Monroe Beardsley’s Anti-Intentionalism in Analysis selected Photographs by Andreas Gursky

Monroe Beardsley describes the features of artwork that provokes the aesthetic experience which include: unity, complexity and intensity. These features can be pursued in deadpan photography as the value of art, because the photographer’s feeling, when taking a photo, is not the key to understanding the meaning of the image. The deadpan genre in photography is a kind of unconventional photography that photographer has an interested view in it, but at the same time they are very smart and intelligent. Gursky’s pictures are a prototype of this genre. These photos in criticism can be interpreted as a good example of this criticism model of Beardsley’s view. The purpose of this research is to introduce a trend of new criticism and to analyze it with the art of photography that most audiences expect to be informed and represented with specific intentions and goals. The method of research is to collect data from the way library study and the internet search, then describe and analyze them in accordance with Gursky’s the selected works as a case study.