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Artistic experiences and aesthetic experiences may instigate changes in the psychological character of existence by way of ontological re-structurings of the person. This conclusion arises from the study of Merleau-Ponty’s writings on art and his last work posthumously published, The Visible and the invisible (1964/1968). The essay presented here progresses from a discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s ontological concepts of flesh and the visible and invisible and their relationship to art, to the nature and role of consciousness for ontology and a psychology of art, and finally to the parts played by imagination and physiognomy in a psychology of art. Artistic experiences and aesthetic experiences are agencies of change in the ontology and psychology of human beings.

Artistic and aesthetic experiences are not to be confused, much less conflated, with" art appreciation". The latter term involves cognitive assessment and value judgment of works of art. Art appreciation is employed in the domain of education. An application of it is found in the commercial enterprises of for-profit art galleries and of art auctions.[Etymologically," to appreciate" derives from ad+ pretium; that is," to, towards, or for price".] Museum acquisitions involve both educational and purchase meanings. Art appreciation is a term generic in its definitional direction and it is nonspecific with respect to the intensity and depth prepotencies that issue from the ontological dimension of the work of art. These prepotencies burgeon in artistic and aesthetic experiences. While art appreciation is informational in character, artistic and aesthetic experiences touch upon and are touched by the ontology of …