Pragmatic Aesthetic
While Carney decries surface style and finds using symbols to gain meaning from a work promotes a shallow understanding of art, he believes that the meaning of the work lies at its surface. He posits a world where art is appreciated for what the work actually contains rather than what is read into it, an aesthetic he refers to as pragmatic. Living moment to moment, he argues, one can, for example, just appreciate the acting in a film and gain meaning from that, from what the characters actually say and do, and the tonal shifts that accompany these actions.
Read more about this topic: Ray Carney
Famous quotes containing the words pragmatic and/or aesthetic:
“A pragmatic race, the Japanese appear to have decided long ago that the only reason for drinking alcohol is to become intoxicated and therefore drink only when they wish to be drunk.
So I went out into the night and the neon and let the crowd pull me along, walking blind, willing myself to be just a segment of that mass organism, just one more drifting chip of consciousness under the geodesics.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
““Form follows profit” is the aesthetic principle of our times.”
—Richard Rogers (b. 1933)