Conception Process of Audience's View of Beauty in Art: Islamic and Western Philosopher's Views

Human’s conception and cognition of art takes place in their communication with the work of art. These works’ hidden concepts and values which have been beyond their creators’ thoughts manifest in relation with the works. The process of cognition is conceiving the creator’s thought which manifests in a physical body. Communication process is one of the most important aspects in the value of a piece of art. Conception has its roots in philosophy. Knowing its identity and explaining its function in knowledge has been paid lots of attention by philosophers. Understanding this concept is one of the most prominent subjects in knowing one self and the world around. When we see a work of art, understanding and knowing the meta-physical aspects, besides the physical ones, are of utmost impotance. In conceiving every work of art, hidden features and values have effective roles in gaining knowledge. One of the noticeable features in this field is the beauty and aesthetic conception of a work which will be created in connection with audiences’ views. Therefore, the audiences’ presence and their conception of hidden values of a work of art will be significant in keeping the work of art. In conveying these features and knowing them, the audiences’ presence and their interactional relation with work is of utmost importance. So, when we see a work of art, the process of conception has an important role and audience is an integrated part of a work of art. In order to reach the goal of the study and answer its questions, the selected method of the study will be interpretive-analytical. To do this, first the process of conception from the viewpoints of philosophy and Islamic and Western philosophers is scrutinized. Then, beauty conception is analyzed from the viewpoints of scholars so that the characteristics and criteria of this process are identified. A comparative study is done to identify the features of conception and beauty among Western and Islamic philosophers. Through this, how the audiences perceive these characteristics can be obtained. Human’s conception and cognition of art, as an epistemologic subject, has its roots in other epistemological domains such as philosophy. In fact, philosophers and scholars’ views of conception of beauty provokes thought. In the present study, it is tried to evaluate and understand the conception of a work and the audiences’ aesthetic values according to Islamic and Western philosophers and scholars based on interpretive-analytic approaches. Also, this study benefits from logical argumentation to analyze the audiences’ understanding and aesthetic processes. Findings reveal that works of art are formal and semantic realities and their understanding is an interactional relation among emotion, thought, wisdom, and human conception. Understanding beauty is both a subjective and an objective process which is identified in three stages of selection, analysis, and giving meaning. Therefore, perception is discovery. Here, the audiences’ mentality playes its role and its socio-cultural conditions influence the field. Conception can be introduced as a subjective and objective process to depict the internal and external views.