Dr. Seuss and Philosophy - Jacob M. Held [138]
Why Is Dr. Seuss’s Art, Art:
Beardsley’s Aesthetic Theory of Art
I have just taken it for granted that Dr. Seuss’s work is art. But what makes his work art? This question became an urgent one for me as I looked at many of his surrealist oil paintings, his ink drawings, and his fanciful sculptures of exotic Seussian animals, done in a faux-taxidermy style. One painting in particular grabbed my attention: Every Girl Should Have a Unicorn. In this painting Seuss places an apparently nondescript and naked girl on a Seussian unicorn. She rides her unicorn on a green-blue hill. She is surrounded by wild vines, painted in fluid, curving lines. These vines—painted in rich vibrant blues, reds, oranges, pinks, yellows, dark blues, and greens—dance across the painting, intersecting randomly. This painting appears to be a landscape in the artistic style of what Jon Agee calls “Seussism.” Here is Agee’s dictionary-esque definition of this Seussy artistic style: “Seussism (Soos-izm), n. Fine Arts. A style of art characterized chiefly by a grandubulous sense of ornamentation and color, where exotic, snergelly architecture twists, turns and schloops into countless grickelly filigrees and flourishes, and rippulous shapes loom about in space as if they were some kind of new-fangled noodles let loose in zero gravity.”1
Yet, Seussism does not seem to fit the image of what most nonartists consider to be art. Most nonartists think that art should be the beautiful, realistic representation of a person, thing, or event. If this is the case, then what makes Every Girl Should Have a Unicorn art? How can we call this painting art? Is it just because Dr. Seuss painted it?
I think Beardsley’s aesthetic theory of art can help us answer these questions. Before we see how Beardsley’s aesthetic theory of art lets us answer this question, though, we should learn more about it. Like other philosophies of art, Beardsley’s aesthetic theory aims to offer a philosophical definition of art. But such a definition is not meant simply to describe how people normally use the word art in their everyday conversations. Rather, a philosophical definition of art aims to provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for an object to be classified as an art object. In other words, a philosophical definition of art aims to answer the question: What criteria must objects satisfy in order to be classified as artworks? This question is important if for no other reason than because philanthropies and governments who fund the arts need to be able to identify which objects and projects are, in fact, art.
Beardsley’s aesthetic theory of art is built on his definition of art. In Art as Aesthetic Production, he proposes the following definition of art: “An artwork is something produced with the intention of giving it the capacity to satisfy the aesthetic interest.”2 Of particular importance is his emphasis on satisfying the aesthetic interest. When an artist produces something, she aims to not only produce an artwork but also consciously desires and intends to produce an object capable of evoking an aesthetic experience in those who encounter it. When having an aesthetic experience, the one appreciating the work experiences it “independent of any expectation of the use or consumption of those objects that might in turn be dependent upon the possession of the objects.”3 Beardsley explains what it means to have an aesthetic experience this way:
[When we receptively] view, listen to, contemplate, apprehend, watch, read, think about, peruse, and so forth an artwork . . . we find that our experience (including all that we are aware of: perceptions, feelings, emotions, impulses, desires, beliefs, thoughts) is lifted in a certain way that is hard to describe and especially to summarize: it takes on a sense of freedom from concern about matters outside the thing