As a musician, I have always found the study of aesthetics somewhat comical. I am no poet, I am no novelist, I am no playwright and I am certainly no painter. Yet, if I as a musician really do create this thing called "art", this thing that deserves its own unified field of study, then surely I should at least have some insight, as an artist, into the methods and aims of these other artistic pursuits?
Yet, I do not. My poetry is terrible, my novels are incoherent, and I count my visual art successful if all of the stick figures possess the requisite number of limbs. This suggests to me that aesthetics is based on a massive mistake, the illusion that these disparate creative fields have enough in common to be given a single name. That's right, folks, I'm saying it: there is no such thing as art.
This, however, is a little too fast. Of course, because we have solidified the study of aesthetics and created this impoverished social class of persons called "artists", there is such a thing as art. But this is pure convention. There is nothing in what we call "works of art" that forces this category on us, nor is there anything of significance common to the creative process of painters, musicians and poets. What does exist is an economic system that systematically forces certain individuals into a kind of romanticized poverty.
The history of what we call "art" in Europe is the history of the rise and fall of guilds. Prior to the industrial revolution and the explosion of capitalism, an artisan of any kind could only rise to prominence if he was accepted into a guild, which funded his work and gave him the means to continue working. Guilds were supported by the monarchical state, but also by various patrons. While often corrupt and self-serving, guilds provided systematic support for all manner of craftsmanship.
18th and 19th-century economists were loudly opposed to guilds. Adam Smith wrote that such institutions violated the spirit of competition. free enterprise and innovation. Ricardo complained that they stifled free trade. Karl Marx objected to the classism inherent in such structures. They needn't have worried: the rise of the factory was the end of the guild, as governments came to expect cheap, mass-produced goods that could be sold on a free market. While certain trades (such as carpentry) survived this change, the guilds of poetry, music, prose and theatre were completely annihilated. Without state funding, no such society could survive for very long, and these artisans became individual labourers. What many don't know is that the popular stereotype of the solitary, neurotic artist arose only after this development.
This is the history of what we now call "art". A few disparate endeavours are now artificially lumped into the same category because our economic system doesn't quite know what to do with them. True to form, the academic class has attempted to justify this categorization via comical attempts to discern what is common to all "art" or to all "aesthetic experience". Yet, step away from this myopic prejudice and just ask yourself what novels, paintings and musical compositions really have in common. The answer is: not a hell of a lot. The process of creation is radically different, the products themselves are different, and the experience of them is different. "Art" doesn't exist.
Yet, I do not. My poetry is terrible, my novels are incoherent, and I count my visual art successful if all of the stick figures possess the requisite number of limbs. This suggests to me that aesthetics is based on a massive mistake, the illusion that these disparate creative fields have enough in common to be given a single name. That's right, folks, I'm saying it: there is no such thing as art.
This, however, is a little too fast. Of course, because we have solidified the study of aesthetics and created this impoverished social class of persons called "artists", there is such a thing as art. But this is pure convention. There is nothing in what we call "works of art" that forces this category on us, nor is there anything of significance common to the creative process of painters, musicians and poets. What does exist is an economic system that systematically forces certain individuals into a kind of romanticized poverty.
The history of what we call "art" in Europe is the history of the rise and fall of guilds. Prior to the industrial revolution and the explosion of capitalism, an artisan of any kind could only rise to prominence if he was accepted into a guild, which funded his work and gave him the means to continue working. Guilds were supported by the monarchical state, but also by various patrons. While often corrupt and self-serving, guilds provided systematic support for all manner of craftsmanship.
18th and 19th-century economists were loudly opposed to guilds. Adam Smith wrote that such institutions violated the spirit of competition. free enterprise and innovation. Ricardo complained that they stifled free trade. Karl Marx objected to the classism inherent in such structures. They needn't have worried: the rise of the factory was the end of the guild, as governments came to expect cheap, mass-produced goods that could be sold on a free market. While certain trades (such as carpentry) survived this change, the guilds of poetry, music, prose and theatre were completely annihilated. Without state funding, no such society could survive for very long, and these artisans became individual labourers. What many don't know is that the popular stereotype of the solitary, neurotic artist arose only after this development.
This is the history of what we now call "art". A few disparate endeavours are now artificially lumped into the same category because our economic system doesn't quite know what to do with them. True to form, the academic class has attempted to justify this categorization via comical attempts to discern what is common to all "art" or to all "aesthetic experience". Yet, step away from this myopic prejudice and just ask yourself what novels, paintings and musical compositions really have in common. The answer is: not a hell of a lot. The process of creation is radically different, the products themselves are different, and the experience of them is different. "Art" doesn't exist.
13 comments:
I agree. Very well said.
Hmm...
While I agree that some all too blithely bung separate "guilds" together and call them art, surely there is some usefulness to the category anyway? Put it this way: I imagine you would agree there is such a thing as "music". And yet it is quite hard to define. Consider that a lot of modern experimental music (the little that I know of it) disposes with such things as melody and harmony and such, and would thus be unrecognisable to Mozart as music. Songs are also hard to class strictly as music, because much of their effect comes from the combination of music and words, rather than just one or the other - so a song is not to be judged strictly as music or strictly as poetry, but as something separate but related. Given all these potential confusions as to definition, do we dispose of the term "music" altogether?
Even though there may not be many similarities between painting and poetry per se, you can easily argue there are similarities between good poetry and good paintings. First, both tend towards having a kind of transcendent effect upon the mind. And second, both don't (usually) have an overt purpose. That is to say, the artist doesn't have an overt purpose (if it was just about money, there would only be thrillers and such), and the audience doesn't have an obvious goal in consuming the art. This suggests to me that "art" plays some important but still mysterious evolutionary role, and so is useful to define as such.
Ever since God told Adam to name the animals, we humans have been naming and classifying everything. Sometimes this is part of our attempt to understand things, but lately (20th century on) seems only to be an attempt to control. If I can say what you are/do, then I can put you into this box here, or that spot there. I'm glad that 'art' is so amorphous, if only to irritate the controlling ones. Long live 'art'!
As a baseball player, I have always found the study of baseball somewhat comical. I am no pitcher, I am no catcher, I am no outfielder and I am certainly no short stop. Yet, if I as a first baseman really do play this thing called "baseball", this thing that deserves its own unified field of study, then surely I should at least have some insight, as a baseball player, into the methods and aims of those playing other baseball positions?
Yet, I do not. My pitching is terrible, my fielding is incoherent, and I count my batting successful if the baseball bat but connects with the pitch. This suggests to me that baseball (or at least the study of it) is based on a massive mistake, the illusion that playing these disparate positions and acting in accordance with these disparate rules have enough in common to be given a single name. That's right, folks, I'm saying it: there is no such thing as baseball.
David:
I disagree entirely about music. While there are many kinds of music, these disparate types have much in common. They all use combinations of tones, for example, concentrated single frequencies combined in various ways (temporally, as chords) and are expressed in some form of regular rhythm.
I have also been exposed (via Schopenhaur, Kant, etc.) to the "transcendent state of mind" argument. I`m not sure what to make of this, because the idea is so mysterious. Suffice to say, *I* don`t feel the same while experiencing a great panting and a great song.
Dr. Killjoy: Nice try, but I think if you ask most first basemen how you play any of those positions, they could easily tell you. You're going to need a better analogy than that. In any case, I do not take this first argument of mine to be decisive, as I said, it only "suggests" the main thesis of this post, which I then go on to defend in more detail.
Maybe you're just not the musician (or philosopher) to ask.
A truly stunning rebuttal.
I appreciate the level of intellectual arrogance it takes to think, absent even a minimal familiarity with the field of philosophical aesthetics, that you could construct an argument at which any self-respecting aesthetician might passingly glance.
However, I'm not quite able to appreciate the level of intellectual delusion required to think that some half-baked blog musings actually present a coherent and minimally plausible and compelling argument for eliminativism about art.
And just so you know, your "argument" is more or less (charitably) the following:
1. If P, Q, R, and S are all Fs, then doing P ought to be at least somewhat revelatory about doing Q, R, and S.
2. I do P.
3. I'm admittedly a complete idiot when it comes to Q, R, and S (both in comprehension and execution).
4. So, my idiocy entails that P, Q, R, and S share nothing substantive in common.
5. Some utter bullshit about guilds and Marx.
6. Some complete fucking nonsense about artisans and monarchical states.
7. (Hidden Premise): I am either wholesale ignorant of philosophy of art or familiar with but equally idiotic about it.
8. Therefore, there is no such thing that is F.
Well done! Now if only you can harness your idiocy to serve the greater good...Of course, you likewise being an idiot about metaethics might make it the case that there is no such thing as the good, so perhaps you should just call it a day.
Goodness! What fortitude, what honesty and courage it must take to hurl insults--anonymously--over the internet.
I may be basically ignorant about the greater good, but I can say with total confidence that society would surely progress towards it if we all had your intellectual virtue.
This author extraordinary Artist would have thoroughly disagreed with you, and in fact insisted that Sacred Art was and is of primary importance.
Art is always coincident with culture.
Please find this introduction to his book of essays on Art and The Beautiful
http://global.adidam.org/books/radical-transcendentalism.html
Also
www.aboutadidam.org/readings/art_is_love/index.html
A set of essays re the cultural significance of His work via:
www.adidaupclose.org/FAQs/postmodernism2.html
Also Art & Physics at:
www.artandphysics.com
Let me take to task your following conclusion:
True to form, the academic class has attempted to justify this categorization via comical attempts to discern what is common to all "art" or to all "aesthetic experience". Yet, step away from this myopic prejudice and just ask yourself what novels, paintings and musical compositions really have in common. The answer is: not a hell of a lot. The process of creation is radically different, the products themselves are different, and the experience of them is different. "Art" doesn't exist.
1. Your right about the silliness of trying to define and capture what the ontology of art object consists by finding necessary and sufficient conditions under which something is called art. In fact, it seems that art itself always resists this type of thematization. Moreover, this silliness persists in such thinkers as Nelson Goodman who classically tries to subsume the problem of artistic meaning under more general metaphysical and epistemological considerations of knowing meaning.
2. Yet, it doesn't follow with such skepticism that there is nothing like art as experience, but just that there is no art as a category. There is just no well formed encompassing theory that captures how it is that we live through aesthetic encounters with all that we consider art, and the mediums themselves might distinguish different creative processes that do not unite them together.
3. I might suggest the concession I give you in 1) and disagreement in 2) follow from the fact that the type of theories you're criticizing are analytically-based aesthetics. Why not opt for contextually-sensitive phenomenological description of these various modes?
Consider Merleau-Ponty and his Cezanne essay. Artistic meaning is only achieved in the finished articulation of a piece. And there is something about how painting works itself out specifically in Cezanne that points us back to the world in a pre-reflective way we're situated in the world.
Consider Heidegger's description about how art constitutes the meaning of the world in very concrete and tangible ways prior to our reflection on the world.
I only bring these two examples up since what is missing in analytic aesthetics has always been the engaged lived-experiential dimension of art, and this also proves as a counterpoint to your sweeping statement that there is no such thing as art qua category. There is, after all, art qua experience.
Great piece!
As Carbondale Chasmite's thoughtful comment points out, philosophers have long since moved from objects to phenomenology - from art to aesthetics - because of the difficulty, or even absurdity, of thinking about art itself.
But this has yet to have much influence on the 'ordinary' world which still thinks of 'art' as if the category made ontological sense outside its peculiar economics, history, and the philosophical mumbo-jumbo that surrounds much of it. (I have posted on that myself.)
Hi PB and Carbondale,
While I'm generally sympathetic to the anti-conceptual analysis approach, I'm still skeptical that the lived experience of art is homogeneous in the right kind of way. Obviously it would be nice if phenomenologists (say, in a Husserlian mode) could descover some significant structural similarities in our experience of artistic creation or consumption, but I don't think that they can.
However, after soms study, I think that Heidegger's approach is not entirely at oddds with mine, here: his historical analysis tries to establish that great artworks help create the implicit framework through which an historical community understands itself and the world. I am completely friendly to this kind of analysis, because it is sensitive to the kinds of historical realities that I was anxious to point out in the post.
Post a Comment