Chiasms in Art

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Chiasms in Art

Roberto Terrosi

In this essay, I would like to underline some chiasmatic aspects of the discourse1

of art, particularly related to particularly problematic and crucial questions con-

cerning the denition of art. A rhetorical gure consisting of two pairs of terms in

which the second pair is simply the inversion of the rst, the chiasm, is based on

inversion, and this inversion can be used to describe an abstract situation, but also

a historical one. In this text we will briey describe three chiasmatic historical

inversions in which art value appears.

The three chiasmatic inversions we will illustrate are each based on a major

historical shift. More precisely, we could say that we will describe a main chias -

matic inversion, combined with two collateral chiasmatic aspects.

The rst basic chiasm regards the passage from religious art to art-religion

(Kunstreligion), which is fundamental in clarifying the nature of art value.

The second chiasm regards the shift from the artist of the image to the image

of the artist. We want to show an axiological inversion from a situation in which

the anonymous artist serves the more important image, to a situation in which the

image (or artwork in general) serves the artist, because it has meaning only as an

expression of the artist (thus the image illustrates something of the artist).

The third chiasm regards the passage from art as work to the work of art. It

shows a fundamental change in the very meaning of the concept of art, rst under-

stood as mere technique (something everyone can learn), and later as a domain of

valuable objects (made by gifted individuals).

I. First Chiasm: From Religious Art To Art-Religion (Kunstreligion)

At the beginning of western civilization religion was a eld of values, and art

was (with respect to religion) merely know-how employed to make religious

representations for worship. So, we nd a rst chiasm: from religious art to art-

religion (Kunstreligion).


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David Freedberg2 and Hans Belting3 have described many examples in which

images had religious power. These images were usually anonymous, as their mak-

ers were not important. From the fetish to the icon, the work of the individual

maker was not considered to have any inuence on the power of image. Freedberg

describes a situation in which an American scholar travelled a great distance to

visit the holy statue of Notre Dame de Rocamadour. When she saw it, the impres-

sion she had was terrible. In fact, she was very disappointed because she found the

sculpture small and ugly. David Freedberg also notes that the ancient holy xoana

wooden sculptures used by Greeks were ugly as well.

So, holy images need not be well-made and beautiful. They must be magic

and, sometimes, the more insignicant they are from an aesthetic point of view,

the more signicant they are from the religious or magic perspective. The sacred

image need only present or make present the powerful religious entity to which it

is connected. Thus the artisan must simply make an artefact that responds well to

religious needs. He cannot invent anything personal to make it more beautiful. For

example, in archaic cultures, such as that of the Sumerians, statues represented

the houses of gods. Once a statue had been completed, a consecration ceremony

was performed to make the god enter the statue. The second step was to carry

the god and the statue into the temple in a procession. In order to host a god, the

statue needed to have some specic features that made the god recognizable.4

If the craftsman acted too imaginatively, the statue might not be a good house

for the god. Thus, ancient craftsmen had to simply be faithful to the canonical

representation of the god, applying a nomos thought to be chosen directly by the

god (or by the mediating gure of the priest who represents his power) and not

by the executor of the image. The executor was merely a tool or an instrument.But what exactly does this qualication mean? To give another example, a singer

who is not the author of the song he sings is just an instrument. He may be a good

instrument, he may become famous, but he remains an instrument and so, rich and

famous though he may be, he is essentially a servant. In ancient Greece, where a

craftsman could be famous without being properly the author of the message he

physically produced, he was considered nothing more than a precious instrument.

He was precious, but he was not free, because in Greek culture, to be free meant

not to have to depend on others, but to be the owner of oneself.5 Consequently,

this precious instrument (the meaning of instrument being that which serves some-

thing else) was not considered a free person, but rather a servant. If we want to

nd a free subject in Greek culture in what we now call the arts, we have to refer

to another gure, more strictly connected with the divine: the aoidos.6 He was

considered to be directly inspired by the gods, and thus belonged not to the class

oftechnikoi but to the class of priests.

Moving further ahead in the history of religious art, we nd a similar, and

perhaps more extreme situation in the cult and production of Byzantine icons.7 In

fact, for theological reasons, each aspect of the Byzantine cult was strictly regulat-

ed in a dogmatic structure. To understand this viewpoint, we can use the example

of a common contemporary practice: driving. When I am driving a car, I have to

refer to signs to know what I can or cant do on a given road. The signs have to be


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clear and standardized. If the maker decides to add his imagination and creativity

to signs, accidents will occur. Hence, a good craftsman in this case does not create

strange or novel signs, but makes perfectly standardized signs. In these signs, it is

impossible to recognize the hand of the craftsman. In information theory, Shan-

non8 claims that in order to make a message (such as a trafc sign) we need a code

and we need different possible choices to select from. The author of the message

is the one who makes the choices and not the one who applies them, modulating

the sign. If I dictate a message to a secretary, I will be the author of the message

even though the secretary is the one who types it. But if the secretary wants to add

something creative, she risks losing her job.

The Byzantine painter was like a secretary or a road sign painter. He was not

permitted to add anything personal to the message. God himself (or priests on hisbehalf) chooses the message. In this sense Byzantine culture shows us the extreme

situation of the craftsmans submission to religious entities through the example

ofAchiorpita, in which the role of craftsman was not only anonymous but was in

fact totally negated. Indeed, theAchiropita, which means not painted by [human]

hands, was believed to have been made directly by god. Actually, the only real

originalAchiropita was the so-calledMandylion, or little cloth: tradition holds

that Jesus used it to dry his face and that the image of his face remained impressed

on the cloth. From that moment on, the cloth had medical and miraculous powers.9

Therefore, theMandylion was not a painting but more precisely a print. So, the

goal for icons was to be a print of the divine world. Any personal mark of the

craftsman was merely noise in the transmission of the message.

Coming to the Middle Ages in Italy, we nd the very turning point of the

chiasm, in which the inversion of terms between art and religion begins. In Italyas elsewhere, religion continued to be dominant in painting. The rst painted tab-

lets, in Europe, had as their subject only religious images.10 But, in Italy, we nd

many differences with respect to the Byzantine situation. With the growth of cit-

ies, culture was no longer elaborated in monasteries. Now, there were other ac-

tors, craftsmen who belonged to the rising middle class and were the owners of

the rst enterprises. They were no longer considered servants, but masters in both

senses master craftsmen and their own masters. Giotto had his employees, and

he rented his tools for money. He was not inspired by God, he was a businessman.

In this new situation, popular tradition came into the culture of painting, bringing

a new instance of realism. Belting refers to the introduction of laicism, quoting

De Lagarde.11 This laicism meant a new interest in applying rhetoric to images.

In Padua, Giotto offered a new rhetorical structure of the representation. We mustalso consider the importance of the schism. Starting from this breaking point, the

western church became more and more interested in promoting a typical west-

ern sensibility, different from the eastern one. This is the mutation that Cennini

pointed to when he wrote that Giotto had changed the language of painting from

Greek to Latin.12 This change was well accepted, because the Roman church did

the same. Finally, there was the question of the rising of new religious movements

such as the Franciscans. In that context, the painter had to tell new stories without


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previous institutional models. So, new models had to be invented, but this time

using the collaboration of painter who was no longer considered merely a hand or

a simple instrument, but an expert in the rhetoric of imagery. Hence, the introduc-

tion of rhetoric, the change of idiom, and new religious movements, in conjunc-

tion with the craftsmans new status as a protagonist of life in the city, gave the

painter the chance to collaborate in composing the message itself, and not simply

to execute it.

Lorenzo Ghiberti wrote: Vide Giotto nellarte quello che gli altri non aggi-

unsono. Arrec larte naturale e la gentilezza con essa non uscendo dalle misure

(Giotto saw what other [painters] did not add. So he added naturalness and kind-

ness, without transgressing measures).13 So, Giotto could decide to add some-

thing personal to the message, albeit while restraining himself from overstepping

certain limits.

Thus the craftsman was no longer a mere instrument, but became the author

of the images he created, although only in part. In fact, he was only the author of

the technical choices and formal composition. The painter continued to refer to

Byzantine icons, no longer copying them entirely, but nding in them ideas that he

was free to select or reject. So, the relationship with Byzantine tradition became

dialectic rather than binding.

Belting says that in the rise of Italian painting we see the end of the power

of images and the beginning of the power of art. But, how can we call it art?

Indeed, if we only use the notion of art without any other specication we might

provoke many misunderstandings. Art, as we conceive it today, did not yet exist

in those times. We can agree with Belting only if we consider art exclusively as

synonymous with technical compositive choices.14 But we have to keep clearin our minds that arts in the age in question were still the arts described by Hugh

of St. Victor (who distinguished artes liberales from artes mechanicae). Painting

was not the whole of art, but only a very small part of it. In fact, Hugh does not

mention painting as a separate discipline, but considers it, among artes mechani-

cae, as a part of military activities.15

Painting was still far from coinciding with art. But a signicant revolution oc-

curred nonetheless. From that moment on, in painting, we nd less and less of the

voice of God and more and more of the painters. People went to an anonymous

icon of the Virgin to pray, but went to a Giotto fresco to admire it. This is the pow-

er of painting: the power to obliterate the religious power of images of the past.

The coexistence of the power of the religious image and the power of paint-

ing technique can only happen in one case: when holiness and technique coexistin the same person. For this to be the case we need to have someone along the

lines of a saint/painter. We nd a rst example of this in Russian orthodox culture,

and a second one in Italy. Andreij Rubliev and the Saint Iconographers expressed

precisely this kind of coincidence.16 However, in Italy, which was a more secu-

lar country, some painters were considered special, as if they were saints. New-

Platonist theories maintained that the painter must represent his own ideas and not

nature.17 In fact, they suggested, the human mind can achieve Gods idea better


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than nature can. In this way, the painter does not imitate things existing in nature

(making a copy of a copy of ideas), but directly shows his ideas, producing a re-

sponsive gure existing in competition with nature itself. In this sense, poets and

then painters came to be considered in the XVII century by Sarbiewski as quasi

creators.18

Along the way, the artist became more and more akin to the saint. While the

aoidos (ancient Greek poet-singer) was part of the sacred world, the painter was

not, because he was a craftsman, and while a saint did things by means of divine

power, a craftsman did things by means of technique. So, to become more similar

to the saint, a painter had to assume the skills of the aoidos, i.e. of the poet. Indeed,

beginning in the Renaissance, painters and sculptors began to compete with poets

and writers. Inspiration became more and more important for this purpose.

Painters were connected to saints by two links. The rst link can be described

as contiguity with the sacred: in fact, painters described holy characters and holy

actions, thus creating the condition for a metonymic relation with the sacred world.

The second link issimilarity19 to saints and prophets, in that painters also xed

their gazes on the intangible and eternal world. Like the augur and the aoidos, the

painter had a special, God-given gift, not for seeing the past and the future, but

for seeing the forms of the divine world what Florenskij, discussing Byzantine

culture, calls mundus imaginalis.20 He also had another God-given gift which

allowed him to appropriately depict those gures. In this sense, the painter had

a metaphorical relationship with the saint. Nevertheless, the artist in the western

world was not properly a saint, but an analogue representation of a saint (or, we

might say, a rhetorical image of a saint) in the lay world. This is why, during Ro-

manticism and Post-Romanticism, he became the object of moral (as opposed tomerely aesthetic) admiration. Exemplary here is the Van Gogh case, studied in this

perspective by Natalie Hainich.21 Van Gogh is the most representative example

of a holy lay gure, the scapegoat of bourgeois society. His expiatory role also

went beyond the plans and conceptions of the romanticKunstreligion.

Kunstreligion is the symmetric opposite extreme ofAchiropita in this chiasm,

because it is the accomplishment of the emancipation of the painter as an artist, the

acme of a climb from a servile position to a free one. Unfortunately, this success

arrived when painting had already been undermined by photography. Suddenly,

visual art became pure poetics, even more so than music and poetry itself. Thus

visual art became an abstract game in which someone like Duchamp could take

an ordinary object and legitimize it as a work of art. Art was born as an institu-

tion only after it had become a sacred eld through Kunstreligion, because thesacred space is a space based on the very principle of separation: each and every

thing can become sacred; sacredness only comes through consecration intended

as a cultural act of separation. Mary Douglas explained this principle in relation

to the concept of the saint or the holy person or object. This principle of valuable

separation is what remains of the essence of art when the technical principle has

faded away.22


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II. Second Chiasm: From the Artist of the Image

to the Image of the Artist

Now, let us consider another chiasm situated within another shift, the shift from

theartist of the image to the image of the artist.

Until the Middle Ages, the term artist was used to indicate a person who

had a high level of competence particularly in the liberal arts (such as astronomy,

rhetoric, music, mathematics, geometry). In ancient Rome, the painter was not an

artist in this sense, but a mere craftsman. Nevertheless, he needed an ars to realize

his paintings, because he needed a technique. The Roman poet, on the other hand,

was an artist he was not a mere decorator, because he decided what important

things he wanted to say. The Roman painter was limited to copying previous mod-

els, especially Greek ones.23

The role of the painter as an artist began when his status reached the same

level as the poets that is to say, when he started to compose and to choose

the topics and the style of his works. This long passage began with Giotto and

ended in the XVIII century late Academy.24

This shift was due to the fact that the painter started to interfere with or inter-

vene in the message through the manner (maniera) in which he painted. Eventu-

ally, manner became so important that the message imparted is by now solely the

painters message. The real age of the artist was Romanticism, when the work of

art was nothing more and nothing less than the expression of the painters feelings

in forms. So, the subject of a painting became a mere pretext. The fullment of

this attitude and the turning point of this chiasm was concrete art in which paint-ers elaborated nothing but pure forms, and sculptors pure volumes. Therefore, the

artwork became less and less important, because importance was entirely focused

on the artists spirit and purpose. In fact, the artist became a lay prophet who could

consecrate everything he did (or took), even provocations. From Duchamp on-

wards, form was abolished as well. Art needed only the sense of the operation con-

nected with the artists intervention in the artistic debate. Art became a debate, and

it made no sense to repeat the same things someone else had already said. Things

were no longer important in themselves; any thing or action that was outside of art

could be inside art, and vice versa. The only difference was the debate: anything

could be brought into this debate. The artist is the protagonist of this debate, the

main actor, although there are many other actors in this play. In recent times, we

have seen a number of super-artists who are not super-art-makers, but propersuper-stars. Thus we are now seeing another transformation. The super-star artists

are not famous for the important things they say. Their artworks are conceived

to be merely advertisements for their own self-promotion campaigns. Today, the

artist takes care of his own public image. His name is like a brand or a logo. The

archetype of the super-star artist is Andy Warhol. As he himself claimed, all he

wanted was to become famous.25 In the eighties pop art was rejected, but we saw

many painters who no longer based their work on a program, nor on poetry, but


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simply on trends. While the surrealist artist had to reject institutional rewards so

as to quash any suggestion that he might care for anything other than his poetry,26

the super-star artist openly admits he seeks worldly success. He is not ashamed

for this, but on the contrary is proud of his social rewards. Jeff Koons married the

porno star Cicciolina and used this fact to amplify his scandal-mongering high

prole. Maurizio Cattelan has planned all his art installations so as to incite the

greatest possible scandal. Works likeLa nona ora (1999), with Pope Wojtyla un-

der a stone, or the three boys hanging from a tree (Mise-en-scene, 2004 a

passer-by, aiming to dismantle the piece, fell from the tree, injuring himself and

sparking a heated debate in Italian newspapers), were conceived with scandal in

mind. Decades ago, Benjamin spoke about the shocking dimension of avant-garde

art, 27 but avant-gardes wanted to attack old conceptions of art in order to propose

a new one. Now they can no longer attack an old conception, but they still act

within this Duchampian conception of art just to promote themselves. Damien

Hirst wrote a book28 which is neither an experimental text, like Dadaist ones,

nor a programmatic text, like concretist writings29 or the Manifestos of the avant-

garde, but rather a self-apologia in the guise of a journalistic-style collection of

interviews.

This dissolution of meaning in art in favour of the pure image of the artist

could be dangerous for the artist himself, because the sceptical, nihilistic and cyni-

cal irony that erodes the basis of the special status of art also erodes the elitist

assumption that determines the condition of the artist himself.

III. Third Chiasm: From the Art of Working to the Work of Art

The third chiasmatic situation concerns the very birth of modern art. It consists

of the passage from the art of working to the work of art. The term art comes

from the Latin ars which was used as the translation of the Greektechne.30Techne

is also the origin of the terms technique and technology. The most proper

translation of this word might perhaps be know-how. To know how to do things

or to make objects means that you have learnt or have ingeniously developed by

yourself a way to carry out a job or to solve a problem. This also implies an alloca-

tion of value, based on the fact that things made by techne are better than things

made without. The limitation of this value lies in the fact that this techne, based

on empirical aspects such as experience, tricks and uses, may not always be true,

unlike episteme, the truth of which is based on logos. Plato divided Technai intothe main categories of the ctetic (to keep things) and the poetic (to build or

make objects), but also ghting, etc.31 Painting is just one minor aspect of poetic

techniques intended to imitate things (mimesis). So, at rst, the most important

aspect oftechne was the non-instinctually-based effectiveness of a practice. Aris-

totle saw this concept as the production of something as nature would produce it,

which means that the product is understood to be no longer natural. In this sense

the whole oftechne is imitative, even when it is not representational, because it


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fundamentally imitates the productiveness of nature at an ontological level. This

productive activity is strictly connected to labour. In other words, it is an art of

working. While in the art of working the meaning of the word art was clear, it

later became mysterious. In fact, art as the art of work meant a group of instruc-

tions regarding how something could be made. Those instructions could be passed

on from one subject to another, and from one generation to another. Therefore, art

in this sense means know-how, but also tradition and, in a certain sense, cul-

ture (culture being an amalgamation of knowledge and behaviours). Hence, art

is what can be learnt. Cicero thus distinguished ars from natura in the education

of the orator: ars is what can be transmitted and learnt, while natura represents

the skills that someone has without any kind of education,32 like genius in Kan-

tian aesthetics. So art conceived as technique, is not a problematic concept. It is

also clear why painting belongs to the category of art. In fact, there are painting

techniques that can be taught, so it is clear that the artist is also a craftsman. The

problem arises only when the painter no longer wants to be considered a mere

craftsman. In this case, there is no longer an art of working, but only an art -

work in which it is not clear what art means. We only know that a work of art

should be more valuable than mere work.

The fact is that, at a certain moment, technique became signicant in itself.

Art is no longer a technique used to make or improve something. Art is involved

in art itself that is to say, the aim of technique has become the pure develop-

ment of technique. Technique for techniques sake is what we call virtuosity. But

the situation is not so simple. In fact, such a situation hinders us from seeing the

passage from technique adopted to improve the way one works, to technique used

to explore all its own possibilities.The art of work implies precisely the dimension of know-how, but the

work of art aspires to the pure dimension of the sacred object, which is independ-

ent from technique and labour. The phrase of art implies valuable, therefore

work of art means valuable object relating to a particular history and tradi-

tion. There are many axiological elds which depend on their function in society

and on their tradition. In economics, social function prevails over tradition, but in

art the functional aspect is weak and not clearly dened, while tradition is very

strong. So, the concept of artwork is inexplicable without reference to tradition.

We can analyse how it works, but we will never understand why contemporary

art exists without considering the genealogical derivation of the eld of paint -

ing. Using a term invented by Stephen J. Gould, we might say that art was born

by ex-aptation.33

Foucault offers an example of this when he writes of leperhospitals which, left empty, provided the occasion for the institution of the mental

hospital.34 By this same token, the fact that we now have a eld called art is a

result of a long series of misuses or abuses of numerous past situations. The key

to a denition of art lies in this long chiasmatic transformation, which is still in

progress.


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Conclusion

At this point, we can invert the third chiasm. In fact, today, we are moving towards

the opposite transformation, from the work of artto the art of work. But this does

not mean a return to the original situation. On the contrary, things are becoming

increasingly complicated. Indeed, the word art has lost its original connotation

of technique, so its meaning has become more mysterious. Arts movement back

towards work does not signify a return to a particular culture of making things; it

is simply the result of the amalgamation of an indenable quality with the world of

high-level commodities. For instance, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo links art

(in the sense, developed by avant-gardes) to fashion.35 Elsewhere, art is linked to

design. Moreover, many decorated or decorative objects from non-western cul-

tures are considered to be arts and crafts simply because they are presented asart, but they in fact lack the idea of autonomy and independent experimentation

inherent in the modern concept of art.36 Rather than art as autonomous and special-

ized research, what the market now seeks is a whiff or a suggestion of contem-

porary art, which is often a whiff ofmondanit. In the development of modern

art there have been several efforts to re-unite with arts and crafts. The rst name

to note in this regard is Ruskin, but the mainstream is represented by avant-garde

formalism: Bauhaus, concretism, kinetic art, optical art and interactive art. All of

these movements, in accordance with a Marxist point of view, sought to establish

a new alliance between art and labour, inserted into a plan for a new society free

from exploitation and alienation. The situation today is completely different, and

more similar to the continuity between art and the world of production proposed

by Jugend Stil, Liberty, or Art Nouveau. But in those trends, the major arts stillmaintained a leading position, to which commercial applications were subordi-

nate. In contemporary times beginning with pop art the situation has often

been inverted: now it is art that is dependent on graphic design, commercials,

advertising. In Italy the copywriter and photographer Oliviero Toscani has been a

model for many artists, including Cattelan. His advertising campaigns anticipated

the works of artists like Andreas Serrano, and had a deeper inuence on the public,

as they were disseminated in magazines and on large posters all over the world.

But the eld in which it has become most difcult to distinguish art from

commercial design on the one hand, or from politics on the other, is internet art.

In most cases it is quite difcult to distinguish web art from web design.

The form being the same, the difference should lie in the disinterestedness of art,

which has been challenged by formalists and other avant-garde artists who judged

it the heritage of romantic ideology. On the opposite side we nd the political

interestedness of hacker art, hacktivism and other kinds of net.art.37 But in the

end, two points remain: rst, the web artist, the super-star artist, the hacktivist,

the web designer and the copywriter share the same goal: to catch peoples atten-

tion; and second, as Yves Michaud claims in Lart ltat gazeux,38 we can nd

aesthetic products more easily in any other place than in art itself. Perhaps this

vision is a bit extreme, but it is true that we can nd nothing in art that we cannot

nd outside of art.


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A nal chiasm comes to mind, not as a rhetorical gure but as a reference to

the original sign used by ancient Greeks: the X. It is a symbol of crossing and

exchange, which is why it was adopted for this rhetorical gure. In this sense, art

in itself is now a chiasm, in that it is a crossing point where the sacred aspect of

culture intersects with commodity and money, where the interiority of the soul

meets the exteriority of the show (and show business, as well) or of spectacle. Art

today is like a strange party where mysterious and incompatible actors meet one

another. It is a non-lieu, a zona franca, an inter-zone. But this inter-zone is

no longer a factory in which a community tries to construct a value, but a market

where people dissipate their values, or consume their goods. And in this consump-

tion of art, art itself risks being consumed by the ames of spectacle.

Chiasms in Art

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