Philosophy Looks at the Arts
ed. Joseph Margolis
(Third Edition, 1987)
[Sibley, "Aesthetic Concepts" (cont.)]
[41]II
A great deal of work remains to be done on aesthetic concepts. In the remainder of this paper I shall offer some further suggestions which may help towards an understanding of them.
The realization that aesthetic concepts are governed only negatively by conditions is likely to give rise to puzzlement over how we manage to apply the words in our aesthetic vocabulary. ... One very natural way to counter this question is to point out that some other sorts of concepts also are not condition-governed. We do not apply simple color words by following rules or in accordance with principles. We see that the book is red by looking, just as we tell that the tea is sweet by tasting it. ... This kind of comparison... is indeed familiar;... Yet whatever the similarities, there are great dissimilarities too. ... ...but certain differences stand out, and writers who have emphasized that aesthetic judgments are not "mechanical" have sometimes dwelt on and been puzzled by them.
...while our ability to discern aesthetic features is dependent upon our possession of good eyesight, hearing, and so on, people normally endowed with senses and understanding may nevertheless fail to discern them. ...
It is this difference between aesthetic and perceptual qualities which in part leads to the view that "works of art are esoteric objects . . . not simple objects of sense perception." But there is no good reason for calling an object esoteric simply because we discern aesthetic qualities in it.
It's our experience of the object which is esoteric , no?
"
there is no such thing as the listener. Everyone listens differently.
"
...
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...
The second notable difference between the exercise of taste and the use of the five senses lies in the way we support those judgments in which aesthetic concepts are employed. ..."disputation about art is not futile," as Miss Macdonald says, for critics do "attempt a certain kind of explanation of works of art with the object of establishing correct judgments." Thus even though this disputation does not consist in "deductive or inductive inference" or "reasoning," its occurrence is enough to show how very different these judgments are from those of a simple perceptual sort.
The argument that occurrence is enough is pretty flimsy, but as it happens this broken clock is probably pointing at the correct time. It would indeed be strange for anyone and everyone to issue critical diktats about, say, silverware, but we do have people around who concern themselves with small-picture and big-picture silverware stuff, issues which would never occur to the rest of us and probably shouldn't. "I'm a huge nerd about silverware." i.e. We can thus assume the presence of some "semantic associations" which, somehow or other, "are the proximal determinants of aesthetic preferences." And subsequently we can expect, it is true, the occasional solipsistic disputation over utterly trivial matters. But that doesn't mean we have to like it.
True enough, mere "preference" is a long way from a certain kind of explanation of works of art with the object of establishing correct judgments . But is this really enough to show how very different these judgments are from those of a simple perceptual sort ? It seems that if we want to will the weightiness of our own "judgments" into existence, all we have to do is to perform that weightiness, i.e. to offer a certain kind of explanation , on what topic it hardly matters; and at that point its occurrence is enough to validate our nerding-out. This snarky inversion of the above conditions is meant as exactly what it is, certainly, but I offer it also to suggest that the most obvious explanations can escape the best minds when those explanations hit a bit too close to home, i.e. when we've decided from the outset that something is not futile simply because it does occur .
What's different about these judgments , then, is the way they goad the judg-ers into solipsism by "touching" us on some "deeper" level; this as opposed to those judgments of a simple perceptual sort which come and go without us feeling any need to support them. Of course it all starts with perception (there's nowhere else it could start), but it doesn't always end there. I just refuse to accept from the outset that this solipsism has some essential role to play. I'm not interested in starting from the premise that it is essential and then trying to find a way forward from there. I would rather back up several steps and realize just how inessential and culturebound all of this really is. Which, I gather, plenty of people have already done, but humor me while I catch up. I think it really, truly is elitist also, which is a word I try to reserve only for its narrowest and most clearcut cases. And I think that coming out of a Classical Music upbringing, coming through a Universitory, running the gambits of Damschroeder's and Grayson's classes when I would really rather have been taking chemistry classes but still "majoring" in "music," all of this has, let's say, left its mark.
Now the critic's talk, it is clear, frequently consists in mentioning or pointing out the features, including easily discernible nonaesthetic ones, upon which the aesthetic qualities depend. But the puzzling question remains how, by mentioning these features, the critic is thereby justifying or supporting his judgments.
No shit.
... Stuart Hampshire, for example, says that "One engages in aesthetic discussion for the sake of what one might see on the way. . . . If one has been brought to see what there is to be seen in the object, the purpose of discussion is achieved . . . . The point is to bring people to see these features." ... But even when it is agreed that this is one of the main things that critics do, puzzlement tends to break out again over how they do it. How is it that by talking about features of the work (largely nonaesthetic ones) we can manage to bring others to see what they had not seen? ...
Well, if that's literally all we're trying to do, then this is not too farfetched. It's very simple actually. But all concerned here must realize that bringing others to see what they had not seen is either a strawman or an ideological dissociation. The unspoken implication of so much "criticism," formal and informal criticism alike, is nothing of the sort. Rather, it is to compensate for a quotidian experience by explaining verbally what would/should have made that experience transcendent. It is noticing that people who "don't get" classical music also "don't get" sonata form, and so drawing a totally spurious causal connection where in fact mere correlation is all that can responsibly be adduced. But I think Vessel et al are much closer to the real explanation with their theory of "semantic associations." I'm sure that lots remains to be fleshed out on that front, but I think it's safe to assume that these "associations" cannot be concertedly cultivated, whether by the critic or by the subject themselves.
Someone somewhere linked to this short article by Lakoff which seems relevant both to criticism proper and to the thornier ontological and phenomenological questions about artworks of which classic "criticism" seems wilfully ignorant:
What are words? Words are neural links between spoken and written expressions and frames, metaphors, and narratives. When we hear the words, not only their immediate frames and metaphors are activated, but also all the high-level worldviews and associated narratives—with their emotions—are activated. Words are not just words—they activate a huge range of brain mechanisms. Moreover, words don't just activate neutral meanings; they are often defined relative to conservative framings. And our most important political words...name "contested concepts," concepts with a common shared core that is unspecified, which is then extended to most of its cases based on your values. Thus conservative "freedom" is utterly different than progressive "freedom,"...
i.e. To Tenney-ize this last part,
there is no such thing
as
the audience for criticism.
Words
don't just activate
neutral meanings.
The way to achieve what "criticism" was out to achieve, then, is to actually change people's "high-level worldviews," their "conservative framings" of incoming stimuli, their "associated narrative." Maybe I'm projecting too much based on hindsight, but papers such as this one often leave me wondering if this was beginning to be understood a very long time ago yet could not quite be accepted because its implications were so profoundly in conflict with basically every other aspect of the mandarin critic's worldview; indeed, in conflict not just with their worldview as critics specifically but also as enlightened Westerners generally.
There are two such big-picture implications which are immediately apparent from the above.
First:
if people are to change in this way, it is not going to be easy; it is going to take a lot of time, certainly; perhaps also (and this leads naturally to the second big "implication") a lot of force. But even assuming perfect benevolence of intent, the cost-benefit analysis of "deep" change doesn't quite add up. We need to be receiving more than just "access" to a canon of artworks to justify a self-dissolution of this magnitude. In this sense, the artworks do truly seem to be demanding much more of us than they reasonably ought to. The critics think they're demanding something far easier and simpler. They breeze along merely
for the sake of what one might see on the way.
, as if that was all that was required.
Second:
The "deeper" the "change" that is sought, the more the chang-ers evince a "totalitarian" or "elitist" or maybe just "snooty" sort of position. When the desired change is seen to be much more profound even than the most "profound" art-ifacts of bourgeois decadence could reasonably be said to be, and when the process appears, to boot, as entirely top-down, suddenly the whole enterprise does not seem worth the trouble, even if it now, finally, seems well-enough understood to be attempted. The inability to get people to agree on certain things suddenly seems a lot less dire when it is held up against the backdrop of full-on reeducation.
It must have been a lot more comforting to believe that all you had to do to get someone to "appreciate" classical music was to pour them a soft drink and explain sonata form. This paints the critic's wider project as part of the gentle churn and negotiation of the Marketplace of Ideas, where the fittest ideas always win out in the end. But then it begins to become apparent that if "sonata form" per se is not in the very air you breathe, if it is not part of your very most conservative of "conservative framings" and highest of "high-level worldviews", if it is not already deep in there, then getting it in there after the fact is going to be anything but gentle. I do wonder if this began to become apparent long before it was able to be accepted? And of course it still is not easily accepted by a whole lot of people, elite and plebeian alike.
Yet of course we do succeed in applying aesthetic terms, and we frequently do succeed by talking (and pointing and gesturing in certain ways) in bringing others to see what we see.
You think so, eh?
One begins to suspect that puzzlement over how we can possibly do this, and puzzlement over the "esoteric" character of aesthetic qualities too, arises from bearing in mind
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inappropriate philosophical models. When someone is unable to see that the book on the table is brown, we cannot get him to see that it is by talking; consequently it seems puzzling that we might get someone to see that the vase is graceful by talking.
I am arguing that gracefulness is a "contested concept" in Lakoff's sense. It doesn't seem quite important enough to be one, but in the above hypothetical it self-evidently is.
...
Miss Macdonald, for example, subscribes to this view of the critic's task as presenting "what is not obvious to casual or uninstructed inspection," and she does ask the question "What sort of considerations are involved, and how, to justify a critical verdict?" (my italics). But she does not in fact go on to answer it. She addresses herself instead to the different, though related, question of the interpretation of art works. ...Miss Macdonald suggests that in critical discourse the critic is bringing us to see what he sees by offering new interpretations. But if the question is "what (the critic) does and how he does it," he cannot be represented either wholly or even mainly as providing new interpretations.
Oh?
His task quite as often is simply to help us appreciate qualities which other critics have regularly found in the works he discusses. To put the stress upon new interpretations is to leave untouched the question how, by talking, he can help us to see either the newly appreciated aesthetic qualities or the old. ...
Hampshire," who likewise believes that the critic brings us "to see what there is to be seen in the object," does give some account of how the critic does this. "The greatest service of the critic" is to point out, isolate, and place in a frame of attention the "particular features of the particular object which make it ugly or beautiful"; for it is "difficult to see and hear all that there is to see and hear," and simply a prejudice to suppose that while "things really do have colors and shapes . . . there do not exist literally and objectively, concordances of colors and perceived rhythms and balances of shapes." However, these "extraordinary qualities" which the critic "may have seen (in the wider sense of 'see')" are "qualities which are
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of no direct practical interest." Consequently, to bring us to see them the critic employs "an unnatural use of words in description"; "the common vocabulary, being created for practical purposes, obstructs any disinterested perception of things"; and so these qualities "are normally described metaphorically by some transference of terms from the common vocabulary."
Much of what Hampshire says is right. But there is also something quite wrong in the view that the "common" vocabulary "obstructs" our aesthetic purposes, that it is "unnatural" to take it over and use it metaphorically, and that the critic "is under the necessity of building . . . a vocabulary in opposition to the main tendency of his language" (my italics).
Well, come to think of it, the "common" vocabulary does in fact "obstruct" a certain disinterested perception of things , but perhaps not for the reasons given here. Rather, to the extent that it is truly common to that same extent has it been used up. It is very difficult to find verbiage that is "common" enough to avoid running headlong into those pesky "contested concepts." It might be better, actually, to use un-common verbiage which people have not yet had a chance to churn over. But that seems not to be what any party to this discourse was actually getting at above.
First, while we do often coin new metaphors in order to describe aesthetic qualities, we are by no means always under the necessity of wresting the "common vocabulary" from its "natural" uses to serve our purposes. ... Second, this view that our use of metaphor and quasi-metaphor for aesthetic purposes is unnatural or a makeshift into which we are forced by a language designed for other purposes misrepresents fundamentally the character of aesthetic qualities and aesthetic language.
Can't disagree with this part.
There is nothing unnatural about using words like "forceful," "dynamic," or "tightly knit" in criticism; ... In using them to describe works of art, the very point is that we are noticing aesthetic qualities related to their literal or common meanings. ... Hampshire pictures "a colony of aesthetes, disengaged from practical needs and manipulations"... But if they had a new and "directly descriptive" vocabulary lacking the links with nonaesthetic properties and interests which our vocabulary possesses, they would have to remain silent about many of the aesthetic qualities we can describe; further, if they were more completely "disengaged from practical needs" and other nonaesthetic awarenesses and interests, they would perforce be blind to many aesthetic qualities we can appreciate. The links between aesthetic qualities and nonaesthetic ones are both obvious and vital. Aesthetic concepts, all of them, carry with them
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attachments and in one way or another are tethered to or parasitic upon nonaesthetic features. The fact that many aesthetic terms are metaphorical or quasi-metaphorical in no way means that common language is an ill-adapted tool with which we have to struggle. When someone writes as Hampshire does, one suspects again that critical language is being judged against other models.
Not sure I'm following this part. We can all agree that critical language comes out a bit the worse for wear when judged against other models . The disagreement seems to be over the reason why.
...
To help understand what the critic does, then, how he supports his judgments and gets his audience to see what he sees, I shall attempt a brief description of the methods we use as critics.
(1) We may simply mention or point out nonaesthetic features: "Notice these flecks of color, that dark mass there, those lines." By merely drawing attention to those easily discernible features which make the painting luminous or warm or dynamic, we often succeed in bringing someone to see these aesthetic qualities. We get him to see B by mentioning something different, A. Sometimes in doing this we are drawing attention to features which may have gone unnoticed by an untrained or insufficiently attentive eye or ear: "Just listen for the repeated figure in the left hand." "Did you notice the figure of Icarus in the Breughel? It is very small." ...
Alternatively, perhaps people's ways of noticing (or not noticing) different things in different artworks is an adaptive social trait rather than a maladaptive one. Perhaps when too many people begin to notice only certain things (and therefore to not notice certain others), a society becomes increasingly "fragile" in Taleb's sense.
...
(2) On the other hand we often simply mention the very qualities we want people to see. We point to a painting and say, "Notice how nervous and delicate the drawing is,"...
Seems even less helpful than (1). See basically every preceeding comment above.
(3) Most often, there is a linking of remarks about aesthetic and nonaesthetic features: "Have you noticed this line and that, and the points of bright color here and there . . . don't they give it vitality, energy?"
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(4) We do, in addition, often make extensive and helpful use of similes and genuine metaphors: "It's as if there were small points of light burning," "as though he had thrown on the paint violently and in anger,"
Funny example, this second one, because it's a terrible example for the author's purposes but nonetheless a fairly representative example of something a "critic" might vomit up. Calling this a metaphor is unusually disingenuous. I guess I can see how someone fully initiated into "criticism" and totally unquestioning of its strictures could read this without actually taking it to suggest an intention; but for the rest of us it not only suggests an intention but indeed supports this ascription of intention with a reference to technique. This suggestion is nonetheless entirely circumstantial and therefore uncertain. More likely it is projected by the critic themselves...but we don't actually know that either! So the end result is a lot of innuendo and not a lot of joy.
...
(5) We make use of contrasts, comparisons, and reminiscences: "Suppose he had made that a lighter yellow, moved it to the right, how flat it would have been." "Don't you think it has something of the quality of a Rembrandt?" "Hasn't it the same serenity, peace, and quality of light of those summer evenings in Norfolk?" We use what keys we have to the known sensitivity, susceptibilities, and experience of our audience.
Unlock me, baby.
...
(6) Repetition and reiteration often play an important role. ...we may come back time and again to the same points, drawing attention to the same lines and shapes, repeating the same words,... ...it often helps to talk round what we have said, to build up, supplement with more talk of the same kind. ...failing to score a direct hit, we may succeed with a barrage of near-synonyms.
Well, as Dr. Grayson once paraphrased Schoenberg, "repetition is for children."
(7) Finally, besides our verbal performances, the rest of our behavior is important. We accompany our talk with appropriate tones of voice, expression, nods, looks, and gestures. A critic may sometimes do more with a sweep of the arm than by talking. An appropriate gesture may make us see the violence in a painting or the character of a melodic line.
Hand-Waving™
Intellectually Dishonest, Critically Essential
...
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...
By realizing clearly that, whether we are dealing with art or scenery or people or natural objects, this is how we operate with aesthetic concepts, we may recognize this sphere of human activity for what it is.
We operate, with different kinds of concepts in different ways. If we want someone to agree that a color is red we may take it into a good light and ask him to look;... if we want him to agree that a figure is fourteen-sided we get him to count; and to bring him to agree that something is dilapidated or that someone is intelligent or lazy we may do other things,...
These are the methods appropriate to these various concepts. But the ways we get someone to see aesthetic qualities are different;...
We cannot prove by argument or by assembling a sufficiency of conditions that something is graceful; but this is no more puzzling than our inability to prove, by using the methods, metaphors, and gestures of the art critic, that it will be mate in ten moves. ...
... I shall end by showing that the methods I have outlined are the ones natural for and characteristic of taste concepts from the start.
When someone tries to make me see that a painting is delicate or balanced, I have some understanding of these terms already and know in a sense what I am looking for. But if there is puzzlement over how, by talking, he can bring me to see these qualities in this picture, there should be a corresponding puzzlement over how I learned to use aesthetic terms and discern aesthetic qualities in the first place.
We may ask, therefore, how we learn to do these things; and this is to inquire (1) what natural potentialities and tendencies people have and (2) how we
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develop and take advantage of these capacities in training and teaching. ...
...consider first those words like "dynamic," "melancholy," "balanced,"...
It has already been emphasized that we could not use them thus without some experience of situations where they are used literally. The present inquiry is how we shift from literal to aesthetic uses of them.
For this it is required that there be certain abilities and tendencies to link experiences,... It is a feature of human intelligence and sensitivity that we do spontaneously do these things and that the tendency can be encouraged and developed.
It is no more baffling that we should employ aesthetic terms of this sort than that we should make metaphors at all. ... We suggest to children that simple pieces of music are hurrying or running or skipping or dawdling,...
But the child also discovers for himself many of these parallels... ...without this natural tendency our training would get nowhere. Insofar, however, as we do take advantage of this tendency and help him by training, we do just what the critic does. ...
Of course the recognition of similarities and simple metaphorical extensions are not the only transitions to the aesthetic use of language. Others are made in different ways;...
When our admiration is for something as simple as the thinness of a glass or the smoothness of a fabric, it is not difficult to call attention to such things,...
These transitions are only the beginnings; it may often be questionable whether a term is yet being used aesthetically or not. ...
[49]
... When we have brought someone to make this sort of metaphorical extension of terms, he has made one of the transitional steps from which he may move on to uses which more obviously deserve to be called aesthetic and demand more aesthetic appreciation. ...
...once these transitions from common to aesthetic uses are begun in the more obvious cases, the domain of aesthetic concepts may broaden out, and they may become more subtle and even partly autonomous. The initial steps, however varied the metaphorical shifts and however varied the experiences upon which they are parasitic, are natural and easy.
Much the same is true when we turn to those words which have no standard nonaesthetic use, "lovely," "pretty," "dainty," "graceful," "elegant."
We cannot say that these are learned by a metaphorical shift. But they still are linked to nonaesthetic features in many ways and the learning of them also is made possible by certain kinds of natural response, reaction, and ability.
We learn them not so much by noticing similarities, but by our attention being caught and focused in other ways. ... It is not an accident that the first lessons in aesthetic appreciation consist in drawing the child's attention to roses rather than to grass; nor is it surprising that we remark to him on the autumn colors rather than on the subdued tints of winter. We all of us, not only children, pay aesthetic attention more readily and easily to such outstanding and easily noticeable things. ...
[50]
... It is at these times, taking advantage of these natural interests and admirations, that we first teach the simpler aesthetic words.
...these situations may serve as a beginning from which we extend our aesthetic interests to wider and less obvious fields, mastering as we go the more subtle and specific vocabulary of taste.
The principles do not change; the basis for learning more specific terms like "graceful," "delicate," and "elegant" is also our interest in and admiration for various nonaesthetic natural properties...
And even with these aesthetic terms which are not metaphorical themselves ("graceful," "delicate," "elegant"), we rely in the same way upon the critic's methods, including comparison, illustration, and metaphor, to teach or make clear what they mean.
I have wished to emphasize in the latter part of this paper the natural basis of responses of various kinds without which aesthetic terms could not be learned.
...in particular I have wanted to urge that it should not strike us as puzzling that the critic supports his judgments and brings us to see aesthetic qualities by pointing out key features and talking about them in the way he does. It is by the very same methods that people helped us develop our aesthetic sense and master its vocabulary from the beginning.
If we responded to those methods then, it is not surprising that we respond to the critic's discourse now. ...
Notes
...
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