I realized today that I don’t care about trying to define what is and is not a work of art…. not that it doesn’t matter as a project. It just doesn’t matter to me. I’ve never been very excited about this project of aesthetics, anyway. What exactly are we trying to accomplish in so doing? David is a work of art, and fountain isn’t. The Isenheim altarpiece is a work of art (albeit religious art, so some might not agree), and the Easter Island Moai aren’t, unless of course one of them happens to be in an art museum, in which case it could be, although… blah blah blah. Don’t take my cheek as irreverence toward the fields of contemporary aesthetics or art criticism. Quite the contrary. I’m more interested in talking about the above mentioned pieces themselves, rather than stipulating whether and how aestheticians may talk about them. After all, it is, or should be, a bit of a common place that works like the above weren’t necessarily created with the kind of museum culture that we often presuppose (with the exception, possibly, of Fountain). Nor where they necessary created to be works of “art” as we understand that word. Rather, these works each demonstrate an elasticity and plurivocity in their ability to function within and without that museum culture. We might say that they function in a milieu that is significantly more robust than the one provided by the western art world.
Contrary to my position, Jerome Stolnitz maintains that the iconic status of these works depends on the disinterestedness that the museum culture preserves1. This assertion or judgment, it seems, relies on two judgments of which I remain unconvinced. First, regarding this iconic status, he presupposes that the reasons for which these works are valued is and ought to be grounded in their being works of the museum culture, or works that we value in a disinterested way. Is this in fact why many or most people do value these works? Is this the only reason why they can value these works? For instance, the Isenheim altarpiece might facilitate a new way of experiencing Mary’s role in the passion of Christ, or, in it’s original context, it can change the way in which the space is experienced, niether of which seem to be especially reliant on ways of viewing that are explicitly dependent on the contemporary museum. And thus, second, Stolnitz asserts that the museum culture fosters the right way of viewing or experiencing works of art. Why? Who decides which aspect of the artistic milieu is the one that ought to be emphasized? What does this say about the revival of urban murals? Are these murals to be viewed the way that one would view visual art in a museum? Is one detrimentally impaired in viewing an urban mural if one hasn’t been formed by the museum culture? Or, is it possible that developing an awareness of the way in which murals shape urban space, and are contextualized by urban space, can actually improve viewers’ sensitivity to museum pieces by thinking about the ways in which context and space change the our perception of works and the way in which works change our perception of space and context? In this case, the intention of the artist and the intentions of the viewers are not unimportant. Nor are they the focal point of a work because works are plurivocal, they function in ways that neither the artist or nor viewers anticipate when working from the perspective of the museum culture. They exist in a milieu of activity, intentions, contexts. Similarly, in Art in Action, Nick Wolterstorff says the only thing that works of art have in common is their varied activities, their ability to do many different things.
Thinking about aesthetics this way, how much does the status of the piece as a work of art or non-art make a difference? I don’t really have a defensible answer at this point… just a hunch that it doesn’t make much of a difference at all.
- “On the Apparent Demise of Really High Art,” JAAC 43 (1985): 356↩
Excellent post. Thanks for the effort.
D-Wade -
The utter brilliance of this post is overshadowed only by its tacit projection of the number of cups of coffee you must have consumed before writing it…
It reminds of that scene in Dazed and Confused when Adam Goldberg’s character, several beers into the night, musters up the courage to “bravely” and angrily confront the bully who had hours earlier humiliated him…:))))))))))))))
Abandoning definitions of the nature of the art work? … hold on…grab hold…your starting to tilt slightly off that beautiful metaxological middle, leaning ever so gently out of the luminous between into the shadows where nominalism likes to flicker like a lightening bug on a warm summer evening….
Now don’t get me wrong - as we both know, I share a fervent sympathy for your pursuit of the plurivocity of artistic activity, as well as your zeal to rage against the overly analytic museum slave-masters who shackle the sons and daughters of art with the chains of culture elitism. But it seems that your vehemence, if unchecked by the limits inherent within a definition, could create another kind of counter-elitism; elitist in that it promotes the triumph of counter-musuem-culturalism. It is a counter culture that will deflate every attempt to define the artwork until finally, no one may say what is and is not art, not even that counter culture itself. Stay metaxological. Stay between. One difficult thing about the plurivocal as a concept is that it dies when absolutized.
Perhaps what you are railing against is a univocalizing of the definition of art (i.e., ‘fine art’) that absolutizes one particular definition as if it were the ‘only voice’ of art, which also kills the plurivocity inherent with every product of artistic activity. I am there on the front lines with you in this battle. But I cannot abandon the project of pursuing the meaning of the artwork. The plurivocity of which you speak demands that we refuse to negate any voices (even the Museum culture), and instead only negate anything that destroys the plurivocity. In seeking to negate the voice of the museum culture, you simultaneously reduce the plurivocity by at least one voice, no? As your post proves, the museum culture still has much to teach us about art, even if dialectically - at the very least, Stolnitz’s position has the value of being the catalyst for the thought process that went into your own valuable reflection (very Hegelian of me, I know).
Excavating the meaning of art is indeed a project worth pursuing, and as I see it definitions are both treasures and tools with which to excavate. Understanding whether something is or is not intended to be produced as this or that kind of art, or not as art at all, does make a difference. Consider DuChamp’s “The Fountain.” Where would it be if the urinal he used was NOT thought to be a common product of utility? True - his granting it the status of the artwork draws out its inherently artistic elements; elements that we so easily take for granted, immersed as we are in a market-obsessed-culture that seduces us away from seeing the products of human making as “concretions to be loved”, and instead see only “products to be used”. yadda, yadda, yadda….
… here’s the point: it is indisputable that the very artistic foundation on which “The Fountain” stands is constituted by the distinction between what is and is not considered an artwork. The unity of ‘art’ - i.e., its overdetermined meaning - arrives through the discovery of distinctions; it cannot be imported a priori whether in a positive fashion, or even, as the case seems to be in your post, in a negative fashion.
….of course, perhaps I should have read your post with a tad more irony…..
BS
Brendan,
Thanks for your comments. Very helpful toward fleshing out my overall stance in this issue. I wish I could say that I was trying to be ironic. But overall, I remain unconvinced that, as you put it, a univocal definition or category of art is helpful, essential, capable of being accurate, or shold be a player in a plurivocal/metaxological understanding of these works. But maybe what I’m really talking about here is high art, or fine art, works that have been created for the purpose of existing within this museum culture, a culture of contemplation - although I’d wager the definition of contemplation proffered by Stolnitz and other philosophers of art is far from that which you’d advocate. And as you point out, “fostering contemplation” is in fact an action performed by these works. So, you’re right, I ought to include this activity of fostering contemplation. But it’s not the only thing that works do. Nor are what you’re calling works of art the only objects, events, etc.. that foster contemplation.
Maybe what I could get behind is a kind of pragmatic or soft definition of art, which is what I think Wolterstorff is alluding to in his statement about the variety of actions of works of art being their unifying factor. So, works can foster contemplation, they can create unique spaces, they can …. They do all these things. But at the end of the day, is this really going to make the philosopher of art happy? Someone who wants to draw some sort of unifying thread between Fountain, Easter Island Statues, Maplethorpe photos, and Greek tragedy? I don’t think so. And I don’t think I can grant what would make them happy.
“ART IS A LIE THAT TELLS THE TRUTH” — PABLO PICASSO
D Wade -
Fair enough; very little of what you said merits my disagreement, but I would like to add a few points to consider.
First, it is quite easy to locate a universal definition for “art” if by this we intend the traditional notion of art before the Modern period reduced ‘art’ to ‘fine art’. I think Dante’s definition is best: Art is the child of nature and the grandchild of God. Traditionally, ‘art’ named any human intervention into the momentum of being that was called ‘nature’. Distinctions eventually arose between, for example, servile art (artes serviles) and free art (artes liberales). But ultimately, art was the unique mode of human production that enabled a greater illumination of nature. We might say art is the activity of illuminating the dark excess of being, the work of ‘lighting up’ the constitutive darkness of that which is other to the human.
Second, when I make my claim about the importance of univocity, I am not applying this universally to ‘art’ as such. Rather, I am saying that the various ways in which art is univocally defined by those who DO advocate a univocity to art overall are not to be jettisoned so hastily. You correctly reject this univocal totalization, but this rejection cannot be the final say. Rejecting a univocal totalization does not preclude integrating univocity in other ways. Moreover, a totalizing rejection of univocity is itself to invoke that same univocity in another form.
If you seek a metaxological approach to art, then you too must concede the integration of the univocal; metaxology is not an exclusive category superimposed to overcome our hostility to other modes of mindfulness (univocal, equivocal or dialectical); rather it is the integration of all these. Only with a metaxological approach are we able to pursue the overdetermined, or plurivocal, excess of all beings, not least of which is art. But being metaxological requires that we integrate - not exclude - univocal approaches: reject their totalization, integrate their relative value.
Finally - yeah! Picasso was a great, great liar … at least if we concede his own definition of art. Or was he a great truth teller? Either way, his definition is quite a fitting verbal expression of his own equivocal output.
BSam