[-To ponder, while about sociology, science I think the basic points
can be applied to aesthetic theory:
"The postmodernist turn seriously challenges the very identity of sociology because it calls into question the very meaning of science. However, the ways in which the debate has been portrayed is seriously misleading for it is posed in terms of a Gran Either/Or: Either sociology is a science or it is not. To the question in such dramatic terms, however, leads to a cul-de-sac: Neither position ultimately questions the fundamental character of science as it has been conventionally understtod; each takes for granted the primacy of a postivist conception of science. While there are many facets of positivist which are open to critique, here I shall focus on that aspect of positivism which requires that adequate scientific theory be disengaged from the ethical-political horizons of the public sphere....The postmodernist challenge demands that sociology alter its self-identity. Tkaing this challenge seriously does not merely demand that we redefine the relationship between theoretical and empirical work. What is required is a a redefinition of the relationship between science and the public, political sphere....
Sociology does not and cannot possess knowledge. Scoiology as 'poiesis' is a means or a bringing forth of meaning and knowledge which it cannot posessess but must relinquish to the realm of public truth. The adequacy of sociological theory must be <bold>brought forth</bold> to the public domain where sociological knowledge is rendered more meaningful through the development of wisdom, understanding, and, perhaps more importantly, practical intelligence. And practical intelligence, as Aristotle maintained, 'is a state of grasping the truth...,involving reason, concerned w/ action (praxis) about what is good or bad for human beings.'"
"Science is the search for truth, but such truth is not some essential, irreducible reality. Instead, the knowledge that we acquire alters the *meaning* it has for us. That is, knowledge alters our activities, our praxis, the uses to which we put that knowledge. Knowledge is a * means* to action; it is a re-leasing of potentialities. To use a simple analogy, clay may seem merely a lump of muddy earth. Yet, humans transform it into a brick, a simple pitcher, or an ornate vase. A brick-maker or potter *knows* and releases the meanings of clay through their use and thus their knowledge of it. The socio-natural world is an objective reality, but human reflection is always secondary and mediated. Human knowledge of the social world always involves and demands reference to meaning. All investigations of the social world--those aspects of experience that people create--are inextricably concerned with, not only scientific truths and meanings, but also aesthetic and moral meanings, potentialities and uses."] -------------------
I am not sure which part of the above can be applied to an asethetic theory. But in any case, I don't have an asethetic theory. I gave up on them a long time ago because they were written by people who knew exactly nothing about making art. Doyle mentioned Rosaline Krauss who used to write regularly for the old Artforum. She was one of a handfull of critics who had interesting and connected things to say about art at the time--up to about the mid-Seventies. But the intellectual and asethetic quality of the mag evaporated when its managing editor Copland(?) left. Other writers I remember were Robert Pincus-Witten(?) and Lucy Lippard. They were all trying to develop a new style of criticism that superceeded their predecessors and started to make some serious progress. Then I don't know what happened. They vanished, the mag became an imitation of itself. It was on autopilot by the end of the Seventies, just in time for the Reagan era.
There is no point in discussing the art since that entire world evaporated. Oh, sure in big cities you can still wonder around galleries and read various things, but whatever happened by the late Seventies was absolute murder. The whole point to doing a particular kind of art disappeared--yet people continued to produce and it all seemed like everything was just fine and dandy. It wasn't. I couldn't point to any one thing or even a coherent collection of things. It was more of a convergence of various weak points in practice, in the underlying economic supports, in the way art students were taught, in the crushing competition for even contract teaching jobs, in the closing of galleries, the shrinking interest in museums, in the collective droning on of various progressive groups about the elitism of it all, and so forth and so on.
The arts are cultural canaries and it doesn't take much to kill them off--a cold wind is about all that's needed. The rich bourgeois who actually support the arts just have to change their taste or their interest or feel slightly threatened or insulted and that is it--feet up at the bottom of the cage.
What really disappears is the sense of community that composes a conceptual audience and provides the context for doing art. It is the other half of the cultural dialogue. That is what vanished. But the practice remains in a kind of pointless limbo, like the street sax player at rush hour serenading to no one.
At any rate, interest in, enjoyment, actually buying and having art around, engaging it and people who produce it, all that got replaced with a bunch of writing about it as if that were all still there and it wasn't. The impact of various technologies also came into play. Video and performance, electronic and mechanical devices could be used because they were finally cheap enough and available to play with. But the conceptual frame or the understanding of how use these devices to make art out of them somehow wasn't developed enough to match the material. It was a little like the early photographers who made photographs as if they were paintings. Other practice level developments when off into architecture and landscape design--sort of the eco-wing. So the art world finally became what Tom Wolfe and everybody else said it was in the first place--bullshit. And that was pretty much it--at least in the advanced US levels.
I think you could go back and trace out the developments and show that they were a foretaste of things to come--those of the last twenty years. It is like after living through these obscure developments in the hermetic art world, I dropped into the everyday world to watch the same cultural process played all over again on a larger scale.
Brad de Long said something to effect that economics brings us civilization, implying of course that we owe it all to the money boys. While this may be a gross overstatement, there is just enough truth to hurt. When I was reading Doug Henwood's book it was interesting to see just about every little blip on his graphs was reflected in some manner or other in what I rememebered happening in art. It was like the art world was directly wired to the fluttering decline of personal income levels and the partitioning of the middle class into the haves and have nots. On the everyday level this process hit a thrushold between '78-'83 and by that time it was obvious to me, we were never going to come back. Not only was Reagan a kind of death knoll, but his policies and the general climate came to coincide with the arrival of particularly nasty new generation of people who could care less about any of this. That was it. We have been stewing around in descending circles ever since.
But the traditional visual arts were not the only casualities. If you go over the advanced physical sciences, particularly physics and some parts of mathematics, you can see a related process going on. I think you could characterize it as a dissolution through diversification. Some fields need a centralizing core as their conceptual armature in order to sustain themselves as an intellectual whole. There has to be a central thrust to several interlated branches of theory and in addition there has to be delicate balance of dialogue between the concrete practices of the field and its theoretical developments. Theory can not go off on its own and cut off from all connection to the everyday practice of its domain. And likewise, practice and execution can not sustain itself, pursuing minor variations of technique without some link to the conceptual sphere. When these balances get out of line, you end up with an incoherent mess.
If the arts seem like the first to register these historical shifts, then political policy must be the very last to register them.
This was long and pointless.
Chuck Grimes