EINFÜHRUNG IN DIE ÄSTHETIK

INTRODUCTION TO AESTHETICS

Bayreuth, Januar 2004

INTRODUCTION: Aesthetics and Art Theory

Aesthetics: From Baumgarten’s Aesthetica (1750).Mainly points to subjectivity, namely, to the experience in front of beautiful objects, either natural or artistic. Art Theory: Focused on Art

Nowadays, they are generally used without distinction, since Hegel claimed that: “Diese Vorlesungen sind der Ästhetik gewidmet; Ihr Gegenstand ist das weite Reich des Schönen, und näher ist die Kunst, und zwar die schöne Kunst ihr Gebiet”. G.W.F. HEGEL, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, I,

Around XVII-XVIII centuries arises the idea of Fine Arts. Cf. Batteux Les Beaux-arts reduits à un même principe (1746). That meant there was a link between Art and Beauty. Before that, Art related to God, to Being, to Truth. From now on, there will be a separation between Art and craft, Artist (genius, original, inspired, creator) and artisan, aesthetic (no purpose) and instrumental, and aesthetic attitude (contemplative) from any other.

So, a first system of Arts (from Greeks to Eighteenth century)A second system of Arts (from Eighteenth century up today): music, literature, dance, picture, poetry, sculpture (architecture and rhetoric), as sketched by Batteaux.

¿A third system of arts?

1. PROBLEM OF THE DEFINITION OF ART

1. Need of defining artSome (zb. Gordon Graham) think that the role of art theory consists of finding out a definition of art. Cf. Cl. Bell, Art

2. Are all the definitions of art invalid?Weitz (“The Role of Theory in Aesthetics”): Art cannot be defined in an essencialist way. We only discover “family resemblances” (Wittgenstein). Art concept must be open.Mandelbaum (“Family Resemblances and Generalizations Concerning the Arts”): Non visual properties common to all games and to artworks.

Danto (“After the End of Art”): perceptive indiscernible. Brillo Boxes and Red Squares. What makes an artifact an artwork is an “atmosphere of theory”. Intension of the concept closed (art as an artifact that is about something [aboutness]and embodies its meaning,), extension open.

Berys Gaut (“Art as a Cluster Concept”): A cluster account is true of a concept just in the case there are properties (criteria) whose instantiation by an object counts as a matter of conceptual necessity towards its falling under the concept. If all the properties are instantiated, then the object falls under the concept: they are jointly sufficient. If fewer criteria are instantiated, this is sufficient for the application of the concept.

There are no properties that are individually necessary conditions for the object to fall under the concept. Though there are sufficient conditions for the application of a cluster concept, there are no individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. There are only disjunctively necessary conditions: some of the criteria must apply if an object falls under the concept.Criteria applied to art: 1) possessing positive aesthetic properties (being beautiful, graceful, etc.); 2) being expressive of emotion; 3) being intellectually challenging; 4) being formally complex and coherent; 5) having a capacity to convey complex meanings; 6) exhibiting an individual point of view; 7) being an exercise of creative imagination (being original); 8) being an artifact or performance which is the product of a high degree of skill; 9) belonging to an established artistic form; 10) being the product of an intention to make a work of art. Criteria as candidates. Counterexamples allowed. Is this theory useful?

3. Contemporary problems in the definition of artRobert Irwin: “Art has come to mean so many things that it does not mean anything any longer”.Formaggio: “Art is anything men call art”.

4. Is it necessary to define art?Stecker: No. Two versions of inductive argument.Novitz: Classifying objects as artworks has nothing to do with defining art.William Kennick, Does Traditional Aesthetics rest on a Mistake? (1958): We just need analyze the language about art (cf. Wittgenstein).

5. Which is the subject of Aesthetics?Aesthetic attitude or artifact (artwork)? Origin of the dilemma in Kant.

6. Does the art category exist?Changes along time in its content and meaning.

7. ConclusionTo apply the category of art is a recommendation rather than a discovery.

2. MIMESIS AND ITS WIRKUNGSGESCHICHTE

1. Plato’s approach to mimesisMimémata: eikón and phantasma (mimesis miméseos). Poet’s manía.Ontological, epistemological (eikasía), ethical and political implications (censorship) (Rep. X.).

2. Aristotle on mimesisMimesis as a natural human disposition. Understood as imitation of the way in which the nature operates (ars imitatur natura in operando). Provides knowledge. Poetry is more philosophical than history: this talks about what actually happened (particular); that about what could have happened (universal). In poetry is preferable something truthful impossible rather than something possible unbelievable. Analysis of tragedy (Poetics)

3. Post-aristotelic reading of mimesis: PlotinusMimesis is a principle present in the whole reality; through mimesis, art can reach the logoi beyond appearances (and emulate mimetic activity of nature) and mimesis through art can improve nature´s beauty. Symbolic activity of artist and art receptor.

4. Romantic reflections on mimesisMoritz (Nachahmung), A. W. Schlegel: die Kunst soll die Natur nachahmen (lebendige Werke); Schelling: art must imitate das in der Natur in der Tat Seinde darzustellen; Schleiermacher: das innere Bild ist das eigentliche Kunstwerk: Schopenhauer: Art as blosser, klarer Spiegel der Welt; Nietzsche

5. Crisis of the concept of mimesisimpressionism, expressionism, cubism, abstract art... Art for art’s sake.

6. Mimetic background of the contemporary debateAdorno, Gadamer, Murdoch, Barthes, Ricoeur, Kendall Walton, Auerbach, Danto and Derrida, etc.Gadamer (“Dichtung und mimesis”): Mimesis= Verwandlung ins Gebilde.

To sum up: conflict between the idea of mimesis as creation of worlds and reflect of worlds.

3. TRANSCENDENTAL APPROACH

1. Augustine

De ordine, II, XV, 42: “[ratio]sensit nihil aliud quam pulchritudinem sibi placere et in pulchritudine figuras, et figuris dimensiones, in dimensionibus numeros".Origin of any beauty: God, pulchritudo, pulchrorum omnium. Everything has got vestiges of beauty (semina verbi). Idea of beauty inside the soul.

2. Aquinas

Ars [recta ratio factibilium] imitatur naturam in operando; omnes formae artificiales sunt accidentales; Pulchra enim dicuntur quae visa placent. Visio: act of judgement; "Nam ad pulchritudinem tria requiruntur. Primo quidem integritas sive perfectio: quae enim diminuta sunt, hoc ipso turpia sunt. El debita proportio sive consonantia. Et iterum claritas: unde quae habent colorem nitidum, pulchra esse dicuntur”. Summa Theol. I, q.39, a.8.

3. Romantics and contemporaries

Romanticism: Speculative theory of Art (Art and absolute. Cf. J.M. Schaeffer): art as the place of relation with the essential mystery of the world, presentation of that which is not possible to represent in any other way. F. Schlegel

Goehr: Principle of separability: art separated from ordinary world (art assumes functions and forms of the religious around eighteenth century). Luc Ferry, Scruton, Valéry, Steiner…

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Romano Guardini, Kandinsky.

4. INTENTIONAL APPROACHProblem: Is “intention” a real independent state of the mind? Extreme intentionalism: the meanings of the artwork are those intended by the artist.Wollheim. Fodor (Art as something intended as such), GenetteW. K. Wimsatt y M. Beardsley: The Intentional Fallacy (1946).Jerrold Levinson: Hypothetical Intentionalism.Extreme anti-intentionalism: the meanings of the artwork are those of the text, performance or artifact considered in themselves. One can be anti-intentionalist respect to the meaning, but consider the intentions of the artist important in order to the right appreciation of the artwork.Tolhurst: difference between utterance meaning (hypothesis) and utterer’s meaning.Hermeneutics (Gadamer): meanings are not limited to author’s intentions, but are reinterpreted inside a tradition.Other problems: Barthes, Foucault: The death of autor.

5. FUNCIONALIST APPROACH

Something is a work of art if and only if it is able to provoke an aesthetic experience.

1. Kant: Art and pleasure feeling

Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790):

Nach der Qualität: “Geschmack ist das Beurteilungsvermögen eines Gegenstandes oder einer Vostellungsart durch ein Wohlgefallen oder Mißfallen ohne alles Interesse. Der Gegenstand eines solchen Wohlgefallens heißt schön”. (KU, 5)

Nach der Quantität: “Schön ist das, ohne Begriff allgemein gefällt”. (KU, 9)

Nach der Relation: “Schönheit ist Form der Zweckmäßigkeit Gegenstandes, sofern sie ohne Vorstellung eines Zwecks an ihm wahrgenommen wird”. (KU, 17)

Nach der Modalität: “Schön ist, was ohne Begriff als Gegenstand eines notwendigen Wohlgefallens erkannt wird”. (KU, 22).

Gemeinsinn (sensus communis): free play of imagination (freedom) and understanding (necessity).Sublime (das Erhabene): mathematical and dynamic.Genie “ist die angeborene Gemütsanlage (ingenium), durch welche die Natur der Kunst die Regel gibt” (KU, 46).

Translation of Kant’s theory of beauty into an art theory

Following formalism:Clive Bell, (Art, 1914): Something is a work of art if and only if it possesses significant form, which leads to aesthetic emotion.Clement Greenberg

2. Expresivism (art as expression of emotion): Tolstoy, Croce, CollingwoodTolstoy (What is Art?): “Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feeling he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them”.Croce: Art as intuitive expression.Difficulties of these approaches.Collingwood (The principles of Art, 1938): Art as self-knowledge.

Problems of functionalism: Is anything able to provoke an aesthetic experience an artwork?

6. INSTITUTIONAL APPROACHG. Dickie as an example of proceduralism1.(1974) “A work of art is 1) an artifact, 2) a set of the aspects of which has had conferred upon it the status of candidate for appreciation by some person or persons acting on behalf of the Artworld”.2.(1984) “An artist is a person who participates with understanding in the making of a work of art. A work of art is an artifact of a kind created to be presented to an artworld public. A public is a set of persons the members of which are prepared in some degree to understand an object which is presented to them. The artworld is the totality of all artworld systems. An artworld system is a framework for the presentation of a work of art by an artist to an artworld public”.Objections

7. HISTORICAL APPROACHSomething is an artwork only in the event that it stands in the appropriate relation to its artistic forebears (which must have the status of artworks).Artnow is defined through its relation to artpast.

Problem of Ur-arts.Levinson (intentional-historical approach): “An artwork is a thing that has been seriously intended for regard-as-a-work-of-art, i.e., regard in any way pre-existing artworks are o were correctly regarded”.Carroll: The link between the present piece and past art resides in a narrative that encompasses the two. This narrative must be accurate, explain later events as generated out of earlier ones. And must track the adoption of a series of actions and alternatives as appropriate means to an end on the part of a person who arrived at an intelligible assessment of the art historical context in such a way that he resolved to change it in accordance with recognizable and live purposes of the practice.

Problem: the Artworld relativity problem: Does it exist a continuous tradition, an historically and culturally unified body of works, to which the newly created piece is related in the appropriated fashion?

8. SYMBOLIC APPROACHGoodman (Languages of Art): Symptoms of the aesthetic: 1) syntactic density; 2) semantic density; 3) relative repleteness; 4) exemplification; [5)] multiple and complex reference.Heidegger:The function of the artwork, or “great art” is the “becoming of truth” (ein Geschehen der Wahrheit), an opening or revealing of beings as such. The lowest interpretation of art is a kind of physicalism: the essence of the artwork consists in being a thing (Ding), as, e.g., the museum’s guard’s one. So, artwork=thing plus aesthetic value. Though we must not deny the character of thing of the work, this should be understood through the nature of being-work of the work. The work as such opens a world (alétheia). Heidegger exemplifies his idea through the analysis of a picture of Van Gogh. Fight between Welt und Erde. Artisan makes, artist creates (a world).

Gadamer: Criticism to the aestheticism of art from Kant and Schiller onwards (excluded from truth). Criticism to kantian subjectivization of the aesthetic. In WuM, chapter 3, Gadamer assigns truth and knowledge sui generis to art. To explain the complexity of Art, we must go back to some more basic anthropological experiences: play (Spiel), symbol, party.Spiel: art experience likened to playing, not as a subjective reality, but as an objective one. What really matters is partaking in it. Playing as free creation and purposeless. Artworks are gespielt. Artistic experience as a representation process, as actors in a drama. In playing, what really matters are not the players, but the playing itself: primacy of playing respect to the players’ consciousness: playing is to be played by the play (game) which poses rules, tasks and targets to the players, who experiment this as a kind of freedom. So, playing itself is what is played and self-represented (far from the distinction subject-object). The same can be said of aesthetic experience: we partake in a play with the artwork, whose outcome we cannot control.

Party: Verwandlung ins Gebilde. Party, play and art become a construction or complete and defined structure (a schema, idealised form, ergon) that is represented and repeated in every party, play or aesthetic experience. This form has to be completed by its representation and its repetition along time. So, it cannot be reduced to its subjective aspect. Art is a form that is represented in every interpretation, in every aesthetic experience. There is no art without interpretation. Continuity of meaning between artwork and Lebenswelt: in artistic experience, the audience recognizes itself and its own world. It is not subjectivity which determines the artistic, but art and its experience configures subjectivity. Artist’s function: give to experience an ideal configuration in which everybody can recognize and in which every member of the community can see represented his own identity. He is not a genius, but works within a tradition. Any artwork is contemporary, and it communicates itself. Conflict of interpretations. Question of “the classic”.

Symbol: sign is essencially pointing outside itself; symbol is the pure being instead another thing: it makes pay attention on itself, because the reality symbolized is irrepresentable.Hegel: Ästhetik=Kunstlehre. Kunst: das sinnliche Scheinen der Idee. Between intellectual apprehension and sensible experience.Absolute spirit (last stage of Phänomenologie des Geistes, after subjective and objective spirit): art (sensible manifestation), religion (representations), philosophy (concept). In art: classic (material, dependent of nature: architecture), symbolic (less dependent on nature: sculpture, gods represented in human shape, the only sensible appearing adequate to the spirit) and romantic (absolutely spiritual, from Christianity onwards: it has too much to express, so it is not the accurate expression of the spirit any longer; independence of matter: painting, music and poetry). True in art, Death of art: it does not fulfill its function any more (Er ist ein Vergangenes). The spirit consciousness is not properly represented on art, but in religion and finally in philosophy. The concept discovers that art’s truth is not in art.

Danto (After the End of Art): being an artwork means: a) being about something, and b) embody its meaning. Problems of indiscernibility. What makes a work of art of something is an atmosphere of theory, something that the eye cannot decry, and that must be made explicit by criticism. Anything can be a work of art, since we live in a post-historical period, in which anything is possible for artists (there are no engaging narratives).

Art as sense of nonsenseNietzsche (Die Geburt der Tragödie):Aesthetic experience as experience of the tragic: shows fiction of any other consolation than fidelity to earth. His metaphysics of art is based on the fight between two impulses: Apollo (representation) and Dyonisus (will). Metaphysically: D: primordial unity of all; A: false appearance. Epistemically: D:intoxication, acceptance of becoming; A: dream. Aesthetically: D: sublime, experience of what supervenes rational apprehension; A: beautiful, formed.

“Nur als ein aesthetisches Phänomen das Dasein und die Welt gerechtfertig erscheint”. Die Geburt der Tragödie, 24.“Als ästhetisches Phänomen ist uns das Dasein immer noch erträglich”. Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 107. Art for life’s sake.Apolo-Dyonisus: triumph of form (logos, Socrates, Euripide) over terrible truth of tragedy. Rising of values opposite to life. Wagner is the re-founder of dionisian music. Thanks to Dyonisus, man is no artist any longer, but a work of art himself.To sum up, Heidegger ("Die funf Sätze über die Kunst", in Nietzsche, I ) collects 5 propositions on Nietzsche’s aesthetic:•"Die Kunst ist die durchsichtigste und bekannteste Gestalt des Willens zur Macht. •Die Kunst muß vom Künstler her begriffen werden.•Die Kunst ist nach dem erweiterten Begriff des Künstlers das Grundgeschehen alles Seienden; das Seiende ist, so fern es es ist, ein Sichschaffendes, Geschaffenes.•Die Kunst ist die ausgezeichnete Gegenbewegung gegen den Nihilismus.•Die Kunst ist mehr wert als 'Die Wahrheit'"