Not an Artburst concert but something interesting.

Solo Violin with Alternating Currents

Karen Bentley Pollick, Violin & Piano
Charles Norman Mason, Technical Director

Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 6:00 pm
Steiner Auditorium
Birmingham Museum of Art
2000 Rev. Abraham Woods Jr. Blvd.
205 254-2565
This program has been made possible by grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts and is presented by the Birmingham Museum of Art and Birmingham Art Music Alliance (BAMA).

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The year comes to a close for Artburst with a wonderful night of Harmony for Humanity concert with Larry Allen Brown. On Sunday Bob Penny provided a beautiful start to the Holiday Season with his reading of Dylan Thomas' "A Child's Christmas in Wales". Please stay tuned as we consider next year.

The reference to Kant can be explained. There is no motion in the pictorial work. In at least one sense. The object, we think, just stays put. Yet we find motion there. The motion is not just in the depicting of a moving subject in the work. That is sort of obvious and in fact is not any motion at all. The sort of motion in the horses. We notice that they are not moving, in part maybe because we think they should be moving. Kant's lesson, Dufrenne says, is this: "movement in the subject precedes movement in the object."(278)

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"...the time that animates pictorial space must belong to the structure of the painting."(277) Are we here equating pictorial with painting? I don't think so, at least it needn't be that way.

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Okay, we begin again with our investigation of the aesthetic experience. In particular we consider the pictorial work. I think I am a little out of order from Dufrenne, but we have done the foundational work, and we can pick and choose a little bit. And we may return to the musical work sometime later.

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Well, we are really not up to anything at the moment, but I think we may need to get another UU Coffee House event going. There must be somebody out there who is interested. Don't you think?

Dolores Hydock is an actress and story performer, whose work has been featured at a variety of concerts, festivals, and special events throughout the U.S. She is a touring artist for the Alabama State Council on the Arts, a speaker with the Alabama Humanities Foundation, and a member of the Southern Order of Storytellers. Her six CDs of original stories have all received Resource Awards from Storytelling World Magazine. Find out more at her website storypower.org

I have been spending some time reading Dufrenne and redesigning the website. I am not entirely happy with the aesthetics of the site, but I am going to leave it for now (if you have some suggestions leave a comment - keep in mind that I am not an artist, nor a graphic designer of any sort).

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Our friend James Wood. Lyda Rose 2817 Crescent Avenue Homewood, AL 35209 He might be moving soon. The new phone number, as of right now, is 205 915-5875 Check his website for more and current information. Hours: Tuesday-Friday 10:30-5:30 Saturday 11:00-3:00

What does the work of art offer? Remember what we said. We are not arguing the existence of aesthetic objects or works of art. We take as a starting point that there are such things. The preceding entry has been a preliminary investigation into why the work of art needs an audience, why it needs a public. The work of art must be viewed or otherwise experienced by people. That is the sense in which we, as spectators, complete the work, make it possible for it to become what it is. There can be no work of art without an appreciative audience.

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There are objects in my environment. Not all are works of art, but some are. Somehow, my attitude towards the works of art must be appropriate, and if no appropriate attitude from the viewer is to be had, then the work of art suffers.

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My own view of the work of art is perhaps a bit too static. My paradigm work of art is the painting. Now, of course we agree with Dufrenne that "the work must present itself to perception"(19). The various art forms have their different ways of presentation. For Dufrenne, I think the presentation is key to the being of the work of art. In addition, the paradigm of presentation is performance.

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We have seen that the aesthetic object is the work of art in proper disguise. That is, an object properly perceived. Dufrenne begins his discussion of the aesthetic object and the work of art by picking an example. He has already said that he will just rely on the experts in deciding what is a work of art. There is no point to try to deny that there are any. To me, in starting such a discussion

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In his introduction Dufrenne begins by consider how to begin. He distinguishes the type of aesthetic experience that is the province of the spectator from that of the creator and says that the aesthetic experience that will form his subject is the former.

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This series will consist of a reading of Mikel Dufrenne's "Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience" and my commentary on that reading. I invite you to join me. You can read along if you have a copy of the book. But you may also participate by raising independent questions and telling us what you think. The book is available at amazon, and maybe some other places as well.

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