NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS

 Image from here.




Am reading John Carey’s What Good are the Arts. Here’s a summary of Chapter One.

Arthur Danto separates the course of Western art into two narratives. ‘Representation’, from about 1400- 1880, the aim of which was to imitate nature with more and more accuracy; and ‘Modernism’, the aim of which was to explore the potential of the materials – paint, canvas, etc. Illusion was no longer pursued Art was not about nature ( or ‘reality’) but about art. This movement ended with Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, which showed that ‘art’ needed no special qualities discernible by the senses. Anything, concluded Danto, could be a work of art. What made it so, was how it was regarded; that someone thought it to be a work of art. But this didn’t satisfy him. Danto believed with Kant that art is special, that there is a kind of ‘trans-historical essence in art, everywhere and always the same.’ To see something as art requires an ‘atmosphere’ of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art. Only the opinion of those who possess this can turn an object into art. They are qualified to do this because they can understand its meaning;’ it ‘ being the one the artist intended; success of the work is thus determined by the extent to which it achieves this intent.

Problem is, says Carey, we don’t have access to these intentions…intentionalism is easily dismissed…what we are left with is this religious type transcendental knowledge/authority whose verdict cannot be questioned, which automatically overrides personal, subjective opinion.

Studies from the Kreitler’s book Psychology of the Arts are cited, which find that responses to art are highly subjective, and that personal association plays a major role in determining preference….understanding why this is so would require virtually infinite knowledge of  ‘perceptual, cognitive, emotional and other personality characteristics, plus biographical data, specific personal experiences, past encounters with art and individual memories and associations’ before the response of a single viewer to a single artwork could even start to be understood.

Carey thus concludes that a ‘work of art is anything that anyone has ever considered a work of art, though it may be a work of art only for that one person; and the reason for considering  anything a work of art will be as various as the variety of human beings.’

Which leaves us stuck in a quagmire of egalitarian relativism; with the opinion of someone who hasn’t read, say, any more than half a dozen works of 20^th Century fiction, just as valid as that of a critic who has read thousands. Some choice: a dictatorship or anarchy. 

from here.

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