John Dewey (b. 1859, USA – d. 1952, USA)
Art as Experience, 1934

As my focus lately has been on “artistic experience”, I cannot ignore Dewey’s “Art as Experience”. But until Amazon gets its work done, I’ll have to rely on its summary in Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_as_Experience):

Dewey’s theory is an attempt to shift the understandings of what is essential and characteristic about the art process from its physical manifestations in the ‘expressive object’ to the process in its entirety, a process whose fundamental element is no longer the material ‘work of art’ but rather the development of an ‘experience’.

“…experience is a product, one might almost say bi-product, of continuous and cumulative interaction of an organic self with the world. There is no other foundation upon which esthetic theory and criticism can build”

So far so good. Then something goes astray:

“Through the expressive object, the artist and the active observer encounter each other, their material and mental environments, and their culture at large.“

I mean, it can be seen that way, for sure – if that’s where one’s interest lies. Yet, I personally would not place so much emphasis on the artist, as my interest is on encounter between the artwork and the audience – regardless of the artist (while artist can, and normally also is, a member of the audience, as they are also encountering and experiencing the artwork – and that experience does not have to be reduced to a simple check that the artwork is identical with artistic intent or vision). While discussion of the “culture at large” is a slippery slope of a totally different magnitude.

Looking forward to engage in more detail once the books arrives.