The artwork of thousands of artists is available to the gallery audience across America. Few pieces are considered important by the viewer and this is how it should be. Everything else is so much hoopla. We have always searched the galleries for the solitary glimpse into the transcendent nature of art. This infrequent encounter is distinguished by subtle feelings of elation and by a heightened sense of awareness and objectivity. While perceived as significant by the viewer, the experience remains more or less unknown to critical inquiry.

Art encounters that evoke a response greater than the objective appraisal have been traditionally interpreted as supporting transcendental philosophies dependent on intrinsic values, eternal ideals and the belief in a knowable world. These are no longer tenable concepts. The Kantian concept of transcendent knowledge implies an ultimate reality to which the heightened aesthetic experience allows access. The dismantling of Western philosophies by the deconstructionists has shown that the 'transcendent signified' (to use Derrida's term) is not absolute. The semiotic nature of perception does not permit a true knowledge of the phenomenal. The transcendent experience does not reveal the essential nature of reality as Kant had believed.

The introduction of aesthetic bearing provides a new context for interpreting the value of the peak experience in art. It sets art's subjectively realized value in a postmodern context. Aesthetic bearing suggests the significance of the numinous aura and sense of affirmation associated with the peak cultural experience in art. Aesthetic bearing acknowledges the art encounter for its role in the cultural integration of the viewer. The concept incorporates the transcendent experience in art but does not imply transcendental ideals.

The revelations of aesthetic bearing are experiential and symbolic. Paintings that evoke aesthetic bearing are the sacred objects of cultural mythology. There is a transpersonal quality to the experience that lends support to the concept of universality. But the existence of great art does not imply universal content. It does indicate content inspiring subjective realizations experienced throughout the incorporating culture. However unlikely, art conveys transpersonal values. In its sublimity, art synthesizes historical circumstance and archetypal determinants, and establishes way points in developing cultural mythology.

Aesthetic bearing presents a conceptual framework that can be applied to a broad class of symbolic experiences responsible for the actualization of the individual into culture. It is a function of all cultural disciplines, not just art. In addition to the numinous response to art, similar events would include the experience of the sublime in nature, the metaphysical revelations of mathematical idealism, the heightened awareness of being and the religious experience. These are all examples of the inspired state of aesthetic bearing. Each in its own way reflects our limitations as it defines our world and who we are. Each provides the bonding experiences and subjective alliances of culture.