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Is Wine an Art Object? Author(s): William B. Fretter Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Autumn, 1971), pp. 97- 100 Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/429579 . Accessed: 11/11/2013 11:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Wiley and The American Society for Aesthetics are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 131.130.253.60 on Mon, 11 Nov 2013 11:45:33 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions WILLIAM B. FRETTER Is Wine an Art Object? IT IS COMMONLY SUPPOSED that the idea hicle of aesthetic communication, and the of taste is only a metaphor and can be ap- concept of fusion are discussed in successive plied chiefly to choices one makes in the arts chapters. of sight and sound. Taste itself, taste liter- Perhaps my comments on wine and its ally interpreted, is not supposed to perceive aesthetic qualities will illustrate in another unities which are art works. Thus wines way Pepper's ideas and will show that their cannot be works of art. This I dispute. applicability is not limited to painting, I begin with some disclaimers and an ac- sculpture, music, and literature. Human knowledgment. I do not intend to discuss beings have valued wine for thousands of the "art of making wine," or the "art of years, as they have valued painting and drinking wine"; nor shall I give advice sculpture, and the depiction throughout about stocking a wine cellar or the virtues history of wine in paintings, drawings, and of an even temperature in a limestone cave; sculpture2 provides beautiful illustrations and I shall not write about the relative mer- of the interaction among these arts. its of California as compared with French It is particularly important in the case of or German wines. non-verbal aesthetic communication to be Some years ago I bought a copy of Ste- able to look at the object, or hear it, to look phen Pepper's The Work of Art.' As a non- at pictures, or listen to a song or a flute or a professional I found it fairly heavy going record. Words are inadequate and particu- but yet rewarding. I had been interested in larly so for the aesthetic appreciation of art and music for a long time, and had wine. But the basic question is: can wine be rather unsuccessfully made a quest for an considered as a work of art? Before I discuss understanding of greatness in music and this in terms of Pepper's question,3 What is art, partly to light me on my search for an a work of art? the question of particularity understanding of greatness in scientific must be raised. We must consider a particu- achievement and discovery. Pepper's book lar wine, in fact a particular glass of wine. concerns itself more with an analysis of aes- Just as all paintings are not works of art, so thetic communication than with the reasons all glasses of wine are not works of art. why one artistic object is a masterpiece and Paintings can be ordinary and inartistic, another is not. The book as it describes the commercial music can be "musak," and process of aesthetic communication creates wine too can be ordinary. Wine can be a light of insight that intensifies on succes- spoiled and too old, and paintings can be sive readings. What is a work of art? Can a faded and deteriorated. Thus not all wine judgment of beauty be true? The dynamics is art, any more than all painting or all of the masterpiece, the control object, a ve- music or all writing is art. Also some wine, while classifiable as art, is not as good as WILLIAM B. FRErrTTERis professor in the physics de- other wine. partment, University of California, Berkeley. Stephen Pepper discusses the work of art This content downloaded from 131.130.253.60 on Mon, 11 Nov 2013 11:45:33 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 98 WILLIAM B. FRETTER in terms of three objects: the vehicle, the Next there is the wine's odor. Its aroma object of immediate perception, and the ob- and bouquet are a complex of various ject of criticism.4 In the case of a painting, odors: the smell of the fruit, of the alcohol, the vehicle is probably a canvas with oil of the many organic compounds formed by pigments spread upon it. It is "the instru- the vine in the grape and by the winemaker ment for the production, preservation, and in the processes of vinification and storage. control of the object of aesthetic worth." The object of immediate perception de- For wine, the vehicle is a mixture of water, pends also on the glass container, the tem- alcohol, organic chemicals, and the pig- perature, and sometimes on the length of ments contained in a glass. The alcohol time the wine has been in the glass. But to serves to preserve the rest of the wine and appreciate wine as an aesthetic object, the together with the water makes it possible sense of smell is essential. for the observer to sense the qualities of the The third sense used in connection with wine, just as the canvas holds the paint in the object of immediate perception is that the position the artist intended it to be and of taste. Like the smell of the wine, taste allows the observer to view the painting. has many components, subtle differences in The vehicle has in itself no aesthetic worth the development of the flavor caused by in either case, although the monetary worth time and strong interactions among the ol- may not be inconsiderable. factory sensations. Flavors may be complex, The object of immediate perception is or simple, or distasteful, and the intensity described by Pepper as: of the flavor often determines whether or the experience a spectator has at any one time not it is acceptable. when stimulated by the vehicle. This is the ob- Thus, as with painting and music, in a single ject we see and feel and fill with meaning. It has perception of a work of art, we run into some a date and location. Many will set the location unexpected complexities. What is usually called within our bodies. Definitely our bodies are much a single perception-say the first time one hears involved in the object of immediacy. Our sense a musical composition or sees a picture-is al- organs, our eyes in this instance [a painting] give ready not one act of perceptual response but a us the colors and the line and the shape; and our succession of such acts. Yet somehow we obtain brains of presumably give us the meaning the something of an integral perception of the work represented objects dependent on learning and and of the series of perceptive immediacies.P memory; and our endocrine systems presumably contribute to our emotion. Our bodies are in- Finally, the full appreciation of the ob- volved in the perceptual response. The duration ject of immediacy requires what aestheti- of an object of immediacy is a certain spread of cians call which is the fusion of time, the time that can be taken in intuitively at "funding," a single act of attention.5 meanings from past experiences into a pres- ent experience.7 It implies memory of past For illustration uses the Pepper perception experiences, of pictures seen, of symphonies of a like or of painting Breughel's Winter, or quartets heard, of books read, and of a statue which must be observed from all wines tasted. The experience of hearing a sides over a period of time. H.ow does this late quartet of Beethoven is enhanced if apply to wine? earlier one has heard it, or other late quar- The object of immediate perception is tets, or ones, or else Bee- first observed visually. We look at the wine early anything thoven wrote. And the of in the glass for the character of its color, for experience tasting a Chambertin is its clarity, the degree of its viscosity, the enhanced if earlier one has pattern of the liquid on the inside of the tasted Chambertin, or Chambertin of an- glass above the wine, the gradations of color other year or from another vineyard in in the meniscus of the liquid, and the shape Chambertin, or even a Gevrey-Chambertin and color of the wine as it moves in the from the region. Past experience is essen- glass. The glass is analogous to the frame of tial, and the continual renewing of the ex- a picture and should be consistent with the perience is desirable, especially where the style and color of the wine in that a fine memory of subtle flavors, odors, and colors wine should be served in a beautiful glass, is not always reliable. not in a water tumbler. We now come to the object of criticism, This content downloaded from 131.130.253.60 on Mon, 11 Nov 2013 11:45:33 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Is Wine an Art Object? 99 the third of Pepper's objects following the us to call the object "beautiful." Saying a vehicle and the object of immediate percep- wine "is beautiful" implies that we find a tion: "The object of criticism is the totality fully funded aesthetic satisfaction.
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