/lit/ - Literature

>>6790434
A quick recap on some Heidegger to make things clear. Heidy takes a note from Nietzhe’s “There are no facts, only interpretations” and proposes that when an element rejects all Grund (foundations), there is only Abgrund (abyss). Being isn’t a given as much as a work in progress, a possibility, a project; while at the same time Heidy defines it as Ereignis (event, happening). Then “Being” is what makes something be, and the thing or object is what is at that time being. I’m free translating from a spanish translation, I’m not sure how those terms are traditionally translated to English.

Another vital term to go over before actually dealing with the topic is a fan favorite that gets confused with Being, Dasein. In Spanish we describe it as “being-there”. Dasein is the “there” of the Being, not given from the start nor eternal, something that is being made and not an essence previous to existence. Dasein is directly tied to humans and our creations because we have the potential of transcendence. Humanity finds itself thrown to the world without having chosen it and has to deal with it day to day trying to constantly improve.

Lastly taking a concept from Husserl, to differentiate the baggage we bring to our analysis from what is originally in the work of art Heidy utilizes the “phenomenological method”, where he limits himself to the phenomenon (from latin phainómenon, that which shows itself). The ideas is that the investigator must leave on hold any belief, any prejudice, any interpretation that takes him away from what the work is giving us. While we coiuld start our analysis on the artist or the absolute concept of art, the work itself is the only element really in front of us. And from it we can understand all three elements.

Every work is first a thing, an object while also being an allegory, it requires the spectator to connect it to a network of meaning to fully exist. A work of art is the ground for a series of interpretations, those of the artist, the spectator, the critic, and so on; it’s a free game of semantic encounters that make the work transcend. This happens even in works that haven’t been made by the artist, like our friend Douchamp’s urinal. Once it enters the world of what is art they start saying much more than they did.

>>6790434
I started reading Adorno's aesthetics, what does Adorno view as artistic honesty? If that is what he is interested in within aesthetic

>>6790439
In a round about way Heidegger defines three different terms that are vital to his interpretation: thing, usefulness and work of art.

In the text mentioned at the beginning he extensively deconstructs Van Gogh’s The Shoes until he brings up the essence of a working tool. Something is the more useful as it disappears in its funtionallity. We use it and in doing so we appreciate it. The work of art shares with it its human origin, but it lacks its objective, it’s not the means for an end*. The essence of the useful lies in the trust it gives, thanks to it we organize our world, we incorporate them to our day to day lives.

In The Shoes Heidegger finds the essence of usefulness, this work produces that discovery (I wanted to write uncovery to make the act of taking a cover away more evident but then I realized I’m not a german philosopher than can come up with her own words). This is what the work of art shows: the essence, the permanent. This particular painting deals with that, but art in general show the essence of everything.
The work of art directs the spectator, directly, to reflect about ideas and essences at the level of discovering truth, leaving art in the heights of philosophical reflexion.

*Although the spectator can use it to accomplish tasks like trying to understand the artist or become patrician or win a lot of money, these objectives aren’t born from the work itself but proposed by a particular spectator.

>>6790446
Now, and here’s where it gets tricky or cool or retarded, depending on your taste, while the work is dis-covering truth, that truth is hidden, codified, in the work. And it isn’t just hiding, but it makes explicit the act of doing so. The terms he uses for this duality, or if you like Heraclitus you can consider it a pólemos, is “world” and “land” and his example is The Partenon.

Each work creates a full world of meaning. It doesn’t adapt itself to an already existing frame, it creates its own code and meaning that never before existed. From it we can have the already mentioned variety of personal interpretations. While The Partenon had a practical use, it also serves know the thinkg about innumerable elements of the helenistic life. That’s why Dasein is so important to understand art, the intellectual part of the artistic allegory changes through time and it builds up on top of each previous one. Only human creations can have autonomous “worlds”. Every great artist gives a testimony of his time, his era, his comprehension, and his integration, as creator, with his people. And a true work of art is ever a personal expression but a combination of all the elements that went through the artist’s life.

Meanwhile he presents “land” as his own version of the greek physis (the process through which things appear), it’s the physical level of the work of art that contains all those “worlds”. The land can’t convey meaning with the world, but the world requires the land to build itself.

That way the Heideggerian dogma of what is art is when a human construction is at the same time allegory, symbol, it opens a world and discovers truths.

>>6790448
Danto, like the nice little post-hegelian post-modernist slut he turned out to be, replaces the idea of an “end of art” for a “end of art history”. With Duchamp and Warhol, he proposes, the meta narratives that define what art “has to be” die and we lost the conceptual frames and the sources of drastic definitions about what was allowed as an artistic manifestation. No narrative is privileged over others nor exclusively constitute a unique road for art.

In his view a work of art exists first and foremost inside a theoretical reflexive level. The work of art is a sign, a place of articulation of meanings to be discovered by the spectators interpreting it. The aesthetic experience is limited to the understanding of each spectator.

A /lit/ example of this is Borges’ “Piere Menard: Author of The Quixote”. Here a modern writer copies every single word of Cervantes’ work but the author remarks how even then the meaning is different. The context of each piece makes evidently different for the reader. They are ontologically different.

>>6790455
Then we have George “The Dick” Dickie. Taking as basis Warhol’s Soap Boxes he proposes that the artist has the role of representative of art as an institution, the authors are at the same time the designer, the fabric, and Warhol, who is responsible to bringing it to the aesthetic appreciation. But as art is an “informal institution” being named “work of art” has imprecise bases, there is no legality to legislate. In his second version of the institutional theory he specifies that what makes an object a work of art is being presented to the public as such, the audience gives authority to the incorporation to the institution.

The “art world” is formed by all the interactions between artists, works and audiences; all of this items are interdependent and we have to, to a certain point, presuppose the simultaneous existence of all of them. Those four instances form what we understand as art as an institution and whatever exists inside of it is “art”

>>6790468
So, from all three authors we can understand a few simple facts. On one hand modern art is entirely tied to an intellectual interaction, they require both the interest and the previous knowledge of the audience to be appreciated. This isn’t a line to cut what is art and what is not, but different audiences will be attracted or rejected to certain works, creating different spaces for what is or isn’t art. We shouldn’t conclude that everything is (or can be) art nor that nothing is (or can’t be) art, if anything it means that a work of art is something we can sit in front of and sincerely analyze, where there is something to be reached on an entirely personal level that is unique to it. Modern art demands that audiences, basically, step it up. And as the elitist little bitch I am I think that’s great.

>>6790441
Well, as far as I've read Adorno seems much more focused on the social and political aspects of art, as you'd expect from a marxist. If you want a more hermeneutic analisis of how art affects human beings you're gonna have to read Walter Benjamin, who deals with the concept of "aura" as the duality between the emotional power of a work and the fragility of it.

If you're having troubles with Adorno you can always check the standard internet companion read: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/#4

>>6790502
Thank you very much. I think for Adorno art is entirely social but we have neglected it as social? This is not as straight forward as minima moralia is so I may be misunderstanding it.

>>6790552
Well, Adorno was quite the bummer. He was sad that the left wing movements were all working with pop music as propaganda instead of motivating a revolution in the soul, so he failed to pay attention to the people working towards that goal outside of the political ambient.
He was never as much of an aesthete as some people in /lit/ making him out to be, so reading him just for that aspect is a bit of a waste. Just try to get what the text wants to say and leave your pure aesthetic interest for further reading.

Bump. Every thread should be like this one.

Thanks Hibari-kun. I'm probably going to want to do some further reading once I'm finished with this. Can you recommend any good books or online sources for this topic?

>>6790628
In the OP I mentioned the particular sources I took for this, but when in need for secondary reading you can always check the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the IEP.

Also, hyper marxist Hibari isn't originally flavor Hibari, please don't mix us up even though I'm sure we're both adorable.

>>6790638
yeah, I spoke too soon.

>>6790644
I'm going to be now, I'll check in the morning and whatnot. I wanted to leave a preventive apology for potential broken english here and there before leaving.

is there more than one hibariposter?

>>6791633
it's relative, there's one avatarfag and there are infinite posters who can also use the same pics.

Well, this is what counts as morning for me. Anyone interested in art today?

>>6792065
oh, well. one last bump now that it's in page 10 but I guess this wasn't a good idea.

>>6792143
I think it was a good idea. Nicely written and well explained. To get bumped more though I'd probably suggest a more interesting topic with the same kind of thought out explanations and stuff but I enjoyed it

>>6792143
Hey yeah I wanna talk about aesthetics. Have you read any Mendelsohn, Lessing or Schlegel? We could talk about the evolution of the German critic!

>>6792239
No, I haven't, do you have any pointers or issues you want to bring up? recommended reading?
why do you put more interest in the german critic over any other nationality?

>>6792190
I should had linked that video about modern art being shit, people love hating that.

Art is subjective bro this thread is useless

>>6792253
>No, I haven't, do you have any pointers or issues you want to bring up? recommended reading?
why do you put more interest in the german critic over any other nationality?
Why, sure! For Mendelssohn, check out 'On Sentiments'
Here, he basically addresses the notion of perfected sensate cognition, which he describes as being a state of knowledge or perception in which the whole is taken in along with the knowledge of it's individual parts. So, for instance, upon originally viewing a work, one gains satisfaction from viewing the whole. This satisfaction gradually diminishes as the individual parts are analyzed because the whole is lost. However,
If one is able to step back and observe the whole again WITH the knowledge of the individual parts, one has attained perfected sensate cognition, or a more perfect state of perception. It's basically how to enjoy art.

Lessing's Laocoön basically addresses what separates poetry and art. What the limitations are in each of these and where they find middle ground. For lessing, poetry is limited in the sense of (and im implementing more contemporary understanding here) the finite working memory. Therefore, a description of a scene in which too many parts are analyzed before returning to the whole fails as a work because the first elements are already forgotten and the artistic whole is never achieved. Painting is limited in the sense that no motion can occur. So a very limited view is given.

1/2

>>6792301
Furthermore, Lessing addresses where the two come together. So, basically, Laocoön (the title of the essay he writes) is a statue depicting Laocoön before the death of sons, this scene is present in the Aeneid. It incorporates both poetic and sculptural elements. While it is limited in it's movement, the reader is able to fill in the blanks with his own knowledge. The ultimate anguish is never attempted to be sculptured and the viewer is allowed, what lessing coins as "free play of the imagination". Lessing stresses the importance the allowance of freedom in the viewing of the work because one gains pleasure from exercising one's imagination. Thus Laocoön's ultimate anguish is filled in by the reader.

Some things cannot be merged. Aeneas's shield is one. It works well in poetry but fails to be drawn because the elements cannot possible fill a limited shield in such a finite space with such depth; it isn't possible.

Schlegel I was hoping you could fill the blanks honestly. But I'd love to keep talking about Lessing, im most knowledgable there

2/2

>>6792301
>>6792333
thanks!
>perfected sensate cognition
it sounds like an expanded view of Kant's aesthetic disinterest, a bit more pragmatic though.

>poetry and art
Heidy also puts poetry above and even a bit beyond most forms of art, I know it's a bit of a greek wanking but it's an interesting though to keep when one compares iconic works against some new thing recently written.

>one gains pleasure from exercising one's imagination.
I mentioned previously in the thread the concept of art as a means to further develop philosophical thinking. I really like the idea that what makes a piece work is how much you can grow from it.

I'm sorry but my education is seriously lacking in modern, post 50's, german authors. My college felt they needed to focus on the center vs periphery situation, which I guess makes more sense since it affects us more but meant missing many great thinkers that kept developing previous concepts.

>>6792281
do you deal with platitudes in every aspect of your life or just those you pretend to understand?

>>6792369
>I'm sorry but my education is seriously lacking in modern, post 50's, german authors.
Well actually, there authors were 18th century!

It's funny you mention perfected sensate cognition and its relation to Kant because Kant and Mendelssohn had a bit of a friendly rivalry. Both submitted papers on the then-emerging interest in the metaphysical to a competition in 1763. Mendelssohn actually beat out Kant and received first place.

And I suppose im not interested in german philosophical history for any reason other than I feel they played an important role in aesthetic evolution.

I need to read Heidy

I might have a strange view on aesthetics, I think that it's generally influenced by your culture or community but is of course filtered through you in the end so its entirely subjective.

>>6792143
I was just dropping by... This is a great thread. I really feel like reading up on the topic now. Thanks.