Art as Experience

At the center of Art as Experience is John Dewey’s claim that aesthetic experience is not a rarefied luxury but the most complete form of ordinary living. For Dewey, all life is structured by the rhythm of doing and undergoing—of acting upon the world and registering its consequences. What distinguishes aesthetic experience is not its separation from everyday activity but its intensification. It carries the rhythms of life to fulfillment, bringing unity, coherence, and heightened vitality. As Dewey puts it, “the actual work of art is what the product does with and in experience” (3). Art is therefore not the static artifact displayed in a museum but the event in which action, perception, and emotion come together into a meaningful whole.

Dewey distinguishes between scattered episodes and what he calls “an experience,” which moves through tension, resistance, and resolution to a satisfying close. He writes, “An experience has a unity” (36), which is created by the binding force of emotion and the continuity of action. This sense of closure can appear in mundane acts—like cooking, gardening, or conversation—but art raises the same pattern to greater clarity.