Dewey draws attention to several factors of human nature in his dissertation on “An Experience”.
First, he establishes the premise that “An Experience” is one that has reached completion. Dewey even cites a staircase as an example, where the experience of climbing the entire series results in a singular, emotional and physical phenomenon that is not experienced with each iterative step. Indeed, the outcome is so discrete from the iterative process that, as Dewey says, “An experience is a unity that gives it its name.” His example of having dinner is such that we iteratively identify and bring into focus important characteristics from that occasion, which combine to qualify that particular experience as unique.
This is not to suggest that Dewey is unaware of the iterative steps that lead to the completion of the task, from which “an experience” has been realized. Rather, it is our interest in the food, or the conversation, or the venue that draws our attention to the dinner. We take them all in, and then select or reject aspects that may contribute or detract from the bias we form. “One quality or another stands out sufficiently that characterizes the experience as a whole.” Upon completion, we then name it: that dinner.
Dewey’s appreciation of the aesthetics is his basis for establishing how we experience art. We perceive the aesthetic qualities of the materials that make up an art piece, which forms the gestalt “experience” – as opposed to an intellectual experience. “It is one reason why the strictly intellectual art will never be popular as music is popular.” In fact, Dewey goes so far as to suggest that “no intellectual activity is an integral event (an experience), unless it is rounded out with this [aesthetic] quality.” Otherwise, it is merely an automatic action, a task, or routine act that we would not identify as “an experience.”
With this as a functional truism, Dewey then dissects the appreciation of art into two discrete experiences: one from that point of view of the perceiver, and that of the artist. For the artist, the creative act itself is a unique perspective that also creates its own experience. Here, he describes “the action and its consequence must be joined in perception,” stating that artists own perceptions of self cannot be filtered out of their gestalt “experience” the way the viewer can filter out the artist.
Here, philosophers ask, “Can humans possibly view the universe the same way God created it?” Dewey would say no.
This disposition ironically clashes with that of Empiricism, which states that the acquisition of knowledge is absorbed through our senses. The irony is that “empiricism” implies “experience,” but Dewey regards experience as a gestalt, whose meaning transcends the iterative actions that comprise it. He states, “This relationship is what gives meaning.” It’s his use of the word, meaning, that moves his theory out of the realm of Empiricism and into Idealism (“knowledge held to be in some way dependent on the activity of mind.” – Webster’s).
For me, Dewey’s portrayal of art goes beyond the fundamental questions of the intentions, responsibilities and expectations between the artist and the viewer (like that of humans and The Creator). He asks whether it’s even possible for the artist and the perceiver to ever share in the same experience. Can there ever be an expectation for the artist to evoke his or her emotional meaning from the viewer? We believe that artists successfully communicate and replicate their own emotional interpretations to viewers, but is it really taking place? Or, are we filtering for the bias we seek to justify?