Aestheticism vs. Popular Taste

This week in class, we discussed art and divided it into two categories, Aestheticism and popular taste. Aesthetic art is often described as “art for art’s sake.” In other words, aestheticism defines the creation of art primarily for the appreciation of its beauty. We also discussed other characteristics of aestheticism, including that it is timeless, complex (requires specialized knowledge to appreciate it), universal, and focuses on the conditions of its construction.


Popular art has many traits in opposition to aestheticism. First of all, popular art is not merely art for art’s sake, but tends to be for a purpose, or functional. It also tends to be historically or culturally specific as opposed to being timeless. Popular art focuses on aspects of its condition or consumption rather than construction. Most if not all of these traits are the exact opposite of aesthetic art’s.


In the same way that some movies are and are not considered art, I believe that video games are in a similar predicament. As a whole, video games seem to fit neatly into the popular taste category, but can have some characteristics of aestheticism. I think that video games are culturally specific and lack timelessness for the most part. Furthermore, they are functional in that they serve as entertainment. The most obvious trait of popular art present in video games is the focus on their marketing and consumption by the masses. Though no examples come to mind, I definitely think that some games hold the characteristic of complexity, or that it requires specialized knowledge to appreciate them. The very nature of video games themselves is that you fully can or cannot appreciate them.