Our disagreement rests on our using the term art differently. I am suggesting that a work of art is the special status of something that can't be achieved by means of artistic intention. By that I place greater emphasis on its subjectivity, its reception, than on its matgerial status.
On the related issue regarding representation, I quickly agree that there are no truly abstract forms even though all forms are essntially abstract (nameless in themselves, as Cheerskep may affirm). The seeming contradiction in that suggeston is that we can't perceive anything without either naming it or inventing a likeness for it. So everything looks like something else (or evokes the metaphorical "as-if"). The problem is that anything can look like many other things which are themselves multiply evocative of still other things, and so on. So an incredibly complex ambiguity is built into every perception. This is where Cheerskep and I part company. He would say the author has the duty to be as clear as possible in stirring another to perceive what he or she intends to convey. I say that some authors, artists, etc., have the duty to remove as many barriers as they can from the natural ambiguity of perception. I know this is not suitable to expository communication for it exposes paradox, alternative perceptions, free-ranging fictionalizing, and even incoherence. The benefit, however, is a greater awareness of the sheer magnitude of how we think and feel. It is an invitation for the fullest possible self-reflectivity, which is simply another way to achieve oneness with Being. While you conclude that abstractness leads to non-referentiality, I propose that non-referentiality is impossible (as does Amando) because, as stated above, everything looks like something else (or perhaps like everything else in some respects and certainly in its evocative capability for nothing prevents me from likening it to anything else no matter how strange or perverse). Abstraction is simply the degree to which form maintains its ambiguous evocative nature in our perceptions, or, more plainly, to subvert our habitual associations and open us to others. Because I imagine the role of some artists to be that of revealing the fullest possible ambiguity of form, its suggestive capacity to evoke likeness to anything and everything while always being itself, for the sake of "stirring" feeling of Beingness (or oneness -- with nature, God, or cosmos), I reject the notion that (all) art should convey (stir) some idea or translation of language or coherent thought or lesson, or, finally, intentionality. Any intentionality consciously imposed will, by necessity, reduce ambiguity. Any conscious effort to reduce ambiguity may be essential to science and exposition, "truth", "meaning" and the like, but it is opposite of artistic endeavor. Art is ambiguity exposed. The ideal art intention is none at all. The ideal meaning is none at all -- impossible to achieve yet worthy to seek. It is what the Renaissance era called Divine. WC
