But I think we should be loathe to take these differences in degree of unity as differences in kind of experience. Viewing either Collective Invention or a Necker Cube constitutes an experience, rather than simply leading to one. We should say that each is a work of art.
Collective Invention, however, is perhaps great art. If so, then according to Dewey, it should not only be that viewing it constitutes an experience, as with the Necker Cube; it should be that viewing it repeatedly constitutes repeated experiences; and each successive experience of it is deeper -- which, I assume, is to say that each successive experience unifies more experiences.
I should now like to ask whether two works that I consider masterpieces do seem to be possessed of an inexhaustible depth of meaning. The works are Rene Magritte's painting Collective Invention and David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest. I conclude that each of these masterworks does indeed seem to contain an inexhaustible depth of meaning. But this is with some qualifications; most importantly, these are modern works, and I shall commit to their being inexhaustible only as they "speak to" experiences that I shall characterize as modern.
Let's begin by asking how it could seem that something -- anything -- continually unifies ever more experiences. Consider the relationship between close friends, lovers, or family members. The briefest interval of separation is often concluded with an excited exchange of details of what each did in the other's absence. A husband reports the details of his day to his wife, who responds in kind, and then they ask their child to do the same. Dewey has told us that conversations are exemplary of the self-sufficiency of an experience, and it's plausible that they're unifying as well. If nothing else, they unify the experiences reported with the experience of reporting and sharing with one's companion. In most cases, they are also unified with listening to and inquiring about one's companion's experiences.
These conversations do indeed seem to become ever richer and greater in their unifications. The dinner-table talking unifies each family-member's daytime activities with those of the other family members, and these with dinner-table discussion. Tuesday's dinner is unified with Monday's, the recent holiday's, and all those dinners the family had together last year. In more dynamic families, there is more than a simple accretion of experiences, though; maybe mom gives helpful feedback on her son's day, while sis cracks fond jokes. As Dewey says, each participant retains her own character while simultaneously revealing it; we can add that each participant also develops her character further and comes to understand the those of her companions in deeper subtlety.
Can one have such a "conversation" with Collective Invention? I believe so. The confirming condition is that every time I return to it, it unifies ever more of my experiences -- it "speaks to me" of all the things I've done since I last saw it, and it associates them with what I take to be the picture's theme, a near-universal feature of modern life, and the artist's intent in creating it. There's much to say about this, of course, but I should be brief, so let me focus on one aspect of the experiences I believe Collective Invention unifies for its viewer (setting aside the viewer's relationship with the painter, other viewers, etc.), and please excuse my heavy dependence on metaphors.
Jose Ortega y Gasset said, "to live is to feel oneself lost." Let me suppose that this is true at least for many of us in modern times -- perhaps this is not so in places or at times where/when Divine convictions dominate (d) an entire culture, or where/when indigenous humans commune (d) more completely with the Earth, or in the Garden of Eden. This experience, where it is felt, is pervasive. Though she might often claim that he makes her feel "at home," a wife can always doubt that her husband loves her; she can always suspect that she's massively deceived and all the experiences that ostensibly give her life meaning are in fact illusory. She has and can have no guarantee that the world she lives in is not completely foreign to her and, in the next moment, its thorough unfamiliarity will be revealed to her.
Collective Invention expresses these feelings perfectly. The figure in the painting is not just a "fish out of water," its situation...
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