Aesthetics as will to power?
Yes. I took you to mean “the concept of skilled making” within art; I agree that the point doesn’t generalize, or at least not obviously so.
This may because “being a good doctor,” for instance, isn’t about creating some thing, some object. Whereas, for most of the Western history of art, it was assumed that art-making was “creating some thing.” It was this assumption that Duchamp and many others began to challenge. The skill involved in making art becomes shifted from manipulating physical material to . . . well, something else, which we’re still in the process of clarifying as the story of art continues. Danto might call it a skill of revelation – the great artist is skilled at (co-)creating circumstances that allow Art to be understood for what it is. Thus the process is hermeneutic, not a physical making.
Maybe at an institutional level, but perhaps not when it comes to you and I finding the novels of Saul Bellow and the music of Brucker pleasing.
Of course. Can such a list be complete? Or will it be a mere stipulation?
Supose we say “art consists in Suppose we say art consists in an item having characteristics A and B and C. Perhaps “A” is “made with deliberate aesthetic intent”, B is “inviting contemplative attention from an audience”, and C is “organized through a formal tradition”.
Later we come across an item that has characteristics A and B, but which is specifically intended to revoke C; this is the case with Fountain; the urinal has no special perceptual or craft qualities, claiming status as art entirely on the basis of institutional context and intellectual provocation.
We might just reject Fountain, pointing out quite validly that it does not meet our criteria {A, B, C}. Or we might look again at that criteria and ask why we chose A and B and C. What, then, is the status of {A, B, C}? Is it undeniably the essence of what it is to be a piece of art, or is it subject to revision, an hypothesis that might be modified or even falsified by further examples?
If we accept the former, then aren’t we simply stipulating what is to count as art, rather than looking around to see what is in fact considered to be art? Isn’t this approach a simplistic appeal to the authority of the critic over the artist?
Shouldn’t we instead look at what is common to items that are indeed included as art, and seek to find what they have in common, and what none of them have in common? And if we find that they have nothing in common, what are we to decide?
Here is the logic of a family resemblance. We write “^” for “and” and “v” for “or”. We want to say that being a member of the family consists in having the characteristics A ^ B ^ C. But when we look to the family, we find that there are things that have instead characteristics B ^ C ^ D, and others that have characteristics D ^ E. And we know that any definition can be put into such a disjunctive normal form, so we write “Being a member of the family consists in having characteristics
(A ^ B ^ C) v (B ^ C ^ D) v (D ^ E)
But then along comes cousin Tim, who does not have red hair or a hook nose, indeed, none of the criteria we listed apply to little Tim; Do we deny him as a family member or do we reassess our criteria? And if the latter, then our criteria are open to such revision; we might write
(A ^ B ^ C) v (B ^ C ^ D) v (D ^ E)….
where the ellipsis indicates a rejection of the authority of the criteria. The definition is never complete.
So here is a choice for us; to sit comfortably with the authority of essential characteristics, or to accept that our usage is dynamic and yet still effective.
Now is that choice just aesthetic? Or is it at its core methodological, an issue about what it is to be honest and rational about our use of language. Seems to me we should think hard about what it is we are doing before we grant such authority.
This, of course, is a playing out of Wittgenstein’s idea of a family resemblance. The original is in Philosophical Investigations, for the few pages from §64. These should be required reading for anyone pretending to philosophical thought.
So, did Lennon experience art? It seems to me that asking the question implies answering in the affirmative. Like Cousin Tim and “family”, here is something that extends our use of the term “art”. The alternative is to close off certain ways of being, in a way I find unacceptable.
And such considerations are not peculiar to art alone. The criteria for being a family or a game have the same sort of openness, and once one begins to look, it can be found everywhere. Art is not peculiar in this regard.
I’ve been using the examples of family resemblance give here for years - indeed, they still appear, in a now somewhat altered form, in the Wiki article I began on the topic. But I noticed now, seeing this after reading Gillian Russell’s Barriers to entailment, that the argument uses much the same method of extending the domain of discourse that is central to her discussion. Whatever essential qualities we might set out, it remains that we might extend the domain in such a way that they no longer apply, by including items that do not satisfy the mooted qualities. There’s more here to consider.
An important point to me too.
Is AC Grayling any good on this?
Interesting. I’ve always preferred the dynamic approach. It seems to me a more difficult and, perhaps, significant question, rather than what is art?, is of course what is good art? When someone says that William Faulkner is better than Dan Brown, that may feel intuitively right, but it rests on a set of assumptions about what “better” means. Setting aside a teleological view, do you also hold to something like the family-resemblance view of what “good” is?
I stipulate only what counts as art to me, not what others consider art. In that capacity, I am not critic, but appreciator of the art, or not.
In fact to leave the realm of subjectivity and enter objectivity is to attempt a definition, which we have both agreed is a murky business.
Who should have the authority if not the observer/reader/receiver of the art?
It presents as inconsistent to wish to remove proscriptions from a knowledge of art yet attach proscriptions to philosophy. Nevertheless, I have downloaded the book and thank you for the recommendation.
Or maybe he just wanted to hook up with her, considering how he reacted to most of the pieces there.
Why?
The slide to talk of “good” is worthy of note, to be sure. Does one need to know what “good” means in order to be good? Is there a rule here, too? An algorithm that will tell us what we ought do in every conceivable circumstance? Some authority to which we might appeal?
I don’t think so.
So you reject Stanley Cavell’s suggestion that to call something art is to make a claim on others - that they ought also consider it to be art? I don’t agree. Calling a piece beautiful or inspirational or awful is doing more than expressing a personal preference. It’s not like a preference for vanilla shakes; something normative is at stake.
Reassess the criteria. This family analogy doesn’t fit here. To determine familial relatedness depends on genetics and DNA, not the expression of individual traits.
Ono’s ladder set-up represents an idea, and the urinal represents an idea. (One gene instead of a genome)
I am a writer. How much thought Ono put into her ladder and how much thought put into the urinal I put into every single sentence of every story. And these sentences are brought together in a coherent narrative arc representing a total greater than the sum of its parts. I create a genome, not just one gene.
It is to recognize that art must go beyond a mere idea.
A genome rather than a gene.
No adoptions or marriages, then.
Ok.
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This is a straw man and does not answer my main point.
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Art was once upon a time, and still loosely is, associated with creativity/skill/talent/genius and viewed as a divine gift, reserved for the few, who would act as conduits to the sublime/heavenly for the rest.
I suspect that artists choose a particular medium (visual/auditory/etc.) and work with it to the point of saturation, after which a new medium is selected. Each medium has its own unique characteristics and they can be artistically exploited to open up a new experiential dimension e.g. sound seems to have a direct connection to our “emotional center” (watched The Nun?). Hopping in this fashion, from medium to medium, can complexify art and even though this is just one way art can become hard to define, it does provide an explanation for the philosopher of art’s conundrum.
That said I wouldn’t go so far as to say defining art is an insolubia. Philosophers of mind, safely assuming mind/consciousness is far more complex than art, have stated that the problem of consciousness is hard, not impossible.
Yeah, probably, maybe to some, a long time ago, but in my estimation, all humans, by virtue of being human, have the potential to be either artists or philosophers. It is their very humanness – the impulses to reflect, analyze, create and express - that makes this so, although not all life circumstances allow for this self-actualization.
For example, all writers are philosophers, even if they have not read Wittgenstein (but of course the more you read the more informed your opinions will be), because like philosophers they are attracted to using language with precision and care to explore “what it is like to be us.” Philosophers and writers alike work to communicate complex ideas, and investigate human nature/existence, and reality itself. Both, really, are storytellers with truth as their driving force.
J
Mark Twain once said, “Show me a man who don’t lie, and I’ll show you a man who ain’t got much to say.” Duchamp’s “truth” was that a urinal was (or could be seen as) art. In part that was because it was presented as art; in part because the white, curved porcelain was beautiful; in part because the critical comment it made about the art world (“art is something to piss on”) was thought-provoking. Context and prejudices can determine both art and beauty. When we adults see a factory chimney belching orange flames and black smoke, we think, “How ugly”. We associate the sight with malodorous pollution and inhuman technology. But a young child might see the same chimney and think, “How beautiful! Just like a flower, blooming all at once.”
Serrano’s “Piss Christ” (like The Fountain, a work of art associated with urine) would, without the title, be an uncontroversial and lovely photo – the golden liquid in which the crucifix is submerged surrounds it like a glowing halo. But the title adds another element to the visual art – a subversive element.
Isn’t “appreciation” the essence of criticism? Why would anyone criticize if not in the hope of praising? Aren’t the angels who spend eternity praising God performing a critique? (I’ll admit that negative criticism is often more fun to read, and thus “better art” than positive criticism, and that singing God’s praises eternally sounds boring.)
The notion that art is an “expression” – that it is somehow “pressed” out of a “truth” in the artist’s soul – seems one-sided. Art is a form of aesthetic communication.
There is more to the story.
There is ample evidence that Fountain was not Duchamp’s work at all, but represents another example of a man stealing the credit owed a woman.
Fountain - a statement made by a woman to decry the art world as a “man’s world” - was made by Dada artist Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (born Else Plötz) – the very first artist to turn found objects—objets trouvés—into art.
George Biddle, in his 1939 memoirs, describes Elsa –
“She showed up at his studio and volunteered to model. She flung open her red raincoat to expose herself. Over her nipples she wore tin tomato cans, held in place by a green cord around her neck. Hanging between them was a tiny birdcage with a canary inside. One arm was adorned with curtain rings she had stolen from a department store. She had taken off her hat, which she had decorated with gilded carrots and other vegetables.”
A passage from a letter Duchamp wrote to his sister, on April 11, 1917 -
“One of my lady friends, using a male pseudonym, Richard Mutt, sent in a porcelain urinal as a sculpture; it was not at all indecent—no reason to reject it. The committee decided to refuse it for the exhibition.”
Art critic, former museum director, and curator Julian Spalding sums up -
“I’m convinced that Elsa is the creator. Duchamp had nothing to do with making or submitting the urinal, but later claimed it as his own. He didn’t just steal it, he stripped it of its meaning. Elsa’s urinal didn’t say that any found object becomes art if an artist says so (a false premise that became the foundation of conceptual art). It was in fact a remarkably penetrating and beautiful sculpture—the first physical (in this case, porcelain) poem, and the first great feminist artwork, deserving a place beside Man Ray’s Gift and Picasso’s Bull’s Head as one of the iconic images of the twentieth century. Worse, Duchamp buried the reputation of one of the true geniuses of early modern art—a female artist at that! The history of modern art must be rewritten.”
Here is some of Elsa’s poetry -
Fruit Don’t Fall Far
From Daddy sprung my inborn ribaldry.
His crudeness destined me to be the same.
A seedlet, flowered from a shitty heap,
I came, the crowning glory of his aim.
From Mother I inherited ennui,
The leg irons of the queendom I once rattled.
But I won’t let such chains imprison me.
And there is just no telling what this brat’ll…!
This marriage thing? We snub our nose at it.
What’s pearl turns piss, what’s classy breeds what’s smutty.
But like it? Lump it? Neither’s exigent.
And I’m the end result of all that fucking.
Do what you will! This world’s your oyster, Pet.
But be forewarned. The sea might drown you yet.
I wonder if she was referring to “a man’s world” as the sea.
I just want to point out that "pressed’ and “soul” are your words, not mine.
There is a difference between communication and expression.
Communication works from memory, but expression works with inspiration, contemplation and imagination to produce art.
Spot on! Buddhism has the concept of tathagatagarbha (Buddha nature), which sensu eminenti compasses all sentient beings. So there could be a daVinci-garbha 
in all of us, which for various reasons remains only as a dynamis (potential) and doesn’t flower into an entelechia. Aristotle was a fine gentleman.
I also must concur with you that writers are philosophers, even though some suffer from writer’s block every now and then. One popular author had an ingenious solution - gravity boots (nothing to do with gravity but all to do with, I think, magnetism). So hanging upside down can do wonders in certain situations.
Art requires certain preconditions to be met. It surprises me to no end how that could’ve been true in ancient Greece and not in the 21st century. A profound mystery as far as I’m concerned.
I digress though, absit iniuria.
Here is another good article about Duchamp’s theft, which also provides more insight into its true creator, and why the lie persists -
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I can hardly believe this. Despite Gary Sullivan’s claim that he is the originator of Flarf poetry, Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven had him beat by many decades!
(I am getting more and more fascinated by this woman)
Here is her poem, published in 1927 -
A Dozen Cocktails Please
No spinsterlollypop for me—yes—we have
No bananas I got lusting palate—I Always eat them— — — — — — —
They have dandy celluloid tubes—all sizes—
Tinted diabolically as a baboon’s hind-complexion.
A man’s a—
Piffle!
Will-o’-th’-wisp! What’s the dread
Matter with the up-to-date-American-
Home-comforts? Bum insufficient for the
Should-be wellgroomed upsy!
That’s the leading question.
There’s the vibrator— — —
Coy flappertoy! I am adult citizen with
Vote—I demand my unstinted share
In roofeden—witchsabbath of our baby-
Lonian obelisk.
What’s radio for—if you please?
“Eve’s dart pricks snookums upon
Wirefence. ”
An apple a day— — —
It’ll come— — — —
Ha! When? I’m no tongueswallowing yogi.
Progress is ravishlng—
It doesn’t me—
Nudge it—
Kick it—
Prod it—
Push it—
Broadcast— — — —
That’s the lightning idea!
S.O.S. national shortage of—
What ?
How are we going to put it befitting
Lifted upsys?
Psh! Any sissy poet has sufficient freezing
Chemicals in his Freudian icechest to snuff all
Cockiness. We’ll hire one.
Hell! Not that! That’s the trouble— —
Cock crow silly!
Oh fine!
They’re in France—the air on the line—
The Poles— — — — — —
Have them send waves—like candy—
Valentines— — — —
“Say it with— — —
Bolts !
Oh thunder!
Serpentine aircurrents— — —
Hhhhhphssssssss! The very word penetrates
I feel whoozy!
I like that. I don’t hanker after Billyboys—but I am entitled
To be deeply shocked.
So are we—but you fill the hiatus.
Dear—I ain’t queer—I need it straight— —
A dozen cocktails—please— — — —
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I don’t understand why you keep laughing at my posts.
I think it’s an equivocation actually. “Family” can be used for biological relations or in other senses. But I think that’s relevant for topic more broadly. Recognizing instances of equivocation and analogy (and examining what sort of analogy exists) in predication doesn’t make this topic easy, but it surely makes it far easier than if we mix together different usages haphazardly.