Anxiety as a Defining Moment of Aesthetical Experience

In this paper, we wish to propose a notion Kunstangst [Danish for art anxiety] as a designation for the destabilising and transformative state that art can impose on its spectator. To this day. art discourse and curation continue to be shaped by Enlightenment ideals. This legacy urges us to dispose of our individuality, either by putting ourselves in someone else's place or by striving towards objectivity and repeatability. We regard this as highly problematic, and to question the scientific, rational, and cisinterested approaches, we have chosen to investigate a more personal, intimate relation between artwork and spectator. The notion Kunstangst derives from the existentialist concept of anxiety, which originates in the philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard We hope that the transfer of this existentialist concept will provide us with a new aesthetic tool that can enable us to undo the chains of Enlightenment thought and help us approximate the intensity at the heart of aesthetic experience. Aiding us in the appropriation of such an abstract philosophical concept and its application to aesthetics, we incorporate the research of psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski. He claims that external conflicts can evoke anxiety, which can - if properly engaged with - become transformative experiences. Following this line of reasoning in an aesthetic context, we believe that this is how the art experience can have transformative potential.