Appreciation of Aesthetic Experiences
Participants should be able to interpret and evaluate works of art (literary, visual, architectural, and spatial, musical, dramatic) intelligently. They should be able to demonstrate how works of art are expressions of particular cultures, and how the works can be understood in the light of those cultures' beliefs and values. Participants should be able to articulate the value of art as a means of enhancing and enriching human experience. Finally, they should know how to make informed choices, to judge between different kinds of works on the basis of values they (the participants) have themselves made explicit.
Participants should not only be able to interpret works of art originally and creatively, but also to sustain an ongoing dialogue with other critics and interpreters of artistic expression. They should evidence a flexibility of mind, a capacity to examine and compare works of art through different perspectives and the viewpoints of different disciplines. They should have the ability to make informed choices and value judgments with respect to specific works.
The examination of works of art should also have given participants an awareness of how art can enrich and clarify the human experience, can help redefine one's way of looking at the world. Participants should be able to see how works of art can reflect the aspirations and integrity of a culture, and how each person recreates those works through his or her encounter with them. Participants will be able to view the aesthetic experience as involving three different kinds of understanding.
1. Of art as a statement of culture.
2. Of art as an expression of the artist.
3. Of art as a redefinition of one's own biography.
In addition, they can view any kind of art as an embodiment of the creative spirit, as a model of the creative possibilities within every human being to make choices, to find connections, that depart from established ways of knowing and being. Finally, they should see how art can portray and evoke the full range of human emotion, can render a sense of the tragic and the absurd in life. They should see how art can offer modes of looking at the world that transcend or complement the purely rational, and can provide a salutary sense of irony - an awareness of the permanent incompleteness of the human experience. They should also know how to regard a particular work from different perspectives, including the:
1. historical: how a work comments upon, and is rooted in, the conditions and intellectual environment of a period.
2. philosophical: how a work illuminates or raises fundamental issues related to the human condition.
3. sociological: how a work interprets the social conditions and dynamics of a particular society.
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