Noël Carroll
Philosophy of Art: A contemporary introduction
(1999)
[19]
1
Art and representation
Part 1
Art as representation
Art, imitation and
representation
... In the course of outlining his utopia, [Plato] argued that poets—particularly dramatists—should be outlawed. ... According to Plato, the essence of drama was imitation—the simulation of appearances. ... he believed that appearances appeal to the emotions and that stirring up the emotions is socially dangerous. An emotional citizenry is an unstable citizenry, ready to be swayed by demagogues ...
Arguments like Plato's against poetry are
still heard today
when it comes to discussions of the mass media.
How alike are these arguments, really?
Often we are told that TV with its seductive imagery ... makes for an unthinking electorate.
Because seductive TV imagery makes us ready to be swayed? Because this imagery appeals to the emotions? Who is making that argument quite like Plato?
...
Aristotle, however, believed that Plato's case was overstated. ...
[20]
... Tragedy evokes pity and fear in spectators, but, he said, it does this for the purpose of catharsis—that is, for the purpose of purging the emotions. ...
... Aristotle also thought that Plato was mistaken in presuming that drama did not address the mind ... He maintained that people can learn from imitations, ...
Though Plato and Aristotle disagree in their diagnosis ... Both take poetry to be involved essentially in the imitation of action. ...
What painters try to do, on the Platonic-Aristotelian view, is to reproduce the appearances of things—to copy them— ...
... Plato and Aristotle primarily thought of dance and music as accompaniments ... They were parts of drama, ... Thus, along with drama and painting, Plato and Aristotle thought of music and dance as primarily imitative or representational arts.
[21]
When the Greeks used their word for "art," they had a broader conception in mind than we do today. For them,
an art
was
any practice that required skill.
Medicine and soldiering were arts on this conception.
...
[they]
would not have defined the arts, in their sense, as solely involved in imitation.
However, it is clear that
...
[they]
thought that these
[today's fine arts]
shared a common feature:
...
imitation.
...
the theory of art that we find presupposed
[here]
...
We may state it thus:
x is an artwork only if it is an imitation.
...
Today, after almost a century of abstract painting,
...
the theory that art is imitation appears to us to fail as a general theory of art,
...
...
...
in deference to Plato and Aristotle, we should also add that
...
When they went in the theater, or when they went to the unveiling of a new sculpture, what they saw were imitations
...
[22]
...
So, in their own time, the imitative (mimetic) theory of art advanced by Plato and Aristotle had some initial plausibility.
It coincided with the dominant examples of Greek art and it also
informed readers about
in the art of their contemporaries,
Seriously, Boomer?!
...
...
The
[imitation]
theory became especially important in the eighteenth century, since it was at that time that theorists began to codify
our modern system of the fine arts.
...
a way of grouping certain practices
—like painting and poetry—into
a category distinct from other practices
—like astronomy and chemistry.
...
Painting, poetry, dance, music, drama and sculpture came to be regarded as the fine arts—the arts with a capital A.
These are the practices
...
that nowadays we expect to be
listed
in the section of
college bulletins
devoted to the arts programs;
and these are the kinds of things we expect to find
represented
at
art centers.
We do not expect to find scale models of space stations there.
Here is an Institutional Theory of the
modern system!
If these particular institutions didn't exist in the eighteenth century (not in anything like their "modern" forms), then these particular examples don't much enlighten us about the
beginning
of this
way of grouping.
But sure,
this is its destiny.
It is a "concept" upon which these contemporary institutions do indeed depend: they need to be able
to say concretely
what they do, and moreover,
to differentiate themselves
from myriad parallel institutions which may seem (and perhaps they really do) perform the same functions more adequately but in
a category distinct
from the
so-called
fine arts.
(Invidious comparison, again.)
Today this way of grouping the arts seems natural to us.
Not to the musicians,
...
A particularly important text
...
was
The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle,
...
by the Frenchman Charles Batteux in 1747.
...
what is that principle? Imitation.
...
[23]
...
...
You may wonder, for example, how music could have been regarded as an imitative art.
Here, theorists argued not only that music could imitate beautiful sounds in nature
...
but, more importantly, that it could imitate the human voice,
...
Similarly, though much dance
...
does not appear imitative, eighteenth-century theorists,
essentially reformers,
advocated
that theatrical dancing—dance as art—become imitative,
...
Moreover, the commitment to imitation
also
encouraged
serious painters
...
to continue their pursuit of greater and greater feats of realism ...
Note once again the top-down aspect of all of this.
What if the
serious painters
didn't have to be
encouraged
by a
theory?
What if this is what they already wanted to do, and
the theory came from the want-to
rather than the other way around?
As for those among us who truly and self-consciously seek to
inform
others
about what to look for and to appreciate,
are
all these sort of people
not indeed
essentially reformers?
Thus, for several reasons,
the authority
of the imitation theory of art
persisted
well into the nineteenth century.
A proponent of the theory
could still
claim
of describing existing art properly so called,
...
(if only, in some cases,
because practitioners
aspired to meet
necessary for cherished membership
...
).
...
Indeed,
the influence
of the imitation theory of art
can still be found
in the twentieth century: until only a generation ago, one could hear
people
saying of an abstract painting that it isn't art because it doesn't look like anything.
And even today,
some people
will say that a certain film is not art because it lacks a story—
...
Have all of these
people
really
been
influenced
by Plato, Aristotle, and Batteux?
Our Man cannot possibly mean this, can he? But this (somehow)
is
what he says.
I thought that by 1999 we had decided to stop saying such things?
Of course, views like this are presently regarded as philistine—the opinion of people uninformed about art and, unfortunately, unashamed by displaying their ignorance.
But
that ignorance does not
It is a residue
of the imitation theory
...
which
...
, until the nineteenth century had
...
some empirical credibility.
Several things, however, have happened since then to undermine the theory decisively.
So,
This is, however,
Namely, it comes from . . .
(a theory which is centuries or millennia old),
paired with an
ignorance
Some people
know their ancient history very well and their recent history not at all.
Copy that.
[24]
By the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, visual art clearly begins to deviate from the aim of imitating nature.
...
...
[Certain]
modern art refuted the imitation theory of art as a general philosophical conjecture,
...
But these counterexamples also encourage us to take a second look at art history and to ask whether the imitation theory was ever accurate.
...
Minimalist art, for instance, reminds us that
there was always
visual art of pure visual design,
...
The history of pure visual decoration is as longstanding as the history of figuration.
...
...
the imitation theory
...
[also]
never really adequately characterized literature.
...
Plato and Aristotle thought of literature in terms of dramatic poetry,
...
[25]
actors imitating the speech of characters.
...
lyric poetry spoken aloud
...
But once we start to think of literature in terms of novels and short stories, the idea that it is imitative, where imitation involves copying or simulating appearances, becomes strained.
For
novels are made up of words,
and
words don't look like their referents.
Hmm. Perhaps the
words
are not the
novel?
(Perhaps the "word" is not the "concept"?)
...
...
the friend of the Platonic-Aristotelian theory may leave off talking in terms of
imitation
in favor of
representation.
...
something that
...
imitation is a subcategory of representation.
However, the notion of representation is
broader,
since
something can also
...
...
representation
[as such]
...
can deal with the problem of literature,
...
the description of the Battle of Borodino in
War and Peace
represents it
without
literally copying
it.
...
[Still,]
...
the representational theory of art remains unsalvageable, since much art is not representational.
...
...
Consider architecture: many of the finest buildings in history are not intended to stand for something.
The cathedral of St. Peter in Rome does not
stand for
a house of God;
it is
a house of God.
...
the Capitol Building
...
does not stand for the legislature; it houses the legislature.
Of course I'm in no hurry to rescue the Imitation/Representation Theory, but this
critique
is altogether inadequate.
Probably all of these do
stand for
something;
if that something-they-do-stand-for is not (always) the selfsame thing that they
are,
if it is not (always) the thing they
do,
this by no means entails that
nothing at all
is "represented" by them.
It's not adequate to simply enumerate features of a work openendedly until we hit upon one that is or is not "represented"
by and in
the work, only so that we can claim thereby that the work is
not intended to stand for something.
The process of enumerating features, for this purpose, must itself be
analytic,
and it seems very much
not
to be analytic here.
This is a recurring problem with the book. The charitable view is that passages like the above are expertly crafted precisely to stimulate critical responses. These passages (by the end there are too many to count) certainly do a good job of that, but more in the vein of hamhanded pedantry than expert craftsmanship. And I suspect we will see, later (perhaps years later, but bear with me), that these particular bouts of hamhandedness cannot be mere calculated deviations from Carroll's own views, offered to facilitate thinking rather than to impart knowledge. They cannot be this, because . . . they
are not
deviations from his explicit positions taken in his "real" work.
In college, during some winter breaks, I used to housesit for a couple of my dad's grad students. This book was on the nightstand one year, along with Danto's
After The End Of Art,
presumably under perusal in preparation for a teaching assignment. I read most of both during that break. As the Emerson meme goes,
"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me."
I definitely was influenced (directed might be a better way to put it) without necessarily retaining any explicit knowledge. And now I've finally returned to both, I've taken them apart word by word, and . . .
I would never teach them,
and I'd fight hard against the suggestion that they should be taught. But I suppose it's worth noting that when I was a student myself, (1) my reaction was mild curiosity, not (as now) violent disagreement, and (2) for two decades hence I truly didn't
"remember the books ... any more than the meals I have eaten."
So, there are at least a couple of different lessons in that.
...
[26]
...
The neo-representational
...
it must be admitted,
that this is a bit of a misnomer,
...
the theory does not claim that in order to be an artwork a candidate must represent something
...
[it]
makes a weaker claim,
...
in order to count as a work of art, the candidate must be
about something
(i.e.,
it must have a subject,
).
that about which the artwork expresses something
. . .
or,
presumably,
literally anything else
. . . ?
Stated briefly, the theory maintains that:
x is an artwork only if it is about something.
This theory can be expanded by being more explicit about what is involved in being "about something."
x is an artwork only if x has a subject about which it makes some comment
(about which it says something, expresses some observation).
[27]
This notion might also be stated by alleging that in order to count as art, a candidate must have some
semantic content.
Indeed, it is in virtue of
[this]
...
that we call this theory neo-representationalism, since
the concept of semantics
and that of
representation
are intimately connected.
...
Perhaps the easiest way to see what is attractive about neorepresentationalism is to note how it handles some difficult cases
...
[e.g.]
the readymade or the found object.
...
...
If
Fountain
and
In Advance of a Broken Arm
are artworks, why aren't things that look just like them
...
artworks too?
...
...
Here, the neo-representationalist advances the tantalizing hypothesis that Duchamp's readymades possess aboutness, whereas their ordinary, perceptually indiscernible, real-world counterparts do not.
[28]
...
But what does it mean to say that the readymades
possess aboutness?
That
they have a subject
For example,
art historians often maintain that
Fountain
and
In Advance of a Broken Arm
are
about art
...
[that these works]
insinuate that artworks need not be literally created or sculpted by the labor of the artist
...
This view contrasts with
more sanctimonious views
of art which regard the artwork as virtually a relic or spiritual imprint
...
Or, it might be said, Duchamp makes the
theoretical point
that the essence of art is not manual labor or craft.
...
[Or]
Fountain
might be
"read" as a parody
of sculpture—
...
In short, Duchamp's readymades
warrant interpretations.
It makes sense to ask what they are about.
Ominous!
Why should this be?
Do we really
need to know
the answer?
It makes sense to ask
something
and if . . .
But if the impetus is a mere
want,
then it "makes" neither less nor more "sense" to
not ask.
Only a
need
makes it
necessary
to ask.
So, saying that an asking-action "makes sense" is not really saying anything.
Must
we ask?
The sorts of interpretations rehearsed in the preceding paragraph answer that question.
To reiterate, the
sorts of interpretations
in question are:
(1) insinuation;
Purportedly
On the other hand, it does not make sense to ask what ordinary urinals and snow shovels are about.
Why
does
it
make sense
to ask what
Fountain
is about? Because it has semantic content?
More likely it is because we
suspect
that it has semantic content. We itch. Yet we do not know (or perhaps understand) what that content is, what it is saying. We can't quite localize the itch. Perhaps we simply find this situation intolerable in and of itself, but then what is driving this feeling?
We
must be driving it, at least in tandem with this or that inherent property of the object, or perhaps, in a few anomalous mediums, in outright defiance of those properties. In a manner of speaking,
some part of us
has a need-to-know, though there seems to be no such
real
need. That is how I would assess this issue. It "makes sense" to me that this should be the assessment. But the situation as I've assessed it
doesn't
totally "make sense." I contend that this is "our practice," and that it doesn't totally make sense. Hence an "analysis"
per se
cannot be expected to reveal only truths but also a few lies . . . and the Big Lie that has already been told, the Big Backside of the Big Liar that is already showing, is this conceit that
"it makes sense to ask what they
[artworks]
are about."
Ordinary urinals and snow shovels are not about anything; they have no semantic content; they are mute—meaningless.
As above with the cathedral and the legislature, this suggests that an object's
function
is not something that it can be "about." An object cannot "mean" its function.
Obviously there
is
an analytically substantive distinction between "function" and "meaning," and obviously this must be kept sight of. That distinction front of mind, it still seems hardly more plausible that the meaning of an artifact would inhere in the
theoretical point
that it
makes
or in what it merely
insinuates
than that the meaning would inhere in this object's function.
...
if you stand in the men's restroom contemplating what the urinals express, you'll probably get arrested.
But,
do
feel free to
analyse
the
concept
"urinal" from the comfort and safety of your own commode/abode.
Our behavior,
then, confronting readymades versus their indiscernible real-world counterparts is radically different.
With readymades
we presume
that it is correct and appropriate to interpret them—
we presume
that they are about something and that
an appropriate response
to them is to determine
what they have to "say"
or
what they imply
concerning whatever they are about.
This is not the
appropriate response
to
ordinary urinals and shovels.
...
the latter are not artworks and, therefore, are not about anything.
...
[29]
...
how generalizable is aboutness? Is it a property of all artworks?
...
Many other sorts of things—from sermons to advertisements to physics articles—have a subject about which they say something.
...
But is
[aboutness]
, nevertheless, a property that anything that is an artwork must possess
...
?
One way to argue for this conclusion is to
begin with the premise
that all artworks require interpretations.
How revealing!
In the Introduction to this
introduction
we never got around to "analysing" the "concept" of a
premise.
Conventionally, as the word is used above, a premise is indeed something to
begin with.
What do we
finish
with? Perhaps a conclusion? And then, that conclusion, someone else's conclusion, may well be our starting premise. e.g., Millions of people air their opinions on the internet. They
conclude
that others, perhaps friends and relations, actually want to consume this content, since Uncle Richard is always posting comments with incomprehensible arrays of emoji clusters and misformed links to PBS talk shows. Then I come along and, plopping down into all of this
in medias res
as it were, I take everyone else's conclusion, their
finish,
as my premise, my
beginning:
Evidently people on the internet actually
want
my opinion. I have been giving it to them ever since.
Anyway, since this doorstop is not actually our "introduction" to the topic at hand, we know precisely which Neo-Representationalist has been
summoned from the shadows
here.
We know that the "premise"
that all artworks require interpretations
comes at the
end of a rather elaborate unfurling of excursus and analysis. To begin with the conclusion
here,
of all places, is to distort this dialogue beyond recognition, and while we ourselves disagree rather vehemently with this particular conclusion, the granular detail of the founding Neo-Representationalist dialogue is nothing to sneeze at, and we reasonably demand it be done better justice in a work that purports to introduce students to the field.
We
do not
know (not
really)
that the topline conclusion of Neo-Representationalism
really was
also
begun with;
we don't really know that this dialogue has been a process of mere rationalization rather than the process of bold discovery that it purports to be; but if we ourselves wanted to build that case, there is a flashing red "premise" veritably readymade for us "begin with." TBC . . .
How revealing, then, that another desperate elision of proprietary opinion would coax Our Man into saying the quiet part out loud!
When one
reads art criticism or art history books,
one is struck by the fact that they are
full of interpretations.
Very true in my case. Like a dog, I am so
struck by
this that I could just poop all over it.
It is
natural to presume
that all artworks are open to interpretation, since
that is what people who are experts about art
...
If we fail to define the concept: "art" this way, perhaps we have nevertheless succeeded (brilliantly) in defining the concept:
people who are experts about art.
But if anything calls for an interpretation, then surely it must be about something—
...
" . . . , and if it is about something, then
surely it must
call for an interpretation! . . . "
This much seems built into the concept or the definition of an interpretation—
...
that the object of interpretation have a subject about which it makes some comment.
An
interpretation
is just
the specification of that content.
Anything that truly warrants an interpretation must be about something—
...
Why else would it require an interpretation,
Finally, a
good question!
I hesitate to say a
difficult
question, because the answer seems obvious:
interpretation
is well and truly
required
when we find that
we lack some "required" piece of knowledge or understanding.
Interpretation is the course of action we take when we confront
a need to know.
Whatever all the "expert" interpretations might tell us about an artwork, these experts are always-already telling us that they (not us) have a "need to know." One problem, of course, is that
they are not us.
Another is that human beings are notoriously poor judges of their own needs. Perhaps we are somewhat better judges of
each other
in this regard; and yet, further perhaps, we become less capable the more this concern for others is
itself driven by the effort to meet needs of our own.
i.e. This is just the Beckerian conclusion that
"man's natural and inevitable urge to deny mortality and achieve a heroic self-image are the root causes of human evil."
(Escape From Evil, p. xxvi)
in its most discomfiting and paradoxical application, i.e. to the
"urge"
to do good and to help people, to the peculiar
"heroic self-image"
of the do-gooder Progressive, of the builders and the boosters and the meliorists.
And so, it is not quite sufficient (or right) to say that interpretation
is what people who are experts about art always seem to do
and to leave things there. Interpretation
is
this, but beyond this it is an especially favored-and-favorite practice of
experts about art who really, really want to do good and to help people.
That is the missing puzzle piece of "needing to know" that is never broached by these Analytic Philosophers.
And the result of that sort of "practice," good intentions aside, is, and can only be, . . . evil.
😈 😈 😈
How might we describe a less fraught
expert
standpoint? What kind of expert scholarly activity is actually benevolent, or at least innocuous? What's a good
word + concept
for the gait or mien or stance or posture (metaphors, all of these) of the non-do-gooder expert?
May I nominate . . .
disinterested?
Thus, if artworks require interpretations, then they must be about something.
This follows from
what it is to be an interpretation.
Not in the least! But enough about that, for now.
Stated formally, this argument maintains that:
This is a strong argument in favor of neo-representationalism.
Oh. Really?
...
The central defining property of
...
being about something
...
is more comprehensive than the one advanced by the representational theory—standing for something else.
For if x stands for y, x is about something, but there are more ways for x to be about something than standing for it.
...
[30]
...
...
The conclusion of a logically valid argument is only guaranteed to be true if the premises of the argument are true.
So the question before us is whether the preceding premises are true.
The second premise
...
seems credible.
So
is the first premise of the argument
Obviously we are now headed for the conclusion that it is not. What a relief! But this is now beyond hamhanded. Is this really the way to
introduce
the field? To learn to be critical, do you have to start with premises that are easy to be critical of? Does the notion of starting with simple problems and working your way up to complex ones really extend to the "problem" of critique?
I am an arch opponent of the
aboutness
theory in both its descriptive and prescriptive guises, but even I can see that it deserves a better presentation than this.
There is a nuanced and selectively convincing case to be made that we
do
have a
need to know
about the art-objects we confront. I "interpret" this need as merely an indication that some prior process has miscarried, and I hold that such "prior processes," so to speak, have nothing especially to do with art. But we really need to hear something directly from the purveyors of interpretation about why they (think they) do as they do. Surely there are isolated cases of depraved groupthink wherein this all is rationalized by nothing more than the stipulation that interpretation
just is
what art-experts do; but if that is all that Our Man has to offer us, then this is
not even philosophy
...
Many contemporary artists aspire to create works of art that are designed to defy interpretation or to be utterly meaningless.
Sometimes artists claim to do this in order to "deconstruct" the distinction between artworks and real things.
...
However, ironically, the neo-representationalist can argue that attempts along these lines really confirm the thesis
...
artworks that are advanced to exemplify the thesis that artworks are ultimately real things are, in fact, not at all like real things,
...
They are about something—namely the nature of artworks—about which they have something to say:
...
...
Thus, neo-representationalism is not challenged by avant-garde artworks that are "against interpretation,"
...
Good one.
...
[31]
...
Moreover, neo-representationalism looks like it can deal with a number of the other counterexamples that beset the representational theory of art.
Much music and architecture that does not stand for anything nevertheless possesses expressive properties.
The Pentagon, for example, expresses strength and substance, while some pure orchestral music strikes us as joyous.
Might we not say that what these examples are about—what they mean, what comprises their semantic content—is their expressive content: strength, on the one hand, and joyousness, on the other?
Well, we have not
said
much on the question of
what it is to be
about something.
We have not sufficiently analysed the concept: aboutness. Instead, it has simply been asserted that everyday objects cannot or do not harbor
semantic content,
whereas artworks do.
What if someone thinks they detect "semantic content" in a public urinal? Carroll stipulates: that person is crazy; or at least, they risk being thought crazy by others in their midst.
What sort of analysis of "aboutness" does this entail? An analysis which
badly underdraws
the boundaries of the concept!
Probably the public urinal
does
have meaning
to
someone, somewhere. The first step in finding that person and that meaning is to adopt a certain family of precious criticspeak metaphors and admit the distinction of degrees: to admit that some object-works may be "pregnant" or "rich" with meaning, and that other object-works may be "terse" or "austere" in this regard.
I suspect that even the APs can follow us at least that far. They have more trouble conceding a thesis of ultimate subjectivity, i.e. one that says: An object-work may "mean" one thing to one person and something else to someone else; a public urinal may be "rich" in meaning to someone who has frequented the bathroom in their place of work for four or five decades, whereas it likely has little or no meaning for a short-term visitor. There are a million and one interesting things that can happen at or near a urinal. When we frequent one in particular, this not only affords greater chance for some of those things actually to occur (to
happen to us),
it also affords us greater chance to
notice
actual marks of discernibility, marks that are perhaps unlikely to be noticed after a year but somewhat more likely to be noticed after a decade. Time is as good as space here, but without any sci-fi boondoggles. We may reveal marks of discernibility by taking the microscope to two "indiscernible" objects, but short of that, if there are marks too subtle for casuals to notice but just noticeable enough for regulars, then more bites at the apple mean more chances to notice. "Ultimate subjectivity" then need not be a matter of anything as convoluted as cognitivists and semioticians have made of it. Perhaps those theories hold together, but they are singularly unparsimonious for the purposes of hammering out a Philosophy of Art that is both analytic and pragmatic (or at least doesn't have APs and Pragmatists coming to blows). To see the way out, all we have to do is realize that human beings are constantly creating meaning. We are meaning-making machines, whether we know it or not, and whether it is good for us or not.
But here again the "premise," in whatever form, that interpretation
just is
the appropriate response to artworks
does indeed seem to come at the beginning of the dialogue as well as at the end.
What I have called "ultimate subjectivity" ends up being explained away either as an idealist fiction or as some kind of lack or shortcoming (with or without real moral scorn attached) on the part of deviant audiences. Evidently it's too far our of bounds to just point out the obvious: that an analytic case for "ultimate subjectivity" would immediately put almost every member of this mandarin gerontocracy out of business, for there would then be, functionally, as many object-works are there are onlookers; in a certain manner of speaking, indeed
no two people could be looking at quite the same painting,
even if we accept that, more literally, materially, socially, etc., this is of course possible. Margolis especially, from what little I can understand of him as of yet, goes to absurd lengths to marry a fully-analyzed "Relativism" with an ever-ongoing-and-openended necessity for lots and lots of interpretation. Danto, in a stunning series of capital-A Analytic works written before he was fully body-snatched by
Neo-Representationalist
zombies, periodically inveighs against "pessimism" and "dark conclusions" (or something like that), and it seems obvious enough, though this work also is rather difficult for me to approach right now, what he is talking about: he's trying as hard as he can to make a circle out of a spiral. He's trying to make "bright sense" of "our practices," as Margolis would (and does) say, and as Carroll all but says here. That's right, it's the forces of light against the forces of darkness, folks. Hold the conceptual analysis. By this time we might (once again!) need a
psycho-analyst.
The problem is: the spiral is not a problem! Anyway, it's not a problem for
practitioners.
Practice saves us from falling into the "dark" abyss by giving us something "brighter" to stare into; and if we get eaten by a lion because we had our
head in the clouds,
that is a tough way to go, certainly, but it's at least quicker than dying a death of decultured despair. (Becker:
" . . . as good as dead.")
Is interpretation too a practice? The "analysis" of interpretation pretty quickly showed that interpretation trades in meanings rather than objects; and the analysis of meaning shows that it is a spiral rather than a circle. So even if the aims of interpretation are somehow analytically sound, its subject matter is not. Its subject matter is a notorious moving target. So, it cannot be a practice if it insists on proceding down the spiral path.
Taleb (there must be a better source/quote for this sentiment, somewhere, but for now this is what I've got):
"the thinker lacking a word for "blue" is handicapped; not the doer. (I've had a hard time conveying to intellectuals the intellectual superiority of practice.)"
(Antifragile, p. 109)
Of course we do have a word for blue, but color is, as it happens, precisely the foil that analysts of aesthetics have pointed to so as to draw a sharp contrast with so many of the "concepts" that interpretation has recruited. Those concepts that are, properly speaking, "meanings," really are the furthest thing from those concepts that "make practice possible," as Carroll insists on putting it. I've labeled this as a "spiral" quality here, and have focused on this; but there is something far more basic about "meanings" that is, I think, totally at odds with the practice of practice. Namely, by the time we are tossing around meanings at all, they have become explicit. So, of course it seems to Carroll, e.g., that practice itself is actually "made possible" by explicit possession of concepts; I would counterpropose that (1) practice
generates
the concepts,
(2) these generated concepts are
implicit
rather than explicit, at least for a while, and, most tenuously (but, uh . . . ask me how I know), (3) bringing an implicit concept to explicit knowledge by way of "analysis" is not the least bit necessary to practice, it's far from clear that it has a single bankable positive contribution to make, and yes, I really do suspect (though I am quite far from being able to prove) that it
does
have some bankable wet-blanket effects, at least in certain domains with which I am familiar.
And lastly, with respect to decorative art,
the neo-representationalist will point out that many of the seemingly abstract decorations on artworks from remote cultures are not at all truly meaningless,
but,
when understood in their correct historical context,
Thus even art that is allegedly merely decorative generally has aboutness.
Ah yes, the whole
context
thing. But this annotation is already far too long . . .
A short hint, for now: If we can
shop around
for
historical context,
surely we can find one in which these works are indeed merely decorative. What is so wrong with that? It's not yet clear, for Our Man has simply declared exactly
one
such context to be
correct.
Of course he means to identify the works'
context of origin.
But
why
are contexts of origin the
only
"correct" contexts in which to locate artworks? I have yet to encounter an AP who dares to "analyse" the concept: "correct historical context." It seems we are left, again, with a huge volume of writing on the topic that evades an obvious issue of interest. And again, though we are perhaps unwise to cast the first extra-analytic stones here, we are total idiots not to notice that the instatement of a unitary correctness criterion
vis-a-vis
"context" is a circle-squaring maneuver
par excellence
It is, yes, a "concept" that "makes" a certain "practice" of interpretation "possible," and without which that practice is impossible.
...
...
Suppose a piece of pure orchestral music
is sad.
Is this really
what it is about?
Does it truly
have a subject,
sadness,
about which it expresses something?
Does
the possession of a property
amount to
being about the property?
...
If a painting
possesses the property redness,
mere possession of the property hardly counts as
being about redness.
...
[32]
...
when we say that a piece of music is sad, we are not really
interpreting
it in any robust sense of the word.
Reporting that the music is sad is more a matter of
describing
a perceptible property of the work.
...
it is akin to saying that the work has a fast tempo.
...
to say
[that the work]
is
about
"having a fast tempo"
...
would require
some further level of articulation
from the work that
calls attention to, makes reference to,
and/or implies some
comment
or
point
about its having a fast tempo.
...
We need not interpret the music in either the case of its possession of a fast tempo or its sadness, since there is nothing that the music is about in the neo-representationalist's sense.
But if
[so]
...
then
[such works]
become, in effect, counterexamples to neorepresentationalism.
YAY!
😃 😃 😃
...
Isn't there some decorative art that is simply a matter of stimulating pleasure by its design or its appearance?
...
Surely some artworks are simply beautiful in this sense.
They are, so to say, "beneath interpretation."
...
They are not about beauty; they are beautiful.
...
Perhaps some decorative art does more than this;
...
But, equally, much decorative art
...
addresses us only on the perceptual level—
...
This sort of art is not really about anything.
...
if we grant that there is such art, as I think we must, then there is art that is not about anything.
...
[33]
...
Neo-representationalism is more comprehensive than the imitation theory and the representational theory of art, but it is still nowhere near comprehensive enough.
...
what to look for and to appreciate
and especially not to Peter Kivy,
to whom this doorstop is dedicated.
that the imitation theory of art
did a good job
the criterion
come from nowhere.
even today
there are
philistines
about,
unashamed
of
their
own
ignorance.
an ignorance that
comes
from
somewhere.
a
knowledge
of
the imitation theory
of
several things
that
have happened since.
is intended to stand for something else
and that
is recognized by audiences as such.
stand for something else
without looking like it.
theory of art
about which it makes some comment
Moreover,
may be
the artwork itself
or
art in general.
about which they say something.
Or do we just
want
to know?
if . . .
we can explain why the question was asked?
nothing in this explanation indicates any untoward behavior or intention?
(Must we
not?)
(2) sanctimony;
(3) theoreticality; and
(4) parody.
this
answers
the
question
of
what is
warranted
when we subject readymades to
those "interpretations" of "semantic content"
which are answers to
those questions which "make sense" to ask.
always seem to do
unless it were about something?
—that all artworks require interpretations—
acceptable?
they will be seen to have religious or ritual significance.
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