“There must also be a reflective or contemplative element to one’s experience of aura for it to count as aesthetic. To help consolidate these ideas let us consider one of Leddy’s examples in which hedescribes noticing the beautiful effect of the shadows cast by some trees. Contemplating this effect, Leddy remarks, “the shadows seem to belong to another world. That is, looking at the shadows as the branches themselves wave in the wind is as though one were looking into an alternative reality" (130). These shadows (viewed more like contemporary artworks) have an ‘aura’ in Leddy’sexperience of them. This involves (or can be characterised in terms of) two components: firstly there is a kind of distancing — ‘they cannot be touched or changed in themselves, but only by way of touching or changing the trees that cast them’ (ibid). Secondly, the experience invokes metaphors of ‘glowing’ or ‘going beyond itself’ in the sense of appearing vividly extraordinary. Such ideas recall Proust’s famous ‘madeleine moment’ (an example discussed in Chapter 8), but also suggest an affinity with Kant’s notion (in the context of art) of ‘aesthetic ideas’[3] or Yuriko Saito’s discussion of the Japanese craftsmen who are able to perfectly exemplify ‘the quintessential character of, for example, a tea cup’ (116-7).”
- Leddy
url: http://netlex.tumblr.com/post/55606211825 by Netlex
- Leddy
url: http://netlex.tumblr.com/post/55606211825 by Netlex
