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Contemporary Aesthetics: Perspectives on Time, Space, and Content - Ossi Naukkarinen
1. Introduction
The easiest way to describe contemporary aesthetics is to say that it covers everything that is currently done in the academic discipline so named. This is true at the rudimentary level but it opens up several further questions: What kind of entity are we trying to comprehend when talking about contemporary aesthetics? What is the nature and scope of “the contemporary” and is it synonymous with “the present?” Where and how does contemporary aesthetics manifest itself? Where are the boundaries of the discipline? Is aesthetics always and only an academic discipline? Is aesthetics of today different from aesthetics of the past decades and centuries, and in what ways?
These are topical questions in a world that is becoming more and more global in the sense that there are no self-evident geographical, linguistic, or ideological centers of academic fields but competing actors who might have wildly different ideas of the answers. In such a situation, scholars and teachers should be able to clearly communicate what their conception about contemporary aesthetics is and why. This is important because our idea about what is contemporary reveals what we think is relevant and worth focusing on, in our own society, today. Moreover, what we deem important for any reason tends to define what contemporary is for us. Often, non-contemporary conceptions are not seen to be useful or even intelligible. Different ideas of contemporaneity are related to different ideas of the current field’s most important features.
When we search for our own answers, it is useful to pay attention to at least three themes: the time, space and content of aesthetics, i.e., to when, where, and what aspects of contemporary aesthetics are significant. Beyond helping us define our own notions of contemporary aesthetics, the points of view can be used in analyzing the issue of contemporaneity in other fields. I will concentrate on the first two themes and provide only some tentative remarks of the last one. First, however, we need to more clearly focus the issue by considering some implicit conceptions manifested in important recent works of aesthetics.
2. Implicit conceptions
Every new publication, event, or lecture on aesthetics necessarily presents at least an implicit interpretation of the field or of its parts, suggesting what is currently relevant to the field. Perusing, for example, the latest issues of this journal, Contemporary Aesthetics, provides an idea of what contemporary aesthetics is, although the idea is necessarily limited—even if by no means wrong—if no other sources are consulted.
However, there are contexts where a more explicit analysis of contemporary aesthetics would be in order. Everyone who teaches philosophical aesthetics should be able to clearly articulate what kinds of lectures and curricula are relevant to students right now and why. Introductory courses, undergraduate textbooks, companions, encyclopedias, and anthologies that seek to present the best contemporary work, especially those containing the word pair “contemporary aesthetics” in their title, evoke expectations related to this. Whenever the field is introduced, one would assume that the introduction is relevant right now, presents things that are currently happening, but also analyzes how the picture of the contemporary situation has been formed. Surprisingly, explications of this kind are fairly rare.
First, there are textbooks that are otherwise interesting and clear but that do not raise the issue of their temporal nature, instead presenting themselves as if they were written in no particular period of history. Colin Lyas’ Aesthetics, for example, is written in such a way that it is difficult to say how he perceived contemporary aesthetics in the mid 1990s, when the book was published.[1] This might have to do with two aspects of analytic aesthetics, whether flaws or just characteristics of it, that have been pointed out by Richard Shusterman: the neglect of both social context and history of the phenomena addressed, art or otherwise.[2]
In Marcia Muelder Eaton’s Basic Issues in Aesthetics[3] and Robert Stecker’s Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art,[4] the time-related nature of their approaches is briefly mentioned: They say that they offer a picture of current or contemporary aesthetics, each at their own time of publishing. Richard Eldridge’s recently updated Philosophy of Art,[5] which does not cover the whole field of aesthetics but only the philosophy of art, also pays attention to some of the latest currents in aesthetics. However, none of these authors analyzes at length how each formed their understanding about contemporary aesthetics and how they see what “contemporary“ or “current” is.
In the preface to the third edition of Philosophy Looks at the Arts, Joseph Margolis goes a bit further. He explicates how the three editions are different from each other because they were compiled at different historical moments. “Every age understands itself as a transition: consolidating what is best, against disruptive pressures; absorbing new conceptions, to liberate us from what confines our entrenched habits of thought; doubting the viability of legitimating either commitment, previously endorsed or now admired.”[6] He notices that each contemporary moment has its own needs, but even he does not explicate how to understand “contemporary” (in 1987).
The situation is not much different in publications that include the term “contemporary” in their titles. Part One of the book Contemporary Aesthetics, entitled “What is Aesthetics?,” and which includes the essays “Twentieth Century Aesthetics” by Monroe C. Beardsley and “Recent Work in Aesthetics” by Joseph Margolis,[7] does give a good picture of what these writers wanted to include in the discourse of the early 1970s. In Contemporary Aesthetics – A Philosophical Analysis, R.A. Sharpe writes: “I have tried to present a picture of how the main problems in aesthetics appear in the last quarter of a century....”[8] Again, in Contemporary Studies in Aesthetics, Francis J. Coleman merely states: “In this book I have brought together a compendium of many of the more influential and stimulating articles in aesthetics written during the past thirty years.”[9] Yet, these authors do not explicate how they have actually considered what is contemporary and on which grounds they have based their conceptions.
One of the broadest and many-sided presentations of contemporary aesthetics is the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics edited by Michael Kelly. The second edition (2014) contains some 800 hundred essays in six volumes. In the Preface to the first edition (1998), Kelly explains that “To capture these multiple dimensions, the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics has been created using a definition of aesthetics as ‘critical reflection on art, culture, and nature.’”[10] Seen from this perspective, aesthetics is not merely a sub-field of philosophy but includes many different disciplines and has local and global aspects. The Encyclopedia tries to encompass “the key centuries (eighteenth to twentieth) and countries (Germany, France, Great Britain, United States) in the history of Western aesthetics,”[11] different disciplinary perspectives, various cultures, many of the arts, various critiques of aesthetics, and dozens of other views.
Kelly also gave a name to the period in which the work for the first edition was done and characterized it briefly: “One of the marks of our present age, which is typically characterized as postmodern, is a skepticism toward any claims about philosophical systems or historical grand narratives....”[12] This skepticism led the editors to take the postmodern, critical attitude into consideration and provide good reasons for their choices. Kelly continued, “Topics were chosen according to the following general criteria: (1) philosophical or critical significance in the histories of aesthetics, art, or fields related to aesthetics or art; (2) relevance to contemporary aesthetics; and (3) historical or contemporary importance in non-Western cultures.”[13] Nonetheless, even if they are much more critical than many others, Kelly and his fellow editors do not really analyze what is “contemporary” and why these things have “relevance to contemporary aesthetics.” They do say what aesthetics means for them and give plenty of examples of that—that is, they suggest what is relevant, but they don’t say what “contemporary” is, in either 1998 or 2014.
The situation is similar to that in such volumes as Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, A Companion to Aesthetics and Theories of Art Today.[14] Moreover, in my experience, browsing through various Internet pages does not reveal anything more substantial on the matter, even if it is possible that somewhere in the digital universe there are gems that I have not found. Even this electronic journal, Contemporary Aesthetics, refrains from defining what the contemporary is.
It seems to be rather typical for many widely used, well-known and in many other ways excellent works on aesthetics, that they don’t problematize the concept of contemporary aesthetics. I emphasize that the tendency of not analyzing what contemporaneity is does by no means diminish the value of such important publications. My aim is not to criticize them but simply note that addressing this theme has not been typical in academic aesthetics. In many other fields the self-reflection that is necessary for understanding the nature of the contemporary state of that field has been very active for a long time, for example, in gender studies, post-colonial studies, and historiography. The perspectives offered by them have also been utilized in philosophical aesthetics, in other ways, but for some reason this has not typically resulted in an analysis on the nature of the field’s contemporaneity.
3. Time: When is “contemporary?”
In different sub-fields of historical studies—the history of the visual arts, theater, music, architecture, philosophy, political events and processes, and so on—the issue of periodization is practically as old as the fields themselves. It is probably impossible to form any idea of history without periodization, i.e., without dividing the past into certain phases, periods, epochs, or eras. Giants of philosophy, such as Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, and Marx, had their own ways of periodizing. We are all used to period names such as the Renaissance, Middle-Ages, and Romanticism, and we may even take them as given. However, after analyzing a number of historiographical questions, Thomas Postlewait showed that in theater studies alone there have been at least twenty-two different principles for periodizing history, each including several sub-categories. Periods have been formed by focusing on political empires and dynasties (Hellenistic, Hapsburg, etc.), normative attributes (primitive, festival, etc.), chronology (the seventeenth century, between the wars, etc.), audience types (bourgeois, aristocratic, etc.), performance modes (Noh, baroque), institutions, famous playwrights, and so forth.[15]
Postlewait’s message is that we necessarily construct such periods and that they are stipulative, nominal interpretations. No period exists as such in the past, and none of them has a singular, indisputable identity. We simplify many things when we make use of them but that is not a problem that we can solve for good; rather it is an unavoidable feature of such tools.[16] We must be critical about them exactly because we cannot do without them. We must ask why we think that a certain period starts and ends at some particular time, what kinds of features characterize it, even if we give a period a name and some characteristics, how many phenomena that existed during that time frame actually represented the supposedly dominant currents of that period, which things are related to what kinds of periods and which out-live them? In aesthetics we can ask, in which sense can we speak of aesthetics of antiquity, the Renaissance, the twentieth century, modernity, and postmodernity? Are all of them periods or something else?
Such questions clearly have to do with the history of aesthetics and are dealt with by specialists in it, such as Władysław Tatarkiewicz and Paul Guyer.[17] However, they are just as important for understanding the contemporary situation. Yet unlike other periods, the contemporary era is still here; we are living it. Furthermore, the fact that we think that there are periods that have ended indicates that we think that we are living a contemporary period that, in turn, will end sooner or later and become history. When, why, and how this will happen is unclear, although some ideas related to this are also sometimes pondered by philosophers of aesthetics.[18] Our ideas and beliefs about the past and the future clearly affect our ideas about the present, but I cannot go into the relations of these three modes of time in this article. Instead, I will concentrate on analyzing the concept of the contemporary.
The word 'contemporary' is sometimes used as a term that indicates that its users refrain from taking a stand on the questions of the kind of times we are living in, what we should call the present, and when it started. It is supposed to simply refer to anything existing or happening presently, simultaneously with us. But as soon as we start to think about it, questions arise that should be answered carefully.
First, what is the temporal scope of contemporaneity, i.e., when did the present start and can we know when it will end? 'Contemporary' in the year 2014 most probably refers to this year. However, a single year, not to mention shorter periods, appears to be too short and arbitrary a unit to define the scope of contemporaneity for an entire academic field. So, when did the contemporary era start? What can be considered being “the same time” as ours today? What kinds of things need to happen that make it end?
As we saw above, many authors operate by paying attention to the last few decades; some tens-of-years might not be a completely useless rule of thumb even if that is not very exact. Also, in a recent international call for papers of the Italian journal Rivista di Estetica, the theme was entitled “The Contemporary,” and this period seems to be understood to have started in the late 1970s to early 1980s.[19] On the other hand, it is quite possible to focus on much longer periods and suggest that in some ways we are still living a period that can be called modern. In everyday parlance, at least, 'modern' often simply means “new,” “the latest”—or “contemporary.” But of course, whether modern aesthetics is the same as contemporary aesthetics is a complicated debate. In Tatarkiewicz’s History of Aesthetics, modern aesthetics started in 1400 and ended in 1700,[20] whereas some others suggest that modern aesthetics really began with Kant and ended at some point in the twentieth century.[21] Another opinion is that we have left the modern behind and are living a postmodern period, as we noted Michael Kelly writing (at least, that was the case in late 1990s). Still others suggest that postmodern is also already history and that the current period started after the postmodern in1990s. This is how Terry Smith described the situation in What is Contemporary Art?,[22] and the same idea can be applied to aesthetics. However, it is not senseless to say that both postmodern and contemporary are smaller entities within the much bigger whole of modernity,[23] although, at the same time, modern is and will always be what is the latest. It is not at all clear how to call the present period or to pinpoint when it started and for how long it has been going on.
If one thinks that modern and postmodern (or romantic, baroque, etc.) are not contemporary phenomena but something that belong to the past, one must have an idea about why this is so. Something substantial must have changed so that present phenomena must be understood in a new and different way. The point of Smith’s book in 2009 was to show that such changes really had occurred and that they should influence our approaches to and theories about works by such artists as Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Matthew Barney, and Tracey Emin. What these changes are, according to Smith, cannot be analyzed in more detailed here, but they are related to various strands of globalization and digital communication. Art that is created in this context is different from modern and postmodern art and thus calls for new kind of aesthetic theory. It is not self-evident that temporal frames must be drawn like this, but Smith’s solution clearly shows that defining any kind of frame for contemporaneity has an impact on which theoretical and other tools we think are needed for understanding contemporary aesthetic phenomena, whether art or otherwise. Moreover, as we focus on certain issues that we find important, it is easy to think that precisely those issues are contemporary while others are obsolete.
There are also borderline cases. Arthur C. Danto’s work can still be seen as contemporary in many senses even though he is, unfortunately, not among us any longer as an active author. I believe that we still live the same contemporary period he was a part of, whatever the name of that period is. Danto was one of the front-row aestheticians in the English-speaking world who saw the role of time to be quite central in art and the philosophy related to it, linking his ideas directly with Hegel’s thinking. Interestingly, he sometimes wrote about very old works of art and operated with timelines covering hundreds of years. Yet he sometimes stated that the present period of the complicated mix of art, historical awareness, philosophy, and criticism more or less started with Andy Warhol in the1960s, while at other times he focused on the very latest exhibitions and currents in his criticism in The Nation and elsewhere.[24] What Danto found relevant at any given moment may have been created a long time ago; there are different starting points for different phenomena important for the present. How long the contemporary period or moment is, is a flexible matter; in one sense, we are contemporaries of Warhol (and Danto), in another, we are contemporaries with things that are happening around us right now.
This is why we have to make a distinction between recent phenomena (publications, events, ideas, theories) that have been or are being produced during the present period and those from earlier periods but still relevant to us, such as Plato’s or Kant’s theories, independently of how and when we think the contemporary period has started. Are Plato and Kant a part of contemporary aesthetics? I think that they are, unlike things that have been forgotten and are not in active use right now. Their ideas are often seen to be interesting in themselves and they are also used as tools for understanding present day phenomena. Interestingly, however, even forgotten theories and ideas may become re-contemporized, as has been happening with John Dewey’s thinking since the end of the twentieth century through the neo-pragmatism of Shusterman, Thomas Leddy and others.
Not everything that is currently produced is equally distinctive for the discussion of contemporaneity, but many publications and lectures simply continue the tradition in the form that was developed much earlier. Yet, exactly the bulk of most of the publications, in any field, comprises the most typical cases of any given period. Not everything can be new, innovative and epoch-making. This issue, too, has been analyzed by historians: is history to be described through what was usual, typical, and everyday-like or through breaks, changes, and exceptional events and individuals? Similarly, when we speak of contemporary aesthetics, are we referring to the bulk of the present or to the most exceptional, best, and innovative cases that are clearly different from cases of earlier periods? One possible way of thinking is that there are simply several schools, styles, or traditions living side by side, some older, some younger, and that as long as they are productive and active, be they innovative or more traditional, they are examples of contemporary aesthetics.
To sum up: there are phenomena, questions, and ways of thinking that have existed for a very long time and are still relevant to contemporary aesthetics (hundreds or thousands of years: the human interest in pictorial representation, modernism broadly taken), ones that have come about later but still span significant periods (tens of years: conceptual art, analytic aesthetics), and some things that only cover recent or short periods (years or months: the latest internet developments, publications in aesthetics in the year 2014), all of which have their role in the whole of contemporary aesthetics. Some old periods and phenomena from them are no longer relevant and they are not really part of the contemporary situation.[25]
4. Space: Where is aesthetics?
While historians actively problematize time-related issues, including periodization, a group of academics in social sciences, cultural studies, gender studies, globalization studies, post- and de-colonial studies, humanistic geography, and elsewhere question the traditional conceptions related to places, regions, borders, centers, peripheries, and other spatial themes. This current, which had already gained interest in late 1970s through Edward W. Said’s Orientalism,[26] also has its bearing on considering the scope of contemporary aesthetics.
The root question here is, where is contemporary aesthetics? A fine example of this kind of research attitude closely related to aesthetics is Pascale Casanova’s The World Republic of Letters,[27] where she interestingly analyzes “the global literary space” and its changes over the centuries. Does such a space exist? In which way? When was it born? What kinds of texts are noticed in it? Such works should have made us sensitive to the question of “where?”
Indeed, spatial questions have received more attention in the core areas of aesthetics than the time-related questions of contemporaneity. For example, the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics clearly pays attention to them, there are special volumes of journals and events on non-Western aesthetics, and the international congresses of aesthetics organized by The International Association for Aesthetics have taken place in different parts of the globe to make sure that various voices and ideas will interact. There are strong signs of a widening of the geographical and linguistic boundaries of academic aesthetics and the present journal has also been active in this process. At the same time, it has become more and more evident that the word 'aesthetics' should be used in the plural, not in the singular: there are different aesthetics in different places as there are different aesthetics in different periods. A recent book addressing the versatility of the field and presenting a number of key figures behind such broadening of tendencies is Monique Roelofs’ The Cultural Promise of the Aesthetic.[28]
Despite the critical and broad-minded attitude of some publications, looking at much of the literature written in English one would still think that the discipline exists mainly in the USA, Canada, and the UK. Most authors come from these countries and many issues they address are of the same origin, even if the so called Continental tradition is often noticed. By looking at the national societies of aesthetics listed on the web page of The International Association for Aesthetics,[29] one might get a somewhat different idea. Yet while there are almost two hundred independent countries in the world, only twenty-nine national societies are mentioned, only one of them from Africa and three from Asia. Aesthetics seems to be a very Western endeavor, even if not entirely Anglo-American. Does this mean that aesthetics does not exist in other countries? Most probably not, but it does not get much visibility, at least in English publications.
A matter which is of a different scale but still of interest is how aesthetics exists within national borders. In the US, the American Society for Aesthetics has done some work in clarifying the state of aesthetics within the country: “During the fall of 1998 the American Society for Aesthetics conducted a survey of the chairs of philosophy departments in North America in order to gauge the status of aesthetics (or the philosophy of art) in the American academy. In particular, the survey was designed to ascertain what proportion have philosophers of art on staff, what aesthetics courses are offered, what the demand for those courses is, and how many graduate departments are training students with a competence in aesthetics.”[30] However, the results presented on the webpage are already fairly dated and represent the situation solely in North America. I am not aware of similar surveys done in other regions. We do not really know where contemporary aesthetics resides.
Be the perspective national or international, the question of the center and periphery, so dear to post-colonial studies, must be asked: Which areas or spots on the map of aesthetics are hot and actively interconnected, which are somewhere in the fringes of topical discussion, and which are completely outside of it? Are there different kinds of hot areas and networks independent of each other? How has the map changed over the past hundred years?
I do not think that the spatial situation can ever be completely balanced. A number of factors affect the map of actors contributing to contemporary aesthetics. It is always a result of various kinds of processes, conflicts, intellectual fashions, political events, economic currents, and power struggles. Some actors and areas get more attention and have more influence than others. Who, from where, and doing what will be included? What kinds of things does a map or even an entire atlas cover? Institutions, publication channels, individual scholars, events, women, men, different languages, schools of thought? There can never be a complete picture of this because the whole is simply too complex for anyone to comprehend in detail.
When we discuss the scope of contemporary aesthetics, we should actively ask these questions and test our different ways of mapping. The map and its actors look very different from the perspective of the US and, say, Gabon. Still, even if the perspective of the English-speaking actors seems to be globally rather dominant, I am not sure that they can be accused of not paying attention to all the different areas on the map in the way that political actors have sometimes been accused of colonializing or even forgetting whole countries or regions. Rather, scholars from Scandinavia, South America, Africa, and elsewhere have the responsibility to take care of their own traditions and current situations, to affect the atlas and its contents. Many issues in aesthetics are very culture-dependent and thus must be dealt with locally, i.e., by scholars and other actors who know enough of such local issues, language-dependence, or otherwise.[31]
Even if there are issues that are so local that they cannot really be understood elsewhere, in some cases the globally dominant English discourse is enriched when other perspectives are noticed. This is accomplished by societies and in events mentioned above, and by authors such as Yuriko Saito, who has not only presented Japanese aesthetics to Western readers but also opened up new perspectives on Western cultures with the help of it.[32] Still, the question remains whether this simply means including new aspects in the dominant Western discourse or truly respecting the idea that there are completely different centers and quarters in the broad field of global aesthetics. It may well be that in some cultures the whole Western idea of contemporaneity, which values change and newness, is not considered important.
More generally, I believe that there are phenomena in contemporary aesthetics that are fairly global or very wide-spread (interest in the arts, Kant’s philosophy), some that are more culture-dependent (conceptions about French art by French aestheticians), and some that are very local, even individual. All of them have their place in the totality of the contemporary situation, and we should be sensitive to all these levels in the same manner that we need to be sensitive to various time layers.
I assume that while scholars in aesthetics become better at using large data bases and their combinations, so-called big data will bring new knowledge to the current field of aesthetics. Thus far, extensive results of this type of research have not been published. To my knowledge, there are no large-scale data analyses on where publications in aesthetics have been published, in which languages, by what kind of people, how they are related to each other and to publications in other fields, what is the overall volume of activities in aesthetics as compared with some other fields’ activities, where courses in aesthetics are taught, and so on. Such issues could be analyzed and presented in charts and images, but carrying through such analyses requires team work that has not been very typical in the humanities. It is probable that working practices developed in the so-called digital humanities will eventually change the situation.[33] The scope of aesthetics in the age of databases and data flows probably looks rather different from that of traditional universities, printed books, and physical locations. In many ways, data do not have locality at all and it is sometimes mind-boggling to try to figure out where and how things in the internet actually exist. How the atlas of aesthetics of Google, Amazon, Scopus, university databases, Facebook, Twitter, and other digital systems will look remains to be seen.
5. Content: What is aesthetics?
When we try to understand when and where contemporary aesthetics exists and manifests itself, we must have an idea of what we are looking for. Not everything that can be included in the category has the name 'aesthetics' stamped on it. Are we looking for texts, people, institutions, ideas, theories, or what, and what makes all these things instances of aesthetics? Philosophically, we should have a conception of the ontology and epistemology related to aesthetics: what is aesthetics and how do we know that?
Depending on our way of defining what aesthetics are we will have a very different map of the current field. The field of Analytic Aesthetics is probably somewhat different from the Continental, Psychoanalytic, Pragmatist, or Marxist traditions, even if liberal minds can include all these in the comprehensive picture. But even liberal minds have some limitations: not everything is aesthetics. This is probably the biggest, toughest, and longest-living question any field of knowledge faces: how to define itself? I am not trying to offer an answer to this question here; the debate has been going on since the days of Baumgarten and will continue. Instead, I just refer to some problematic issues that we face when we try to find our own answers.
First, can works written in, say, anthropology, the social sciences, or psychology, following their terminology and methodology, be considered aesthetics if they focus on the arts or beauty? Many issues relevant to aesthetics are actively dealt with in these fields, even if not philosophically. One only has to think of the activities of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics, pursued mostly by psychologists. In fact, this is still a fairly simple case because the association openly uses the name 'aesthetics' in its title, but there are other contexts where the name is absent and yet what is done seems to be, at least partly, aesthetics. I am thinking, for example, about Susan B. Kaiser’s work in the social psychology of clothing.[34] Also, in environmental aesthetics the borderline between philosophical aesthetics and natural sciences is often very thin, if it exists at all.
On the other hand, it is not evident that everything that is called aesthetics is aesthetics in the sense that I understand it. Do we have quite different uses for a single word; is this a case of homonyms? There have been interesting discussions over the term in art education and even suggestions for strongly questioning the usefulness of it because, according to some authors, the word seems to be referring to too many things or to not much at all.[35] Taken to the extreme, this would mean that in some sense contemporary aesthetics does not really exist or is some sort of illusion. But if contemporary aesthetics doesn’t exist, what would all that be that I have thought belongs to that category?
Moreover, we need to consider whether aesthetics is something that happens only in academia—in philosophy or elsewhere—or whether some of the things done by artists, fashion designers, art educators, critics, cooks, carpenters, athletes, hairdressers, web designers, and cosmeticians are equally important parts of the field of contemporary aesthetics? At least, they address aesthetic issues, their activities by far outnumber anything academic aestheticians could ever imagine doing, and they create things that academic aestheticians are also interested in. Some artists and artworks explicitly comment on and develop themes that occupy philosophical aestheticians’ minds. This current that is openly pondered in the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics becomes evident in a number of exhibitions and biennales, along with books such as Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985.[36] The difference between academic and non-academic aesthetics is blurry, as is nicely stated by Kevin Melchionne at the end of his article in Contemporary Aesthetics: he says that he “paints and writes aesthetics.”[37] And perhaps, in the end, we can even think that some animals have their aesthetics, as David Rothenberg has argued.[38] It is possible that they really consciously pay attention to aesthetic matters and in that sense have their aesthetic ideas and preferences, even if not verbal theories.
It is crucial to realize which perspective to aesthetics one is adopting and tell it openly. I don’t have a problem with stating that aesthetics is something that is created by academics at universities and disseminated in linguistic form (as books, articles, web pages, lectures, and speeches), that is, what is labeled as aesthetics by aestheticians themselves. And I don’t have a problem including a nebulous group of artists, designers, journalists, athletes, and their products in the sphere of aesthetics, either. These are two very different ideas of what aesthetics is and how it should be approached ontologically, epistemologically, and otherwise, and they may be useful and comprehensible in different situations. One of the most promising approaches is presented by Casey Haskins. Even if he focuses on academic circles of aesthetics, he sees aesthetics as an “intellectual network” that includes and connects very different instances of aesthetics together, evolves over time, and does not have a clear, dominant center and operation practices, nor a single ontology or epistemology.[39]
Again, we can make use of a tripartite scheme. If there are very old, “middle-aged,” and quite recent strands in contemporary aesthetics considered temporally; global, culture-dependent, and local phenomena considered spatially; there might be explicit, semi-explicit and implicit cases of contemporary aesthetics' content.
Together, these three axes form an imaginary or metaphorical three-dimensional space of contemporary aesthetics. We can try to posit different instances of aesthetics into this space and see how they are related to other cases. A philosophical essay on the definition of art published in this journal belongs to a different location of this space than an opening speech of an art exhibition in a small town in South Korea.
This kind of space is a metaphorical construct, not a neutral picture of a reality. But many, if not most, theories and other conceptual entities are exactly that. Still, it can be a useful tool for demonstrating the multifaceted aspects and versions of contemporary aesthetics. The next step, then, is to discuss them in more detail and probably debate whether all types belong to the field or space of contemporary aesthetics or, rather, to the past, to the future, or outside aesthetics altogether. It may also make it easier to clarify from which linguistic, cultural, philosophical, methodological, or other standpoint one is approaching the contemporary field.
[1] Colin Lyas, Aesthetics (London and Bristol: UCL Press, 1997).
[2] Richard Shusterman, “Introduction: Analysing Analytic Aesthetics,” in Analytic Aesthetics, ed. Richard Shusterman (Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1989), pp. 10–11.
[3] Marcia Muelder Eaton, Basic Issues in Aesthetics (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1988).
[4] Robert Stecker, Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: An Introduction (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005).
[5] Richard Eldridge, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art, Second Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
[6] Joseph Margolis, Preface to Philosophy Looks at the Arts: Contemporary Readings in Aesthetics, Third Edition, ed. Joseph Margolis (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), p xi.
[7] Monroe C. Beardsley, “Twentieth Century Aesthetics” and Joseph Margolis “Recent Work in Aesthetics,” in Contemporary Aesthetics, ed. Matthew Lippman (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1973), pp. 44–50 and 51–74.
[8] R.A. Sharpe, Preface to Contemporary Aesthetics – A Philosophical Analysis, ed. R.A. Sharpe (Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1983).
[9] Francis J. Coleman, Preface to Contemporary Studies in Aesthetics, ed. Francis J. Coleman (New York, etc.: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1968).
[10] Michael Kelly, Preface to Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, Volume 1, editor in Chief Michael Kelly (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. ix.
[11] Ibid., p. xiv.
[12] Ibid.,p. xii.
[13] Ibid., p. xiv.
[14] Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, ed. Matthew Kieran (Malden, Oxford, Carlton: Blackwell Publishing, 2006); The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, eds. Berys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes (London and New York: Routledge, 2001); A Companion to Aesthetics, ed. David Cooper (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992); Theories of Art Today, ed. Noël Carroll, (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2000).
[15] Thomas Postlewait, The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) p. 189.
[16] Ibid., pp. 191–192.
[17] Władysław Tatarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics, Vols. 1–3, ed. D. Petsch (The Hague: Mouton, 1974); Paul Guyer, A History of Modern Aesthetics, Vols. 1–3 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
[18] Arthur C. Danto, “A Future for Aesthetics,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 51 (1993), 271–277; Francis Sparshott, The Future of Aesthetics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998).
[19] “Call for Papers,” Labont, accessed 2 June 2014, Http://labont.it/rivista-di-este….
[20] Tatarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics.
[21] Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present: A Short History (Tuscaloosa and London: The University of Alabama Press, 1966), p. 210 onwards.
[22] Terry Smith, What is Contemporary Art? (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), p. 242 and passim. An illuminating contribution to the discussion on modern vs. contemporary art and the history of the idea of contemporaneity is Richard Meyer’s What Was Contemporary Art? (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2013).
[23] Whether we should speak about modernity, the modern, or modernism, and whether these terms refer to periods, attitudes, styles, or something else is a matter of debate. On this, for example, Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1987).
[24] All these aspects come together, for example, in Arthur C. Danto, Encounters & Reflections: Art in the Historical Present (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990).
[25] Although it is not exactly the same, this tripartite model can be compared to ones addressing overlapping period durations in historical studies presented by Fernand Braudel and Norbert Elias. See Postlewait, The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Historiography, pp. 167–168.
[26] Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
[27] Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters (Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press, 2004). Originally published in French in 1999. In the visual arts, similar issues have recently been addressed in The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds, eds. Hans Belting, Andrea Buddensieg, and Peter Weibel (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2013).
[28] Monique Roelofs, The Cultural Promise of the Aesthetic (Bloomsbury: London and New York, 2014).
[29] “National Societies,” International Association for Aesthetics, accessed 22 May 2014, Http://iaaesthetics.org/national….
[30] “Aesthetics in the Academy: Survey Results in Brief,” American Society for Aesthetics, accessed 23 May 2014, Http://www.aesthetics-online.org….
[31] One reason for why this may not be so easy in current academia is that scholars all over the world are pressured to publish in English.
[32] Yuriko Saito, Everyday Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
[33] Of digital humanities, see, Digital Humanities Quarterly, accessed 22 May 2014, http://www.digitalhumanities.org…
[34] Susan B. Kaiser, The Social Psychology of Clothing: Symbolic Appearances in Context (Fairchild Publications: New York, 1998).
[35] Kevin Tavin, “Eyes Wide Shut: The Use and Uselessness of the Discourse of Aesthetics in Art Education,” Art Education, 60 (2007), 40–45 and Paul Duncum, “9 Reasons for the Continuing Use of the Aesthetic Discourse in Art Education,” Art Education, 60 (2007), 46–51.
[36] Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985, eds. Zoya Kocur & Simon Leung (Malden, Oxford, Carlton: Blackwell Publishing, 2005).
[37] Kevin Melchionne, "The Point of Everyday Aesthetics," Contemporary Aesthetics, 12 (2014).
[38] David Rothenberg, Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science, and Evolution (New York, London, New Delhi, Sidney: Bloomsbury Press, 2011).
[39] Casey Haskins, “Aesthetics as an Intellectual Network,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 69 (2011), 297–308.
can you post facts please. to debunk.
- spl33nidoru2
- I don see how this is factual.ORAZAL
- ^ LOL! Well played, sir!Continuity
- déjà vuspl33nidoru
- every thread should start with why isnt this true.yurimon
- no they shouldn't.scarabin
- georgesIII0
the contemporaneity of your comments leaves me speechless,
great post, I wish I could upVote you more than once
- kona1
The answer is, 4?
- mekk0
- nb-3
For those of you who didn't read it, don't worry, there is no need to disprove anything. The author doesn't draw any concrete conclusions, but instead asks a lot of questions and occasionally offers a possible answer.
Fun read.
- georgesIII5
I am sorry to be the baron of bad news, but you seem buttered, so allow me to play doubles advocate here for a moment. For all intensive purposes I think you are wrong. In an age where false morals are a diamond dozen, true virtues are a blessing in the skies, and are more than just ice king on the cake. We often put our false morality on a petal stool like a bunch of pre-Madonnas, but you all seem to be taking something very valuable for granite.
So I ask of you to mustard up all the strength you can because it is a doggy dog world out there. Although there is some merit to what you are saying it seems like you have a huge ship on your shoulder. In your argument you seem to throw everything in but the kids Nsync, and even though you are having a feel day with this I am here to bring you back into reality.
I have a sick sense when it comes to these types of things. It is almost spooky, because I cannot turn a blonde eye to these glaring flaws in your rhetoric. I have zero taller ants when it comes to people spouting out hate in the name of moral righteousness. You just need to remember what comes around is all around, and when supply and command fails you will be the first to go.
Make my words, when you get down to brass stacks it doesn't take rocket appliances to get two birds stoned at once. It's clear who makes the pants in this relationship, and sometimes you just have to swallow your prize and accept the fax, instead of making a half-harded effort. You might have to come to this conclusion through denial and error but I swear on my mother's mating name that when you put the petal to the medal you will pass with flying carpets like it's a peach of cake.
- lolmonospaced
- https://www.youtube.…monospaced
- omgbklyndroobeki
- false morales*sarahfailin
- hahahah!Krassy
- accept the faxKrassy
- I WANT TO DIEsublocked
- BestETM
- I'm so confused...pango
- intents and purposes*garbage
- a snoop doggy dog world?cannonball1978
- swallow your prize hah.
did you write this gem?bklyndroobeki - What does intensive purposes mean?nylon
- really, nylon? read the rest and you'll get the jokemonospaced
- I'm dissapointed that "per say" didn't make the list. I've seen it used several times on QBN.ORAZAL
- I'm disappointed that "whole nother" isn't there either.monospaced
- it isn't on there because it isn't a real word making it not funny nor what the point of this peice is. on another note, this has been around for years, funnygilgamush
- no shit it's not real word but it would have fit in perfectly as that's the whole point of the piece.monospaced
- no it isn't you dunce. the whole point is one real word being replaced with a nother real word. this isn't about typos.gilgamush
- yurimon-4
He could have just said it in one line.
- browser width would make that a bitch to readmonospaced
- lolgilgamush
- Twitter generationeighteen
- Mr_Mxyzptlk0
Jesse?
- i_was0
Nice copy paste
- marychain0
because pants
- lolGnash
- I miss you marychain.isleptwithsirenstonight
- yupGnash
- ORAZAL-1
- This is amazing.sarahfailin
- Yes, but why is it not true?ORAZAL
- http://www.imdb.com/…ORAZAL
- its true for you cause, you fall short of idiotic mockery, and expression of your neurosis and contempt of issues that impact peoples lives. you can only handlyurimon
- illusion as a form expression can not explore real issues because it would really cause you to face yourself.yurimon
- what you express is a diversion. a aggravation of a your wounds in life. the mockery becomes pleasure when defecate on beauty because it hurts to fix your woundyurimon
- s, pain becomes pleasure and the deconstructive motion of your actions deflects what is real.yurimon
- OKORAZAL
- wordyurimon
- ORAZAL-1
- georgesIII-1
- Don't forget to play Actress' Supreme Cunnilingus in the background.ORAZAL
- face_melter1
I remember having a similar conversation many (many) years ago with someone while at university. We discussed the perception of reality in relation to light and how it plays an integral part in how we see the world around us - colour, shape etc. An obvious subject, of course, but we went deeper - could it be argued that solid objects were in fact *not* solid when light doesn't hit them as it is light which essentially creates our world and the things in it?
Views passed back and forth, arguments were had about the importance of personal belief and interpretation of what is 'solid' and how to define it within a framework that could be applied on a daily basis. This continued for many hours, with both of us shifting and accepting our (new) views about the physical world.
It was 4am and we were in a pub lock-in arguing about the colour of a table.
- ORAZAL-2
Arthur C. Danto, Author of The Transfiguration
of the Commonplace
KAREL CÍSAŘAbstract: Danto’s innovative theory of art – formulated in response to artworks that were made by being transfigured from commonplace objects – was to undergo two radical transformations. On the one hand, this theory instigated the
rise of the so-called Institutional Theory of art, whose conclusions are rejected by Danto; on the other hand, it produced a theory of the end of art, which he later
developed – as a reinterpretation of his original conclusions. Transformative appropriation is the most natural element of Danto’s philosophy, as well as of the art of the neo-avant-garde followers of the original avant-garde on which Danto’s theories are based.1. Danto’s book, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, also deals with this specific transfiguration. From the preface we learn that this is nothing other than the transfiguration of a commonplace object into an artwork, regardless of its aesthetic quality. The ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp and, in particular, the work of Andy Warhol are given as examples here. If Marcel Duchamp was the first to turn a bottle-rack, bicycle wheel or urinal into artworks, it was Andy Warhol who, in Danto’s view, turned Duchamp’s gesture into the actual subject of his artistic activity. Danto makes several references to his first encounter with Warhol’s work in a 1964 exhibition at the Stable Gallery in New York as being a turning point in his philosophical career (Danto 1981: vi-vii, 1994: 6-7 and 1992: 5-6). When he saw Warhol’s Brillo Box, at first glance piles of ordinary soap powder boxes, he realized that, for the first time, a genuinely philosophical question had arisen from the art world, namely how can we view these boxes as artworks, which is what his Brillo boxes undoubtedly were considered to be. Danto’s answer, as formulated initially in the articles ‘The Art World’ (Danto 1964) and ‘Artworks and Real Things’ (Danto 1973) and subsequently in his book The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, is well known. The Brillo boxes cannot be revealed as artworks through mere observation. To be seen as such, it is necessary to have a certain knowledge of art theory and history and to be engaged in the art world. Only after adopting such an aesthetic approach can one see – albeit on the basis of perceiving what is indistinguishable – not piles of containers for soap pads but artworks. We cannot comprehend a work of art only by looking at it; it has to be interpreted in a kind of strategic way that is oriented in the art world. We have to set out a theory concerning the meaning of the work. It is such an interpretation that transfigures everyday utilitarian objects, such as cartons for soap pads, into artworks. Danto’s innovative theory of art – formulated in response to artworks that were made by being transfigured from commonplace objects – was, itself, to undergo two radical transformations, which are described at the end of the preface to The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. On the one hand, this theory instigated the rise of the so-called Institutional Theory of art, whose conclusions (as set out by Richard Sclafani and George Dickie) are rejected by Danto; on the other hand, it produced a theory of the end of art, which he later developed – as a reinterpretation of his original conclusions. Danto criticizes the Institutional Theory, which made famous his concept of the art world, for changing the position used when formulating the underlying issue. Danto was originally engaged in what was basically a Kantian question about the conditions governing the possibilities of artworks; in contrast, institutional theorists posed a different question, i.e. how can a mere thing become an artwork, which they answered, at sharp odds with Danto’s theory, in a non-cognitive way, i.e. that a mere thing becomes an artwork once it is appreciated as such by the art world. In the preface to his book, Danto outlines the distinct reinterpretation of his original theory that he fully developed three years after the publication of The Transfiguration of the Commonplace in his article ‘The End of Art’. Here, he only notes that, unlike previous definitions of art, his specification is capable of comprising also a revolutionary transfiguration of art of the kind that was brought about by Warhol. Moreover, in Danto’s view, this represents a culmination of art history, for it poses a question about the essence of art which, in a Hegelian way, is transfigured into its own philosophy Apart from differentiating Danto’s position from that of the institutional theorists, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace also presents objections to the position of the Institutional Theory itself. According to Danto, the main problem with this theory is that it continues to adhere to aesthetic qualities as a constitutive element for the creation of an artwork, a position from which Danto’s own theory radically differs. In this connection, Danto cites Dickie’s claim that Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ (a commonplace urinal) displays similar qualities, for example, to sculptures by Brancusi or Moore, i.e. an oval shape and shiny surface that reflects the surrounding space (Danto 1973: 93). Such qualities, however, are displayed by any other urinal – regardless of whether it is considered to be an artwork. For this reason, it is not possible for the art world to appreciate Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ as an art work for these qualities. Furthermore, according to Danto, the Institutional Theory cannot properly specify either who is a member of the art world or how one can become a member. For in 1964, in relation to the Brillo Box, according to the Institutional Theory, the philosopher Arthur C. Danto would be included as a member of the art world, as opposed to indisputable art experts such as the director of the Stable Gallery, Eleanor Ward, or the director of the Canadian National Gallery. Charles Comfort, who, at the time, refused to appreciate the Brillo Box as an artwork (Danto 1992: 36-37). It was precisely this experience that led Danto to adopt the familiar position of Heinrich Wölfflin, according to whom the definable basis of art does not change but is interpreted in considerably different ways in various historical periods. What is now seen without difficulty as art could not have been seen as such earlier on. Moreover, according to Danto, Warhol’s Brillo Box exhibition at the New York Stable Gallery in 1964 can, from a certain perspective, be seen as representing the end of art, for in it – by questioning its very essence – transfigures art into its own philosophy. Danto’s book contains three references to the theory about the end of art, each time in the context of Hegelian influence. Hegel’s philosophy of history is basically correct: the development of art did not come to an end, but to a logical climax: art became self-conscious in a philosophical theory about itself (Danto 1981: vii-vii, 56-57, 111). The above theory was fully developed in the 1984 essay on ‘The End of Art’ (Danto 1984: 5-35). Even here, Danto’s perspective is based on the historical conditionality of art activity and a Hegelian conviction as to the progressive nature of its development. This may be illustrated by the gradual sophistication of the visual reproduction of reality by means of visual art, which was dropped only with the full development of the narrative means of cinematography, which gradually took over this role from visual art at the beginning of the twentieth century. The alternative is a theory that subordinates the mimetic function of art to one that is expressive. Such a theory, however, cannot satisfactorily interpret the development of art history as a continuum, for it holds individual artworks to be a mere expression of the artist’s disparate and isolated emotions. Against these two theories, therefore, Danto sets a different development model based on the Bildungsroman, that is a novelistic description of the narrator’s character development. By applying schemata from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Danto concludes that essentially self-reflexive philosophy is the culmination of the spirit and art. According to Danto, this is borne out by the development of art in the last few years, in which theory has been increasingly shown to replace the actual artwork. Art has ended, for it has transformed into its own philosophy. From now on, all artworks may be considered to be post-historical works, for Warhol’s ‘Brillo Box’ deprived them of their historical role in 1964.
2. The possibility of there being two observationally identical artworks – like the ‘Brillo Box’ where the artwork is perceptually indistinguishable from a commonplace object – was, according to Danto, first described in Borges’ story ‘Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote’ (Danto 1981: 33-39). This story is about two completely identical texts of Don Quixote, one of which was written by Cervantes, the other by the early twentieth century symbolist poet Pierre Menard. In Danto’s view, this raises an ontological question about the identity of an artwork. The answer, however, cannot be found in the perceptual qualities of the two works, for they are observationally identical. Danto finds support for his assumption that they are different with Borges’ narrator, according to whom the Quixote of Menard is infinitely richer that Cervantes’ ponderous Quixote. The explanation for this difference, however, cannot be found in the internal qualities of the text; one has to look at the external qualities which place the text in a specific context. For the texts were written at different times and by different authors whose nationalities and aims also differed. According to Danto, their place in the history of literature is also an essential part of these works. Although Danto’s interpretation emphasizes the identity of both works, his intention from the outset is, by contrast, to underline their difference. Besides, he cannot find support for his claim as to textual identity in Borges’ story, for Menard’s undertaking is described in several places as being impossible to carry out. What we have in front of us are not two identical texts, but the complete original work of Cervantes and several fragments of this work written by Menard. So it is hardly about an identical work. As far as Danto’s interpretation is concerned, the intellectual experiment mentioned by Borges’ narrator should be seen as a productive rather than unsuccessful attempt by Pierre Menard. For the narrator admits to being able to read Cervantes’ Quixote as if it had been written by Pierre Menard. Adding such a footnote necessarily transforms the meaning of the text, turning it into a different work. As mentioned above, it is Borges’ narrator who declares Menard’s Quixote to be richer than Cervantes’ ponderous Quixote. In addition, it is the narrator who says that Menard “(perhaps without wishing to) has enriched” the rudimentary art of reading by means of a technique of deliberate anachronism and erroneous attributions, which makes it possible to interpret any text as having been written with different authorial intentions and in different historical contexts. Perhaps what brings together the positions of Danto and Borges’ narrator more than anything else, is that they both transfer the initiative for finding the meaning of a work from the author to the reader or observer. As is the case with Warhol’s ‘Brillo Box’ – where Danto does not enquire as to Warhol’s intention, but identifies it from an observational position – in Borges’ story, too, an evaluation of the meaning of Menard’s work is left to the informed reader. Danto proceeds in a similar way in other cases covered in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Perhaps the most famous example is his intellectual experiment involving a group of identical red square canvases, each having a completely different meaning and, in certain cases, a different ontological status. Depending on the external qualities of the work – e.g. its title, the author’s personality or the work’s place in art history – they may represent a historical painting, a psychological portrait, a landscape, a geometric abstraction, religious art, a still-life, or a red object that is not connected to art in any way. Everything depends on the ability of the observer to make use of these external leads and, on their basis, to formulate a theory about the meaning of the work. Although this possibility is treated only peripherally in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, Danto’s theory about the difference of perceptually indistinguishable artworks need not be verified solely by considering intellectual experiments. They can be proved by viewing the actual artworks, in the way the author himself undertakes to do in his later texts. The relevant examples may initially be divided into two groups: monochrome paintings (artworks that reduce the means of expression to a single quality of colour) and ready-mades (artworks made by being transformed from commonplace objects). In the book The Transfiguration of the Commonplace Danto focuses on the work of Ad Reinhardt and tries to show, above all, the uniqueness in style of Reinhardt’s monochrome paintings (Danto 1981: 204); in his later monograph Beyond the Brillo Box he focuses on the theory about the end of art and considers the differences between the otherwise indistinguishable monochromes of Marcie Hafif (1981), Ad Reinhardt (1962) and the first ever monochrome paintings undertaken by Kazimir Malevich in 1915 (Danto 1992: 46-47). Paradoxically, an interpretation of later neo-avantgarde monochromes, which for Danto are only a post-historical repetition of an original avant-garde gesture setting the boundaries of art, is essential to prove his early theory about the role of a work’s external qualities when finding its meaning. For it is on these monochromes that Danto can convincingly show that a work of art necessarily relates to its precursors, and is even a kind of criticism. The pioneering works of Malevich and Rodchenko, however, are more difficult to interpret; in fact, they defy interpretation – at least from the perspective of the artists. In their radicalism they reject the traditional metaphoric structure of an artwork, upon which Danto explicitly leans in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Rodchenko’s famous triptych ‘Pure Colours: Red, Yellow, Blue’, dating from 1921, is a good example of this. According to Rodchenko himself, the aim of the work is, on the one hand, to rid colour of any denotative function and, on the other, to mechanize the process of painting. With this, however, disappear two fundamental leads for identifying the meaning of a work, as formulated by Danto in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Retrospectively, it is possible to identify a place for Rodchenko’s triptych in the art world, but such a place is different to the one originally claimed by the work.1 A similar case applies to Danto’s interpretation of ready- 1 For the relationship between avant-garde and neo-avantgarde monochrome paintings, see Buchloh 1986: 41-52. mades. In The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, Danto focuses on Andy Warhol, but in his later texts there are more references to the specific form of ready-mades, which is appropriation of another artwork (and not a commonplace object) (Danto 1994: 58). For Danto’s early theory about the difference of perceptually indistinguishable artworks, similarly to monochrome paintings, it is less difficult to interpret Warhol’s later readymades or the appropriations exhibited, for example, by Sherrie Levine.2 Levine became known mainly due to her photographic reproductions of works by Edward Weston (‘After Edward Weston 1’, 1980) and Alexander Rodchenko (‘After Alexander Rodchenko 3’, 1987); in addition, however she has also undertaken an appropriation of Duchamp’s Fountain – a copy consisting of several identical bronze casts. Moreover, Levine is one of the few artists to make explicit references in her work to Borges’ story ‘Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote’.3 The meaning of Sherrie Levine’s works is actually focused on their external qualities, in particular the artist’s female name and the title, in which a key role is always played by the ambiguity of the word ‘after’ (following in time and in imitation of). Only with these leads is it possible to differentiate her works from their perceptually indistinguishable models and to successfully interpret them as subversions – often openly feminist – criticism.4 Duchamp’s Fountain is harder to interpret from the perspective of Danto’s theory. Unlike Sherrie Levine’s reproduced bronze copies, which subversively transform the original readymade into a traditional sculpture in a traditional style, the status of Duchamp’s work is questionable. It is well known that Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ is actually lost – there are now only copies of the original and one photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz. Duchamp sent his Fountain – a commonplace urinal, furnished only with a signature (‘R. Mutt’) and a date (‘1917’) – to the first annual exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, of which he was a member. Although it fulfilled the only condition specified in the third section of article three of the society’s regulations, according to which the exhibition may involve the 2 For the relationship between avant-garde and neo-avantgarde ready-mades, see Buskirk and Nixon 1996. 3 Levine 1987: 92-93. See also Wallis 1984, which contains a reprint of a translation of Borges’ story. 4 Cf. Crimp 1993: 126-136; Krauss 1986: 151-170. For the legal aspects of appropriation, see Buskirk 1992: 82-109. participation of anyone who sends the required fee of six dollars, Duchamp’s Fountain was not accepted for the exhibition. Only much later was it appreciated as art, as were Duchamp’s previous ready-mades, which successfully resisted being classified as artworks not only due to their radical limitation of their denotative functions but also due to their anonymity and means of display (Duve 1996: 89-143). It is not Warhol’s ‘Brillo Box’ or Ad Reinhardt’s black canvases, but Duchamp’s ready-mades – “still almost not art” – and Rodchenko pure colours – “almost no longer art”, that represent the original demarcations of the boundaries of art. As such, however, they defy both of Danto’s theories. On the one hand, they shake off the external leads by which they can be identified as art, and, on the other, they foreshadow Danto’s end of art. Danto’s theories are based on an interpretation of the neo-avantgarde followers of the original avant-garde. Transformative appropriation is the most natural element of Danto’s philosophy, as well as of their art. This is also why the author of The Transfiguration of the Commonplace is Arthur C. Danto.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Buchloh, Benjamin H. 1986. ‘The Primary Colors for the Second Time: A Paradigm
Repetition of the Neo-Avant-Garde’ in October 37: 41-52.
Buskirk, M. and Nixon, M. (eds.). 1996. The Duchamp Effect. Cambridge, MA,
London: MIT.
Buskirk, Martha. 1992. ‘Commodification as Censor: Copyrights and Fair Use’ in
October 60: 82-109.
Crimp, Douglas. 1993. ‘Appropriating Appropriation’ in: Crimp, Douglas (ed.) On
the Museum’s Ruins. Cambridge (Mass.), London: The MIT Press: 126-136
Danto, Arthur C. 1964. ‘The Art World’ in Journal of Philosophy 61(19): 571-584.
Danto, Arthur C. 1973. ‘Artworks and Real Things’ in Theoria 39: 1-17.
Danto, Arthur C. 1984. ‘The End of Art’ in: Lang, Beryl (ed.) The Death of Art.
New York: Haven Publishing: 5-35.
Danto, Arthur C. 1981. The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Cambridge
(Mass.): Harvard University Press.
Danto, Arthur C. 1992. Beyond the Brillo Box. The Visual Arts in Post-Historical
Perspective. New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux.
Danto, Arthur C. 1994. Embodied Meanings. Critical Essays and Aesthetic Meditations.
New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux.
Duve, Thierry de. 1996. Kant after Duchamp. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Krauss, Rosalind E. 1986. ‘The Originality of the Avant-Garde’ in: Krauss, Rosalind
E. (ed.) The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths. Cambridge,
MA: MIT: 151-170.
Levine, Sherrie. 1987. ‘Five Comments’ in Wallis, Brian (ed.) Blasted Allegories: An
Anthology of Writings by Contemporary Artists. Cambridge, MA: MIT: 92-93.
Wallis, Brian (ed.). 1984. Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. New
York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art.- Not true cause it lacks knowledge of art theory.yurimon
- because of this fact, it is only not true because you posted it.yurimon
- I recognize the words individially but the way you put them together doesn't make much sense. Make an effort, I'll hold your hand if you need help.ORAZAL
- based in the logic of your post if you read it.yurimon
- OK, here we go.
You think the paper lacks knowledge of art theory, therefore it is not true?ORAZAL - thats what this guy says in one line.yurimon
- I'm trying to understand what YOU are saying. I'll take that as a yes then. So the 1st condition to it not being true is that the paper lacks knowledge of art.ORAZAL
- And the 2nd condition is that because of that fact (lack of knowlege of art) it is ONLY not true because I posted it.ORAZAL
- Is the paper not true ONLY because I posted it? In this case why mention the first condition?ORAZAL
- And how does "because of this fact" tie your 2 comments together. This is the part I really have a problem getting my head around.ORAZAL
- 2016 update: From reading your latest notes I have noticed that you've made a lot progress in your writing. Kudos!ORAZAL
- von?Drumpf
- ORAZAL-2
