Somewhere in between and overlapping with Nelson Goodman and Kierkegaard, I subjected myself to one of Stephen King's recent books, Duma Key.
When the artist main character is doing something really great, he goes into some sort of a trance. He doesn't understand his work, doesn't know where it comes from, doesn't really know much about art history. He does recognize as he's doing it and when it's done when a work seems really great to him are viewed by others, amateur and professional alike are entranced, such that stylistic comparisons become irrelevant. (It's of course great for an author that he doesn't have to actually produce the works; descriptions are inevitably vague enough that they could fit either a masterwork or a piece of amateur crap, so King is able to sell their quality via character reactions and mood elements. This will be more difficult when it inevitably becomes a movie or mini-series.)
This picture of intimate contact with a great work has a highly intuitive appeal, and I think might be the source of Jay's resistance during the podcast to Nelson Goodman's view as not fitting his experience as an artist. Goodman's thesis, which I've tried to lay out here for those of you who weren't clear about it from the podcast, posits (among other things) that we understand works by associating them to other works, and our experiences of the objects (if any) being depicted, and to other experiences like dreams (in the case of surreal art, which is what the artist produces in Duma Key). But does this analysis, which seems to stick all these other references in a sense between us and the work, contradict our experience of intimacy with that work?
No, it doesn't, because Goodman is not doing phenomenology: he's not just describing our experience of works. He's doing some sort of analysis, and the question is what sort? It's seems akin to Hume's associationist account, which for his time would count as psychology though it wouldn't count as any part of today's science of psychology. I think we might want to call it a logical or maybe semantic account, meaning he's exploring the content of our conceptions of artistic (and other kinds of) understanding and what kind of theory they underlyingly imply. This analysis does look at the mass of our experiences, but it's not a theory-free description of this experience. Goodman explicitly turns his analysis of ways of understanding in general upon his own aesthetic approach, saying that he's trying in his philosophy to create a way of understanding our relation to art through worldmaking practices: he's creating a framework that he thinks emphasizes interesting aspects of the phenomena and helps us make sense of the wide difference in artistic approaches and in the connections between art and other kinds of knowledge.
However, when you start clairvoyantly painting things with your missing limb and your paintings drive people into homicidal rages and accomplish other feats of magic, it's time to put down the brush. Such are the important lessons of this timeless King classic.
(Actually, the book was fine; pretty much in line with his other recent work, which I find generally entertaining with only some irritation with the dialog and a few just plain silly plot moments like when one character suddenly reveals his boyhood fondness for ventriloquism, which is then immediately put to use in channeling some entity though a doll to reveal crucial bits of exposition. Also, there's some seemingly well researched bits about what it's like to recover from a serious accident, with mood swings and aphasia and phantom limb syndrome and the like, so while it's not exactly Tom Wolfe-level research, it makes it actually educational to a point.)
(This image is from a wonkette.com article on "World's Wost Obama Paintings," which points in turn to www.badpaintingsofbarackobama.com.)
-Mark Linsenmayer
Gary Chapin says
November 10, 2010 at 9:07 pmYou do know that Stephen King was nearly killed by a van while walking along his road some years ago? What kind of research has Tom Wolfe done to top that?
I’ve enjoyed both of the episodes that have delved into aesthetics, though Wes and Seth seems so reluctant to go there. A couple of points. First, referencing the post above, just to explore your analogy, the references that lie between you and the art may be a barrier, as you imply, but they may also be a pathway. This ideal of the pure experience of a piece of art strikes me as unachievable and childish. When have you — has anyone — experienced a piece of art and not immediately drawn connections between the art an experience, patterns, other art, etc.? And those “transcendent moments” at Grateful Dead shows don’t count. Yes, I know that’s an inductive argument, but I’ll stand by it for now.
Second thing: in both aesthetics episodes, Seth frequently says something like “this only applies to painting” or visual art, but “not to music.” Then you all let the point go. It would be interesting to explore the music angle, examine why the points that apply to visual arts do not apply to music, and what that tells us about the things we call “art.” For example, is there an analogy to be made between the movement of visual art away from representation and Western music’s move away from harmony? Representation seems to be an objective standard, and harmony seems to be a consensus standard. But it’s possible that Representation is also a consensus standard (because one is attaching a value to “this looks like the real thing”), or that preference for harmony might have an objective basis (perhaps in brain science). The difference between two aspects of art may surface some understanding of art as a whole.
Brilliant show. Love it. Wouldn’t mind you guys taking a whack at Rhetoric — though I fear an explosion of snark if you try.
Wes Alwan says
November 11, 2010 at 1:32 amI’m surprised that I came off as reluctant. These were two of my favorite readings/discussions.
Gary Chapin says
November 11, 2010 at 9:04 amTwo of my favorites, also. It did seem that way. I’m not sure what it was. You all seemed more tentative in your assertions and arguments. I’m willing to be wrong about this.
Mark Linsenmayer says
November 11, 2010 at 11:15 amDanto’s thesis that painting had been striving for realism but then photography made this moot obviously doesn’t apply to music, though the general pattern of trying to get more and more experimental until you reach utter chaos and so more or less abandon the cutting edge for just going for idiosyncratic does.
On the Goodman episode, I feel like we brought in plenty of musical examples, and his theory very obviously does apply to them, but since we had Jay the painter on, and Goodman often uses examples from painting, we did talk about that more than other things, though I don’t recall us really bringing up the question in that case of how well or poorly the various arts fit Goodman’s picture.
I agree that we should have some discussions more specifically about music, film, and literature. I think next on our list for aesthetics list is either Adorno (who we’d want to do after Marx, as he has sort of a Marxist, sociological take on art appreciation that we haven’t quite gotten into; I know he talks about jazz a lot), and I’ve wanted to do George Santayana for some time (who was a poet). Dewey’s “Art as Experience” is also a good option, though we may not want that to be our introduction to Dewey given how much he has to say about pragmatism. Still, Danto himself did give us a number of specific recommendations of people to read re. music/film/etc., so we’ll for sure dive into that list too. (Eventually!)