Art as Experience

According to Dewey, art is not a material product but an experience. A painting or poem becomes a work of art only when a perceiver actively engages with it, completing the rhythms of doing and undergoing. In this sense, art is the most powerful form of communication, as it transforms private meanings into shared cultural expression. Art both arises from, and reshapes, the life of a community.

Criticism, in Dewey’s terms, is judgment rooted in perception rather than in rules or authority. He distinguishes it from “judicial” criticism, which hands down verdicts of praise or blame, and from impressionistic responses that never move beyond personal reaction. Genuine criticism analyzes and discriminates the features of a work while also unifying them into a coherent appreciation of the whole. Its true purpose is to “re-educate” perception, helping audiences perceive more fully and richly.

According to Dewey, doing and undergoing describe the rhythm of all experience. Doing is the active phase of reaching out, shaping, or experimenting with the world, while undergoing is the receptive phase in which individuals register consequences and are changed by them. In art, the two are inseparable: the artist both acts on materials and is transformed by their resistance, and the audience actively perceives while undergoing emotional and imaginative change. Their integration creates the flow that culminates in aesthetic fulfillment.

Emotion, for Dewey, is not something that is added to experience or mere feeling. To him, it is the organizing force that binds the energies of experience into a coherent whole. Emotion selects, emphasizes, and drives the rhythms of tension and resolution that define both every day and aesthetic experience. A work of art without emotion is lifeless, for it lacks the vitality that fuses substance and form into expression.

Expression is the transformation of raw experience into communicable form. It is not a mere release of feeling, but the disciplined organization of impulse, emotion, and meaning into a medium (like paint, words, or sound). Through expression, private experience becomes public, and it can be shared, perceived, and re-created by others. For Dewey, this is what distinguishes genuine art from personal venting or mechanical production.

Dewey uses the term “form” to describe how the parts of an artistic work are organized into a unified and satisfying whole. It grows naturally out of the artist’s interaction with the medium and with the work’s underlying substance. According to Dewey, a successful form feels inevitable; it expresses the internal order pf the experience rather than following a fixed formula. Through it, the rhythm of doing and underdoing reaches completion. Form is what turns raw experience into an aesthetic whole.

Imagination is the faculty that fuses past meanings with present perception, making conscious experience possible. Dewey calls it the “gateway” through which meanings enter perception. In art, imagination becomes dominant, welding sensation, memory, and emotion into new unities. Both the artist and the perceiver rely on imagination: The artist to create, and the perceiver to re-create the work in experience.

Integration makes an aesthetic experience feel meaningful. It is the transformation of disparate parts into a living whole. For Dewey, this unity is not imposed externally but arises from how each element functions within the experience. The result is unity without sameness and order without rigidity. According to him, a work that achieves integration has the quality of life itself: It is ordered and rhythmic, yet flexible.

The medium is the material through which aesthetic expression takes shape. Some examples include paint, stone, words, or sound. Dewey stresses that a medium is never a passive carrier of ideas. Each medium has its own resistance and possibilities that help determine what can be expressed. The artist’s interaction with the medium—like the grain of wood or the sound of an instrument—all shape meaning as much as the artist’s intention.

Perception, for Dewey, is not passive reception but active participation. A work of art is only complete when a perceiver engages with it, undergoing its rhythms and meanings by observing and reflecting. Dewey stresses that perception is cumulative: It builds toward fulfillment, paralleling the artist’s creative process. Without active perception, a painting or poem is only a physical product, not a work of art.

Dewey uses the term “substance” to refer to the underlying quality that gives an aesthetic work its coherence and emotional tone. Rather than materials or themes, it is the pervasive mood or attitude that unifies a work. For instance, the substance of a painting makes it seem calm, tragic, or joyful.