Aesthetics for Birds

What follows is a guest post by Nicholas Whittaker (CUNY Graduate Center). It is based on ideas found in the article “Blackening Aesthetic Experience” in the Fall 2021 issue of the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.

I. 

Let’s start with something we can all agree on: there are things in the world we call artworks. Songs and plays, memes and movies, novels and dances and even perfumes. And of course, these things don’t just exist; we engage with them, we experience them! 

End of story, right? I’m not being glib. It really does seem like this picture is just basically right: we, human beings, experience artworks that exist in the world. I think it is basically right. You’re not about to get some arch “Well, how do we know Bach’s Aggripina or Real Housewives of Atlanta aren’t just figments of our imagination?” argument here. 

Instead, this post is about a way of talking about that basic picture—a way of talking that sneakily adds elements to it, and strips others away. This is a way of talking that seems so basic that it can be taken for granted as the only possibility. In taking it for granted, we don’t ask what it adds and what it takes away. We don’t even think to ask if it actually is basic. But we should.