The Dialogue between Painting, Mindfulness and Dufrenne’s Aesthetics

This paper examines the dialogical relationship between painting and mindfulness. This premise is explored with reference to the aesthetics of Mikel Dufrenne. Dufrenne’s arguments make use of a number of features that characterise mindful practice and reflect mindfulness philosophy. Dufrenne’s phenomenology of aesthetic experience centres on being present, focused, non-judgemental and attentive to the aesthetic object in order to realise its signification. These concepts are also given primary importance in Buddhist philosophy of mindfulness. Dufrenne’s theory lends itself ideally to understanding aesthetic experience in relation to mindfulness as well as how these experiences complement one another. Although Dufrenne does not prioritise painting, the present paper will explore painting in particular due to its embodied, gestural nature, which utilises the notion of style, reflecting the artist’s mode of being-in- the-world. Dufrenne’s ideas allow both mindfulness and painting to be understood in more comprehensive terms than that of their meanings considered individually.