Pollock!!

Contemporary art in relation to aesthetic experience.

The birth of contemporary art affected not only the art world at the time, but also changed the entire purpose of art up through the present. Up until this point, I think I would agree with Ellen D. that there are "two kinds of appreciation...the ecstatic response to sensual, psychophysiological properties in the artwork, and the aesthetic response to the manipulations of the code..." (What is Art For, 164). But contemporary art pulls away from aesthetic tradition. While contemporary artists would have studied the codes and patterns of history, the art itself doesn't reflect this. In fact, it is a reaction against traditional aesthetic experience. 

Jackson Pollock, Full Fathom Five

Ellen D. suggests that art serves a useful tool for people "not only to 'understand' the mysteries of life but to 'control' their world as best they could" (151). Pollock, perhaps one of the more famous contemporary artists, describes his technique as a controlled accident. It would seem to me that artists such as himself are trying to shy away from the more "cognitive or intellectual element[s] in aesthetic response" (165) as they desire to capitalize on said mysteries of life--that uncontrollable element of the universe--perhaps even chaos itself. These artists are after the point that art doesn't have to be modeled on reality, it doesn't have to have some kind of universal meaning or symbolism. Instead, aesthetic experience can simply be rooted in the feeling that the universe is full of randomness and things that we don't understand, which is exactly the feeling I get when I look at Pollock's work.

Contemporary art bypasses all the codes and is symbolic in that it represents the essential essence of something. It is an experiential art, the development of which "consists in the deepening [of] one's feelings through experience...and through experience in interpersonal relationships so that one can better appreciate embodiments of specific aspects and modes" (164). For example:

Jackson Pollock, Shimmering Substance

"Shimmering Substance glows with the brilliant light of midday sun on a thick meadow. Alive with arcs and orbs of heat-saturated colors, the painting is a testimony to the importance of the Long Island landscape as a motivating force of Pollock's work in the late 1940s" (http://www.nga.gov/feature/pollock/artist15.shtm). While the painting's subject matter is a summery landscape, I don't necessary see that with my eye. This is a great example of what I'm getting at simply because the name of the painting is Shimmering Substance... Pollock is representing the substance of sunshine (one of these somewhat elusive concepts) on a grassy meadow...not necessarily the thing itself (sun, grass, flowers, etc.) which would require the viewer to understand certain aspects of perspective, depth, motion...codes. What is most important in terms of understanding contemporary art is a "wide acquaintance with human relationships and ranges of emotional and imaginative thought...[which] will enrich one's experience of art in a way that may not be strictly necessary for emotional experience of nature, sexual love, religion, and so forth, where acquaintance with complex traditional 'code' is less involved in receptivity and response" (165).