Dewey’s Art as Experience and the Aesthetic Prowess of Judith Rothschild


Dewey’s philosophy of Art As Experience (1934) describes the idea as a “rhythm of intake and outtake". He writes that an aesthetic experience should involve a certain quality of unity and wholeness that occurs before reflection. He believed that if the audience encountered a unified and dynamic experience during their engagement, followed by an impression or reflection the full experience or rhythm would be complete. For example, while walking among Japanese gardens, or becoming engrossed in the symphony an aesthetic experience becomes art. This intake of a unified experience prompts an outtake of response and reflection creating a whole rhythm.

Dewey’s idea extends beyond the gallery and the viewer and affects the artist in a similar rhythm as they create and merge experience, ideas, and emotions with art through the intake and outtake of the creative process. Dewey’s core concept of experience defines art as being that is more than the final product for the artist and the audience, and he critiques the rigid separation between “fine art” and ordinary life. The contemporary art experience is a product of many decades of institutionalized and commodified conveniences. This widespread adoption of mass-produced items reduced the role of an artist in everyday life, they also removed the aesthetic experience from the artist and the audience. Modern ordinary life over-emphasizes, efficiency and productivity and continues to lack simple communal experiences such as eating a well-cooked meal, or the unity of doing and undergoing the process of shaping bread or making soup, or carving a wooden spoon. Earlier cultures depended on aesthetic experiences to deepen social engagement as well as provide a function.

“Domestic utensils, furnishings of tent and house, rugs, mats, jars, pots, bows, spears, were wrought with such delighted care that today we hunt them out and give them places of honor in our art museums. Yet in their own time and place, such things were enhancements of the processes of everyday life” (Dewey 6).

Dewey explains that art should not be isolated to museums and galleries. In Art as Experience, he urges that to restore art’s role in life one must recognize aesthetic qualities in the human experiences through expression and continuous engagement with the environment.

 

Judith Rothschild, “Portrait of a Young Girl” (1959), oil on canvas

American abstract artist Judith Rothschild (1921–1993) began painting in the 1940s, initially influenced by abstract expressionism and the early 20th C European modernists such as Picasso and Braque. Her career evolved from a Cubist and Constructivist style of painting towards a more lyrical and personal abstraction. Rothschild blended the two aesthetic experiences abstraction and representation. Her paintings and drawings were known for a bold use of color, and geometric forms yet blending softer forms and fluidity and spontaneity. Her dynamic yet balanced compositions challenged the status quo and engaged the social discourse. In her piece, Portrait of a Young Girl (1959) Rothschild paints loosely with geometric figures using a controlled palette of just a few colors and incorporates both abstractly and with human form, with hard and soft lines.

Her impact went well beyond her unique and avant-garde canvases as a post-war modernist painter. Rothschild's artistic vision inspired her to become a trailblazer spending periods of her life in cooperation and community with other artists. She left behind The Judith Rothschild Foundation, a unique grant program that focuses on encouraging interest in recently deceased American painters, sculptors, and photographers whose work is of the highest quality but lacks adequate recognition. The grant program is dedicated to ensuring that the work of under-recognized, deceased artists has meaningful opportunities for public viewing and critical reassessment.


References

Dewey, J. (1958). Art as Experience. Capricorn Books. (Original work published 1934)

Moss Galleries, Celebrating the Legacy of Abstract Painter Judith Rothschild at Moss Galleries. 2024, July 10. https://hyperallergic.com/930799/celebrating-the-legacy-of-judith-rothschild-moss-galleries/

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