Abstract

What makes an artwork an artwork and not an everyday object? Why do artworks evoke a sense of wonder and even a feeling of estrangement or distancing from our present circumstances? Do artworks embody a higher truth?I am interested in these questions about aesthetic experience insofar as they bear fruit for a critique of a traditional aesthetics of works. Do artworks embody a higher truth as critics of work aesthetics maintain? If the process of appropriating an artwork is to avoid any falsification of its truth, must we regard this process as merely secondary or reconstructive? If so, can art be understood from the way it is given in experience? Do we misrepresent aesthetic experience if we take the experience of artworks as our point of departure?