Joseph Kassman-Tod

What would it be for the language of art criticism to be both appropriately and productively responsive to a work of art? Philosophical reflections on art criticism commonly betray a commitment to what I will call ‘prosaic’ discourse. The ‘prosaic’ view is committed to the claim that art criticism, when it is good, presents and justifies a specific way of appreciating or of evaluating the artwork at issue. In this paper, I highlight the need for a ‘poetic’ quality in art criticism, where this ‘poetic’ quality is a moment of discourse that brings forth new possibilities of sense-making. My proposal takes its cue from German Idealist poet/philosopher Friedrich Hölderlin. I want to show that although this ‘poetic’ quality of language is present in an intensified form in Hölderlin’s ‘poetic’ translations of Sophocles, it can also be seen to be present in good art criticism.

When responding well to beautiful art [schöne Kunst], what kind of attitude does the appreciating subject hold? It could be argued that if we turn to Kant’s aesthetics for an answer to this paper’s motivating question, then we might be led either to arrogance or hubris. In full recognition of this concern, Matherne (2023) has argued that it is also possible to interpret Kant’s aesthetics as offering promising resources for a model of aesthetic humility. In this essay, my primary claim is that Kant’s aesthetics provides a further dimension of aesthetic humility beyond those identified by Matherne, namely, an artwork-directed dimension. My secondary claim is that this model of aesthetic humility is not constrained by contingent features of late eighteenth-century art; it also applies to the appreciation of conceptually difficult contemporary art. According to this Kantian model, in the context of our aesthetic judgments of both beautiful art and conceptually difficult contemporary art, aesthetic humility shows up in three ways: (1) in one’s reflecting judgment of the artwork; (2) in one’s experience of the artwork’s symbolic reference to that which exceeds one’s understanding; and (3) in the expansion of one’s sensual and cognitive capacities. This paper argues, then, that aesthetic humility allows for the judging subject to be enlivened in and through their experience of beautiful and challenging art.

What is it for art-critical conversation to be productively and appropriately responsive to a work of fine art? Broadly, contemporary work on the nature and purpose of aesthetic discourse tends to prioritize one of two poles: the need for agreement in judgement and/or sensibility, and the flourishing of individuality through aesthetic response. I propose that these alternatives each express the legacy of Kantian and Schillerian thought, respectively. Furthermore, I argue that a favourable approach is available if we look to Friedrich Hölderlin’s way of characterizing the kind of communication that can occur between friends. This is a framework that binds together a plurality of perspectives and voices with what it is for one’s individuality to flourish in and through aesthetic response. Drawing on Hölderlin’s thought, I submit Diversity-in-Unity as a norm on art-critical conversation. In art criticism, individual perspectives need to be reciprocally shaped in new and surprising ways.