2. Art as Experience

This gem is less read than some of the other works on this list, which is an absolute shame. John Dewey in the 1930s drills home the humanness of experience in a way that still feels profoundly prescient.

He claims that the texture and minutiae of aesthetic experience is intrinsic and fundamentally human. And what’s more, we can’t really talk about it, it has to be expressed. Art can’t tell you what it is (though, science, he remarks, can tell you what science is), it can only express what it is. But the problem is that we are increasingly surrounded by anesthetic objects. Capitalism has been and continues to be a powerful influence in promoting the idea that art is somehow disparate and apart from common life, how the mobility of trade and populations due to this economic system has weakened and destroyed the connection between works of art and the genius loci of which they were once the natural expression, that is, us. It’s a challenging read but highly rewarding!