sábado, 9 de agosto de 2014

Anti-Kosuth: changing gears back to reality

René Magritte, La trahison des images [Ceci n'est pas une pipe], 1929
Los Angeles County Museum of Art-LACMA
© René Magritte Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

Six steps to an ecology of art

by ANTONIO CERVEIRA PINTO

 

Step one


Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (ed. 1953).

The duck-rabbit, made famous by Wittgenstein
in Wikipedia

Aphorism 1-10

1. "When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out.  Their intention was shown by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples; the expression of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of the voice which expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding something.  Thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learnt to understand what objects they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs, I used them to express my own desires."

These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language.  It is this: the individual words in language name objects--sentences are combinations of such names.--In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning.  The meaning is correlated with the word.  It is the object for which the word stands.

Augustine does not speak of there being any difference between kinds of word.  If you describe the learning of language in this way you are, I believe, thinking primarily of nouns like 'table', 'chair', 'bread', and of people's names, and only secondarily of the names of certain actions and properties; and of the remaining kinds of word as something that will take care of itself.

Now think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping.  I give him a slip marked 'five red apples'.  He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked 'apples', then he looks up the word 'red' in a table and finds a colour sample opposite it; then he says the series of cardinal numbers--I assume that he knows them by heart--up to the word 'five' and for each number he takes an apple of the same colour as the sample out of the drawer.--It is in this and simlar ways that one operates with words--"But how does he know where and how he is to look up the word 'red' and what he is to do with the word 'five'?" ---Well, I assume that he 'acts' as I have described.  Explanations come to an end somewhere.--But what is the meaning of the word 'five'? --No such thing was in question here, only how the word 'five' is used.

— in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations with commentary on the right by Lois Shawver


Step two


Guy Débord, Rapport sur la construction des situations et sur les conditions de l'organisation et de l'action de la tendance situationniste internationale (Paris, 1957)
Guy Débord, La Société du spectacle (1967, 1971, 1992, 1996)
Raoul Vaneigem, Traité de savoir vivre à l'usage des jeunes générations (1967)
Guy Débord, La Société du spectacle, film by Guy Debord (1973)

Dans la culture - en employant le mot culture nous laissons constamment de côté les aspects scientifiques ou pédagogiques de la culture, même si la confusion s'y fait évidemment sentir au niveau des grandes théories scientifiques ou des conceptions générales de renseignement; nous désignons ainsi un complexe de l'esthétique,des sentiments et des mœurs: la réaction d'une époque sur la vie quotidienne -, les procédés contre-révolutionnaires confusionnistes sont, parallèlement, l'annexion partielle des valeurs nouvelles et une production délibérément anticulturelle avec les moyens de la grande industrie (roman, cinéma), suite naturelle à l'abêtissement de la jeunesse dans les écoles et les familles. L'idéologie dominante organise la banalisation des découvertes subversives, et les diffuse largement après stérilisation. Elle réussit même à se servir des individus subversifs :morts, par le truquage de leurs œuvres ; vivants, grâce à la confusion idéologique d'ensemble, en les droguant avecune des mystiques dont elle tient commerce.

Une des contradictions de la bourgeoisie, dans sa phase de liquidation, se trouve être ainsi de respecter le principede la création intellectuelle et artistique, de s'opposer d'emblée à ces créations, puis d'en faire usage. C'est qu'il lui faut maintenir dans une minorité le sens de la critique et de la recherche, mais sous condition d'orienter cette activité vers des disciplines utilitaires strictement fragmentées, et d'écarter la critique et la recherche d'ensemble. Dans le domaine de la culture, la bourgeoisie s'efforce de détourner le goût du nouveau, dangereux pour elle à notre époque, vers certaines formes dégradées de nouveauté, inoffensives et confuses.
— Guy Débord, Rapport sur la construction des situations et sur les conditions de l'organisation et de l'action de la tendance situationniste internationale (Paris, 1957) [Scribd-pdf]

Step three


Importing Wittgenstein's investigations into modern art conversation.

Richard Wollheim, On Drawing an Object (1964, 1965)
Richard Wollheim, Minimal Art, in Arts Magazine (January 1965)
Richard Wollheim, Art and Its Objects: an Introduction to Aesthetics. New York: Harper & Row, 1968
Richard Wollheim, The Art Lesson, in Studio International (1971)

Step four


Conceptual Paradise
Interview Art & Language (Michael Baldwin, Mel Ramsden)

S.R.: Maybe one very important or very interesting issue is that philosophical people like Deleuze or Derrida - when they think or work on art they always have such a strange cosmos of reception that we maybe don't understand why they take this conservative practice. [...]

Michael: It seems unintelligible given the philosophical import of what they say quite frequently. It's quite strange. [...] But I think that also, we shouldn't say this in public, but philosophers are bloody awful readers of art. [...] The only one I know who was really good was Wollheim. He could look at painting quite well. But philosophers like a Magritte, don't they? (laughs)

Joseph Kosuth, "Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs (1965)"
in Wikipedia

I think Joseph Kosuth is a not very good illustrator and a bureaucrart.

Joseph Kosuth, One and three Chairs (1965?) [see derivative image above]
Joseph Kosuth, Arts as idea as idea (1966?) [image here]
Sheet of Museum of Normal Art stationery sent from Joseph Kosuth to Lucy Lippard and John Chandler, 1968 May 6 [image here]
Joseph Kosuth held is first solo exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery (1969) [images here]

NB—I would like to see any document proving that Kosuth's One and Three compositions were made and shown on the year 1965.

Step five


Object-oriented art (OOA) correlates to object-oriented philosophy (OOP) and to knowledge-intensive based art (KIBA), and rejects both solipsism and encapsulated or tautological art forms. The degree of connectivity between an artwork and the public realm is not neutral, nor a non issue. Content matters, as well as techne (τέχνη). An artwork is a concrete subjectivity demonstration. It needs to play language games and style to come alive and noticeable, but its meaning and necessity goes further than utilitarian conversations, interest and bureaucracy.

Logic may be poorly designed, a fragile and temporary building due to its contingent nature, but not contingent as such; that is: Logic may be contingent in its nature, but not in its logic. This postulates a necessary split between art and knowledge. Art and Science are identical twins, but stroll along parallel avenues.


Step six


The Israeli perpetual war against Palestinians, namely on Gaza strip, is not outside art jurisdiction, though art judgments are of different nature than mass-media and propaganda.