Emotion to Art

When scrolling through Instagram or looking through my Snapchat story, hundreds of selfies and pictures of food flood my visual sensation. Pictures of a salmon bagel positioned perfectly behind a white background seem to be a pleasing and common “insta” on my Instagram feed; in addition, selfies with shadows from the blinds of a window are “loved” to the user’s desire. While scrolling through my social media, I find myself saying, “WOW! That is soo aesthetic!” What I do not see behind these pictures is the amount of time that went into producing that “Instagram worthy picture.” Truthfully, our views on what is and what is not aesthetic has radically changed from our descendant’s definition of aestheticism.

Denis Diderot was a French philosopher who was critical during the age of enlightenment. Being an art critic and opponent to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he enjoyed paintings of ruins and what messages they evoke. What an interesting way to look at pictures of ruined buildings and the past, looking for what they communicate. This can be summarized through Volney’s invocation on ruins, “Pregnant, I may truly call you, with useful lessons, with pathetic and irresistible advice to the man who knows how to consult you.” Aesthetics and paintings can not only provide us with “advice to the man who knows how to consult you”, but make us intrigued to find more about the narrative of the artist.

Diane Roger-Ramachandran of Scientific American wrote about the neurology of aesthetics. As I previously mentioned, paintings and art make us feel many emotions. She writes, “Art is clearly an expression of our aesthetic response to beauty.” During the neo-classical era, artists did not paint for the sake of drawing their imagination, it was to tell a story. Without a doubt, painters hoped for their viewers to interpret their work in a way that gave way to the current social experience and climate. “Every partial glimpse of an object prompts a search—leading to a mini “aha”—that sends a message back to bias earlier stages of visual processing” says Ramachandran. Paintings are an excellent way of viewing ruins and appreciating the aesthetics for interpretive messages through art.

Professor Steintrager’s lecture on November 9, 2017, delve into one of the principles of humanities and philosophy: aesthetics. Aesthetics? Really (It never occurred to me that aesthetics would be a branch of philosophical thinking)? Anyway, Professor Steintrager spent an ample amount of time discussing the “aesthetic” behind Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s book, The Basic Political Writings; his aesthetic, as in writing. He noted an example from the work of Ovid, Tristia, in which Steintrager makes the claim that Rousseau’s aesthetic in this particular section was to put himself in the place of Ovid so as to further Rousseau’s declaration of being a “barbarian” because they do not understand him. Steintrager then moves onto examine the process of aesthetics through various paintings.

The painting above was examined by Professor Steintrager on November 9, 2017, and is called “Le Pont Du Gard”, produced by Hubert Robert in 1787. This Roman aqueduct structure still stands today in Rome! Compared to the actual painting, the structure today looks like it never aged! Anyway, Steintrager observed that the aesthetic gives the viewer a message of progress still standing, even in times of ruins. As this aqueduct was built during the reign of the Roman empire, this message is interpreted as being empires truly never “go-away”, there is progress made beyond the reaches of the gone empire.

Though there are differing views on aestheticism from the past to today, one can conclude that aesthetic speaks to the humans response to what is truly beautiful. I can appreciate the fact that though we rarely care for neo-classical paintings, there are many resources online that give way to appreciating paintings and examine the aesthetic further. One example is Nerdwriter41 on YouTube who does essays on paintings and help us discover messages that were once overlooked in paintings.

Works Cited

Ramachandran, Diane Rogers-Ramachandran Vilayanur S. “The Neurology of Aesthetics.” Scientific American, 1 May 2008, www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-neurology-of-aesthetics/.

Project Gutenberg's The Ruins, by C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

Folkenflik, Vivian. “Rape and the Aenid.” Humanities Core Research Blog, 21 Oct. 2017, sites.uci.edu/humcoreblog/2017/10/21/rape-and-the-aeneid/.