Aesthetic Judgement and Aesthetic Value

An aesthetic judgement is the decision that a person makes when deciding on the aesthetic value of an artwork, an evaluation that indicates the quality of a work. This text considers a work’s aesthetic value to vary according to the person who judges it: the aesthetic value of a particular artwork is considered to be idiosyncratic. A judgement of high aesthetic value specifies that a work is very good--that it is strongly liked by the person judging it. A judgement of low aesthetic value specifies that a work is not very good--that it is strongly disliked by the person judging it.

People often use the term aesthetic value when they discuss their liking or disliking of a work. A person, for instance, may indicate a liking for a work by saying “This work has aesthetic value,” or express a disliking by saying “This work has no aesthetic value.” During the research interviews and during casual conversations, I observed that many people use the word “aesthetic” in reference to the visual characteristics of a work. For example, a person may say “I don’t like this website for aesthetic reasons,” meaning that the work is considered to have low aesthetic value because of its visual characteristics.

The aesthetic value that a person bestows to an artwork is affected by which aesthetic features it contains. The dominance of red within a work, for instance, may increase its aesthetic value for a particular person, but this same feature may decrease the work’s aesthetic value for someone else.

Process of Aesthetic Judgement

The process of aesthetic judgement proposes that a person evaluates an artwork using an aesthetic perspective that is comprised of one or more criteria called aesthetic criteria. People use their personal collections of aesthetic criteria to determine if their physical, emotional, and intellectual responses to an artwork are appropriate for a work to be judged as good, to have high aesthetic value. People’s aesthetic perspectives and aesthetic responses are influenced by various factors, including context, their motivation for making judgements, personal values, knowledge, persuasion, and the characteristics of human perception. Although people use different aesthetic perspectives when judging artworks, the model outlines a general process that is applicable for any aesthetic perspective and for any medium or style. The model proposes that different aesthetic judgements of the same aesthetic object are the result of people using different aesthetic perspectives.

© Don Ritter