Art and Aesthetic Experience between Care and Therapy: Paradigms, Practices, and Reflections

Abstract

This article investigates contemporary aesthetic theory through three paradigms — exclusivist, reductionist, and transcendental — to reconsider the philosophical meaning of art in relation to aesthetic experience. The discussion begins with the definition of art in the exclusivist perspective, which separates artistic ontology from aesthetic experience (Danto (1981)), continues with the reductionist approach that seeks continuity with ordinary experience (Dewey (2005), neuroscience), and culminates in the transcendental paradigm (Kant (2000), Jauss (1982)), which emphasizes aesthetic experience as a reflection on conditions of meaning. A central focus is placed on the category of care within aesthetics: art as both an opportunity for the cultivation of common meaning and a potential therapeutic resource. By distinguishing between curatorial art and therapeutic art, the paper highlights how works of art may act both as mediators of shared cultural values and as tools for individual elaboration of trauma and life-experience. Through an analysis of Marco Bellocchio’s films, particularly Sorelle Mai and Marx può aspettare, the article explores how autobiographical cinema intersects with processes of elaboration and healing. Ultimately, the article proposes that the idea of care should be considered a central aesthetic category, capable of articulating both communal and individual dimensions of experience.