Toward a phenomenological psychology of art appreciation.(Report)

Abstract

Experiences with art have been of longstanding concern for phenomenologists, yet the psychological question of the appearing of arc appreciation has not been addressed. This article attends to this lack, exemplifying the merits of a phenomenological psychological investigation based on three semi-structured interviews conducted with museum visitors. The interviews were subjected to meaning condensation as well as to descriptions of the first aesthetic reception, the retrospective interpretation, and the "horizons of expectations" included in the meeting with art. The findings show that art appreciation appears as variations in experiential forms comprised of gratifying experiences of beauty, challenges to the understanding, and bodily-informed alterations of the emotions. The phenomenological psychology of actual, lived experience can embrace the phenomenological theories of art appreciation by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, yet highlight the psychological importance of experiences with art.

Keywords

art appreciation, phenomenology, phenomenological psychology, qualitative research

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This is a psychological investigation of art appreciation. Art and experiences with art have been philosophical topics since antiquity and have been present in studies of art history, art criticism, and sociology as well. These theoretical frameworks lack a psychological perspective, and the topic of this article is art appreciation from the point of view of phenomenological psychology. Through the use of the methods of phenomenological psychology, particular focus is placed upon individual experiences and their potential for variation, brought to the level of the general. This article thus deals with the general topic of what kinds of experiences are had in relation to art and deemphasizes the famous question "what is art?" The questions of the nature of art and of its appreciation cannot, however, exist independently. They are reciprocally related and jointly inform each other. This relationship has long been recognized in the phenomenological tradition, wherein the experience of art is considered a part of the art phenomenon. Indeed, art is not art if it does not open up toward the recipient. The art work is a horizon for both the viewer and the artist, who are in turn horizons for the work of art. Therefore, a thorough description and understanding of the one will inevitably lead to increased understanding of the other. (1) Not surprisingly, then, the topic of art appreciation has been deeply intertwined with those of art and aesthetics, and numerous features have been proposed to be essential in the viewing of that which is beautiful and that which is art. The two concepts of "beautiful" and "art" only partially overlap, as art is currently considered to contain more than formal beauty, such that, for instance, what is "ugly" also can be "art." It may be that what is "ugly" is "true" and therefore "beautiful," but the concern of this article is not to discuss these concepts which have perplexed philosophers for centuries, but rather to pose and illuminate the phenomenological psychology question: What and how is art appreciation in its appearing? Thus, it is an attempt toward a description of the life-world as it exists in relation to art.

Since art has long had a unique power to fascinate (Raffnsoe, 1996), many explanatory paradigms have been proposed to justify this fact. Several disciplines discuss personal experiences that are involved in such fascination and much of the scholarship on art appreciation has been contributed by disciplines other than psychology, most prominently by philosophy. In philosophy, for instance, it has most famously been argued that there is a particular kind of experience which characterizes the genuine meeting with art. Such a claim has its historical antecedents in the Ancient Greeks and its modern roots in the work of Baumgarten (1735/1968), who initiated aesthetics as an independent held of inquiry. It was crystallized by Kant (1796/1997), who argued that the experience of beauty and art is characterized by disinterestedness, that is, by an experience devoid of secondary interests--an end in itself.