Astonishing mediocrity in Kivy and Danto in understanding obvious principles
of arts as a creative reflection of the impressions on humans from the
surrounding world sensed.
Boris Shoshensky
To: [email protected]
Subject: Reading Kivy: Chapter Two - Arthur Danto
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2009 16:00:29 GMT
"Works of art are distinguished from the real things with which they might
now
be confused because "the former are about something (or the question of what
they are about may legitimately arise)"" (Kivy quoting Danto)
"the thesis is that works of art, in categorical contrast with mere
representations, use the means of representation in a way that is not
exhaustively specified when one has exhaustively specified what is being
represented" -- or --- a work of art not only possesses a content, but it
"expresses something about that content" (Danto)
Where even if the artist and critic agree that an artwork has no content at
all -- it would still make sense to ask what the artwork is about - whereas
it would not make sense to ask "what a bicycle or fish is about"
A key phrase here is "legitimately arise".
How can we determine if the question of aboutness is legitimate? Concerning
which, Danto tells us that there are features ""the eye cannot decry - an
atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an
artworld""
...........................
....
And here, Kivy once again raises the issue of absolute music - does it fit
into Danto's model.
As he has already recorded, there is a history of including absolute music
among all the other representative arts - so questions of its content would
be
legitimate.
But this inclusion has also been disputed (Kant and Hegel).
Danto addressed this issue as follows:
"Music is not generally regarded as an imitative art, though both Aristotle
and Plato regarded it that way, and there have been those who supposed that
if
it did not merely express the emotions, in some way it mimed them. But from
the perspective of the concept of medium, the intermediary substance and
avenue of transmission from subject to spectator, music shares crucial
features with painting, sculpture, and drama"
As Kivy notes, the "other crucial features" are irrelevant and being
recognized as imitative is necessary but not sufficient (i.e. an art must not
only have a content, but it must also express something about it)
So to help Danto out, Kivy then offers three kinds of aboutness which might
"bring absolute music into the orbit of Danto's theory":
1. Absolute music may be about emotions (Jerrold Levinson: "Musical works
have
... expressive content")
2. Absolute music may be about the fictional worlds that it generates, the
way
a novel is (Kendall Walton: "It would be inadequate to think of music as
merely indicating or expressing the property of lateness; it portrays a
particular (ficticious) instance of something's being late ona particular
occasion")
3. Absolute music may be "about itself"(Richard Kuhns: "Music quotes
music...tone represent other tones...music is built on repetitions")
Yes, music can feel sad, but is it about sadness?
Yes, we can imagine music as a fictional world, but do we really care about
that world? (as we would care, say, about the world created by Homer)
Yes, music quotes itself, but should those quotes be interpreted in terms of
reference and representation? (does anyone ask what Beethoven was asserting
about a Mozart theme when he incorporated it into a Diabelli variation?)
Kivy takes ten pages to elaborate on this discussion, and it's fun to follow
all its musical details - but ultimately he doubts whether anyone is really
concerned with what these kinds of content are about - so they fail to meet
Danto's definition of art.
And I would agree.
But by the same token, a Formalist., like Bell or Fry, would not be
concerned with what the contents of the visual arts are about.
I.e. - the fact that Mrs. Wolfe is represented in a painting (by Thomas
Lawrence) - and the fact that she is dressed in fine clothes and viewing a
book of reproductions from the Sistine Chapel --- all of that content is
irrelevant to its
proper inclusion in an art museum, or to the proper understanding of that
painting as a work of art.
Kivy states "the question again is whether there is enough of the right stuff
here to compel us to construe these musical phenomena as even vaguely or
remotely "semantic"
And, despite the current status of semiotics and Nelson Goodman, I think
the
same question can reasonably be asked about paintings and sculpture.
Kivy even encourages such skepticism:
"Plenty of artifacts ,after all, are designed with the intention of parts
suggesting other parts without our wanting to impute semantic properties to
them. And nature abounds with cases of "suggestion" as well. (Clouds are a
"sign of" rain). Such intention to suggest , and success in suggesting, may
indeed be necessary conditions for meaning, but they are certainly not
sufficient."
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