Well, I find Schneider's essay rather interesting. Cheerskep and others may dismiss it out of hand but I think they may not be as familiar with Artspeak as I and others are such as Saul. This is not to defend the cluttered language of Artspeak yet when one reads a lot of it, certain ways of writing and uses of terms become familiar and readable. Artspeak is a type of technical language.
The use of the word autonomy in the essay presumes that readers know the 'art for art's sake' proposition that under-girds modernist formalism. Of course, I think it's quite well understood now that the art for art's sake concept is merely a device to focus attention on the blankness or nameless or homeless nature of form and color as distinct from symbol, identity, meaning, etc., which had hitherto been presumed to be inherent to and inseparable from form and color. I have argued --imitating Kant, Collingwood and Hegel at least -- and people like Barthes Derrida, and Foucault -- that we invest blank form and color (I'm using those words to stand for the whole array of formalist nouns) with our projected content.(Our own projected content is itself tangled with societal and cultural habits, expectations, presumptions). Schneider refers to TJ Clark's comments on David and the parading of the Death of Marat as if it had been a fanciful idea. But Clark writes in his book Farewell to An Idea that David's Death of Marat was indeed paraded in the streets to hype a political cause. I believe one of Clark's point in his discussion of how David's painting happened to be a feature of a political event, an event not imagined when it was commissioned and painted. Clark is introducing how modernism becomes entangled from its beginning with the constant destabilizing of circumstance. No artwork is simply Art, as the developed formalist argument had theorized. It is never autonomous. I am not sure if Schneider has a clear view of that. He does not mention TJ Clark's book where the discussion of David is the opening chapter. All of these problems with Artspeak terms like form, content, art for art's sake, formalism, autonomy, and the like, begin with ideas that locate them in objects and not in the minds of people. This is where Cheerskep's constant haranguing is justified, even if it is very old hat by now except among stubborn oldsters and beginners. But it does seem is if Schneider has just discovered that autonomy (formalist theory) no longer has any theoretical validity. However, the formalist ideas do have a legacy. And it is a legacy that can't be isolated, no matter how faulty its truth is. To dismiss that legacy is akin to dismissing all natural philosophy before Darwin. We have inherited a long formalist tradition and it has its value. For me that value is freeing the objective to be linked to a constant stream of re-contextualizings or new circumstances. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: saulostrow <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sat, October 13, 2012 4:43:39 PM Subject: Re: Papers: "Aesthetic Autonomy Reconsidered" by Bret Schneider But might we not address the issues raised without having to actually address Schneider's arguments (muddled as they are) - This refusal to deal with issues outside of the instrumentality of one's own subjectivity rather than for the sake of the collective is the type of privatization of public space that I indicated to William has come to be endemic of this listserv. I sent this text along because the question of the autonomy (independent nature) of aesthetic experience seems to underlie many of this listserv's members value systems, expectations and beliefs. On 10/13/12 5:22 PM, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote: > In a message dated 10/13/12 3:23:13 PM, [email protected] writes: > > >> Are you sure you read this carefully enough,before shooting it down as >> not expressed with sufficient clarity for discussion? >> > Yes, say I, I'm sure. I gave only Exhibit One. But I could easily fill > two pages detailing lots of additional evidence for feeling Schneider is not > equipped to clearly discuss the numerous terms he uses. > > I plead regretfully guilty to seeming abrupt and dismissive, but the > repelling truth is, I've learned how bootless it is to try to convey to > someone > unequipped that he is unequipped. (I'll preemptively try to fend off an > obvious reponse by saying I'm aware of dozens of other topics in which I > myself > would be woefully unequipped.) > >> It is always >> possible to improve on any phrasing but sometimes the problem,clumsily >> stated as it may be, is more interesting than straightening out the >> prose.
