Is every painting art?
On 7/7/09 10:10 AM, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote: "- for art does not exist until approached with the idea that this is art " This pure postmodern approach I reject. It is based on impotent ideas of unable wannabes and idiots- collectors advised by crooks. When we hear melody or noise we don't need any idea to approach them the way they deserve. Boris Shoshensky ---------- Original Message ---------- From: Saul Ostrow <[email protected]> To: aesthetics list <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Worringer: Abstraction and Empathy Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2009 08:41:19 -0400 Worringer believes that the signifier can be constructed in such a manner as to stimulate a sense of identification on the part of the viewer that rather than leading to a text that might be about something is a text whose primary content is referential to experiencing the signifier - the signified in other terms is the experience of the work of art stripped bare of any narrative external to that experience - for Worringer, who is esthetically a romantic such an experience is emotive rather than necessarily intellectual though one does not necessarily preclude the other - the intellectual response would tend to be one of self-reflection concerning, or about what one might associate with such an experience rather than the experience itself - As for approaching art - there is no way to approach art - for art does not exist until approached with the idea that this is art and must therefore be approach as such -from there one approaches it in any number of learned producing various and sundry texts (readings) - none of which is universal, exclusive nor complete but only reflect that aspect of the signifier that might be grasped within the (specific) moment or cumulatively over time On 7/6/09 8:07 PM, "Frances Kelly" <[email protected]> wrote: Frances to Saul and others... The terms "signifier" and "signified" and "text" are familiar to me as the jargon used in francoeuropean semiology and structuralism. If that is your intended usage, it is admittedly one good way to assay abstraction and naturalization in art, although it may not be a way that Worringer might have used. To use it is to simply scan and probe an artifact, with the goal of reading some content or meaning into it, as if it indeed might be a stated text or narrative discourse or literary fiction. This is likely the best way to appreciate modern artistic installations, such as urinals and fences and diggings. The artwork is merely reviewed and reported to be like a conditional proposition, where any evoked aesthetic experience would be mainly intellectual. While it is a good way to approach some art, it is not the only way, nor even the best way in some instances. For this reason, the terms and jargon of angloamerican semiotics is available. By way of comparison, the "signifier" in semiology is like the sign vehicle or representamen in semiotics, and the two "signifieds" as "texts" in semiology are like the immediate and intermediate objects in semiotics. The terms "signifier" and "signified" are of course acceptable, but the dyad seems to be missing a third concept, which would be the significant interpretant as an effect or even as the signer. The term "text" furthermore should not be used in the way semiology uses it, because any lingual text should be held as roughly a written statement that is mainly scribed or lettered or typeset, or further marked and coded. For pragmatism, lingual statements and narratives and discourses have their manifestations in oral remarks and discussions and lectures, or in literal texts and documents and manuscripts. There is simply no need to use the term "text" for narrative and discourse. Saul wrote... Art objects are signifiers - the signified consists of two discrete text - one a continuous text of its being (it is self-referential to the being of the signifier) - this text constitutes what it is eg a phenomenal object, whose subject is aesthetically organized by means of the following principles - the other is a text of linked segments ( a narrative of our subjective comprehension, )which is speculative and interpretative - this corresponds to what the work is about. The segmented text is always incomplete and the continuous one constitutes an object of knowing and can not be completely comprehended William wrote... Frances continues to assume that art objects have qualifying attributes that we find interesting or boring, etc. I insist that this is a manner of speaking and not a correct statement. Art objects, like anything else do not have such affective qualities. They simply are of such and such material, for such and such purpose, and so on. Any qualities, such as interesting or boring, are projected by perceivers and are only make-believe, as-if they belonged to the object. Thus it's ridiculous to say that an abstract painting (or anything at all) can be boring, or interesting, or good or bad, or meaningful. When we say that we are saying they are metaphors. Artworks are nothing but objects. They attain the status of art objects through our own projections, personal and cultural. Worringer is quite clear about this. Again and again he refers to abstraction and empathy as subjective states and art objects as (at best) symptoms of those states. Today, I believe he would say metaphor instead of symptom. -- ____________________________________________________________ Click to get your online credit check report & score. http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2241/fc/BLSrjpYVrWfJx21JyvvqeNciElH5QS Hk1ndGv7e3M40QBdkqeLTJAG2NVMM/ --
