1 MERE EXPOSURE AND AESTHETIC REALISM A RESPONSE TO “PERCEPTUAL LEARNING, THE MERE EXPOSURE EFFECT AND AESTHETIC ANTI-REALISM ” BY BENCE NANAY

I admire much of Nanay’s approach to understanding aesthetics, and not simply because I am an author to which much of the article is directed. In attacking aesthetic antirealism, the notion that quality in an artwork does not inhere in the artwork itself, he defends aesthetic realism. Within art history this latter view was perhaps last endorsed by Rosenberg (1968), and then swept away by the spread of semiotics. Nonetheless, it is hard to resist the notion that there is a kernel of something valid in aesthetic realism. But I need to set a number of things straight concerning Nanay’s presentation. To be sure, Nanay is correct in that a general force of Impressionism and its Canon (Cutting, 2006), and more particularly its predecessor (Cutting, 2003), was to show that the repeated, diffuse exposure to artworks (a cultural generalization of the laboratory phenomenon of mere exposure) – even if we can’t remember having seen them – increases our evaluation of their artistic quality. Beyond this Nanay concludes several things. Three are: that I am essentially, if not an “all out, ” aesthetic antirealist; that the subsequent results by Meskin, Phelan, Moore and Kieran (2013) limit my conclusions; and that mere exposure has been shown to work for artistic tokens but not types. Let me address each of these ideas. Mere Exposure as One among Many Aesthetic Effect