Thesis: Aesthetic resources contribute broadly to the human endeavor of progress, self-understanding, and science, beyond the immediate experience of art. Aesthetic Resources are frameworks, concepts, and modes of expression in art, literature, and philosophy that capture the imagination and the intellect through the senses. The role of art is to inspire the future: the romance of the sea, the open road, space.
The arts are a hallmark of civilization, but can their benefit be crystallized as aesthetic resources that can be mobilized to new situations? How can aesthetic resources help in moments of crisis?
A worldwide social identity crisis has been provoked by pandemic recovery, politics, equity, and environmental sustainability. Philosophical and aesthetic resources can help. Understanding art as a reflection of who we are as individuals and groups, this talk explores conceptualizations of art, with examples, in different periodizations from the 1800s to the present. A marquis definition as to what constitutes an artwork is Adorno’s, for whom the work must promulgate its own natural law and engage in novel materials manipulation. For many theorists, art is the pressing of our self-concept into concrete materiality (whether pyramids, sculpture, or painting). What do contemporary periodizations of art mean to our current and forward-looking self-concept? Recent eras include the neo-avant-gardes of 1945, the conceptual art of the 1960s, and post-conceptual art starting in the 1970s, produced generatively with found materials, the digital domain, and audience interactivity. What is the now-current idea of art? Is today’s Baudelairian flâneur and Balzacian modern hero incarnated in the quantum aesthetic imaginary and the digital cryptocitizen? Far from an “end of art” thesis sometimes attributed to Hegel, aesthetic practices are more relevant than ever. Individually and societally, we are reinventing creative energy and productive imagination in venues from science, technology, health, and biology to the arts.