필자는 예술적 형식의 개념을 정립하고, 형식이 큰 몫을 차지하는 것으로 흔히 인식되어온 미적 경험의 성격을 논의한다. 먼저 종래의 형식주의와 신형식주의에서 운용한 형식 개념을 비판하며, 형식을 작품의 목적의 견지에서 의미 있다고 고려되는 내적 관계들로서 규정한다. 이어서 필자는 인지를 심리적인 의미가 아니라 흔히 그러해왔듯이 진위와 관련되는 인식적인 의미로 좁게 본다면 미적 경험은 인지적이지 않다는 캐롤에 반대한다. 그는 결국 형식의 경험이 미적 경험이라고 주장하지만, 필자는 인식적인 의미로도 미적 경험은 인지적임을 굿맨의 전략을 따라 주장한다. 끝으로 필자는 회화의 경우로 몇몇 사례를 들며 미적 경험의 과정에서 작품의 형식과 다른 성분들인 질료, 재현, 표현이 상호 영향을 주고받는 면면의 일단을 다룬다. 필자는 작품 내 이 네 가지 성분의 상호작용을 통해 무엇보다도 세계와 인간에 대한 종전에 파악하지 못한 새로운 국면을 알게 되는 것이 작품에 대한 인지적 경험으로서 미적 경험이라고 생각한다.
The components or categories which together organize the artwork are ‘form,’ ‘matter,’ ‘representation,’ and ‘expression.’ Among these, form is usually known as an overriding factor for analyzing or appreciating art. Form is found when matter, subject matter, and emotion or idea are molded into a self-contained entity. In this paper, my aim is to set up the concept of artistic form and to characterize aesthetic experience in which form is a crucial factor. First, after criticizing the views of form in formalism and neoformalism, I conceive artistic form of an artwork as relations of elements significant in terms of the purpose of the artwork. Next, I examine the controversy between N, Carroll and A. Goldman over the character of aesthetic experience. For Carroll, aesthetic experience lies mainly in attention to formal properties, and he objects to Goldman who defends the broader view that includes cognitive and moral properties in aesthetic experience. Traditionally, cognition is usually thought of in terms of determining truth and falsity. Carroll objects to Goldman that even if cognition as a psychological process is involved in aesthetic experience, cognitive insight, understood epistemically, that is, as the acquisition of knowledge is not an object of aesthetic experience. In this passage, I, contra Carroll and following N. Goodman, maintain that the point of aesthetic experience is cognition understood epistemically. With Goodman, I think that all artworks are referring symbols. For him, reference is comprehensively conceived as including exemplification and expression as well as representation. Here, the mediumistic components of form and matter are also referential.
Finally, I intend to show how form, matter, representation, and expression interact with and bear upon each other in several cases of painting. I believe that art is a cognitive instrument which, among other things, teaches us about the world through the mutual interrelations of the above four components.