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ultimate realization of a receptive mode which can function at many different levels of intensity. |
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Certainly this new receptive mode vis-à-vis the work of art opens up a much vaster phase in culture and in this sense is not intellectually confined to the problems of aesthetics. The poetics of the work in movement (and partly that of the 'open' work) sets in motion a new cycle of relations between the artist and his audience, a new mechanics of aesthetic perception, a different status for the artistic product in contemporary society. It opens a new page in sociology and in pedagogy, as well as a new chapter in the history of art. It poses new practical problems by organizing new communicative situations. In short, it installs a new relationship between the contemplation and the utilization of a work of art. |
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Seen in these terms and against the background of historical influences and cultural interplay which links it by analogy to widely diversified aspects of the contemporary world view, the situation of art has now become a situation in the process of development. Far from being fully accounted for and catalogued, it deploys and poses problems in several dimensions. In short, it is an 'open' situation, in movement. A work in progress. |
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1. Here we must eliminate a possible misunderstanding straightaway: the practical intervention of a 'performer' (the instrumentalist who plays a piece of music or the actor who recites a passage) is different from that of an interpreter in the sense of consumer (somebody who looks at a picture, silently reads a poem, or listens to a musical composition performed by somebody else). For the purposes of aesthetic analysis, however, both cases can be seen as different manifestations of the same interpretative attitude. Every 'reading', 'contemplation', or 'enjoyment' of a work of art represents a tacit or private form of 'performance'. |
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2. ''La nuova sensibilità musicale,'' Incontri Musicali, no. 2 (May 1958): 25. |
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3. For the evolution of pre-Romantic and Romantic poets in this sense, see L. Anceschi, Autonomia ed eteronomia dell'arte, 2d ed. (Florence: Vallecchi, 1959). |
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4. See W. Y. Tindall, The Literary Symbol (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955). For an analysis of the aesthetic importance of the notion of ambiguity, see the useful observations and bibliographical references in Gillo Dorfles, Il divenire delle arti (Turin: Einaudi, 1959), pp. 51ff. |
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5. Edmund Wilson, Axel's Castle (London: Collins, Fontana Library, 1961), p. 178. |
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6. Pousseur, p. 25. |
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