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.