>When we talk about art these days, we can't really still intend to
>indicate the private practice of art as painting, sculture,
>printmaking, no matter how advanced or retrograde their particular
>styles or which small collection of people produce them, see them, or
>are effect by them.
Oh, but we can, and I do.
>Art today in its larger sense of meaning, as in an art of a particular
>culture or period, is no longer comprised of these predominately
>historical and private practices with canvas or metal or hand
>presses.
Art comprises drawing, painting and sculpting, as well as photographing and printing, film making, designing of web sites, etc., etc. We have a few more media available to us than we used to. That doesn't remove the production of art from its historical context or make art any less a form of self-expression.
>The art of today is actually a vast envelop of media that has
>no single medium or style or format or even a localizable objective
>armature of any sort. Or rather it has one of every sort and
>completely encapsulates our senses and sensibilities of time, space,
>and memory. The television is of course one example, but then there
>are all the other visual media, not to mention all the audio formats,
>and all their combinations. In other words our art is the totality of
>these mass media we are surrounded by and through which we both
>receive and extend our perception and knowledge of the world. We are
>literally drown in these arts. So, that the ideas about the
>singularity or uniqueness or value or reproduction of art are
>completely irrelevant.
Art has never had a single medium or style or format. (I don't have a clue what you mean by a "localisable objective armature".)
The development and proliferation of audio-visual media has indeed had an effect on our perception of pictures that don't move, objects that don't make noise. The presence of technologically driven and highly reproducible art forms points up the uniqueness, the hand-madeness, and even the rootedness in tradition of the singular work of art -- makes an issue of uniqueness, where there was none before.
>There is no work of art as such in our age of mass mechanical
>reproduction and electronic media.
So what are the sidewalk and mural paintings we see on city streets? What shall I call my own paintings and sculpture? What are monuments and mosaics, the figures, photos, calligraphy and drawings in our public buildings? If not works of art "as such", then as what?
>Rather all these productions and
>media are our art. So, instead of evaluating this envelop as an
>aesthetic experience, or attempting to critique its artistic qualities
>or lack of them, it seems to me the primary direction for an analysis
>to take is to attempt to understand it's function.
First abolish the work of art, then claim that "our art" is the totality of artistic production, then deny its aesthetic value while trying to understand its function. Yes? You've set us quite a task, there, Chuck.
>That function which
>is predominately social, ideological and propagandistic has in
>fact been vastly augmented by this multiplicity of means of
>production.
What we're left with when we when we suck the aesthetics out of art is a set of very vague ideas. Which is probably because visual art, *an sich*, is not about ideas (though it sometimes traffics in them). Its job is to offer an aesthetic-sensuous experience to the viewer. That's considered an outmoded notion by those who believe artists should chase ideas, that the work of art should be an illustration (as Tom Wolfe scoffingly put it) to some text, whether stated or implied. But the modern mistrust of the sensuous-aesthetic nature of visual art doesn't have us all snowed. Some of us eccentrics still know that the human brain is capable of spelunking into other than verbalisable places, and that some of the most valuable human work is done where words will never venture. On the edge of chaos, we might say.
All social animals are capable of communicating, however simply, for social, ideological and propagandistic reasons (by thumping on their chests, by eyeballing each other, by broadcasting pheromones, etc.). The human animal may be unique in wanting, even needing to work regions of the brain not immediately connected to self- or group-interest; to communicate other than conscious thoughts, and for other than practical reasons. This realm of non-instrumental communication encompasses inspired moments in all creative work, from particle physics to web site design, and including spur-of-the-moment bed-time stories, dance, theatre, Jimmi Hendrix's Star Spangled Banner, even -- shudder -- opera.
This is not to suggest that the creative individual acts outside society. All creative effort arises in a given political-economic context, can be used for promotion and propaganda, reflects and can influence existing social relationships, is historically situated. It is precisely within its social context that art has value as venture into the dark, beyond words, beyond ready-made meanings.
>In comparison to this media envelop, what makes the
>traditional practices of art important is not their identification
>with unique and potentially valuable objects available only to an
>elite. Instead, these practices represent probably the only means that
>still exist to produce art that is available to any one, especially the
>marginal and dispossessed. However degraded our own view these
>practices in themselves and however little we value them, they still
>contain at least the potential for mass access to the production of
>art, although they are of another era and completely excluded from the
>universal commons of mass media.
Are you bringing the one-off work of art back into play, now? The potential for mass access to such art is more likely to be contained in the technological means for its reproduction than in the artwork itself.
And I disagree (again) that the production of one-off works of art is anachronistic. Folks haven't stopped putting pencil to drawing pad or file to stone since the advent of MTV. Nor will they. The tentative scratching of images is here to stay, just as much as are our eternal half-blind ventures into music and mathematics -- boomerangs into the unknown. We wouldn't be human if we didn't dare.
Now, back to Marx and Benjamin: I understand Marx to be saying (below) that in earlier times we dominated the forces of nature with mythology, which nourished the life of the imagination; and now that, as he believes, technology is the master of nature, mythology must disappear. He asks whether this will affect our view of nature and of social relations (and answers in the affirmative).
"Is the view of nature and of social relations on which the Greek imagination and hence Greek [mythology] is based possible with self-acting mule spindles and railways and locomotives and electrical telegraphs? What chance has Vulcan against Roberts and Co., Jupiter against the lightning-rod and Hermes against the Credit Mobilier? All mythology overcomes and dominates and shapes the forces of nature in the imagination and by the imagination; it therefore vanishes with the advent of real mastery over them." -- Intro to the Grundrisse, 1858.
Walter Benjamin may have had the Grundrisse passage in mind when he asked what effect technology would have on art. He seemed to conclude that it is just as well art should escape the clutches of mythology (cult) through technology; that technology has given art a better chance of belonging to the public sphere:
"[F]or the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the 'authentic' print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice -- politics." "The Work of Art in the Era of its Technological Reproducibility", 1935. http://www.student.math.uwaterloo.ca/~cs492/Benjamin.html
My response is that art (and I'm talking about drawings, paintings, sculpture -- works to be viewed), having lost its connection to myth and ritual, has itself been vested with some sort of oracular truth-telling function. I'm speaking of the apparent screaming need among the cognoscenti to void art of aesthetic value, so that every work of art worthy of the name is seen as illustrating or, better yet, channelling some more or less obscure text. We're not supposed to trust our own senses, dammit; the information they send our way isn't good enough for us hyper-brained beings. Visual expression must develop an idea, make a statement: a work of art is an essay (pace Marta) with a speech impediment.
How many times have we heard people say they went to an exhibit of modern art but "didn't understand it"? But the viewers are right -- they can tell the artist doesn't trust the aesthetic-sensuous experience; they know they're supposed to be "getting" something. As though a little stack of cans of the artist's dog's shit is anything but an insult! The collaboration of artists and art critics is at fault for having produced work that coyly insists on being deciphered. The present-day mystification of art leaves it with no more chance of belonging to the public sphere than it ever had. In fact the latter-day self-mythologizing is far more alienating than the erstwhile association with myth and ritual.
cheers, Joanna S
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