The Sublime and the Pantheon

(Sublimity can be defined as a feeling of being in the presence of something great, something greater than one's self)

As I stated in my previous post, I spent about eight days in Rome during the winter break. During that time, I saw pretty much all of the famous and great churches and monuments of Rome. My favorite of all the buildings was the Pantheon. This was due to me experiencing the greatest moment of supreme sublimity when I entered the Pantheon. (This was a consistent experience, I went inside of it at least 5 or 6 times.)  Nowhere else in Rome did I have an experience even close to this, even with St. Peter's Cathedral's dome being only slightly smaller than the Pantheon's. But sublimity was the intention of these baroque architects, constructing these gigantic and ornate churches, so why did I not really receive sublimity from these churches?

I think the answer might have something to do with analogy between how I sit in regards to the church as an institution, and the placement I am in the actual physical church. I should start with my relationship as a human being to the church. I grew up with very little to no knowledge of the Christian faiths and kind of developed my own views that 'God' is not an entity which lives above and beyond us but that nature in and of itself is 'God'. When I think of spirituality, I do not associate it with a relationship to heaven, but with a relationship to nature. Spirituality and faith is a much more immediate thing for me and is not so much longing for some kind of divine worship from above, but a more naturalistic worship from around us. (You can see my influence from people like Thoreau.) So let us analogize this to the Pantheon vs. St. Peter's. The Pantheon is much closer to the Earth. The dome is not something far above us, but is right there. While St. Peter's (and the other gigantic Christian cathedrals) are so far above me, I feel no connection, I don't feel overwhelmed (being overwhelmed is usual prerequisite for sublime beauty), more disinterested. St. Peter's is beautiful and all, but I don't seek for that which is beautiful, I seek for that which is sublime.

So now this comes to my relationship with dance. How in the world do I produce a sublime affect through dance? Most treatises on sublimity actually focus upon literature as a source of sublimity. The reason why I ask this question is because sublimity is really what, for me, makes art worthwhile. I do not really know the answer to this question, and it will probably be the focus for a lot of my next few years. (I think I have always really sought the sublime in dance, I just haven't noticed it until recently.) I am doing some extensive reading upon the sublime and am currently experimenting with my choreography to see if I can produce that result, or a different, more peculiar, form of the sublime within dance itself. But one of my professors told me that Ballet is actually aimed at the sublime, but I quickly pointed out that I do not feel sublimity from ballet. So maybe there is another analogy that we can make from the previous analogy. Maybe I have the same relation to ballet as I do to Christianity or to baroque architecture? I do not know. These are all questions which I will continue to seriously ponder as I go into my future as a choreographer and philosopher.

Why Should Artists Study Aesthetics?

I was quoted this recently from some source unknown to me, "Aesthetics is to the artist as ornithology is to the birds." Implying of course, (disregarding the bad analogy as it is generally accepted that dancers should study kinesiology) that the study of aesthetics have nothing to do with being an artist or creating art. Being someone who wants to find in-roads for philosophy and dance to interact, this was a troubling sentiment to me. So what exactly does the study of aesthetics do for a choreographer? Well, my first reaction, and the one I like to default on, is that the study of different areas brings new ways of thinking and perceiving in the creation of a work of art. However, that does not really answer the question, because the same holds true for the study of any discipline and it says nothing about the content of the field of aesthetics.So let us examine the importance of a specific debate upon an artist, say, the debate between the aesthetic empiricist and the aesthetic contextualist. (We will be skipping the enlightened empiricist position for the sake of simplicity)

Aesthetic empiricism is the idea that the appreciation of art is a matter of a distinct state of mind which allows someone to grasp the formal and expressive qualities of a piece of art. It has been described as a way of seeing or perceiving distinct from ordinary, day-to-day perceptions. Aesthetic contextualism, by contrast, is skeptical of this distinct state of mind and believes that aesthetic appreciation is a result of knowing the context which surrounds the art, along with the artwork itself. They claim that certain works require context in order to appreciate and that you cannot separate the art from its context.

So how does this affect an artist? Why should they care if aesthetic empiricism is right or aesthetic contextualism is right? Well, the answer is, that they do not really need to know if one is right or wrong, what they do need to do is recognize which one they believe in. If I am an aesthetic empiricist (which I am), then this information is vital for how to get my audience to enjoy my work. So I need to be able to communicate the type of mindset or somehow get them prepared to see my show by getting them in the right mindset to appreciate my work. But if I am an aesthetic contextualist, then I need to know what information to communicate to my audience if they are to get my dance.

So the answer to the question: "What does the study of aesthetics do for the artist?" is really quite simple. The study of aesthetics enables an awareness of the audience and how the audience should and should not be perceiving the work of an artist. It allows an artist to be able to avoid the usual answers to the all too much asked question: "What does it mean?" It allows the artist to guide the audience into the appreciation of their artwork, without appeal to artistic virtuosity. (The ability for the artist to create the piece of work, which is usually a quick, but undesirable, in-road to works of art.) Aesthetics is vital for the artist who wants an audience to actually appreciate their work.