Art as Experience

In Chapters 3 through 5, Dewey moves from describing the general shape of “an experience” to the dynamics of expression and, finally, to the character of the expressive object. These chapters clarify how art grows from the same rhythms that structure ordinary life: impulse, resistance, adjustment, and consummation. Together, they show that art is not a special domain separate from living but the intensified realization of experience itself.

A key feature of Dewey’s account is his insistence that emotion is not a detachable add-on but the binding thread of experience. He observes, “We are given to thinking of emotions as things as simple and compact as are the words by which we name them. […] In fact emotions are qualities, when they are significant, of a complex experience that moves and changes” (41). This contrast between static words and shifting experience underscores the danger of reducing emotions to labels. Literary rhythm in the sentence—its movement from “compact” to “complex” to “moves and changes”—mirrors the unfolding quality of emotion itself. Dewey’s account aligns with the theme of Aesthetic Experience as a Unified Process of Life, since emotion integrates action, perception, and meaning into a single developing whole. Without it, experience fragments into scattered episodes or rigid mechanics; with it, experience achieves coherence and vitality.

Dewey repeatedly turns to ordinary examples to ground his philosophy in simple, everyday terms. In Chapter 4, he describes how infants learn that crying elicits attention and smiling invites care: “As the infant matures, he learns that particular acts effect different consequences, that, for example, he gets attention if he cries, and that smiling induces another definite response from those about him” (62). Through this anecdote, Dewey makes his abstract claims about expression vivid by drawing on a universally recognizable scenario. It illustrates how expression emerges through interaction, as impulses are shaped by the responses of others. This idea embodies the theme of The Interdependence of Artist, Audience, and Artwork. Just as the infant’s cry requires a listener to complete its meaning, so, too, does artistic expression depend on an audience whose perception recreates the relations embedded in the work.

Another thread running through these chapters is Dewey’s emphasis on resistance as the condition for mature expression. He remarks, “The difference between the pictures of different painters is due quite as much to differences of capacity to carry on this thought as it is to differences of sensitivity to bare color and to differences in dexterity of execution” (45). By juxtaposing “thought,” “sensitivity,” and “dexterity,” Dewey resists the reduction of art to either skill or sensation. Instead, he stresses the ongoing dialogue between impulse and material, which is a process that requires reflection and adjustment. The device of comparative illustration—the contrast among painters—dramatizes this point. Thematically, this resonates with both Aesthetic Experience as a Unified Process of Life, since experience becomes art through sustained organization, and with The Interdependence of Artist, Audience, and Artwork, because creation and perception require active engagement with resistance rather than passive discharge.

Dewey also reflects consciously on the structure of his own argument. Phrases such as “It remains to suggest some of the implications of the underlying fact” (46), and “The last chapter considered [expression] as an act. We are now concerned with the product, the object that is expressive” (82), function as signposts that guide readers through complex transitions. These moments of metadiscourse serve a rhetorical purpose: They mirror the very rhythm of “an experience,” tracing the arc from unified experience to expressive act to enduring object. Dewey’s literary strategies—anecdotes, comparisons, paradoxes, structural signals—help the reader experience the processes he describes. The writing style enacts the theme of Aesthetic Experience as a Unified Process of Life by giving the reader a sense of participation in a process that builds toward closure. In this way, Dewey’s book not only theorizes about aesthetic experience but also attempts to produce it.

Dewey situates his argument within a larger intellectual and artistic tradition by invoking figures such as William James, Edgar Allan Poe, Vincent van Gogh, and Leo Tolstoy. These references function as intertextual anchors, connecting his philosophy to recognized authorities across psychology, literature, and painting. By aligning his claims with such diverse exemplars, Dewey demonstrates that the processes he describes are not limited to philosophy but are visible in the works of artists and thinkers who have shaped culture. This intertextuality reinforces the theme of Art as the Foundation of Cultural and Social Continuity, showing how each act of expression both draws from and contributes to the shared reservoir of human meaning.