Most Journal Assignments will be comprised of two parts -- précis and expound -- which will total roughly four journal pages per assignment and will be due almost every Wednesday (exceptions noted below). Journals will be collected and evaluated four times over the semester, but expectations are that you will keep up with the weekly writings as what you craft for your journal is what you are expected to bring to class to contribute to discussions both formally (for your individual presentation assignments) and informally (as an engaged class participant). See our course syllabus for more information on evaluation and grade weight.
1st Part: Précis: a précis is a summary of a text that aims to give a synopsis, to present the essential gist or heart of a reading. The ideal précis identifies a reading’s main message/thesis and delineates the main steps of its argument like a condensed outline, including notes on key features, e.g., style or method, goal, key examples, terminology, etc.. You may wish to include notes on connections to other readings, questions on the text’s meaning or ideas within it, personal evaluation, and/or points you wish to bring to discussion. Begin your assignments by re-reading and reflecting upon the previous class’ reading assignments, considering what is their heart or essential message, then crafting a roughly page-long summary of each. Your written piece can be informal, i.e., via bullet points, outline, fragments, or narrative paragraph.
2nd Part: Expound: to expound is to state and elucidate, to present and explain, something (a theory, interpretation, idea, etc.). Select two of each week’s given prompts (listed below) and craft, for each, a roughly page-long response. The challenge of these reflections is that they are to be thoughtful and complete expression of developed ideas, but must be concise, and, therefore, can be informally written (e.g., bullet points, outline, fragmented or flowing narrative paragraph, etc.). To ensure your prompt responses present-and-explain brief but developed ideas, dwell upon the prompts and gather your thoughts before you begin.
Assignment Evaluation:
Journal Project: evaluated by completion (i.e., has all required entries), quality of content (i.e., Précises: effectively summarize without excessive chronical or sacrifice of crucial content; including brief evaluation, questions, comments for class beneficial; Expoundings: prompts clearly addressed, thoughtful depth of reflection, analysis, interpretation), and of presentation (i.e., entries & their topics clearly identified, writing adequately legible, thoughts well-formed, pieces are cohesive wholes; evidencing attention to form, tone, style beneficial). The Journal Project is worth 60% of your final grade (each of the four submissions: 15%).
Journal Entry One: (1: Jan. 17) Kant: Judgements of Beauty & Sublimity: (in relation to: Kant's Critique of Judgment, "Judgment" & "Analytic of the Beautiful," in A&S, pp. 93-113)
Two “Précis” and Two “Expound” entries required this week.
PRÉCIS: Construct synopses for both of the following selections:
(1) on ‘Judgment,’ pp.95-98;
(2) on ‘Analytic of the Beautiful,’ pp.98-113.
EXPOUND: Select any two of the following prompts:
(1) Kant’s “First Moment,” in order to elucidate “disinterest,” differentiates three judgments: the beautiful; the pleasant; and the good. Find an example of art (any medium; provide names, titles, etc.) that illustrates each of Kant’s judgments and offer your own interpretation as to why these examples fit his distinctions.
(2) Kant’s “Second Moment” explores a seeming paradox—aesthetic judgment is subjective and universal—and justifies its validity because (a) such judgment is not based on concepts and, (b) it does not necessitate universality, but hearkens a ‘universal voice’ (explored more in the 4th Moment). Focusing on (a), how do you understand and agree/disagree with Kant? E.g., compare & contrast subjective (the feeling in you) vs. objective (based on a concept of the object) judgments and argue their pros/cons for aesthetics.
(3) Kant’s “Third Moment” presents the wildly fascinating/complicated idea that the beautiful makes us feel like it has purpose, but, technically, it does not. Despite knowing it does not, we feel it; this power grants the existence of and feeling of pleasure from our aesthetic judgements. Critics of ‘purposiveness without purpose,’ however, argue that something can have a purpose (e.g., propaganda) and be beautiful. What do you think?
(4) Kant’s “Fourth Moment,” that aesthetic judgment is necessary, elaborates how there is a sensus communis, a common or shared sense amongst all people, that he calls a ‘universal voice’ (broached in the 2nd Moment) grounding aesthetic judgments. Find some examples of art (any medium; provide names, titles, etc.) and explain how you believe them to demonstrate or disprove this common sense.
Journal Entry Two: (2: Jan. 24) Kant & Lyotard: Sublimity: (in relation to: Kant's Critique of Judgment, "Analytic of the Sublime," in A&S, pp. 113-120 & Jean-François Lyotard’s “What is Postmodernism?”, in A&S, pp. 559-564.)
Two “Précis” and Two “Expound” entries required this week.
PRÉCIS: Construct synopses for both of the following selections: (ca. 1 p. each)
(1) on the ‘Analytic of the Sublime,’ pp.113-20;
(2) on ‘What is Postmodernism,’ pp.559-564.
EXPOUND:Select any two of the following prompts: (ca. 1 p. each)
(1) Comparing & Contrasting Judgments of the Sublime and the Beautiful:
Commonalities: both are reflective judgments (not of sense or logic, hence yield only a feeling of pleasure, not knowledge); and both please in and of themselves (not for any purpose or by any idea). Differences: the ground for our mainly positive pleasure from the Beautiful (directly tied to furtherance of life; charms and sparks free play of imagination) is form; whereas the ground of the sublime’s mainly negative pleasure (indirect pleasure, from challenge to vital powers being conquered; exercises imagination) is the formless. Reflect on and try to richly describe each element in these two key differences: form vs. formless and positive pleasure vs. negative pleasure. (E.g.: what exactly is form?, the formless?; any examples in various arts? How to describe positive pleasure?, negative pleasure? What in form might elicit positive pleasure?, what in the formless might elicit negative pleasure? Etc.)
(2) Crafting a Good Example of the Sublime:
The sublime, for Kant: (a) concerns the formless object; (b) boundlessness that still invokes totality; (c) yields indirect ‘negative pleasure,’ a result of the rush of power-feelings restored after being taken; and (d) the greater the sense that it violates purpose, exceeds our capacity to take it all in, and does violence to our imaginations, the greater do we judge it sublime. His first non-example is a stormy ocean (p.115)—he says it is not sublime because our minds will have so many immediate ideas about it, and proclaims no object of nature is sublime, the sublime ISonly as something felt per (a-d) above. However, maybe the ocean storm IS a good example IF we judge it disinterestedly, that is, without all the ideas (e.g., if your life is immediately threatened by it, you won’t make a true aesthetic judgment, you will just run for your life; but, if you are safe, etc., maybe …?). This shows the difficulty of examples that has led generations after to struggle to identify what is sublime, and what is a sublime work of art? So! Take the ocean example or choose any work of art and propose how it can meet the above four aspects defining the sublime.
(3) Crafting a Good Example of the Mathematical Sublime:
Kant names two categories of the sublime: The Mathematical (great in the sense of size, scope) and The Dynamic (great in the sense of might, power). He warns against human or natural examples of the first type because the judgment must be pure, without concepts and interest (p.117-118), but gives examples of the latter, including cliffs, storms, volcanos, waterfalls, etc. (p.120). Can you re-describe any of his examples of the dynamic sublime to become mathematically sublime, or come up with your own?
(for 4 & 5 & 6) Lyotard’s Definitions of Modern & Postmodern Art Re: Kant’s Sublime:
In Kant’s sublime, indirect negative pleasure is a ricochet between attraction and repulsion culminating in the uplift of human spirit by the power to grasp and therefore conquer formlessness.
Lyotard defines modern art as an aesthetic of the sublime that accords with Kant’s conclusion: the mind’s conquer over dumbfounding formlessness yields sublime pleasure.
Modern art is sublime because it sparks invention; its conquer happens as either:
(b) inhumanity (satisfaction from recognizing it is not human to be able to conceive the inconceivable, e.g., Braque, Picasso, Lissitsky, Duchamp);
Both (a) and (b) lead to invention: the spawn of new rules by which to play, e.g., Proust’s narrative voice, Joyce’s grammar and vocabulary).
Lyotard defines postmodern art as an aesthetic of the sublime that accords with Kant’s premise: sublime pleasure is necessarily both positive and negative, so neither wins out.
Postmodern art is sublime because it sparks invention … because, while remaining faithful to Kant’s premise: the sublime yields negative pleasure, this art:
(a) denies any consequent solace (from conquer of formlessness by form); and:
(b) denies any camaraderie (from consensus of taste);
Both (a) and (b) lead to invention: inspiring seeking of new presentations to intensify the feeling of inexpressibility (instead of increasing enjoyable expressions).
Before considering the prompts below, quickly scan examples of modern and postmodern art (but, keep in mind that Lyotard’s definitions will be more specific than The Art Story’s definitions!): (www.theartstory.org/definition-modern-art-artworks.htm) (www.theartstory.org/definition-postmodernism-artworks.htm)
(4) Sublime Art: Invention re: Unpresentable:
Lyotard defines both modern art and postmodern art as sublime. The key to their being sublime is that they both ignite invention in response to the unpresentable (formless). Explore what this might mean and what you think about it (E.g., what does ‘sparked invention’ feel like, what does it cause, what and how is the inventing?, what about the unpresentable causes this?, can beauty’s pleasure or other things not cause this same invention?, what would modern/postmodern artists be so concerned with the unpresentable?, in your creative activities, is the unpresentable your concern, why?, etc.)
(5) Crafting Good Examples of Modern/Postmodern Sublime Art:
Select any example of modern art and any of postmodern art (from site above, or anywhere; of any medium; note names, titles, etc.); richly describe how each can illustrate Lyotard’s definitions of modern art and of postmodern art as sublime.
(6) Does Lyotard Reveal a Contradiction in Kant’s Negative Pleasure?
Lyotard’s differentiations of modern and postmodern sublime art reveals a really important question about Kant’s theory of the sublime: does he contradict himself?! --If Kant’s premise defining the sublime is: it yields negative pleasure (attraction + repulsion) in its audience; --And his conclusion in describing the sublime is: its negative pleasure is indirect because it comes with the conquer over the dumbfounding of the formless; Does the conclusion of the sublime’s description mean just pleasure results, which would violate the premise of the sublime’s definition as attraction+repulsion? Must these feelings both be had persistently, or can one replace the other, or …? So, does he or does he not contradict himself? How do you propose we understand the sublime’s pleasure?
Journal Entry Three: (3: Jan. 31) Kant: Aesthetic Judgment & Artistic Genius: (Re: Last Readings in Kant: "Deduction" and "Genius," in A&S, pp.120-133) Précis: Construct synopses for both of the following selections (write ≈1p. each):
(1) on Kant’s Critique of Judgment, ‘Deduction’ (§§31-Rmk), pp. 120-127.
(2) on Kant’s Critique of Judgment, ‘Genius’ (§§46-49), pp. 128-133.
Expound: Select any two of the following prompts (write ≈1p. each):
(1) Kant’s four ‘rules’ for the genius dictate that s/he must be (a) original, (b) provide the model for others, (c) does not know how s/he has acquired his/her ideas, and (d) is the instrument that gives rules from Nature only to beautiful art, and not to science (§46). Select one or more of these rules to briefly explain what it means (according to Kant), and richly argue whether and how you agree or disagree with it.
(2) A free-reflection on anything in Kant (e.g., what is most important, interesting, frustrating, worthwhile; how can you use his ideas; what do you want to think more about after reading him?).
Journal Entry Four: (4: Feb. 7) Near or Far? Consummatory Principle & Psychical Distance: (re: Pepper (A&S, pp.326-330) and Bullough (A&S, pp.457-467) (1) Précis: (one page each):
Stephen Pepper’s The Work of Art, in A&S, pp. 326-330
Edward Bullough’s “‘Psychical Distance’ as a Factor in Art and as an Aesthetic Principle,” in A&S, pp. 457-467.
(2) Expound: (select two; one page each)
(1) Consummation & Pleasant: Pepper’s “consummatory principle,” akin to an appetitive drive, grounds both how we experience art and judge it (do art criticism)—hence art’s ‘experiencing and judging’ is as ‘appetites consuming.’ This sounds like Kant’s judgment of the “pleasant”—hence, more akin to our regard of sandwiches and cakes, scary movies on Halloween and fluffy comedies after bad days. How does the consummatory principle identify with and differ from our judgment of the pleasant? Since Pepper believes his theory is not a radically personal relativism (in which every experience and critique would be valid only for the one doing it), what structure or guide does he give it to keep it from this, and do you think he succeeds?
(2) Distance &/vs. Disinterest: Bullough’s idea of “psychical distance” can be read as a revision or refinement of Kant’s idea of “disinterest” as a requirement for true aesthetic judgments. (a) Identify several key factors that explain Bullough’s distance, (b) argue how they do or do not differentiate it from Kant’s disinterest, (c) then personally evaluate the idea of “psychical distance” as “the much needed criterion of the beautiful” (460, emphasis mine).
(3) Objective/Subjective: We struggled in Kant to come to terms with his declaration of aesthetic judgment as subjective and universal. Part of that struggle to evaluate it required us to better understand what those characteristics meant. Bullough deals with the same difficulty of loose and specific meanings of objective and subjective. Since there are differences and similarities, elaborate what these ideas mean and how they play roles in the aesthetic theories of both thinkers, and conclude with your own thoughts whether one thinker’s ideas can help us think of the other’s ideas.
(4) Near & Far: Both Pepper and Bullough tie art experience and judgment to nearness and farness, with the former emphasizing the coming-near and the latter the keeping-far. Their approaches (emphasizing exactly the idea of approach) are simple and radical at once: of course the human body in spatio-temporal positioning and human mind in reflective-attentive-anticipatory relation to art fundamentally impacts experience and evaluation … but these are also insights that many try so hard to suspend in or abstract from art experience and evaluation in order to try to get to something essential, objective, universal, true, reliable, knowable, etc. about art. What do you think are the best points (in the thinkers and your own) for and against including and excluding embodiment (near-far as mind/body-art relation) in aesthetics?
R. G. Collingwood’s Principles of Art, in A&S, pp.191-201
Tolstoy’s “What is Art?”, in A&S, pp. 177-181.
(2) Expound: (Select two; one page each)
(1) Communication? Tolstoy essentially argues that for something to be art, it must be an expression of an artist’s emotion that is clearly communicated to recipients who then become “infected” by the affect so as to thereby experience for their selves that same emotion. The power of this theory is that it evidences the idea that art is essentially expression, it communicates, it is an universal language. The troubling aspect of this theory is that, today, we tend to like the idea that a work can communicate many things, whereas for Tolstoy, if the artist intended to communicate ‘happy!’ and you hear ‘sad,’ we must judge the work to have failed. Unfortunately, it is very hard to validly argue that art is communication without using something like Tolstoy’s formulation (i.e., communication is onlycommunication if it communicates X from you to me, so if I receive Y, we did not communicate). So, is art communication, a communion, a sharing, exchanging of emotions? How do you argue for or against Tolstoy’s theory in light of the above?
(2) Copies & Originals: Collingwood’s identification of the distinctions between “what transmutes (consciousness), what is transmuted (sensation), and what it is transmuted into (imagination)” work to show that while imagination works from what is sensuously given in experience, aesthetic experience is entirely imaginative, thus wholly created by consciousness (hence, the seeming paradox of experience necessarily giving the pieces, but saying the given-to is wholly responsible for all the making) (200). However, expanding beyond his project, these distinctions can be used as evidence to claim that repetition/duplication/imitation is impossible, do not exist. Two consequences of this claim: undermines the idea of art as mimesis (an imitative act--e.g., which can propose art as an innately natural human capacity and mode of expression, explain similarities between arts of different times and places, etc.); and makes using likeness as a criterion to judge art invalid (e.g., saying a realist painting or photograph or actor’s character was good because it so faithfully reproduced what is real). So, while Collingwood saves so much as art that Kant’s idea of the Genius as entirely original rejects, he also opens the door to making ‘copy’ an impossibility. Where do you stand? Is art only what is wholly original (Kant)? Is every creation original, hence can be art (& we’d need another way to judge it) (Collingwood)? Are there originals and copies, and some of both can be art (& how would we judge this)? Etc.?
(3) Expressing & Arousing Emotion: Tolstoy’s communication of emotions requires an arousing of emotions; Collingwood, however, argues that communication of emotions is expression, not an arousing of emotions. While Collingwood’s ideas smooth out a lot of issues with Tolstoy’s theory, it also suggests art experience and judgment is either more intellectual (hence very opposed to Kant’s idea of it as subjective feeling) or requires a form of emotional disinterest (using Kant’s idea, but in a non-Kantian way). How do you understand the ideas of expressing emotion and arousing emotion, if they are co-implicatory or distinct, in Tolstoy and Collingwood? How do you evaluate their different accounts of the emotional dimension of art?
Journal Entry Six: (6: Feb. 21) Synesthesia & Catharsis: Précis: Construct synopses for both of the following selections (write ≈1p. each):
(1) Wassily Kandinsky’s “Concrete Art,” in A&S, pp. 673-676
(2) Lev Vygotsky’s The Psychology of Art, in A&S, pp. 521-523.
Expound: Select any two of the following prompts (write ≈1p. each):
(1) How Make Art: As a “manifesto,” Kandinsky’s mild-tempered piece might just be advocating that artists continue making “concrete” (i.e., abstract, nonfigurative) art, but key to how to make this art may be the real message of his work, and we might find this “how” indirectly through Kandinsky’s exploration of feeling itself … for this is what he spends the most time talking about, the activity and description of human sensory feeling of, especially, painting and music. So, how do you interpret his rich descriptions of feeling to be instructions of how to do art?
(2) The Point (literally): According to the French philosopher Michel Henry, Kandinsky’s “point” means more than a geometrical entity, instead: “As such, it is indivisible and abstract in the sense of an immaterial and ideal entity, which characterizes every geometrical figure taken and conceived in its purity (and not as a natural form),” further arguing that it has, for Kandinsky, “an inner sound” whose tonality is of “the utmost conciseness,” “the greatest reserve,” and “the ultimate and most singular combination of silence and speech” (Michel Henry on and quoting Kandinsky in Seeing the Invisible, p.47). Conduct a though-viewing experiment to try to understand and evaluate Henry and Kandinsky’s claims: first, find a piece of visual art; second, examine just its form by reducing whatever it is a picture of down to shapes (e.g., an arm as a triangular, a face as an oval, a torso as a rectangle, etc.); third, further reduce the shapes down to its lines (e.g., the three lines of the triangle that makes the arm, etc.); fourth, even further reduce the lines down to its points (e.g., the triangle’s lines become just starting and ending points); finally, pull your gaze back to try to see the whole work as only these points. Artwork reduced to only its most miniscule constituent parts (points) renders just an inordinate number of dots when viewed up close, but then they can coalesce together to form lines to form planes to form shapes to form representations of objects when you step back from the work. Now that you have practiced this envisioning of art as points, consider the quote above: is this a representation of a work’s absolute purity?, do these points have an essential sound?, is their sound a singular synthesis of speech and silence? Write about your experiment and thoughts on these three questions.
(3) The Rhythm of Catharsis: True art, according to Vygotsky, always contains within itself an affective contradiction that causes, in us, conflicting feelings that culminate in their own destruction, which we experience as an emotional release called a catharsis. This rise and release of emotions is the feeling we specifically call our aesthetic reaction to art; it is also a rhythm of conflicts within artworks themselves between their material and form. Considering what Vygotsky says about these two dimensions of rhythm (in art and in us), explore various works of art and carefully note your reactions to them; do you witness such catharsis as rhythm in them and you? Describe your art experiences and personally evaluate Vygotsky’s claims.
Journal Entry Seven (7: Feb. 28) Significant Form & Sensation Itself: Précis: Construct synopses for both of the following selections (write ≈1p. each):
(1) Clive Bell’s Art, in A&S, pp. 185-190.
(2) Kasimir Malevich’s “Suprematism,” in A&S, pp. 667-672.
Expound: Select any two of the following prompts (write ≈1p. each):
(Re: 1, 2, 3, & 4) Ways to evaluate art: think about the number of different ways we have been given so far to judge art (broadly, that it is art, its quality, meaning):
Kant: if you disinterestedly consider a work, does its form alone make you feel mere pleasure;
Pepper: are you driven by a consummatory principle to the terminal area for the optimal receipt (most satisfying, complete consumption) of the work;
Bullough: is there concord between your psychical distance to the work and the work’s psychical distance so neither are too-near/far and yield a personal relation of a strong, unique emotion;
Tolstoy: do you feel the artist’s intended individual, clear, and sincere feeling;
Collingwood: do you have, as an understanding, the emotion that the artist came to have as an understood emotion in its expression;
Kandinsky: do you feel the intensity of sensation, fully, radically, from all your senses;
Vygotsky: do you feel the conflicting-releasing rhythm embodied in the work itself;
Bell: if you consider significant form, and nothing else, do you feel aesthetic emotion;
Malevich: if you cast aside everything objective (ideas, concepts, images, all likeness of reality), do you feel pure feeling?
(1) Bell & Kant: Both identify the source of aesthetic emotion/pleasure as form. First, rigorously describe and evaluate the form of/in any three works of art (note artists, titles); then offer at least three brief personal reflections identifying some benefits and/or drawbacks to formalism (aesthetic judgment/critique based on form).
(2) Tolstoy & Vygotsky: Successful art, for Tolstoy, is an equivalent feeling communicated from artist to audience. Successful art, for Vygotsky, is a receipt of the conflicting rhythm of emotion that destroys its content, hence transforming the emotions, giving you cathartic release. First, find a work of art (any medium) that you are not or barely familiar with (note artist, title); deeply, repeatedly engage the work, noting your experiences each time; finally, offer a personal reflection on whether your engagement with it was more as an emotional communication (re: Tolstoy) or emotional experience of release (re: Vygotsky)
(3) Pepper & Bell: Engage any two works of art according to Pepper’s appetitive drive to their terminal areas of optimal receptivity seeking to consume them fully—record numerous points of description/critique. Then analyze each of your points as to connections to Bell--e.g, is the terminal area an origin of meaning like Bell’s form, are elements within that area akin to points in Bell, do they connect to emotion, etc..
(4) Bell &/or Malevich & any Other Thinker: Through an example of any chosen work of art, compare and contrast the ways of evaluating art for Bell &/or Malevich and any one other thinker we have read in order to posit your own argument as to which method you find most beneficial.
(5) Bell & Malevich Free-for-All: A free-reflection on anything in these two thinkers (e.g., what is most important, interesting, frustrating, worthwhile; how can you use their ideas; what do you want to think more about after reading them; etc. etc. etc.).
Précis: Construct a synopsis on the following selection (write ≈1p.):
John Dewey’s Art as Experience, in A&S, pp.203-220
Expound: Select any two of the following prompts (write ≈1p. each):
(1) A Philosophical Experiment: Experience & An Experience: Dewey differentiated the “inchoate” experience that “occurs continuously, because [of] the interaction of live creature and environing conditions is involved in the very process of living” and “an experience when the material experienced runs its course to fulfillment,” thereby is “a whole” (205). Thus, engage an experiment of experience and an experience:
(a) Go for a walk: be actively aware of the experiencing--e.g., of your activity: movement of body, sound of your footsteps, your speed, breathing, where you look, the perspective of scenery, where you turn, awareness of being aware, etc.; of your surroundings: your route, the surface you walk on, what you walk by, the temperature, the noise, busy or desolate surroundings, recognize people or not, etc.
(b) Immediate Writing: after your walk, immediately, with as little reflective forethought or revision as possible, write aboutyour walk.
(c) Follow-up Report: after finishing (a) and (b) and doing something else for a little while, pick up your journal again and write a follow-up report: (i) describe your event of the walk using the present tense; (ii) then pause, reflect upon the whole experience of the walk and report on the walk as an experience had using the past tense.
(d) Re-Read and Final Thought: re-read Dewey’s seven paragraphs on pp.205-206; re-read your parts (b) and (c); answer the following questions: (iii) how does your part (b) capture or not capture experience? (iv) how does your part (c i) capture or not capture experience? (v) how does your part (c ii) capture or not capture an experience?
(2) Lives in Individualized Experience: Dewey writes: “A work of art no matter how old and classic is actually, not just potentially, a work of art only when it lives in some individualized experience” (p.212). The perceiver of art, if perceiving aesthetically, creates an experience; the substance of that experience is new, no matter that the substance of the work is its same material, and, hence, the newness of the self-sameness is what makes a work of art a work of art.
(a) First, try this out: seek out any “old and classic” work of your choice, engage it in Dewey’s “appreciative, perceiving, and enjoying” unity of aesthetic experience that relates “doing and undergoing, outgoing and incoming energy” (pp.212, 207, 208, respectively).
(b) Second: write out several reflections on this engagement with your chosen work.
(c) Third: carefully reflect on Dewey’s thoughts in the “Substance and Form” section (pp.211-214) and your written reflections,
(d) Finally: write out several reflections answering and explaining your thoughts on two questions: has your personal engagement with the artwork made it live and actually a work of art?, and did your genuine aesthetic engagement of the artwork truly unify the what and how of the artwork into one, whole experience (as opposed to a division of what and how it was and is)?
(3) Painting’s Color: Consider and write per the following:
(a) Consider: Dewey writes: “in ordinary perceptions, this medium of color is mixed, adulterated. While we see, we also hear; we feel pressures, and heat or cold. In a painting, color renders the scene without these alloys and impurities. They are … squeezed out and left behind in an act of intensified expression. The medium becomes color alone, and since color alone must now carry the qualities of movement, touch, sound, etc., … the expressiveness and energy of color are enhanced” (pp.214-215).
(b) Consider: Jean-François Lyotard (of whom we read “What is Postmodernism?” on the sublime, pp.559-564) wrote extensively about color in the paintings of the contemporary Californian artist Sam Francis, characteristically remarking about his work: “The gesture of painting defers to the authority, the absolute, almost giddy confidence that colours have in themselves” (Lyotard, Sam Francis: Lessons of Darkness…like the paintings of a blind man…, trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Venice, CA: The Lapis Press, 1993), 6th plate).
(c) Write: your free reflections on color in paintings--e.g., think about how do you describe the expressiveness, energy, giddiness of color?, does color come most alive in painting?, what are the possibilities and limits of color?, what is the meaning of color itself, as opposed to specific colors?, are they most important in painting as an activity, as a thing, as what we experience in such art?, etc.?
(d) Consider: However, Sam Francis is most known (and Lyotard most interested in him) for his abstract minimalist paintings that predominately feature bare white centers with color pushed to the edges of the canvas. Considering Sam Francis’ “Not All I See Is There” (1969, Private Collection), an 8’x10’ acrylic on canvas that has long streaks of color, red, purple, green, brown, rimming the work in a thin band with crisp edges while the upper right and lower left have bands that cross diagonally down, violating the pure white interior of the work, Lyotard wonders: what if the white was the painting?, and proposes: “There, there was no this or that. When it is bold enough to try and get beyond, sucked in by the void, by utopia and uchronia, suddenly without beyond, without tomorrow or yesterday, the gaze finds itself stripped of its separative power. But it is also freed from the vanity of grasping. It discovers that ‘There is’ is not all that it sees, not all I see is there. It practices seeing where it can’t see, when the visible is not there. It stops looking. Something then is seen. Through colours, the eye advances into the white of its deliverance, and this white is also the night of its infirmity” (Ibid., 13th plate). (See "resources" tab, then "Re: Dewey" tab, or ~here~)
(e) Write: after thinking about Dewey’s ideas on color, exploring pictures of Sam Francis’ paintings online, meditating on Lyotard’s question about the white and reflection on Francis’ painting, now, write: do you think that Lyotard captures Dewey’s “sensitivity to a medium as a medium [that] is the very heart of all artistic creation and esthetic perception” (p.217), that is, does he express the enhanced “expressiveness and energy of color” (p.215), why or why not, how or how not?
(4) The Role and Significance of Art Mediums: The magical, the uncanny, the power, the marvelousness … these are the terms that Dewey uses “to suggest the role and significance of media for art” (p.215) before continuing to offer that whatever medium an art uses—be it color, harmonious sound, flavor, etc.—such serves as the mediator or means … but how do you understand this description of medium here? Is it a guide to the underlying quality that unites the flow of experience into an experience?, or is it the opportunity that connects the giving of a work to a giving of a receiver?, is it what concentrates the perceiver’s reception of the given, or the excess of all possibilities perception has before it at its peak?, and what does any of this feel like to you? For your reflection, consider what Dewey offers, consider how to interpret it, consider what you think about the role and significance of arts’ mediums, develop even more questions about art mediums, explore all these thoughts while actively trying them out by engaging different types of arts, and help make sense of all of these questions.
Journal Entry Nine (9: March 21) The Analysis of Pure Experience of Order:
Précis: Construct a synopsis on the following selection (write ≈1p.):
Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things, in A&S, pp. 440-454
Expounding: Write on at least one the following prompts (write at least ≈1 page):
(1) “Thus, in every culture, between the use of what one might call the ordering codes and reflections upon order itself, there is the pure experience of order and of its modes of being,” Foucault writes in his preface, and that what follows, in parts one and two, “is an attempt to analyse that experience” (441). (a) Carefully consider and note at least three points about this obscure middle domain of pure experience of order in his Preface. (b) Select and describe at least one element in his analysis of Diego Veláquez’s “Las Meninas.” (c) Fully, richly explain how you understand your selected element in the painting analysis explains, illuminates, or demonstrates that obscure intermediary domain of experience Foucault is seeking to reveal.
(2) Conduct your own thorough analysis like Foucault’s—to demonstrate “the pure experience of order” that has become revealed as other than the theoretical and cultural codes (441)—on any work of art (any medium you like, note name and title), being sure to explicitly note how and what the aesthetic insights show and/or say about the pure experience of order.
(3) Conduct a thorough analysis of any one of the following issues in Foucault’s analysis of “Las Meninas:” (a) the gap, absence, space, or void; (b) the two centres; (c) the spiral versus the X; (d) names and/or the relation of language to painting; (e) mirrors; (f) light and dark; (g) the gaze.
Journal Entry Ten (10: April 4) Futurism as Politico-Artistic Revolution:
Précis: Construct a synopsis on both of the following selections (write ≈1p. each):
F. T. Marinetti’s “Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto,” in A&S, pp. 656-660
Umberto Boccioni’s “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture,” in A&S, pp.661-666
Expound: Select any two of the following prompts (write ≈1p. each):
(1) Marinetti makes the fantastic claim: “To paint a human figure you must not paint it; you must render the whole of its surrounding atmosphere” (657). First, try it!, in your journal, “paint” (draw, sketch, etc.) a human figure by his instruction. Finally, offer a rich personal evaluation of your experience and his claim.
(2) Madmen: Marinetti’s manifesto’s fifth declaration is that “madman” is an honorable title. Reflect back to Kant’s ideas on the artistic genius (§§46-49, pp. 128-133); how do you think the two thinkers might agree or disagree on the madness of artist? What do you think?
(3) Boccioni’s Conclusions: Boccioni concludes his manifesto with nine conclusions for Futurist art. Select any one of these to explain what he means by it, and then richly, personally evaluate the positive and negative features and/or consequences of his charge.
(4) Futurist Free for All: Engage either or both thinkers rigorously on any topic of your choice.
Journal Entry Eleven (11: April 11) Power: Fetish. Effects: Regression:
Précis: Construct a synopsis on the following selection (write ≈1p.):
Theodor W. Adorno’s “On the Fetish-Character in Music …,” in A&S, pp. 539-547.
Expound: Select any two of the following prompts (write ≈1p. each):
(1) Adorno’s idea of the “regression of listening,” wherein everything has become “commodity listening,” wherein music is “manipulated for reasons of marketability” (540), is illustrated through his examples of Arturo Toscanini, the song “Puppchen” (543), Watney’s beer ads (544), the jitterbugs (545), and Ham radio operators (564). While it is a delight to have a philosopher give us examples, I worry that his idea is still so very relevant for us today, but that his examples are dated and therefore may diminish the seeming relevancy. Develop fresh, contemporary examples of this regression, and then reflect on whether/why/how you personally find this regression to be relevant.
(2) Explain, offer your own examples illustrating, and thoroughly evaluate Adorno’s claim that commoditized culture so determines the objects of our fetishes and creates our “values,” that personal taste and feeling are no longer truly ours: “Music, with all the attributes of the ethereal and sublime which are so generously accorded it, serves in America today as an advertisement for commodities which one must acquire in order to be able to hear music” (541-2).
(3) Adorno proposes that “Perhaps a better hour may at some time strike even for the clever fellows: one in which they may demand, instead of prepared material ready to be switched on, the improvisatory displacement of things, as the sort of radical beginning that can only thrive under the protection of the unshaken real world” (547). What do you think? Is this possible? While Adorno suggests Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schönberg, and Anton Webern might be examples of this hope, do you have other, more personally or contemporarily relevant examples?
Journal Entry Twelve (12: April 18) Art as Liberator:
Précis: Construct a synopsis on the following selection (write ≈1p.):
Herbert Marcuse’s The Aesthetic Dimension, in A&S, pp. 548-557.
Expound: Write on any two of the following prompts (write ≈1p. each):
(1) Art & Politics: Marcuse argues that art is needed for positive political transformation: “art expresses a truth, an experience, a necessity which, although not in the domain of radical praxis, are nevertheless essential components of revolution” (548). What social or political issue today most interests you and how do/could you see art playing a role (either beneficially or harmfully)? Given your example, do you agree with Marcuse that art is necessary for socio-political change?
(2) Art Experience: Marcuse argues that “art creates the realm in which the subversion of experience proper to art becomes possible: the world formed by art is recognized as a reality which is suppressed and distorted in the given reality” (550). Explain what this means through the use of a personal example—how have you or how can you imagine the experience when art opens you to a reality that is always present in the everyday, but only in a distorted way. Is there / what is the social benefit of this experience? Would you want to, and how could you, increase this experience in everyday life?
(3) The New: Think back to the manifestos by Kandinsky, Malevitch, and the Futurists Marinetti and Boccioni; despite their diversity, it is fair to argue that they each announce a radical newness. Now, our two critical theorists (Adorno and Marcuse) also promote something radically “new,” and have intense similarities and intense differences to and against what the “new” is. So … elaborate what is their “new”—is it the same for Marcuse and Adorno, or not?—and highlight any similarity or difference to any of the above manifesto writers.
(4) A ‘Marcuse + ______ ’ Free-for-All: What is the most important and personally most interesting connection (be it similarity or difference) between Marcuse and any other thinker(s) we have read? Explain the idea in detail and richly illustrate why and how this has import in and interest for aesthetics/your life/the everyday world.