art and allusion

Notes on Session 4 of Philosophy-Art-Society (Tate Modern)

These notes complement the 4-session Tate Modern course Philosophy - Art - Society led by Nigel Warburton (ticket only, fully booked).

For the final session of the course we considered the idea of Aestheticism.

The word 'Aesthetics' is used in a number of ways. It has come to be a synonym for the Philosophy of Art. Historically it has been more specific in scope, and was the study of beauty in art and nature experienced through the senses. 

'Aestheticism' is the focus on personal experience of a sensual kind. Historically it is associated with the 19th Century movement in the arts that put beauty above social concerns - 'Art for art's sake' was its slogan  (Théophile Gautier may have coined this phrase). The idea was that art needed no justification beyond itself and the aesthetic pleasures it gives rise to.

In Kierkegaard's Either/Or, the author of the section 'Either' exemplifies the life of an aesthete, who sets morals aside, and concentrates on his own sensual pleasures, whether from music, or from seduction. His biggest fear is boredom (and he devises Crop Rotation as a solution!)

Listen to a podcast summarising Kierkegaard's Either/Or (from my book Philosophy: The Classics)

If you're interested in Kierkegaard you might like this BBC Radio 3 programme 'Fear and Trembling in Copenhagen' (though note that I mispronounce 'Regina Olsen' throughout!)

Walter Pater in the Conclusion of his book The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1873) stressed the need to 'burn always with this hard,  gemlike flame' so that we would not miss the moments of beauty that give life significance. Read Walter Pater's Conclusion (omitted from a later edition of the book because, in Pater's words 'I conceived it might possibly mislead some of those young men into whose hands it might fall.') Pater seems to be advocating a hedonistic pleasure in the moment, a cultivation of perception to enjoy the beauty and emotions stirred by life and art. This aestheticism inspired Oscar Wilde, who loved the book. It stood in stark contrast to the view of many Victorians that art should get its value from its utility and its moral stance.

Clive Bell's book Art (1914) set forward a different kind of aestheticism with his notion of Significant Form (the quality that all genuine works of visual art allegedly shared), i.e. patterns of lines, shapes, and colours, capable of stirring the Aesthetic Emotion in a sensitive viewer. This is aestheticism in the sense that all that matters is the personal response of the sensitive viewer - art history, utility, artistry, social context are all irrelevant to experiencing art as art:

'The representative element in a work of art may or may not be harmful, but it is always irrelevant. For to appreciate a work of art, we must bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its affairs and ideas, no familiarity with its emotions.'

Read the relevant extract from Clive Bell's book Art. For a critical examination of Clive Bell's views, see my book The Art Question (Routledge).

In the gallery at Tate Modern we went into the Alexander Calder Performing Sculpture exhibition, and attempted to burn with gemlike flames, making ourselves receptive to the three dimensional patterns of his mobiles 

Read a review of the Calder exhibition (Adrian Searle in The Guardian).

Thanks to everyone who came to the course. It was great meeting you all. I hope you enjoyed it. For information about future courses, keep an eye on this weblog or sign up for email updates, or follow me on Twitter at @philosophybites I won't be teaching another course at Tate Modern until early next year (2017).  

 

 

 

Notes on Session 3 of Philosophy-Art-Society (Tate Modern)

These notes complement the 4-session Tate Modern course Philosophy - Art - Society led by Nigel Warburton (ticket only, fully booked).For this week’s class we looked at the idea of the self as a social construct, both in the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and in that of Erving Goffman (who was heavily influenced by Sartre.

Sartre’s descriptions of Bad Faith (a particular kind of self-deception about the limits of one’s personal freedom) include the example of the Café Waiter who enacts his role, performs his dance, as if he could not be anything else. For Sartre he is in denial of the degree to which he is not bound by social norms or by any picture other people have of what he ought to be. We also discussed Sartre’s argument against solipsism (the idea that you might be the sole mind in the universe) – the example of a voyeur peering through a keyhole who suddenly becomes aware of himself as a ‘looked at look’ when he hears footsteps behind him. The implication is that we are all pre-consciously aware of ourselves as being one mind amongst many, and that social emotions such as shame reveal how much our way of being in the world takes this for granted.

Listen to a Philosophy Bites podcast on Sartre on Bad Faith

Erving Goffman, in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, put forward an interesting dramaturgical line on human interactions. Taking seriously Shakespeare’s line that ‘All the world’s a stage…’ he analysed a wide range of interactions in terms of masks, stage-setting, and performance. Surprisingly he did not think that there was a ‘true’ self behind all the masks.

Listen to a Social Science Bites podcast on Erving Goffman (with transcript)

Read more about Erving Goffman (Wikipedia)

In the gallery we looked at selected works in the Performing for the Camera exhibition, considering them from the perspective of Goffman’s dramaturgical framework. The setting, the appearance given and given off, etc.

For the final week of the course we’ll be looking at Aestheticism…

Notes on Session 2 of Tate Modern course Philosophy - Art - Society

These notes complement the 4-session Tate Modern course Philosophy - Art - Society led by Nigel Warburton (ticket only, fully booked).

For the second session we focussed on the idea of dissent. We discussed the value of dissent - ideas that came up included:

• Dissent as a matter of personal integrity (expressing what you truly believe rather than concealing it)
• Dissent as a catalyst to thought (even when the dissenting view is largely false)
• Dissent as an aspect of a well-functioning democracy 

We considered the remarkable case of August Landmesser - the extraordinarily brave German who refused to make the Heil Hitler salute in a Hamburg dockyard in 1936 (seen in this photograph with his arms folded):

Chapter Two of J.S. Mill's 1859 On Liberty made a powerful case for dissenting voices as catalysts up to the point where they incite violence. He argued that 'teachers and learners go to sleep where there is no enemy in the field' and that there is a danger of holding your views as Dead Dogma if they are not challenged by people who fundamentally disagree with you. Mill took seriously Socrates' idea that the unexamined life wasn't worth living for a human being and was fundamentally opposed to the 'deep slumber of a decided opinion'.

 Martin Luther King Jr's 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail' is a passionate defence of the fight against injustice using civil disobedience, the selective breaking of unjust laws. That kind of dissent has as an aim to 'so dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored' - an approach that shares a great deal with the aims of dissenting art. 

If you're interested in the topic of free speech try my book Free Speech: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press).

This series of 10 interviews on Free Speech for Index on Censorship may also be of interest - the most relevant to the arts are the ones with Martin Rowson (the cartoonist), Zargnar (a Burmese comedian who suffered years of solitary confinement and torture), Natalia Kaliada (of the Belarus Free Theatre) and Ma Jian (the Chinese novelist). The whole series is available here.

Other podcasts on free speech:

Richard Reeves on Mill's On Liberty

T.M. Scanlon on Free Speech

Rae Langton on Hate Speech

 

In the gallery we looked at a number of images in Level 4 East of Tate Modern 'Media Networks', including 

works by the Guerilla Girls. Dissent in art often uses words to make its targets more precise. That is certainly true of the works by the Guerilla Girls, John Heartfield, and Barbara Kruger that we looked at. Yet with Barbara Kruger's work, the use of the words  'Who Owns What?' within the work had a degree of ambiguity (not to mention irony given that the label by the side of the picture indicates that Tate owns the work, thanks to help with the purchase from a donor)...the ambiguity extends to Tate's own longer caption: few of us saw there anything trinket-like about the box that the hand holds or the way it is held - the allusions are surely to advertising a product and holding it out as something we need to buy. Perhaps there is even an allusion to ownership of pharmaceutical patents as the packet looks suspiciously like a packet of pills...

Next week we'll be thinking about the self, masks, and performance. You might like to watch this short animation about Erving Goffman's view of the self as a prelude (I wrote the script and Andrew Parks did the animation - you might recognise the voice over actor).

Notes on Session 1 of Tate Modern course Philosophy - Art - Society

These notes complement the 4-session Tate Modern course Philosophy - Art - Society led by Nigel Warburton (ticket only, fully booked).

For the first session we focussed on the concept of Power, using Steven Lukes' useful categorisation of the Three Dimensions of Power. This provides a convenient way of thinking about what could otherwise be a rather elusive topic. 

Lukes' basic account of power is that it is a capacity bring about consequences, and that it differs from extreme cases of coercion where there is no possibility of agency (though it is arbitrary whether we consider these cases uses of 'power' or not). Power involves compliance, often, though not always, with another's wishes. 

Lukes identifies 3 dimensions of power:

1. Where there is a conflict, the one who gets his or her wishes has power over the other. This can be observed: it focuses on behaviour. (
2. In some situations power is evident in agenda-setting. The powerful can control what even gets discussed.
3. Least obviously, social norms, and other invisible forces can be at play which exert power over individuals without them realising that this is happening. These unconcsious forces are not necessarily malevolent, but can shape a person's entire life without him or her realising that. This is inspired by the Marxist notion of 'false consciousness', the idea that you may not know your own best interests, and may even be in thrall to a vision of society that shapes your preferences and beliefs yet leaves you thinking these are freely chosen, when in fact they simply serve the interests of the powerful. 

Listen to a Philosophy Bites audio interview with Steven Lukes on Power (c15 mins) (Philosophy Bites is also available on iTunes and via an iPhone/iPad app)

Read a short review of Steven Lukes' book Power.

You might also be interested in this Philosophy Bites interview with Susan James on Michel Foucault which includes a discussion of his approach to power. (c20 mins)

Machiavelli wrote about strategies for exerting the first dimension of power in his book The Prince. He, for instance, argued that if you have to chose as a leader whether to be loved or feared, then chose to be feared as love isn't an effective motivator in times of crisis, but you can exert your power through fear. Machiavelli challenged the classic wisdom that a ruler should be compassionate, lamb-like, and display Christian virtues: he argued that a good leader should be a combination of the lion and the fox. Use the lion's power and the fox's cunning.

In the gallery we concentrated on a room in the Citizens and States section of the Tate Modern collection, Citizens, looking at works such as Richard Hamilton's The citizen 1981 - 1983, discussing them in relation to Lukes' 3 dimensions of power. 

We also looked at the power relations displayed by Tate Modern over viewers' interpretations of works in the section Abstraction and Society, and in particular the suggested reading of abstract works by Mondrian and others through the caption 'Works reliant on geometrical abstraction from different moments in the twentieth century reflect the aspiration to invent a new society'. The confident and seemingly authoratative caption here, written in abstract and somewhat academic language, could be viewed as exerting power of types one and two over the viewer. There seems little room for debate here, and some more conventional views of about Mondrian's intentions,  for instance the idea that his move towards abstraction during turbulent times in the mid-Twentieth century could be seen as a turning away from pressing social issues to focus on spiritual metaphysical, aesthetic matters, don't get on to the agenda of those who are dependent on the captioning. A more charitable reading, however, would be that such captions are deliberately provocative and designed to prod viewers of the images to see them differently. 

Next week we will be thinking about art and dissent.