Heidegger on Art

Posted on January 16, 2009
Filed Under Heidegger, Philosophy | 13 Comments

Hubert Dreyfus has up a nice article on Heidegger on Art (HT: Enowning) It ends up covering a lot of issues from the later Heidegger.


Heidegger is not interested in works of art as expressions of the vision of a creator, nor is he interested in them as the source of aesthetic experiences in a viewer. He holds that “Modern subjectivism … immediately misinterprets creation, taking it as the self-sovereign subject’s performance of genius.” and he also insists that “aesthetic experience is the element in which art dies.” Rather, for Heidegger, an artwork is a thing that, when it works, performs at least one of three ontological functions. It either manifests, articulates or reconfigures the style of a culture from within the world of that culture. It follows that, for Heidegger, most of what hangs in museums, what is admired as great works of architecture, and what is published by poets, were never works of art, a few were once artworks but are no longer working, and none are working now. To understand this counter-intuitive account of art, we have to begin by reviewing what Heidegger means by world and being.

One of the most fascinating texts by Heidegger for me is his section on art writ large in his Nietzsche lectures. It’s also the most chilling since if there is an element of fascism in Heidegger I think it is here. The idea of an artist and society as their canvas. Of course it seems undeniable that many artists most explicitly do so consider themselves in that fashion. (At least many of the ones I’ve talked to have — preferring to think in terms of the political rather than the traditional senses of aesthetics) And many of these artists, to me anyway, end up with a rather subjectivist conception of truth that verges on the solipsistic.

Of course I know the dangers of overgeneralization. So I will say that there are artists who also just like to make things that people enjoy that communicates some aspect of things that others may have missed.

Related posts:

  1. Does Heidegger Reify Language?
  2. Heidegger and Realism
  3. On Kant, Heidegger, and OOP
  4. Podcast on Heidegger and the Environment
  5. Damon Linker on Heidegger
  6. Levinas, Heidegger & Objects

Comments

13 Responses to “Heidegger on Art”

At the risk of sounding like a DFH, is there an artistic statement that is not political? Or perhaps we are playing different word games…

I don’t know – what counts as an artistic statement as opposed to an artistic creation?

Statement is a word that I seem to have chosen carelessly (which doesn’t make my word choice meaningless, I admit). What I meant to say is that art itself seems to be political. When I was in college, there was this poster put up in one of the dorms that had the question “what is art” written on it with an invitation to write your response on the poster. I usually find projects like this insufferable, so I didn’t write a response, but I thought about it for a while and came to the conclusion that art is the frame.

By that I mean that Art is the process of framing reality to privilege a certain narrative, placing the elements that fit outside of that narrative outside of the frame. Creating art is the process of making the natural artificial (or art-ificial). Choosing what stays inside the frame is inherently a political acivity because the artist is creating a narrative to transmit to other people in order to influence how they will interpret to the natural world.

I guess the problem with my definition of political there is that every event of communication is political. That’s why I asked if you meant something different by political.

Is art always communication? I’m not sure it is. (What’s communicated?)

Certainly there are theories of art where it is always political. Indeed I think that’s sort of what Heidegger is getting at. To cast art as mere framing seems incorrect though. I personally think that aesthetics has to be part of the discussion.

Is art always communication?

Yes. Art, by its very nature, is an intentional act in which a creator reproduces reality, and then directs that reproduction to a viewer. Art, therefore, is intersubjective, and thus inherently communicative. Moreover, if you think about the distinction between craft and art, it becomes even more clear that the only reason to care about form is to communicate an idea to a viewer. I would agree that not all art has an overt message, but that is not the same question as whether art is communication. Even still life painting created only to showcase the painter’s skill and to create an aesthetically pleasing scene is communication.

I personally think that aesthetics has to be part of the discussion.

We may be talking past each other here. Creating art is the process of choosing what elements to put in the frame and what elements to leave out. Those choices are guided by an aesthetic narrative. For me, the question of aesthetics is part and parcel of the question of the guiding narrative that the artist is communicating. You may have a narrower definition of aesthetics than I do, though. I am assuming that aesthetics is totally subjective and there are no agreed-upon standards of taste. YMMV.

Well on the first point I’d probably disagree. I think art can evoke but I don’t think it is necessarily communicative in the sense of being intentional conveying of an idea from the artist to the audience.

Too keep in with the language of speech acts (which I don’t think is the best – so don’t read too much into it) we can talk about art as communicating content. And that is definitely a part of some kinds of art. But I don’t think it is essential to art as art. That’s because art can also function as a kind of performance without much content. (Which is what I tend to see aesthetics proper as) To judge good art the focus is on aesthetics or beauty and not ones skill as a communicator. Likewise just as I can point at something without communicating (especially if I point beyond what I know) art can point us to something in excess of the understanding of the artist.

To me to say art is communicative is to say that the artist masters their art rather than the opposite. (Which I think is more true)

I agree there’s aren’t agreed upon standards of taste although I’m not sure that entails beauty is subjective. There’s not agreed upon standards of truth yet few say truth is subjective.

Just to be clear, I don’t have a worked out theory of art. I do think though that aesthetics (whatever it ends up being) is basic. That is it can’t be explained in terms of other things. I also think the Greek view that it is fundamental in some sense is correct.

I’m wondering if we’re talking past each other–it’s very likely, and likely my fault.

First, on the communication angle, I’m racking my brain trying to come up with an example of what is commonly known as art that is not communicative. Using the basic transactional model of communication, communication is an event where a sender sends a message through a medium to a receiver. I think you agree with me that there is a sender, a receiver and a medium, you just aren’t sure of a message. But I think it’s pretty clear that there is a message in every work of art. First, there is the denotative message–the painter is arranging pigments on a canvas to send the message of a bowl of fruit, for example. It isn’t a bowl of fruit, but it is the message of a bowl of fruit–pretty clearly communicative. That’s the denotative message. The connotative message that a work of art conveys is found within the aesthetic frame of the work. The artist can’t help but convey through her artistic choices their aesthetic preferences–their view on order versus chaos, to use just one example. I’m finding it hard to think of even one example of art that is not communicative in at least these two ways.

art can point us to something in excess of the understanding of the artist.

Granted that art has the potential to evoke a response in the viewer that was not intended by the creator. But that has nothing to do with whether art is communication. Literature, the form of art that is most clearly communication, has the potential to teach messages that go beyond the original intent of the artist. This usually has to do with what comm. theory calls interference–that due to either poor choice of symbol by the sender, imperfections in the medium, or mistakes in decoding by the receiver, meaning is not perfectly conveyed.

To me to say art is communicative is to say that the artist masters their art rather than the opposite.

I don’t quite understand what you mean here. Are you talking about transcendence?

In regard to aesthetics, I have always thought of the Greek view of beauty as a common frame of reference–a paradigm to arrange, alter and subvert. However, the Kantian turn has been in my rear view mirror for a while now, so I tend to react to theories of beauty with bemusement–perhaps that is the root of the problem right there.

You think all modern art has a propositional content that is in the mind of the artist and communicated to the audience?

I don’t.

That’s not to say I believe there is no communication in most art. I guess what I’m saying is that it doesn’t appear to be what is most important in art.

Put an other way, if we separate out (quasi-artificially) style from content then art’s key aspects are in the former rather than the latter.

Maybe you are correct – you’ve been seduced by the dark side of Kantianism. Which I suspect can’t make heads nor tails out of what I see as key to art. (grin) I have to admit I’m rusty on my Kant here. So correct me if I’m off. But doesn’t Kant see art more as a matter of taste and more empirical. That is it’s the common sense (in the literal sense of that term) that all have. To the degree all consider something beautiful it is beautiful. But this speaks only about the fact we share a common sense.

But then I’m really not the person to be debating art with. I know more here than I do about say ethics, but only partially so. I know more about Heidegger’s sense of art simply because it is so wrapped up in his ontology. And that ontological aspect I actually agree with. I just think that when turned to art proper it is missing something.

You think all modern art has a propositional content that is in the mind of the artist and communicated to the audience?

Not necessarily propositional content. But, not all communication is propositional in nature. What I’m saying is that (a) art is intentional, (b) art is intersubjective, (c) intentional, intersubjective acts are communicative. Even modern artists are trying to convey a mood or an aesthetic message, if nothing else. What is the intent of the artist of making art if not to communicate? Even if you say, the artist is making a pretty picture for other people to enjoy, the artist has coded her belief about what constitutes a pretty picture as a normative statement onto the canvas.

And, I wasn’t talking about Kant specifically. I was more referring to Kant’s “Copernican Turn” (which I have heard at least some refer to as the Kantian Turn) toward subjectivism. What I am trying to say here is that the question of what is beauty strikes me as a useless question, especially as applied to art. To me, art is not art because it is beautiful, art is art because it tries to convey something about the artist’s aesthetic viewpoint. Also, aesthetics is to me a place where I feel comfortable being radically relativist. Of course, I have opinions about what constitutes good art and bad art, but those have more to do with technique than substance.

I guess what I’m saying is that there are three components to a lot that gets called art. One is the communicative with art as an expression by an artist and dominated by the conscious intents of the arts. The next is the focus on aesthetic experience. Heidegger rejects both these elements in favor for a third notion of the expression of a culture’s style and the expression of that style. That is art is primarily cultural rather than individual.

While I think all can be found in art I tend to think that the aesthetics that Heidegger downplays is the most important aspect of art. Certainly one can recognize the aesthetical and try to put it in art. But one can do this accidentally and it is still art. That’s roughly my argument against the domination of the work of art by the artist. Heidegger sees the culture doing the art with the artist basically a locus of forces utilizing the artist. The artist no more dominates the art than the paintbrush held by the artist does because the artist is themselves held. And I think there’s a lot of truth in that, if only because I think intentionality always includes a lot the intender is unaware of. (This is where I think my post-structuralist sensitivities conflict with your Kantian ones – the nature of intentionality)

I read a bit more (briefly) on Kant’s theory of art and in many ways he’s actually fairly close to my view with his focus on aesthetics as a common sense of style. He obviously buys into a universality that I think incorrect. But beyond that I agree with the basic approach.

As you describe it art is the conscious representation of aesthetics utilizing a particular viewpoint.

I just can’t accept that view.

But if art has anything to do with nature than there must be a “universal” lynch pin (so to speak) in the aesthetic. In fact, I think judging an aesthetic presupposes a connection with nature–however intuitive. Such a connection has the effect of grounding the aesthetic in such a way that one may judge it’s stylistic quality ahead of the quality of it’s execution.

I would also say that culture influences art to the degree that it informs one about nature and, therefore, is also grounded in the same way that art is–by something that is universal.

And so, I think I agree with Nate in that art is essentially communicative. But it is only so in how it deviates from the “universal” aesthetically–there being something “telling” in the deviation however intuitive.

That depends upon how you conceive of nature. The way Heidegger or Peirce conceive of nature rather than Kant entails that there is no universal lynch pin that is fully complete. Beyond that I do agree that aesthetics and nature are tied together. And here Heidegger has a lot to say. Indeed Heidegger’s thinking through the old Greek notion of physis in a new and originary fashion is quite helpful here. (IMO)

An artist makes the invisible visible and I, as a cloud of electrons, trapped in a morphogenetic field swimming in the Hertzian Sea finds great succor in such tulpoidal heroics. Hear,Hear- a tot ‘o rum to the pongids!

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