ABSTRACT
The term 'aesthetic field' is first employed in an educational context in Living Powers: The Arts in Education, edited by Peter Abbs. In the first sense aesthetic field denotes the four successive stages through which a work of art passes, namely, making, presenting, responding and evaluating. The related use of the term 'aesthetic field' refers to the whole symbolic system in which the individual work is made. Just as in quantum physics the field creates a variety of forms which it sustains, then takes back, then creates again in new patterns. So in the aesthetic field the complex relationships between the parts are changing all the time, recast in different ways at different times, by the driving power of different ideological movements, critical theories and artistic schools. Any major and widely accepted re-evaluation alters the relationships between all the other works in the field.
