80. Art
Here I start a series on art. It is based
in part on a discussion with a panel of three artists and a well-known
architect.
In classical Greek philosophy the beautiful
was identified with the true and the good. A strong Platonic tradition, which
manifests itself in Schopenhauer, for example, is that artistic experience is a
serene contemplation of eternal, immutable ideas. In this way art, in
particular music, helps to escape, temporarily, from the relentless drive of
our will towards the satisfaction of ever new desires that is never achieved.
In another tradition, art was seen as mimesis,
imitation of nature or a representation of religious, historical or
mythical figures or scenes.
Under the influence of the philosopher
Kant, art was seen to form a category of its own, next to the true or the good.
If art is no longer associated with the
good, then the horrendous, the ugly, even evil could be art, as in Dostojevsky,
Mallarmé, Céline, and de Sade.
In romanticism, art became the revelation,
the authentic expression, of what is delved from inside the self. Here, art is
still representational, but it now represents something from inside, not out in
he world.
Does a work of art have some canonical,
correct or true meaning, referring to some entity in the world or in
imagination? Gadamer proposed that art does not have one true interpretation of
what the artist intended. The viewer or listener brings in his or her
interpretative, creative arsenal of spiritual, emotional and intellectual mental
frames adopted and developed along the course of life.
According to Heidegger, art does not
represent anything but stands in its own, creating a new world. Albert Camus,
in his The rebel, recognized art as creating an alternative reality. As
discussed in the item on power (nr. 50) in this blog, this may yield an escape
from institutionalized power. For Nietzsche art is creative destruction, and a
transformation of the self, not a delving from it.
If art needs to be useful, to survive the
present onslaught of economization on culture, it is not mere opportunistic
rhetoric to say that it is an exercise in world making and as such is conducive
to innovation.
How could this work? Earlier, in items
32-34 (on meaning) of this blog, I proposed that people categorize (assign to
concepts) what they see or hear by picking out features that fit in their
mental make-up of concepts and associations that constitute their absorptive
capacity. That is how they make sense of the world. Perhaps what art does
is to offer new features that confuse, upset or bypass established
categorization. It may trigger novel associations that do not fit the customary
frame or script. Thus it may loosen existing categories and suggest new ‘ways
of world making’. It may ‘not make sense’ and thereby generate novel sense
making.
According to my small panel of artists, art
is expression, shaping. It comes from a conscious idea, meaning, decision,
choice, design. It is intentional, it does not arise haphazardly or by chance,
as it might for an amateur. And to be professional is to fully go for it. You
cannot be a bit of an artist.
By ‘not making sense’ sense making is generated, and this paradoxical procedure is what we call ‘art’, is this what you are saying? My children and their friends tend to call this ‘out of the box thinking’, and in the seventies this phenomenon went by the name of ‘lateral thinking’ ( van Gennep) . Thus, I’d say, art is a way of allowing for unusual associations to spring from the mundane and to express them. Now, it seems that this attitude may be and actually is held and lived in very many aspects of life, in science, education, in the briefest of encouters in public places, even in politics, occasionally. Is there a separate domain for ‘the arts’ in the classical sense of the word, would you say?
ReplyDeletePaula, Good question. In response I woud say this.
ReplyDeleteOut-of-he-box, lateral thinking, novelty in science, politics, etc. yield new ideas and perspectives, but still with existing language and meanings. New stories in familiar terms. Art, I think, goes further, beyond existing language, with new meanings and new ways of looking a the world, or creating worlds of its own. Think, for example, of the move to impressionism, expressionism, cubism, and the like.
In evolutionary terms (see item 82 in this blog), it is a difference between presenting new thngs to a existing selection environment and, in art, challenging the selection environment.
What do you think?