Quotes worth saving (3) Wittgenstein on Taste

“I am not able to judge whether I have only taste, or originality as well. The former I can see distinctly, but not the latter, or only quite indistinctly. And perhaps it has to be like that, & you see only what you have, not what you are. Someone who does not lie is original enough. For, after all, the originality that would be worth wishing for cannot be a sort of trick, or an idiosyncrasy, however marked.”

Taste is refinement of sensibility; but sensibility does not act, it merely assimilates.”

“The faculty of ‘taste’ cannot create a new organism, only rectify one that is already there. Taste loosens screws & tightens screws, it doesn’t create a new original work.”

(Hence, I think, a great creator needs no taste: the child is born into the World well formed.)

“Taste can delight, but not seize.”

All quotations from ‘Culture and Value’, Wittgenstein, p.68e

Reply to the argument #1 - "Timeless experience is not experience"

[Before reading this, please read yesterday's piece here]

Although it is argued that the timeless experience is not "merely a gesture", but that it is indeed a "fuller experience",  it is the intent of this response to show that this is all it is and could ever be under the framework of description offered.

Rather than offer one way in which we might define art (as historical) instead we are given another definition as the one correct manner (or, at any rate, the ‘best’). Indeed, it becomes obvious by the end that this definition of experience is nothing so solid, but is rather merely a vague gesture towards what an artistic experience might comprise of. Hence, the acknowledgement of our own ‘historicity’ and the odd image of the historical and the timeless ‘mixing’ in some part, greater the amount of timelessness the greater the art work, or the experience possible from the art work. However, here is clear point, where is the timelessness to found? By this description it would seem that it is a ‘thing’ that a good artist can implant within a work and thus stimulating a greater or fuller aesthetic experience in us the viewer. This seems misplaced although it is an understandable mistake if we follow the standard trail of aesthetic reasoning as it has developed from the enlightenment until present day. This trail and the misplaced route I place at the door of ‘aesthetic concepts’ as defined most elegantly by Frank Sibley in his same titled work of 1959.

Let me just define where I see the problem before I go on to attack it. Firstly, the placing of the aesthetic concept ‘timelessness’ in the object is problematic itself even before we consider how it is placed there by the supposedly historical being of the artist. Next, having placed this experience as reliant on an external quality of an object, the question of interpretation of art objects is merely dismissed as being an unknowable. Thus, what we are left with is merely a gesture towards some sort of ‘mystical’ experience. An experience that we might conclude is certainly capable of being totally subjective, but not problematic for all this. “Well, it’s MY experience of the object that is of importance and anyway if it’s a timeless experience then can’t we all be said to be experiencing the same sort of thing, in a round-about manner?” Well, perhaps, but then perhaps this timely experience of the timeless aspect of art is rather a sort of mental confusion. The sort of paradox suggested by Zen masters to lead the thinker towards enlightenment, however, this particular koan is an empty gesture, although if the intended outcome what seeing ‘this’ then its complexity was rich indeed. And this then is my main worry, that what we really want when we experience art is some sort of mysterious feeling, as if the point of art is not to feel connected with something but to feel bewildered by the inability to say anything at all. That it is this that is the connecting feeling we must be aiming for. We are all one in the World means we are all so absolutely confused that we accept this all together.

If this were the point of art then surely the majority of films, music, paintings, sculptures, and so forth would instead be a chaotic mass of swirling sound, colour, form, and motion with the strict intent of inducing this kind of pseudo-mystical rapture. I say pseudo here because this sort of conception is exactly that, a sort of ‘quick fix’ mysticism for the pretentious. The mystic, if they are to be a mystic in my understanding, does not engage in something so quick and easy, but neither are they engaged in something solvable by a great deal of hard thinking. Ultimately they might seek refuge in the realm of the beyond (as I would see it) but I would suggest this communion comes about from an acceptance within one’s whole life and is not a simply transportable experience available to all (or, rather, available to all without much effort).

Although an effort is made to suggest that art should be without the evidence of history, it is admitted that this cannot be so, for then it would be outside of human agency, instead we are offered the image of an art work created with intent of it being communicable to all humanity ever. A bold claim. Although the basis of this perspective was to avoid the levelling down of the institutional art experience (that we must know the historical context to understand or to even experience the art object) the outcome has ended the same. An art experience must be an experience that communicates some vague abstract of human experience for it to be an art experience that is worth having, but why must it be an experience of a certain type?

We cannot get round the fact that we are historical beings and that the things we create (be they art objects or not) necessarily ‘live’ with us in time as well as being solid formations of a certain cultural time. It is also true to describe the process of art as an attempt at expressing something fundamental about human experience, that it is an articulation of that experience of the artist. Well, why not just acknowledge these facts? What is challenging about art is not to be found in how we define art, but in how (and WHY) we approach it at all.

Grounds for argument #1 - "Art is best experienced viewed timelessly"

[This piece and its reply are steps along the way to building a larger conception]

Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (above) is a painting that can be taken as being in response to a particular event; the Nazi bombing of said town during the Spanish civil war, and indeed in a solely historically defined, or timely fashion, this can be said to be completely correct, but in ‘reducing’ the painting to only having this sort of historical attachment removes what is its deeper more expansive force. In a sense, I want to say and this is my addition, that a true work of art and therefore a fuller aesthetic experience is one that is timeless (to use a Wittgensteinian phrase[1]). That is, that we can appreciate Guernica not because we can relate in some way its historical value but that it speaks to us (that is, it shows us) about things that are of primordial importance to the experience of human existence. The images of horror, pain and suffering without a direct cause show us something of the conflict we all face; against faceless power, against convention, and against our own historicality, that we cannot escape: The war of existence. Thus, we have here a distinction between art (timeless) and propaganda (only timely). The key point here is that propaganda is only timely, that it communicates nothing but present circumstances in an attempt to influence public opinion. Therefore, the more an artwork has of the element of timelessness the closer it is to being true art. However, I do not believe that such a work would ever be completely possible as we are always already within our own historicity. That is, there is always something attaching us to our present circumstances and that this ‘expression’ of the timeless cannot be a true expression in any categorical sense, but that it is attempting to show us something beyond.

This brings forth another point, a distinctly Wittgensteinian one, that of saying and showing (this is how Richard Shusterman in his Pragmatist Aesthetics describes it – in so many words – without referencing the obvious influence). As Shusterman says quoting Dewey, “the particular quality which unifies and thus constitutes aesthetic experience, can only be felt… and cannot be described nor even specifically pointed at.”[2] Any attempt to describe or define the aesthetic experience in words, which goes beyond just a pointing out, is an impossible task. As the aesthetic experience is an ‘immediate experience’ then this is inadequate as grounds for a justificational standard for critical judgement. That is, defining art as aesthetic experience, is defining something comparatively clear (art) by something obscure and indefinable. Thus, there is no measurement here, but if it cannot be properly described how can we define art in this manner? Shusterman answers, “a good definition of art should direct us toward more and better aesthetic experience” and “redefining art as experience liberates it from the narrowing stranglehold of the institutionally cloistered practice of fine art.”[3]

However, what of a foreign visitor viewing Picasso’s Guernica who does not have any of the Western cultural conventions of art that we all do, and for that matter what of our viewing of an ancient art from a ‘lost’ civilisation how can either make any sense without an understanding of the history? Well, this may be true and I would agree with this but then to make this all that the artwork is[4] seems to miss the point of the artwork. We do not need to know the artist’s intent (indeed, there is a strong case that we cannot ever know the artists intent) to interpret an artwork, but to ‘correctly’ interpret it? That is another matter[5].

The question should still remain, how exactly am I using timelessly as a concept? For it seems to suggest some sort of transcendent experience, that is to say, one outside of human agency. However what I am suggesting is nothing like this, perhaps it would be best to say that I am using this notion of timelessness more in a poetically metaphorical manner than philosophically conceptual, I am not suggesting something transcend of human experience. Rather, something that is timeless as ‘we’ are timeless, that is we as Humanity. Thus, the primordial experience shared by all, the experience of experience, but I do not mean this in such a vague and nebulous fashion. At least not in the context of defining art, although to call this notion a concept would be suggest that I have (like many have mistakenly done before) taken an abstract and made it a ‘thing’. Of course, I have no such intention, but I have something like this in mind, “one who lives not in time but in the present is happy” and “in order to live happily I must be in agreement with the world. And that is what ‘being happy’ means.”[6] Therefore, art when viewed timelessly (rather when it exhibits this timelessness and is thus capable of being viewed timelessly) is showing us our fundamental experiential natures that is our constant running up against the ‘limits of the world.’ This could be expressed thusly, “feeling the world as a limited whole – it is this that is mystical.”[7] Moreover, we might substitute mystical for an aesthetic experience quite successfully here.

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[1] Perhaps a moment to explain this mention of Wittgenstein here, in using ‘timeless’ I am referring to section 6.4311 namely, “If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present.”

[2] Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics, p. 57

[3] Ibid.

[4] The shadowy figure I refer to here is Hegel, but this may be an unfair characterisation.

[5] That is, what is a correct interpretation?

[6] Wittgenstein, Notebooks, pp. 74, 78.

[7] Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.45. [my emphasis]

Old Post #1 - Is Finnegans Wake a novel?

This is an old favourite of mine. It's just a simple description of anti-essentialism in aesthetics as described by Morris Weitz. Written sometime in 2008 I think.

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When we begin with aesthetics the first question any theoretically-minded person will be tempted to ask is the ‘What is art?’ question. This sort of question one imagines will lead us to identify the ‘necessary and sufficient’ conditions of art. However, art is not such a factual discipline; indeed, beyond mathematical formulae (the foundation of those who look at art in this manner) it is impossible to see quite where is the factual problem that is solvable in this way (we might think of cognitive psychologists here in the same regard). This is what the philosopher of aesthetics Morris Weitz meant when he said that there is no essential answer, that philosophers are merely approaching art incorrectly, asking the question ‘what is art?’ is itself a flawed and hopeless task, but yet still this temptation remains (it is not only in art that the temptation is found and nor here alone does it cause us problems and confusions). Weitz (influenced by Wittgenstein) wants us rather to consider in what context do we understand and use the concept of art; that is, the question should be rather not ‘what is art?’ but ‘how do we understand and use the term art in language?’

 If we are to look at the profusion of art theories that came about during the early 20^th century (especially mid-World Wars) that was matched by the amount of art movements, all of them attempted to give an answer to the essence of art. For it was felt that without this answer that we could never get close enough to even understanding what art was, for ‘how can we talk about it, as good or bad, if we cannot give a definite answer of what it comprises of?’ Formalist, Emotionalist, Intuitionist, Organicist, and Voluntarist theories of art all came to give a description of this hidden essence, but although there are still some who hold with a particular theory, for the most part it has been agreed that none of these theories gave a final answer to the question.

Weitz’s claim then is that art cannot be subject to this sort of essential factual definition, as it is an ‘open concept’. Briefly, Weitz believes that art is akin to what Wittgenstein calls ‘family resemblances’, that while we might find some similarities between some examples of art (or games, or what have you) that there is no one unifying ‘something’ that is common to all, but rather similar things or ‘family resemblances’. So, questions like ‘is Finnegans Wake a novel?’ are not factual questions (answerable with a yes or no), but are decision problems. One that is dependent upon a set of conditions, which are always variable (within certain parameters). A concept is an open concept if it is always amenable to change, the concept of art is an adventurous one, as there are always new ideas and movements coming forth (indeed, this might be taken as a defining characteristic, but art is not one thing). Once an art movement becomes ‘closed’ this is normally the death knell of the movement, it is named and constrained, doing this with a wider field, i.e. art, literature, theatre, would be a ridiculous step to deny art its creativity.

What is at stake here is the realisation that there are no necessary and sufficient properties available by a factual analysis but an evaluative decision of not intrinsic but extrinsic or relational properties. However, this takes us from Weitz’s conception and towards that of later philosophers of aesthetics like Stephen Davies, Arthur Danto and George Dickie. To quote Danto from The Artworld, “To see something as art requires… knowledge of the history of art…” This new angle of aesthetics is concerned with the ‘institutional’ nature of art, namely its historical and social properties.

To conclude this short piece on Weitz’s anti-essentialism, I would summarise his main position as against the incorrect use of aesthetic theories. That is, when they are taken literally, i.e. as an attempt to answer conceptual questions (like ‘what is art?’ or ‘is Finnegans Wake a novel?’) in a factual manner, they lead to errors of circularity or, worse, the confining of creativity. Aesthetic theories are not useless however; they are arguments (or recommendations) for looking at a certain criteria of art in a certain way.

New title & apologies

So, I've changed the title but not yet the web address, which I may well do.
Reason for title:
1. articulation - the shape or manner in which things come together and a connection is made
2. articulation is also a coherent expressive utterance (mostly, but not always, verbal)
3. It's a bad pun :-)

Hopefully this is a return to regular writing also.