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roachboy · 01-25-2006, 07:17 AM

how can you talk coherently about intent?
particularly given that traditional aesthetic theory defines the artwork as complete in itself, something encountered already in place, severed from the processes that went into fabrication, seperate from the artist----who is reduced to a floating proper name the "meaning" of which is filled in via the various classifying activities of critics/art historians etc etc. these "meanings" are inevitably a function of other classifications: the prevailing ideology of artistic production, the tradition or school into which the piece or artist has been placed---this (scarcely outlined) relation to artworks is the source of the illusion that there is something different in kind about an artwork that distinguishes it from other types of fabricated objects---once this ideology collapsed (and it has in various quarters, tho perhaps not amongst the public at large--but then again, who knows what this abstraction might think? it is legion) you began to see arguments from/about intent.

how do you know intent?
have you tried to approach making things in this way: declaring TODAY I SHALL MAKE ART and not laughing afterward?
even if you were to ask the person who fabricated an object, would you anticipate a full or even useful account of intent?
wouldnt the responses vary wildly medium to medium. artist to artist--to the point where the category itself would become something that could be interesting in aiding interpretation of the meanings ascribed to the work itself, but impossible to rely upon to distinguish art from other types of fabricated objects?

i ahve been fascinated by the bauhaus for a long time--it'd be a good thing if a new bauhaus were conjured into existence i think--it'd be a great place to be, to teach at,etc.---anyway one of the central aspects of the bauhaus approach was more or less the following: when you are engaged in making things, you focus mostly on craft. why? because you can.. sometimes, you will find that craft relation opens onto something beyond itself. the results of this could be art.

at a lesser, personal level: when i practice i focus on technique, but technique is not an end--it is just something i can focus on. i find it endlessly interesting, working out various ways to carve up mentally the enormous abstract space that is a piano keyboard, to work on adjusting my vision and ways of thinking to accomodate higher levels of complexity/simultaneous voices, etc. but the whole relation is predicated on another, which is hopelessly vague (openness, stillness), is linked to a kind of meditative or ritual space. the space that presents the possibility of going beyond this craft relation (practice) into something else is performance--but the curious thing is that when i hear the recording back of a performance, it is the first timei have much in the wya of conscious understanding of what happened in performance, and the interaction of levels of engagement is far too complex for me to sort out,so i do not try. this also creates the problem of not being able to really judge my own work. but i suspect that many folk share this limitation.

the point is that intent is so murky as to be almost arbitrary.

i also do not see why folk would want to link art directly to emotion either: this seems to radically limit what a piece can do. such an emphasis would wipe out most of the space in which conceptual art works, for example: you would not be able ot raise questions about the nature of art or the character and implications of political ideology or make statements about the problematic status of this fiction folk refer to as "reality" if all that art could do was cycle through emotions.
such a position also seems to downplay the role of sublimation--that is the indirect expression of---say--emotional contents.
the curious thing is that this notion of art as a medium for the expression of emotion runs directly counter to what many artists have said about the space from whcih they work: many are very still inwardly when they work--detached, analytic---focussed, engaged in a practical relation with the medium that does not conform to the criteria for interacting with the world that traditional epistemology has come to validate (i was reading a description by ad reinhardt last night of the state from which he painted that triggered this response--there are many many others who have talked about process in a parallel way)....for many, particularly modernists and after) art is as much a philosophical undertaking (i.e. paul klee, kandinsky, john cage, etc etc) as it is a space to work through emotional matters.

at best, you could say that, for many people who engage with a medium in a creative way, the expression of emotion is important.

01-25-2006, 07:17 AM	#37 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	how can you talk coherently about intent? particularly given that traditional aesthetic theory defines the artwork as complete in itself, something encountered already in place, severed from the processes that went into fabrication, seperate from the artist----who is reduced to a floating proper name the "meaning" of which is filled in via the various classifying activities of critics/art historians etc etc. these "meanings" are inevitably a function of other classifications: the prevailing ideology of artistic production, the tradition or school into which the piece or artist has been placed---this (scarcely outlined) relation to artworks is the source of the illusion that there is something different in kind about an artwork that distinguishes it from other types of fabricated objects---once this ideology collapsed (and it has in various quarters, tho perhaps not amongst the public at large--but then again, who knows what this abstraction might think? it is legion) you began to see arguments from/about intent. how do you know intent? have you tried to approach making things in this way: declaring TODAY I SHALL MAKE ART and not laughing afterward? even if you were to ask the person who fabricated an object, would you anticipate a full or even useful account of intent? wouldnt the responses vary wildly medium to medium. artist to artist--to the point where the category itself would become something that could be interesting in aiding interpretation of the meanings ascribed to the work itself, but impossible to rely upon to distinguish art from other types of fabricated objects? i ahve been fascinated by the bauhaus for a long time--it'd be a good thing if a new bauhaus were conjured into existence i think--it'd be a great place to be, to teach at,etc.---anyway one of the central aspects of the bauhaus approach was more or less the following: when you are engaged in making things, you focus mostly on craft. why? because you can.. sometimes, you will find that craft relation opens onto something beyond itself. the results of this could be art. at a lesser, personal level: when i practice i focus on technique, but technique is not an end--it is just something i can focus on. i find it endlessly interesting, working out various ways to carve up mentally the enormous abstract space that is a piano keyboard, to work on adjusting my vision and ways of thinking to accomodate higher levels of complexity/simultaneous voices, etc. but the whole relation is predicated on another, which is hopelessly vague (openness, stillness), is linked to a kind of meditative or ritual space. the space that presents the possibility of going beyond this craft relation (practice) into something else is performance--but the curious thing is that when i hear the recording back of a performance, it is the first timei have much in the wya of conscious understanding of what happened in performance, and the interaction of levels of engagement is far too complex for me to sort out,so i do not try. this also creates the problem of not being able to really judge my own work. but i suspect that many folk share this limitation. the point is that intent is so murky as to be almost arbitrary. i also do not see why folk would want to link art directly to emotion either: this seems to radically limit what a piece can do. such an emphasis would wipe out most of the space in which conceptual art works, for example: you would not be able ot raise questions about the nature of art or the character and implications of political ideology or make statements about the problematic status of this fiction folk refer to as "reality" if all that art could do was cycle through emotions. such a position also seems to downplay the role of sublimation--that is the indirect expression of---say--emotional contents. the curious thing is that this notion of art as a medium for the expression of emotion runs directly counter to what many artists have said about the space from whcih they work: many are very still inwardly when they work--detached, analytic---focussed, engaged in a practical relation with the medium that does not conform to the criteria for interacting with the world that traditional epistemology has come to validate (i was reading a description by ad reinhardt last night of the state from which he painted that triggered this response--there are many many others who have talked about process in a parallel way)....for many, particularly modernists and after) art is as much a philosophical undertaking (i.e. paul klee, kandinsky, john cage, etc etc) as it is a space to work through emotional matters. at best, you could say that, for many people who engage with a medium in a creative way, the expression of emotion is important. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite