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BOOK REVIEWS 315
The Aesthetic Function of Art . By gary iseminger . Cornell U.P. 2004 . pp. 160 . £19.99 (hbk).
I n this tight, innovative, and interesting book, Gary Iseminger propounds a credible and vigorous defence of aestheticism in art. He does so by combining a very broad con-ception of the aesthetic with a version of the institutional theory. His is a neat approach that draws on the intuitive appeal of aesth-eticism whilst accounting for the possibility of anti-aesthetic art.
On Iseminger’s view, the function of the practice of art (the artworld) is to promote what he calls ‘ aesthetic communication ’ . While aesthetic communication can take place in a variety of ways, in art it always involves the production of an artefact aimed at and productive of appreciation. This apprecia-tion is said to be aesthetic appreciation, which Iseminger understands to be just the second-order state of valuing an experience for its own sake. Iseminger emphasizes that the function applies to the practice of art as an institution , and not to the function per se of every particular work of art.
By understanding the aesthetic in such general and subjective terms ( ‘ the state of valuing an experience ’ ), Iseminger avoids both having to provide a list of uniquely aesthetic qualities and any narrowly circum-scribed characterization of aesthetic experi-ence. For Iseminger, any experience that is so valued for its own sake, and any qualities that make up the content of said experience, will do.
As I indicated at the outset, since the aesthetic function is here attributed to the
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general practice of art, it need not be present in every particular work of art. Thus, an artwork that is created without any intention that it be appreciated, or perhaps even to defeat the possibility of appreciation, will not constitute a counterexample to the theory. Further, although aesthetic communication paradigmatically requires the use of some sort of physical object or action, appreciation can also take as an object such things as semantic properties, not merely perceptual ones. Hence, even works of conceptual art will possess an ex periential element to suit the purpose of aesthetic communication, and would not in that regard serve as potential counterexamples.
Since there is nothing especially mysterious or dubious about the existence of the mental state of valuing (even of a second-order vari-ety), Iseminger’s theory neatly avoids the accusation of presenting an empty psycholog-ism such as that faced by aesthetic attitude theories. Moreover, there is no hint of form-alism here, since any property, even a relational or expressive one, could be a proper object of appreciation on Iseminger’s view.
Iseminger completes his argument with an empirical analysis that aims to show that the systemic function of the practice of art is, as he has proposed, to produce this second-order state of valuing experience for its own sake. Altogether, the elements of Iseminger’s theoretical stance constitute a signifi cant re-surrection of aestheticism.
In this fresh effort to save aestheticism, it is the breadth of the conception of appreciation and the resultant characterization of aesthetic interest and communication that do most of the work. Nevertheless, there is a cost at-tached to introducing such breadth. After all, aestheticism’s most appealing feature is that it provides us with an explanation of why we take an interest in art in the fi rst place. Yet if an aestheticist analysis of art really is to have such explanatory power (like Beardsley’s for example), we must be provided with a more substantive description of the aesthetic than Iseminger provides.
As I see it, one could save the aesthetic by trying to make sense of a special mental state
of distinctively and recognizably aesthetic experience, or by giving up on experience as fundamental and instead characterize the aes-thetic in terms of a certain kind of property. Iseminger chooses a third route, focusing on experience but sketching appreciation in such broad strokes that it might escape the old aestheticist pitfalls. The problem is that, in so doing, we are left with something not really aesthetic at all. A parent valuing direct experience of a child’s fi rst step would meet Iseminger’s criteria, but the parent’s interest is not thereby an aesthetic one, nor is the child engaged in aesthetic communication in any way.
Iseminger does in fact raise the question of ‘ whether [his] concept of aesthetic commun-ication is recognizably enough related to traditional ideas of the aesthetic for [his main functionalist thesis] to be described as an aestheticist thesis ’ (p. 55 ). According to Iseminger himself, it is in the end relatively unimportant what the theory propounded is called. But if I am right about the principal attraction of an aesthetic analysis, more hangs on this than a mere descriptive label. In fact, if the sort of communication he has described falls short of being aesthetic in any standard way, it becomes increasingly less plausible as a description of the function of the artworld at all. In signifi cant part, his functional thesis gains its plausibility by riding on the back of traditional conceptions of the aesthetic. For one thing, Iseminger grounds the functional claim exclusively on traditional aesthetic ex-amples. But more importantly, it is precisely the traditional conceptions that can provide the normative basis for his functionalist ac-count by identifying a link between the value of artistic practice and the independent or in-strumental value of aesthetic experience itself.
I have one fi nal concern. Iseminger insists that the practice of art should be seen to have begun only with the Batteaux grouping of the eighteenth century. However, it is not clear how Batteaux’s rearrangement in the classifi ca-tion of the liberal, manual, and fi ne arts could possibly be understood as producing the phe-nomenon of uniquely artistic communication
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when and if there had been none at all before. A far more natural understanding of the transition has it that what was occurring was not invention but evolution of existing artistic communication (probably as a function of al-tered social and economic relations). It seems not fundamentally different from the cur-rently changing and evolving boundaries of the arts today, which we properly see as the evolution of a set of already related practices. Otherwise, one would have to describe each new arrangement as the springing to life of an entirely new practice (call it art*), and then there was no art * , nor art*istic communica-tion, until fi lm (or quilting) was added in the twentieth century. On such a view, with each new addition would be born a new concept altogether.
Despite the questions I have raised here, Iseminger has unquestionably produced a clear and powerful new defence of an enor-mously important and infl uential conception of the nature of art. Without a doubt, this book pushes the discussion and assessment of aesthetic analysis of art into entirely new territory, and provides a crucial new lens through which that territory will have to be surveyed.
daniel o. nathan
Texas Tech Universitydoi:10.1093/aesthj/aylo1o
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