Jan Świdziński
Models of Art
1. There exists a dependence between civilization and art. It is possible to construct models of art which correspond to different phases of civilization. Full synchronization between civilization and art does not exist. Civilization, developing spontaneously, is a constant process. The canons which civilization creates try to stop this process. If the changes taking place in civilization are sufficiently free, the canons maintain their importance for a long period of time. The instability of the structure made up of reality and answering to its principles appears only in the initial stages of a new civilization, in the period when new canons are created, and during the period of civilization’s decline when the old canons do not correspond to the new reality.
If the speed of changes taking place in civilization increases, the canons become more and more relative (they are compulsory to a certain degree). If the speed becomes great, the changes in reality do not give civilization the necessary time to keep up with the creation of new canons. The model with which it is possible to describe reality cannot be closed and based on firm canons. The only possibility which exists is the building of on open model in which unforeseen variability is the normal state of reality. Truth equals topicality and is described according to the context in which the phenomenon is considered. This is the situation in which our civilization finds itself at present.
2. The resistance put up by set canons towards changes in reality is the reason for the coexistence of three models of art in modern practice. The oldest, in terms of its time of its birth – originating from the Renaissance tradition – is a model of art based on everlasting and continuously valid principles. It is the model which has been used for centuries by painting, sculpture and graphics. The second, which did not appear till the 20th century, is a relativistic model. It corresponds to Modernism and the Vanguard movement in art. Conceptualism of the 70’s closes this period, showing at the same time the need for the building of another model, corresponding to the situation in which the present civilization finds itself.
3. The first model, which goes back to the beginning of middle class art, is connected economically to and conditioned by the form of the exchange of goods. Functioning efficiently in the economical structure of the modern Art World (the best example of this may be the prices achieved for Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles) it has only functioned efficiently, in the epistemical structure till the end of the l8th century in the preindustrial epoch when changes in the materialistic civilization took place so slowly that is was possible to believe in the stability of existing canons. In science, the answer to this model can be found in the opinion based on Newton’s physics. It is based on the following assumptions.
There exists a type of science which is stable and impossible to overthrow, establishing what is right once and for all. It endows the existing world with a sense of reality. The ideals of art, as a true picture of the world, based on the objective truth of science, were already formulated by Leonardo da Vinci “Studia prima la scientia e poi seguita la practica nata da essa scientia”. “II buono pittore ha da dipingere due cose principali cio’e 1’homo e il concetto delia mente sua”. (From Trattato della Pittura, Codex Vaticanus (Urbians) 1270 ed. H. Ludwig 1882, fragmento 54 and fragmento l80).
The universal model of art – being Foucault’s expression – assumes that the signs with which civilization shows reality are transparent for art. The language of art, like the language of science, has the means to express reality as something that really exist in our recognition and not as structure. It is something which is only a meaning which language gives to its expressions. The language which is used by the artist, mediating between empirical reality and the reality of art, cannot be in itself the aim of interests.
The situation changes in the 19th century. The sign, losing its transparency slowly, becomes a barrier between the reality being expressed and the already expressed reality. From the Romantic period the artist has started to pay attention to the sign itself, to its form and not to the function of turning one’s attention to what the sign expresses.
The consequence of such a process is that of art operating with a sign lacking in meaning, where the artist’s work moving entirely into the plane of formal and aesthetic decoration.
4. Modernist art proposed the relativistic model, to lake the place of the universal model which had not fulfilled its function. This relativism is characteristic for the entire knowledge of the 20th century. It is based on the following reasoning. A direct and homogeneous image of the world is impossible as ii depends on the tools with which we learn about it. Thus, the image of the world described with the tools used in physics or biology will differ, as well as the image described with the specific tool known as language. This reasoning can be spread to the idea of a sign as it performs the function of tools leading one’ s attention to what it indicates. If we consider the sign as a semantic idea and use the terminology of the structuralists, we can discern two parts in it: that which can be described as signifié and signifiant respectively. A dilemma exists if “signifié” is the same as “significant”. Is the reality transferred by art the true reality, or a different reality produced by art? How much of the true reality can be found in the reality of art is another problem. Can it really be found there or is art simply art, these two areas having nothing in common with each other?
Thus, art may either transmit an uncertain image of reality or only such a reality which can be expressed by a given art, or art may only transmit itself. This tendency, originating from Romanticism (from the preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin, written by Theophile Gautier in 1835- 36) is typical for the majority of modernist artists and theorists. Ad Reinhardt proclaiming his permanent revolution in art as a negation of the use of art for some purpose other than its own, is the last expression of this tendency.
5. The consequences of the relativistic model of art are the same as the consequences of modern science based on the model. It is a philosophical problem of Neopositivism. The genesis concerns the problem which D. Hume put forward in his work Essayes Concerning Human Understanding in 1748. He then formulated the alternative: either knowledge is certain but then it only concerns the ideas constructed by our mind, or it concerns the facts of the actual world and then it lacks certainty. This leads to the following dualism. There are sentences of ideas, which are analytical, and others of facts, which are synthetic (otherwise empirical). We accept the analytical sentences entirely on the basis of understanding the meaning of the expressions. The main difficulty arises when we want to verify the empirical sentences . Einstein speaks about “die auf Einfuhlung in die Erfahrung sich stuzende Intuition”. Kandinsky formulates this similarly for art in Uber das Geistige in der Kunst , as well as Piet Mondrian in the article “Art” in Neue Gestaltung”. Wittgenstein, in agreement with the Neopositivist tendency, says that his language describes his world.
6. For the universal conception, time is absolute. There exists an absolute simultaneity of phenomena. Similarly, there exists the possibility of sorting out incidents according to the time. Things remain together in mutual relations.
Relativistic time belongs to matter. The dependence of tune is conditioned by the interaction of material arrangements and processes. The time unity of the process of reality and the process of art becomes broken. The synchronic pivot takes over the diachronic one (as with the Structuralists, one examines phenomena lacking in history, replaced here by anthropology).
Art does not concern itself with the absolute, as Malraux in Les Voix du Silence wanted. It is confined to itself, to its own signs. The main problem of Conceptualism and Art and Language lies in this. Atkinson/Baldwin in the Legibus Naturae from 1971 express this. Many other works of the Art and Language group lead to similar conclusions.
The experience of conceptual art, similar to the experience of Neopositivism in philosophy, leads to the following conclusions. It is impossible to create a system which would be able to express and explain itself by its own being. Hilbert’s programme for building a mathematical and logical system based on the absolute evidence of non-contradiction, and not on the passing on of interpretations from other theories, turned out to be unfeasible. This can be understood in Godel’s statement from 1931. In 1936, A.Church stated that even the essential qualifiers’ calculation in an unsolvable theory. It is also impossible to build on the same principles an autonomous and formalistic system in art. My language, or the means which I make use of, describe my world, but there exists another world which describes my language. Art as a relativistic world of one’s own time is utopia. We are subject to dependence and cannot break away from it.
Kosuth, in his first programme, in Art after Philosophy, proposes something unfeasible. On the one hand, he wishes to bring back to art the semantic function which hal been lost in the Modernist period (art which is meaning and not decoration), while on the other hand, he looks for a solution in the philosophical system which comes to the same conclusions in its own field as formalistic art did. Art as an analytical sentence is, of course, tautology. The difference between the proposed formalism through Modernism (through Ad Reinhard for example) and conceptual theorists is primarily based on the change of the means of expressions. According to the Modernists, these are visual signs. In Conceptualism and, especially in Art and Language, it is the language of logic. The misunderstanding is based on the latter; logic does not prove the truth of the relationship with empirical reality but only does research into the truth of statements about reality. One can see that what is proved by logic is a structure and that it is proved with the help of language. Our attention is turned towards the meaning. Thus, with the help of some meanings (of language) we prove other meanings (of structure). According to the semantic definition of truth put forward by Tarski , truth is based on the understanding of expressions of the language used. This does not mean that it necessarily has to be a linguistic language. The loss of communication of the signs of art does not confine itself solely to the language of art. It is a sign of the quick changes which take place in our civilization. One can partly come to such conclusions after reading Draft’s An Anti-Text Book (Art and Language 1974). The language of logic appears to also be a sign which is just as non-transparent as the language of modern art.
The conclusions lead Kosuth to withdraw from the programme found in ‘Art after Philosophy’ and to form a new programme m 1975 as ‘Anthropologized Art.’ Similar measures were undertaken by an English branch of Art and Language, proposing a form of para-Marxism in its last statements.
All these opinions are declarations of good will, the good will of confessing to the dependence of art on reality. ” The artist perpetuates his culture by maintaining certain features of it by “using” them. The artist is a model of the anthropologist engaged.
Another, although a much more naive declaration of good will, is the second manifesto of the French Collectif Art Sociologique from May 1975 (Herve Fischer, Fred Forest, Jean-Paul Theno). D’une part, en tant que pratique active dans le champ social, ici et maintenant, recourant aux approaches theorique gu’il soumet a l’epreuve de l’action, mettant en oeuvre des strategies par rapport au reel, mais aussi par rapport aux institutions, au pouvoir, inventant les techniques de ses experiences, l’art sociologique sort du cadre du discours scientifique et universitaire.”
The logical and scientific training of Art and Language permitted those artists to understand that the crisis of art does not results in its lack of learning. (The French artists from the Collectif Art Sociologique did not understand this).
Unfortunately, despite what they imagined, the realization of their assumptions does not appear in the programme of the artists from Art and Language. On the other hand, art must internalize and use its social awareness. One may agree here with Kosuth, but there still remains the question of how to do so. Under what kind of conditions should the constructing tool in interhuman communication come about in our present civilization?
C i t e d l i t e r a t u r e :
R.Barthes: Le Degre Zero de L’Ecriture. Paris: Edition du Seuil, 1964.
M.Foucault: Les Mots et les Choses. Paris: Gallimard, 1966.
M. Foucault: Les Mots et les Choses, “Le signe enferne de la chose repreentee, et sa nature consiste a exciter la premiere par la second.” Paris: Gallimard, 1966, p 78.
E.Husserl: Ideen zu einer reinen Phanomenologie und phanomenolonischen Philosophie. Halle 1913.
R.Carnap: Logical foundations of probability. Chicago: 1950.
K.Popper: The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Hutchinson Co., 1959.
W. Kandinsky: Uber des Geistige in der Kunst. Bern- Bumplitz: Benteli-Verlag, 1956.
P.Mondrian: “Art” in Neue Gestaltung. Mainz; Florian-Kupferberg, 1974.
T.Atktnson M.Baldwin: “De Legibus Naturae”, Studio International, London: 1971, pp.226-232.
L. Bieberbach; “Uber den Einfluss von Hilberts Pariser Vortrag Uber “Mathematische Probleme” auf die Entwicklung der Mathematik in der letzten dreissig Jahre-n”, Naturwissenschaften J Berlin: 18, 1930, pp 1101-1111.
K.Godel: “Uber formal unentscheidbare Systeme der “Principia mathematica” und verwandter Systeme. l.” Monatshefte fur Mathematik und Physik. Leipzig: 38, 1931, pp. 173-198.
J.Kosuth: “Art after Philosophy.” Studio International London: October, 1969, pp. 134-137.
“Works of art are analytic propositions. That is, if viewed within their context – as art – they provide no information what-so-ever about any matter of fact. A work of art is a tautology in that it is a presentation of the artist’s intention, that is, he is saying that that particular work of art is art, which means, is a definition of art”.
A.Tarski: Logic, Semantics, Matemathematics, Oxford: 1956
A.Tarski: Pojęcie prawdy, Warszawa: 1933
Draft: “An Anti-Text Book”, Art and Language, London: September, 1974
J.Kosuth: “The Artist as Anthropologist”, The Fox, New York: l, 1975
Art and Language, New York: 2, 1973 and op. cit. p. 41
“l) to establish appropriate forms of context with self-active groups in working class movement
2) to integrate the resulting dialogue in reciprocal historic praxis”.
H.Pischer, F.Forest J.-P.Thenot: Collectif Art Sociologique, Paris: Musee Galliera, 1975