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| Art behind philosophy Jānis Taurens, Philosopher | |
| I’ll always have a clear memory of it because it happened so simply and without fuss. irene was knitting in her bedroom, it was eight at night, and i suddenly decided to put the water up for maté. i went down the corridor as far as the oak door, which was ajar, then turned into the hall toward the kitchen, when i heard something in the library or the dining room. the sound came through muted and indistinct, a chair being knocked over onto the carpet or the muffled buzzing of a conversation. at the same time, or a second later, i heard it at the end of the passage which led from those two rooms toward the door. i hurled myself against the door before it was too late and shut it, leaned on it with the weight of my body; luckily, the key was on our side; moreover, i ran the great bolt into place, just to be safe. (Julio Cortázar. House Taken Over) The subject announced in the heading may seem rather broad and vague to some, and so i’ll state immediately that the impetus to write was very specific. it came from arturs bērziņš’ exhibition Mind Works, which was on show at the riga art space late last year. the word “behind” which can be found between “art” and “philosophy” may possibly require clarification, too. this doesn’t mean “to be located after something” in the sense of a temporal sequence, like “art after philosophy” in kosuth’s well-known article of the same name, when art, leaving philosophy behind it (for which kosuth signs off a hegel-like “final” judgement), took over the work with texts. conversely, at the end of the century there is the appearance of a reversed time sequence, in behind-the- looking-glass style, or a countermove to philosophical reflections about art, in thierry de duve’s work Kant after Duchamp (and similarly reversed is the combination of the years the works were published – 1969 for kosuth’s essay and ‘96 for Kant after Duchamp). Therefore the metaphor of an axis of time, where the events placed on it are connected by a succession relationship, can be discarded. another meaning to which the word “behind” alludes is connected with hiding. does art hide behind philosophy? but what is philosophy itself? we can ignore the death of metaphysics as announced by neo-positivists, something for which kosuth, having uncritically adopted, is among other things criticised. but it is doubtful whether philosophy, too, as a discipline of research in the academic history of philosophy, is significant for art. what then remains – a quixotic defence of “pure” philosophy of language? the purity of philosophy of language which denies the role of mental/psychic content in our understanding of linguistic expressions disappears in the interdisciplinary project of cognitive sciences, in which the problems of the sciences involved dominate. Philosophy’s “sociological” actuality which in surveys would allow it to surpass the fatal five percent barrier is only inherent in, so it seems, political philosophy, where the plethora of somewhat empty declarations on democracy, private property and the free market, individual initiative and responsibility, and similar concepts, may be called “philosophical”. in addition, these concepts – similarly as ‘creativity’ and ‘art’ – have become political marketing slogans with which western neoliberalism successfully operates. (here, for the sake of polemic, i borrow a little from the left-leaning western intellectual position that is critical of the capitalist mode of production.) But my article isn’t about philosophy, no more than it is about art, at least not about art in its traditional sense. it’s not about that field which is subordinated to the muses (mūsikē), and where – according to statements at the beginning of the second book of Plato’s laws – postures (shēmata) and tunes (melē) which carry the goodness of the soul or body are called beautiful (655a–b). by extending Plato’s statements to any image system and thus including all art, together with Jacques rancière we could call it an ‘ethical regime of images’. this is followed by – if we continue to use rancière’s classification – the ‘representative regime of the arts’, in which forms of art are classified according to the internal logic of each, or the possibilities inherent to specific forms of expression. even though rancière associates this with aristotle, it acquires its most pronounced embodiment in clement greenberg’s formalism. to the french thinker, aesthetics describes the third ‘regime of identifying art’ which, having begun two centuries previously, still continues today, allowing “everything to be a potential subject or material for art, everyone to be a potential viewer of this art, and denotes the aesthetics as an autonomous form of life”.1 In this way, the term “aesthetic” would be preserved in the discussion about art, from which duchamp tried to exclude it in the early 20th century, then conceptualism fifty years later, and in the 21st century – by what claire bishop, for example, calls the vanguard in the development of art, using the same good old military terminology. it is true, when writing about the contemporary avant-garde – participatory art – in her work (which has borrowed its name artificial Hells from an andré breton manuscript) and referring back to rancière, she attempts to restore the concept of the aesthetic. (the differences between the terms ‘restore’ and ‘preserve’ correspond approximately to the differences between the anglo-saxon and the continental theoretical tradition.) Claire Bishop’s argumentation is worth dwelling on a little longer. in participatory art, respect for others, recognition of differences, protection of fundamental freedoms and concerns for human rights are, of course, important. but bishop points out that the entry of these notions into the critical discourse of art, also referred to as the ‘ethical turn’, marks the emergence of a new type of repressive norm. the result is just as surprising and ridiculous as in Plato’s laws – the scene that was drawn with the best of intentions turns out to be quite ghastly. for example, bishop refers to grant kester’s essay about community and communication in art (Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern art, 20042), which criticizes “art that might offend or trouble its audience”. but that’s what almost any avantgarde is like! for bishop, as someone writing in english – therefore, the author taking into account the possible popularity or “sociological” aspect of one view or another – such declarations are an important motive to argue that “unease, discomfort or frustration – along with fear, contradiction, exhilaration and absurdity – can be crucial to any work’s artistic impact”. as for me, kester’s conclusion causes me exclaim “oh!”, or along with aldous huxley’s savage to shout: “but i don’t want comfort... i want danger... i want sin!”, and to put away in my memory kester’s negative attitude to certain types of uncomfortable art, alongside the absurdity of individual details of Plato’s or campanella’s utopias, as something to recount to students to entertain them a little. to be fair, it should be added that Plato’s utopia, with its scrupulous regulation of a person’s internal and external life and its penalty system, also reveals frightening aspects of the future in the 20th century and has earned serious criticism, from karl Popper as well. and perhaps i, too, need to take a more serious look at the country in which i live, and the cultural space contained by the language in which i write. some translations of Plato – but not the wearying long laws dialogue, of course, in which socrates doesn’t even take part! – are already an achievement for us. though neither formalism, which as i already mentioned could possibly be linked to rancière’s so-called “representational arts regime”, nor an “ethical turn” has really been experienced in latvia and sampled to the bitter dregs in the practice of art. we do have something – including a translation of nicolas bourriaud’s Relational aesthetics and claire bishop’s article about it (a serious criticism of this tendency), and there are several generations of artists who are now living in an era of art world information overload which has taken the place of the old soviet “information filter”. It is clear that nowadays we no longer speak about good or bad art, with the representation of virtue as the criterion, but how do we understand the new “ethical turn”? could this be the return of Platonism? in the essay about relational aesthetics previously mentioned, claire bishop refers to bourriaud’s concept that the criteria for assessing art – meaning works in which the viewer takes an active part as well – are not just aesthetic, but also ethical. however, bishop’s position, as Vasīlijs Voronovs pointed out in the review of the translation of the article (Studija, no. 80), is quite ambiguous. it becomes clearer in artificial Hells, published eight years later, at the beginning of which she points out that this study takes over and continues the criticism of bourriaud begun in 2004. in this book, bishop is by now definitely arguing about the need for an aesthetic viewpoint in participatory art as well, and talks about the fact that it is necessary to view works of this type as works of art, and not just to analyse their social or political content. (among other things, an interesting paradox is developing – critics who emphasize non-aesthetic criteria still usually place the works under examination in the context of art, not social or political actions.) If such a point of view has appeared in relation to participatory art, then obviously it needs to be taken into account also when discussing the less radical art forms and the ones most commonly found on latvia’s contemporary art scene as well. hence the previously expressed assertion that my article is “not about art” demands some explanation. this should be understood in the sense that in the postmodern (apparent) absence of rules or restrictions of contemporary artistic techniques, an increasingly greater role is played by the consistency of artistic method, which in simple words can be called a certain diligence, perseverance or regularity.3 the most accurate literary image for it would be Julio cortazar’s story, House Taken Over. cortazar’s fascinating text is a precise model for the consistency of artistic method, as could be described from the position of the viewer. unknown beings – natural or supernatural – about which we find out purely from vague noises, are systematically taking over ever more rooms in the house of the main hero and his sister in the story, until... (but more about this – at the end of the article). Similarly, in the case of art, too – certain artistic activities are consistently undertaken, even though we can only establish their fundamental principles from the visual (in the story – the acoustic) result. someone could conclude, rather too hastily, that – if these principles are philosophical – then in such a model “philosophy is hiding behind art”. a sceptic would remark that we can make a judgment on these principles from the appearance of the work as little as we can about space or the cosmos from cigarettes [Kosmoss was a soviet-era brand of cigarettes].4 but let’s leave the notion of an art work as a self-contained object on some utopian formalist island. an art work, using adorno’s term, is “constitutively insufficient” in the sense that it requires interpretation (let us remember that the artist himself may not be the best, but rather only one of the interpreters). if this interpretation involves philosophical concepts and problems, then one could say – in complete opposition to the rash or impatient reader’s assumption – that art is hiding behind philosophy. So that there’s some concreteness, i’ll select some artists who work methodically: besides the already mentioned arturs bērziņš, they’d be leonards laganovskis, in whose works text regularly appears, ivars drulle with his consistently selected controversial subjects about which his art “speaks”, and armands zelčs, whose objects always have a common feature which allows them to be suspected of containing some sort of philosophical paradox. it should be added that henceforth in the text i will briefly touch on only a few individual works which would confirm merely the possibility of my point of view, leaving the task of convincing to other, more exhaustive studies. I’ll start with laganovskis’ painting from the Vodka opart (2009) series, depicting the name of the vodka, Cubenaya, which was invented by the artist following the example of well-known appellations of the drink (for example, Stolichnaya). the name Cubenaya has a number of reference objects. firstly, it is a nonexistent brand of vodka, existing only in some possible world. but also, secondly – the cube, as in laganovskis’ painting, the name CUBeNaYa, in a sort of rippling manner, covers the walls, floor and ceiling of an illusory cubic space. the impression of this image reminds me of barbara kruger’s work Past/Present/future (2010) which was specially created for the amsterdam stedelijk museum’s so-called hall of honour a year later. (in kruger’s text installation, similarly as in laganovskis’ cube, the gallery’s walls and floor were covered with continuous black and white words, with only the ceiling plane remaining bare to operate as overhead lighting. however, people strolled over her captions, and possibly we can only see the similarity here if we look at kruger’s work in photographs). the third reference object would be cuba, as for all citizens who have experienced the soviet era the connection between moscow and the cuban regime has settled in some corner of their consciousness (in the same way as the previously mentioned Kosmoss cigarettes). Vodka also has a similar prevalence in our everyday consciousness – it is not just a specific alcoholic drink, but also an indirect symbol of being soviet – and of today’s russia (even though the internationally distributed Stolichnaya is produced in latvia), and equally an essential attribute of soviet era power and culture (alternative culture as well). as sergei dovlatov, by then in america, wrote in 1980: “anything can disappear from the shelves of soviet stores – onions, eggs, sausage, toilet paper... only the hard liquor is always present, in the capital city and the country, in the tundra and in the desert...” by increasingly broadening the circle, such a description could be continued. strictly speaking, none of the appearances of reality described are reference objects of Cubenaya (i haven’t even begun to analyse the term ‘opart’) in frege’s meaning, yet could become such by the adoption of some debatable interpretation of possible worlds. likewise, my description is obviously based on the contextual (based on usage, or pragmatic) understanding of meaning, which in a similar way to the references of words “frege” and “possible worlds” would seek a comment from the point of view of linguistic philosophy. The problem of reference also “stands before” or “obscures” arturs bērziņš’ art. for example, again i’ll take just the one, a characteristic 2008 work untitled (winter) from the national romanticism series that is made up of three small charcoal “paintings” after motifs of Purvītis’ painting Winter. one could say that there are natural landscapes or – simplifying and without analysing the concept of ‘landscape’ – fragments of the surrounding reality, photographs of these, Purvītis’ painting in which the natural landscape is portrayed, its photographs and bērziņš’ charcoal works, which in turn are reproduced, for example, in a limited edition catalogue. there’s a variety of reference relationships that exist between these elements, which either influence or don’t affect (depending on the philosophical position) their meaning, and again i must add that for simplicity’s sake i have ignored the aspect of time: almost a hundred years separate the works of bērziņš and Purvītis. (this remark is necessary so that i shouldn’t be accused of assumptions about the immutability or typicality of nature which, it seems, could justify, for example, the use of the terms ‘landscape canon’ and similar in relation to Purvītis.) In arturs bērziņš’ exhibition Mind Works the issue of reference is openly moved forward to the forefront of painting, creating the work according to wittgenstein’s Tractatus,5 in which the relation of reference is at the foundation of the so-called picture theory of meaning. (the main theses i cite from memory: “a name means an object, the object is its meaning” and “one name stands for one thing, another for another thing; the whole group – like tableau vivant – presents a state of affairs.”) in a similar way as in other works in the exhibition, here, too, the meaning of the work and the evaluation of the art aren’t linked with paintings as formal or immanent objects of analysis, but rather with the relationship of the chosen means of art (predominantly – representational) to a philosophical problem which is vaguely hinted at in the titles of bērziņš’ works, including a reference to some philosophical text, and the chosen object for representation which should make clear as to what and in what aspect in the given text has attracted the artist’s attention. a credit to the exhibition is its frankness – art openly stations itself behind philosophy, of course, the “object” behind which art stations itself is visually fairly imperceptible and hence this “frankness” does not exclude “hiding”. The linguistic turn has caused language and certain problems associated with it to become the central 20th century object of philosophical reflection, and they are still relevant today as well. however, in the world of contemporary art, like an inescapable basso continuo, each region with its history, suppression, hurts, marginal groups, its rights and common culture of the place, weaves through the other as connected themes of fields of disparate influences and contrast. one could state in unison with richard rorty that literature has taken over the role of philosophy here, rendering the latter into just “a private transformation of the self”, instead of “a means of achieving a social goal”. but in this case as well – if we ignore what was stated at the beginning of the article, some words still must be said about philosophy – literature uses philosophy as a way of mapping out a general problem area, even though research methods in philosophy and literature differ. in this sense the description “philosophical literature” is permissible, but can something similar be said about art? For his works, ivars drulle selects themes which could attract – and i hope that this is happening – art theorists or curators who are interested in latvia as a space where latvian and russian language and culture come into contact. drulle’s greatest contribution to national art6 is that he graphically shows that latvian culture in latvia also includes an understanding of the russian language, without which we wouldn’t be able to, for instance, enjoy jokes – the best of them being, for example, about Poruchik (lieutenant) rzhevskuand natasha rostova, which have to be told in russian! – or drulle’s own most recent solo exhibition at the gallery alma (You’ll Be Pardoned forthwith (2013)) in which, on opening the neatly set up curtains, we see dating advertisements, including ones in the russian language. the 2012 exhibition at kim? art centre – По жизни – already by its very title points to a particular, differing understanding about life which is best presented in russian literature. (here we should call out: look, we haven’t even got our own kharms and Vvedensky, or Pelevin and sorokin!) at the same time, one of the stories in this exhibition talked about second world war death camps and a peculiar, “musical” story of rescue, if i remember my impressions of that time accurately. bearing in mind the location of the kim? gallery building, at the very entrance to the moscow suburb, the so-called Maskatchka – where the Jewish ghetto was located and where the synagogue burnt down in 1941, along with the people inside it – the story takes on an increased significance. On his homepage, drulle writes that his art examines contradictory themes from our recent past, and topics of discussion which we avoid discussing publicly but resolve when sitting around the kitchen table.7 to my ears, the word combination “kitchen table” derives its fullest resonance from the soviet communal kitchen in a russian-speaking context, but, without delving further into this theme, an appropriate question would be: where is the hiding behind philosophy here? the answer is simple – contemporary art, at least in one part, strives or is encouraged to seize from philosophy the contentious and conflicting themes of social life (like literature in richard rorty’s interpretation). at the beginning of the 20th century, in place of Plato’s The Republic and laws came h. g. wells’ a Modern Utopia and huxley’s Brave New World, and in the 21st century, for example, tatyana tolstaya’s mutations of language and the person in the novel Кысь [The Slynx].8 the means of expression of art do not permit such expanded models as does the novel, but the consistency of drulle’s little figurines and the utterances, announcements and other fragments used could over time be transformed into an encyclopaedic gallery of images, in a similar way to the chapters of tolstaya’s book, which are set out in alphabetical order. But the initial sphere of visual art is three dimensional space, and time has entered into it only recently together with the moving image and sound. that’s why we’ll turn to the “classical” three dimensional objects, which, it transpires, can also be philosophical if they consistently reveal some characteristic inherent to a philosophical paradox. armands zelčs’ history of making paradoxical objects is not particularly long, but it is consistent enough to attempt to generalize it. in reality, zelčs’ useless “objects”, starting from 2007 onwards, not only indicate the role of the insoluble paradox in our thinking (in its time, such a paradox, which russell first noticed, overturned frege’s attempt to reduce mathematics to logic), but also point to an interesting question about the status of the lie in our language games. or, in other words, one could ask in what way lies differ from simple bullshit ). for example, zelčs’ work Maria’s Way, in the shape of a playground slide, makes one understand the object in a certain way, simultaneously with an obvious denial of the slippery slide’s function by its closed off lower section. can these be called lies, if they are so brazen? or perhaps the drivel which muddles the discourses about functional objects and sculpture in high art? the question about lies and drivel is philosophical, and without an established (debatable) answer to it, a well-grounded criticism of an art work is not possible. in this sense – without any negative connotation – zelčs’ works, along with the other casually selected artists’ works in this article, hide behind philosophy. What is art criticism to do in such a situation? the oak door of philosophy is often too thick (in both the literal, book volume dimension sense, as well as the metaphorical, difficulty of understanding sense), and the indeterminate noises of art behind it – “like a chair knocked over rolling along the carpet” – are too unclear, and as a consequence unyielding to interpretation. art criticism is left to just guess what can be found in the “haunted” part of the house, or, along with the heroes of cortázar’s story, to abandon it, lock up the front door and toss the key down a sewer. Translator into English: Uldis Brūns 1 at least that’s how contemporary art theorist claire bishop understands rancière, but rancière’s classifications and concepts aren’t that simple. for example, the autonomy of aesthetic experience as mentioned also means a connection with politics – rancière discerns the origins of this paradox in schiller’s 15th letter “on the aesthetic education of man” (1795; for the latvian version see “kentaurs xxi”, no. 26, 2001). rancière also encourages “self-sufficiency” which schiller ascribes to the greek sculpture, known as the Juno ludovisi, at the end of the letter, not to be confused with the self-sufficiency of art defended by clement greenberg. however, in this work (i use rancière’s english translation aesthetics and its Discontents) he does not indicate that greensberg’s formalism is in reality much closer to a representative regime, only the represented content moves towards zero, as in abstract art, coming to the forefront and gaining self-sufficiency in each type of art’s specific means of representation. 2 the latest version of the article: Conversation Pieces: The Role of Dialogue in Socially-engaged art (2005) can be found on grant kester’s home page. 3 this shouldn’t be confused with such outdated concepts as the “artist’s handwriting” or “style”. 4 i’ve used the magazine editor’s splendid comparison in a slightly different context. 5 the actual title: “without title” (from ludwig wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus). 6 i am currently assuming that in the new government, which is being formed as i write this article, the minister of culture will be allocated to the “nationals” (apologies to political scientists, as i don’t recall the exact names of the parties), and consequently a “national aspect” must somehow appear in the evaluation of art, and theory must hurry up to prepare its arguments for it. 7 there is a certain inconsistency in the fact that ivars drulle’s home page is only in english, but luckily i do know a little english as well as the russian language. 8 the novel was written between 1986 and 2000, as shown on the last page. | |
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