John Frohnmayer
Affiliate Professor of Liberal Arts
Oregon State University
"The Doomed Pursuit of Aesthetics and its Turbo-charged Afterlife"
The place is filling up for John Frohnmayer's lecture!
Members of the community, students, and faculty from various departments such as Music and Art attend this lecture.
Dr. Frohnmayer, former Chair of the National Endowment of the Arts, lawyer and professor, begins his talk with a definition of "aesthetics" which he summed up as:
He went on to say that a better understanding of what aesthetics is could be arrived at by talking about it and talking around it. Using quotes from many sources from Shakespeare to popular culture, Dr. Frohnmayer's eloquent lecture was more of an artful meditation on aesthetics than a lecture.
According to Dr. Frohnmayer, aesthetics cannot describe the magic of art. Quoting Loa Tzu, he said "language is the great barriar that gets in our way of the Way." Art has more volume, more dimension than laguage can ever recreate. So why bother to address aesthetics if the logical process of language does not work in describing art? "If," as Dr. Frohnmayer reminds us, "you have encapsuated a work of art in words, you have failed."
Aesthetics is the "cheerleader for art." Society needs aesthetics to strengthen and enrich itself. Aesthetics isn't looking for consensus but for an understanding of the lens we are looking through. Aesthetics, says Dr. Frohnmayer, can expand or break down borders. And it is imperative for a healthy society.
Dr. Frohnmayer lists the attributes of aesthetics:
Who else, asked John Frohnmayer, besides artists, is asking us to "look," to take risks, to live on the edge? Art comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. As in the earliest cave paintings, the hunt and the depiction of the hunt are inextricably bound up in the human condition.
Aesthetics is the discipline of thinking about art's influence on us, on our immediate cultures, on the world as it is depicted in art. Aesthetics is also about cognitive growth. It is not a spectator sport; one must participate in order to practice aesthetics. Through this discipline, we realize that art helps us to create social bonds.
Aesthetics leads us not so gently to ambiguity, to the difficult questions that are the stock and trade of the artist. Aesthetics allows us to deal with ambiguities without being lost in them; it helps us to approach art - art becomes the teacher. Because of aesthetics, we learn to listen and to understand the other person's point of view. It teaches us the fine art of polite discourse.
Aesthetics is always a work in progress, and the spectator adds to the artistic process. Jazz, for instance, is just as much about audience participation as it is about music.
Aesthetics was an early casuality in the culture wars. Academics, asking what should be the new standard in art, met with several different answers. Feminists believed that dead, white guys should no longer be the standard bearers. On the other hand, white guys were saying that their dead ones should be the only standard bearers. "Honesty" as a standard was offered by some, saying that the quality of art is truth. But in all artistic works of genius, says Dr. Frohnmayer, is the clearness of the human condition.
Where does this leave us, asked Dr. Frohnmayer. "Well - probably in one of the ugliest classrooms I've ever been in!"
The Ugly Classroom
No problem with audience participation in this crowd! Questions came fast and furious.
A community member and a student listen to the exchange of ideas between audience members and Dr. John Frohnmayer.
Lana Gailani, B.A., Reed College
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