The role that intersubjective and relational processes play in the nature and development of aesthetic engagement is discussed. Aesthetic experience is not only a complex intraindividual phenomenon characterized by a peculiar weaving of percpetual, emotional, and cognitive processes, but also an intersubjective enterprise. These approaches differ in the conception of intersubjectivity they adopt. The cognitive approach highlights the intrinsically communicative nature of art experience as well as the intentional intellectual involvement with the artwork; the embodied approach stresses the precognitive empathehtic relation with the artwork that, by means of embodied simulation, emotionally enganges the observer
