Feminist aesthetics is an oxymoronic term because a field of study can not be anti-objectification and post-objectification and at the same time--just like feminist theory challenges traditional political theories from the very basis and through social practices, feminist aesthetics looks at and critiques the philosophy of beauty by assessing its basic values and through gendered issues, a focus of which being raising the problem with fine art.
Fine art, according to dictionary reference, refers to a visual art considered to have been created primarily for aesthetic and intellectual purposes and judged for its beauty and meaningfulness, specifically, painting, sculpture, drawing, watercolor, graphics, and architecture, and it is a huge part in the study of aesthetics--to say fines art is the visual display of the concept art and beauty, aesthetics would be the corresponding inquiry into the institution of it.
The first problem with fine art lies in its underlying values inherited from the classical world. ‘The skill of Art’, as it represents the necessary techniques required for fine arts in English, has its counterpart ‘techne’ in Greek, which was granted an internal order back to as early as Ancient Greek. In his theory of forms, Plato classified and sorted subjects of studies according to their closeness to Truth, or the Form of things, thereby leaving concepts associated with these subjects’ hierarchical values. For example, closer to Truth than body, particularity, emotion, and appetite are mind, universality, reason, and sense. From the perspective of feminist aesthetics, these binary hierarchies also include male being superior to female, as the former is more culturally related to mind, universality, reason, and sense, meanwhile the latter is said to manifest more characteristics of body, particularity, emotion, and appetite. As it is suggested in this way, fine art’s first aesthetical issue is about its sexist values.
The second problem with fine art is about how it had developed and how the concept of it was shaped: historically, women’s creative efforts were likely to be directed to the production of domestic wares; when these were shunted into the category of “craft,” women’s presence in the genre of visual arts shrank radically, leaving the field of ‘fine’ art exclusively for male artists to practice and define. Even though, in the early modern period, ladies from upper-class families or daughters of male artists may get the opportunities to study fine arts, their works are often restricted to performance or exhibition in front of relatives and friends and are most commonly seen as ‘added values’ to their eligibility as potential wives.
A Short Introduction to Feminist Aesthetics Category description: This category provides readers with a glimpse into the field of feminist aesthetics, covering its historical background, body, and critics. The category also offers an overview of feminist aesthetics’ manifestation in art review and reality and its position in the structure of feminist and political philosophy.
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