The popular opinion about art, at this late date in history, seems to be grounded in art appreciation as a sort of spectator sport. Even in the more “cultured” circles, the interactions between art and consumer are, at best, marked by a kind of aesthetic analysis – an appreciative breakdown of constituent parts. We categorize paintings by schools, theorize about music, and write verbose critiques of Hollywood films. Now, while this habit of analysis is all well and good, it does tend to confine notions of artistry, and aesthetics in general, to a remote sphere of art practice – at once removed from the daily life of the general populace. Art, and aesthetics, are generally considered the exclusive realm of the “artist”. To put this in more extreme terms, it might be said that the artists hold monopoly on notions of “creative process”, while the art critics, and art lovers, stand on the sidelines as observers, unable to participate. In this sense, while an appreciation of aesthetics falls into either sphere, aesthetic synthesis belongs solely to the producers of art, while a reciprocal practice of aesthetic analysis is given as a sort of consolation prize to the art consumers. The spectator is relegated to a position where one may, at best, understand and appreciate the artistic work as a product to be consumed.

Of course, while this may be an accurate abstraction of the popular view of art, it is far from being the whole story on aesthetic processes – and might even be considered an unfortunately shallow account. To adopt a deeper perspective, let us consider John Dewey’s theory of “Aesthetic in Experience” as a working alternative. Writes Dewey, “no experience of whatever sort is a unity unless it has an aesthetic quality.” (50). That is to say, any meaningful experience will enter human consciousness only by means of an aesthetic construction – the constituent bits of reality must be synthesized, by the individual, into an aesthetic unity. In this sense, all meaningful moments, and indeed, the making of meaning itself, are inevitably an exercise in aesthetic synthesis. Furthermore, Dewey puts forth, these experiences of meaning construction are of the utmost importance: “The moment of passage from disturbance into harmony is that of intensest life.” (46). By thus re-positioning aesthetics as a natural and vital function of human cognition, Dewey collapses the divide between analytic aesthetics for the consumer and synthetic aesthetics for the producer. The Aesthetic, rather, first arises in cognitive experience, and it is only by virtue of this fact that artists and art consumers are able to participate in a meaningful aesthetic dialectic at all.

Dewey’s practical understanding of the Aesthetic has a great deal to teach us about the purpose of art, and how we might best view it. His emphasis on the primacy of experiential aesthetics, and subsequent notion of “art as process” implies that aesthetic synthesis, or more simply put, creativity, is not necessarily the privileged realm of the artist. Rather, creativity is a regular and fundamental aspect of the human condition. Aesthetic synthesis can emerge within the least artistically inclined person, during, say, a walk across town, as surely as it can for the creative genius perched in deep concentration over canvas or keyboard[1]. The former may produce a unified personal experience, while the latter leaves behind the concrete residue of a “work of art” – but in either case we see an act of aesthetic synthesis has taken place.

Now, by situating the “work of art” in the context of the aesthetic process that created it, Dewey is inviting the consumer to do more than merely absorb or analyze the finished product. Instead, the viewing of art becomes a reflection on, and acknowledgement of, the process of aesthetic synthesis itself. We look upon a painting, or listen to a piece of music, and therein partake of a synthesized reality – a reality not several steps removed, as in the platonic bias – but rather, a newly formed aspect of reality in the first degree - primal, aesthetic, and expressive. A reality every bit as real as any moment in life in which we have found meaning.

Dewey is reminding us that Art is only the most obvious, most formalized means of collecting and expressing aesthetic experiences. Within each of us is a capacity for creativity just like the artists, whether we practice a specific craft or no. Viewing art, then, becomes an invitation for the individual to become aware of their own aesthetic sensibilities, by making sense, for themselves, of what the artist has made. Dewey’s notion of Art as process is not merely an alternative perspective for art appreciation – it is in fact a reminder that the act of viewing art has the potential to be an aesthetic experience in and of itself. The art consumer, in pondering the process that created a work of art, embarks on an individual creative process to make meaning of the artist’s creation. In this view, aesthetic synthesis in Art gives rise to aesthetic synthesis for the consumer; – artistry in craft begets creativity in life.

Although it may seem, at first, that this conception of the Aesthetic robs the artist class of their identity as “keepers of the creative process”, we might instead take this new perspective as an opportunity to better appreciate the vital role that formalized art and artistry plays in society. If the process of aesthetic synthesis is as vital to the human organism as Dewey implies, perhaps we would do well to partner it with critical analysis as being one of the two primary modes of human cognition[2]. In such case, the applied understanding of the synthetic modes of consciousness would be considered of equal import as those modes of analysis which are today so highly prized in the academic sphere. Insofar as aesthetic synthesis is a fundamental process of human life, we must consider it a valuable skill, well worth cultivation. Art and artistry then, far from being mere objects of cultural appreciation, reveal themselves as being an agent locus of human education and development. And the role of the artist becomes that of the teacher – albeit a teacher in a field that is, by its very nature, resistant to analytic definition. In fact, under this conception of the primacy of Aesthetics, the artist may serve very much the same role for our synthetic consciousness as the philosopher does for our analytical abilities.

By returning aesthetic experience to the realm of the consumer, Dewey also offers a final and implicit contribution the school of Aesthetics itself. With creativity returned to the masses, so to speak, and the human mind recognized as having dual synthetic and analytic aspects, Aesthetics becomes specifically that branch of philosophy which seeks to explore, analyze, and (we hope) synthesize the bridge between these two vital, and oddly opposed, modes of being.

[1] Virginia Woolfe, a philosopher in her own right, demonstrates both modes of aesthetic experience (quite beautifully, I think) in her Mrs. Dalloway - in which the reader may reflect simultaneously on both the richness of aesthetic synthesis as experienced by the protagonist, on a moment-to-moment basis, and on the genius and skill Woolfe showed in capturing it all in prose.

[2] In fact it is a generally recognized biological “fact” that the human brain divides its function in precisely this way across its hemispheres – right-brain cognition is generally synthetic, wholistic, and creative, while left-brain cognition tends toward the analytic, the linear, and the temporal.