ASA Sponsors Session at the 2021 College Art Association (Virtual)

The American Society for Aesthetics is pleased to sponsor a session at the College Art Association Virtual Meeting February 10-13, 2021. The session, "From East to West, and Back Again: Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art in the Post-Pandemic World," will include taped lectures with open discussion on February 10, 8:00-8:30 am.

The complete conference schedule: https://caa.confex.com/caa/2021/meetingapp.cgi

The session was organized on behalf of the ASA by Professor Andrea Baldini.

Andrea Baldini is Associate Professor of Art Theory and Aesthetics at the School of Arts of Nanjing University and Director of the NJU Center for Sino-Italian Cultural Studies. He is the author of two monographs on street art: A Philosophy Guide to Street Art and the Law (Brill, 2018) and, with Pietro Rivasi (Venice Biennale), Un(Authorized)//Commissioned (WholeTrain Press, 2017).

Panel Participants:

Prof Peng Feng (PKU); Prof Kathleen Higgins (UTexas); Prof Zhou Xian (NJU); Prof Mary Wiseman (CUNY),

In the history of aesthetics, discussions of non-Western philosophical traditions have been largely ignored. Though comparative approaches are a significant exception, systematic inclusions of notions and concerns typical of, for instance, Eastern or African conceptions of beauty and the arts have been – at best – a rarity. At the same time, also examples of non-Western artistic practices have not found adequate discussion in the canon of Western aesthetics and philosophy of art. Specimen from the history of Western art have been the focus of philosophical attention.

Since its early days, the American Society for Aesthetics has championed an inclusive understanding of the discipline. Tough somewhat limited in quantity, qualitatively significant debates on non-Western aesthetics have shaped the life of the association. In 2007, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism dedicated a special issue to “global aesthetic,” while also returning to that theme since then. In a 2017 article, past ASA president Kathleen Higgins argues that “the default interpretation of ‘esthetics’ should be global aesthetics,” and the field should take as its starting point a basic knowledge of aesthetics in various cultural traditions.

Within this understanding of global aesthetics, this panel aims at deepening and building on that trend by considering both systematic discussions of aesthetics in the Chinese context and examples from Chinese art as salient to philosophical theorizing. The goal is to bring both contemporary Chinese theories of art and beauty as well as sustained analysis of Chinese art to the forefront of the studies of the arts.

Beauty (Mei, 美) in the Zhuangzi and Contemporary Theories of Beauty

This presentation outlines a reading of Mei in the Zhuangzi, taken to mean “beauty” or “the beautiful.” There is a possible anachronism involved in such an approach because mei is not central to Zhuangzi’s thinking. Nonetheless, I will argue that interesting points of relevance between Zhuangzi’s comments on mei and contemporary theories of beauty can be found and that an intercultural interpretation of mei and the beautiful can shed light on aspects of both traditional Chinese aesthetics and contemporary Western aesthetics by placing the two in conversation with one another. Zhuangzi seems to support neither relativism nor universalism in his understanding of beauty, though he touches on both relativist and universalist ideas. I argue there are certain superficial similarities between Zhuangzi’s aesthetics and positive aesthetics. But, on a deeper level, Zhuangzi advocates a form of negative aesthetics that is not dissimilar from those already prominent in contemporary Continental aesthetics, such as Christoph Menke, Gernot Böhme, and François Jullien. In this way, I highlight points for dialogue between Zhuangzi’s theory of beauty and contemporary discourse, as well as the ramifications of these ideas for thinking about the future of aesthetic education.

Peng Feng is a professor at the School of Arts, Peking University. His research interests include the history of Chinese aesthetics, comparative aesthetics, and contemporary art theory and criticism. He is also a playwright, freelance art critic, and curator of exhibitions at the international level. He has curated over two hundred art exhibitions, including the China Pavilion at the Fifty-Fourth International Art Exhibition of Venice Biennale 2011 and the First International Sculpture Exhibition of Datong Biennale 2011. His recent publications include An Introduction to Art Theory (in Chinese, 2016); “Aesthetics and Contemporary Art,” International Yearbook of Aesthetics 2012 (editor); and The Return of Presence (in Chinese, 2017). Since 2013, his musical The Red Lantern has been traveling in China.

Chinese Aesthetic Holism and Current Criseshinese Aesthetic Holism and Current Crises

A number of contemporary Chinese philosophers (such as Chen Wangheng, Xue Fuxing, Zeng Fanren, and Cheng Xiangzhan) have emphasized the ancient Chinese origin of the field of environmental aesthetics. An ecological vision of reality has been the presupposition in Chinese philosophy, with emphasis on flows of energies as opposed to individuated units, an outlook that contrasts with the dominant tendency in Western thought.  The lack of separation between human beings and the larger environment and the interdependence of everything within the whole are themes that shape Chinese aesthetic thought and artistic practice.

The ecological perspective of Chinese thought offers important models for global environmental aesthetic discussion, and it might well recast certain debates in current Western aesthetic thought, such as the relationship between environmental aesthetics and environmental ethics. It might also help us to rethink our relationship to the environment in the context of efforts to contain COVID-19.  A particular challenge in this context is how to sustain a holistic interpretation of well-being in the context of an epidemic, in which the flow of energies is the means of transmission. Chinese models for viewing oneself as operating within a broader dynamic flow of energies can provide a foundation for comprehending patterns and possibilities for coping with the current situation as well as underscoring the fact of our global interdependence.

Kathleen Higgins is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. Her main areas of research are philosophy of music, aesthetics, continental philosophy, and philosophy of emotion. Her primary research interests in aesthetics include philosophy of music, emotion and the arts, beauty, popular culture, kitsch, and non-Western aesthetics. She is author of The Music between Us: Is Music a Universal Language? (University of Chicago, 2012), The Music of our Lives (revised edition, Lexington, 2011), Nietzsche’s “Zarathustra” (2nd ed., Lexington, 2010), Comic Relief: Nietzsche's Gay Science (Oxford University Press, 2000), and co-author (with Robert C. Solomon) of books on Nietzsche and the history of philosophy. She has edited or co-edited several other books on such topics as Nietzsche, German Idealism, aesthetics, ethics, erotic love, non-Western philosophy, and the philosophy of Robert C. Solomon. She is currently writing a book on the aesthetics of loss and mourning.

A Grand Materialism

Mary Bittner Wiseman (CUNY)

Material matters in the work of Chinese artists whose goal is to call attention to its subjects through the directness and immediacy of its material like dust from9/11, 1001 Chinese citizens, paintings made with gunpowder, written words, or the specificity of its sites like the Three Gorges Dam. Artists are working below the level of language, where matter and gesture, texture and touch, instinct and intuition reign. Not reduced to the words applied to them, art’s subjects appear in their concrete particularity, embedded in the stories of their materials or sites.

The new art from China is contemporary in being free of the high modernist narrative as this is characterized by the philosopher Peter Osborne. Its reach is global in part because matter is a least common denominator and because everyone relishes stories, such as those that tell why an artist used the materials or chose the site that she did. Finally, it is art in satisfying philosopher and critic Arthur Danto’s characterization of a work of art as what has a subject that it makes clearly present by means of a rhetorical figure that the viewer is to grasp as such. That these two western art theories apply to the art from China shows both theories and art to have global appeal despite differences in the conceptual geographies of China and the west.

Mary Bittner Wiseman is Professor Emerita of Philosophy and Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center and author of The Ecstasies of Roland Barthes (Routledge, 1989 and 2017). She is co-editor with Liu Yuedi of Strategic Strategies in Contemporary Chinese Art (Brill, 2011) and author of the forthcoming A Grand Materialism in the New Art from China (Lexington Books, 2020).

Tension between Action and Disciplined Approaches in Chinese Aesthetics
Zhou Xian (NJU)

In China, aesthetics is increasingly showing two different paths: one is what I shall call disciplined aesthetics, and another is what I label action aesthetics. On the one hand, disciplined aesthetics focuses on constructing systematic models knowledge of authorized institutional discourse about aesthetics. On the other hand, action aesthetics emphasizes socially engaged artistic practices and their societal and cultural roles, broadly construed. Obviously, there is a constant tension between these two kinds of aesthetics. With the increasing specialization and institutionalization of aesthetics, action aesthetics has been largely marginalized in Chinese aesthetics. The author argues that action aesthetics provides us with richer and more pluralist ways of reflecting on artistic issues of societal and cultural relevance: Action aesthetics, in this sense, is more critical and reflective than the disciplined aesthetics, and deserves more attention.

Xian Zhou is the Yangzi River Chair Professor at the School of Arts, Nanjing University, China, where he was also associate vice-president, and is founding Dean of Institute for Advanced Studies. He is vice president of the China Aesthetics Association and vice president of the China Literary Theory Association. His research focuses on aesthetics, literary theory, art theory, visual culture, and related areas. His books, published in Chinese, include, among others, Cultural Logic of Art Theory (2018), Cultural Representation and Cultural Studies (2014), The Turn of Visual Culture (2008), Critique of Aesthetic Modernity (2005).

Future CAA meetings: ASA is an affiliate member of the College Art Association, which entitles ASA to one 90-minute session at the annual meeting of the CAA. The 2022 meeting will be held in February in Chicago. If you are interested in developing a proposal for a session at this meeting, please contact secretary-treasurer@aesthetics-online.org at your earliest opportunity.