Disinterestedness is one of the central concepts in Modern Aesthetics (17th -19th century). This concept is related to other important concepts, like beauty, aesthetic pleasure, aesthetic attitude, fine arts, and taste.
Lord Shaftesbury is known as the first philosopher who writes about disinterested perception. (Stolnitz, 1961). “Disinterest” is more understandable if it is contrasted with “interest”. Shaftesbury uses the term “interest” to refer to a desire to achieve private good. Shaftesbury also calls interest “self-interest” or “self-love”. In contrast, aesthetic experience requires a distance from private benefit or disinterestedness. Disinterestedness is not motivated by self-concern or private benefit.
For example, “an archeologist” and “an art lover” examine a Greek ancient sculpture. Both of them observe the sculpture’s dimension, color, and material. However, the archeologist does not perceive the sculpture as an aesthetic object but a scientific or historical object, while the art lover enjoys the object for its own sake or as an aesthetic object.
In the 1960s, the contemporary art movement emerged and countered the existing art patrons and standards. Contemporary art challenges the grand narrative of classic and modern arts. The contemporary art movement celebrates local or particular narratives and diversity.
Contemporary art is related rather to the contribution of art to society, than to pure aesthetic pleasure. The contemporary arts contribute to the community by questioning living values, ideas, and beliefs. Then, is disinterestedness still relevant to see contemporary art, since the artworks no longer require being beautiful or creating pure aesthetic pleasure to be called ‘art’?
Pierre Bordieu (1930-2002), a French sociologist, sees disinterestedness as an aesthetic illusion or mystification. Disinterestedness is a privilege for those who can abstract themselves. They usually belong to a certain class, have free time, and have a wealthy life. They are petty-bourgeois intellectuals, who are not worried about work or capital, and indulge themselves in adopting universal ideas and disinterestedness considerations. (Ranciere, 2009).
Disinterestedness alone seems not enough to look at contemporary art for some reasons. 1) pure aesthetic experience is no longer the purpose of art. 2) disinterestedness potentially uproots art from the wider social and environmental context. 3) disinterestedness is based on a static visual art model that is not suited to the context of contemporary art (which often integrates visual arts with performance, dance, music, or literature). 4) disinterestedness is inadequate when faced with functional contemporary art in the form of architectural works of space, gardens, fields, and uncultivated landscapes (Clark, 2010).
Realizing the risk of withdrawing artworks from the social context, in contemporary arts, the art viewers need to activate their critical thinking instead of disinterestedness to experience the artworks.
