Materiality as the Basis for the Aesthetic Experience in Contemporary Art

A number of historical philosophical theories relate to materiality in contemporary art and the role of art objects as an extension of ontology, or the study of the nature of being. The Kantian idea of the “aesthetic experience” is the point of departure, tracing philosophical discourse of how art functions via its materiality through the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Maritain to the post-modern considerations of David Hickey and Arthur Danto. The research for this thesis focuses on how contemporary art, in all its various forms, functions via art’s material qualities or materiality. The objective is to ascertain the significance of materiality in contemporary art within the notion of temporal proximity and to establish the importance of the physical experience of works of art irregardless of whether the artwork manifests as an object, as in the case of painting, or as an experience as in performance art. The aim is to establish the fundamental relationship between the viewer and the work of art as it originates from material experience in all its manifestations. Considerations of materiality can be universally applied in the aesthetic assessment of diverse contemporary art forms that range from traditional, low-tech media to conceptual, ephemeral works. Examples here include works by Richard Tuttle, Eva Hesse, Marina Abramovic, Tara Donovan, Agnes Martin, Cecily Brown, Tony Fitzpatrick and Bill Viola.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Montana

Year

2009

Author dc:creator

• Mills, Christina Murdoch

• 2009
• aesthetics
• art
• art history
• contemporary art
• materiality
• mills

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/1289

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.umt.edu:etd-2308