Cometti's 'La force d'un malentendu' Examines Art Theory's Pitfalls

Jean-Pierre Cometti's book 'La force d'un malentendu. Essais sur l'art' (Questions théoriques, 2010) critiques art theories for distancing art from ordinary life. Drawing on John Dewey's 1934 diagnosis, Cometti asks whether a philosophy of art can guide free orientation. He distinguishes three approaches to the sensible: subjectivist hedonism (return to Kantian taste philosophy, where pleasure is key but paradoxically not spontaneous), phenomenalist conception (inspired by Merleau-Ponty, art as revelation in existence), and pragmatic hedonism (body engages aesthetic experience, art as thought process in ordinary life). Cometti concludes that aesthetic judgment always operates within conventional generic terms used to describe non-art. The book is reviewed by Jérôme Lebrun in art press n°364 (February 2010).