"Poetry, Language, Thought" has finally arrived, and a long wait at a car
rental agency gave me the opportunity to dive into Heidegger's "The Origin of
the Work of Art".
I realize that this is one of the iconic works of 20th C. art theory, so
school boys are supposed to treat it with great respect. But right off the
bat, the reader is taken into a world of nonsense that just keeps on getting
more fantastic (and I couldn't help wondering if it were intended to be a
spoof -- as Aristophanes might written concerning Plato and his friends)
"The artist is the origin of the work, the work is the origin of the artist.
Neither is without the other. Nevertheless, neither is the sole support of
the other. In themselves and in their interrelations artist and work *are*
each of them by virtue of a third thing which is prior to both, namely that
which also gives artist and art their names -- art."
Huh?
And so begins the Heigegger method: to leverage understanding out of how
language is commonly used. (with occasional reference to how language was used
back when Gods strode the earth -- i.e. ancient Greece)
"What art is should be inferable from the work. What the work of art is we can
come to know only from the nature of art. Anyone can see that we are moving
in circle.... this is neither a makeshift nor a defect. To enter upon this
path is the strength of thought, to continue on it is the feast of thought,
assuming that thinking is a craft"
And no... I'm not going to follow him down that circular path.
Although, actually, I did keep on reading -- as he introduced a discussion of
Van Gogh's painting of shoes - to demonstrate how "the art work lets us know
what shoes are in truth. It would be the worst self deception to think that
our description, as a subjective action, had first depicted everything thus
and then projected it onto the painting"
But unfortunately, that is precisely what Heidegger has done -- for he has
described the shoes as a "pair of peasant shoes and nothing more -- from the
dark opening of the worn insides the toilsome tread of the worker stares forth
- in the stiffly rugged heaviness of the shoes there is the accumulated
tenacity of her slow trudge through the
far spreading and ever uniform furrows of the field swept by a raw wind etc
etc"
And yet it is the consensus of art historians that the shoes belonged to Van
Gogh himself -- i.e. they are the shoes of an artist.
And so forth.
It's amazing to me that this man is taken seriously.
But the Epilogue to this essay does make a less fanciful presentation of his
position -- as an apostle of the great Hegel -- so I've copied it's entirety
below.
The job of an apostle is to preach that the words of his Prophet are true
until proven otherwise - so if the Prophet tells us that art is no longer
"decisive for our historical existence", how can it not be so ? (for who
could ever disprove it?)
How did this weird cult of German idealism take root in European education,
and why is it still so entrenched in academia ?
And please note Heidegger's frontal assault against experience as "the source
that is standard not only for art appreciation and enjoyment, but also for
artistic creation"
Yes, Heidegger is the enemy of direct experience, and the friend of school
boys who learn about Titian by reading historicist texts instead of looking at
the paintings.
But also note how he concludes his Epilogue:
"The history of the nature of Western art corresponds to the change of the
nature of truth. This is no more intelligible in terms of beauty taken for
itself than it is in terms of experience, supposing that the metaphysical
concept of art reaches to art's nature."
So, if we don't share in some supposition regarding a "metaphysical concept of
art", then beauty and experience may once again make Western art intelligible.
( and perhaps the other kinds of art as well)
**************************
Epilogue
The foregoing reflections are concerned with the riddle of art, the riddle
that art itself is. They are far from claiming to solve the riddle. The task
is to see the riddle. Almost from the time when specialized thinking about art
and the artist began, this thought was called aesthetic. Aesthetics takes the
work of art as an object, the object of aisthesis, of sensuous apprehension in
the wide sense. Today we call this apprehension experience. The way in which
man experiences art is supposed to give information about its nature.
Experience is the source that is standard not only for art appreciation and
enjoyment, but also for artistic creation. Everything is an experience. Yet
perhaps experience is the element in which art dies. The dying occurs so
slowly that it takes a few centuries.
To be sure, people speak of immortal works of art and of '; art as an eternal
value. Speaking this way means using that language which does not trouble
with precision in all essential matters, for fear that in the end to be
precise would call for thinking. And is there any greater fear today than
that of thinking? Does this talk about immortal works and the eternal value of
art have any content or substance? Or are these merely the half-baked cliches
of an age when great art, together with its nature, has departed from among
men?
In the most comprehensive reflection on the nature of art that the West
possesses--comprehensive because it stems from metaphysics-namely Hegel's
Vorlesungen iiber die Asthetik, the following propositions occur:
Art no longer counts for us as the highest manner in which truth obtains
existence for itself. One may well hope that art will continue to advance and
perfect itself, but its form has ceased to be the highest need of the spirit.
In all these relationships art is and remains for us, on the side of its
highest vocation, something past.
The judgment that Hegel passes in these statements cannot be evaded by
pointing out that since Hegel's lectures in aesthetics were given for the last
time during the winter of 1828-29 at the University of Berlin, we have seen
the rise of many new art works and new art movements. Hegel never meant to
deny this possibility. But the question remains: is art still an essential and
necessary way in which that truth happens which is decisive for our historical
existence, or is art no longer of this character?
If, however, it is such no longer, then there remains the question why this is
so. The truth of Hegel's judgment has not yet been decided; for behind this
verdict there stands Western thought since the Greeks, which thought
corresponds to a truth of beings that has already happened. Decision upon the
judgment will be made, when it is made, from and about this truth of what is.
Until then the judgment remains in force. But for that very reason the
question is necessary whether the truth that the judgment declares is final
and conclusive and what follows if it is.
Such questions, which solicit us more or less definitely, can be asked only
after we have first taken into consideration the nature of art. We attempt to
take a few steps by posing the question of the origin of the art work. The
problem is to bring to view the work-character of the work. What the word
"origin" here means is thought by way of the nature of truth.
The truth of which we have spoken does not coincide with that which is
generally recognized under the name and assigned to cognition and science as a
quality in order to distinguish from it the beautiful and the good, which
function as names for the values. of nontheoretical activities.
Truth is the unconcealedness of that which is as something that is. Truth is
the truth of Being. Beauty does not occur along~ side and apart from this
truth. When truth sets itself into the ;~ work, it appears. Appearance-as this
being of truth in the work and as work-is beauty. Thus the beautiful belongs
to the advent of truth, truth's taking of its place. It does not exist merely
relative to pleasure and purely as its Object. The beautiful does lie in form,
but only because the forma once took its light from Being as the isness of
what is. Being at that time made its advent as eidos. The idea fits itself
into the morphe. The sunolon, the unitary whole of morphe and hule, namely the
ergon, is in the manner of energeia. This mode of presence becomes the
actualitas of the ens actu. The actualitas becomes reality. Reality becomes
objectivity.
Objectivity becomes experience. In the way in which, for the world determined
by the West, that which is, is as the real, there is concealed a peculiar
confluence of beauty with truth. The history of the nature of Western art
corresponds to the change of the nature of truth. This is no more intelligible
in terms of beauty taken for itself than it is in terms of experience,
supposing that the metaphysical concept of art reaches to art's nature.
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