With Images in Time. Atmosphere and Art: Mediation and Dialogue

Authors

Pauline von Bonsdorff, University of Jyväskylä, FinlandFollow

Abstract

The article challenges the idea that atmospheres are always sensed immediately. Instead, atmospheres in art are mediated and arise in a dialogue between work and audience. To understand how, we should pay attention to temporal structures in and around the work, such as the dynamics and duration of aesthetic experience and the historicity of both work and perceiver, including pasts and present. Mikel Dufrenne’s phenomenological aesthetics, complemented with insights from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of perception, offer resources for this. Writing on expression, Dufrenne distinguishes “presence,” in which sense is felt immediately and firmly connected to embodiment, and “sentiment,” which arises from reflective adherence to the work, and comprises both emotional and intellectual components. In aesthetic perception, the work of art as a “quasi-subject” guides the process. Moreover, Dufrenne’s theory of (affective) a prioris that secure the relevance and depth of art, its truth, turns out to be key for understanding atmosphere as sentiment. Individual a prioris are born from dynamic structures of world and subject. Experiencing the sentiment and overall atmosphere of nonrepresentational art, such as the late paintings by Mark Rothko, arises from awareness of the historical situatedness of the work and of the present. It also summons us to delve into what Dufrenne alternatively calls “Nature,” “the originary,” “ground” or “the Grand memory”: to creatively make sense of and respond to the address of the work, including its utopian dimension. Experiencing atmospheres in art, especially as sentiment, entails mediation and dialogue. We see with images, in time.

Recommended Citation

von Bonsdorff, P. (2025). With Images in Time. Atmosphere and Art: Mediation and Dialogue. Duquesne Studies in Phenomenology, 5 (1). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/dsp/vol5/iss1/4