According to Hume, experience in observing art is one of the prerequisites for being an ideal art critic. But although Hume extols the value of observing art for the art critic, he says little about the value, for the art critic, of executing art. That is, he does not discuss whether ideal aesthetic judges should have practiced creating the form of art they are judging. In this paper, I address this issue. Contrary to some contemporary philosophers who claim that experience (...) in creating art is irrelevant to one’s ability to judge that art form, as well as to some dance critics who see dance training as possibly even detrimental to one’s aesthetic judgment, I suggest that having practiced dancing makes one a better observer of certain aesthetic qualities of dance. Dance training, I argue, can facilitate a kinesthetic experience upon watching dance without which some aesthetic aspects of a dance performance—such as grace, power, and precision, as perceived kinesthetically—may go unnoticed. (shrink)

Since it was first published in Chinese in 1981, The Path of Beauty has been read widely and translated into several languages, becoming a classic in the study of Chinese aesthetics. The author, a noted philosopher and aesthetician, draws on examples of sculpture, painting, calligraphy, and poetry, among other sources, from throughout China's history to build a cogent and engaging argument concerning the nature of Chinese artistic values. While providing an historical overview of Chinese art from antiquity to modern times, (...) he examines as well the evolution of the sociological, psychological, philosophical, and spiritual underpinnings of Chinese culture. (shrink)

Artistic creation is never a hermetic practice within which artists create something completely new without any reference to the past. Such a past, in anglophone literary criticism and aesthetics, is often delineated by the term tradition, while, in Chinese artistic criticism, it is specified by the term gu 古. Both tradition and gu imply that artistic practices, be they in Europe or East Asia, will inevitably encounter the past. What distinguishes these two terms is the different attitudes taken by Chinese (...) and Western artists and art theorists toward the past and the different values underlying these attitudes.In Western art theory and literary criticism, the influences of the past can be roughly divided into the... (shrink)

One can safely say that the martial arts are generally not viewed as practices that are conducive to aesthetic appreciation. Since serious martial arts practice entails physical aggression and a violent athleticism, it is difficult to see how one can aesthetically appreciate martial movement in the manner that one enjoys the refined movement of dancers, actors, and other performance artists. However, it has been suggested that sports provide aesthetic experiences for spectators and for the athletes who cultivate their bodies in (...) order to compete successfully.1 Since sports competition is often characterized by physical aggression, one is naturally led to consider whether martial arts also procure aesthetic.. (shrink)

This article examines several aspects of the appreciation of Chinese calligraphy, seeking to address two questions. First, what are the aesthetic objects in its appreciation? And second, how can we characterize the process of coming to understand calligraphic works? The answers, I contend, can be found in classical texts on this art. I hold that the aesthetic objects in the experience of a calligraphic work are twofold: the outer form and the inner qualities. This is analogous to what Noël Carroll (...) understood as the object of aesthetic experience, that is, the formal and/or expressive properties.1 I propose that calligraphy appreciation can be understood as a process of retrieval, a term I take from Richard... (shrink)

Conventional Chinese calligraphy criticism displays a tendency toward what in Western art discourse is known as "formalism," an aesthetic doctrine that claims formal properties to be the proper focus of the study of art. Kang Youwei, a noted calligrapher, scholar, and political reformer, writes that "calligraphy is a study that rests on [its] configuration."1 Kang's dictum suggests two interpretations: first, practicing calligraphy should focus on its xing ; second, appreciating and evaluating calligraphy should concentrate on its xing.In classical calligraphy criticism, (...) discourses on xing inevitably involve another important aesthetic term, shi. For... (shrink)