In the aesthetic appreciation of a visual work of art, in the experience of looking at it, we see something more, so to speak, through or in the work itself, than simply what is represented on the visual surface. A visual work also can be appreciated by the auditory sense, by the sense of smell, by the tactile sense or by the sense of taste. We can, moreover, think in the particular "world" realized by the work of art itself. What kind of experience is such an appreciation? The present essay is a comparative and analytic examination of the aesthetic experience of the author in response to three bathroom tableaux which are in striking contrast to each other : <<Bathing women 1>> by Yuki OGURA (1938), <<My Mother putting her hair up>> by Anthony GREEN (1974) and <<Bathroom>> by On KAWARA (1953). Through the description and examination of such issues as the cultural meaning of the bathroom ; color, lighting, perspective ; appreciation by the sense of smell, by the tactile sense ; and consciousness of the essence of water, the author investigates the nature of these particular kinds of experiences, and also addresses the difficulty of establishing a universal, generally valid, theory of such experiences.
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