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[63a-1] ‘Art Language and Art-Language’, Art-Language, Vol. 2, No. 2, Summer, 1972, pp. 21-28.

Art  Language and Art-Language

Ian Burn – Mel Ramsden

One of the problems in referring generally to ‘aesthetics’ is the confusion of quite different things under the general subject name. The enquiries one finds in (e.g.) the British Journal of Aesthetics (– and even these have clear distinctions from each other) have a certain methodological homogeneity and a common academic background. But a day-to-day reference to ‘aesthetics’ has little connection with that and is used more in the sense of ‘good taste’. This is the common usage of the term ‘aesthetics’: we use it when we arrange furniture, order food, how we dress, etc. – it is about how we hang something on the wall, not why. In this sense it has no more to do with a realm of art than with anything else.

Many aestheticians (and others) hold that there is an ‘aesthetic experience’ derived from viewing works of art. Such a notion, that there is an ‘experience’ which is said to manifest the essence of Aesthetics, is faced with the same difficulties as the claim for an ‘experience’ which purportedly manifests the essence of religion. The former may merely be an ‘experience’ occurring in one kind of context, while the latter an ‘experience’ in another, a religious context – it may be that the context alone provides the individuating features.

While being careful to distinguish it from any art-activities, this day-to-day variety of aesthetics need not concern us: it can be said to be a natural feature of our behaviour in the world. lt is the other, the academic kind (the kind found in the British Journal of Aesthetics) which will be dealt with here.

Generally speaking, the art-community has not been too bothered to find out what the claims of these aestheticians are and whether they have any bearing on an art-world at all. Barnett Newman’s remark, that Aesthetics is to the artist what ornithology is for the birds, is at least typical of this attitude. However, since the art-community is more than over-run by peripheral role-seekers, by critics, historians, aestheticians, philosophers (of art), psychologists, etc., it’s as well to look at what the kinds of claims are that aestheticians do make... since theirs has been among the longer established roles. Aesthetics has been the butt of many jokes, whereas on the other hand a subject like Philosophy of Art is hardly acknowledged at all in the art-community. One wonders why Philosophy of Art escapes so lightly. So it is not without interest to consider the relationships each of these has to both philosophy and an art-world.

One of the more noted writers on (not of) Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art has been Professor J. A. Passmore and it is worth briefly outlining his position. The two articles which bear on this are: ‘The Dreariness of Aesthetics’ (Mind, 1951) and especially ‘Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art’ (Critica, Mexico 1968).

ln the earlier article, Passmore is concerned mainly with the question why books and articles which make general remarks about art are so dull – and, in particular, whether there is any basis for believing this dullness to be inevitable. So it is an attempt to see if anything is worth salvaging of Aesthetics. One reason advanced for its dullness is that the aesthetician sets out to ‘substitute for individual judgment... the application of mechanical method’. So it seems the aesthetician is looking for a parallel method for testing the goodness of works of art (‘follow my prescription and you can’t go wrong’) in much the same way, say, that an ethical theorist wants to test the goodness of conduct. This leads in every case to an emphasis upon techniques which lend themselves to mechanical calculation. Such an emphasis is misleading, Passmore maintains, in that the consequential ‘rules’ for goodness do not hold out any kind of interesting framework other than a technical methodology. He suggests that the confusion (and consequential dullness) springs from the failure to make any any kind of distinction between ‘technical’ and ‘formal’ points. Technical points can be settled by the simple application of ‘rules’, i.e. a mechanical method; whereas a formal point can be made only ‘after the closest scrutiny of the specific work of art’. According to Passmore, it is only the formal problems which are the aesthetic questions, conceding at the same time however a considerable difficulty in deciding whether certain questions would actually be technical or formal – he is hesitant to dismiss all formal questions to the realm of technique, since that would leave Aesthetics ‘bombinating in a vacuum’. (It is important to comment that Passmore is tentative in offering this distinction, perhaps realizing that it may not amount to any more than ‘a rule of thumb’. That it may be only so, is largely in sympathy with the conclusions of his article – but since he is intent on salvage-work, some distinction has to be offered to mark off what might strictly and seriously constitute an aesthetic question.)

Passmore submits that there may be an aesthetic approach (within the terms of a serious enquiry), just as there is a scientific approach, without necessitating that objects have aesthetic or scientific characteristics. In this sense, objects may share a certain mode of consideration or approach. The danger lies however in the aesthetician’s ‘craving for generality’. And hence, Aesthetics falls through positing distinctive properties as common to all the arts (Passmore’s examples are ‘balance’ and ‘theme’), since these may have specific meaning in one kind of art, while only a metaphoric meaning in another. The alternative ‘isn’t subjectivism but an intensive special study of the separate arts, carried out with no undue respect for anyone’s “aesthetic experiences”, but much respect for real differences between works of art themselves’. We conclude from this that there would then be an ‘aesthetics of music’, ‘... of fine art’, ‘... of architecture’, and so on; and in each case there would be ‘formal’ questions which were appropriate for an aesthetic approach. While this kind of separating does have some value, one is not much closer to understanding what kinds of claims aestheticians are making.

What is patently clear here is that in attempting to say what an aesthetician’s role ought to be, Passmore is forced into certain ‘analytic’ vaguenesses himself (while avoiding, of course, all the traditional ‘metaphysical’ ones). He is not unaware of this, since he makes the charge against his own arguments that ‘... it still doesn’t follow that there is such a thing as Aesthetics, in distinction from literary theory, musical theory, etc.; it seems to me possible at least that the dullness of Aesthetics arises from the attempt to construct a subject where there isn’t one.’ It is this that he pursues in his later article, discarding the notion of ‘formal’ problems and submitting that in fact there is no such subject as Aesthetics. It’s not so much that he says it, but why – what reasons he gives – which is of interest here.

He initially points out as significant that there are various levels at which it is possible to talk about works of art:

(1) Judgments which assign critical predicates to particular works of art or to particular artists: ‘Reinhardt has no gift for design’.
(2) Judgments about specific art forms: ‘Painting is no longer a viable medium’.
(3) Judgments about works of art in general: ‘Every work of art signifies its content through its form’.
(4) Judgments which assign peculiarly philosophical predicates either to works of art or to critical comments on works of art: ‘Aesthetic judgments are exhortations in disguise’.

These distinctions he characterizes: type (1) as criticism; type (2) as critical theory; type (3) as aesthetics; type (4) as philosophy of art. Certain of these distinctions overlap, but the differences are clear enough for the distinctions to count. For practical purposes, one frequently finds the first three kinds of judgments occurring in the same context since each depends on a close familiarity with specific works of art. So it is with these together that Passmore is concerned – and in particular with Aesthetics on the one hand and with Philosophy of Art on the other.

Philosophy of Art builds on those questions in the arts which are or can be assumed to be essentially of a ‘philosophical’ nature. (lt should be added that this presupposition is made only by philosophers and that philosophers are the only ones who really contribute to the area – the requirements are basically that one must be a philosopher in order to be able to identify what a philosophical question is and in order to deal with it ‘philosophically’.) Such a question Passmore suggests would be – ‘what is the ontological status of a work of art?’ (Now it is certainly not clear-cut that this question has significance only in philosophy and not for the artist – nor is it particularly clear-cut that Passmore is asserting that it only has significance in philosophy.) Passmore adds as a rider that in order to discuss this kind of question ‘we (philosophers) need know practically nothing about works of art’ – which seems in a backhand way to affirm that only philosophers can join his club.

If we agree that what is essentially of a ‘philosophical’ nature is not Aesthetics, then on this distinction much of what is typically under the banner of Aesthetics is now classified as Philosophy of Art. This seems to be useful insofar as it does allow and encourage sorting out of what are philosophical-type questions from the usual category of Aesthetics. This admittedly has been one of the confusions about the subject. So, if there are to be any claims for an ‘aesthetic approach’, as distinct from a philosophical approach, then Passmore’s classification must be assented to. It remains still to be seen if there are strictly and importantly aesthetic questions.

Traditional Aesthetics breaks down to two major (historical) views: the first, that it is concerned with ‘the beautiful’, and the second, that it is concerned with certain intrinsic properties of works of art. These are obviously very distinct conceptions of what Aesthetics is – despite attempts to conjoin them. On the first count, the charge can be made that if Aesthetics is about defining ‘the beautiful’ then it is not essentially about works of art; the aesthetician may reply that it is about works of art insofar as they are (occasionally) instances of ‘the beautiful’... but that is hardly a convincing connection since it can be said to be as much about Jane Fonda or natural landscapes as about works of art. The aesthetician holding this view would agree to some extent – stating that the ‘excellence’ of a landscape may be the same sort of thing as the ‘excellence’ of a painting. This kind of argument implies that aestheticians ought not to take a special interest in works of art (– wheareas the fact is that they do). The definitition then would have to be qualified to read – ‘concerned with “the beautiful” when and inasmuch as it occurs in works of art’ – which could not be all that satisfying to an aesthetician or anyone else. These qualifications aside, if Aesthetics is concerned as such with ‘the beautiful’, then there are no grounds to assume that it is interested in any important way in works of art, nor can it be of much interest to philosophy. Its relations with these domains will hardly be necessary or even stimulating.

The second view of Aesthetics, that it is concerned with certain properties of works of art, has always been a curious one, since implicit in it is that there are properties which are characteristic ‘excellences’ of works of art, ‘excellences’ which make them works of art. As Passmore suggests, the properties would need to be both ‘excellences’ and ‘defects’. Since there is no characteristic which is predicable of all works of art and which might not as well be ascribed to many other things, it seems more than odd to construct a ‘domain of enquiry’ on such an assumption. If there was ever any doubt about this, then the difficulty in accounting for recent events, e.g. ‘minimal art’ and ‘conceptual art’, in the above terms must dispel those doubts. To disregard those difficulties is simply to disregard what the system is meant to account for.

It is Passmore’s point that, while one may be able to ascribe properties (viz. excellences) to particular works of art and perhaps even groups or kinds of works of art, there is no special field of enquiry ‘aesthetics’, as distinct on the one hand from literary theory, fine art theory, etc. and the Philosophy of Art on the other. He expresses it thus: ‘There is no such subject as Aesthetics... There’s nothing illuminating and non-lexicographical to be said about “the nature of the beautiful in general” and there are no defects and excellences peculiar to, and common to, all works of art... It will follow, if I’m right, that philosophy has nothing to contribute to aesthetics except its destruction. But this conclusion is less alarming than it at first sight seems. For there certainly is, I am suggesting, such a subject as the Philosophy of Art...’

This is an acceptable conclusion from a philosophical point of view, that nothing can be said about works of art in general which is not essentially belonging to an ‘external’ subject, e.g. of a philosophical nature, and that any other kinds of statements must be about separate kinds of works of art. Passmore is inclined to let these ‘separate kinds’ cover the broadest classes, i.e. fine art, literature, music, etc.

Now it is possible for further conclusions to be drawn on this. There are two points to be looked at in Passmore’s articles – one is his characterization of Aesthetics and the other his characterization of Philosophy of Art. Both characterizations are from the view-point of a philosopher – he assumes (and rightly) that questioning art philosophically is both acceptable and in some ways worthwhile (for philosophers). When the ‘network of philosophy’ is superimposed on art to ‘see where it touches’, the view is without doubt an ‘external’ one. Philosophy of Art is just such an external view and has been defined here as such (by Passmore). And also by his definition the philosopher need know little about works of art. What then is the difference if the same or similar questions are asked by an ‘internally’ committed person? Does the significance of the questions change? If an ‘external’ question is asked in an ‘external’ context, then it cannot hope to change or effect much; this can only be done by asking the question within the context it is aimed towards. This is the purpose in asking ‘external’ questions in the same context as typical ‘internal’ questions – one wants the questions to have some effect. So the significance of the context of asking literally makes a ‘world’ of difference.

Several points can be made. There are many senses in which Aesthetics (as ascribing properties) suggests the beginning of an ontological structure, so it is probably not unfair to question it as that. Within any art-community one is largely given to believe (if one is aware of it at all) that an ontological structure of one’s ‘art-world’ is given, that is, is ‘set’ or has already been worked out, and there is little reason to question it.

The role which one assumes will determine which structure is set. By Passmore’s explanation, the structure offered by one kind of Aesthetics is such that art is reducible to properties, properties which are a necessary condition for all works of art. This, for example, might be a quite coherent structure, as well as offering something one could ‘virtually point to’. However, it just does not seem to be very comprehensive since it does not account for what it claims to account for – what’s more, Passmore has already shown that this kind of structure has little to recommend it from the philosophical stand-point.

By way of example, another ontological structure, probably the most used one, is such that it makes it irreducible the ‘work of art’ in whatever physical form it occurs. Such an ontology has been presupposed ‘internally’ by most artists and critics and ‘externally’ by most philosophers of art. The wide acceptance this ontology has enjoyed is demonstrated by the recent popularity of red herrings like ‘object/post-object art’, ‘dematerialized art’, ‘idea art’, etc.

The point is that not much consideration has been given to interpretation through a plurality of ontological structures. The tendency has been blithely to regard one structure as the structure. Passmore’s attack on Aesthetics was on the viability of the purported ontology it offered and, in particular, on the claim that it was the verifiable structure. On the other hand, if aestheticians stated that their domain of enquiry was a hypothetical one, based on a principle that certain properties are common to all works of art, and this hypothetical art-world made no claims of prescriptive ‘usefulness’ or ramifications in any practical art-world... then Passmore’s complaints would cease to apply, since it was merely a fictitious domain. Moreover, it is noticeable that, while invalidating the claims for one kind of structure, he does not offer another (ostensibly for Philosophy of Art). It must seem he presumed that by throwing the whole problem into the domain of philosophy, then that would also take care of its ontological structure. On this basis it may be very important to look briefly at what philosophy ‘takes care of’ and how it does it – this through Philosophy of Art.

Philosophy of Art, makes no commitment other than to ‘philosophy’. In other words, it is philosophy which uses ‘art’ as ‘phenomena’ or an empirical ‘guinea pig’ for its enquiries. It seems then to imply a pre-ordained hierarchical relationship between philosophy and art – and one in which the philosopher’s role is restricted (by way of his framework) to descriptiveness or attempting to explain.

Consideration was given this subject in some earlier notes and it will be useful to quote directly from a part of those.

‘..it’s been suggested that articles be published (in this journal) which are written by persons usually in the ‘philosophical domain’ (say by philosopher X). These articles would be included because it was considered they may be relevant to the journal’s aims. The questions then arise:

(1) should a distinction be made between those articles and ones by the regular contributors to the journal? And, if one’s unwilling to make this distinction, then
(2) should a distinction be made instead by regarding certain articles by philosopher X as being pertinent to the discussions carried on in this journal while other articles by him would be precluded through not being pertinent?

‘lf neither of these distinctions were agreed to be upheld, then it is fairly obvious that our domain would become limitless and all-inclusive; everything within the total field of knowledge must then be pertinent. That would imply an obligation and commitment to ‘total’ knowledge, without preferences or priorities – and that is not likely to be agreed on as being a usable criterion (or even a criterion at all). If, on the other hand, distinction (1) is adhered to as an operable criterion then what is being opted for is some kind of distinction (criterion) which is based on categories of authorship, i.e. ‘artist-author’, ‘critic-author’, ‘philosopher-author’, etc. Then it would seem that a particular authorial category is being held as having a special significance over others. What’s more, authorial categories would be difficult to swap about – once one’s categorized, then that’s it. Neither does it seem likely that one could belong to two authorial categories. lt begins to sound a lot like a hereditory membership for these categories.

‘Distinction (2) is much more complex and problematic. No authorial distinctions for articles here, but a distinction based on to what it refers, that is roughly, one maintained by reference to a particular ‘area of knowledge’. In other words, we might go through any philosopher’s life-work sorting out articles appropriate for the journal and discarding the rest. It may be that there is a problem here in talking of ‘areas of knowledge’, which would not be entirely gotten rid of by substituting ‘epistemic problems’ or any like phrase. A possible way out of this might be to fall back on the categorical notion of ‘domains’ (i.e. an ‘ethics domain’, a ‘logics domain’, a ‘political domain’, ‘a works-of-art domain’, an ‘Art-Language domain’, etc.), and then assert that all knowledge pertains to all domains but each domain orders its priorities differently. This would seem to get us over the problem of dealing with philosopher X’s oeuvre: some articles would have priority over other articles in terms of this journal – and this would have no bearing on any other domain. This is fairly sound since one can apply it generally – e.g. in an ethics domain, certain articles would have priority over other articles (which could be articles dealing with logic, or empirical knowledge, etc.). So, to be very pragmatic about it, it might as well be accepted that those articles which have a ‘high priority rating’ to a particular domain can be referred to as ‘appropriate’ or ‘bearing on’ or ‘having significance of import’ to that domain. This is still very slack but it does give us some terms to work with.

It might be objected that this is a border-line case since it is dealing with philosopher X’s articles rather than a ‘normal contributor’. Fine, but perhaps there is some closer significance in all this. At the point we closed the above argument, we resolved a sorting out of philosopher X’s oeuvre into what was appropriate to use in this journal. So while, from a philosophical viewpoint, all of philosopher X’s articles are appropriate to the philosophical domain, only some of them are appropriate to the journal. So much for philosopher X. But is there any reason to suggest that all articles by a normal contributor (which are considered adequate) will pertain to this journal only? lsn’t it feasible to suggest that some articles by a normal contributor might be appropriate to both (e.g.) philosophy and the Art-Language journal? If this is granted, then one can take this a step further and hypothesize that it could also be feasible that an article by a normal contributor might be appropriate to only (e.g.) a philosophy domain. (These remarks are phrased in terms of philosophy as a comparative framework, but they might equally be stated in terms of politics, or science, or sociology, or any ‘external’ framework.) But the question can be put – Is the framework of this journal constituted thus that an article by a normal contributor could be rejected as appropriate to another domain?’

That discussion perhaps relies overmuch on domain distinctions based on preordained (virtually ‘natural’) priorities. In the framework of this journal priorities may need to be kept ‘fluid’ or at least contingencies made in that direction. But certain of the arguments in the above discussion might be carried further through the earlier remarks: for example, it can be argued that a philosopher could not, under any conditions, contribute ‘good’ Art-Language work – but only works of Philosophy of Art (or, at best, a philosophical screening of Art-Language work, i.e. by superimposing the ‘network’).

A further final question might be raised whether the ontology (ostensibly descriptive) advanced through a Philosophy of Art is (or ever could be) the same one which would be advanced by an ‘internally’ committed person. There is not a little difficulty on Passmore’s distinction to construct an ontology which ‘accounted for everything’, while at the same time not needing to ‘know much about art’. That’s a rather parochial view of the problem, characterizing the philosopher’s commitments as lying in one direction. Obviously an ontology advanced through an ‘internal’ position could answer better any requirements of ‘comprehensiveness’ or ‘accountability’. At the same time, and more importantly, this ontology has the option to concern itself with ‘coherence’, that is, with its own ‘internal’ structure – this might involve the notion of constructing or ‘working out’ an ontology. It is not simply a matter of using an ‘external’ framework, e.g. a philosophical ‘screen’, but rather the advancing of assumptions for an ‘internal’ framework, which is in no sense descriptive.

It should also be clear that there is no ‘real’ way in which this (or any other potential) ontology can be accounted for or verified in the external world – only physical aspects (objects, pieces of paper, etc.) can be accounted for. There is little point in trying to explain a physical art-world. This is why there may well be an emphasis on constructing an ontology. The ways in which it is verifiable may be either very limited or not at all. It parallels the difficulty of verifying ‘the best of all possible worlds’ – one can only end up reflexively demonstrating or exemplifying what it would be like for such conditions to be satisfied. Description or explanation will not provide the basis for constructing an ontology; moreover the philosopher (of art or anything else) has no way by which he might understand the reasons and priorities for doing it. There simply could not be any significance in it for him. The point is that the ‘external’ questions must be framed ‘internally’ for them to effect anything, for them to be of any significance (e.g. to effect a paradigmatic change in the framework). So it is in this sense that the role must be undertaken by an ‘internally’ committed person.

 

 

[63a-2] Frameworks-Air-Conditioning, Art & Language Press, Coventry, 1967, reprinted in Maenz and De Vries (eds.) Art & Language: Texte zum Phanomen Kunst und Sprache, Dumont Schauberg, Cologne, 1972, pp. 18-47 (pp. 18-20).

1. Air-conditioning Show/Air Show/Frameworks
Terry Atkinson – Michael Baldwin
Air-Conditioning Show

The Air-conditioning as Device

After a few weeks attempting to sort out indicators for the exhibition of non-entities model, Michael Baldwin remarked that he was not sure that the air-conditioning didn’t constitute a separate focus. For myself, I made the decision that it suited my purposes to regard the air-conditioning as an integral part of the exhibition. Although one can see a possible situation where, if the air-conditioning were to be declared a separate focus, this separating from the exhibition might be used as a device to relate it to the exhibition. But here there is no need to set up this separate focus, rather, to use the air-conditioning as a means to examine the concepts of length and temperature.

Assuming the air-conditioning equipment is functioning then the room(s) will be filled with air-conditioned air. A question to be asked at this point; is the air (air-conditioned or not) a permanent factor? And if it is, then how do we identify it as such? Let us consider firstly the question of identifiability.

We can start by examining how we detect temperature. The temperature of a body is a measure; that is a measure of its hotness. This can further be defined as a property of the rate at which heat will be transferred to or from it. Is it then reasonable to say that the temperature is a measure of the kinetic energy of the molecules, ions, atoms, of which matter is composed? Let us assume that we need an exhaustive description of the temperature throughout the rooms. We therefore need to make extensive analytic breakdowns. Experience guides us to acknowledge the presence in the rooms of various bodies. The concept of a ‘body’ involves a measure of identifiability and permanence. This measure of identifiability will, if it is to be a comprehensive analysis, mean a scale ranging from the macroscopic to the microscopic. A complete characterization of the body will demand the ability to specify what will be the result of every conceivable operation applied to the body. Any assumption that the body (bodies) is inert or passive would be incorrect. Properties of a body are not always the same but change when the external circumstances of the body change (e.g. the density of a quantity of gas changes when the pressure is altered).

We should be careful here in identifying just exactly what we mean by permanent factors. It is not so much that the air has an exact volume and an ‘exact’ temperature which we can measure by using the appropriate instruments, but regardless of whether we measure them or not, we can say that the air has a volume and a temperature. Can’t we?