Here are two recent articles combing art and philosophy - each offering a look at art through a different worldview, and each interesting in its own way.
First up:
Art as Indefinable and Deconstructable: Weitz and Derrida“Is aesthetic theory, in the sense of a true definition or set of necessary and sufficient properties of art, possible? If nothing else does, the history of aesthetics itself should give one enormous pause here. For, in spite of the many theories, we seem no nearer our goal today than we were in Plato’s time.” -- Morris Weitz (“The Role of Theory in Aesthetics”)
“And this thread is the work, the fact that there are works of art. Repetition of the Hegelian gesture in the necessity of its lemma: there are works which common opinion designates as works of art and they are what one must interrogate in order to decipher in them the essence of art. But by what does one recognize, commonly, that these are works of art if one does not have in advance a sort of pre-comprehension of the essence of art? This hermeneutic circle has only the (logical), formal, derived) appearance of a vicious circle. It is not a question of escaping from it but on the contrary of engaging in it and going all round it: ‘We must therefore complete the circle.’” --Jacques Derrida (The Truth in Painting)
In his essay “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics,” Morris Weitz (1916-1981), a philosopher of aesthetics, adapts a Wittgensteinian view of language to the concept of art and argues that the very nature of art as a practice makes a definition of art impossible. Similarly, the French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) in his book The Truth in Painting also critiques the unacknowledged presuppositions that have structured the debate about the nature of art. Both philosophers are less interested in providing an account of what art is than in exhibiting the various misguided assumption that have guided theorizing about art within the Western tradition.
As hinted above, Weitz was influenced by the philosopher of language Ludwig Wittgenstein who shaped the debate in the 20th century on analytic philosophy. In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein argues that philosophers had misunderstood the nature of language, believing that every word had an associated, sharply defined meaning. Wittgenstein proposed that instead we think of words on the analogy of family. If we look at an album of a large family over several generations, we will soon notice that there is no single particular characteristic, not even a small set of characteristics, such as having a large nose or curly hair, shared by all family members. What we will find is a set of overlapping but different resemblances. Similarly, words are governed by the logic of family resemblance. We can see a set of overlapping but differing criteria that explain how a word functions in a language.
In adapting this view of language Weitz argues that the very nature of art makes a definition impossible. This is so because art inherently evolves; innovative artworks constantly disrupt prior categories. This happens in science too as Thomas Khun also argued in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The changing categories (what Khun call paradigms) cannot be settled by appeals to definitions. Rather, they call for a decision based on one’s understanding of the works and their relation to a tradition.
Read the whole article.
Now this one . . . by the same author.
Martin Heidegger's Conception of Art as Truth
“Art is historical, and as historical it is the creative preserving of truth in the work. Art happens as poetry. Poetry is founding in the triple sense of bestowing, grounding, and beginning. Art as founding, is essentially historical. This means not only that art has a history in the external sense that in the course of time it, too, appears along with many other things, and in the process changes and passes away and offers changing aspects of historiology. Art is history in the essential sense that it grounds history…The origin of the work of art—that is, the origin of both the creators and the preservers, which is to say of a people’s historical existence, is art. This is so because art is by nature an origin: a distinctive way in which truth come into being, that is, becomes historical.”
--Martin Heidegger (“The Origin of the Work of Art”)
Heidegger (1889-1976) remains one of the most influential of continental philosophers, despite his tarnished reputation due to a brief flirting with the Nazi party. He begins his analysis of art with this question: What is the origin of the work of art? What is being asked becomes clear once one understands Heidegger’s answer: “art is the origin of the work of art.” To understand this puzzling answer which sounds like a mere tautology one has to keep in mind that Heidegger has a holistic view of art. That is to say, every aspect of that complex phenomenon known as art is equally crucial to the understanding of what art is. Those aspects are fourfold: 1) the art object itself, 2) the artist (or in Heidegger’s terminology the “creator”), 3) the audience or viewer (or “preserver”), and 4) the work (in the sense of effect) of art.
Heidegger never mentions any specific theory of art, nevertheless he is implicitly critical of any theoretical account that privileges one or the other of art’s four components as the essential one. So, for Heidegger the work of art, itself an ambiguous term which refers both the art object and to its effects, can be understood with reference to its role in that complex phenomenon. Once this holism of Heidegger is grasped, it becomes easier to analyze his more specific claims. The most important of those claims is the assertion that art reveals the truth of Being. From time immemorial philosophers have linked art and truth, but Heidegger’s unique conception of truth as the disclosure of Being is essential for understanding his view of art.
Heidegger begins his complex analysis by first asking what distinguishes an artwork from other types of things, especially from what he calls “equipment.” An item of equipment such as a pencil or a hammer, undoubtedly plays a role in the various purposive projects which we undertake such as writing, building, etc. Superficially, equipment and artwork may appear similar. Both are created items of form and matter. A statue is a piece of marble on which a sculptor has impressed a form. A pencil is composed of wood and graphite, joined to make a useful object of writing. Heidegger agues that such a superficial view ignores the essential nature of the artwork: its ability to reveal truth.
This begs the question: how does an artwork reveal truth? By getting us to see objects outside their customary settings, revealing the broader contexts within which they exist. Heidegger provides some examples; three of them are the painting Shoes by Vincent van Gogh, an ancient Greek temple, and a poem about a Roman fountain. Although the “worlds” disclosed by each of these works are different from one another, they make available to their viewers the specific worlds, the historical cultures in which they were produced. As such, each work is an example of the essential nature of the artwork.
Read the whole article.
Heidegger is offering an integral understanding of art by highlight the various "domains" in which/as which a work of exists - 1) the art object itself, 2) the artist (or in Heidegger’s terminology the “creator”), 3) the audience or viewer (or “preserver”), and 4) the work (in the sense of effect) of art.
These are valuable ways of looking at art -- relativism adds little to the conversation between artists and works of art that is the foundation of what we do as creators.
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