The primary aim of this study is to elucidate the relationship between the artist and the audience, with particular emphasis on the thought of Simone de Beauvoir. The central question guiding this research is how the creation and experience of art make possible an ethical dialogue and the realization of freedom, and how the interaction between artist and audience contributes to the disclosure of existential truth. To address this question, the study employs a descriptive-analytical method within an existentialist framework grounded in Beauvoir’s philosophy in order to clarify the dynamics of this relationship. An examination of Beauvoir’s thought reveals that through engagement with a work of art, we not only become aware of the artist’s limitations in grasping the ontological truth of the subject, but also uncover a deeper truth concealed behind this apprehension. Such discovery, however, becomes possible only when meaning is released from the confines of the artist’s singular interpretation and the work is entrusted to future generations of audiences. In this sense, the artist requires the gaze of the audience to justify his or her existence. Beauvoir’s reflections further demonstrate how artistic creation and aesthetic experience can open a space for ethical dialogue and the realization of freedom. She conceptualizes the relationship between artist and audience as a dialogue grounded in mutual respect among others who are essential to the individual’s existential project. By employing concepts such as ambiguity, embodiment, freedom, and reciprocity, Beauvoir explains that artistic creation attains significance only when others experience and recreate it. The findings of this study indicate, however, that Beauvoir’s works exhibit a notable lack of sustained attention to the audience’s perspective, a limitation that poses a challenge to her aesthetic theory and reveals an internal tension within her position. The present argument contends that if Beauvoir’s ethics is to be employed in evaluating the artist-audience relationship in the contemporary context, this tension must be addressed. Although Beauvoir articulates an ethics that acknowledges temporality and mortality, she frequently privileges the artist’s intentions and aims within her ethical framework, attributing to the artist alone the capacity to transcend death and attain a form of immortality that exceeds the realm of mere imagination. By grounding the discursive domain in the artist’s intentions at the moment of creation, she marginalizes the audience’s standpoint. This apparent neglect may stem from a desire to avoid the risk of relinquishing the artwork and allowing dialogue to drift away from the artist’s authentic aims. Yet, if the artist is regarded as the fundamental source of meaning within the project, alternative meanings that might emerge through the audience are effectively foreclosed. In such a framework, the artist becomes a producer, while subsequent viewers are reduced, at best, to reproducers. Accordingly, the study concludes that in order to develop an ethical aesthetics consistent with Beauvoir’s ontology, it is necessary to acknowledge temporality, the active role of the audience, and the indispensability of reciprocal dialogue. |
