バーネット・ニューマンの美学批判とその帰結

抄録

"Aesthetics is to artists as ornithology is to the birds" is known as Barnett Newman's quip. For a generation of painters, it represented the inadequacy of aesthetics for them. In turn, some aestheticians have referred it as artist's inconsiderateness to aesthetics. This phrase is derived from Newman's contribution to a conference held by aestheticians and artists in 1952. Although little attention given to it, the text of Newman's speech shows that his remarks became known with certain distortion. In this paper, examining Newman's speech from the context of aesthetic studies and art scene at that time, I consider Newman's thought and his own art. What Newman disputed was not the whole aesthetics but two particular methodologies; "aesthetics as science" and Langer's symbol theory. The former issue is due to the discrepancy between artist's concern for the evaluation of artworks and aesthetician's attitude to be objective. The latter one is involved with an aspect of Newman's art that is not symbolic but searching for a reality of its own. Such aspect was succeeded by Minimal Art in 1960's. Newman's speech seems to reflect a historical turning point of both aesthetics and the visual arts in America.