Aesthetics: Fast Forward

Transcription

1 Marquette University Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications Philosophy, Department of Aesthetics: Fast Forward Curtis Carter Marquette University, L & B: Series of Philosophy of Art and Art Theory, Vol. 17 (2002):

2 page 133 L&B Volume 17 understood you correctly, this cannot be the case. Paetzold: I would like to make a distinction between art criticism and art theory. In art criticism, many unclarified notions circulate, useful for a moment of interpreting a certain work of art. However, art criticism is different from the theoretical world. los de Mul: On the point of the:.difficulty of establishing a dialogue between artists and philosophers, I entirely agree. Although, in the Netherlands, the demarcation between philosophy and visual art is no longer that sharp, there are important differences. Ultimately, the artist and the philosopher speak different languages. Philosophers should not become artists and artists should not become theorists since theories by artists are as disappointing as art works by philosophers. So, it might be interesting and inspiring for both fields if their different languages could merge in a dialogue. You do not have to try to adopt the language of the other in order to have a dialogue. AESTHETICS: FAST FORWARD Curtis L. Carter My work over the years has been an attempt to bridge the world of art and that of aesthetic theory, where the philosophers have reigned. The philosophers who have interested me most were the ones directing significant attention to the arts. For my own development these happened to be G.W.F. Hegel, Rudolf Arnheim, and Nelson Goodman. All three demonstrate in their work, and in their lives, a genuine concern with the practice of the arts, and this is reflected in their writings on aesthetics. My attraction to Hegel began when I read his Aesthetics and continues through a series of papers, including one on Hegel and the death of art, where I attempted to rescue Hegel from the charge that his theory of art would lead to the death of artjl) In the formulation of his aesthetics, Hegel is very much aware of the practices of art in his time and often refers to art from previous eras. Rudolf Arnheim, from whose keen critical insights and friendship I have greatly benefitted, incorporated into his gestalt-based approach to the arts his observations on the practices of architecture, the visual arts, and dance. These observations on form, movement, and expression, for example, are recorded in Art and Visual Perception and a notable list of other books produced throughout his remarkable career.!') His pioneering books on film and radio signify an early interest in the emerging arts of his years in Berlin and later in Italy. His Film als Kunst (1932)13) and Radio (1936)!4) were among the first studies in the aesthetics of media arts. My association with Goodman began with a series of lectures he gave at Harvard just prior to the publication of Languages of Art. Our mutual interest in contemporary dance, collecting in the visual arts, and the ways in which museums might become activators of the arts rather than mere repositories led to a long and

3 page 134 L&B volume l rich personal friendship. Goodman's writings in aesthetics often deal with what he called "art in action",!5) His willingness to experiment with the living arts and arts education often extended to collaborations with artists, as when he worked with choreographer Martha Gray to produce a dance performance piece, Hockey Seen.!6) Goodman was founder and director of Project Zero ( ), an interdisciplinary program for investigating the arts and aesthetic education. He also directed the summer dance program at Harvard from It has always been puzzling to me how one can practice aesthetics without a strong link to the arts and their role in one's own time. Indeed, the primary reason for my choosing aesthetics over some other discipline was the opportunity to work closely with practicing artists and those formally responsible for developing and implementing arts policies. One of the lessons that I have learned while working in two fields, as a professor of aesthetics and as a museum director-curator, is that there is no necessary correlation between an interest on the part of philosophers in aesthetics (understood as a philosophical inquiry into the theory and criticism of the arts) and operational knowledge or interest in the practice of the arts. Similarly, there appears to be little effort on the part of aestheticians to actively advance the educational and other societal roles of aesthetics or the arts beyond the academy. This is especially true in reference to the experimental practices of contemporary arts. There are exceptions, of course, among aestheticians, but the absence of such efforts is sufficiently pervasive to warrant discussion in this forum provided by the International Association for Aesthetics World Congress. The radical transformations that began early in the twentieth century, indeed, offer a challenge to traditional aesthetics and to views of art grounded on traditional understandings of art. We stand at a moment in history when traditional formal teaching in the arts has been largely suspended and there is no agreement on what such teaching might be based. Would it be drawing and painting, or a course in electronics and video technology to equip the artist to produce works in a video lab? Indeed, many of the more interesting contemporary artists are grounded in disciplines other than their art practice and are often self-taught. For example, Nam June Paik, the father of video art, studied music and philosophy as well as electronics, and he literally taught himself how to make art from television. Not only are there puzzles over the teaching of art, but there is no agreement on the boundaries of art. This is not a new problem; yet it is an issue that remains open and in need of continuing discussion. The different approaches to contemporary art advanced by Benjamin, Greenberg, and Kantor only hint at the complexities found in recent art practices, many of which call into question the relevance of traditional approaches to aesthetics. Hence, from a philosopher-aesthetician's point of view, it is tempting to look the other way, or not to look at all and simply ignore developments past the beginning of the twentieth century. My own strategy has been to plunge into the fray of contemporary art developments in the hope of better understanding what

4 page 135 L&B Volume 17 will be required of aesthetics in light of the changes in the practices of the arts. Here I follow a lesson drawn loosely from Wittgenstein's views on how language is learned. According to Wittgenstein, learning a language does not proceed from prior knowledge of rules or concepts. Rather, Wittgenstein proposed that we learn how language is learned by observing that this learning takes place by ostension, or active engagement, that is by acts that connect words with appropriate things in or part of the world.!') Instead of maintaining an exclusively theoretical interest in the rules or concepts of art, which may easily lead to false views on art, it is useful to pay close attention to developments within the arts themselves and to alterations in their societal roles. Such efforts will result in experiences from which to develop aesthetic concepts and theories that truly show understanding of the practices of art and its place in human experience. This type of understanding cannot be attained solely by inventing and analyzing concepts of art. Hence, I would like to make a plea for a greater effort on the part of those working in the field of aesthetics to give serious attention to the practices of the arts and to pay particular attention to contemporary arts. I urge that the same critical dialogue take place between aestheticians and artists as goes on among aestheticians themselves. Failure to engage in such a dialogue leaves aesthetics isolated and useful only as an introverted exercise with little relevance beyond its own small circle of practitioners, and deprives art itself of the insights that aesthetics might offer. THE EMERGENCE OF (POST)GEOGRAPHICAL AND (POST)HISTORICAL ART Jos de Mul Great art has its own form of truth. That truth is not primarily propositional in nature (although, of course, a work of art can convey information about physical and social reality) but rather, to use a term from Heidegger, it discloses a world. It does not so much concern isolated individual facts, but a structured whole, a meaningful nexus. A Greek tragedy, for example, offers entry into the tragic world and the tragic worldview of the Presocratics. In the disclosing design of the work of art, things are given their look and human beings are given their outlook. One of the things I investigated in my book Romantic Desire in (Post)Modern Art and Philosophy is how, since the Renaissance, European art has contributed to the development of modem Western conceptions of space and time. For example, in the central perspective in painting, we see that the human subject is no longer immediately absorbed in the world-space, but rather is placed opposite the world. As such, central perspective played an important role in the construction of the modem geographical world-space and of human identity as the center of spatial experience'!}) The sonata form, which was developed in music beginning in the mid-18th century, played a comparable role with regard to the modem experience of historical time. The teleological structure of the exposition, the development and the recapitulation of the sonata not only gave all the notes a specific

5 --~ ~- ~-- CONTENTS 9 STATEMENT _I_I_Annette W. Balkema and Henk Slager Prologue ~ Henk Slager, Newesthetics 27 SEMINARS ~ ANTWERP, Prolegomena (Bart de Baere, Patricia de Martelaere, Herman Parret, Johan Pas, Kurt Vanbellegem) ~ KARLSRUHE, Immaterial Communication (Ursula Frohne, Boris Groys, Peter Weibel) ~ LJUBLJANA, Iriformation Strategies (Minerva Cuevas, Eda Cufer, Thomas Feuerstein, Lev Kreft, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Gregor Podnar, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Apolonia Sustersic) 81 LONDON, Aesthetics o/the Seamless (Norman Bryson, Mark Gisbourne, Sharon Morris, Andrew Renton, Irit Rogoff) ~ MAASTRICHT, Institution and Research (Nadezda Cacinovic, Sue Golding, Sarat Maharaj) ~ NEW YORK, Cultural Conditions (Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Lynne Cooke, John Rajchman) ~ OSLO, Artistic Language Games (Doris Frohnapfel, Stian Gmgaard, Gunnar Liestl'll, Andrew Morrison) ~ PARIS, Collaboration (Jean-Franr,:ois Chevrier, Hou Hanru, Jerome Sans)..; ~ TOKYO, Aesthetic Discourses (Curtis L. Carter, Joanna Lee, Jos de Mul, Arto Haapala, Heinz Paetzold, Richard Woodfield, Hiroshi Yoshioka) 142 VENICE, Curatorial Strategies (Annette W. Balkema, Dan Cameron, Chris Dercon, Danielle Goldoni) 153 SYMPOSIUM Daniel Birnbaum, Thierry De Duve, Anne-Marie Duguet, Bartomeu Mari, Michael Newman. 194 PARTICIPANTS

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