UT PICTURA POESIS

This blogsite is devoted to the study of aesthetic experience. The study of aesthetic experience entails reflecting on the many ways in which the five senses (mediated by thinking) provides life-enhancing enrichment. This appreciative stance is in keeping with a long tradition in the history of art known as UT PICTORA POESIS. This is a tradition of thinking about aesthetically significant art as part of the fabric of cultural edification in which universal values of: beauty, balance, moral and ethically important stories and ideas are embodied in the media of art. Here painting shares characteristics with poetry, dramatic art with the novel, narrative arts and music with dance, opera or film where separate art forms are cross-pollinated and conjoined.

The idea of UT PICTORA POESIS points to a unification theory of the arts and further to the underlying reality of how all human faculties combine in any aesthetic experience or everyday perception for that matter. In this way, UT PICTORA POESIS can be understood as a form of kinesthetic consciousness united to the highest forms of thought. As the philosopher Descartes said, this is a commonsense approach to appreciating how the five senses work in common under the aegis of the mind. When the common unity of the senses are placed under moral and ethical value systems one has achieved what the principle of UT PICTORA POESIS promoted, which was to make humankind-- kinder, more reflective, creative, practical and more aware and ultimately transformed. It is my hope that this blogsite can contribute to this tradition. In this spirit I want to encourage all bloggers to comment on the many topics already posted on this site. I will endeavor, with the support of my colleague Dr. Joe Ferguson and his commonsense approach to the psychology of perception-- to offer fresh and worthwhile updates on points of view on aesthetic themes on this site.

To this end, Joe and I have been working on a taxonomy of aesthetic expression in which well-known visual artists are analyzed using a range of sense and thought processes. Joe has used his background as a clinical psychologist to organize these perceptual forms under a numerical rating system. The numerical rating is in no way to be confused with an IQ test or indication of some superior status based on higher numbers on what we call the HFAP. The idea for a rating system is to simply make one more aware of the different thought and sense processes we have noted in diverse artists, and also to draw out the identifiable elements of any particular aesthetic experience. The HFAP is intended to serve an aesthetic purpose by promoting ways to appreciate what artists have made and the underlying levels of human awareness that were experienced by the artists in the making of their artworks. This approach is consistent with John Dewey's pragmatic and important study- "Art as Experience." Click here to download HFAP forms and to see a brief description of its rating scales.

In the most general sense, this blogsite, the HFAP, posting and comments are about appreciating appreciation as an aesthetic end in itself as part of an on-going contribution to the history of UT PICTORA POESIS.

Bill Havlicek, PhD