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Text

Broad Creation Date

2026

Language

English

Location

Portland

Abstract

This dissertation involves an aesthetic encounter between a viewer and a piece of art, and specifically involves an individual in visual engagement with a piece of art work. During this visual engagement there is more than a simple awareness of the color and form of the object. There is also the underlying understanding and connection of the viewer to the work. It is in this place of connectivity that this dissertation argument emerges to say that there is more to the connection than meets the eye. For the viewer, this dissertation argument puts forth, there is a history of perspectives and impressions that lay in his/her unconscious. On first sight this assumption filled unconscious is what automatically relates to the piece of work, but beyond the initial encounter, this dissertation posits, there is a wealth of subjective and individual thoughts and perspectives in relation to the work of art: thoughts and perspectives that stir within the individual and tune him/her in to his/her unique and individual being and self.

The concept of bracketing found within the Phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl is the method by which an individual is able to put aside outside perspectives and identify his/her individual perspectives. Alongside Husserl, the philosophical perspectives of Kant, Schiller, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Helena Blavatsky, Rudolph Steiner, and Martyn Rawson serve to weave themselves into this dissertation through an engagement with the vii artwork of Wassily Kandinsky and Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. After the external world has been bracketed and authentic subjective consciousness has been isolated and applied to visual art, it is put forth in this dissertation, that an individual will relate to art with a perspective wholly his/her own.

The aesthetic encounter, or the engagement between viewer and artwork, and the ensuing event between the two, the aesthetic event, create both conflict and connection between an individual and creativity. It is in this interaction, when the viewer is actively bracketing outside influences, that the aesthetic encounter is solely between the subjective consciousness of the viewer and the artwork. This dissertation introduces concepts such as the Real Unreal and the prophetic. It likewise reevaluates our understanding of the aesthetic encounter and aesthetic event to address the intimacy of the encounter between viewer and artwork as a seminal, personal, and prophetic experience. It is within this experience that an individual finds an opportunity for spiritual self-discovery and ultimately a perspective of the work of art that is reflective of his/her personal truth.

List of keywords accompanying the abstract: Spirituality, Bracketing, Phenomenology, Aesthetic Event, Aesthetic Encounter, Prophetic, Real Unreal

Disciplines

Aesthetics | Arts and Humanities | Painting | Philosophy

Publisher

Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts

City

Portland ME

THE PRIMACY OF EXPERIENCE: EXPLORING PHENOMENOLOGICAL BRACKETING IN SELECTED WORKS BY ILYA AND EMILIA KABAKOV AND WASSILY KANDINSKY



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