Noël Carroll
Philosophy of Art: A contemporary introduction
(1999)
[SK's comments]
[108]
3
Art and form
Part I
Art as form
Formalism
Like the expression theory of art, formalism arose as a reaction to representational theories of art. And also like the expression theory, it was prompted by striking shifts in artistic practice. ... [i.e.] modern art or modernism. ... Cubism and Minimalism ... abstraction. ...
Undoubtedly, one
important cause
of the evolution of this type of modern art was
the advent of photography.
Important
as in:
doing much of the
causing?
Or, as in:
one cause among others,
but "important" in some other way(s)?
... photography looked like it might put painting as imitation out of business. ...
... Instead of treating the picture as ... a mirror or a transparent windowpane onto the
[109]
world—painters began to explore the very texture of the glass itself. ... This was
painting for the sake of painting—
Oh.
So it was
not
just
for the sake of making
images
noteworthy for their visual organization,
form, and arresting design?
(p. 108 above, very first paragraph, very last sentence)
This first-mentioned sake is broader in scope than is mere painting per se, is it not?
... not
painting for the sake of showing the world.
...
... [such works] required a new sort of theory in order to be enfranchised as art. ...
According to [Clive] Bell, what determines whether or not a painting is art is its possession of significant form.
How helpful, finally, to give the strawman du jour a proper name. Easier to do, I suppose, when his strawbook is in the public domain?
... Though the importance of form was
made especially apparent
by ... abstraction,
significant form was a property said to be
possessed by all artworks,
past, present and future.
Significant form is comprised of arrangements of
lines,
colors,
shapes,
volumes,
vectors,
and
space
(two-dimensional space,
three-dimensional space
and
the interaction thereof).
Genuine art, on this view, addresses the imagination like the figures of Gestalt psychology, prompting the viewer to fill the artwork in such a way that we apprehend it as an organized configuration ...
... Gestalt properties
compel our attention
and encourage us to dwell on and contemplate the ways in which the composition interacts with our perceptual capacities, thereby
[110]
serving as pretext for us to explore our sensibility ...
Clearly, this view ... tracks what is valuable in nonobjective and nonfigurative art more accurately than representational theories of art. ... Moreover, formalism also had the advantage of showing Europeans the value (the formal values) inherent in much of the nonimitative and "distorted" artworks from non-Western cultures which were beginning to appear with increasingly greater frequency ...
However, theorists like Bell ... advanced formalism as the comprehensive theory of the nature of all art. ...
... Thus, a consequence of formalism was that our idea of art history needed to be reconceived. ...
From the formalist perspective art could be representational. But ... the formalist regarded representation as an incidental ... [they] worried that representation could even get in the way of the appreciation of the formal interpretation of artwork—
swamping it
in
floods
of
anecdotal observation.
🤐 🤐 🤐
...
[111]
...
Formalism found its natural home in the realm of painting. Nevertheless, it was easy to extend the view to other arts. ... not all music is expressive. However, arguably, it all possesses form. ...
... Literature might appear to be a more difficult artform to explicate exclusively in terms of form. However, ... formalists [could] point to the centrality of features of poetry like meter, rhyme and generic structures ... stories too possess formal features such as narrative structures and alternating points of view ... notably the Russian Formalists ... argued that [representational] content only serves to motivate literary devices, ...
In
certain ways,
formalism is a very
egalitarian
doctrine.
Stop the presses!!
Previously, certain pictures were classified as artworks in virtue of their possession of
certain highly valued representational content—
historical subjects, religious subjects, mythological subjects, ... But under formalism, anything could be art— ... —so long as it possessed significant form. Formalism revised how one thought about art. Some amorphous works which were nevertheless representational were
cashiered from
the order of art, while other hithertofore lowly, disenfranchised works ... could
assume their rightful position
alongside artworks with uplifting subject matter. Thus, formalism can acknowledge the artistry of the work of women quilters, for instance, that the representational theory of art ignores.
" . . . though it cannot compel the women to acknowledge that acknowledgment . . . "
But formalism is not simply attractive because it is open to a greater range of achievement than representational theories of art. It can also claim several powerful arguments in its favor. ...
[112]
...
...
... all artworks do seem at the very least to possess form. ... At least at first glance, formalism seems to be the most promising hypothesis we've seen so far ...
... The common denominator argument, however, does not provide us with a sufficient condition for art status, since many things other than art also possess form. ... in some sense
everything
might be said to possess form.
Thus, the formalist needs to say that "x is art, only if it possesses significant form," though this, of course, will still not differentiate art from many other things, ...
[113]
... Standardly, the formalist attempts to meet this challenge by adverting to the function of artworks ...
Speeches and mathematical theorems
may possess
significant form, but it is not
their primary purpose
to display their form. ... These activities may
result in products
that
are remarkable for
their form, but
exhibiting
their form is not what they are
primarily about.
If they
lacked
significant form, they could still be eminently
serviceable
vehicles for discharging their functions. ...
No other
human activity,
the formalist alleges, has
the exhibition of form
as
its special or peculiar province of value.
...
Art may be concerned with religious or political themes, ... But
so are many other things.
Nowhere is the fruitlessness of Our Man's search for a definition more evident than here.
Eventually we simply must advert to the function of whatever it is we are confronted with. That is pretty much what it means to be a social, political, moral creature.
Once we initiate the adversion, the above point could loom large (presuming that it is taken to be true). It's a point about "function," and if function is what we're concerned with at the moment, then this is a point which demands to be accounted for.
In the search for a Definition of Art, meanwhile, it appears as a mere arbitrary prescription. The point itself is being made to function (ha!) in a way that it cannot. Actually, if you wanted to scare everyone out of ever raising this point in its proper domain, an excellent strategy for you would be to repeatedly raise the point in some alien domain, wherein it can only appear absurd and easily refutable. That way people will come to associate it with reaction and dogmatism instead of associating it with . . . function.
Indeed, many other things like sermons, pamphlets, newspaper editorials, and philosophical treatises generally
do a better job of
conveying cognitive and moral information
than art does. What is special about art is that, above all else, it is concerned with
discovering formal structures
that are designed to encourage our imaginative interplay with them. In fact, many formalists would argue that artworks
ultimately contain
cognitive, moral and other types of representational content
solely
in order to motivate
the display of formal properties. ...
... We regard much of the art of the past as worthwhile, despite the fact that the ideas it represents are now known to be obsolete. This contrasts with physics, where discredited theories are long forgotten and rarely consulted. ...
[114]
The formalist can explain this; ...
... it often transpires that we criticize certain films for being too message-oriented, while commending other films as being good of their kind. ... The formalist has a ready answer: a dumb, amoral film may be formally interesting— ...
...
The preceding considerations suggest an argument for the view that a sufficient condition for art is that an artwork is something
designed with
the primary function of
exhibiting significant form.
We can call this
the function argument.
... Here, it is important to note that
by function
is meant
the purpose
that the work is
intended or designed
to discharge. ... if the notion of an intention is not added, then natural beauties may be counted as artworks, ...
🤐 🤐 🤐
... if the simple possession of significant form were the litmus test of art status, then many works of art would have to be discounted
just because the artist fails
to invest her work with significant form. But artwork
is still art,
[115]
even if it fails
to discover a significant form ... a theory cannot render bad art nonexistent.
... in order to avoid making formalism into a
commendatory
theory, rather than a
classificatory
theory, we need to add to the formula that an artwork
be such that it is intended
primarily to exhibit significant form. It may fail ... Such should be the story of bad art, according to the formalist.
...
...
Objections to formalism
...
[116]
...
... is [formalism] an adequate, comprehensive theory of all art? ...
... Much traditional art was religious or political, ... The primary purposes of the stained glass windows in cathedrals and of illustrations of the life of Buddha are educational— ...
This much is obvious, and
such intentions
can generally be
read off the surface
... if many artworks are primarily designed to discharge broader social agendas, then the primary intention to exhibit significant form cannot be a necessary condition ...
So why did we add the intention clause again?
Two reasons were (seperately) given:
(1) to rule out natural beauties as candidate artworks (p. 114); and
(2) to ensure that this theory qua theory would be classificatory and not commendatory (p. 115).
... the formalist may reply that our problem comes from interpreting her requirement in the singular rather than the plural. ... An altarpiece may be designed to observe the resurrection of Jesus ... However, another purpose of equal weight is that the viewer appreciate the design of the work. The artist has two purposes: ...
" . . . , the second of which can be read off the surface as well as can the first; or if somehow the second cannot be, then nor can the first . . . "
This might have been the remainder of the above paragraph, but of course it is not.
... The formalist will
[117]
argue that such works
had to be
designed with the intention that the work be so appreciated, lest the artist would not have
lavished such care
in the execution of its design. Thus artifacts that have been made with the primary intention to
acquit some social function
will, if they are genuine artworks, also be made with
another equally motivating
and,
therefore, primary
intention, ...
It's an even stronger argument without invoking intention, and without arrogating to define art broadly.
The question, in the form in which it is actually worth asking, is: Who bothers and why if the design of the work is anything less than significant-to-them? If the thesis of "significance" is not tout court validated by interest-taken, then the sincere Formalist deserves a sincere explanation as to why.
If the explanation is simply that some social functions just are arresting qua social function, regardless of artifactual form, then we have indeed established something crucial, something about human beings, something that does for aesthetics what Nietzsche (I gather) did for morality; and this is where the action is.
But even then, we never quite figured out how to dispense with morality, and we won't be able to dispense with Aesthetics or with Formalism either.
Or, ... the formalist may accommodate your misgivings ... [he] claims no more than that something is an artwork only if ... made with
an
intention (which may or may not be the
primary
intention, ... ) that the work exhibit significant form. ... Why would the artist have
taken the pains
... ?
However, this conceptual maneuver is inadequate. ... in cultures all around the world, certain demon figures are common. ... they are supposed to ward off intruders and trespassers. ...
... we typically count such sculptures as artworks. ... Yet it is immensely implausible to suppose that these works are designed with any intention to exhibit significant form. They will not
frighten anyone away,
if they
simultaneously invite
the appreciation of significant form. ...
All this proves is that a chapter on Intention should have preceded this chapter on Formalism.
Do the works exhibit significant form? What if we form (ha!) our answer by watching for people's observable actions rather than merely ascribing intents to them?
Now
it may be the case
that these demon figures possess significant form, but
it is not part of the artist's intention
... to display it, ...
... Problems seem to be erupting with respect to the requirement that the exhibition of significant form be designed or intentional. So, why not avoid the problems by dropping the expectation that the display be intentional ... ? But, as we have already seen, that way lies trouble.
On the one hand, there is the aforementioned problem of bad art. ...
[118]
...
On the other hand, there is also the problem of nature. Nature
can have significant form
... But nature
is not art.
If so, then significant form indeed is no matter of intention in the first place, and it was indeed foolish to bring the latter to bear on the former.
Are we sure it was the despised Formalists themselves who made this leap into Intentionalism? Or is it Our Man Here who has made it on their behalves?
...
...
... The notion of significant form itself is regrettably indeterminate. What is it exactly?
You're supposed to tell us.
... obscurity lies at the heart of formalism; ... its central term is undefined.
... a work can be arresting for reasons other than formal ones, or even in virtue of formal properties that are not significant in the formalist's sense ...
Once again, the more interesting question is: Can we reliably distinguish between form-driven and non-form-driven instances of arrest? Our Man certainly seems to think so!
How, without a characterization of significant form, will we know whether a work is arresting because it possesses significant form, rather than for some other reason?
Often formalists attempt to repair this shortcoming by saying that significant form is such that it causes
a special state of mind
in viewers. But that is an unhelpful suggestion, unless the formalist can define that state of mind. ...
[119]
...
In the next chapter, we will look at further attempts to develop the idea that artworks evoke certain distinctive states of mind. ... However, ... it appears unlikely that there is [such a thing] ... since there are so many different kinds of artworks that
require
all sorts of different kinds of
mental responses,
it is doubtful that there is just one mental state that they all share.
Certainly. But the word require is a bit of a tell, no?
Does
a feminist novel
really engender the same kind of mental state that
a Fabergé egg
does?
Did poor old Clive Bell really mean for his theory to cover feminist novels?
Until such hurdles can be crossed, the suggestion that significant form can be defined in terms of the distinctive mental state it provokes is moot.
One day, perhaps mental states of audiences also will be summarily read off the surface. Until that day, it seems we are permitted to "read" synthetic representations of persons but are not similarly permitted to "read" the person sitting next to us at the concert, nor to "read" the person who was sitting in front of us but who did not return following intermission.
But perhaps the formalist will say that we really don't need a definition of significant form here. Everybody knows what it is. ... we can pick out examples ... with a surprising degree of convergence. ... We can apply the notion of significant form without a definition.
Good one.
What about picking out examples of mental states?
And what about so-called behaviors? What about those actions which speak louder than verbal descriptions of "mental states?"
...
But if we take the formalist at his word and use our ordinary language intuitions to apply the concept of significant form, there are many counterexamples ...
...
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...
... if ... it is possible, as in the case of 4' 33, to make an intentionally formless artwork successfully, then neither significant form nor the intention to exhibit it is a necessary condition for art.
... Cage is not the only artist to explore formlessness—in our ordinary language sense—intentionally. The sculptor Robert Morris is another. ...
...
Perhaps the formalist will say that these works are not really formless. But ... They lack symmetries, balance, equilibrium, studied contrast and counterpoint, and every other criterion that we typically use to apply the concept of form in common discourse.
Hmm. Isn't the form of 4'33" right there in the title? It's not formless at all, but rather 'contentless,' "a form in search of a filling."
What's missing, perhaps, is "significance," not "form." But ascription of symmetry, e.g., hardly exhausts the "significance" of whatever form-bearing object it is thereby applied to. Ascriptions like "symmetry" seem to name only the kind of "form" that 4'33" in fact possesses; nothing more is entailed unless the ascription is fleshed out with just this entailment in mind.
What
lacks form in life
must also
lack form in art
where the artworks in question are perceptually indiscernible from their real-world counterparts. If
mounds of refuse
are formless,
so are Morris's sculptures.
Again, the dreaded mounds seem more to be 'contentless' and without 'significance' in both the Formalist and ordinary language senses.
And yes, in light of Our Man's art-life monism, nature seems again to be knocking at art's door. The notion that it is specifically the Formalists of the world who refuse to let it in is a notion which strains credulity; or at least it strains mine. If this is aimed at specific theorists of the past, we have, as of yet, only one such name at which to aim it.
...
[121]
...
As a last resort, the formalist may contend that these works by Cage and Morris actually do possess and exhibit significant form intentionally. For once one understands
what these artists are up to,
one can see that
their choices were apposite.
Form follows function. ... the design of 4' 33? is brilliant. It
gets the job done
with deliberate economy and verve. ...
There is
much truth
in the preceding argument. However, it is
not really available
to the formalist at this point in the discussion. For in order to propose
an interpretation like this
of
something like Untitled (Dirt)
[by Morris], one would have to
know antecedently
that it is
an artwork
and not
an ordinary mess
on the garage floor.
Hmm. Isn't this a big fat equivocation vis-a-vis the notion of a "classificatory" theory?
The whole thrust of Danto's method of indiscernibles is to show that you can't "classify" just by looking; the entire mandate, both of criticism and connoisseurship, then proceeds on this basis. The Dantoist does seem to know antecedently which is a mound of refuse and which is a sculpture.
If Our Man is looking for a way to tell just by looking, he surely won't find it here, since it has been ruled out from the start. But I must have missed the part where "classificatory" theories are admonished to proceed this way? Where the theorist is forbidden recourse to any knowledge he may have had about the world before his theory existed?
It's at least imaginable that different theories of classification could combine with different types of justified knowledge claims. Even Danto's theory of "embodied meaning", e.g., could land upon a positive verdict simply by "reading it off the surface"; the theory shows that this is not guaranteed to work, not that it is guaranteed to fail in each and every instance. Cannot this same conclusion be generated out of very many combinations of theory with claim? Aren't there several different ways we could learn of the provenance which would qualify an object as art under the Institutional Theory? Must we discover for ourselves that "form" is "significant?" Can someone just tell us? Do we all have to agree?
By the same token, it seems possible (simple, actually!) to forbid any theorist just the piece of "antecedent" knowledge that is needed to operationalize their theory. In the Morris example, this 'piece' is, indeed, of the nonvisible, Dantonian variety; that is possible, obviously, because the given work really is prone to have an indiscernible counterpart; it's a sensible example only because an unoperationalized theory really does wilt at the sight of two "indiscernible" piles of trash. But the demand for a self-operationalizing theory to deal with this scenario seems to me, actually, to be even less coherent than is Danto at his most unhinged. That's not "classification." What is it? Probably either magic or circularity.
That is, in order to attribute significant form to Untitled (Dirt) you would first have to be able to classify it as an artwork. But the formalist cannot do that, since the formalist needs to be able to identify significant form independently in order to classify something as art.
Well, Our Man has had no qualms about attributing "significant form" to "nature," nor to recruiting a spurious Intentionalist corollary to the Formalist cause in order to attempt an end run around this unquestioned attribution. If there is no obstacle to attributing "significant form" to objects which are not artworks, then there can be no such obstacle to making the same attribution to objects whose art status is undetermined and undeterminable!
... In a gesture of desperation, the formalist may say "let's stopping [sic] talking about significant form and just talk about form,"
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understood loosely as any relation between the parts of a whole. ... But this is extremely unhelpful. ... since there are artworks—like the
monochrome paintings
of Ad Reinhardt, Yves Klein, and Robert Ryman—that
have no parts
... Moreover, reading the formalist's theory in this way would defeat any hope of his securing a sufficient condition for art, since
everything that has parts
probably has form
in the loose sense, and
not everything is art.
... Leibniz notes that everything, no matter how apparently formless, has form in the sense that a mathematical equation can be devised to represent it. But if this is so, form, in the unqualified sense, is not a sufficient condition for anything in particular. ... A mathematician may decide to produce a more elegant proof of a truth already known. Her objective is not primarily to prove a conclusion, but to exhibit a more economical—as mathematicians say, "a more beautiful"—way of rendering the theorem. Her results have significant form, describable in terms of elegance. But a
[122]
mathematical proof, even one like this, is never a work of art. ... Nor is
mathematics
the only source of counterexamples here.
Athletes
and
chessmasters
can intend primarily to exhibit significant form in their activities.
Are we to believe that chess and theater really are less alike than, oh say, cubist paintings and feminist novels?
At that point, it seems that what we're on the hunt for here is nothing about definitions or conditions: rather, we're trying to figure out why exactly we categorize paintings and novels together at all. That we do this is taken as a given. But this is no basis at all for denying outright that a certain kind of theorem, e.g., simply is very much like a certain kind of dance or music. Theorems may be far more like music than music is like literature. There's little stopping us from saying so! And the fact that we do not often say so is its own kind of fact, but nevertheless it is not really the kind of fact that settles the important questions.
But what of ... the common denominator argument and the function argument? ... We have seen that form, in the ordinary sense, is not a property of all artworks. ...
...
Parallel problems beset the function argument. ... Certain mathematical theorems, athletic performances, and chess games may also be meant to exhibit significant form for its own sake. ...
Perhaps the most
radical thought
advanced by formalism is that
representation,
where it occurs in artworks,
is always strictly irrelevant
to
art status.
It is in virtue of this idea that formalists are often criticized for being
politically incorrect,
or, at least, insensitive.
They regard fascist productions—like The Triumph of the Will—as art because it exhibits arresting formal
[123]
structures cinematically, whereas many politicos are predisposed to classify it not
as art,
but
as obscenity.
That is, the politicos think that what Triumph of the Will represents is relevant to its art status, while the formalist regards the Nazi representational content as strictly irrelevant.
The flipside of the chess issue. This makes "art" truly into an "honorific" rather than "analytic" category. But notice that "relevant to its art status" gets shortened the second time around to just "strictly irrelevant."
We cannot adjudicate this ... here; ... But the deeper formalist supposition—that representation is always strictly irrelevant
to art status—
Thanks for cleaning that up.
is mistaken. ... in a large number of cases artworks possess and exhibit significant form just because of their representational content. ...
Consider ... Bruegel's The Fall of Icarus ...
... The painting is expressive of insouciance, ... But the painting also has significant form—a delightful off-centeredness or asymmetry that underscores the contrast between the quotidian and the momentous.
... Narrative structure and compositional conventions pull in opposite directions in a way that sets up a dynamic formal tension in the painting and in our perception of it. ...
... to appreciate this formal structure it is necessary to attend to the representational content of The Fall of Icarus. ...
[125]
...
... Significant form in
literature
is generally inconceivable without representation. How can one discern tragic structure without taking heed of what is being represented? ...
Neoformalism
The utter neglect of
the relevance of content
to art status
is the most glaring problem of formalist theories of art.
Is it also a problem for Danto, e.g., whose "aboutness" criterion does not in and of itself specify what art must be about?
Thus an obvious way to go about repairing formalism is to provide some accommodation for content. ... But many things ... which are not art possess form and content. So it must be something about
the way in which form and content
are related
in a work that makes it an artwork. Here, the neoformalist proposes that ... form and content are
related
in a satisfyingly appropriate manner.
...
[126]
... But what exactly do ["form" and "content"] mean? One popular way ... [is] the analogy between
a container
and
what it contains.
...
... But ... when it comes to art, it is
generally impossible
to distinguish
between what is contained and a container. The content of Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Easter Overture is elation and hope fulfilled. ... But
the content is not "contained"
in the musical structures.
The content would not exist apart
from the musical structures. ... the content of the Russian Easter Overture—elation—is not
separable from the form
in the way that the champagne is
separable from the bottle.
Well, here is one of our oldest frustrations with this field. We just did refer to two terms, not just to one; so, at least at the verbal and conceptual levels, content and structure must indeed be separable. After all, we just did separate them, just this way. At a certain point the sheer persistence of the mistake must be taken to mark some important problem that has, apparently, not even been formulated, let alone solved.
Incidentally, we seem here also to be sniffing around (without ever running into) the core McLuhanism: "the content of any medium is another medium."
One might say that the content of the Russian Easter Overture is really Easter and elation is the form. But ... elation seems more like the kind of thing that would be contained in something else. ...
... the neoformalist may explicate the form/content distinction in another way.
The content
of an artwork may be said to be its meaning— ...
whatever it is about.
Form,
then, is
the mode of presentation
of its meaning, ... the way it is
embodied,
presented
or
articulated.
...
For example, the content, subject matter, meaning or theme of The Fall of Icarus is the way in which epoch-making history passes us by unnoticed. That is
what the painting is about.
This seems like a narrowly literary construal of content which is foreign even to representational painting, to say nothing of symphonic music. Form is then defined just as narrowly and . . . literarily, in service of meaning rather than of anything else that an artwork might "contain."
I have no desire to rescue and perpetuate the Form-Content distinction, but if the Content-Meaning distinction is threatened then I'll take my medicine. Meaning is neither Form nor Content, nor is it Form-Content. Nothing that is not a novel quite contains meaning the way that a novel does.
The
form of the work
is
how this theme is pictured.
That sounds more like "content."
This theme is articulated by
decentering
the subject
of the painting—Icarus's legendary fall—
How did we decide what the subject of the painting is? We have just identified the "form" in relation to the "content," so we cannot now be identifying the "content" in relation to the "form." It seems the title has designated the "subject matter" and that "form" and "content" alike hardly matter for that purpose. It would then be no more nor less incisive to say that this ascription of "meaning" itself creates the "content," or creates the "form." Icarus could be "form " and his placement could be "content"; or it could be the other way around. It hardly matters. That seems to be the whole point of saying that the Bottle Analogy doesn't actually hold for artworks.
...
The content of an artwork, then, is its meaning ... the form is the mode of presentation of the meaning, ...
[127]
... According to the neoformalist, what distinguishes artworks from other things that have form and content is that in artworks form and content are related in a satisfyingly appropriate manner. But what is [this?]
Let us consult The Fall of Icarus again. As we have seen, its theme is that history passes by unnoticed, a truth that strikes an arresting chord for many.
Who knew
in the late 1950s and early 1960s that we were living in the Golden Age of rock 'n' roll?
Well, here is a statement for the Danto of Narration and Knowledge to analyze: an "historical" statement that is (also) a statement about the future. In abstract epistemic terms it is far bolder, actually, in its future-oriented than in its past-oriented content. (In pragmatic terms one of course registers disagreement at one's own great peril.)
The Fall of Icarus makes this point by placing the major event in the painting in such a way that it goes unnoticed. ...
... we are likely to be ... as inattentive to Icarus's plight as the farmer is. ... In that sense, the form is appropriate to the content.
... we are disposed to say "How clever, how very suitable, how ingenious." ... when we reflect upon the match between the meaning and the form, we feel satisfaction in seeing
a job neatly done.
The unity of meaning and form here abets
a satisfying feeling of completeness
...
Perish the thought that this painting means something to us which is at cross purposes to its alleged form!
... According to neoformalism, the possession of a form that is satisfyingly appropriate to its content is necessary and sufficient for art status. ... whereas The Fall of Icarus was
an embarrassment
for formalism, it can serve as
a paradigmatic example
for neoformalism.
... If the mode of presentation mismatched the purposes of a given work, the neoformalist might ask, why would we count it as an artwork anyway? A sermon that boringly recounted the tenets of a catechism is not art, but one whose rhythms raised hope might well be. ...
[128]
Neoformalism is also sensitive to the expressive dimensions of artworks. ... [it] counts ... expression ... as the content or meaning of the painting— ... and then asks whether the formal means ... are suitable for articulating that expressive property.
Formalism, in contrast, only attends to the
structural forms
of such paintings and
ignores
their relation to
supervening human qualities.
Quick! Name three important functions for that kind of theory! Don't overthink it! Don't assume that there aren't any just because definition is not one of them!
"Liveliness" does not sound like the name of a significant form. Thus, formalism is severely challenged by the fact that we often
classify artifacts
as art
in virtue of
their human qualities,
...
... neoformalism ... can handle cases like Cage's 4' 33". ... The structure of the piece ... functions to make its meaning manifest, almost unavoidable. ... according to the neoformalist, 4' 33" does have a form that is satisfyingly appropriate to its content.
... the notion of the satisfying appropriateness of form to content seems more informative and less obscure than the notion of significant form. Of course, one cannot antecedently list
every type
of appropriate form, since
artists
are always discovering new ones;
that's what creativity is all about.
Not quite.
Meaning is spiral and unbounded, and so allowing meaning to drag form around by the scruff of the neck is really just a death wish, a dare to the gods. And it's clear enough that artists do not have to discover anything of the sort in the first place, in order for this death wish to be issued on their behalf; there are always plenty of non-productive culture-workers around to take care of that part for them.
Creativity is more so all about the bracketing of meaning, of appetite, and of all the other self-generated abysses into which human beings too easily go tumbling at the slightest misstep.
But since the notion of appropriate form
is tied to
the meaning of the artwork,
where we are
able to identify
the meaning of the work,
That would be, anywhere and everywhere.
we are in a position to determine whether it has been implemented effectively ...
Content,
in other words,
governs our determination
of appropriate form.
🙄 🙄 🙄
Knowing the content puts us in a position to
isolate the elements
that give rise to it and then
to assess the suitability
of those elements to advancing
whatever the work is about.
... There are also independent considerations on [neoformalism's] behalf. These do not take the form of deductive arguments, but rather
arguments to the best explanation.
Are we trying to solve a murder or something?
That is, neoformalism is promoted on the grounds that it does the best job of explaining
certain distinctive features
of our artistic practices. ...
[129]
...
... One [such] phenomenon is artistic change. ... If the imitation theory of art were true, one would have expected the evolution of painting to halt, once artists discovered the pictorial secrets of realism.
It seems more that non-realist painting would cease to be art than that it would cease to exist.
And if formalism were true, couldn't we predict a point in history when all the significant forms have been discovered?
Perhaps we could calculate their number to within a reasonable margin of error; but if we calculated correctly, the date of arrival would be so far away as to be moot.
...
The neoformalist explains this by pointing out that as history marches onwards, human situations change, and, as human situations change, new issues arise, people have new things to say, and artworks have new things to be about. New content mandates new forms— ...
... New times call for new meanings, new ideas, new subjects, in short, for new content. Art serves to articulate this new content— ...
Additionally, neoformalism makes sense out of
our critical and
appreciative practices.
Don't try too hard.
Remind me once more why exactly it is that our practices certainly make sense?
Why is it so difficult to find a just so theory which "makes sense" of our practices?
Why tf should conformity with "our practices" count for or against the sort of argument we are here asked to consider?
Characteristically, critics spend a great deal of their time
interpreting artworks
and
calling attention to distinctive elements
in the artworks that they interpret.
Gee, it's almost as if . . . the theory came first and the practice followed!
...
... the neoformalist adds, this practice makes perfect sense, if what an artwork is essentially is a matter of fitting form to content. The critic ...
[130]
... is revealing the artistic value in the work— ...
Of course,
attending to
the marriage of form and content
is not just something that
only critics do.
Indeed. As a real definition of criticism this both excludes too much and includes to little.
A better definition would have to include: critics seem to think that someone asked them to articulate, share, and promote their thoughts on the matter. And then, just as chess perhaps has a better claim to be included than excluded from the realm of art, perhaps plenty of current noncritics will be seen for what they really are.
This is often what we noncritics do as well. In this regard,
critics
are just
special cases—
exemplary,
and frequently professional—
representatives of
what common folk do
when responding to artworks. The critics
help us
by
showing us where to look
and how to understand
what we find.
This is no mere special case of what common folk do. It is something completely different.
For most purposes which matter it is starkly different. We may define our purposes so as to render the distinction between critic and commoner as unimportant as possible; but which purposes are these? And are they really ours?
But in this, their practices are merely a more refined extension of one of the central ways in which we all appreciate artworks.
Well, telling others where to look is by no means something we all do. Further, people that do it do not all do it the same way, nor with the same frequency, nor do they all occupy the same relationship to the people they tell.
Being told where to look is . . . well, try it in pretty much any other situation and see if you don't get countertold which body part you'll soon be looking at and what you'll be doing down there.
...
... if what is special about artworks is the relation of fitness between form and content, then reflecting on that fitness would appear to be the natural way to respond to what is uniquely artistic about artworks. Thus, neoformalism offers a very illuminating account of our appreciative practices, ...
Neoformalism can also say something about what it is that artists do. ... The artist is essentially a specialist in matching modes of presentation and meanings, in marrying forms to content.
In sum, neoformalism is superior to formalism ... even so, it has its problems.
... The requirement that [artworks] have content
[131]
reminds us of the neorepresentational theory of art and it is susceptible to the same kind of objections ...
... as we have already seen, ...
Some art has no meaning.
Some art is exclusively devoted to
producing an effect
in audiences. ... to
delight
by means of its appearance.
... this is
all that it is intended
to do. Therefore, meaning cannot be a necessary condition of all art; some art is
"below" meaning.
Such artworks may be
simply beautiful.
They are
bereft of content;
there is
nothing they are about.
Much pure orchestral music and pure dance might also be described this way.
This is a pretty interesting moment.
What is it to forbid any meaning to those artworks which are exclusively devoted to producing an effect? This is a perfectly conventional way of construing these concepts, as far as I can tell; but if so, then it nonetheless draws out a curious aspect of those conventions which is apt otherwise to remain invisible: that is, per this rendering, the "effect" cannot be considered a "meaning."
There is a hard line drawn here, or perhaps (again) it was always there but has only now been unequivocally revealed. If no line, then the above would be merely stipulative: it would merely stipulate that "effects" cannot be (in and of themselves) "meanings," but without showing (as the above does not actually show!) that there is any logical or empirical basis for the stipulation.
If this hard line between "effect" and "meaning" were to somehow break down under logical or empirical scrutiny, there would then be an additional species of "meaning" under which additional works, formerly nonart, would then qualify as art under any theory which requires artworks to be about something. And that sounds like no grave problem for a theory, except perhaps for the possibility that some such "effect," of some kind or other, could be posited for almost any object. And in that case, the line between "effect" and "meaning" would be seen, finally, as necessary to protect any such theory from descent into a fatal (and frankly absurd) overinclusiveness.
So, there is quite a bit at stake here; and for once I don't think that Our Man's hamhandedness allows us to ignore this blip on the radar, to write it off as a hamhanded caricature of some highly sophisticated theorist's theory. I suspect this is exactly what many writers on the subject assume about "effect" and "meaning." And perhaps this particular conceptual contour is thoroughly conventional, rationally defensible, and empirically verifiable. If so, I look forward to learning how and why. At this early juncture it's not so obvious to me that this would indeed be the outcome. Will we be given anything more to work with here?
But the neoformalist ... might argue that there is a way in which such art does have content. ... [it does] have structures which produce effects in audiences that cause pleasure and absorption.
... The artist puts these structures forward not only
in order to move us
in certain ways, but to enable us
to reflect upon
how we are moved by them. These structures
address our human sensibilities,
and, in that way,
reveal
the nature and contours of our sensibilities to us.
... Artists who manipulate appearances for the sake of delivering beauty and engendering pleasure are in fact also fundamentally involved in exploring human sensibility. Their works enable us to
make discoveries about ourselves—
...
That sounds like an instrumental aim . . . and instrumental aims do not sound much like any kind of formalism.
These works are, then, about something; they are about the human sensorium— ... they tell us about who and what we are.
Undoubtedly, this account of artworks is true in some cases. It does a good job describing the work of many Minimalist artists, such as the sculptor Donald Judd and the composer Philip Glass. These artists
intend their works
to have
a reflexive dimension—
they are
about themselves
Oh . . . ?!
in the sense that they
encourage audiences
to
reflect upon
their own
[132]
experiences
of the work in question
Okay. It sounds like these artworks are about the audience's own experiences. It no longer sounds (it never really did and never really does) like these artworks are about these artworks. It now sounds like the old epithet self-referential refers to the "self" (plus its baggage) of the audience; to their-selves. A "self" is indeed "referred" to by an artwork, but this is not a case of that artwork "referring" to its-self. It is, rather, referring to someone's else's self; not even to them, but to they self.
Who or what does make "reference" to the artwork its-self? The audience has . . . experienced, perhaps consumed, the work. They have referred the work to they theyselves. They have made this referral (only?) because there was no other explicit "meaning" con-tained in the work. But the work does not refer to itself simply because there is no other internal meaning to which it may refer. The audience are the referrers. Them referring the work to they selves. The work refers neither to them nor to itself, not until some-one comes along and makes the referral . . . and Our Man Here has spoken confidently (unusually confidently for an Analytic Philosopher) about what this referral is, the basis for it, the mechanism of it, and the ultimate outcome. Can we believe him at this point? (Would we believe that he is not actually speaking for his-self here, but rather for some unnamed neoformalist from whose publishers a hefty licensing fee is being hamhandedly withheld precisely by remaining unnamed?)
[" ... encourage audiences to reflect ... "] (to reflect, for example, on the way in which various repetitive progressions affect one's temporal consciousness of the music). These works are meant to invite
an apperceptive response
in spectators—they extend an invitation
to attend to the way
that we attend to
the artwork.
But not all abstract music and painting has this reflexive or apperceptive dimension. ... It may engage our sensibilities ... without encouraging us to interrogate the sources of that engagement. ... Such works may and most frequently do
lack
the kind of internal structuring strategies
that allow us to say of Minimalism
what it is about
or comments upon the nature of our human sensibilities.
But if such artworks do not encourage an apperceptive stance in audiences and do not possess the kinds of internal structures that invite it, what sense does it make to say that these works are about exploring our human sensibilities?
Indeed, it makes no sense at all to say that something has been done if it has not actually been done. If not, then indeed there is no comprehensive Theory of Art to be had here. But the question (the actually interesting and important question) was, Why cannot works that do encourage an apperceptive stance be "about" this stance? Why cannot such an "effect" just be (also) the "meaning" of the work? It seems that every time we start down the road towards an answer, we stall out.
Many artworks engage our sensibilities, even quite pleasurably, without being about our capacities for pleasure.
N.B. To engage is not to be about.
To be about our capacities for pleasurable engagement surely requires more than just being pleasurable. A candy bar
is pleasurable,
but it is not
about pleasure.
It is not reflexive.
Not so fast. What is required to make this (hereafter proverbial) candy bar reflexive in the above sense? Dare I say this happens all the time, in cases of short-term and long-term overeating, when people realize they don't like the way they feel and/or look.
Under present conditions, I find it no less likely that a candy bar than a painting could be(come) "reflexive." Moreover, the candy bar truly was not intended to do this. If we are philosophically ambitious enough, we might even attempt to show just why the quite contrary intentions of the candy bar's maker, precisely for being so totally contrary, thereby afford (but without fully entraining) the consumer a "reflexive" "meaning"/"effect" for the candy bar; an effect that is totally contrary to that which was intended. (Have your dialectic and eat it too!)
... unless they contain special internal structures that allude to or draw our attention to our capacities for absorption, there are no grounds to suppose that all "meaningless" artworks are really about our capacities for absorption. ... Therefore, some works of art are not about anything. ... Therefore, content is not a necessary condition for art.
The neoformalist also contends that x is art only if it has form. ... it depends on what we mean by "form." ... if we mean ...
"having parts
that are related to each other
in some
[133]
way or other,"
then, though the condition will hold for anything ... that has discernible parts, it will not obtain for artworks that have no discernible parts ...
But ... We have suggested that, for the neoformalist, form amounts to
the way in which
the meaning or content of an artwork
is articulated
... [But] If form ... requires content in order to subsist ... then a work without meaning or content can have no form in this sense. And since there are some artworks bereft of meaning or content ... then ... form cannot be a necessary condition of art.
One might try to find a more promising sense of form ... One candidate could be that the form of the work is nothing other than the appearance or shape of the work ... However, ... when we refer to the form of an artwork, we generally mean something less than its total appearance.
The third necessary condition ... that "x is an artwork only if the form and the content of x are related in a satisfyingly appropriate manner." Insofar as this condition depends on the concepts of form and content, it inherits the preceding objections. ... [And] It returns us, once again, to the issue of bad art.
... something does not cease to be an artwork because it is bad. ... The upshot of neoformalism is that all artworks, properly so called, are good— ... since anything that is an artwork has discovered a satisfyingly appropriate form for its content. ...
The only real problem with this seems to be that we will have an even harder time defining good and bad than we have had with art and nonart. We won't get any closer to a real definition. We would, however, not only get close to but in fact arrive at something much more useful (that is, useful at all). When someone declares some piece of music to be not-jazz because it is not blues-based, we learn nothing about the music in question but we learn much about the declarer himself. The fact that his "criticism" is not "objective" bears only on its fitness for circulation in the impersonal public sphere. But if privately we only ever receive empty "objective criticism" from him, we will not know him at all; in fact he is then not allowing us to know him, at least in this way. To know someone at all we need to know what they value. That is useful. The less of that sort of thing circulates publicly, the better; but this does not mean that more circulation of "objective criticism" is for the better. That has its own pitfalls.
Instead of a
comprehensive,
classificatory
theory of art, neoformalism turns out to be a
commendatory
theory of art— ...
Whoever might have occasional but urgent need for such recommendations? Where, for once, might it be appropriate, helpful, even expected that such recommendations be made?
Among practitioners, of course! But perhaps only among them.
But this overlooks all the bad art ...
[134]
...
... neoformalists ... are quick to provide a remedy. ... badness in art is a function of possessing very low degrees of satisfying appropriateness. Bad artworks ... possess satisfying appropriateness, but in very low quantities.
... First, one wonders how anything that has found a satisfyingly appropriate match of form to content could be bad, in any straightforward sense. But second, and oddly enough, badness here seems to be nothing more than the absence of goodness ... Yet aren't some defects in artworks absolute blemishes in their own right, not just substandard virtues ... ?
... bad science fiction films and sidewalk paintings at art fairs are often like this. ... The problem is not that they are
insufficiently good;
they are
altogether bad.
... there is
positive badness
and not merely
negative goodness
to be found in art, ...
Possibly some will say that that's okay. Sometimes an attempt at art can be so bad that we should not count it as art as all. So maybe the neoformalist is onto something important.
To create an artwork
is an achievement of sorts.
An artwork, thus, cannot be altogether bad. ...
But there are two problems here. The first is obvious, namely:
what is a sufficient amount
of appropriateness and
how do we measure it?
Can this be done
without
courting arbitrariness?
But there is also a deeper problem. Appropriateness or satisfying appropriateness is a matter of degrees. ... But being an artwork is not a matter of degrees. Rather,
something is art
or
it is not art.
It's beyond my present philosophical competence to try to evaluate this argument. For now: This absolutism really seems like a choice! It's a choice that was made explicit at the very beginning of the book. And for all I know it may be a very useful, wise choice for so-and-so to have made. But the contrary choice (i.e. to admit reasoning by degree) doesn't seem philosophically unworkable. What does it seem to be? It seems like a wise choice for someone in a different situation than Our Man Here. It seems possibly unwise for a practitioner, who requires some healthy-closed-mindedness, some friction-in-order-to-create-traction. But as the proverbial audience member, why not take what you can get? Why not choose to affirm rather than deny the artlikeness of (some) chess games? Why railroad yourself intellectually into denying this artlikeness, though it is right under your nose? Similarly, why insist that this artlikeness is thoroughgoing when it seems obvious to all concerned (including Our Man) that it is merely partial?
Why?
...
...
[135]
... if degree concepts are ill-suited to define either/or concepts ... then there is a deep problem with the neoformalist's attempt to define art in terms of satisfyingly appropriate form. ...
... suppose the neoformalist attempts to resolve this inadequacy by stipulating ... a threshold below which a work's amount of formal appropriateness is not sufficient to count as art. ... Constant disputes will arise along the border between art and nonart. ... some nonarbitrary principle must be found for determining what amount of degree of formal appropriateness is just enough. But that seems a hopeless task.
... the reader may be surprised that it was not suggested that it be resolved by replacing the requirement of formal appropriateness with the
more modest
requirement that the formal appropriateness
merely be intended
by the artist.
More modest?!
More like: easier said than done. There's nothing the least bit modest epistemologically about this appeal to intent. Rather, that sort of claim is notoriously difficult to evaluate.
Thus, an artwork need not
achieve
a satisfyingly appropriate match of form to content, but only
be intended to achieve
it. ... Would this save neoformalism?
Not really. ... many artifacts that are not art have form and content that are not only related in satisfyingly appropriate ways, but which are intended to be so related.
... Ordinary Brillo boxes, for instance, are about the product Brillo, about which they say something by means of their shapes and colors. ...
...
[136]
... Brillo boxes project Proctor and Gamble's idea of their product in an economical, appropriate, and even imaginative way. But ordinary Brillo boxes are not art, even if Andy Warhol's appropriation of them is.
... Many cultural artifacts match their content with satisfyingly appropriate forms. That is what
commercial design
is all about. ... The labels on bottles of mouthwash have content, have meanings, and are about something. The companies that sell them hire armies of graphic designers to articulate it to find an appropriate form for the content. ... But have you ever seen a bottle of mouthwash in a grocery store that you would call art? Yet might not a neoformalist have to?
A Social/Institutional Theorist certainly would!
The (hereafter proverbial) bottle of mouthwash may not be an art object, but as an art work it falls squarely within any number of contemporary theories!
Cultural artifacts—including gestures and behaviors—of all sorts
have content
and are
freighted with meanings.
Maybe most are. And, additionally, quite of few of them articulate their meanings by means of appropriate forms, ... But not all such cultural productions are art; ...
Perhaps they are not Fine Art. Are they Functional Art?
Unlike most of the institutional Boomersphere platitudes featured here, these are concepts that we actually (still) use. May we eventually get around to analysing those kinds of concepts, please?
And yet, by the same token, it is hard to see how neoformalism can deny them art status.
Maybe that was the whole point?
...
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