One wonders also what kind of painting would represent the proposition that
a bachelor is an unmarried male. At most what could be represented is a
middle-aged man with no wife around, but we would be hard pressed to
conclude from this whether he is a bachelor, a divorcee, a widower, a
married man whose wife is at work or what not. Saying that he is a bachelor
does not so much affirm anything but rather excludes some other relevant
possibilities. Or, what kind of painting would represent the proposition
that unicorns don't exist, or that Paris is the capital of France. There is
a host of things that can be said in language but not represented
pictorially.
Of course, this is more evidence that language is nothing like a sequence
of pictures.
O.K.
On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 7:15 AM, Adriano Palma <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There are attempts (some claimed that two of M Escher’s works are
contradictions – personally I disagree, since one does not represent
contradictions, but that would be philosophy hence slightly too complicated
to grasp)
*From:* lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *Omar Kusturica
*Sent:* 07 April 2015 20:03
*To:* lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject:* [lit-ideas] Re: Kosuth Citing Ayer
I am not sure that analytic and synthetic are appropriate terms to use
here at all. The question, as I understand it, is whether art is
representational or mimetic. Even a painting that appears to have rigid
designation such as a portrait of Mary Magdalene might not be
representational in the same sense a photograph is; for one thing, there is
no certainty that Mary Magdalene ever existed, and if she did it is
unlikely that she looked like the painting. The talk about synthetic and
analytic only obfuscates the question of representation by raising issues
of truth value. Works of art are not propositions, and not true or false,
except in a metaphorical sense. Moreover, I doubt that it is possible to
paint a tautology or a contradiction.
O.K.
On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 7:18 PM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Following Ayer, Kosuth argues that forms of art that depend for theirvalidity on being verified by the world and "the ‘infinite space’ of the
human
condition" are synthetic propositions while "forms of art most clearly
finally referable only to art" are ANALYTIC propositions.
Then, making the pairing of analytic proposition and meaning on the one
hand, and synthetic proposition and language on the other, Kosuth
brackets
off and expels any questions of a referential dimension from his
theoretical
model, concluding that "art’s only claim is for art. Art is the definition
of art.">
So much the worse for Kosuth and his theory of art [which appears to be no
more than a misapplication of analytic-synthetic distinction so as to expel
synthetic content from art: yet it should be obvious that the worthwhile
content of any art is always synthetic and never analytic, just as it
should be obvious that there is no such thing as an 'analytic' piece of
music, novel etc.]. The blight of theories like Kosuth's is itself part of
a blight where modern art has diminished itself by shabby half-baked
intellectualising.
You don't have to read far into the field of modern art criticism (just
attend an exhibition) to find that many theorists are very, very low-level
as thinkers and many have a relatively low level of appreciation and
understanding of art. Even when they are sometimes right in claiming the
significance of a work, they may still be very poor at explaining why it is
(or might be) significant.*
Dnl
*Two examples, I recently encountered, include the talking-heads in
documentaries trying to explain the significance of Kraftwerk and Joy
Division - both rightly considered significant and with an 'aesthetic' that
extends its influence beyond musical fields. With Kraftwerk, the
'theorising' leads to almost total blindness to the deadpan wit that is
central to their aesthetic. With Joy Division, 'theorising' as to their
'modernism' leads to overlooking the central conundrum raised by their
records: which is how they manage a startlingly apt 'modernistic' sound
while using musical structures almost entirely basic and traditional within
'rock' [e.g. intervals of 1sts-2nds-3rds-4ths-5ths-7ths]. (In the Joy
Division documentary, their bassist explained that one fundamental aspect
of this sound - a high-end bass taking a role more typically taken by lead
guitar - developed because this was the only way he could make himself
heard over the guitars and drums. It was nothing to do with Derrida.)
On Tuesday, 7 April 2015, 12:50, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <
dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
My last post today!
In a message dated 4/5/2015 6:07:11 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Famously, Gombrich has applied this approach to the visual arts, where it
is immensely useful in drawing out "The Story of Art" - and probably the
only approach that can give adequate rationale to the misguided
outreaches of
modern "conceptual art".
--
which means Kosuth.
Kosuth describes the distinguishing characteristics of this aesthetic
theory that he will refer to as “linguistic conceptualism” in “Art After
Philosophy”, where he advances an exposition of conceptualism undergirded
by the
tenets of logical positivism, in particular A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth
and Logic (1936).
According to Kosuth’s thesis, unlike Gombrich's thesis, questioning the
nature of art should be the main concern of artists.
Remaining within traditional categories of painting and sculpture,
however,
obstructs such inquiry since these artistic categories are conventional
and their legitimacy is taken for granted.
Thus these categories should be disavowed, regarded as anachronistic,
useless, even detrimental, to artists.
This main line of argument leads Kosuth to reconsider the history of
modern
art as it is conventionally narrated, and to dismiss the relevance of
artists such as Edouard Manet, Paul Cézanne, and the cubists, whose work
as
art Kosuth rightly deems valid only on morphological grounds, that is,
only
insofar as they remained tied to the medium of painting.
Instead Kosuth champions an alternate canon of art — one that is
characterized by the subversion of the old classifications— represented by
his
understanding of the legacy of Marcel Duchamp.
"The ‘value’ of particular artists after Duchamp," Kosuth writes, can be
weighed according to how much they rejected "the handed-down ‘language’
of
traditional art" and thereby freed from morphological constrictions
inquiry
into the meaning of art.
Given this formulation, in which a work’s importance is exclusively
located
in its MEANING, the problem of referentiality arises.
Presumably, prioritising the CONCEPTUAL content of art, its
intelligibility, requires an account that is more than self-reflexive.
It is in this connection that Kosuth introduces Ayer’s evaluation of
Immanuel Kant’s distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions,
and
defended by Grice against Quine (Grice, "In defense of a dogma" -- the
dogma
(as Quine ironically called it) of 'analyticity').
Following Ayer, Kosuth argues that forms of art that depend for their
validity on being verified by the world and "the ‘infinite space’ of the
human
condition" are synthetic propositions while "forms of art most clearly
finally referable only to art" are ANALYTIC propositions.
Then, making the pairing of analytic proposition and meaning on the one
hand, and synthetic proposition and language on the other, Kosuth
brackets
off and expels any questions of a referential dimension from his
theoretical
model, concluding that "art’s only claim is for art. Art is the definition
of art."
On the other hand, Gombrich was no artist!
Cheers,
Speranza
KEYWORDS: iconographic-iconologic, conceptualism.
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
