Summer 2003
In the eye of the beholder: Looking good, being good
Photo by Jayme Halbritter
MARCIA EATON
Professor, philosophy
Education
Ph.D., philosophy, Stanford University; B.A., Knox College
Most recent books
Merit, Aesthetic and Ethical (Oxford University Press, 2001)
Basic Issues in Aesthetics (Wadsworth, 1987); translated into Finnish, 1995
Reflections on art and the environment
“The wetland where I was photographed for this article [used to be] a meadow where kids could play, fly kites, etc. Land management folks decided to turn it back into a wetland to provide better drainage. Many people complained that they had turned a beautiful field into an ugly swamp. ”
Reflections on art and life
“Art does not always suddenly transform one into a Muslim or a democrat or a Marxist—though it may contribute to such transformations. It does make one experience kitchens and umbrellas and blonde hair and crowds and birches and Lincoln and the Danube differently. It also opens one to and makes one more enthusiastic about seeking what other cultures have to offer. These ‘trivial’ changes are, of course, potentially profound.” (Merit, Aesthetic and Ethical, p. 30)
Room with a view:
“I see Loring Green from my [downtown Minneapolis] condo—I love that view and know that high density living is better for the environment than having a house with a huge, high-maintenance lawn. I feel good about that.”
While she was living and teaching in Copenhagen in 1971, Marcia Muelder Eaton stumbled upon an object that would shape her professional passion. Stopping by a modern art museum, Eaton saw an unsettling exhibit: pieces of slaughtered horses displayed in glass jars.
Then and there, says the U of M philosophy professor, CLA Dean’s Medalist, and 2003 recipient of the University’s Distinguished Women Scholar Award, “I decided that before I died I would answer the question, ‘Is that art?’”
It’s not exactly the kind of experience that ordinarily launches a love affair, but that’s how Eaton describes it. “I fell in love with that problem like I fell in love with my husband,” she says. “It captured me.”
No one was more surprised than Eaton herself, who had started college as a pre-engineering major. Finding that her own talents and interests “lay more in ideas than in things,” Eaton says that once she got into philosophy, “I never wanted to leave.”
That decision has been the U’s good fortune. Since arriving on campus in 1972 with a Ph.D. from Stanford, Eaton has earned an international reputation as a scholar of art and ethics. Of course, the ideas that hold her fascination are still grounded in “things.” Indeed, as a teacher and lecturer, she’s known for her props, one of which, a humble cake pan, evokes the inevitable question: “Is this art?”
Context is everything
As a philosopher, Eaton loves nothing better than sifting
her way through perspectives about art, ethics, and utility—putting
art and other objects in a cultural context and looking at the aesthetics
and ethics of their creation, their history, their purpose and use,
and people’s experience of them. “Some people say that
when you have an aesthetic experience, you are just reacting to
a work’s formal properties, just to what you see or hear immediately,”
she says. “But I think that’s false. You don’t
put aside who you are when you look at art. We humans have a built-in
response to the context of art. When you take art out of context,
you rob it of its value.”
At the very core of Eaton’s view of art is her belief that aesthetic properties can be understood fully only in relation to culture and human values—including ethical values. “Some properties matter in some cultures, not in others,” she explains. “Shapes, colors, sounds matter differently in different cultures. Whether something is original is very important in our culture; in others, it’s not so important.”
A staple of early socialization, children’s books conspicuously use aesthetic properties—both visual and literary—to make ethical points, says Eaton. In the children’s classic “The Little Engine That Could,” Eaton notes that the story’s aesthetic appeal is precisely what makes the moral (about striving and refusing to give up) memorable.
“The author was a genius at arriving at a phrase and repeating it,” Eaton says of the story’s rhythmic, repetitive refrain, “I think I can, I think I can.”
Throwing international politics into the mix, Eaton finds a provocative example in recent news dispatches from Iraq. “Most people think of gold as inherently beautiful,” she says. But when the palaces in Baghdad were opened to reveal Saddam Hussein’s gold bathroom fixtures, “it wasn’t just gold. This is someone who used gold to make a sink. That matters in how we see it”—not to mention how we see Hussein, or even Iraq.
“Our ethical values influence our aesthetic values,” says Eaton. “And it works the other way around as well.”
Eaton’s work ultimately has public policy implications. Her goal as a teacher and scholar, she says, is to help students and others understand the complex role art plays in the lives and values of communities—and to be vigilant. Art, says Eaton, has the power to edify but also to “seduce.”
“Genuine aesthetic appreciation,” Eaton says, “requires intellectual exertion. The opposite of ‘aesthetic’ is ‘anesthetic.’ My greatest challenge is to convince students that they need to stop and think, not to seek only anesthetic, mind-numbing experiences.
“Having really green grass is dangerous,” Eaton says by way of example, noting that it takes “polluting, dangerous chemicals” to create yards where the grass is greener. Understanding the potential environmental costs of the pursuit of beauty, Eaton has worked with landscape architects to develop designs that are in keeping not only with aesthetic standards but also with the environmental, cultural, and other standards of communities.
So what about that horse exhibit in Copenhagen? In her latest book, Merit, Aesthetic and Ethical (Oxford University Press, 2001), Eaton maintains that if an object has certain “intrinsic properties” considered worthy of aesthetic attention in a particular culture, then yes, it’s art within that culture. The dismembered horses, however repugnant they may seem to us, thus do count as art. But, Eaton argues, they are “not very good art. Great art sustains repeated attention over time; aesthetically valuable experiences are those by which we are turned on, not off.”
Recently, Eaton has become deeply involved in an art education reform effort, spearheaded by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, to incorporate aesthetics into a K–12 arts curriculum. Since her recent book has, in her words, “pretty much said what I think I have to say,” Eaton is now “concentrating on refining those views and doing what I can to get students to take the ideas seriously and build their own views as a result.”
One thing Eaton hopes students will take away from her work is an appreciation for the diversity of aesthetic experiences: “Students should never go away without thinking, ‘This Monet is great, but what might a Hopi say about it?’”
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