Abstract

Eductional a RE viE ,w 2017 vol . 69, no . 4, 523 https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2016.1264206 INFLUENTIAL READERS Art as experience, by John Dewey, New York, Minton, Balch & Company, 1934, £37.29 (hardcover), £12.23 (paperback), ISBN 0399531971 In Art as Experience, Dewey brings together the deep and enduring connection between art and human experience. Art is understood not as a commodity or solitary object but as an intensely meaningful expression and transg fi uration of life. At the core of his argument, Dewey underscores the necessity of approaching art’s creation and interpretation as a continuous process – a paradigm that has laid the theoretical foundation for my practice as an artist, children’s curator and PhD researcher. Like Charles Darwin, Dewey defines experience as the interaction between a being and its exterior world. The connection between art and experience is theorised as both an expression of the human who created it and within the personal experience of the viewer. The first resulting from an “impulsion” to create an outward expression of one’s internal construct through the selection and arrangement of materials, the latter being a consequence of individual interpretation. Both these perceptions are assemblages within one’s mind and are therefore always individually