William:
[Me] I did not say art has no function. I said that utilitarian
things are made *first* to have a function, and their looks are
subordinate to that. Works of art are made *first* to have a certain
appearance, and then perhaps to serve an explicit function, as a
portrait, a religious icon, etc.
[William] How is a "certain appearance" not a function? The artist
acts to please self perception and that's a function of the act.
Aw, shit. Now you're making this into ambiguity and ambivalence. Seven
types of them, even. Gotta mull this one over.
[Me] You also say, "The problem is we can't find the location of
art." I believe that we have no trouble locating a given artifact or
made thing if it's well within the borders of a category, say, in
Kansas. But when the artifact is over near the edge, on the beach at
low tide, on the border between art and nonart, then we have a
difficult time, NOT locating the work, but locating the boundary.
[William] I was using a common figure of speech when I said
"location" to mean the identity of a concept among other concepts,
not the physical placement of an object.
Ah, but my answer was metaphorical. Some encounters seem to be very
clear and unambiguous. "This looks like an X, and I feel comfortable
responding to it in X-terms." Those things are "in Kansas," i.e., well
within the limits of the category at hand. But other things are not so
clear, they seem to hover on the edge between Y and Z, and we pause
and ponder what to make of it. "Okay, I'll take it as Y, but if it
seems to be more like Z as I get into it, I'll be willing to revise my
interpretation."
[Me] Are you ever puzzled when you encounter some thing and wonder,
"Is that a work of art?" I suspect it happens as infrequently as not
being able to tell whether the voice on the telephone is a man's or
woman's, or if the long-haired person sitting in the row in front of
you is a man or woman. What are the cues and qualities of each
encounter that guide your first snap conclusion? Analogous to seeing
something "as art" or not. You make a provisional scheme for
deciding on the nature of what you are perceiving. Things that are
well within the boundaries typically don't cause problems, but
things at the edge--the contralto voice that could be a tenor, the
long hair and indistinct shoulders that could be a man, the picture
that could be merely a picture. <g>
[William] When I consciously adopt the attitude that my experiences
are art experiences, then nearly everything is art, an aesthetic
experience; if not, I'm not paying close attention to my experience
as an aesthetic experience. I think when we are conscious the
aesthetic realization is always more or less insistent. We choose
to pay more or less attention to it. I can't experience what I am
not already prepared to experience. An analogy might be that we are
always prepared to breath and thus we are prepared to breath fresh
air, or not so fresh air.
I agree with this, except for the first sentence. I can't calibrate my
experiences to be art experiences, and I cannot, ergo, experience
nearly everything as art. I can--and often do--pay attention to the
"aesthetic" properties of things, such as the keyboard of this
computer, and make observations about its aesthetic qualities. But
that does not mean that the keyboard had been transmuted into a work
of art.
[Me] My criterion--is the representation contingent on external
verification--is a binary thing. Either it is (the map must conform
to what it purports to represent or it's functionally useless) or
it's not (the map is a imaginary diagram of a yet-to-be-discovered
land of praeternatural bounty). The saint's image on the wall can be
painted in any way, as long as certain attributes are shown--and the
same saint looks different from one church to another. The accuracy
of the likeness is an elastic standard, modified by the artist's
skill and preference for various pictorial effects. Not so the
driver's license photo.
[William] This is too mechanistic for me. I mean it's too
conditioned by rules and the comforts they provide. If something
purports to represent something, then it does, unless there is
another previous representation ( or prescribed rules for that
representation) that has been taken or insisted upon by some
authority as true.
I didn't assert this as a prescriptive rule, but as a general
observation about perception and experience. I believe that at the
fundamental level of encounters, we parse our sensory information
first at a level of threat or non-threat, and then parse it again and
again many times in rapid succession into personal and social
categories, unknown and known, so that we prepare ourselves to engage
the new thing. The old smarty-pants joke about the Dwayne Hanson
sculpture in the gallery ("How do you know whether it's a statue or
the guard?" "The statue has a square taped on the floor around it.")
demonstrates my point: we react differently, based on how we expect to
engage the object. Real guard, nod or speak; statue, pause and look.
In fact, your statement above about consciously adopting an attitude
about art experiences describes a condition similar to mine: you are
applying a rule ("interpret as art experience") so that the
characteristics of the encounter that best fit your expectations are
most evident.
[William] Also, you know very well that the first thing people do
when they see their new driver's license photo is judge whether or
not it is an accurate likeness. That surely betrays the fact that a
thousand photos of one person's face will show a thousand different
faces (and that's why the most accurate digital proportional
measuring can ID a person regardless of the varied appearances of
that same person's photo images).
I think either you missed my point, or I am missing yours. I meant to
say that, while painted likenesses may or may not match the model--in
fact, some, like pictures of Jesus, don't even claim to do be actual
likenesses--we expect a degree of reliable correlation between the ID
card photo and the bearer (allowing for the notoriously poor quality
of such photos).
[William] The question remains: Where is art? With the artist?
With the audience? A collaboration?
With historical symbols, symbols of culture and its beliefs? I'm
inclined to think that we all have an innate aesthetic buzz in our
consciousness that we can tune up or down but never off. That buzz
is always urging us to objectify it and when we do we say, Ah,
there's art! Then, unhappily, we contaminate the awareness with
explanations, but we are compelled to do so.
I understand this, but we part company at the "There's art" moment. My
experience is that, like you, I have the buzzer constantly on, but
when only when I see something that I rapidly *and provisionally*
declare to be "art-qualified" do I apply "artistic criteria" to it.
Aesthetic qualities can be perceived in things that I do not call
"art," such as manufactured product, type and typography, clothing,
living things, landscapes (terrain).
A.
1. You and I are talking. I want to give you directions to some other
place. I point out there, then to the left, to the right, and verbally
tell you where to go. But you are confused. So I draw a map, pointing
to the lines and then out there, then to the left, etc., and you get
it. I have made the map resemble to "reality," to the way things are
"out there." This is akin to a "non-art" image: it is made to conform
to "out there."
2. You walk up to me and see that I am drawing something, and ask me
about it. I say it's a map, something I've just come up with from my
imagination. Then you pick up the map and comment that it seems to
conform to the local area (or perhaps to another place). You have
shown how "reality" resembles my map. This is akin to an "art" image:
it is made freely and then the correspondences to "reality" are noted.
B.
1. We're talking. I describe a vase I've seen but cannot locate. You
don't follow the description, so I draw it for you. Then you point to
the shelf and say, "There it is." Non-art image matched to "real"
object.
2. You walk up and see that I've drawn a vase, and ask me about it. I
say that it's a drawing of a style of vase I happen to find aesthetic.
You look around and see a similar-looking vase on the shelf. "There's
one just like it." Real thing found to resemble "art" image.
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Michael Brady
[email protected]
