- The most essential function of the art-work lies in its influence upon man's attitude toward reality.
1.01 A work of art . . . does not call upon the perceiver primarily to adopt an emotional attitude toward it, but rather to understand it. It is not directed toward one side of man, but to man in his entirety, to all of his capabilities.3
1.02 The understanding that the artistic sign establishes among people does not pertain to things even when they are represented in the work, but to a certain attitude toward things, a certain attitude on the part of man toward the entire reality that surrounds him.4
1.021 A SIGN consists of a SIGNIFIER (the word "apple," for example) and a SIGNIFIED (the concept "apple") which together comprise our reference to "apple."
1.022 The work of art is a bundle of signs.
1.023 . . . any item of nature, technology or everyday use can become a sign whenever it acquires meaning beyond the bounds of its individual existence as a thing in and for itself.5
1.03 A picture is a fact.6
1.031 Pictorial form is the possibility that things are related to one another in the same way as the elements of the picture.7
1.0311 THAT is how a picture is attached to reality; it reaches right out to it.8
1.0312 It is laid against reality like a measure.9
1.04 What signs fail to express, their application shows. What signs slur over, their application says clearly.10
1.05 The art work comprises the theme (content, subject, etc.), the artistic means (medium, format, materials, technique, attitude) and the context in which the work is presented.
1.051 The totality of these things influence the way the perceiver experiences the work of art and thus the way he will subsequently experience reality.
1.06 Art "lives" by influencing individuals and other art, not by its nature as the physical residue of the artist's ideas.
1.07 Every act is political.
1.071 The presentation of the work of art is no exception.
1.0711 A photograph in the Museum of Modern Art is viewed in one manner, reproduced in Picture magazine in another, still another if reproduced in Hustler.
2. The world is made up of relationships, not merely things.
2.01 The responsibility of the critic is to mediate relationships.
2.011 The important thing about the relationship between the artist and the audience is that the artwork exists between them: the artwork is in the middle, the artist on one side and the perceiver on the other.
2.012 The critic stands in the same relationship: the artist on one side, the critic in the middle, the perceiver on the other.
2.0121 The critic also mediates between the art object and the entire culture which produced both the artist and the object.
2.02 The art object always embraces more of the culture than those experiences peculiar to the individual artist.
2.03 The critic mediates as well between the individual perceiver and the whole culture.
2.031 And between the art object and the history of art objects which preceded it.
2.04 It is the critic's responsibility to express his opinion about the work as an aesthetic object, to record the actualizations of the work, that is the shape it takes from the point of view of the aesthetic taste of the time, and to express his opinion about its status in the system of established artistic values, determining by his critical judgment to what extent the work compares with the requirements of artistic evolution.11
2.041 Evaluation includes the desire to overcome uncertainty and indecisiveness in the face of the unfamiliar.
2.042 . . . a work can become subject to multiple evaluation, in the process of which the shape of the work constantly changes in the mind of the perceiver.12
2.05 Thus we read of a film both that it is Òbrilliantly directed, warm and inspiring, a cinematic triumph"; and also that it is Òa bloated, sentimental piece of trash, woodenly acted, trite and boring."
2.051 The application of formal analysis is part of the artistic norm which emphasizes formal elements in art.
2.052 There is, or course, organization from a formal or technical point of view. But there are also ethical, social, religious, sexual, philosophical, political and other requirements.
2.0521 The application of psychological analysis, for example, as part of the artistic norm which emphasizes psychological elements in art, can only be applied post-mortem to works of art produced prior to the introduction of psychology as an artistic concern.
2.06 Ultimately description as a critical method fails. Pretending to a non-subjective rendering of the object, it cuts off the peripheral pressures of experience. When visual data is accepted as the only basis of apprehension, there is no possibility for an account of intentions.13
2.061 The bulk of art criticism, however, focuses almost exclusively on description.
2.07 The problems of criticism are linked to the "market-place" aspects of art.
2.071 A unique object can be sold.
2.072 An idea, once apprehended, need not be purchased. It belongs to anyone who can understand it.
2.0721 It may indeed change the way in which one experiences the world, but there is no necessity to have it hanging on the wall.
2.073 Critics frequently become aesthetic automobile salesmen, hawking the unique features of the season's newest art models, or the lasting investment potential of the traditional.
2.0731 This may be inevitable in the context of the "art market."
2.08 There are criticisms which retard the evolution of art, and those which stimulate it.
2.081 There are critics whose activities assist in changing taste, and those who stand guard over traditional tastes.
2.09 A peculiar chain of influences is set in motion when new artistic process is influenced by work seen ONLY in reproductions couple with criticism, or as advertised by galleries: we have the mediation but no object.
2.091 I.e. New York, Paris, etc.
2.0912 A different role is played by independent art publications which are not subservient to the market aspects of art, nor supported by gallery advertisements. These tend to be more invested in exploring positions than products, and thus occupy another critical position.
3. The photograph poses special problems for criticism.
3.01 A photograph is not a mute object, it is an active producer of meaning.
3.02 Photography is not a primary language, because the objects in the photograph already have meaning in the culture.
3.03 The nature of the photographic image, set into the world of art objects as well as linked to the world of objects, is such that confusion as to how to approach it is not only possible, but likely.
3.031 There is a tendency to approach the meaning of the photograph as a matter of what the picture "represents" and to limit analysis to those things which can be discussed in thematic terms.
3.0311 On the other hand there is the tendency to ignore subject and to view the photograph in purely formal terms.
3.04 The particular quality of photography is that it always refers to the specific, even when it attempts the general, the universal.
3.041 In fact the photograph is inseparable, not only from the object or event pictured, but also from the attitudes and opinions of the picturer.
3.05 The photograph is locked into time and content. It is linked irrevocably to its time of conception and to its object of representation.
3.051 Much photographic activity centers around trying to sunder this connection, attempting to consider the photograph severed from its object.
3.06 Photographic criticism is equally vulnerable to errors of transparency and opacity, that is either assuming the photograph is a clear window on reality or a surface.
3.07 The values of photography criticism have changed in that less emphasis is now placed on fixing an ideal object eternally, and more upon the grasping of a small slice of flowing time, as well as acknowledging the role of photography in the construction of memory.
3.071 These artistic norms correspond to the different location in which man now sees himself occupying the universe.
3.08 Photography is an irrevocably cultural act.
3.081 Not only does the photograph contain objects which have history and use, but the very act of taking (making) the photograph is a specific cultural action.
3.082 For a full discussion, see "Opinion: Suzanne Muchnic," Picture Magazine, Issue #6, and Susan Sontag's On Photography (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, N.Y., 1977).
3.09 The difficulty in criticizing photographs also arises from confusion as to whether the photograph is properly an art object or a conveyor of information.
3.091 The photograph as a unique art object needs the aura of rareness to accrue dollar value.
3.092 Photographs however are inherently reproducible and are perhaps most suited to contain information.
4. Photographs are in the center of the debate over formal versus functional artmaking and criticism.
4.01 Formalist art . . . is the vanguard of decoration and, strictly speaking, one could reasonably assert that its art condition is so minimal that for all functional purposes it is not art at all, but pure exercises in aesthetics.14
4.011 Formalist critics and artists alike do not question the nature of art, but . . . being an artist now means to question the nature of art.15
4.02 The function of the critic and the function of the artist have traditionally been divided: the artist's concern was the production of the work and the critic's was its evaluation and interpretation . . . conceptual artists take over the role of the critic in terms of framing their own propositions, ideas and concepts . . .16
4.03 The IDEA of the work, which only the artist could reveal, (traditionally) remains hidden thus becoming everybody's guessing game . . . Under these circumstances there is, indeed, a need for critical interpretation. It gives the gamut of art and art objects some semblance of coherence and stability, some measure of "objective evaluation," although this process is arbitrary in terms of the artist's intention. Attending to the critical function itself is the nature of Conceptual Art. There is no further need for critical interpretation of ideas and intentions already clearly stated.17
4.031 In this manner many photographic artists have removed themselves from the arena in which a critic would mediate the work, stand between the artist and audience and translate, and have taken on the mediating function as part of the work itself.
4.04 This reclamation of process refocuses art as an energy driving to change perception.18
4.05 Perhaps the artist working with photographs has wearied of the marketplace and mystification and has taken the reins of criticism in hand.
5. We are getting rid of ownership, substituting use.19
1 There are no original opinions. All derive from sources in the culture. These have been collaged from a number of writings.
If the function of art IS to affect the manner in which one perceives the world, then these notions (some of them recycled several times) have been "artworks" for me, and this piece should be, functionally speaking, an artwork for the reader.
I have included the footnotes in full not to give the work credentials, nor solely to protect myself from cries of plagiarism, but because I find the process by which opinions -- my own included -- are made much more interesting than just the opinions spread out on the page.
2 With apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein for my flagrant misuse of his method of notation as I found it in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (New Jersey: The Humanities Press, 1974).
A note from that volume:
6.54 My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them -- as steps -- to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.
And also:
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
3 Jan Mukarovsky, Semiotics of Art, Prague School Contributions (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1976).
(Note: I hereby bow to the tyranny of our language, and use the masculine pronoun throughout although I am definitely a woman, and rankle with each use of it. dlp)
4 Jan Mukarovsky, op cit.
5 Petr Bogatryrev, Semiotics of Art.
6 Ludwig Wittgenstein, op cit.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Felix Vodicka, Semiotics of Art.
12 Ibid.
13 Mel Bochner, Excerpt from Speculation (1967-1970) from Artforum, May 1970, as reprinted in Ursula Meyer, Conceptual Art (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972).
14 Joseph Kosuth, Art After Philosophy, Studio International (October 1969), as reprinted in Meyer, op. cit.
15 Ibid.
16 Joseph Kosuth, "Introductory Note by the American Editor," Art-Language, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1970, as reprinted in Meyer, op. cit.
17 Meyer, op. cit.
18 Robert Morris, Statement: Conceptual Art and Conceptual Aspects; Exhibition, The N.Y. Cultural Center, 1970, as reprinted in Meyer, op. cit.
19 John Cage, A Year From Monday (Middletown, Conn; Wesleyan U. Press, 1969), as reprinted in Victor Burgin, Situational Esthetics, Studio International, Vol. 178, No. 915 (October 1969), and as reprinted in Meyer, op. cit.
