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Paper Abstract: Analysis of art as an intellectual and emtoional aeathetic response. Discusses Clifford Geertz's theory of art forms and their cultural context. The meaning perceived in aesthetic form and objects. Applies Geertz's framework to Abstract Expressionism as it developed in the post-World War II period. Limitations of Geertz's theory. Critical views of Clement Greenberg and Lucie-Smith. Paper Introduction: Clifford Geertz (1983) has proposed a theory of art as a cultural system in which the response to aesthetics is both intellectual and emotional, or rooted in one’s feelings. These feelings in turn are seen as rooted in culture, itself manifested in the varied expressions of religion, morality, science, commerce, technology, politics, amusements, law, and even in the societal organization of everyday practical existence. Geertz (1983, p. 96) argues that talk about art tends to move beyond the technical and even the spiritualization of the technical and is directed to “placing it within the context of these other expressions of human purpose and the pattern of experience they collectively explain.” Art, therefore, is very much a product, expression, symbol, and commentary upon the artist and the society in which the Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. These feelings in turn are seen asrooted in culture, itself manifested in the varied expressions of religion,morality, science, commerce, technology, politics, amusements, law, andeven in the societal organization of everyday practical existence. (1975). Culturally, as Geertz (1983) would suggest, abstract expressionisminvolves both a surrealist orientation and an illusionist perspective.Such art ignores the treatment of space that was typical of the realistpaintings of an earlier era, the classical work of ancient Rome and Greece,and the neoclassical, humanist art forms of the High Renaissance. (1961). To that end, Arnold Berleant (1991) contends thatthe phenomena of aesthetics reaches to the very source of perception andmeaning in direct experience and thus becomes in some sense foundational.In other words, the arts have the potential to bring us closer than anyother social form to the immediacy of the human world as we live it.Applied to abstract expressionism, what these theories suggest is that newforces were at work in the post-war world that signaled major changes insociety itself. Lucie-Smith, E. To the degree that these artists wereengaged in modernism and the modern project, they present inventiveness inrelation to a given time, place, and tradition. It is this particular achievement, manifested in the unity ofform and content, that must be the semiotic experience of art. Geertz, C. Regardless of the specific culture or socialsystem in which a work of art or an art form is developed, that art work orform says a great deal about the culture in which it was produced. The unity of form and content found in art forms is understood byGeertz (1983) as a cultural achievement and not as a philosophicaltautology. Art and Engagement. Tounderstand and to explain art, it therefore becomes important to giveattention to what Geertz (1983) calls "talk" that includes but is notlimited to the recognizably aesthetic. Philadelphia: TempleUniversity Press. Greenberg, C. Local Knowledge. Theintellectual confusion and flux experienced by Americans in this period isperfectly captured in the new cadences and use of line, form, and colorfound in the work of abstract expressionists.Limitation of the Theory Geertz (1983) focuses his perspective on aesthetics withinthe context of specific and often quite unique and discrete cultures. (1991). 96) argues that talk about art tends to move beyond the technicaland even the spiritualization of the technical and is directed to "placingit within the context of these other expressions of human purpose and thepattern of experience they collectively explain." Art, therefore, is very much a product, expression, symbol, andcommentary upon the artist and the society in which the artist exists.Geertz (1983) believes that to study art forms is to explore a sensibilitythat is itself a collective formation whose foundations are as wide associal existence and as deep. In essence, Geertz (1983) proposes that any theory of artis by its very nature a theory of culture and not an autonomous enterprise. For example, the work of artists such as Jackson Pollock,Hans Hofmann, and Mark Rothko - all of whom are representative of abstractexpressionism (Lucie-Smith, 1975) - appeals to me because the works createdby these and other artists of the era speaks to the confusion and sense offlux and change which was characteristic of the era in which it wasproduced. Berleant (1991) makes the point that while it is true thatevery art, including abstract expressionism, dwells in its own sphere ofexperience, it also transcends that domain with connection of varyingstrength to other regions and peoples. Though it can be argued that the European artists of thepost-war era experienced life differently both in the present andretrospectively than did American artists, a very real exchange ofaesthetic values took place in this period (Greenberg, 1961). If Geertz (1983) is correct in his assertion that art cannot beseparated from culture, then it becomes necessary for the art historian orstudent to recognize what was occurring in the world when Pollock createdsuch works as "Broadway Boogie Woogie." What seems to be present in thework of artists like Pollock is the idea of a continuous dynamic whichreflected the rapid movement and greater mobility which came tocharacterize American and Western society in the years following World WarII. Abstract expressionism mostdefinitely identified cultural influences and societal values predominantin America, but also transcended any specifically American definition. All art forms, rooted in culture and its mores, include a matrix ofsensibility and contain a kinetic of its own (Geertz, 1983). Ifthere is a missing element in his understanding of art as an inherentlycultural system, it is with respect to the fact that there are certainsymbols which may well emerge from what is known as the collective humanconsciousness. The devastation of World War II, the unleashing of the forces ofnuclear holocaust, and the stark reality of genocide certainly influencedsociety and those artists who chose to depict it in their work. What was at work was a new way of attempting to synthesize cultureinto art forms that would speak both aesthetically and intellectually tothe viewer. Geertz(1983, p. Art and Culture. Boston: Beacon Press. To adegree, abstract expressionism foreshadowed the emergence of pop art in theUnited States in the 196 s, which Edward Lucie-Smith (1975) considers tohave been an attempt to revalidate purely realistic painting. To"understand" art from both the cultural and the aesthetic perspectives, itis important to recognize that what one sees is a record of visual activitythat one must learn to read in much the same manner as one learns to read atext from a different culture. In commenting on the work of artists like Pollock, Clement Greenberg(1961) makes the point that the abstract expressionists produced work thatwas the first manifestation of American art to draw a protest domesticallyand serious attention from Europe. In the modern era, when art and artists move freely between differentcultures and social systems, culture itself is a mobile phenomenon (Lucie-Smith, 1975). Greenberg (1961) claims that far more than inspired impulse wasat work when the abstract expressionists took brush in hand and began topaint. Clifford Geertz (1983) has proposed a theory of art as a culturalsystem in which the response to aesthetics is both intellectual andemotional, or rooted in one's feelings. The capacity to perceive meaning inaesthetic forms and objects is seen by Geertz (1983) as a product ofcollective experience that far transcends it and as out of participation inthe general system of symbolic forms called culture that participation inart is possible. Though it would bedifficult to find two artists whose styles are as different as those ofPollock (with his undulating lines of seemingly uncontrolled paint broadlysplashed on canvas) and Hans Hofmann (who favored geometric forms of boldcolor juxtaposed against less line-bound splashes of primary colors), theseartists were working with the same general set of cultural "messages." As Lucie-Smith (1975) maintains, what these artists shared was adetermination to open up certain areas of expression that had been formerlyignored. (1983). Any semiotic theory of art is seen as necessarily tracing the life ofsigns in society and not in any invented or artificially and externallyimplied world of dualities, transformations, parallels, and equivalences.Application of Framework One of the most influential aesthetic forms and expressions ofartistic freedoms is the visual arts produced during the period followingWorld War II. References Berleant, A. New York: BasicBooks. Geertz(1983) gives insufficient attention to this while thoroughly identifyingthe cultural "rootedness" of an art form. Late Modern: The Visual Arts Since 1945.New York: Oxford University Press. If we assume, as does Geertz (1983), that all art must be "read" interms of the culture or social system in which it is produced, we must turnto American society in order to "understand" and "talk" intelligently aboutthis large body of work. 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