In our contemporary present, the value of Art has become simple valuation. Whereas we once would value the contribution that Art makes to human society, a quality we might say that is ‘measured’ in the amount of thought it causes (which cannot be measured because…well, even thought I’ve typed the phrase “the amount of thought”, I have no idea what this might mean because how could we isolate and attribute this ‘amount’ from the web in which thought exists), nowadays there is a price, a metric of monetary value. There is also the value of Art as a societal token, indicating your social position (class position) to others. Art serves marketing purposes, the advertising industry – it beautifies products, is part of the ceaseless consumerism in which we live. Artefacts are “broken off” dragged out of context, and reattached to cars, credit cards, motor oil etc. etc. This, I think, tends to be the main way of valuing Art: how does it contribute to the sales of other goods.
The bizarre prices that certain paintings command merely indicates that they have become ‘chips’ in the “possession game”: the person who pays millions for a Van Gogh or a Warhol (see the Robert Hughes documentary, The Shock of the New and the conversation he has with a New York stockbroker who owns the largest number of Warhols) doesn’t do so because they are compelled by appreciation of the work. It could be any item that others consider valuable, allows them to indulge in conspicuous consumption and is “an investment”. For them, the work is of little, if any, importance. What we’re seeing is the disconnection between artistic value and monetary value. The former cannot be calculated in the latter’s terms. This also raises questions in regard to reproduction, but in a different way to Benjamin’s discussion of this in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In that, Benjamin argues that reproductions of the original erode the aura of work (before going on to posit that works are now created for reproduction). But isn’t the aura of a work a fleeting instant, vanishing with the final brush stroke or note? The work is then “in the world”, reproduced or not. What of plays, films, music? These have always been produced for reproduction; where is “the original” in these cases? The manuscript, the master reel? Their purpose is to engage the reader, to interact, to cause thought – whether that be with “the original” or with a copy is of no importance. To insist on the importance of the original is to turn that original into an object of supreme value, to value the object above and beyond its capacity to cause thought, reflection or meditation. The work may be exploited as, say, in the case of the Mona Lisa by the reproduction of the image on tea towels, cups, scarves etc. BUT in what sense is this a ‘bad’ thing? This exploitation might be for monetary game yet its effect is to bring the work into contact with those who feel that Art is “not for them” – in the same way, one might argue, as the use of classical music to sell cars. To some, it will be just another picture on a tea towel, or the backing track for a car. However, to others it might catch their imagination, draw them into a world from which they have previously felt excluded. And in that, Art is the ‘victor’.
The most obvious example here is, I suppose, films of books. How many people have been brought to Jane Austen by Clueless, or by the apparently ‘straight’ adaptations? Look at the fuss surrounding the film of All Quiet on the Western Front: how many were intrigued enough by this to read the novel? Then, from these initial points, how many started journeys to other works? Art may seem to be being exploited, but how often does this crude exploitation open new vistas to their readers?
As I’ve said, can we say that there is something intrinsically ‘wrong’ with the work of art produced for reproduction? On a very simple level, even works not produced for reproduction when they are reproduced give us access and, in both cases, surely this is the point? An artefact is created to be engaged with, to cause thought, with as wide an audience as possible. Mechanicial reproduction – or, in our day, technological reproduction – is an asset, an opportunity to bring the artefact to the widest possible audience and, thus, to have the widest possible influence. The question of ‘originals’ and ‘reproductions’ arise only when the artefact is inserted into “the markets”, with its attendant considerations of copyright, ownership, publishers etc.. To think of Art in this way is to begin in defeat, by unconsciously accepting the rules of “the markets”. We saw this during the early days of the internet and the idea of self-publishing, then with musical groups who released their albums directly online. Not that either of these came to anything: the markets adapted very quickly, and the existent rules proved to embedded to be overthrown.
There is another, interesting aspect to the monetarisation of Art. Some years ago, The Museum of Modern Art in Edinburgh paid €20,000 for a work that consisted on a canvas that had been slashed by a carpet knife. This caused outrage; the usual “money for nothing” and “my four year old could have done that” hysteria was deployed…and, possibly, in monetary terms there was some point. However, in terms of artistic value, this hysteria missed the point. I could spend paragraphs here discussing the artistic value, but suffice to say, the work itself was a commentary on divergent values. How many, once their intial outrage had dissipated, began to consider what the artefact was ‘saying’? How many recognised the validity of its commentary on the irrelevance of monetary value in Art – that slash leading us behind the canvas, leading us to the dark space of hanging in a gallery and, thus, into the question of how a work of art becomes a work of art by its placement in an environment where it will be perceived in a specific way that is dictated by that environment. What of the canvas itself? That space usually filled with colour and representation? Here the commentary seems to revolve around the importance of the reader in making meaning and thought, and the ways in which we project, through our imaginative powers, in environments that invite us to do so. Can we apply a metric of monetary worth here? No. Is it artistically valuable? Yes.
What this work also raises is the question of artistic intention. What did the makar intend? Do we need to know? Is their intention important? The answer to all of these is “Who cares?” Once a work is, in some sense or other, complete (better word than ‘finished’) and enters the world, it is open to interpretations. The makar’s intention only matters if we accept that they retain control of meaning, that they own the work and that the work is about them; we are, in other words, back to the idea of the individual as being the basic unit of society, that this work goes to reveal something about their psychological make-up, what I’d call “critique as psychological jigsaw puzzle” – the point of such criticism is to see each work as allowing us to reassemble a portrait of the artist, the more intense our research is – where did they live, what was happening to them when they produced X – the more accurate our reconstruction will be. This is as pointless as I hope I’ve made it sound. If a work is only ‘about’ the artist then it’s of no interest to us. It offers us no thought, no reflection on the life of human persons. It is limited by its attachment to a specific individual.
This still leaves the “my four year old could have done that” question. Unarguably they could have, and here there’s a contradiction with my previous paragraph. If a four year old produced the work, as opposed to, say, someone of thirty, then we can argue that the intentionality is different. For the sake of argument, our thirty year old has been to Art College, has lived in a garret (which, interestingly enough, comes from the French for “watch tower” or “sentry box”), and endured poverty. Our four year old has done none of these things. However, if we move away from the individual to the work itself, do the experiences and circumstances of the individual alter the meaning of the artefact? The temptation is to say yes. The thirty year old’s work possesses an intentionality that examines Art and the Art world. The four year old was amusing themselves on a wet afternoon. Now take another step: we do not know the ages of the artists, in fact, we know nothing about them other than their names. The focus is now on the works themselves and the critics interpreting these works. When further information is revealed, the critic may feel rather foolish, but their analysis has been produced as a result of concentrating on the work itself, without any of the attached ‘noise’. Does this new information make the analysis invalid?
Murmurs from the Forest 
As you know, I produced a graphic novel. That means: I developed the idea; did research; wrote the script; created the storyboard; drew the cartoons; inked and coloured the artwork and drew in the lettering––this is the artistic process. No reader will ever see this. And Walter Benjamin’s Aura seems not present here. Also the editing and post-production did not make the process ‘complete’. Somewhat surprisingly, it was the mechanical reproduction that eventually valuated the work as Art––each book as an individual well produced artefact.
The deliberate artistic choice to ‘re’-produce the book in a strictly fixed and individually numbered amount of works, allowed each book to have a unique place and connection with a reader. It seems that the restriction of numbers and, strangely, the inaccessibility to mass production that creates artistic value in our contemporary present. After all, Amazon and other corporate sellers advertised the book, but were unable to stock it because it was not available to them. Instead, carefully picked small scale bookshops had (have?) the book on their shelves.
Is it then that Art will gain artistic value when accessed by the reader (viewer, et al.), when not engaged with corporate forces? Did Amazon give my book the effect of Duchamp’s urinal––not available as a mass produced copy generating therefore a clearer awareness of what a book is when seen as a unique and carefully produced work? Is that Benjamin’s Aura?
Sartre points out that the reader spends time and money or the writer’s book. That deserves a well written and beautifully produced book in return. The balance between the individuality of the reader and the individuality of the writer is certainly vital in the process of reading and writing. Corporate scale market processes, mass consumerism and ‘“broken off” artefacts’ have no place in that vitally balanced relationship.
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So the final ‘act’ in the artistic process is the artefact being accessed by a reader/spectator etc. Does that mean that if someone goes through the process (as in your paragraph 1) but their work is never seen by anyone, it isn’t art? So a work of art is the a shared ‘possession’ of the artefact by artist and reader? A “coming together” of imaginations?
Does restriction of numbers work, generally, in the way you suggest? When, in general, numbers are restrcted, it often seems to me more like a marketing ploy that has more to do with the monetary value of an artefact, rather than its artistic value; the restriction is designed to make an artefact ‘rarer’ and, therefore, increase its desirability as an ‘investment’. I’m not suggesting that this is always the case – and certainly not yours – but when I see “limited edition prints” or only “X number of copies pressed on vinyl”, I do think it’s about money.
The other thing here, I suppose, is how the artist sees their work, in that some may want to engage with the whole corporate, mass production machinery – detective writers, for example; a great deal of their work is formulaic, in that you can list a set of characters, a set of events and plot the occurence of these events in specific chapters. In one sense though, does that detract from the work? Many of these formulaic works contain critiques of government policies, in-depth discussion of the reasons for crime etc.. The fact that they sell millions means the authros can continue to produce them, and that their ‘message’ (which isn’t just about sloving a fictional crime) reaches more people.
In terms of book production, I know jacket design is a specialised area (and can be deceitful – I always remember the cover of Kingsely Amis’ novel, “I Want It Now”, which is an attack on 60s/70s consumerism, had a cover depicting a virtually naked woman, lying on a bed, holding a glass of wine and smoking a cigarette – which rather changed the meaning of ‘it’), but I’ve always preferred the French convention of books having completely plain covers, thus, the focus is on the words contained within. It was interesting that, in the 60s/70s/80s, albums had covers that were pertinent to their music – the Beatles “Sgt. Pepper”, Roger Deane and Yes, Hawkwind – but this fell away as music transitioned to CD, then to streaming. I suppose that you could say that the album cover was replaced by the music video…but that was what turned music into an accompaniment because it gave a far more definite meaning to the lyrics than a static album cover.
Hmm, as far as Duchamps goes, I always thought he was pointing out that we amongst sculpture…
I’ve never been very clear about Benjamin’s ‘aura’; it’s always seemed to owe rather too much to the idea of religion to me. The ‘original’ is something worthy of worship (?) in virtue of its position as “the original” – something you can see with Shakespeare’s First Folio today, or the whole first edition idea – as if reading a first edition is, somehow, a different exeprience to reading a standard edition. I can see it with sculpture or painting – whereas I’m grateful for the reproduction of something I could never have hoped to have seen, if I do then get the chance to see the original, it’s a qualitatively different experience. Classical music is fascinating in this regard: the emphasis is on the quality of the performance and performers and the ways in which we’re taught to value these. For example, the general idea from the outset is, without ever hearing a note, that the Berlin Philharmonic are ‘superior’ to the Bournemouth Philharmonic – that the Berlin Phil will, in some sense or other, ‘capture’ (?) the spirit of the original composition in ways the Bouremouth Phil cannot. This is before we even get to conductors or the idea that a ‘true’ performance should be given on original instruments.
Maybe it’s like touching a historical artefact, and that moment of imagining who has touched this before, how it was originally used?
I still think, as I said in the blog, that “broken off” artefacts can have a positive effect in causing people to find a path to works – in which case, you could say that the pieces become ‘whole’ again.
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In response to “shared ‘possession”’: this is a matter of defining Art. However, I wrote that Benjamin’s Aura was missing (a bit about that Aura later)––I did not say that it was not Art. Perhaps it is, I do not know because I do not know how to define Art with certainty. Nevertheless, the process of creation seems mesmerising to some covert observers in such degree that it qualifies as such, aura in the eye of the artist or not. What is this magic?
Benjamin seems to couple the aura-radiating artefact with tradition, among other things. I sympathise with that notion. The obscure practice of the artist, both regarding skill as well as creative vision appear to find its base in tradition (standing on the shoulders of giants and so). These creative processes are for a part dependant on carefully cultivated emotional states or moods. These are the private artist’s means not shared initially, but eventually fixed in the concoction of the complete work of Art. These are the vibrations in the exact timbre and tuning of the 18th century harpsichord that Bach heard when composing a complex fugue, and not the shrill jingle of a 21century piano tuned in 19th century manners on which that same but fragmented and edited, if not mutilated, fugue is played in a mode indeed suitable for car ads. The magic is gone there. It seems to me that also Walter’s Aura has departed on those unfortunate occasions.
I agree, of course, in general, a restricted edition of a book is most likely motivated by commercial considerations. Also, I will not make little of the intellectual revolution that Gutenberg provoked in his 15th century (for commercial reasons as far as he was concerned, I might add). Still, a book that is published as an edition of one copy, let’s say an illustrated manuscript, is a different kind of artefact than a mass published book with similar literary content. Both have their place in the category of disciplines. Perhaps that is what I mean. It could be the timbre of that old keyboard with all its secrets against the newest hyper-sampled audio file fresh from silicon valley. Both represent a culture as well as artistic value. Apart from vulgar capitalistic shitfuckery.
The Aura in relation to religion is quite right, I think. My love for the Bible––I am not ironic––comes from the fact that it is a delightful collection of ancient texts. Not very much different from the delightful epic of Gilgamesh, Homer’s writings, or Petronius’ Satiricon. I am not a worshipper of the heroes in those works, that would be absurd, but they certainly have the aura of human creative drive and achievement (dare I use the word), and that includes the books of the Bible (with the exception of Paul, I freely admit. He is a whiner not worth being remembered at all, What on earth is he doing in that collection). The problem is generated by a sort of identity politics in a sort of art-disguise (or indeed pure religious ignorance, and not much more). That is where the worship starts. Indeed: the Berlin Philharmonic versus the Bouremouth Philharmonic.
We can further ask the question: in their own compartment of performance categories, which of the two latter orchestras plays Bach better? I submit, neither! The input of my baroque-orchestra’s listeners-ear has destructed the Aura before I ever would hear a note from either. The ‘touching of the historical artefact’, as you suggest, seeing Michelangelo’s tombes in San Marco, hearing Bach’s music in an authentic setting makes the shared possession of the work of Art complete.
And for Duchamp’s, he just expresses the inferiority complex of the ceramic artist.
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Sorry – having to get used to us writing to each other, rather than sitting across a table – that I misunderstood what you said about Auras.
I’ll try to be more methodical in responding this time; just before I get going though, I was wondering about “shared possession”, and speculating, given what you said about the unseen process, when Art ‘starts’ and, on foot of that, when it ‘ends’. The best I could come up with in regard to a ‘start’ is when the artist has the initial idea, feels the initial compulsion to create X. If we take that as beginning the process though, once the artefact is “out in the world”, once it has, literally, left the hands of the artist, can we say it’s ‘finished’? I don’t think we can – the (artistic) process simply continues in a ‘different’ way – the artefact continues to cause thought in readers/spectators. Would that function as an inclusive ‘defintion’ of Art: after Kant, a human-made artefact that causes thought? Put another way, an artefact, initially created by another human person which then interacts with the imaginations of other human persons, with no discernable ‘end’ in sight? What I mean by “discernable end” is that the process of creativity contniues over time – whether that’s days, months, epochs or centuries. An artefact is art if it continues to speak to other human persons, no matter how far removed from their contemporary presents it may be. This would also include the possibility of sometthing’s stopping being art – moving from artistic artefact to historical artefact (although that couldn’t be a “hard and fast” rule – it could vary from person to person). For example, folk theatre: whereas some might perceive this as art, other might be equally convinced that it is now an irrelevance, a “museum piece” that has little, if any, connection with modernity.
Ah, I get the idea of the aura now, if I’m understanding you correctly. So…if a fugue is played on the original instrument for which it was composed, tuned in the original way, then it retains its aura? Could we modernise that and say that that idea was responsible for Bob Dylan being vilified for going electric? That in doing so, people thought the aura of folk music was ‘gone’ (dissipated)? Or that watching a film made in the 1930s on DVD in 2023 has lost the aura of the original? It seems only painting and sculpture can fully ‘conform’ to Benjamin’s concept of the aura then? Although, if we take the reader/spectator as part of the ‘equation’, even this is not possible because the sensibilities of the human person have changed in the intervening time period. Which, (maybe!) means that the aura begins to “leak away” the moment the artefact is released into the work (if not before). Or can the aura change? Is it a fluid entity, that flows and shifts, rather than something fixed? I can never experience the aura of an artefact, one of Bach’s fugues say, as it was during it’s first performance., but I do experience its aura now in 2023. We could go further and say that the aura is different each time I hear that particular fugue in 2023 – and that the aura you experience and the one I experience are fundamentally different because you know far more about Bach’s techniques than I do…which, I suppose, leads to the ultimate question: Is the aura important? Is it just that the term ‘aura’ is outdated?
Hmm, I’m guilty in regard to books, of looking past the artefact to merely what it says, which is I mistake I know. Although the printing press did break the church’s monoploy over biblical meaning – taken over, in the case of the UK, by James I (VI of Scotland) and that whole episode where he gives identical passages of the bible to scholars in Oxford and Cambridge, then chooses the translation which favours the monarchy. Mind you, it didn’t stop the emergence of varous factions after the publication in English – Ramblers, Muggletonians etc – that eventually results in the Englsih Civil War. Yet more bloodshed by folks who reckoned their God was the only ‘true’ one.
Now, I don’t know enough about Bach to get into that final paragraph discussion. What I do know, however, is that when I first heard the Cello Suites, it was as if I was hearing something in my head made ‘flesh’. I remember where I was, who I was with. There was an immediate familiarity, even though I’d never heard No. 1 before. One of those “everything else fades into the background” moments. Like the first time I met Lisa.
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I agree with your and Kant’s idea of ‘no discernible end’, that is, in the context of human society with its complete melange of all social positions and infrastructure. From the artist’s perspective it seems more complicated. Each work of Art is an expression of the individual artist and should be defended as such (I exclude collectives for the moment). The ‘hidden’ creative process stops when the work is ‘finished’, however, the artistic process––as opposed to the creative process––could well continue. It could be as simple as the reader’s ‘head-theatre’ in which the experienced narrative is visualised, including the forming of scenery and even type casting. This is initially also an obscured structure, but will become of influence as part of the readers own social actions. But is it Art? Does it by (Kant’s) definition possess the value that is required for it being Art? Will the ‘museum piece’ by definition be Art? Or, indeed, does the perception of tradition as expressed in folk theatre carry that value?
I think the question is: can Art have objective value? It is my opinion that in terms of a universal truth, as derived from our perception of reality, that the answer is no. Art is essentially meaningless. How then is an Aura in anyway present, if at all? It seems that biological evolution uses artistic expression as a positive survival tool by means of our homeostatic impulse. It might follow that the quality of the creative expression inspires a certain degree of awe, leading to the preservation of that work. The ‘awe’ is an emotional necessity for the Art to be understood as important––it is now seen as valuable. The communicative meaning of the work might even be of secondary importance to the artistic quality in the mind of the observer. The not necessarily artistic message that the work contains travels, so to speak, along with the ‘valuable’ Art. Art appears to operate in its own mysterious realm, loose from its contained meaning. If this is so, l’art pour l’art, or in Benjamin’s own terms, ‘theology of art’ has in my opinion been around since humans starting to make Art. Can I then still rationally defend the apparent circularity of my own argument: Art is around since Art is around? Within the boundaries of human evolutionary mechanisms, perhaps. Shared possession with no discernible end further suggests I could.
Is Art then nothing much more than an impulsive vehicle operating with or without meaning? Is this what we signify when suggesting that Art can only be experienced to the point of ‘awe’ through cultish religious worship? Perhaps. If Art does not need to justify itself rationally––and I think that that is so––its value appears to exist outside the rational realm. And what does ‘outside the rational realm’ mean anyway? Many writers experience the strange and seemingly irrational phenomenon that while writing, the story appears to present itself to them––as if it is dictated. Explanations involving the supernatural must of course promptly be rejected with vigour. Our brain is capable of unconscious decision making, of tapping into stored resources of experience, subconscious considerations and irrational impulses. The latter might explain the euphoria experienced while listening to awe-inspiring music, or when engaging in Dionysian exhilarating dance. It also suggests that experience is a cultivating factor during the creative process. When we escape from Plato’s cave, we just only enter another cave, and another, and so on. Our experiences are always fed by new impulses. To claim that we have free will is absurd (or as Christopher Hitchens claims: ‘of course we have free will, we have no choice’). Nevertheless, I am not aware of an epistemology that will help us soundly to arrive at a rational conclusion regarding an irrational claim about the ‘Awe’, ‘Aura’, or hidden value in Art (the pre-socratics, perhaps? More biological study?). I must resort to opinion and the awareness that Art has no objective value. To your question: ‘is “aura” outdated?’ I will answer: yes, it is! Francis Bacon was delightfully right when he suggested that: ‘Perhaps [Art] is a way of passing the time’.
Anyway, by excepting the demise of Aura as a necessary by-product of reproducibility and (Walter again) establishing the democratisation of Art as a result of modern accessibility, the problem seems no longer existent. But for the sake of the argument I will still use it once or twice.
Are we free then after all? I do not think so, but nevertheless, we can play that fugue in any way we like. And this new way of playing can clearly generate its own Aura. Jethro Tull’s ‘Bourrée’ is more awe-inspiring than Bach’s own original (yes, I know. I am giving away personal secrets here). It prompted me to pay attention to Tull’s other music. However, a bourée is not a fugue. And no, it will not retain its Aura by sole merit of the original technology and technique by definition, but if the Aura of the original Art is looked for, it is my opinion that the original ingredients should be present. All other methods can not work. In the mean time, as we clamber from cave to cave, I agree, the Aura is bound to leak away. Playing a film from 1930 on a projector from 1930 is certainly cool! The smell of the hot bulb and added rattling of the celluloid film going through the gears seems to have the potential to produce a serious Aura. But we are threading on thin ice here (Riefenstahl new a few things about the stupendous). The smell and sound where, I assume, never included in the creative intentions of the film maker. It is ‘cool’ to us because of the old projector’s novelty, but the 1930’s film maker might have preferred the DVD for his film. For Bach, the sound of the harpsichord itself was the intended medium of his choice. The complex musical inventions where specifically written in the context of the harpsichord’s technological spectrum. Idem for the variety of other period instruments.
Dylan’s vilification, is more likely a social issue in which change of genre annoyed fans. He always wanted to go electric but the early sixties environment of Greenwich Village brought him in different waters. His companions there and then, both musically and ideologically, were artists like Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez, et al. They where all folk singers engaged in socialist and communist activism. They used the musical instrument of the working folks: the guitar (Guthrie’s guitar had the text painted on it:’This Machine Kills Fascists!’). In the mean time, Dylan’s listeners became Dylan’s fans. And when in 1967 he found a new form of poetry to write in, and when the commercial circumstances allowed it, Bob changed genre: electric rock music and his fans did not like him for that. He was suppose to be the activist with the machine that kills fascists and now he is suddenly a rock-star. In reality, Dylan was foremost a poet (during the late sixties, that is) and his music was always secondary. He was know to hate people humming along with his tunes and when that happened during live concerts, he would change the melody and harmony there and then to stop them from interfering––so much for shared possession. The music was dispensable, but the lyrics never changed.
That Bible! Nearly no original manuscripts exist, only copies of copies of copies, and so on. The entire New Testament was written by well educated well trained scribes writing in late first century Greek-Romano regions, probably Turkey, Greece, or even Rome itself, in the Greek language, as was the norm in educated circles of the time. Modern scholarly consensus is that most texts are part of the contemporary secular cannon of 1st century Greek literature. Most NT texts are loosely based on the oral tradition about an historical illiterate jewish apocalypticist named Jesus operating in early first-century Palestine. Nobody’s true god at all!
The Cello Suites ‘made flesh’! How much more Aura does one need?
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Wow.
I think that distinction that you make between the creative process and the artistic process is really fascinating – a real “leap forward”. So let me see if I understand properly: the creative process is that which involves the artist and all the hidden factors that feed into the ‘finished’ artefact. At this stage (?), the artistic process comes into being when the reader/spectator becomes part of the process (of the artefact in-the-world), and this process has no end, in that the same artefact (a ‘result’ of the creative process) can have effects hundreds of years lafter the moment of its production…then we have that third ‘category’, the way that these two processes influence the social actions of the reader – the ways in which they become causes of thought and action-in-the-world. The implication here is that art transcends time in terms of influence. Could we say then that Art’s value is definied by an ability to “continue speaking” over long periods of time? I’m not suggesting that there needs to be a consistency in the ‘voice’ that an artefact has, this can change through time (taking into account the ways in which an artefact can be manipulated by ideology, and Heidegger’s idea that it is Art which creates society). Perhaps, as time passes, we are more able to see an artefact for what it represented at the time of its production? The social and political dimesions become clearer, more distinct? We could also say that an artefact persists over time because of the ways in which it addresses “the human condition” (which isn’t to suggest that the human condition is some kind of ahistorical entity which hovers, unchanging, ‘above’ history).
I’m always suspicious of the idea of ‘tradition’ because of its conservative nature (back to Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France”, in which he opposes the theoretical to the traditional); it seems to me that the traditional tries to exert an influence on the contemporary, suggesting that X is ‘unacceptable’ because it is too much of a ‘departure’ from what has gone before – tradition attempts to constrain the directions and developments of the contemporary.
Art is essentially meaningless? Well, yes, but only in the same way as anything at all is meanignless without contextualisation – without examining the web of factors that dynamically intertwine in the production of meaning. Objective value and universal truth I’m just grappling with in what will be my next blog entry. I don’t think that objective values exist, unless you construct a subjective system that assigns value to X, Y and Z and includes a concept of universal value – which has been constrcuted subjectively, in that it’s objectivity is borne out by the subjectivity of the system (and this subjectivity is then hidden or obscured by the workings of the system itself).
Universal truth falls into much the same system of production, in that if I define what constitutes ‘universal’ within this system of thought, then I can then make the claim that X is universal…which, obviously, it isn’t. Take capitalism for example: competition between people is posited as a universal truth, but that only works if you accept the tenets of capitalism. The dogma of the markets is accepted by a “leap of faith”, not through any causal chain.
Back to discourse and who controls the discourse…so Foucault and Nietzsche again.
Awe and Aura. So, when I stand before a particular artefact, read it or watch it, I am overcome by emotion(s) (Can I identify these emotions, or is there always a ‘something’ which is “just beyond” my ability to name it?). This, it seems to me, is similar to the eighteenth century idea of the Beautiful and the Sublime (Burke again). The Beautiful is a term used to describe a human-made artefact, the Sublime describes nature – in that one can feel ‘overcome’ by scenes in nature. The general idea is that the latter reminds us (brings into sharp focus) of our insignificance, our transitory passage in what we call life. Kierkergaard also discusses this at length (in relation to his “Christian existentialism”…but that’s another story), when he talks of the insignificance of human civilisation comapred to nature.
If we go back to awe though, is the suggestion that the reason an artefact persists over time is because we cannot adequately explain it (analyse it into its component parts)? This is what makes it valuable? Every time I hear the opening notes of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1, it is as if I’m hearing it for the first time while, simultaneously, I have always heard it. The clash between the two mutally-exclusive feelings causes me to feel awe – a combination of beauty and sublimity. All I can do is feel this, I cannot verbalise it (this is identical to the way I feel about Lisa). Oddly enough, I’ve just sat here reflecting on other works that evoke the same feelings in me, and they are all musical: Mahler’s Ninth symphony, Bruckner’s Seventh, Mendelsson’s violin quartets…The Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” and “Midnight Rambler”…Miles Davis’ “Jean Pierre”. Still, as Camus wrote, “All Art aspires to the condition of music”. Maybe…
Music does seem to possess that “mysterious quality”, be part of that “mysterious realm”…or is that me (a) not having the vocabulary/knowledge of music to discuss it adequately or, (b), just being lazy? The empiricist in me thinks (b).
Which leads into that whole ‘supernatural’ thing. Yep, that’s got to be rejected out of hand. It’s mere laziness – the easy option. Seems to be quite fashionable nowadays: accept everything as “the way things are”, look after your own interests, keep your head down and your mouth shut…Which brings up the idea of experience, of the world and of the artefact. If, as I think we can reasonably argue, all experiences modify those experiences which have gone before and are, themselves, modified by those experiences which we’ve already had (and add to this the idea of the unconscious working of our minds) then the concept of ‘value’ is one that is necessarily fluid, that never reaches a ‘static’ point. This applies across the entire gamut of experiences that include the concept of value (in different ways), whether that be our interaction with Art, with social society, with political society (seperated for illustrative purposes only). I also think we need to include judgement as an element of value here (and value as an element of judgement). These ‘elements’ come to us through our initial contact with relations, peer groups, the media etc., yet there is no ‘identical’ reaction to the way that we respond to the same artefact. The reaction of some to X is merely a passing notice, to others X will be a clarion call for action. For example, I’ve never understood how anyone can watch “The Magdelene Laundries” and continue to attend church – or not want to remove the church from any societal input…but they do. So what kind of ‘aura’ does the film have? Surely it’s designed to provoke outrage, to force people to call into question their beliefs. Or is that just my reaction, and my deduction, because of my experiences? If, for example, I had been brought up in Ireland, in the Catholic church, would my reaction be different? Would I be more forgiving? (Without getting distracted here, I’ve never managed to work out how, with this film and all the other revelations concerning the church, people continue to attend mass, allow these folks to be involved in education etc.). What I’m getting at here is the question of value. The value of the film is as exposé, as a document that reveals injustice and invites a response to that injustce. Is that its aura? I don’t know, but what I think we can see here is an illustration of the way that an artefact’s aura can change over time (connecting with your “artistic process” stage). Actually, the reason this example comes to mind is that a few days ago, some clown was arguing that he wasn’t oppressed by the catholic church on the 80s and 90s. In regard to this, the film acts as a corrective – which, we might speculate, was part of the creative aura stage.
I’d argue that this is one of the values of Art. I wouldn’t argee with Bacon (look at his own work; no way is that simply “passing the time”). Art is revelatory; its born from conflict with what exists. It’s at stage two (the artistic) that the question of meaninglessness and passing the time arises. The reader (in the widest sense of this word) makes a choice (which I think does involve an exercise of some sort of Free Will), which is to either accept the invitation to thought that the artefact offers, or to neutralise it – to make it something with which they can be comfortable, but is a long way from the creative process of stage one. Teh reader can consign the artefact to the dustbin of history, not because of a lack of value in the work, but because of their desire to not-think (to reamin in a state of ‘thinkinglessness’?!). Thus, the aura of stage one is denied/changed in stage two.
Hmm, I’ve gone on and on. Suffice to say that it was Woody Guthrie’s gutiar that bore the legend “This machine kills fascists”. Funny that you describe Dylan as a poet; I’ve always thought of him as more of a storyteller, but maybe that’s in the later work. That’s why I think Bruce Spirngsteen used to be described as “the new Dylan”, because of the way his songs are really short stories.
Right, I’m off to listen to Bach.
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Your categorisation of the three elements of artistic process is rather elegant. When re-reading the text, however, I realised that the complexity of the process changes in structure when considering creative practice outside our Western cultural domain. For example studio pottery in East Asia.
Ignoring the discussion here whether applied art can be defined as Art or not, the small scale production of unique ceramic objects often involves a creative process that includes the uncontrolled forming influence of natural forces––something that is not usual in the West. Western technology such as film cameras, musical instruments, etc., are designed to control natural forces like light, sound waves, et cetera. High quality Japanese studio ceramics are fired in kilns that exposes the artefact to extremely high temperatures (+1200° C) generated by wood fire. This technology deliberately allows a minimum of control regarding surface treatment which is an important facet in ceramic art. The artist creates the pre-fired objects with this technology in mind. He or she does not know what the ‘finished’ artefact will look and feel like. The artist is wilfully out of control and the kiln, as it where, has its share in the creative process. Traditionally, this was considered a mystical input by the gods of the kiln, and so on. In our time, the Japanese ceramist considers the gods mythological, but the influence of the processes within the wood firing kiln (anagama) remains a crucial feature regarding the artistic value of the individual object when ready-for-the-world.
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Bacon’s remark on ‘passing the time’ was, I believe, a momentary insight into the otherwise obscured creative process that takes place in the studio. Exposé as artistic value is certainly a very important, if not structural element of Art. However, passing the time as a human person engaged in artistic practice during the creative stage is precisely the moment when the subject of revelation (exposé) is conceptualised and made ‘visual’ but not seen yet. It is the moment when the device is created to make visible what must be seen and to keep hidden what must remain obscured. The trap that the colloquial use of the phrase ‘passing the time’ has set is that it somehow entails inaction or unimportance. When uttered by Bacon, intense human existence draped with a heavy layer of irony is trow at us with ease. But from what we know of his studio practice––and that is quite a lot––his passing of the time there had an intensity of magnitude as powerful as his paintings.
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Ah, I let my own prejudice get in the way when you quoted Bacon’s “passing the time” remark: I immediately became defensive (the perils of living in the neoliberal universe). Now I’ve read your explanation, I realise that Bacon’s use of the phrase “passing the time” is a positive one (rather than the negative – typified by “All I was doing was passing the time” etc.). Your expression is perfect, “it is the moment when the device is created to make visible what must be seen and to keep hidden what must remain obscured.”
What I’m wondering about now, is how conscious this process is? Is there a definitive moment when the artist thinks, “Yes, this is it. No further.”? I think perhaps there is, but whether this is an entirely conscious (as in “fully before the mind”) decision remains to be seen…I’m not trying to suggest that there’s some kind of ‘mystical’ force/process at work here, more of a ‘feeling’, in that the artist may think “this is as far as I can go here” or “this is where I am now”. Something along the lines of “the potentiality of this artefact is now revealed insofar as I can achieve at this time”. Then the artefact is ‘presented’, in some sense or other, to the audience (I think we need a new word here: audience/spectator et al all suggest a passivity before the artefact when the opposite is the case), and the next category of the process begins – the artefact is the bearer of a knowlege to be discovered, but a knowledge that changes from person to person based on their experiences (although certain facets may be common to those knowledges).
For some reason, I keep remembering the later Wittgenstein slogan, “Don’t ask for the meaning, ask for the use” in relation to this. I suppose that this ‘remembering’ could be pointing me toward the idea that our language use in relation to artefacts must be contextual, in that by making clear which artefact(s) we are discussing makes the generalities of language specific, ‘sharper’.
There’s something else here, in regard to the artefact and time. In what sense, other than a trivial (?), chronological one, can an artefact said to be “in time”? Is that moment, when the work moves from the creative to the artistic, one of transcendence? The moment when the work is beyond time?
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When discussing consciousness during the artistic process I am somewhat in unfamiliar waters. But here are my thoughts so far. At one point during our MA course, we were pondering the importance of an opened book’s weight held with both hands in relation to the reader’s awareness of how far the narrative had been read and how it would influence the reader’s silent ‘retelling’ of the story. In Western cultures, the weight moves from the right hand to the left. In East Asia: from left to right. One could assume that if the shifting weight has any influence at al, it must be unconscious.
In the wood block print ‘Under the Great Wave of Kanagawa’ by Katsushika Hokusai, the enormous wave moves from the left side of the image and is about to crash onto the tiny skiffs to the right, ready to cause chaos and destruction. At least, that is how a Western observer will predict the narrative to develop (and described as such in a number of art books and media documentaries). But of course, Hokusai, being Japanse and would therefore assume directionality to flow from right to left, created a narrative not from the point of view of the wave, but rather from the perspective of the skiffs depicted on the right side of the image, or even more importantly, from the viewpoint of the men inside the skiffs: skilled seafarers used to navigating the rough waters around Kanagawa. The visual narrative has changed dramatically with the reversal of directionality. Here, the artist is very much aware of the functionality of supposedly unconscious or subconscious forces at work in the mind of the observer and applied these very much consciously. Similar techniques are used in graphic novel art and are, in fact, instrumental in the genre’s storytelling method.
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That’s really fascinating. So directionality is crucial in interpretation – left to right, it’s ‘about’ the destructive power of nature, right to left ‘about’ seafaring expertise (human ability).
I think the conversation around weight is interesting too, especially when you look at the language we use: a book will be described as a “weighty tomb”, a phrase which contains various ‘undercurrents – that it’s ‘serious’, that it deals with ‘important issues’, that it’s difficult to read (to put it another way, the phrase has what Barthes names ‘glamour’, in that it ‘contains’ a set of unspoken culutral meanings).
Counterweights: a balance between what has been read and what is to be read; the proximity between the read and the unread. There’s another way of perceiving this I think: the ‘weight’ of what person X has read versus what person Y has read – that weight isn’t actual but metaphysical, in that it depends on experience and artistic knowledge. If X is (for the purposes of this argument) more knowledgeable than Y – in that they have read mor widely and can see connections between the text being read and prior texts – then, for X, the text is ‘heavier’. An actual example would be something like Eliot’s “The Waste Land”; on the one hand, you can read it without knowing the connections with prior texts (Chaucer, Wagner, Marlowe etc.) and it means A. On the other, you can read it knowing the connections and it means B, but a much ‘heavier’ B, one that stretches through history, incorporating prior texts.
I’ve always wondered about the western tradition of reading left to right, as against reading right to left – moreso when I’ve come across the idea that you can take in entire sentences at a glance, rather than reading word by word. This idea always strikes me as peculiar: why would you want to read other than word by word, looking at how sentences are constructed, then paragraphs, then chapters. Interesting to compare that to film (or painting), in that no one would claim to take in an entire scene, or an entire painting, “at a glance” – the scene or painting has to be studied (watched/looked at more than once) in order to discern the relations between the objects we can see. Ok, directors and painters will draw our attention to particular aspects – call them “primary object relations” – but we still want to examine other aspects – “secondary object relations” – in order (we think) to try to “fully understand” the meaning of a scene or painting. We can also perceive a scene or a painting in terms of its formal relations – the spaces between shapes, the shapes created by spaces, the colours used, the relation between light and shadow. We could, I suppose, call this part of the weight of the film or painting – the ways in which formal aspects contribute to meaning(s). Look at something like Peter Greenaway’s “Prospero’s Books”, a film that to me, by interweaving object relations and formal relations, acheives a similar textuality to Shakespeare’s play; the film has a ‘density’ that other filmic interpretations of Shakespeare lack.
The same kind of thing is true of music I think. There are some commentators who argue that you hear everything at once. I think we can do that, but there’s a ‘heavier’ meaning in, say, listening to Beethoven’s third symphony and focusing on the violins and their interactions with other instruments. Or is that doing a disservice? I chose a symphony because it relies on the relations between different instruments but insists on us hearing those instruments all that once. During it’s course, some instruments will be highlighted, yet the others will still be ‘there’, indicative of a necessary relation (to produce the meaning Beethoven was trying to acheive?)
How the hell did we get here?! Right, I think I’ll try going back to bed before I spend the rest of the night listening to Beethoven…
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The forces in a German Romantic symphony are indeed harmonically merged in order to let the listener hear everything at once. And they will. Much like the letters of a word will be read as one image, or even, as you said, an entire sentence (something I can not do, by the way). But it is indeed good study practice to try to detect and follow the individual instrument sections of the orchestra to reveal the composer’s labours (during the creative stage. And if we may believe Romantic historicity, poor Wolfgang laboured a lot). So, forgive me for going back to the Baroque, Bach and the importance of the original instrument to expose those labours of the composer, as well as those of the performer. Baroque composers, often use a technique in which short bits of different harmonies follow each other up very quickly––not always quick in tempo, but rather in succession regardless of fast or slow tempo. Especially Bach had the habit when writing for the keyboard to overlap the last note of one harmony on the first note of the new harmony. Musically, this overlap creates a somewhat undesirable dissonant (something a [modern] pianist will struggle with endlessly, as is demonstrated too often, unfortunately). An experienced harpsichordist who is in control of the specific technology at hand, would know how to navigate this dissonance without making them sound as such. The delightful musical friction that this ‘messing’ with natural sensory conventions causes is yet a conscious process and also, of course, an artistic cooperation between composer and performer, and will allow the critical listener to join in and enjoy the fun. However, the untrained listener will certainly also ‘hear’ the artistic goings-on and extract pleasure from it, but probably much more subconsciously. Inclusive Art, I would say!
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Is there a decisive moment when the creative process in the artist’s studio is ‘finished’, and whether the artist makes a conscious decision to come to that conclusion? I think we do not know. Perhaps there are as many answers as there are Art works. How did Jackson Pollock made the terminal decision and how did that relate to that decision made by Phidias? Anton Webern and Federico Fellini? There is a famous report from Michelangelo writing to his sister (I think) in which he complains about Julius II who kept asking when he could show of his freshly painted ceiling to Rome. “When it is finished’ seems to have been the answer. This is as far as we might get. Pollock’s work is suspiciously well composed and always has a terrific colour balance. Is this conscious design, or unconscious input just as the Dionysian character of his paintings suggest? My guess is: the former. Are André Breton’s dream paintings artworks that have an unconsciously harvested subject but are otherwise consciously executed and finished? I think so. In literature the completion of the (content) work appears to take place when the emails from the editor cease to appear in the writers inbox. When Truus Schröder already lived in Gerrit Rietveld’s ’Schröder House’ for a while, Rietveld would visit her regularly as they were close friends. But when Truus complained about water logging on the balcony, Gerrit lost his temper and took a hammer and chisel and cut a rough channel in the balcony floor to drain off the water. The archaeological proof is still visible. Was this hissy fit conscious? Was it and artistic completion of the work? Not even that, I would say. Nevertheless, it is true that there are times that the ‘completion’ of the work takes place in a warm mood not unlike the last act of an early Italian opera with an Homeric theme. It is the moment just after the gods have ascended back up to heaven leaving Ulisse and Penelope behind, embraced, while singing an erotic duet in slow tempo and fading light. And when the chitarrone pings one last note, the work is complete. If Art is the simulation of those things that do not exist, perhaps the artist is a mere troubleshooter who makes the artefact work ‘again’, and that might be the moment it is finished.
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