Aesthetics: What's the Point?

This is a conversation about the philosophy of beauty and the power of art. The speaker discusses different philosophers' views on beauty, including Socrates and Locke. They talk about how beauty is a relationship between the observer and the observed, and how art can have a moral impact on individuals. The speaker also interviews a professor who is a novelist, discussing topics in her writing and the allure of being a writer. They also discuss the impact of movies and books, and how they can transport and transcend the reader or viewer. The speaker and the professor talk about the connection between art and social issues, and how art can educate, inspire, and create dialogue. I don't know what's going on and neither do you, maybe we can talk about it and pretend like we actually do. Hey! Existing Existentially, a podcast of philosophies by Joey Degnan. I did not cross a single box off my Oscars bingo card. I was that girl who was peeved that Greta Gerwig didn't even get a nod for directing Barbie and there's no doubt in my mind that past lives deserve best original screenplay. But really, what do I know? I'm a liberal arts student who has never touched a film camera and most of what I create is based on someone else's work. My judgment of good art is contingent on how something makes me feel or how it makes me think in a new way. But what does that say about me? According to Mr. Socrates, beauty is defined by itself. By means of beauty, all beautiful things become beautiful. So many uses of the same word. Essentially, he believes that our value of life increases as we start recognizing beauty more in everyday things. Locke had to complicate this idea, of course, by introducing the theory of primary and secondary qualities of an object. To Locke, primary qualities of an object are its extension, motion, solidness, and number. A basketball, for example. Its ability to bounce, the space it takes up, and the fact that there's only one of them in this scenario are all primary qualities. These qualities are inherent parts of the object and cannot be separated from it. In other words, they come from inside the thing itself. Secondary qualities, on the other hand, include smells, tastes, colors, and sounds. Secondary qualities are effects that the object has on us and what it puts out into the world when it's observed. For example, if the basketball was purple instead of orange, it would still be a basketball. Our perception of it would just be different. So, what does this mean for aesthetics? Basically, Locke says an object is beautiful if beauty resides in its primary qualities and can be observed in its secondary qualities. So, to Locke, the presence of beauty relies on two parties, the observer and the observed. Beauty's existence is a relationship between what is outside of us and how it makes us feel. The psychology behind beauty joined this area of study 100 years later with works like Friedrich Schiller's Aesthetic Education of Man from 1794. He believes that appreciating art plays a stronger moral role in an individual than their religion, and art is ultimately the key to realizing morality. Schiller argues that witnessing beauty launches our minds into a mental state of quote, equanimity and freedom, end quote, which makes us feel more relaxed and present. This state of mind allows us to be more open to new ways of thinking and experiencing, thus increasing our acceptance of differences. The philosophy behind beauty is hopeful and inspiring, but it's difficult to achieve on an everyday basis. Humans are naturally thinking creatures, and while witnessing something beautiful transports us to a new state of mind, reality is a way of pulling us back. To talk more about the power that art has over our psyche, I interviewed Professor Tara Eisen, who is a novelist and teaches creative writing at ASU. Tara is no stranger to art, as she dedicated her life to the practice through writing. What are some of the topics that you've written about in your novels and essays? There's an interesting split. A couple of my novels are, I guess what you would term historical fiction. One is set during World War II France. Another one is actually set on the island of Alcatraz, where a mother and daughter, the families of the prison guards, lived on the island with their families. So I told the story of a mother and daughter living on Alcatraz. But those are, and I love research, so those historical novels require a great amount of research. But my other fiction, my other novels and my short fiction, tends to be very contemporary and looking at dysfunctional power dynamics in relationships. Sometimes it's romantic relationships, so there's like a weird psychosexual dynamic, and sometimes it's a dysfunctional relationship between a child and a parent, or between friends. Yeah, so that's sort of the primary theme I'm interested in exploring. Wonderful. So what originally got you into writing? I always say I always wanted to be a writer, but I didn't want to write. And I wanted to be a writer primarily because the images of writers I saw in movies and on television just were so cool. It's like everybody had a beach house, or everybody is in a Parisian garret drinking red wine. Exactly. You know, we never see the work of the writing, actually. You get this like six-second montage of someone at their typewriter. But it always looked so cool. So I thought being a writer was the sexiest, most glamorous, coolest thing anybody could do in their life. Thank you. That's a great way of putting it. I liked the aesthetic of being a writer, but I didn't want to write. And that's work. That's horrible. A lot of work, yeah. So I had to really realize that at some point, unless I actually not only wrote something, but kept writing things, people would notice that I would no longer be able to confirm myself as a writer. Fortunately, I did fall in love with the process of writing stories. So can you tell me a little bit about why movies are so impactful for us? I can speak for myself personally, but I think my experience is also very universal. I'm primarily thinking about movies in the sense of the old-fashioned Not necessarily sitting on your couch and folding laundry or playing with the dog while you're watching something. But that experience of going to a theater and sitting there with that huge screen, it was so immersive. I mean, obviously you had images to see and you had sounds and dialogue to hear. But you could almost smell it. You could almost taste it. You could almost feel it. And I think the lure of... I mean, I think of the species anthropologically. We crave stories. We crave hearing stories. We crave telling stories. It's a way to connect. It's a way to see ourselves reflected from a little bit of distance. But in a movie theater, the lure of how you could enter into the world of these other people and experience their lives, I think it's very compelling. I think it's very visceral. Reading is a little different. Reading, even if you're reading pulp, even if you're reading lighthearted, the kind of junky stuff I might read on a plane, you're still processing language in a way that calls upon your brain to be firing. Whereas I think with a film, I don't think it's necessarily a more passive experience, but I think that we process image differently. I think it's more immediate. I think it's more visceral. I think we can turn off our brains a little bit, unless we tend to be sort of analytical and that kind of thing. But I think you can give yourself over to a movie in a way that you can't always do with literature. But I want to say I have been absolutely transported and swept away by works of literature, obviously. I've had transcendent experiences where I get very lost in the prose. But again, I think we're using different parts of our brain. Yeah. Building off of what you just said, as far as when you are engaging with a movie or a book and you feel transcended, can you explain to me kind of what that feels like, what that experience is like? Yeah. I think part of it is maybe the experience of having a really good strong glass of wine or some kind of mind-altering drug. It's like you become oblivious to your own existence, I think. You know, your fight with your mother or what's going on at school or what's going on in the world. I guess that's a sort of fancy way of saying it's escapist. But I think it's more profound than that. I think it's deeper than that. I think the invitation to experience another person's reality, another person's life, I think by definition that taps into your sense of empathy and the need to identify with other human beings. And I think that the experience of doing it, it is escapist, but it's also transcendent because it does allow you entrance into another psyche. Exactly. I think that's very powerful. And I also think there's a cathartic sense of it, too. You know, to see these, and this goes back thousands of years, but to see other humans playing out your own dramas You know, we can learn from it. We can be inspired by it. We can feel less alone. And that can be a very transcendent experience also. That's interesting. I love that you're bringing up this state because there's actually a book on aesthetic philosophy called On the Aesthetic Education of Man that came out in 1794. Wow. And it discusses this idea that witnessing beauty kind of takes us into an aesthetic state that allows our minds to be more open. Oh, I love that. And potentially what's really interesting is because our minds are more open, we're more receptive to understanding other people. Yeah. Right? So that's where those social movements come in. So from your perspective, is there an intersection between art and social issues? Or how do they relate to one another? I think there certainly can be. I don't think there necessarily is. You know, I don't think there's any singular function to art. I mean, you know, sometimes it's escapist or just pure entertainment, and that's wonderful. You know, life can be really tough if you can entertain me, you know, for an hour and a half or even 20 minutes. I'm thrilled. I'm grateful. You know, art functions, you know, again, it can be to educate, to illuminate, to transport, to inspire critical thinking, inspire dialogue. I think that art has a way of getting a point across very often in a way that, you know, by art, I'm actually sort of leaning towards fiction when I say that. Although, I mean, I'm a huge nonfiction lover also. But I think with fiction, with story, in whatever form, it's, you know, a teaspoon of sugar. I think that, you know, you can be really sneaky in flipping your messages in when someone like you are saying is sort of open and absorbing the story and the experiences of other people. I think it can be a really powerful, maybe a little slippery and sneaky way of flipping the message in there in a way, you know, differently so that if you were to try to make a social justice argument through, you know, an essay or a debate or dialogue or whatever it is, you know, I think it's easier for people to find something like that, you know, polemic or dogmatic and to resist it. Wow, yeah. But if it's integrated into art, you know, I think it still has to be integrated in service of the character and in service of the story because if all we feel is the artist trying to make a point, say, about social justice, you know, we may as well be reading an essay. How in every day do you see, like maybe even separating from art forms necessarily, like how do you see art imitating life? Well, you know, does art imitate life or does life imitate art? I think that happens just as often. I mean, art is going to imitate life in the sense that so many of us, you know, who are storytellers or artists, painters, sculptors, dancers, musicians, do draw to some degree on our own experience. And a lot, you know, a lot of our experiences are very universal, are very common. Certainly the emotions are. We all feel, you know, fear, pain, love, anger, resentment, inspiration. So I think by, you know, even people who don't explicitly draw from life, I think the art that we create is certainly influenced and informed by our own life experiences. And so I think that the art that is created is going to reflect aspects of life to some degree. But like I said, I think it works just as powerfully the other way. You know, I mean, whether it's you're watching a movie and one of the actors is wearing this great shirt and you decide you want to go out and try to find that shirt. I mean, that's a pretty superficial example. But it's true. Yeah. I mean, you know, whether we like it or not, we're looking to art for inspiration and lessons, even if we don't think that consciously, about how to behave in the world. You know, how to dress, how to act, how to speak, how to love, how to hate, how to, you know. I mean, that's what my book is all about, right? The Reeling Through Life essays book. You know, all of these models for how to live, how to love, how to die in the film. And my own experience, in a way, just sort of copying, you know, behaviors that I saw in film that modeled different aspects of life for me. In your opinion, can art be bad? I'm not sure how you mean bad. Do you mean bad as in crummy? A really, a dull story, a poorly directed film? Or do you mean bad as in destructive? As in destructive. Can art be bad? Absolutely. Propaganda. Yeah. Propaganda manipulation. I mean, you know, fascist propaganda is very powerful in its artistry, in its posters, in its films, in its movies. You know, Leni Reifenshal, the German filmmaker who, you know, did the film about the German athletes during the Olympics. Gorgeous film. Absolutely breathtaking from a technical, cinematic perspective. But it was created and used as promotion for the Nazi ideology. So, you know, can art be destructive? Can art be used for malicious, destructive, dehumanizing purposes? Absolutely. For every reason that art is powerful as a source of entertainment, escape, illumination, inspiration, it can be equally powerful as a tool, as a destructive tool. Tara had a lot of powerful things to say about the experience of witnessing beauty through storytelling. But the wonderful thing about art is that it has endless mediums. I talked to my friend, Sanjana, who interned with jewelry designer David Yerman in New York last summer and is currently the president of ASU's Fashion Collective, about what art meant to her. It can be from your own Instagram post to a painting you make to an outfit you wear to an outfit someone else wears to something you see in a magazine or something you see on the internet. I think anything can be art. So what kind of art really, like, what kind of art inspires you? I, since I study fashion, I've always loved fashion. So clothing really inspires me. Couture, runway looks, high fashion, that all really inspires me. But also, I really like graphic design and paintings, surrealism, things that are kind of weird, things that are interesting to look at and things that, when you see it, you're like, how do they even think of that? How do they even come up with that? The shock factor. Yeah. That's a good point, yeah. So in your experience, have you ever, like, witnessed somebody's creation and immediately had a bad taste in your mouth? I've definitely, I'm often around student designers and I'll see some of their work and not really like it at first. But, you know, you can't really tear down other artists. But also, it's just not my taste. They're still making sales. They're still selling things. They're still ending up in big places. It's just not what I would wear or make myself. So I wouldn't really consider it a bad taste. I would just, I just, like, it's not really my cup of tea. What do you think influences your taste? I think it's, most of it is just you as a person. Like, what you like. I think I've always liked very similar aesthetics, even as a kid to now. I've always liked more edgy and unique things. But that's not what everybody else likes. Some people just like, you know, they'll slip in a Van Gogh painting and they're like, wow, that's beautiful. And like, I recognize the beauty in a Van Gogh painting, but I don't, I'm not inspired by it. Yeah, that's a good point. Exactly. And is there a difference between that, between recognizing something is beautiful and feeling inspired by it? Yeah, totally. Because I've been to so many art museums. I've been to some of the best art museums in the world, but I won't walk through it and be like, wow, like, this is so inspiring. I'll think, wow, this is so beautiful. I can't believe someone made this. But I don't necessarily draw inspiration from that. Can you remember a time when you saw something and felt inspired? Honestly, runway shows, a lot of haute couture runway shows, I feel a lot of inspiration from those because there's crazy things that people come up with and the fact that they make it fit the human body in a wearable way is kind of fascinating. That is so true. It's so innovative. Yeah, exactly. It's that shock factor. It's like, what the heck? That is so true. Okay, nature is holy. It's the most beautiful thing to be created. And yet, in practice, you look at climate change and you look at everything terrible that's been going on in the environment that everybody knows about, whether they believe it or not. And why is there that disconnect there between honoring the beauty of nature and treating nature like it was beautiful? I think art is, the way people view art is separate from how they view the world. You don't see an outfit or a painting or a dress or a design on the internet and think, oh, this is what the world looks like. You just are like, wow, that's a beautiful thing that this person made. But there's also, I think, in relation to fashion, when you're looking at fashion, whether it be high fashion or retail fashion, when you're looking at it, you're looking at it in a way where it's like, okay, I like that. I would wear that. But you don't really think about what goes into it. You're just more like, I want that, rather than this is going to contribute. If I bought this, this would contribute to landfills, to carbon emissions, to water pollution, to the industrial waste. You don't really think of that when you're looking at clothes immediately. In the back of your mind, obviously, you know you shouldn't be shopping past fashion. You shouldn't be mass-consuming clothes. But at the same time, the human's innate need to fit in and be beautiful, I think, overrides that. What's the purpose of art? I think the purpose of art is to just make more beautiful things in the world. People paint paintings to make something beautiful. People make clothes to make something beautiful. So I think it's to bring more beauty into the world. But I think that in recent times, with the advancement of technology and the focus on constantly innovating and making something new, making the next big thing, has kind of overshadowed the true meaning of art because now people are just looking for something new, exciting, something that's never been done before, rather than just something beautiful. Creativity is based on commission. I know. Yeah, that's what's so... That's just sad because, again, it's supposed to be naturally inspired. There's a luxury brand called Coperni. In the past couple of years, their runway shows, they've always had a crazy technological event happen on the runway. And the recent one was having, like, a spray-on dress on Bella Hadid, and she stood on the runway. That was, like, the closing of their show. She stood on the runway, and then they sprayed her body with this material that turned into fabric when they sprayed it onto her body. And then a designer came on stage, cut it up, and then she was just, like, standing there wearing it. And then eventually it was a wearable, movable dress. Aesthetics is an abstract and emotional area of our lives. But finding beauty is possible in everything we do. Whether it be an escape or a source of inspiration, beauty waits for us around every corner. But it's up to us to open our eyes and see it. Over and out.