[microsound] making/erasure

[Charles Turner]

On Tue, 20 Jan 2009 10:37:39 -0500, Stephen Hastings-King wrote:
> 1. the category of aesthetics is a problem. classical aesthetic 
> theory takes the work as given for it's point of departure.  
> bourgeois and materialist forms of aesthetic theory differ primarily 
> in the interpretive frameworks they bring to bear on the artwork.
> in both, the processes of making are erased behind the work as 
> totality and are replaced with one or another version of the mythical 
> Artist.
> it seems to me that one of the many conceptual tasks that await 
> us--whatever that means--out there in the world is to undo this 
> category and the constraints that enframe it.
> this isn't exactly a new idea---lots of folk have addressed it one 
> way or another since the 60s at least--in alot of cases, the way folk 
> went at it was to tack on autobiographical statements after fairly 
> straightforward aesthetic pronouncements.

Hi Stephen-

I've always found Stefan Morawski's distinction between "artistic 
value" and "aesthetic valuation" to be useful. (The first chapter of 
his 1974 _Fundamentals_ book sets it out.)

Morawski was trying to justify both an historical materialist approach, 
and an aesthetics that could encompass neolithic cave art, Poussin, and 
Duchamp/Cage/Fluxus.

Briefly, he posits artistic values as those attributes that an artist 
instills in an "object" that cause us to relate to it as such. Artistic 
value is then prior to any aesthetic understanding of the art object. 
(As he points out, people were making art objects long before there was 
any body of aesthetic thought.)

Aesthetics is essentially a judgement of these artistic values, and an 
attempt to come to terms with how general and particular values 
instilled in art objects come to be significant.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding your point.

Best, Charles