Art and embodied knowledge: the bodily basis of aesthetic cognitivism

ABSTRACT This article seeks to further the dialogue between aesthetic cognitivism and embodied cognition, two influential paradigms in the study of aesthetics. I first provide a discussion of the different ways the sense-perceptual has been theorized in relation to aesthetic cognitivism. Adopting Elisabeth Schellekens’s recent classification of how we may learn from art or aesthetic engagement, I distinguish between four models: the standard model, the autonomy model, the enabler model, and Schellekens’s own noetic model. Second, I draw on Mark Johnson’s Deweyan-inspired approach to aesthetics to develop an embodied conception of aesthetic cognitivism that is much in favor of the noetic model, but that also stresses the significant role of the body and sensory experience in shaping the intellectual value of art. Third and last, Rudolf Arnheim’s work on visual dynamics in fixed images and my own work on image schemas in film will serve as case studies to illustrate the cognitive benefits of these patterns in art, particularly for perceptual learning, supporting Ted Nannicelli’s recent perceptual-cognitive model of aesthetic education.