Discourse of "anti-" review

Here is a great article by Ralph Shain that presents two rival models (or even better, traditions) of art theory, one called the Aesthetic or High, the other the Popular or Low. Both the Aesthetic and the Popular are active contenders today with their own histories and advocates.

Reproduced below is a table from the article (¶55) describing Popular and Aesthetic in a list of words, with a third column in the center. Surrealism is proposed here as a model that sought to transcend the standoff between Popular and Aesthetic. Surrealism failed and is relegated to art history and we can say this because “its works are judged by aesthetic or popular concepts; Rembrandt and Titian are not judged according to Surrealist concepts.”(¶61). In other words, Surrealism is not an independent tradition.

Aesthetic	Surrealism	Popular
Beauty	Marvelous	Entertainment
Individual	Collaboration	Popularity
Creation	Investigation	Consumption
Original	Unconscious	Recognizable
Form (al unity)	Juxtaposition	Content
Harmony	Turmoil	Ease
Genius	Chance	Talent
Enduring	Anachrony	Ephemeral
Contemplation	Revolution	Enjoyment

The two models are incommensurate in the way they approach judgements of quality and this is crucial. Popular will deny there are any inter-personal standards of quality, in short, to each his own. Popular places the judgement of the receiver (viewer) higher than the artist. (¶19) This suggests that the viewer is not called upon to defer to the informed judgement of the artist or to learn the history of the tradition the artwork is part of. Aesthetic on the other hand places art and the artist above the viewer (¶5) which in turn places certain demands on the viewer to acquire the requisite skill to recognize quality.

The way these two models handle this question is so important that I suspect it may be the best way to determine which one is in play during any given discussion, and how in the long run one may come to choose one over the other.

How each model judges quality will impact other issues as well. In the case of Popular, if there are no inter-personal standards of quality, then the only distinguishing characteristic between any given two works of art will be exchange value.

Aesthetic on the other hand has greater resources to draw upon to judge quality. There are numerous aesthetic theories past and present that have played a role in the history of Aesthetic, and to discuss them here is not necessary. It is enough to acknowledge that to operate in some kind of tradition, (or system if you prefer) that sets out to articulate inter-personal standards of quality is a hallmark of this model.

The discourse of “anti-” has clearly regressed to an academic style. (¶19) This fate may have been unavoidable. Dada remains the standard by which all “anti-” art discourse is measured by, but was it from the beginning under the jurisdiction of Aesthetic? (¶101) It is difficult to say if the subsequent absorption of Dada in to the museums shows this to be the case, or if in fact it was outside Aesthetic at the beginning. In any case, the article shows the discourse of “anti-” is becoming less effective. I suspect the reasons are very complicated and I don’t think the article offers a complete diagnosis. This article is good for pointing out that there is such a thing as the Aesthetic model, and I think future productivity lays in a complete re-examination of what the Aesthetic model can be today.

Art in the Age of Intellectual Destruction

Walter Benjamin’s “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” has been required reading for anyone attending an American art school for so long that it has become part of the canon of contemporary art theory. Is it still trenchant given where we find ourselves today, over 70 years after it’s appearance? Here is a strong critique by Jonathan Davis that puts to the test our ability to take seriously Benjamin’s most famous art text.

Davis’ critique has four points.

1. The “aura” of art that Benjamin claims has been forever lost due to mechanical reproduction is poorly defined, never threatened by copies, merely the effect of hallucinogenic drugs, or applicable strictly to a narrow category of cult objects. The reference to drugs is outside the essay and is taken from Benjamin’s other writings. Has the “aura” of art persisted despite the rise of mass market culture, or was it never there in the first place? The best point is this: the opening of the Louvre in 1793 did more to wrench art from its older traditional context than any industrial reproduction techniques.

2. Davis critiques Benjamin’s ontology of painting by proposing an alternative. Benjamin claims that an artwork’s aura is dependent on there being a unique object located in space and time. Davis’ alternative is that a painting can be one element of a type, in other words several versions of the same painting. This could easily work with editions of sculpture, but painting is the harder case and I think Davis makes the case.

3. Davis argues that Benjamin’s essay is complicit with mass produced consumer culture. This is so because Benjamin can find no appeal for aesthetic value beyond individual preference. Consumer preferences is the value of the shopping mall, a serious competitor to the art museum.

4. Davis points out that Benjamin’s political commitments led him to renounce tradition. This unfortunately leaves no alternative to the shopping mall. The serious work of fine art is better able to resist the small world of consumer preferences and to awake in us sensibilities stunted by mass culture.

These are all, in my opinion, cogent arguments and merit serious contemplation.