In light of what is often presented as Modernisms demonstration that there is no clearly defined class of objects that might be identified as art, it seems reasonable to accept the proposition that art is an assemblage of contradictory elements which simultaneously come to exist as a category, a practice, and a concept. Reciprocally, these come to be the subject of various be an analytic tools and disciplines seeking to generate and substantiate varied bodies of knowledge. The un-bounding (de-historization/ de-regulation) of art (and culture) creates an environment in which the minor, anti-authoritarian discourses associated with dada, Surrealism, Futurism and Constructivism concerning how art and aesthetics have been used to advance the view that art may be used as a mode of social -engagement: as a means for the reformation of both tacit and social knowledge. This intent was represented as a means to re-establish art's specificity of purpose if not form, by advancing art (now thought of as a practice) and critical culture per se, as constituting a socio-cultural laboratory in which an endless array of differing concepts, experiences and point of views could be synthesized, combined, realized, or tested. To advance this view of art, it was necessary to abandon the either/ or logic of positivism in which one term needs to succumb to the other the Derridean notion of deference (differentiation and deferral) such oppositions are now understood as forming co-existent frameworks came to be implicitly, embraced and with it emerged notions of fluidity, indeterminacy, and multi-disciplinarity.
Consequently, within the frame of post-Modernisms explicit conceptualization of the practices of art and its making, the opposition between conceptual (general) and material (specific) no longer seemed relevant because the ontological status of an artwork no longer tended to be bound to the particular ways it maybe interpreted (Danto). As such it is no longer necessary to differentiate art as being either an objects that produces special experiences (as in Kantian and phenomenological aesthetics), or as a particular system of symbolic representations (as in Hegel, Cassirer, and Goodman.) Likewise, the assertion that works of art are received in a purely subjective manner (as Hume suggests) can no longer be thought to providing an objective. Reciprocally, by expanding the conceptions of both critical analysis and subjective interpretation, the primarily affect of modernisms assault upon a traditional positivist understanding of language, communication, and aesthetics in the context of art resulted in a comprehension of the disjunction between art as signifier and signified as consequence of the necessary differences and consequential tensions that exist between medium and message, form and content. The further dismantling of dichotomies, and the reconciliations of differences gave further impetus to the ongoing attempt to determine what role art may play in a secular culture committed to abandoning metaphysics and ideology. The acceptance of this approach within modernism lead to an acceptance of the work of art as a conflicted self resulted in arts thematization, and schematization of art itself. Within late Modernism, these views were used to re-address the notion that art could be employed as a means to provide a corrective to instrumentality by reflecting upon and transforming our logics (as Merleau-Ponty and Adorno argue). As such art came to thought to be essential for the education of sensibility and judgment (as advanced by Dewey) and because it is playful in character (Gadamer) representing an open-ended process that cannot be contained (Derrida) within our increasingly instrumental society art. Given these qualities art preserves just enough autonomy so that it by it very nature it may be thought of as having a genuinely political dimension and at times serve as a tool of subversion (Benjamin, Rancihre). In this context, its effable and emergent forms and content is therefore is projected as being capable of supplying a basis for historical and cultural identities (in Hegels sense of being reflective of that domain within which we recognize the self.) Sent: Monday, May 24, 2010 9:51 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: "I regret that, in our attempt to establish some standards, we didn't make them stick. We couldn't find a way to pass them on to another generation, really." This presumed split shows up in such terms as skilled and deskilled, suggesting that the traditional art practice of acquiring skills in, say, drawing from nature (extracting art from nature) contrasts with the view that since art is an idea about nature (awareness of cultural projection of art) it does not need the filter -- and thus the distortion --of drawing skills. This has even led to the elimination of skill-based teaching in art schools -- perceptual drawing for instance. To me this reveals the fakery of so much modernist-postmodernist art theory.
