Art as Autonomous

 

Art seems to present itself as an autonomous, self-enclosing entity. Immediately, before we have grasped its full nature, it seizes our attention. We find it arresting and engrossing, but also separate from us. Though we cannot master or possess it, art stirs us as other things cannot. And not always by argument since there can be few arguments to follow. Not wholly by truth, or accuracy of depiction, since we can be delighted by manifest absurdities. Not by its potential applications, as art is not generally useful in any direct way. By what then? The way it presents itself — by its coherence, balance, shape, rightful order: what an earlier age called "beauty" and we call aesthetic qualities.

Kant distinguished three types of pleasure — in the agreeable, in the good and in beauty. The first was a matter of gratification, and here our preferences were simply matters of taste. Our pleasure in the good was important but not disinterested. Beauty, however, was an immediate and disinterested pleasure. To find something beautiful we must respond to it as it presents itself, without reasoning or analysis. There is nothing more fundamental we can appeal to, though we justify our feelings by pointing to aspects of that beauty.

 

The aesthetic response relies on a certain attitude, a detachment that Schopenhauer saw as loss of the individual will or self, and which Edward Bullough called the detachment or "psychical distance". We suspend belief. We know from the picture frame, stages, story title that these are not "real life" but something where greater wholeness and clarity will provide a more than compensating aesthetic pleasure. Not only do the picture frames, stage, etc. signal to us that the art-object is "not for real" but the elements inside, the whole matter composing the object, are not representations of the real, but a complex series of codes that we learn to interpret and apply. This view, developed by Nelson Goodman, links traditional aesthetics with linguistics and Structuralism, and questions any naive view of art as representation.

 

But art at the cutting edge today, whether the performing, visual or literary arts, often seems a rejection of much of what previously characterized the enterprise. Meaning is indeterminate, fragmented or shifting. There is no message as such, or even subject matter beyond what the artwork creates. Previous art-forms, concepts and terminology are combined playfully, as a collage or montage of images that are not required to make sense of the outside world. Even the artist is self-effacing, leaving his productions to speak as their audience pleases. But if such art appears democratic, inviting audience participation, its appeal is nonetheless to a fashionable minority who have the use of wide cultural reference.

 

So the professional art scene. We are often uncertain at a poetry reading as to whether the introduction is continuing or the poem begun. And exhibits in galleries have become so inconsequential as to be sometimes thrown out by cleaners, gallery staff or even fellow artists. Clearly, much of contemporary art is non-aesthetic. It aims to broaden the concept of art, to make it an everyday, democratic and unsettling experience. If the specific pleasures of art disappear, so be it. Those pleasures were often elitist, calling on a privileged education to appreciate previous artforms and an unearned leisure to indulge their further development. And where art leads, philosophers, critics and social commentators must follow. It is extraordinarily difficult to discern the significant in the diversity of contemporary activity, and theories which attempt to do so are often unconvincing or parasitic. The "But is it art?" jibe may linger, but the artists themselves are serious, as must be the gallery-owners and publishers to induce a sophisticated public to part with hard-won cash.

 

Does this reduce art to entertainment, a distraction for a restless, easily-bored urban society? Possibly so, but art is only reflecting its times, the plurality of a consumer society. For its creation and appreciation, art requires exorbitant amounts of time, and time in bustling western democracies is a scarce commodity. Naturally, with so much on offer, the public needs guidance — hence the streamlined criticism, shallow advertising, artistic fads and fashion.

 

A greatly expanded article, with references, can be found on TextEtc.

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