195 Fábio Fonseca de Castro and Marina Ramos Neves de Castro: Banality and intersubjectivity in art Fábio Fonseca de Castro Marina Ramos Neves de Castro Banality and intersubjectivity in art Translated by Ana Carolina Azevedo and Bruno Declerque Abstract: This article aims to reflect on the banality of art in its quotidianity. It attempts to question by what social dynamics the common, the banal and the quotidian can come to have artistic value. The answer we seek to build for the question, observes this sensation in its dynamics of sociation, that is, as a bond, as a structure of the collective and experiential character of social life. By understanding the phenomenon as a total social fact, we can say that it is engendered and simultaneously engenders the societal bond in an intersubjective procedure that produces the shared sense. Keywords: Art. Banality. Quotidian. Sociation/sociality. Intersubjectivity. INTRODUCTION: THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BANALITY OF ART A long discussion on the banality of art is present, although often not explicitly, in the reflection on art and aesthetics. The debate is present in the works from Dewey (1997), Gombrich (1999), Huyghe (1998) and Maffesoli (1990). Other authors, such as Cauquelin (1998), Crispolti (2004) and Guyau (2009) also mention it on their reflections on the uses that contemporary society makes of art, beauty and taste. In general, the banalization of art appears as the opposite theme, par excellence, to the question of the essentialization of art as a value system by modern and contemporary societies. What these authors point out, in general, is the need to think of art, first of all, in its organic dimension, that is, inalienable to the doing, to the being, to the daily exchange of social life. However, to organically think art does not answer the tangential problem of the social nature of the work of art, because it is evident to all these authors, though the question is not usually formulated, that the organic dimension is not the only present in what, by different approaches, can be called "taste", "beau- tiful", "art", "aesthetics", etc. Neither the complete imanentism nor the radical transcendentalism. It is not enough to understand the totality of art as a banal, quotidian and immersed in ordinary life fact; it is also necessary to question by what dynamics the common, the banal and the daily life can come to have value as taste – and here we try not to positivize the idea of taste, by understanding it as pleasure; on the contrary, we understand taste as sensation, that can be of pleasure or not. The answer we seek to build for the question observes this sensation in its dynamics of sociation, that is, as a bond, as a structure of the collective and experiential character of taste. By understanding the phenomenon of taste as a total social fact – that is, in the Maussian concept, as a complex phenomenon which in itself has dimensions that are aesthetic, economic, polit- ical, etc. – we can say that it is engendered and engenders the societal and intersubjective bond which produces the shared sense. What produces the totality or the organicity of art? The fact that this totality or organicity is produced intersubjectively. So, in summary, our understanding. We begin the article by observing how the question of the banality of art is present in Dewey, Gombrich and Huyghe. Then, through Maffesoli, we put in the perspetive the Simme- lian approach of sociation, understanding it as the mechanism that allows us to think of art in its intersubjective dimension. We then conclude the article by organizing the elements that allow us to think art through the societal and intersubjective bond that produces the shared sense. THE THEME OF THE BANALITY OF ART IN DEWEY, GOMBRICH AND HUYGHE In speaking about the experience of art, Dewey notes that what we call art is present in the early stages of man's production as a social being. This production is presented through the creation and manufacture of objects and tools to satisfy daily needs - such as those destined for domestic use, worshiping, production, reproduction, war, among others. It is important to note that these productions also present, throughout human history, a symbolic character that has been exhaustively explored by the history of art and societies. In making his analysis of art as an experience, Dewey points out how painting and sculpture were organically linked to architecture and the everyday life, being socially intended and produced, as one thing.