriving at such a conclusion.}

A third theme, related to the previous one, is the satisfaction that
comes from bringing order to a medium, and the value in doing that
work.

◊q{
The work takes place when a human being cooperates with the product so
that the outcome is an experience that is enjoyed because of its
liberating and ordered properties.
}