An Essay in Aesthetics summary Roger Fry BBS 2nd year English

  An Essay in Aesthetics by Roger Fry

Aesthetics - the philosophical study of beauty and taste.                                        

 Here in this essay, the writer has expressed his feelings for art. According to him, art is an expression of human's imaginative life. Art is free from our daily necessities. It doesn’t fulfill our daily needs but provides pleasures. We feel sensations (संवेदना, अनुभूति) in art. An artist expresses his/her imagination in art. Art brings out the imagination of the artist that matches with spectators' (दर्शकहरुको) feelings, therefore, art evokes feelings and emotions in their minds.

 

Graphic art (visual art), is an expression of the imaginative life. It is not a copy of actual life, separated from actual life. He uses the example of children, who never copy what they see but use their own imagination to freely draw. In Actual life, there is responsive action. In art we have no such responsive action for example if we see a wild bull, we feel afraid and run away but in imagination, we can stare at it and observe for as long as we.

 

To the pure moralist, art must represent ethical values and right action, otherwise, it is useless. The Puritanical view is the life of the imagination is worse than the life of sensual pleasure. The essayist is not agreed with them. He is close to Ruskin a moralist to whom imaginative life helps to promote morality and it is an absolute necessity.

 

Roger now speaks of religion. Religion is also a representation of imaginative life. A religiously intelligent person cannot say that religion can impart complete moral knowledge. In fact, religious experiences are said to be based on human nature and spiritual ability.

 

He thinks that pleasures derived from art are different and more fundamental than merely sensual pleasure. It is not temporary and material. The feelings of an imaginative life that an artist has shown in his/her art, the same feelings, emotions, and attachment spectators or viewers find when they observe it. Because graphic art represents more or less mankind’s feelings and emotions. He says that we can justify actual life by its relation to the imaginative and justify nature by its likeness(similarity) to art.

 

People have different imaginations at different times they always do not match up with the general level of the morality of actual life. Thus in the thirteenth century we read of barbarity and cruelty. He admits that today humans’ moral level and general humanity are higher but the level of imaginative life is lower.

 

At last, he says that imaginations that are in our control are desirable but imaginative life that we see in dreams and under the influence of drugs are undesirable. This desirability separates imaginative life from actual life. Art is the chief organ of the imaginative life. Art encourages and controls it. The imaginative life is distinguished by the great clearness of its perception, and the greater purity and freedom of its emotion. (काल्पनिक जीवन यसको धारणाको ठूलो स्पष्टता, र यसको भावनाको ठूलो शुद्धता र स्वतन्त्रताद्वारा छुट्याइएको छ।)