Neglected Knowing: Some Characteristics of Positive Aesthetic Experience in Painting

........................................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgments .........................................................................................................v List of Tables .............................................................................................................. vii CHAPTER ONE -INTRODUCTION ........................................................................1 The scope of the study ...................................................................................................1 Purpose and focus of the study ......................................................................................5 Implications for education and justification of goals.........................................6 Motivation..........................................................................................................7 Theoretical underpinnings .................................................................................8 Initial conceptual influences ............................................................................10 The dilemma of conflicting epistemologies.....................................................11 The nature of the inquiry..............................................................................................11 The research question and participants ............................................................11 Contributions arising from the dissertation’s findings and an overview of its implications for art education ......................................................................................13 Structure of dissertation ...............................................................................................16 CHAPTER TWO -ESTABLISHING THEORETICAL BASES..............................20 Introduction and Overview ..........................................................................................20 Intentions......................................................................................................................21 The aesthetic as a mode of knowing ............................................................................22 Fortification of the aesthetic ........................................................................................26 The sublime..................................................................................................................28 An intrinsic/essentialist account ......................................................................30 A subjective/contextualist account ..................................................................31 Summary ..........................................................................................................32 Aesthetics as a discipline .............................................................................................33 Essentialist beginnings.....................................................................................33 Introducing contextualist concerns ..................................................................35 The confusional air of aesthetics......................................................................36 Influences of feminist theory ...........................................................................40 Theoretical pressures from the left ..................................................................43 Practice and pedagogy .....................................................................................45 Discipline based art education (DBAE).......................................................................47 DBAE in practice.............................................................................................49 Summary ..........................................................................................................51 CHAPTER THREE -INTRINSIC/ESSENTIALIST PERSPECTIVE......................52 Introduction and overview ...........................................................................................52 The aesthetic attitude and disinterestedness ................................................................54 Psychical distancing.........................................................................................60 Regarding human agency.................................................................................61 Formalist qualities........................................................................................................62 Elements of elitism, percipience and sensibility..........................................................63 Summary ......................................................................................................................65