The Being of Art According to Plato

Plato's conception of art needs some investigation. I want to explore specifically the aspect concerning the 'double removal' from truth, or being. We start with the concept of something (e.g., "couch", to use Plato's example), and this concept is said to range over all particular couches. So couch A and couch B may be materially constituted in completely different ways (A is made of straw and wool whereas B is made of metal and cloth), but insofar as they both instantiate the function that "couch" calls for (presumabely, being a legged, long piece of furniture for resting), both couches may be fairly designated by that concept. Plato's claim is that an art object participates in an analogous relation as "particular" and "concept", except in its case it is between itself and a particular, respectively. This is where the notion of double removal comes from. Particulars are (singly) 'removed' from their concept just as an art object is removed from its particular, thus in a transitive way the art object is doubly removed from the original concept.

A language which admits of degrees of being and degrees of truth is useful for comprehension. I often personally get frustrated with the idea that something can be more true than another or that something can simply be more than another. My usual notion of being is a function of whether there is a thing in the world which instantiates its concept. The notion of truth too is merely a function of a proposition's correspondence with an objective state of affairs. These notions don't exactly admit of degrees -- something either is or is not, or a statement is either true or false (Just how many details are wrong in the statement doesn't affect how false the statement as a whole is -- it takes only one). But I have to admit that I'm being a little hasty in dismissing the idea that we can speak meaningfully about 'more' truth and 'more' being, and I think a proper modification of the concepts can help us make sense of Plato's taxonomy.

Plato speaks of the forms as having the most truth and the most being. I will be fair to Plato and not take him as meaning to posit some ethereal realm of forms that exists outside space and time; that would be unfairly attributing weighty metaphysical claims to Plato that he may not necessarily have intended. For us, a form will function as a concept without any metaphysical significance. Strictly speaking, a form is itself NOT spatiotemporal, though it may designate things which are. I believe that the most important distinguishing property about all forms is their timeless and eternal character, and I will take this property as equivalent to highest being and highest truth. For example, in our universe's existence, dogs have only inhabited it for a finite, quantifiable length of time. However, in an important sense, "dog" (as form) has always existed because in principle this form is always 'there' for designating (whether or not there are any objects in the world that can satisfy its conditions as a referent) and its existence as form is not conditioned by time or whether or not it has occupied a person's mental content in the guise of a concept. Similarly, eternal truths would be such that they range over all possible worlds. This is the sense of "eternal" Plato invokes in his description of all forms.

Now let's take all dogs that have ever existed as our object. These dogs do not have the eternal character of "dog" that we described above; the existence of dogs is finite and specific to time. Thus, by our new definition, they have 'lesser' being. It appears then that the degree of being that an object has is directly proportional to its approaching timelessness and eternity.

We can make sense of the double removal from being of art since an artwork stands in direct relation not to a form, but to a particular instantiation of the form (at least according to Plato). We've already seen that all beings conditioned by time and only approximate a form have a lesser degree of being, so if the artwork's existence is contingent upon such a being, then the artwork's being necessarily has a lesser degree than both the form itself and its instantiation.

Remarks on science, truths, and lies

In "On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense," Nietzsche insists that we recognize that our claims of truth cannot extend beyond the sphere of metaphor. The truths of science are conditioned by human subjective perception, but this is forgotten by the 'rational' person. Two things struck me while reading this.

First, I'm curious about truth claims expressed by scientific fields like biology. He writes, "If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare 'look, a mammal,' I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value" (p. 68). It appears then that the biologist's project of taxonomizing the various life forms into hierarchical structures is, in an important sense, a fiction. It is true that the numerous genus-species relations do tell us what properties are inherited by individual classifications of life, but what do we learn from this? The activity appears to be a mere subsuming of perceived nature into these fabricated categories in order to make this nature more digestible to the human. But we shouldn't expect to find a hierarchical structure 'in nature'; things simply are as they are while our human conceptualization merely formalizes what is present to us. A project like this one appears to not be a position to claim 'truth', since nothing is really learned from nature.

Second, I am also intrigued as to the extramoral value of truths and lies. This is typical of Nietzsche, especially in works like On the Genealogy of Morals. He takes what appears to have absolute value -- for lack of a better term -- like morals, truths, and lies, and whereas other philosophers take their value as for granted, Nietzsche investigates the values themselves from a sort of historical, naturalistic perspective. Nietzsche writes, "What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth" (p. 66). This is a very interesting remark on the possible origins of the value of truths and lies, and I believe that is is quite plausible but too often overlooked. At the origin, the object of the hatred or pleasure is not the instance of "lie" or "truth" in itself, but rather the very material, tangible results associated with the act of lying or truth. It is the invention of the human that abstracts away from these particular instances to the forms of "lying" and "truth-telling", and somehow the object of scorn or pleasure gets focused on these concepts themselves -- as if they were absolutes -- rather than their material consequences.

Kant's Aesthetic of the Sublime

Francisco Goya, "Saturn Devouring his Son."

      When we read Kant for this class, we focused on Kant's Aesthetics of the beautiful, but Kant also describes, as Dr. Grady mentioned, the sublime in relation to his aesthetic theory. The sublime, like the beautiful, is a kind of feeling that arises when we behold an object of art or nature, but while the beautiful is a wholly positive feeling, the sublime is a mixed bag of pleasure and displeasure. Kant insists that the sublime reminds us of the superiority of reason to nature, and we may see from this that the experience of the sublime is a reminder of the superiority of morality to inclination.

     While Kant's Critique of Judgment is concerned primarily with aesthetic judgments of the beautiful, he also devotes considerable time to an analysis of the sublime, that which we call "absolutely great" (94). The beautiful and the sublime each operate in a similar way. They both are relations of the faculty of the understanding to another faculty of cognition: with the beautiful, the understanding; with the sublime, reason (90-1). But while we can call a certain object or phenomenon beautiful, Kant understands the sublime to be held not in the object, but in the apprehending subject: "true sublimity must be sought in the mind of the judging subject, and not in the Object of nature that occasions this attitude by the estimation formed of it" (104). Furthermore, while Kant's analysis of the aesthetically beautiful starts with the apprehension of the beautiful in nature and moves on to the beautiful in art, his analytic of the sublime considers mostly objects in nature.

     Kant suggests that the sublime reveals to us the limits of our own imagination and, thereby, the superiority of the rational to the natural. We can understand, through reason, the phenomenon of a thunderstorm, but our imagination fails to grasp its enormity, even when it is displayed before us. The feeling of the sublime that arises when we behold a thunderstorm is a feeling of pleasure at the extent of our reason and displeasure at the limits of our imagination (106). This is what Kant calls the "mathematically sublime"  The limits of our imagination, our grasp of the sensible, in comparison with what we may grasp through reason, leads us to the apprehension that we, as rational beings, are superior to the natural, purely sensible world that does not posit ends for itself (91-2). The sublime is a feeling of greatness in ourselves.

     The sublime, however, is not wholly a feeling of pleasure. It is a combination of pleasure and displeasure, for while we are certainly rational beings, we are also bound by the laws of nature. Thus, Kant writes:

The feeling of the sublime is therefore at once a feeling of displeasure, arising from the inadequacy of the imagination in the aesthetic estimation of magnitude to attain to its estimation by reason, and a simultaneously awakened pleasure, arising from this very judgment of the inadequacy of the greatest faculty of sense being in accord with ideas of reason.... (106)

He also describes it the sublime terms of a "vibration," oscillating back and forth between  "repulsion and attraction" (107). The example of the storm is an apt one: we are nonetheless drawn to watch them if we are safely indoors, despite the fact that they are frightening. Our imagination fails to present them in their entirety. We can only conjure up certain details. Storms serve as a reminder to ourselves of our own limitations: if it were not for our houses, we would fear them more. But this is precisely where the pleasure arises. Our rational being allows us to build protection against nature. We are capable of thwarting nature's might (to an extent), in this case, capable of raising up shelters to shield us from storms.

     But what of the sublime we apprehend in art? It would seem to operate the same way as would the sublime we see in nature. The feeling of the sublime operates in the mind the same way as does beauty (purposiveness without purpose). The apprehension of the sublime, the feeling of an interplay between the imagination and reason, is prompted by a given representation or object. For Kant, the moral law is derived from reason, and if the sublime in nature reminds us of the superiority of our rational, lawful selves, then the sublime we behold in art might be a reminder, specifically, of this latter superiority. Because we are rational, lawful, moral, we are superior to that world which is merely sensible, and does not posit its own duties and ends.

     Artwork has the capacity to remind us of our moral selves, often, paradoxically, through the representation of immorality. Think of our response to tragedy, or to a play like Merchant of Venice. It's a difficult comedy, We are entertained, drawn in by the language, the plot, and the characters: foolish, cruel Antonio, petty Bassanio, the vengeful Shylock. Our reaction is a moral one, or, at least, the feeling inspired by the play is evidence of our moral considerations. Any experience of the sublime in a work such as this is a reminder that it is better to treat others with dignity, as Kant might say, as opposed to treating others as prices. We are reminded of how it is better to act out of respect for the law and from reason, and of the horrors and limitations of acting purely on impulse.

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Kant, Immanuel. Critique Of Judgment. Trans. James C. Meredith. London: Oxford University Press, 1964.

Classifying video games as art...

http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/are-video-games-art/Content?oid=2282684

The Paradoxical Aesthetic Regime 

Jacques Rancière begins "Aesthetics as Politics" by questioning the many artists and philosophers singing a euphoric dirge to commemorate the death of a 'utopian' emancipatory artistic movement. In the wake of utopia's death, artists and philosophers moved on to what Rancière identifies as two distinctly new conceptions, or attitudes, of art. The first conception identifies art's potential to identify and exult a communal space by emphasizing the inseparability of art and being in the world. The second conception extricates art from the immediacy of the context in order to reorient perspectives toward the collective environment. As Rancière points out, both of these attitudes emerge from a divorce between art and politics; in other words, the dissolution of Aesthetics. Undoubtedly, this dissolution followed from fears about propaganda, realized in the manifestation of mass conformity, which resulted in mass death. However, Rancière wants to show that this dissolution stems from a faulty premise; namely, that there can be art without it being political: "there is no art without a specific form of visibility and discursivity which identifies it as such. There is no art without a specific distribution of the sensible tying it to a certain form of politics" (715).  Furthermore, the belief that art can avoid being political only liberates the viewer from responsibility of reflection, placing her in a dangerously vulnerable position to be swept inadvertently away by the politics of a piece. Optimistically, though, Rancière claims that there is nothing intrinsically pestilent about the relationship between art and politics. Fundamentally, there requires a reorientation of expectation for aesthetics. First off, art and politics perform the same task: they create a space in which certain individuals have the right to speak and be listened to. Good political art elevates those who have traditionally been denied recognition to a platform on which they can be heard. Second, there must be a consideration for what emancipation actually entails. For a long time, revolution simply meant an inversion of those out of power and those in power. The consequences of this inversion is clear: an abusive of power by the new hegemony towards the old. Result: same inherent problems of exclusion and denial of recognition--the victim simply gets revenge and replicates the same violent abuses inflicted upon them. Rancière offers an alternative analogous to a Marxist revolution. Rather than continuing the hold the State and Populace  at a distance, just as theory and practice are held at a distance, why not focuses on the concrete nature of existence? In art, you find these dichotomies represented: “As a sensory form, it is heterogeneous to the ordinary forms of sensory experience that these dualities inform. It is given in a specific experience which suspends the ordinary connections not only between appearance and reality, but also between form and matter, activity and passivity, understanding and sensibility” (708). A specific art piece has the potential to alter a particular sensorium while that sensorium simultaneously affirms the piece as art. These reflexive relationships highlight the ambiguity, contingency, and antimony present in Aesthetics. It is in these contradictions, too, that one finds the political potential of art. 

Ranciere

In “Aesthetics as Politics,” Ranciere, like other authors we have read before, concentrates on the distinction between “aesthetics of politcs” and “politics of aesthetics.” Ranciere’s most interesting point, to me, however, is his discussion on the nature of politics alone apart from aesthetics. Ranciere says that politics “it not the exercise of, or struggle for, power. It is the configuration of a specific space, the framing of a particular sphere of experience, of objects posited as common and as pertaining to a common decision, of subjects recognized as capable of designating these objects and putting forward arguments about them.” While this may be true for certain democratic societies where the people do have a choice about who is governing and it is not necessarily a struggle for power amongst politicians (but rather a struggle for votes and alliance among other politicians), I think that politics, in any sort of despotic or totalitarian regime is all about power. The Nazis for example, were a political society based entirely on the hierarchal organization of the power, and had to be completely subservient to a higher power. While the Nazis did partake in the other political activities (partitioning of resources, configuration of space, etc), it certainly was a political existence based on power.

            Ignoring these rare types of societies, though, Ranciere brings up interesting aspects on the aesthetics of politics vs. politics of aesthetics dynamic. For Ranciere, the question is not whether art and politics are separate entities, but rather, “to know whether or not they ought to be set in relation.” Both of “forms of distribution of the sensible, both of which are dependent on a specific regime of identification.” Ranciere further says that “art and politics are thereby linked, beneath themselves, as forms of presence of singular bodies in a specific space and time.” I do not think there is a way in which this could be more accurate. Whether it be political satire, subtle messages throughout media and campaigning, or ordinary discourse throughout life and interaction in society as a whole, it is impossible to separate art and politics into two separate entities, since in the way the modern world and society is constructed, the two are permanently and inexplicably linked. It is impossible to escape the effect of one on the other, whether it be politicizing aesthetics or aestheticizing politics. Both exist, and affect the average viewer differently, depending on the situation, and “play” is the property of art and the individual that allows this differential interaction to occur.

Ranciere

Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, James Whistler (1874)

Just like Adorno and Benjamin, Ranciere focuses on the politic nature of art. And like the last two authors he recognizes the successful politics of art as a product of art’s autonomy.

            Art is important because it is political. It is political not because it tries to make a statement on today’s society, its structure, or its class system. Art is political in distancing itself from these societal concerns. Art, though entirely indebted to its specific moment in history, the time and space of its existence, acts as if it is completely independent. It is this apparent, but misleading autonomy that enables art to be political. In distancing itself from the societal concerns of its founding environment, art is able to make us more aware of our specific societal conditions.

            “[T]here is no contradiction between art for art’s sake and political art” (711). Though seemingly opponents, “the politicy of art is tied to its very autonomy” (707). Art that strives to be political tends to be less valuable and less politically powerful than art that exists for its own sake. Art that intends to be politically charged can only function as propaganda; it is what Adorno and Benjamin called the “aestheticizing of politics.” Art for art’s sake however, is political because by avoiding positing a political opinion, it is claiming a transcendence of the cultural context of its creation. It is this assumed transcendence that draws attention to our political reality. Art is political in that it reveals our politics and the role the play within our culture.

            Benjamin claimed that art for the masses is not possible in the modern world, and though he acknowledged film as the medium of the masses, he claims that this is a decay in art, not an advancement. Ranciere agrees to an extent, but disagrees with Benjamin that art can no longer function as universally politically relevant. “This art is not the founding of a common world through the absolute singularity of form; it is a way of redisposing the objects and images that comprise the common world as it is already given, or creating situations apt to modify our gazes and our attitudes with respect to this collective environment” (704).  Art is not creation. It is not the job of the artist to conceive of and make something entirely new from nothing. Instead, it is the role of the artist to recycle his environment, to reference common truths. So that art today is not an act of creation, but a way of making the viewer re-see our collective world. Yes, art can be political on in acting as if it is autonomous, but it must also include ‘play’.

            Ranciere’s insistence on play, which is lifted from Gadamer, is his biggest diversion from Benjamin and Adorno. He claims play is essential in art. He agrees with Schiller’s claim that play is key to our humanity. “Minimally defined, play is any activity that has no end other than itself, that does not intend to gain effective power over things or persons” (708). Play, then, is the means by which art gains its autonomy. Interestingly, it is also how art remains relevant to us. The aspect of play is necessary to each of us, and play in an artwork echoes that need within our selves. So, although play gives art autonomy it also connects it to our collective world. Play is the means by which art for art’s sake is political.

            Ranciere has brought us through the philosophy of aesthetic art. The aesthetic movement in art was not a sort of manifesto-based movement, just a gradual abandoning of the old ideas of art as a moral or political vehicle. Artists began to experiment (play) and to make art that existed only for its own sake. Much of the art of this sensibility was self-referential, the paintings were often about the act of painting itself, or the act of composition. In refraining from any framework for art and denying political art, the aesthetes were actually able to make what Adorno and Benjamin would call political art. It revealed that previous forms of art where often didactic at their base.

            An excellent example of the Aesthetic movement is James Whistler’s painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket. It is an abstract cityscape that shocked his contemporaries in his abandonment of traditional form. This painting became political in the literal sense. After a bad review, Whistler took prominent art critic John Ruskin to trial for libel. One note against the painting was its relatively slapdash production. It only took Whistler a day or two to produce this painting, but of course Whistler claimed that his entire lifetime of experience was necessary to his ability to produce this piece. This supports Ranciere’s idea of play and the artists as appropriater not a creator. Although he won the case, he was only awarded a farthing in damages and the court fees plunged him into financial ruin. The purpose of the trial was probably not for Whistler to receive substantial payment, but to bring aestheticism to public attention. Whistler succeeded in revealing painting’s limiting conventions and introducing an alternative.

The Eternal War: Language, Art, and Truth in Nietzsche's "On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense"

Mark Rothko: Untitled, 1963*

I heard a story about Friedrich Nietzsche, today. A friend told me that, for the last years of his life, Nietzsche refused to speak, or even to write. The reason, he said, was that Nietzsche had detected in language an order that might suggest the existence of God. Mortified at the possibility that he might assert the existence of the divine, Nietzsche stopped talking.
       The story, of course, is purely apocryphal. If Nietzsche stopped talking in the final years of his life, it was probably because of tertiary syphilis. Aside from this, though, Nietzsche's understanding of language and the way it is used to construct our understanding of truth, is of paramount importance in his essay "On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense." Nietzsche argues that what we understand to be truth is merely a construction of language, a set of metaphors that we use to give order to our experience and structure ourselves into communities. Good art, for Nietzsche, plays with those metaphors, recombining their constituent parts to form new means of expression, but different forms of "truth" are often at odds with one another. Art may be lead to conflict with art.
       Nietzsche takes objection to the view of truth as a correspondence between subject and object, saying that the description of objects depends on the arbitrary distinctions designated by words. Language "only designates the relations of things to men." (67). It does not show us "things-in-themselves," but gives us a system by which we can designate, organize, and communicate our perceptions. The words themselves, which we use to distinguish one thing from another, are an arbitrary series of sounds and rules; nothing in the object to which one refers suggests that it be called "snake" or "stone" (66). What we call "truth" is instead: 

A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coin. (67-8)

To Nietzsche, what we call truth is a system of artful language that has faded, over the passage of time, into cliche. We barely recognize it (if we recognize it at all) as metaphor. What such truths do, however, is organize us into "a pyramidal order according to castes and degrees" and create "a new world of laws, privileges, subordinations, and clearly marked boundaries" (68). In short, language systems allow us to organize ourselves into communities and hierarchies.
       Nietzsche notes that we are constantly adding to these systems. Even within an overarching language (say, English), there are thousands of smaller communities that use different combinations of terms to refer to different things. One such community is that of science. Nietzsche, with dramatic flourish in creating his own metaphors, describes the language of science in terms of a tower, with its scientist-architects "always building new, higher stories and shoring up, cleaning, and renovating old cells" (70). He goes on to state that the scientist must "find shelter for himself beneath those bulwarks... for there are frightful powers which continuously break in upon him, powers which oppose scientific 'truth' with completely different kinds of 'truths' which bear on their shields the most varied sorts of emblems" (70). Nietzsche is quite deliberately calling attention to the use of metaphors in creating his own 'truth,' but the metaphor seems particularly apt. Science (or, the language of science) has frequently come under assault from other visions of the world.
       One such assault might come in the form of art. Nietzsche says that human beings have a "drive towards the formation of metaphors" (70). In a certain sense, we want to be deceived, we want "to refashion the world which presents itself to waking man, so that it will be as colorful, irregular, lacking in results and coherence, charming, and eternally new as the world of dreams" (70). Art offers us the means to do this, by mixing, confusing, destroying the old metaphors and recombining them into new and vivid perceptions (71). Art, for Nietzsche, casts off the chains of old, stale "truth" that is unaware of its own history, and creates new illusions, new combinations of language which become a new kind of truth. In doing so, art explicitly sets itself up as a competitor against science.
       But art itself is not immune to the assault of art. There is no reason why the truth of art should not become just as "stale" as that of science, with the passage of time. When that happens, the urge for something new, for something more colorful, again animates the artists to fashion more illusions. Art turns against itself. We may see this historically, with the rejection, again and again, of prior artistic traditions and the movement towards different means of expression. Nietzsche's war of truths is an eternal one. In order to satisfy the human desire to rework the world, we will time and time again reject and respond to the art that has been fashioned before us, creating new forms that will, themselves, be reconfigured by subsequent generations.
       I told my friend that his story about Nietzsche was not true, but by turning Nietzsche's life into narrative, by refashioning his experience into myth, we engage in that very same "truth"-forming process that he describes. In a certain light, Nietzsche might have appreciated the tale.
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* Image from: http://cct300-f08.wikispaces.com/Abstract+Expressionism

Ranciére

In his explanation of the relationship between art and politics, Ranciére presents a view, called the "distribution of the sensible" (706). The idea is that the "common of the community," or the relationship between members of the community and the community or "space" in which they live, is able to make known the places and identities and the other "sensible" things so that they can be understood by every individual. The two concepts of "politics in art" and "art in politics" accomplish this. Though they accomplish identity in different ways, they are linked "as forms of presence of singular bodies in a specific space and time" (707).

He says furthermore that there is no conflict between purity of art and politicization (710). It seems that the political messages are brought to life by the very art in which they are intwined. In this way, art is a not just a "separate reality," it helps us understand what the world is and "what it might be." For Ranciére, the tension between the two politics of aesthetics (the politics of the becoming-life of art and the politics of the resistant form) describes how art can be understood in the different times and places of history.

Adorno

Lauren DiCoccio

Marco Brambilla

Adorno takes his cue from Benjamin. Although there is little mention of mechanically reproduced art, Adorno clearly takes inspiration from Walter Benjamin’s Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Adorno runs with Benjamin’s closing remark: “This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responded by politicizing art” (444). Adorno expands upon the difference between aestheticizing politics and politicizing aesthetics.

Benjamin argued that art in the contemporary age has been commoditized, thus destroying the aura and the power of art. Adorno agrees, “Art keeps itself alive through its social force of resistance; unless it reifies itself, it becomes a commodity” (226).  Art that is easily absorbed ceases to function as art. Art absorbs us, and we absorb commodities. Art that does not force us to meet its challenge is not art at all.

“Whoever experiences [erlebt] artworks by referring them to himself, does not experience them; what passes for experience [Erlebnis] is a palmed-off cultural surrogate” (246).

Art possesses a dipartite nature, which Adorno refers to as the combination of, “autonomous structures and social phenomena” (248).  Art is dependent upon society as a means of grounding its aura, providing source material and an audience. But it is vital that art never caters to the audience: “art becomes social by its opposition to society, and it occupies this position only as autonomous art” (225).  Art is social in its essence, but must function as a being-for-itself. For if art possesses in perceivable function, it becomes a commodity. The uselessness of art is “the strongest defense of art against its bourgeois functionalization” (227). In fact, according to Adorno, “the necessity of art…is its nonnecessity” (251).

The social relevance of the autonomous artwork is the key to the continuation of great art. It is the politicizing of aesthetics. This implies that the art cannot be created with any predetermined socially universal message. If it was, art would be politics in an aesthetic disguise. “The immanence of society in the artwork is the essential social relation of art, not the immanence of art in society” (232). Art is only important and relevant to us as a society if it contains a societal truth at its center, the external placement of art within society is not one of its essential characteristics.

It is obvious in looking at our world today that there are examples of both aestheticized politics and politicized aesthetics. Fine art continues to get stranger to us in an ever-intensifying effort to challenge our oversaturated media-hungry minds. Some works of art intend to jar us to this realization by directly referencing the problem. Consumerism, in particular, is a popular topic. Artist Marco Brambilla uses maximalist video collages to create his pieces. A common theme in these collages seems to be the mechanization of man: the use of him and his art as a mere cog in a larger project. is reflective Benjamin’s talk of fascism through a mass culture. Adorno echoes Benjamin’s in this respect. Brambilla seems to agree with Adorno and Benjamin while striving to counteract the effects of the our “proletariazation.” Lauren DiCoccio tackles our mass-culture as evidence in consumerism by handmaking common commodities.

We can also seem the aestheticizing of politics in a very literal sense. The design of presidential campaigns is increasingly important to us. Obama posters by Shepard Fairey, a prominent graffiti artist, lent his 2008 campaign a sort of street cred. That the posters were not commissioned and that Fairey was eventually sued for plagiarizing an image of Barack Obama only added to the impression that he was the candidate of the man on the street. On the other hand, Romney’s 2012 campaign logo was criticized on the internet for resembling Aquafresh toothpaste. 

It seems that there is a definite value difference between politicized aesthetics and aestheticized politics. However, I think Adorno is right in shying away from Benjamin’s claim that the two cling to two very different political systems. I think that there is far more gray area than Benjamin implies, and that Adorno is right to mention poltical systems only obliquely.

Textual Reflection on Adorno

It was interesting to read Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory after we read Benjamin’s piece. When talking about Benjamin in class, we talked about the aura and reproduction. Benjamin focuses on authenticity and how “even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” (Cazeaux, 432). He also looks at the ways changes in society influence artwork. He claims that, “the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well” (Cazeaux, 433). These discussions are a good segue into Adorno. Adorno talks about the relations between society and art. Adorno says that art is not only social because of the way it is produced or the material artwork is based on, but paradoxically, “art becomes social by its opposition to society, and it occupies this position only as autonomous art” (225) and by existing, art is partaking in a critical relationship with society. The autonimity of art comments on society by making “itself a vehicle of ideology” (226) and art now has a responsibility to do so. Not only does art thrive on opposing society, it in facts survives because of it. It is a form of social resistance that “becomes a commodity” (226). This argument is particularly interesting when contemplating the roots of artwork. Although I am not an artist, it seems to me that artwork is derived from observations in society, for example, political art. Adorno stresses the disjunction of art and society when it seems that really they compliment each other. Adorno also talks about the truth of art. He believes that truth is within the art and not in the perception of art. As Benjamin talks about artwork changing throughout historical context, Adorno brings up the idea of eventual neutralization. He comments, “works are usually critical in the era in which they appear; later they are neutralized, not least because of changed social relations” (228). Again, it seems that this claim would make sense when looking at artwork in relation to society. Historical situations change and with them, societies evolve and adapt. It seems appropriate to say that artwork is critical in the time period it arrives in because it occupies a spot in that time’s history and is influenced by those current circumstances. When the artwork is removed from its original position, viewers aren’t looking at it in the exact way it was intended to be seen. Instead, they are looking at it in a context that may or may not fit. This context to some degree must be influenced by society. Adorno says this in a way by stating, “the artistic subject is inherently social, not private…the artist unconsciously obeys a social universal” (231).

Do We Have Reason to View Benjamin's Views as Negative?

   As I was walking from class to the middle ground last Thursday, a member of our class intercepted me at the entrance to the mail room and asked something along the lines of "Do you think Grady really believes what he just told us?" I said that I did, but that because our professor was simply trying to argue most points from Benjamin's side, the graveness of Benjamin's conclusions may have been exaggerated during the lecture.
   Benjamin himself felt positively about some aspects of the shift in our treatment of images, although his motives seem contrary to those of someone who truly values art. The author is content in knowing that the loss of "aura" will move art into a more political sphere, or one in which it's "exhibition value" is prized most of all. Rapidity, perfection, and accessibility will all take priority over "distance" and ceremonial role. Additionally, there lies a concept akin to Hegel's aesthetic philosophy in that both authors depict a time in which major cultural bonding over a work of is no longer possible.
   It does seem true that humans are obsessed with images, and that we trust them to an extent that could quite easily be proved to be reckless. I think it can also be agreed upon that the having the value of art lie in its existence (cult value) is better than having it lie in its consumption (exhibition). At least, that seems to be the case when looking at the tone in which the lecture was given on Thursday and the conclusions  of past philosophers as to what makes "good" art. Nothing that we have studied would lead us to believe that rapidity, perfection of detail, and accessibility constitute a "good" work of art. We have glamorized qualities like "truth" and originality, yet it may not be realistic to assume that we can preserve these things in our art any longer.
   For instance, the ability of art to show a cultural truth (per Hegel) is relatively lost, at least in our country, due in part to the heterogenous nature of our society. Surely one thing that made art so powerful a long time ago was the fact that the piece generally stayed in one town, and that the people of the town were more unified in their races and ideologies. Now, we simply have less distance between clumps of people in the world. As that distance has been torn down, so has the "distance" that Benjamin relates to our connection with art. I believe that the mixing of societies in our world was inevitable and positive, and as it has been aided by photography, cinema, and the internet, it has contributed to a less ignorant population as a whole. Some defame the information age, saying that it makes our country less unified, but I myself am perfectly willing to make that trade if it means that there is less chance of extremist hate.
   That escalated quickly, but back to Benjamin; if we look back at thursday's lecture and at the reading itself, we see that the aesthetic shift from cult to exhibition value requires a data-hungry, highly-informed mass. This was portrayed in its most negative light in the frame of a fascist society, for example, in the way that the Nazi regime used propaganda to control the population in Germany. The power of accessibility combined with the trust that humans put in images and film can has reached a point at which massive overnight movements can occur (See: Kony 2012). These movements range from utterly detrimental to a race of people to a waste of time. However, how many times has the exhibition value of art, its rapidity, its accessibility, and its detail, been used for good? We Are the World, a song created by a pantheon of popular musicians in 1985, sold 3 million copies and donated all of it to famine relief in Ethiopia. When the earthquake hit Haiti, a renovated group created more songs for the same purpose, and kids from our generation were able to click a button on iTunes or text a certain number and contribute to the cause. Without the spread of images, film (news reports), and music, there is no feasible way that 500+ million dollars could have been raised to help Haiti.
   My point, and this is the point I made on that walk from Palmer to the mail room, is that the shift of art from having cult value to having exhibition value is not as negative as it might have seemed during our lecture, and during our reading. The shift is simply something that has happened; its effects on our world have been widespread and should not be marked down as either beneficial or detrimental to our society. That said, it seems likely that our personal connection with art will not reach the heights that once existed, in a time without photography and other mechanical reproduction.

Benjamin on Film

            The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction addresses how the ever-increasing technology is altering the work of art. Benjamin is talking in particular about photography and prints. He begins by saying that “the work of art has always been reproducible.” All great classical artists learned by example, through copying the masters. The creation of even the most perfect copy in the classical tradition still only held the subordinate status of a replica. This is because art is grounded in tradition. The original piece held precedence, and thus authority. No technically perfect reproduction could match it, because it cannot hold the same place within tradition. As Benjamin says, “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element, its presence in time and space.” The context of the work of art is inseparable from its being. Its place in history, its particular context, is the aura of a work of art.

            Benjamin says, “that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.” Because art in this age can be reproduced perfectly from the same source every time, for example a film negative, there is no ‘original’ work of art. Instead there are many originals, each of them a reproduction. As reproductions, they cannot claim a specific historical context, and thus are robbed of their aura. In a way, mechanically produced art seeks to extract itself from tradition, and refuse any historical roots. But it is the historicity of a work that grounds it, and allows it to transcend its time.

            Just as art of the mechanical age strives to transcend its specific historical context, so it tries to break down dependence upon the audience. He talks in particular about the prominence of film. Even as mechanization makes reproduction simple, and thus greatly widens the potential audience, it places a barrier between the artist and the audience. For example, “the film actor lacks the opportunity of the stage actor to adjust to the audience” (437).  The film actor does not have any relation to the audience, his relationship is with the camera. Thus, “The audience’s identification with the actor is really an identification with the camera” (437). Benjamin elaborates on the effects of technology on theater. The film star’s audience to whom “he offers not only his labour but also his whole self, his heart and soul, is beyond his reach” (438). The audience is vast and inaccessible.

            Benjamin says that a “man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it” (442). According to him, it is impossible to be absorbed by film because the camera comes between the actor and the audience. The viewer has absolutely no involvement in a film, nothing about their experience allows for participation or individual interpretation. Each frame appears more quickly than the viewer can absorb it. There is no chance for reflection in absorbing a film.

            Benjamin argues that the mechanization of our world has destroyed painting as an art form. Painting is meant for viewing by an individual or a few people at a time. Confronting a painting creates a conversation between the viewer and the artist. Painting, however is historically dependent, and cannot appeal to the masses, because it is primarily an individual experience. “Painting simply is in no position to present an object for simultaneous collective viewing” (440). And yet, in the age of mechanical reproduction, we want and expect paintings, which often take their significance from their uniqueness, to be reproduced en masse and distributed to the masses. Film has placed unrealistic expectations on painting.

            In the past, art accessible and meant for the masses, architecture and the epic poem, invited interaction. Architecture is fundamentally an interactive experience, buildings are tailored to the needs of their inhabitants and architecture occupies both the eye and the feet. A building absorbs the viewer in a literal sense. Epic poetry was designed specifically for its mass audience and its recitation, like any form of good storytelling, always responded to the response of the audience. Today, film is in a position to appeal to the masses, but interaction with film is impossible, creating an ultimately unsatisfying experience. Mechanization has ruined our ability to truly appreciate painting, and has been unable to replace it.

            Mechanization has formed a wall between audience and artist. In completely accurate reproduction, it is impossible for the artist to effectively exert his viewpoint and makes conversation with the viewer difficult. Even as the camera causes a separation of communication, it is also blending the line between viewer and artist. “Any man today can lay claim to being filmed,” photographed, or written about (think about blogging), which cheapens these mediums. Art today is overly accessible. We consume it at a voracious pace, but we are never sated.

            Benjamin argues that the mechanization of art has caused a fundamental shift in how art is made and consumed. Much of what he says about film and the overabundance of aspiring art and artists rings true. However, I am not sure I agree with his value judgments. I do not agree that film cannot be art in the same way painting can. In my experience, a film can absorb the viewer, and although it is true that it is presented in a set perspective and moves at a rate that does not allow for reflection, I think that these two, working in tandem, force the viewer to adopt a unique perspective of the film. In fact, it is impossible for the viewer not to view a film from an individual perspective, he is bringing to the viewing all of his past experience, that different parts of films resonate with different people is evidence of this.