Dimensions of Aesthetic Encounters: Perception, Interpretation, and the Signs of Art

216 Pages·2022·3.535 MB·English

by  Robert E. Innis

Dimensions of Aesthetic Encounters
SUNY series in American Philosophy and Cultural Thought
Randall E. Auxier and John R. Shook, editors
DIMENSIONS OF
AESTHETIC ENCOUNTERS
Perception, Interpretation,
and the Signs of Art
ROBERT E. INNIS
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
©2022 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Innis, Robert E., author.
Title: Dimensions of aesthetic encounters : perception,
interpretation, and the signs of art / Robert E. Innis.
Description: Albany : State University of New York
Press, [2022] | Series: Suny series in American
philosophy and cultural thought | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021038626 | ISBN 9781438488257
(hardcover) | ISBN 9781438488264 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Aesthetics. | Art—Philosophy.
| Dewey, John, 1859-1952. | Peirce, Charles
S. (Charles Sanders), 1839-1914.
Classification: LCC BH39 .I55 2022 | DDC 111/.85—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021038626
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Dimensions of an Aesthetic Encounter:
Encountering Giorgione’s Sunset 7
2. Energies of Objects: Between Dewey and Langer 31
3. Quality and the Theory of Signs: Dewey’s Peircean Aesthetics 55
4. Aesthetic Naturalism and the “Ways of Art”:
Linking Dewey and Samuel Alexander 83
5. Between Nature and Art: Analytical Exemplifications
of Dewey’s Aesthetics 103
6. Pragmatism and the Challenge of a Cosmopolitan Aesthetics:
On Theory beyond Borders 139
7. Filling the Hole in Sense: Between Art and Philosophy 167
References 187
Index 197

ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 1.1. Giorgione, The Sunset. 8
Figure 2.1. Giorgione, The Tempest. 37
Figure 2.2. Renoir, Bathers in the Forest. 43
Figure 2.3. Hofmann, The Golden Wall. 50
Figure 3.1. Michelangelo, Moses. 73
Figure 5.1. Bingshou, Landscapes. 110
Figure 5.2. van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait. 112
Figure 5.3. da Vinci, The Mona Lisa. 113
Figure 5.4. Renoir, Young Girl Bathing. 120
Figure 5.5. Cézanne, The Card Players. 123
Figure 6.1. Shitao, Landscape for Yongweng. 145
Figure 6.2. Dong Yuan, Taoist Temple in the Mountains. 148

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank the following publishers for permitting the revised and recon-
figured use of the following materials in a new form and format:
Chapter 1 is a reconfiguration of two basis texts: “Dimensions of an Aes-
thetic Encounter,” originally published as a chapter in Semiotic Rotations:
Modes of Meaning in Cultural Worlds, edited by SunHee Gertz, Jaan Valsiner,
and Jean- Paul Breaux, 113–134 (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing,
2007), and “Perception, Interpretation, and the Signs of Art,” originally pub-
lished in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy 15, no. 1 (2001): 20–32, and
used by permission of the Pennsylvania State University Press.
Chapter 2 is based on, and extends with new examples and analyses, my
essay, “Energies of Objects,” which was originally published as a chapter in
Das Entgegenkommende Denken, edited by Franz Engel and Sabine Marien-
berg, 21–38 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016).
Chapter 3 selectively merges material from two essays as well as, in part,
their titles: “Dewey’s Peircean Aesthetics,” originally published in Cuader-
nos de Sistemática Peirceana, no. 6 (2015): 139–160, and “Peirce and Dewey
Think about Art: Quality and the Theory of Signs,” originally published in
a special issue on Peirce’s later theory of signs in Semiotica, no. 228 (2019):
103–133 (Berlin: De Gruyter; https:// doi .org /10 .1415 /sem - 2018 - 0079).
Chapter 4 was originally published as “Aesthetic Naturalism and the ‘Ways
of Art’: Linking John Dewey and Samuel Alexander,” in Rivista di Storia della
Filosofia, no. 3 (2017): 513–532 (Milan: FrancoAngeli srl).
Chapter 5 combines two texts: “Between Nature and Art: Analytical
Exemplifications of Dewey’s Aesthetics,” originally published in American
Aesthetics: Theory and Practice, edited by Walter Gulick and Gary Slater, 111–
134 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2020), and “Between the
Thinking Hand and the Eyes of the Skin: Pragmatist Aesthetics and Architec-
ture,” originally published in Cognitio 20, no. 1 (2019): 77–90.