“On the one hand, the layman who enjoyed art should educate himself to become an expert. On the other hand, he should also behave as a competent consumer who uses art and relates aesthetic experiences to his own life problems. This second, and seemingly harmless, manner of experiencing art has lost its radical implications simply because it had a confused relation to the attitude of being expert and professional” (Habermas 106)
Here, Habermas seems to be grappling with the relationship between art, viewers, and critics. He believes that people who enjoy art should educate themselves and be critical of what they look at. That’s a belief I can certainly agree with. It’s not enough for me to just enjoy a work on a surface level. I enjoy looking deeper and analyzing what something does well and what it doesn’t do well. I like thinking about the implications a work has and what kind of messages it imparts on the viewer. I feel like many people can benefit from taking a closer look at the works they enjoy. However, I’m a bit confused whether or not one should “educate himself” to the level of “expert” in order to critique a work. Is Habermas trying to imply that we can’t fully critique something we aren’t completely familiar with? I guess to some extent, that’s true. I’m, by no means, an expert on animation or theme park design, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to critique Disney movies and theme parks. I am fairly familiar with writing and storytelling, so I can critique them from a narrative standpoint. Someone who is an expert can look at these works on a level that I’m not familiar with. In some cases, it’s interesting to know what an outsider’s perspective is on a work. It could add another dimension or layer of meaning that we otherwise couldn’t see.
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