Bob Ross

So today is Bob Ross' 70th birthday. Some people have fashioned together some tributes of him - here's one. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lurt5FosdB4&feature=related

Response to Eye and Mind

In response to Eye and Mind, I want to try to digest and restate Merleau-Ponty’s account of painting as a means of entry into the text. Following this, I want to explore and question his privileging of painting as the prime exemplar of phenomenological understanding. Merleau-Ponty begins his essay by addressing the scientific pursuit of absolute objectivity. He argues that the division of science as autonomous from other methods of knowing is contrived and the pursuit of purely objective knowledge is in vain. “Scientific thinking , a thinking which looks from above, and thinks of the object-in-general, must return to the ‘there is’ which precedes it; to the site, the soil of the sensible and humanly modified world such as it is in our lives and for our bodies—not that possible body which we may legitimately think of as an information machine but this actual body I call mine…” (454) It seems he is positing that the vanity of pure objectivity is twofold. First, we cannot ever know the thing itself and, second, scientific knowledge must return to or include perception in order for it to ever be known and understood. Merleau-Ponty asserts painting as a kind of antidote to this futile and ultimately meaningless objectivity. He sees painting as the action most capable of analyzing and demonstrating sight as we, bodily beings, experience it. He articulates this generally but lucidly early in the essay. “The painter ‘takes his body with him’ says Valéry. Indeed we cannot imagine how a mind could paint.” (455) Merleau-Ponty continues by investigating the specifics of our perception that ground our knowledge as an understanding through the body and explaining how these particulars of perception are expressed in painting. He describes the duplicity of feeling. “My body simultaneously sees and is seen. That which looks at all things can also look at itself and recognize, in what it sees, the ‘other side’ of its power of looking. It sees itself seeing; it touches itself touching; it is visible and sensitive for itself.” He then uses this duplicity to argue against the Platonic understanding of the image as secondary. The mind is unable to imagine a pure form distinct from perception because it is conditioned by perception thus the image is not secondary or false or true. The image is a primary record of sight or as Merleau-Ponty states with more complexity “a central operation contributing to the definition of our access to Being.” (461)

I find Merleau-Ponty’s thinking and the few claims I’ve summarized to be accurate. I do, however, think that they are not exclusive to painting and that painting is no more capable of contributing to our access to Being than any of the other arts. Painting expresses and documents the experience of sight and its synethesia with other senses. Other sensorial arts such as sculpture, music, and performance offer their own unique access to Being that other realms of art cannot replicate. For example, the space and dimensionality of sculpture allow us to experience time and narrative as it relates to our bodies. In order to view an entire sculpture we must move around and/or through it and thus begin to comprehend it as it relates to the movement of our body. A painting is unable to provide this understanding. James Turrell’s work is a good example of sculptural access to perception and, perhaps, the linkage between objectivity and perception for which Merleau-Ponty sought. Turrell uses an acute awareness of optics and astronomy to create light installations and experiences that address human perception and illusion. The creation of the work is heavily design and science based yet Turrell’s compulsion towards light derives from a fascination with the way in which we perceive the world and a Quaker faith that deifies light.

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/james-turrell

A Quick Reponse to Merleau-Ponty

In “Eye and Mind,” Merleau-Ponty explores art, and more specifically, painting, as the act of viewing the world in a wholeness not equaled by science and philosophy. That is, art forces an encounter with the “brute meaning” of the world. This view of confronting the “brute meaning” of the world, as opposed to taking a more scientific approach, is the one preferred by Merleau-Ponty as it reinforces our sense of perception through which our consciousness is extended to the world.

            This is explained when Merleau-Ponty describes how the painter works, and the painter does so “by lending his body to the world that the artist changes the world into paintings.” This is accomplished by a complex relationship between the body and the universe in which the body sees and is seen, that is, there is a barrier between the what the body sees and itself, and there is an invisible unseen between the body and the universe, that is made visible by the painters own vision and the object’s unconcealment to the painter.

            For me, the most interesting part of Merleau-Ponty’s work is how it is different from others we have read so far this semester. Unlike Heidegger and Kant, Merleau-Ponty places the body as the center of experience and consciousness. That is because for MP, the way in which we experience the world flows through the “Eye and Mind” as opposed to simply our logic and reason. Also, MP’s beliefs are different in that it is the vision that extends from the body into the world, and in order to experience and interact with the world, one must be whole in his own body.                        
              This is summed up best, in terms of interaction with the world, with the quote “The enigma derives from the fact that my body simultaneously sees and is seen. That which looks at all things can also look at itself and recognize, in what is sees, the 'other side' of its power of looking. It sees itself seeing; it touches itself touching; it is visible and sensitive for itself.” (456). The interaction with the world does not flow through the mind, but through the body, then the mind, as a means of seeing then thinking, and at the same time, influences and is influenced by the world. Consciousness is inseparable from the body and makes all physical experiences imperative to existence and understanding, instead of just introspection or previous modes of philosophical thought.
            I personally prefer this thought on our existence and experience, as it reinforces the way I feel about how we live. Certainly, there are truths that I can reach simply through deductions and logic without much interaction with the physical world, but the our perception of lives as experiential makes us believe there is more to the world than the simple truths, and that our actions and what is acted upon in the world is constantly altering our own identity and self-truths.

Textual Reflection on Gadamer

Gadamer begins his essay Aesthetics and Hermeneutics by suggesting that the way we normally define hermeneutics is not accurate because art would not be included.  To him, it is important that we know art's role and purpose in hermeneutics because "it is the work of art that speaks to us most directly" over all the other things that confront us in nature and history (187).  As we have already heard, calling something beautiful we are discovering something about ourselves we did not already know, and Gadamer calls it "an encounter with ourselves" every time we are gripped by the "mysterious intimacy" of art (187).  He argues that art is so powerfully expressive that it overcomes its "own historical origin" so that "the experience of art... always has its own present... the work of art communicates itself" (187).  However, Gadamer is not saying that just because a work of art can be interpreted in many does not mean it should; there is "a standard of appropriateness... a universal validity" required not only of judgment of taste (Kant) but also of interpretation (188).  He then asks a series of questions that "transform the systematic problem of aesthetics into the question of the experience of art," focusing on how art has something to say to us, that it is a language (188).  But art cannot belong to only to the category of the linguistic because it also has nonlinguistic qualities, using the example of an archaic image of a god (189).  "Every interpretation of the intelligible that helps others to understand has the character of language," and art can function in this way, while it can also be a "fragment of a past world... assisting us in the intellectual reconstruction of the world in which they are a remnant" (189).  So is art a tool or a language?  Whatever it is, art "says something" to everyone and "our task is to understand the meaning of what it says and to make it clear to ourselves and others" (190).  This sounds similar to Plato, in that art has didactic purpose, but Gadamer's view of art differs from Plato's; he recognizes that art has value in society and because it says something to everyone, that the"language of art is constituted precisely by the fact that it speaks too the self-understanding of every person, and it does this as ever-present and by means of its own contemporaneousness" (191).  In the hermeneutic circle, in order to understand a whole, we must first understand a part, and to understand a part, we must also be aware of the whole.  According to Gadamer and hermeneutics, everything is a symbol (something that points to another thing).  Art is also a symbol that "gathers into itself" (192).  He ends his essay mentioning the intimacy of art that he discussed at the beginning, that art quiets us with its mystery and simultaneously shatters us with the familiar, saying to us that we are this way and we must change.

Gadamer's Aesthetics

            In his concise argument, Hans-Georg Gadamer reinterprets the notion of aesthetics with having it subsumed by the science of hermeneutics. Gadamer’s conclusion of Aesthetics provides an interesting and unique position on understanding not only the meaning of art, but also the experience of art as a whole. This is a direct challenge to our previous reading of Kant and Hegel, which is not only refreshing, but is ultimately beneficial to us in determining a contemporary view on Aesthetics.

            In the beginning of his essay, Gadamer refers to Hegel’s description of art being an interpretation of the Absolute Spirit “that is, (Hegel) saw in art a form of Spirit’s self-knowledge in which nothing alien and unredeemable appeared, a form in which there was no contingency of the actual, no unintelligibility of what is merely given” (p.187). Gadamer quickly responds to his interpretation of Hegel’s aesthetics and explains that the historical presence and power of a work of art does not express any particular development of historical consciousness that is trapped by the historical period, but in fact, “the work of art always has its own present” (187) which can be seen as how the work of art speaks for itself rather than have to rely upon the voice of its creator. We cannot possibly imagine what the great sculptors were truly trying to say when they created the classical statues we see today, we can only come to understand our contemporary interpretation, which is to be intrinsically different than the interpretations of the ancient Greeks. Gadamer uses this transparency of interpretation in order to philosophize his greater intentions for the direction of his essay, namely, that the “hermeneutical perspective is all-encompassing” (191), so much so that to best see this universal power is by experiencing art.

            Hermeneutics original definition, according to Gadamer, is “the art of clarifying and mediating by our own effort of interpretation what is said by persons we encounter in tradition. Hermeneutics operates wherever whatever what is said is not immediately intelligible” (189). Hermeneutics works with language; the art of reflecting on interpretation is a method of trying to determine a greater understanding for the individual as well as for society. With the understanding of hermeneutics being a useful tool for philosophers, it is logical for Gadamer to inquire as to whether or not hermeneutics is a suitable method to incorporate in what many persons would argue is incapable of being described by language: the experience of art. As Gadamer understands the world, “the entire experience of the world is linguistically mediated” (189), thus including art itself. Art, according to Gadamer, speaks to whoever is interpreting the work of art. Gadamer calls the language art “is the language the work of art itself speaks, whether it is linguistic in nature or not. The work of art says something to the historian: it says something to each person as if it were said especially to him, as something present and contemporaneous” (190). Because of this power of the experience of art, Gadamer states that it is of the utmost importance to understand the meaning of what art says, and this is the reason why hermeneutics includes aesthetics, “Hermeneutics bridges the distance between minds and reveals the foreignness of the other mind” (190). Whether or not hermeneutics is the best method for bridging together minds is one aspect that is worth questioning, but for the sake of this blog post, must be discussed elsewhere.

            Gadamer then goes into discussing the experience of art itself in order to better understand how hermeneutics will bring about a greater understanding of art. “The work of art that says something”, according to Gadamer,  “confronts us itself. That is, expresses something in such a way that what is said is like a discovery, a disclosure of something previously concealed” (190). This sense of discovery is true to all persons, regardless of time or place, for art speaks to the “self-understanding of every person, and it does this as ever present and by means of its own contemporaneousness” (191). It is this contemporaneousness of a work of art that allows it to “come to expression in language” (190).  Because of this power of art, it cannot be understood that the artist is speaking to the viewer, for it is not the language of the artist that interests us, but is instead “the excess of meaning that is present in the work itself” (191).  To me this is an odd way of understanding art as itself, for how does one quantify meaning? Gadamer makes the statement “excess of meaning” and makes the claim that this excess is what allows for the inexhaustibility of the language of art.

            It is interesting to me that Gadamer rejects so much of previous philosophical works, and in all honesty, it is refreshing to see. Unfortunately Gadamer’s principle of hermeneutics seems to be too good to be true. I suppose it is just my skepticism showing through, but more study needs to be done on hermeneutics to truly understand the greater picture of Gadamer’s aesthetics. Either way, his essay shines a new light and gives me hope that there is work to be done in the field of contemporary aesthetics.

Problems with Gadamer's Hermeneutics

In Hans-Georg Gadamer’s essay “Aesthetics and Hermeneutics,” the distinctions between hermeneutics and aesthetics are explored, as well as their relation to each other. Gadamer spends most of his time in this body of explaining how the experiences of art fall into the category of hermeneutics, and the nature of hermeneutics itself. While his theory on hermeneutics and what the experience of art entails are logically sound, I find a few problems with his ideas.

Gadamer begins with a definition of hermeneutics as “the bridging of personal or historical distance between minds,” and later expands on this definition as saying it is the way in which we go about “clarifying and mediating by our own effort of interpretation what is said by persons we encounter in tradition” Tradition, simply put, is anything encountered in human experience that can be linguistically expressed. Originally, Gadamer claims that art must not exist within hermeneutics, but then explains how it must be included as real art is able to say something beyond its historical confinement, and is experienced by each person individually in a “timeless present.” This transforms all the problems of aesthetics into the question of the experience of art, and his views on the experience of art are strongly in line with Kant. Since works of art all “say” something to us, they belong in the realm of things we are able to understand and interpret linguistically, and therefore aesthetics is not a realm of study on its own, but a study under hermeneutics.

Gadamer then goes on to attempt to explain the meaning of experience of art. He claims that art is impactful because of the “surprise at the meaning of what is said.” That is, to say, the work of art always says something to the viewer in a way that the viewer experiences something new, and subsequently must confront himself with the disclosure of this new thing. All works of art cause this introspective experience, and the real experience of art is to integrate this newfound thing into one’s own world and orientation to the world.

Gadamer, however, in explaining the language of art, says that art is art because it has an “excess of meaning” that is present in the world itself, and this extra meaning cannot be translated into ordinary language. Certainly it is true that when experiencing what you believe to be a good work of art, there are feelings and experiences and emotions that arise in you without being put into play. This is where my main concerns arise.  If the experience of art is defined by the way in which some sort of truth is unconcealed to us as viewers, and it is necessary to apply this truth to our own experience in relation to the world, then how is this excess knowledge to be defined or utilized if it is outside the scope of ordinary linguistics?
            Our we to create our own new linguistic dimensions or terms to define these, or are we simply to just try to encompass them in the fleeting moment of experience and attempt to recreate them when recalling the work of art and hope some of that experience remains? If hermeneutics is the bridging of distance between minds and clarifying what we encounter in tradition, this can only be done linguistically in our conventional language. Gadamer asserts that the experience of art itself and its defining characteristics themselves exist outside of linguistics. It seems to me then, that aesthetics, and subsequently, the experience of art, if not able to exist within tradition and linguistically, must therefore not be considered a hermeneutic study but that of something else.

I believe Gadamer attempts to address this by saying that he has previously stated that “being that can be understood is language,” but I still find it problematic that he places the study of art, which he claims the real experience of is outside of language, into a system that utilizes language as its defining characteristic.

Reflection on Nietzsche

At first glance, Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense” seems to have some obvious contradictions. The author begins his essay with a description of the arbitrariness of the human intellect, yet he is presenting us with an essay that delves deeply into that same topic with the goal seemingly set on enlightening the reader. Tell me Friedrich, if my intellect is merely deceiving me into thinking I am important, and the same thing is happening to you, why are you worried about writing anything at all, let alone something that will surely be used in learning institutions? Again, if language is merely a set of arbitrary metaphors for things that we see (“forms”), why bother devoting your life to writing?

While it never fully answered my initial questions, the rest of the essay did flesh a few of Nietzsche’s more important points out. Obviously the essay’s primary concern is truth, which is eventually determined as something that exists, but that we are not able to grasp in full. Our truth is not how we tend to perceive it, but rather a made up social connection between humans for the sole purpose of allowing us to communicate with one another. Simply put, we think we know more than we do, and in reality the man who grasps the meaninglessness of things like truths and lies (as we see them today) is the only type of person able to claim any truth at all.

Am I the only one seeing it, or are there two different types of truths being discussed in the last sentence? Nietzsche seems to have an idea of “truth” as the failed concept that humans throw about with a glaring ignorance to its arbitrary origins, as well as an idea of “Truth” as something that actually does exist, just beyond our language and understanding. But, Nietzsche doesn’t define “Truth,” so is it assumed to be similar to our original understanding of the word, i.e. an affirmative connection between something that we have in our minds, and something that exists in reality (credits to Tanner for the definition)?

The second part of the essay consists of an interesting comparison between the rational and intuitive man. Nietzsche poses that what the intuitive man lacks in rationality, he makes up for in his artistic ability. I don’t completely buy the idea that the intuitive man is “artistic” merely because he, in fearless battle, paves the way for a new society; it seems as though those people in the society would then be the artistic ones. I would agree just that that the intuitive man creates room for others (most likely rational men) to be creative. Moving on, while the rational man is only concerned with warding off pain, the intuitive man takes everything around him to exist simply as it appears to him to exist. The rational man creates reasons for the existence of forms, but the intuitive man is actually capable of reaping true joy from his perceptions. That being said, he also has more opportunities to be sad, with a more potent sadness as well, than his counterpart because of his lack of defense against deception.

Nietzsche’s description of the intuitive man appears to show a pity, rather than an admiration for the irrational being. Interestingly enough, the description of the rational man involves a line about simply seeking sincerity, something that the intuitive man brings in heaps and bounds. Adding to that the grey description of the rational man as wearing an unchanging and emotionless face makes it seem as though there are qualities inherent in the intuitive man’s futility that the rational man, the one who is most likely deceiving the simpler foil and causing him pain, desires! What a contradiction… this was the most interesting part of the essay for me, and it left me wondering which of the two men would make the most qualified aesthetic judgment according to our philosophers. They both seem to have their advantages: the intuitive man would likely have the purest aesthetic judgments, for he lives in the moment, and Nietzsche’s rational seems very susceptible to falling into an “interested” relationship with his art. I bet it would be a closer battle than we would think…

Textual Reflection on Nietzsche

Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense discusses the relation between concepts and the external world. He presents a circular thought pattern due to the crossings between dissimulation and perception. One of the first claims he makes is about language. Humans need dialect in order to communicate in the world. The first laws of truth are established from the introduction of language because “the contrast between truth and lie arises here for the first time” (66). However, it is because of language that people cannot find the truth since language is a man made mode of operation created in order to relate. A person who tries to use words “in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real” (66) is a liar. By trusting language and relying on it to help understand, we are depending on biases. Nietzsche seems to view language as a tool, which we use to help us feel like we understand concepts that we do not know. However, language carries limitations because it is confined within the human perspective. Through our quest for truth, are we in fact getting farther away from the truth by delving into the false assistance language provides? Nietzsche states, “it is only by means of forgetfulness that man can ever reach the point of fancying himself to possess a ‘truth’” (66). While we think that language leads us to knowing things, we really only possess metaphors for the things. This isn’t useful because metaphors “correspond in no way to the original entities” (67) that we are attempting to understand. These metaphors aren’t derived based on the essence of the thing in question nor does logic play a role in forming the metaphor, so there is no substantial relation between the metaphor which we wrongly equate with language and the actual thing. Language is formed of words, which become concepts. Concepts have to fit multiple cases that are not equal which means that “every concept arises from the equation of unequal things” (67). The method by which concepts are formed ignore the particulars and only concern themselves with the general. Consequently, “truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions” (67). The concept has been conceptualized so many times by language that we mistake the end product for a truth when really it is the most distant from the truth. The quest for metaphors is the “fundamental human drive” (70) and the drive further blurs the conceptual categories by introducing new information and further complicates the issue of trying to equate unequal things. Since Nietzsche believes that knowledge “is no longer understood as a binary relation between representation and object…perception and understanding are akin to the creation and appreciation of art” (64). Between a subject and object there is an aesthetic relation only. Consequently, art is not limited by nature the way language is but art transcends nature. Art does not carry the burden that the limitations of language impose. Human intellect is “aimless and arbitrary” (65) within nature because “this intellect has no additional mission which would lead it beyond human life” (65). Art need not concern itself with entities related to intellect like language because art itself is a stimulus and a purpose in itself.

Hegel's Infuriating History

Hegel obviously has some very strict ideas about the progression of art throughout history. In his lectures on aesthetics, he dives into a three-part chronology of art and gives us a simple model to follow with detailed instructions behind every choice. In terms of “better art” the three stages, Symbolic, Classical, and Romantic, are presented in a sort of bell curve of quality. Symbolic and Romantic art are the lesser than Classical art because they lack the balance of content and form that works that classic sculptures have. Between the lesser two genres, Symbolic art has more form than content (i.e. the Egyptian Pyramids) and Romantic art has more content than can be properly expressed in any artistic form. I found myself distracted while reading this section of the “CAR;” I was getting sidetracked finding examples and explanations to disprove this theory, even if it only existed for Hegel to show the development of the Ideal in a few forms of art and not to provide a full art history lesson with only three examples. Still, when the more complex reasoning behind the categorization of the Symbolic, Classical, and Romantic was revealed, I only became more entangled in trying to disprove Hegel.

Hegel explains the futility of Symbolic art in that it grasps for its content after setting out with the form already in hand. That is, the artist acts as one student would when he or she has no clue what their thesis is going to be and yet begins to write pages and pages in search of their own argument. Having experienced that exact feeling, and having learned since then to always have a solid thesis before beginning my writing, I see exactly where Hegel is coming from with this point. I do think however that Hegel’s staunch Christian beliefs have something to with his portrayal of ancient ideals as being merely abstract, that is, arbitrary and without effective shape.

Again I tended to side with Hegel in terms of the Romantic period having an imbalance of content over form. Reading Romantic literature and poetry in my high school English classes single-handedly convinced me that I was not set out to be an English major at Rhodes. On the other hand, in my Music 101 class last semester, I found Romantic music to be robust and effective in making me feel the emotions exactly as it seemed the composer wanted to. Perhaps Hegel would respond that my feeling was merely my heart manifesting itself in itself, and not in the true reality. His lecture notes state that in Romantic Art, the external medium is abandoned of any essence or meaning, for the content is so internally spiritual that it is unable to be fully expressed by our art forms. Here lies his idea that some concepts are simply better sensible than others, hence Classical art and its perfection of the unity between content and form.

I’ll come right out with it: the idea that spirit of the idea of beauty is assumed best in a human body, and in fact only appears satisfyingly in the shape of a body, makes me cringe. Hegel poses that the spirit that must be conveyed in this type of art must not be absolute or eternal, but rather human and particular. In response, I do not see Romantic art as always dealing with absolute or eternal ideas itself, and the limiting of art to the basic idea (singular, basically) of humanity, and limiting the expression to a depiction of the human body, is an undeniably depressing idea for me to behold. The balance between form and content is something that makes sense when we look at what we say is “good art,” although I think you will find that it is more like a scale in Aristotle’s sense of a golden mean. That is, the meter could be leaning towards one side or another depending on the emotion being expressed and whether or not the artist has a specific way in mind for showing you said emotion.

I agree with the Hegel’s idea of good and bad art within the balance or imbalance of content and form, respectively, but I cannot say that the strict manner in which he applied those ideas makes sense to me. It seems to me as if there is simply a boundary on either side that should not be crossed, given the idea on display, rather than the best art being the one that achieves the perfect balance. The latter seems both objective and in conflict with the way we as humans perceive works of art. 

~On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense

In The Gay Science, when the Madman decrees, "All of us are his murderers...God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him," he is not simply speaking of the Judeo-Christian God. The Madman is announcing the revaluation of the Western Metaphysical tradition. In one aphorism, Nietzsche undermines the entire Enlightenment premise of progress and pure knowledge. Truth, for Nietzsche, is interpretation. To extrapolate, the basis for all morality is shaken--the columbarium has fallen. This act of revealing posits an opportunity for human beings to break from their slave morality, which is perpetuated, underscored by the illusion of Objectivity. Artists, musicians, and visionaries can peel back and pick at the comfortable consistency of empiricism. Nonetheless, human beings need dialectics to operate in the world. Language is at the foundation of this project. By translating sensation into a vernacular, statements can be made and understood about the world. For Nietzsche, language is the fundamentally an act of creation. Signs are metaphors for sensation. Although, in language, we understand signs to correspond with noumena, that is a misunderstanding. The human intellect is particular lens, rather than a universal one. Therefore, when we speak about things in the world, implicit in each statement is the caveat that whatever is being said is limited to and dependent upon the human perspective. The barrier between subject and object is removed, despite this opposition being necessary to understanding. A concern for Nietzsche is the historical forgetfulness that led to the displacement of dissimulation by truth, by repetition. In "On Truth and Lie In an Extramoral Sense," Nietzsche discusses the genealogy of the idea of truth as necessary and universal. The essay is rich with metaphor. This stylistic move echoes the confluence of "truth" creation and metaphor that he elucidates in the paper itself. As literary artist, he is performing the act of unveiling that art is uniquely equipped to do. Similarly to Levinas, art is necessary to point towards other epistemological, ontological, and ethical possibilities, while pointing out their essential provisionality. Although Nietzsche, in the title, suggests that his interpretation is extramoral, I do not think this is the case. Without pointing to a specific moral code, Nietzsche nonetheless places a value on a certain outlook on the world--the master morality. This perspective or mood is grounded in intuition and harkens to Nietzche's Will To Power. These are the individuals, like Nietzsche, who deny themselves the comforts of The Herd, and act in accordance with their own beliefs, not those provided by others. This is the honest way to live.

A Waking Dream Made Just for You

An article on the fascinating work of the performance art group, Odyssey Works.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/arts/design/odyssey-works-makes-art-for-and-about-one-person.html

Hegel on Egyptian Art

For Plato, the best art is didactic; it serves only to point to an idea. In Plato’s mind, symbolic art is the only art worth allowing in a republic. Hegel does not agree. In Hegel’s Aesthetics, symbolic art is described as the lowest form of art. (Though we should note that he still considers the symbolic art.)

According to Hegel, art must contain both concept and form; each of these which must be concrete in itself. In a truly successful artwork concept and form are perfectly melded. The symbolic meaning of the piece must be reflected in the form of its representation. Thus, the Idea points to the form and the form points back to the Idea. If concept and form are both viable and well-executed, then the work becomes entirely self-contained producing a message outside the viewer independent of the viewer’s individual perspective. This self-containment is art’s bridge to universality. And only in being entirely self-referential can art be timelessly and universally relevant.

Hegel describes the composition of symbols as: “(i) the meaning, and (ii) the expression thereof” (304). This sounds identical to the argument posed in his Aesthetics, where content and form combine to create an Idea. So, I believe Hegel is saying that fine art is a symbol within itself. Symbolic art, then seems to be something different. Symbolic art spears to be a misuse or misunderstanding of the true nature of symbolism, in which form and content are disjointed and largely unsuccessful in communicate a deeper Idea.

Hegel’s Aesthetics explains that symbolic art is not very successful in the blending of concept and form. The form is often overly simplistic and the ideas encompassed in the composition are too large to be conveyed through the Egyptians’ simple style. Though they concept is much more powerful than the form in symbolic art, it is the form that is notable. It is immediately apparent in viewing the form of Egyptian art, that there is a large and important concept behind everything they created. But the external obviousness that there exists an grander idea has none of fine art’s required subtlety. This means the simplicity of the form in comparison to the idea does not highlight the idea, but rather, by too directly referencing its existence, emphasizes form and obfuscates the idea. It is for this reason that Hegel declares symbolic art, which is epitomized in Egyptian architecture, to be the least successful of all the arts.

Hegel’s primary example of Egyptian symbolism is the Pyramids because they “put before our eyes the simple prototype of symbolic art itself” (356). The fascination the Pyramids ceaselessly engender is evidence of the imbalance of concept and form in their construction. Had these two symbolic elements been balanced, there would be no question of the meaning or purpose of the Pyramids. However, “they are prodigious crystals which conceal in themselves an inner meaning” (356). The Pyramids have frustrated and fascinated generations because their enigmatic form clearly hints at a definite meaning within their structure, yet their impressive form reveals little about what that meaning might be. As Hegel says, “the shape for such an inner meaning still remains just an external form and veil for the definite content of that meaning” (356). The inharmonious blend of idea and form ensures that “inner meaning rests concealed” (356). So, as fine art, Hegel would declare the Pyramids unsuccessful.

Hegel goes on to compare Egyptian art to riddles: “we regard the Egyptian works of art as containing riddles, the right solution of which is in part unattained not only by us, but generally by those who posed these riddles to themselves” (360). He clearly thinks that the failure of attaining true symbolism within Egyptian art is due to an incomplete grasp of what the artists were hoping to convey, meaning that their art cannot help us grasp at a more concrete understanding of these concepts, merely suggest their existence. So, “Egyptian symbols, as we saw at the very beginning, contain implicitly much, explicitly nothing,” thus making them relatively unvalued in aesthetic terms (360).

From his brief talk of riddles, Hegel naturally progresses to the Sphinx, a mythical creature famously associated with the Egyptians. Hegel claims the sphinx “the symbol of the symbolic itself” (360). For this reason, I would claim that the sphinx is a symbol in Hegel’s highest sense of the word. Like fine art, the sphinx is both a formal and ideological representation of an Idea, in this case, a riddle. Hegel’s original description of “the symbol is no purely arbitrary sign, but a sign in which externality comprises in itself at the same time the content of the idea which it brings into appearance” (305). 

A riddle cannot be art, because the answer is evident only externally. For example, the riddle the Sphinx gives Oedipus requires him to look within himself for the answer. He must follow the command to “Know thyself”. This is in accordance with Kant’s ideals of art, where the nature of art must echo with something inside of us. It is completely contrary to Hegel’s aesthetics for the same reason. For Hegel, all art must have a self-contained meaning. Though the riddle does not represent this to Hegel, I would argue that the sphinx does.