Carroll—A contemporary introduction—Chapter 3—Part 2

Noël Carroll
Philosophy of Art: A contemporary introduction
(1999)

 

[SK's snark]

 

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[137]

Part II
What is artistic form?

 

Excellent question. Perhaps this should be Part I?

 

 

Different views of artistic form

Form is an important concept for talking about art. ... However, ... it cannot serve as the

defining feature

of all art ... Formalists and neoformalists ... overplay their hand. ... But much art

possesses form

and that, in large measure, is often why we appreciate it. ...

So, what is artistic form?

Perhaps the most common way of thinking of artistic form is to conceive of it as

one half of a distinction—

the distinction between

form
and
content.

The neoformalist tries to clarify this contrast by turning it into the distinction between

meaning
and
mode of presentation.

However, ... if there are artworks without meanings, ... then this way of conceptualizing form entails that such artworks lack form altogether.

But ... Often "meaningless" artworks—such as works of pure music—are what we typically take to be the greatest exemplars of artistic form. ...

This suggests that one might look for a broader way of crafting the contrast between form and content.

One way

of doing this is to say that

content is
whatever makes up the artwork,

and

form is
the way that
whatever makes up the artwork
is organized.

Content is the
matter;

form is the
manner.

Form operates on whatever comprises the content. Again, this makes our conception of

the form

of an artwork

dependent on

our conception of

the content

of the artwork. That is, one cannot determine

the manner of its organization,

until one knows

what is being organized.

A problem arises here almost immediately. ...

[138]

the notion of content, as just stated, is

excessively ambiguous,

and this ambiguity is likely to infect whatever we say about artistic form ...

...   Imagine a historical painting of St. Francis and a donkey. What

makes up

this artwork? In one sense, ... oil paint. At another level ... lines, colors and closed shapes. ... representational figures that refer to certain subjects or referents, ... which, in turn, may also be expressive of the human quality of kindness. Furthermore, the painting may take a point of view ... It may ... suggest a thesis about St. Francis: ... the painting may even advance a more general theme: ...

...   this list could be even longer if our descriptions of these dimensions were more fine-grained.

 

In other words, criticism can never be fully 'objective' so long as fine-ness of grain is left to the critic themselves to decide upon. The "grain" can always be tailored to critical needs, turning up as much or as little basis for commentary as is needed/desired.

 

Boorstin—Immediacy as a Form-Content Issue

Daniel Boorstin
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961)

Readers and viewers would soon prefer the vividness of the account...to the spontaneity of what was recounted. (14)

[My notes say:]

A classic mapping of the Form-Content problem onto the Seriousness-Accessibility problem; which is to say that both Form and Content so construed do not mediate accessibility with equal force or aplomb; rather, Form is the gatekeeper, with all of the stigma (I would say of course) of that word as we use it to apply to middlemen in the social world of the arts. Of course the market/commodification is the real driving force toward an imbalance; but the dynamic is there in any case, market or not.

Détournement and the Form-Content Binary

Anselm Jappe
Guy Debord (1993)
trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (1999)

...Debord's whole conception of society is founded on détournement: all the elements needed for a free life are already at hand, both culturally and technologically speaking; they have merely to be modified as to their meanings, and organized differently. (61)

In other words, nothing is new under the sun; but does that truism point to the Timelessness of what we've always had, or to its changeability via being "modified as to [its] meanings, and organized differently"? That question indicates that the form-content distinction is maintained intact here; or perhaps materials-process (i.e. "elements"-"meanings") would be more accurate. In any case, if such a distinction were specious or unimportant, it would certainly not be necessary to recapitulate it the way this passage does. And if it is thus indicated to be meaningful, the next question is why this should be so. There are several answers, I think: the statement is far less controversial with regard to production/consumption than it is regarding culture; it is less controversial regarding a Bird's Eye View of society broadly than it is regarding individuals, for whom production/creativity/agency of the type said here to be superfluous may in fact be a basic human (i.e. psychological) need; and is every artefact just this amenable to having its meaning reframed (willfully) by individuals and/or groups according to the ephemeral needs of the moment?

[from a post-it, 2017 or 2018]