Dewey J. Art as experience

New York: Wideview/Perigee Books, 1980. — 445 p. — ISBN10: 0399500251; ISBN13: 9780399500251.Some labyrinths are worth descending into just to get a glimpse of the Minotaur, even if you can't yet defeat him. Art as Experience is one of those. It will require several more descents to get the clearest picture of the Minotaur and more familiarization with the territory in order to be able to face it head on. But I have seen the face of the Minotaur, and it is beautiful and terrifying. This is my attempt to follow the threads back out of the maze.Dewey's monstrous work - and I use this as a term of admiration, rather than derision - is daunting in scope, yet, at it's core, it is a simple argument: People change, their perception changes, so that every encounter with a potential "art" carries with it the possibility of an aesthetic experience. The imposition of one's preconceived theory on art interferes with one's direct interaction with art, since it imposes generic ideas on the mind that do not take into account both the artists and the viewers own experiences as influences in the interplay between creator and created, viewer and viewed.The live creature
The live creature and "etherial things"
Having an experience
The act of expression
The expressive object
Substance and form
The natural history of form
The organization of energies
The common substance of the arts
The varied substance of the arts
The human contribution
The challenge to philosophy
Criticism and perception
Art and civilization