Contrasting Views on the Aesthetic Experience

The nature of aesthetics has puzzled many, where questions and reflections about art, beauty, and taste have intersected with our understanding of what a real art experience truly is. The notion of the aesthetic experience, an experience that differs from the everyday experiences, has been given great consideration by English art critic Clive Bell and American philosopher John Dewey since the beginning of the 20th century. Both have spent much deliberation on the distinctive character of aesthetic experience; yet have complete opposing ideas on how to go about understanding aesthetic experience’s ecosystem. Bell takes a formalist approach, as he thinks that to understand everything about a work of art, one has to only look at the work of art.

Nevertheless, I deem Dewey’s perspective inherently compelling because he wants to place art back to the people, who are disengaged from it and allow them to understand that the experience is supposed to personally affect you on some level within your life. Dewey’s aesthetic experience expresses a relationship between the artist and active viewer, as they are now unified together, on the basis of manifesting an experience that moves from disturbance to harmony (AE., 8).
Dewey’s view of the aesthetic experience is linked to our daily lives and scenes from our everyday experiences, Bell, in contrast, is a formalist who finds that acknowledging life in art hampers the significant form, thus hampering with the aesthetic experience. In essence, Dewey’s understanding of aesthetic experience lies in the fact that our art experience is interconnected with our engagement with humanity, therefore creates an aesthetic experience that allows us to see art, life, and cultures in a way that doesn’t avoid our emotions or daily