The very conception that their is such a thing as art gives rise to it practices, practioners, and its products. The artist is not the creator of the concept but the concept the creator of the artist. In turn, we come to know thecontent of the "concept art" through the objects we associate with art. That is the art-work is an elaboration of the concept and through these we come to know "the knowing of art" (this latter concept being a kantian one).
The tautological nature of MH's arguments he believes reflects the very essence of the circularity of our reality - that things are what they are through the circularity of thought and that by demonstrating this we might be emancipated from the fallacies of thought. As for the Shoes - you may want to read Myer Shapiro's response to MH's reading fo them - I think you might find more satisfactory - and more to your taste On 4/7/09 9:56 AM, "Chris Miller" <[email protected]> wrote: "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
