The Varied Substance of the Arts

"The product of art- temple, painting, statue, poem - is not the work of art.  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" (p. 222).  This suggest to me that Dewey thinks of art not as what it is but when it is.  (I put enjoyed in [ ] just to comment that not all art products are enjoyable, but that enjoyed probably means worked with or appreciated, sometimes for its unpleasant relations.)

"If art is an intrisic quality of activity, we cannot divide and subdivide it.  We can only follow the differentiation of the activity into different modes as it impinges on different materials and employs different media" (p.223).  This, with the first citation, suggests to me that I can call teaching art, so long as it is done with attention and acute sensitivity to the qualities involved with the activity, for the integral completion of that experience.  Using each component within the educational environment as related to an overall whole, ("for the red is always the red of the material of that experience") and recognizing that it must be activily recieved to be complete.  What makes teaching completely unique, I think, is that some the components of the environment, we could analogize them to the individual brush strokes on a canvas, are the students themselves, and therefor not only must they actively engage with the experience as an audience does with a work of art, but they are the artwork itself.  When a composer uses tones to express an artistic idea, the composer understands the quality of relationships between the tones used.  In teaching, the tones have the unique quality of being alive, and as James teaches us, life can never truly be predicted.  There are always exceptions, the ongoing sense of an "ever not quite."  Furtharmore, the teacher (in public education today) does not choose the students as a composer chooses tones, the teacher works with the students given in the class.  The artful teacher predicts as best they can the quality of relations between planned experiences of a curriculum and the students involved in them, but at some point plans on improvisation being a part of the product.  I think here the discussion could turn to D&E or E&E with the ideas of using the situations of the group to drive experiences, and the roles of the teacher as facilitator.

I know its getting long but I want to remember that later in the chapter Dewey comments a bit about the elusive search for the essence, a connection I think to both James and Wittgenstein.  He also reminds me of Wittgenstein in On Certainty when he writes, "Language comes infinitely short of paralleling the varigated surface of nature" (p. 224).  This is like James' all-those-particular-qualities-which-make-this-thing-unique-to-each-and-every-person-every-time-it-is-encountered, and Wittgenstein's discussion of exactness, when he suggests that true exactness cannot exists, that we can only move closer towards some sense of exactness.

The Common Substance of the Arts

Throughout this chapter the feeling that I get is of the intensity of relationships which work together in art.  Dewey writes, "The undefined pervasive quality of an experience is that which binds together all the defined elements, the objects of which we are focally aware, making them a whole" (p. 202).  This reminds me of the Stream of Consciousness from James.  The objects, pots and pans floating by, in the stream of our experience, are the subjects of art.  Connecting all of the objects is a pervasive quality, the water in James' analogy.  Dewey then writes, "A work of art elicits and accentuates this quality of being a whole and of belonging to the larger, all inclusive, whole which is the universe in which we live" (p. 202).  I think Dewey would say that in James' stream of consciousness, art works because of the water carrying those objects and it makes the water more noticeable.  Art also has the effect of allowing us to perceive the entire stream.

Later in the chapter Dewey makes another distinction between the aesthetic and the non-aesthetic, one which I think I spoke of during a discussion in ED 5010, though I probably botched it a bit.  He speaks of media as that which becomes the artwork, rather than a means of expression, "Colors are the painting, tones are the music... esthetic effects belong intrinsically to their medium" (p. 205).  Interestingly he uses different learning outlooks as an example of intrinsic or external operations, as either aesthetic or not.  He sums the point up by writing "all the cases in which means and ends are external to one another are non-esthetic."

"Sensitivity to a medium as a medium is the very heart of all artistic creation and esthetic perception" (p. 207).  When a medium is not merely a means to expression, the medium becomes infinitely more important.  The parallel I attempted to make in the class discussion was somewhere along this idea, that in teaching our medium is the classroom experience, and sensitivity to that experience, which is like no other experience because of its particular relations, is the heart of teaching aesthetically. 

The Organization of Energies

"Cumulative progression toward the fulfillment of an experience in terms of the integrity of the experience itself-something not to be measured in external terms, though not attainable without the use of external materials" (p. 171). 

"The meaning of 'wind, rain, sheep... is a function of the whole situation expressed, and hence is a variable of that situation and not an external constant" (p. 171).

I think that what Dewey is saying here is that the integrity of a work of art comes from the whole working together, and although it must exist materially those materials should not be used to judge the artwork.  He gives the example from Wordsworth's Prelude to illustrate that those words have original meanings in that work, mainly that together they work to create a feeling, or a quality to that poem rather than a literal dictionary definition.  I think we could say the same for colors, shapes, sounds, and timbres in paintings and music, that works with integrity barrow from the materials of the external world to serve a purpose for that piece in a unique way. 

Later in the chapter Dewey writes about perception and its object, but he argues that objects belong in perception, not to them.  The distinction sounds similar to Wittgenstein, as Dewey writes, "objects of most of our ordinary perception lack completeness.  They are cut short when there is recognition; that is to say when an object is identified as one of a kind..." (p. 184).  This comes after he discussing seeing the cloud, or the object with a name, rather than "this individual thing existing here and now with all the unrepeatable particularities..." 

In a previous post I wrote something about destroying the idea of the "essence" as some property belonging to things which we cannot observe, that hides beneath perception, but that makes them unique.  Wittgenstein replaced the essence with the "family of relations."  I then wrote, I think, about the problem with programs in education, such as reading programs or math programs.  I'm not sure that I can make the logical argument but I see the ideas in this post as being related.  The connection comes from taking a mechanical, or technical approach to what I view as an integral experience.  When following a program (planned experiences as external materials?) I think we put some external constant, a definition of what should happen, between ourselves and the meaning of what is happening with our students (all of those individual things existing here and now.)  Not of course that we should teach without plans, but that those plans should grow from the experiences of the group, "by virtue of what has gone before and what is [musically] impinging or prophesied" (p. 191).

The Natural History of Form

Rhythm.  "Ordered variation of changes" (p. 160).  As a musician I hear the term charged with a particular meaning.  In a broader sense we often hear of the natural rhythms of life.  Dewey discusses rhythm with such a broad scope, and he devotes so much discussion to it, that I won't ever hear it in the same way.  Dewey credits rhythm in the natural world as "the first characteristic of the environing world that makes possible the existence of artistic form" (p. 153). 

Dewey approaches rhythm from his definition of form: "Form may then be defined as the operation of forces that carry the experience of an event, object, scene, and situation to its own integral fulfillment" (p. 142).  Simply stated form is the method, the how, however it must be tied to the integral fulfillment or risk an overtly mechanical nature.  In the attempt to reach this integral fulfillment the artist must overcome challenges, "the existence of resistance defines the place of intelligence in the production of an object of fine art" (p. 143).  This rhythm of resistance and intelligent creativity is responsible for advances in technique, however those advances "grow out of the need for new modes of experience" (p. 147) not out of the resistances of technique itself. 

Earlier today I wrote in the ED 5010 moodle site that I experience patterns of optimism and pessimism as a teacher.  Now I'm trying to relate what I wrote above to my teaching experiences, which I tend to think of as paralleled to artistic experiences, if not actual artistic ones.  It suggests to me that at the predictable low points a new mode of experience is needed.  This could mean throwing out old lessons (I tend to renew themes rather than actual lessons though) or rethinking the layout of the year.  It could mean changing positions or even more drastically changing jobs.  I think it will be natural, once in any position for an extended period of time, to find all sorts of rhythms, some of them leading to opportunities for intelligence and creativity.

Substance and Form

This is the chapter in which Dewey writes "there can be no distinction drawn, save for in reflection, between form and substance.  The work itself is matter formed into esthetic substance" (p.114).  When we are in the performative what we do is carried in how we do it, or vice versa.  And I think this, from an educational standpoint, is a huge lesson. 

Dewey also comments on the link an artwork serves in communication between the artist and the audience, and that the triad is a necessary requirement of art.  And he says, "It is also true that it exists in unnumberable qualities or kinds, no two readers having exactly the same experience...A new poem is created by everyone who reads poetically" (p.112).  Here I see a relationship to an idea I attribute to Wittgenstein, that being the role of individual perception in communication.  I think Dewey builds from the angle that "language exists only when it is listened to as well as spoken.  The hearer is an indispensable partner" (p.110) not only that the hearer brings to the communication their lived experiences, their individual perception, but that they have to engage.  No part of communication is passive.  This I think is another important point from an educational perspective.  It seems to bare a relation to Dewey's concept of impulsion, because to listen to a communication, or to engage with a work of art would start with an impulsion. 

The Expressive Object

"The blase critic may permit his trained modes of technical response - ultimately always motor - to control him to such an extent that, while he skillfully apprehends how things are done, he does not care for what is expressed" (p. 102).  Dewey gives us two conditions which must be met in order to perceive art as having qualitative meaning, on the part of the audience: "There must be indirect and collateral channels of response prepared in advance in the case of one who really sees the picture or hears the music.  This motor preparation is a large part of aesthetic education in any particular line" (p.102).  On the other hand the artist must fuse "meanings and values extracted from prior experience" (p.102) into the artwork itself.  I think the challenge to the arts educator, as is the ethical challenge of any educator, is to prepare channels of response (technical motor experiences) in a way that does not bias the meanings and values of an expressive object. 

Since "nature... does not present us lines in isolation" (p.104) I think the task of teaching is impossible to be completey free from bias.  Perhaps this is along the lines of what Paulo Friere meant in Letters to Those Who Dare to Teach when he wrote that teaching was political.  "Different lines and different relations of lines have become subconsciously charged with all the values that result from what they have done in our experience in our every contact with the world about us" (p.105).  To me this suggests that the technical content I use to teach should have meanings and values I consider to be of high quality, that I can honestly appreciate.  And ethically I think I should discuss this aspect of material with students.  It's powerful when Dewey writes "[lines] seem in direct perception to have even moral expressiveness" (p.105).

The Act of Expression

“The epidermis is only in the most superficial way an indication of where an organism ends and where its environment begins.  There are things inside the body that are foreign to it, and there are things that belong to it de jure, if not de facto” (p. 61).  I think we could think of the mind and the intellect in the same way, as acting on impulsions to fulfill needs.  And perhaps a major problem with public education comes from creating an environment congenial to the straightaway delivery of information, such that our students don’t have to “give an account of [themselves] in terms of the things [they] encounter, and hence they would not become significant objects” (p.62).  Of course this relation goes back to Dewey’s idea that there are impulsions which need to be fed.  And that seems to be the hook, to spark an impulsion which requires the student to interact with the environment in an educational pursuit.  But in our age of efficiency I think we are killing the impulsions, erring on the side of feeding information to pass the test.  Maybe not just with the recent NCLB, but by putting our content in books, sitting our students in rows and feeding them content in a disconnected way.  I think this relates to Dewey’s philosophy of education stemming from solving problems relevant to the life of the problem solver; the impulsions and the interacting with the environment to satisfy them.

Education would happen when one creates or perceives meanings, and Dewey writes that we learn “that particular acts effect different consequences… He thus begins to be aware of the meaning of what he does” (p.65).  This is the beginning of acting expressively, and it marks every work of art.  Later in the chapter Dewey writes more about meaning which I relate to the James and Wittgenstein discussion about meaning, with the qualitative and technical differentiations, “There are values and meanings that can be expressed only by immediately visible and audible qualities, and to ask what they mean in the sense of something that can be put into words is to deny their distinctive existence” (p.77).  I think Wittgenstein suggested that we could get closer to understanding this qualitative meaning by discussing the effects of changing parts of it, like changing one pitch in a melody.  I think this is a clue towards teaching qualitative perception.

The last concept I want to touch on deals with the union of the artist and the product.  Dewey writes of the transformation of the “inner” materials along with the transformation of the physical artwork.  He says that there are not two operations performed on each the inner artist and outer artwork but that “The work is artistic in the degree in which the two functions of transformation are effected by a single operation” (p.78).  In such a case the artwork would reflect back to the artist something of that “inner” quality.  It becomes something emotionally fulfilling rather than a routine chore.  Then when we engage as spectators with a work of art some of the fulfilled emotional experience is reflected onto us.  I think that merges with our own self, something from the artwork resonates with us in a meaningful way, as something about our experience is reflected back to us.  This seems at the heart of any meaningful communication. 

Having an Experience Continued - Intent

To have an artistic experience I think is more than to have an aesthetic experience.  What separates the artistic has to do with intent, although I don’t think there is a clean break between aesthetic /integral/full experiences and purely artistic ones, I think as in all experience there’s a spectrum between the two.  I’m not sure that I could call my earlier ice climbing example art, despite the perception of related qualities, but maybe something like an art.  Art is a communication and so an artist “embodies in himself the attitude of the perceiver while he works” (p.50).   And to be creating art the artist must be creating a new vision, not mechanically repeating “some old model fixed like a blueprint in his mind.”  I think there is an art to a lot of things, but that art per se is something a little bit more, namely a communication.

So this gets me thinking about teaching as art or as an art.  Often I think we’re working from an old fixed model, and those of us who are enthusiastic are trying to desperately to make that model work as well is it can.  By this I mean we’re using lesson plans with standards and objectives (fixed models,) but I do think that thoughtful teachers embody in themselves the perception of their students.  We are hopefully acting with “sensitivity to the quality of things” (p. 51).  And I do think that part of our job is to teach our students to be perceptive, as Dewey writes, “For to perceive, a beholder must create his own experience.  And his creation must include relations comparable to those which the original producer underwent” (p. 56).  The original producer, I think is the subject matter, content, or concept.  The aim is for students to create meanings which relate comparably to the original concept, the communication technically and qualitatively begins with the teacher, just as the artwork comes from the artist.  This all makes me think that maybe teaching cannot exactly be called art, but it is something a lot like it and to approach it as an art I think would help us to have fuller experiences.

Having an Experience

I finished reading Art as Experience last night so I’m thinking about how to approach writing/discussing it in the most useful way.  It certainly is full, I probably have at least one sentence underlined on each page, and it’s a work that I’m sure will continue to open up for me with time and persistence. For now I’ll discuss some of the themes and ideas which I hope to remember, and use for a specific purpose later. 

Having an Experience

I appreciate Dewey’s spectrum of the quality of experiences we have, from the inchoate, interrupted, and mechanical to the integral and aesthetic.   Certainly the aesthetic experiences are the ones we are wide awake to.  It occurred to me that completing this book was stepping towards havening an experience with it.  My first attempt was interrupted and while I wouldn’t say “humdrum” or “mechanical,” sustaining focus on what I was reading was difficult.  Regardless it was incomplete and not holistically aesthetic.

I feel conflicted with the idea that an interrupted experience is not aesthetic, because I feel like an interruption could come while being wide awake, such as falling from a rock climb or putting down a book after a few chapters.  But when Dewey writes, “To put one’s hand in the fire that consumes it is not necessarily to have an experience.  The action and its consequences must be joined in perception.  This relationship is what gives meaning; to grasp it is the objective of all intelligence” (p. 46) Then I think for Dewey “interruption” means something like 'that which ends the experience and any reflection on it.'  Falling from a rock climb is probably more like a resistance which invites reflection than an interruption.  Working with a few chapters could be an integral experience, so long as the reading is not merely mechanical and technical.  Working with the whole book, and perceiving meanings from it is a larger, fuller experience.  But merely reading a few passages and leaving them is something like wasted time.

The bedrock Dewey strikes is that “The esthetic is no intruder in experience from without…but that it is the clarified and intensified development of traits that belong to every normal complete experience”  (p. 48).  Every experience has an aesthetic element, such that we can’t separate what happens from how it happens (until reflection.)  So I think complete integral experiences are ones in which the how is perceived.  Certainly, comprehending the technical is only part of understanding experience.   Still, that’s the objective reality, that’s the starting and ending place of many minds. 

 I want to include this quote “To think effectively in terms of relations of qualities is as severe a demand upon thought as to think in terms of symbols verbal and mathematical” (p.47).  It makes me think that to think artistically one does not necessarily have to be an artist.  I think any perfomative task demands thinking in terms of relations of qualities, from how your words work together to where and how to strike at ice with an ice axe when climbing.   What fascinates me is the scope of relationships, from the very small minutia to the grand scale of an entire way of life.  In many ways verbal and mathematical symbols become automatic, such that people can talk a lot without saying anything, or as Dewey writes “ art probably demands more intelligence than does most of the so called thinking that goes on among those who pride themselves as being ‘intellectuals’” (p. 47).

My friend Jeff Previty climbing the route "Dracula" at Frankenstein Cliffs.