|
Art & Aesthetics
Why Do We Need Art
Theory?
Painting
has two aspects, the inspirational/conceptual/aesthetic and the
craft. Both are needed if the work is to go on pleasing the informed
observer. They are also interdependent. New techniques encourage new
perspectives, and vice versa.
Art aesthetics is the philosophy of art, and naturally tries to
arrive at statements about representation, coherent form, emotive
expression and social purpose that are universally true, independent
of context and speaker. Unfortunately, that very generality means
that aesthetics can often be used to justify a very doubtful piece
of work.
But aesthetics is not reviewing, and still less art criticism.
Criticism asks: How is this effect achieved? How significant is it?
How does it compare with similar works? Criticism is an arduous
task, and requires knowledge, sensitivity and expository skill.
Reviewing is more ephemeral, and aims primarily to entertain.
Journalistic skills are essential, but they do not usually unsettle
or extend our appreciation of artworks. Indeed the pressures of the
job often requires the reviewer to simply accept the importance of
the exhibition, and commend it to the public.
That does not make reviewers insincere, nor necessarily unreliable.
Most will have a degree or two in art history, and will know far
more about even the old masters than the average gallery
visitors, painters included. But it does
mean, to stay ahead in a notoriously competitive profession, that
reviewers must always concern themselves with trends, fashions and
personalities.
It is by forming a theoretical bedrock to the complex and ever
changing world of the visual arts, that aesthetics becomes
important. Reviewing ultimately rests on art criticism, and this in
turn probes the aesthetic grounds of our judgment.
Practical
Importance of Art Aesthetics
For the
practicing painter, a nodding acquaintance with art aesthetics will
help to:
1. Provide a
vocabulary necessary for describing or promoting work among
colleagues and reviewers. To know aesthetics is to understand
where the trendier criticism is coming from — and so engage with
it or prepare a defense.
2. Explain their work to themselves. Painters think through
painting, but even they need to occasionally step back and see
their work in the larger context of European art.
3. Rethink their aims and interests. Contemporary art
aesthetics, though resting on contentious ground, will generally
provide more suggestion and inspiration than the abstruse
word-spinning of art magazines.
4. Understand better the art of the past, which is illuminated
by theories that may now seem strange, but can be modified for
contemporary concerns.
5. Serve as a prophylactic against the preposterous and
stultifying, reestablishing a solid tradition to which all
artists belong.
6. Suggest new avenues of development, which may combine past
techniques with new perspectives.
Aesthetic Theories
Aesthetic
theories can be approached from many directions. Here is a
simplistic introduction, pointing up names that viewers may wish to
research in books or the Internet.
Artist-Centered Philosophies
Dewey and other intentionalists considered art to be the product
of a creative process. The conscious intention of the artist was
important, as was his interaction with the medium. Tolstoy saw art
as the transmission of emotion, though he probably meant the ability
to arouse emotions in the viewer since there is no simple
correspondence between a painting and how the painter felt while
painting it. Bouwsma located expression within objects, which
represent the characteristics of people under some emotion, just as
weeping willows mimic sorrow.
Langer felt that feeling emerges from the form, which are ideas of
feelings, not feelings themselves. Art symbolizes human experience.
Because art was essentially an irrational activity, an irresponsible
expression of emotion, Plato banned poets from his Republic.
Aristotle disagreed, replying that art was natural activity, and it
catharsis served a therapeutic function. Croce thought the crucial
element in a work of art was the idea in the artist's mind.
Viewer-Centered Philosophies
Some philosophers have emphasized taste, which is a special
perceptiveness and sensitivity. Everyday concerns are set aside on
these occasions, and we do not call the police when we see murder on
the stage, for example. Feagin thought we feel pleasure at being
able to respond in this way. Iseminger felt that the sadness exists
simultaneously with the pleasure. Bullough talked about
underdistancing and overdistancing oneself from a performance or
work of art. Against an aesthetic view, Dickie has argued that
viewers simply look at different things, i.e. rather than look
differently.
Others have concentrated on the formal qualities of a work of art.
We attend differently to things like color, rhythm and composition,
but expect them to grow from inside rather than being imposed from
without. Aesthetic experience seems immediate, moreover, bypassing
thought, though Goodman thought that even here the emotions
functioned cognitively.
Philosophies of Representation and Expression
Most philosophers accept that representation is not resemblance.
Gombrich has argued that visual representation involves manipulating
signs, so that the language of art is more than a loose metaphor.
Signs have a history, a tradition: they have to be learnt. Panofsky
believed that icons in art can be studied on three levels: iconic
(the dog resembles a dog), the iconographic (dog stands for
loyalty), and iconological (some metaphysical claim about the
reality of the physical world). Goodman rejected the theory of
resemblance but favored one of denotion: symbols used in painting
may be arbitrary and conventional, but looking at painting meant
unraveling a code.
Philosophies of Artistic Objects and their Contexts
Formalist philosophers emphasize intrinsic properties of the
work of art rather than what it represents, so defending modern art
against criticism that it doesn't depict the world as it really
appears. Nonetheless, many paintings do depict some aspect of life
or convey some attitude or message, and it is idle to suppose they
don't or weren't intended to. Content matters.
Marxist philosophers see art as produced in certain social
conditions and argue that it needs to be seen in terms of those
conditions. Berger thought that oil paintings are commodities that
depict a consumerist society. Benjamin also believed that art
mirrors culture.
Institutionalists like Dickie stressed that an object becomes an
artwork when society or recognized sections of society confer that
status on it. Cohen didn't see the rituals of conferral anywhere,
and Wollheim couldn't find reasons for such a conferral. Danto
introduced the term artworld but said the candidate must conform to
a theory about what art is.
Structuralists claim that artworks have their own structures, but
that these also reflect the structures of the society in which they
originate. Deconstructionists assert that, quite to the contrary, we
simply don't have access to all the contexts necessary for
understanding of art and aesthetic experience. They try to bring out
the ideological principles at work in texts and utterances, and
reflect on the power inherent in artistic and other statements.
Philosophies of Interpretation
How do we know if an interpretation is good, or even correct?
Perhaps we cannot know for sure, particularly the intentions of a
little-known artist now long dead, but we can tell which
interpretation results in a fuller, richer aesthetic experience.
Ellis thought the best criticism was the most inclusive. Viewers
cannot be reasoned into pleasure, it is worth noting,
only reasons suggested for pleasure already experienced.
Philosophies of Value
Tolstoy was a moralist: art had to help us to live better lives.
Those who read good novels or looked at good paintings were more
able to put themselves in other people's shoes because they
understand better both the people and their world. Art made us more
sensitive and imaginative. Eaton suggested a distinction. Aesthetic
experience is experience of intrinsic features of things or events
traditionally recognized as worthy of attention and reflection.
Aesthetic value is the value of a thing or event has due to its
capacity to evoke pleasures associated with its attention and
reflection.
Traditional
Function of Art
By
accepting that the arts have to a. please the eye, b. clarify,
intensify or otherwise enlarge our experience of life, and c. act as
witness to the nature of the times and places that produce them,
many would summarize the functions of art as:
1. Painting are
representations of reality that give order, value and
significance to objects or scenes depicted.
2. The objects and scenes become available in this form through
the medium of depiction.
3. The objects and scenes are themselves of visual interest —
both through previous paintings, and the value society places on
them per se. Both content and rendering are important.
Traditional Painting
Today
Direct
painting was a nineteenth-century innovation, made possible by new
technology and imposed by a shrinking market for labor-intensive
commodities. Paint could be stored in metal tubes, and by working
out of doors, or on contemporary subjects, the artist could escape
the stifling Academy system. At the same time, because the emerging
middle classes had not the money for elitist manufactures, nor
perhaps the leisure to acquire a connoisseurship to appreciate them,
there naturally grew up a class of art critics to suggest how they
might collect these friendly and modest works of art. The mechanics
of painting is not an exciting subject to write about, and art
critics were not generally artists anyway, except perhaps literary
artists, so that painterly qualities were apt to be overlooked.
Originality of conception, authenticity of expression, boldness of
approach — these were what captured the imagination of intelligent
critics, and could be related to larger themes. Any history of
modern art will portray the battles and the shifting perspectives
that lead to the art-world we recognize today. The process is
complete, and much of art has become the plaything of its
commentators. Traditional skills are not recognized in the national
press, which rapsodizes over installations, landscape sculpture and
so forth.
Few can support themselves entirely by traditional painting: they
teach, receive help from spouses or run art-stores. But if they
can't pay their way in a consumerist society, they do like to feel
that their achievements are worthwhile, that they are producing
something useful and which their fellow practitioners can admire.
What can they do when their efforts will never receive approbation
from an art establishment that worships at other shrines? Or when
they will never be bought by the larger institutions or corporations
that by handling public funds must be guided by these authorities?
They must create a new public for their works, just as the
Impressionists and Moderns did before them. That means returning to
painting as painting, reclaiming its objectives from an
intelligentsia whose power lies in handling concepts that impinge
only tangentially on art objects. No wizardry in words will enable
the art critic to tell the good from the indifferent in painting.
That ability comes from a deep love of the subject, backed by years
of looking and firsthand experience. The good critic knows not only
what is good and bad in a painting, but how the bad can be put
right. A sound start to that knowledge is provided by the experience
of painting, most particularly with the methods of the established
masters who met practical problems with practical solutions.
Oil painting revitalized will not be an art of the past. Nor should
it be academic, where an all-pervading finish and attention to
detail makes the work too tight and self-conscious. The great
masters were innovatory in their time, and so must be the
contemporary artist. But what serious artists could profitably do is
reexamine the past methods of oil painting. They are not limiting in
theme. They do not inhibit originality. And they are not always
time-consuming. Titian may have been a slow worker, but his
approaches were streamlined for rapid execution by Tintoretto and
Veronese, who had pressing commissions to fulfill. Something similar
could be achieved by contemporary artists, and works created that
deserve to be treasured. Since all original work is difficult to
sell at first, until promoted by critics and art galleries, there is
every incentive to paint two outstanding canvases in place of ten
rather indifferent ones, and to achieve that end more readily with
the varied and powerful techniques of earlier painters.
|
