Anthony Öhnström, 2021
I
The question of whether or not a social function can be assigned to art has long been of interest to artists and scholars alike. This vast inquiry can, in a somewhat crude manner, be separated into two distinct questions. Firstly, there is the ‘prescriptive question’ which asks if art should to be used for expressing shared truths and experiences, or if it ought to be free of any such responsibility. Secondly, there is the ‘descriptive question’ concerned with the extent to which art possesses the means necessary to have such a role to begin with. The ‘descriptive question’ lies at the heart of Peter Bürger’s book Theory of The Avant Garde, which this text is responding to.
Following in the footsteps of Friedrich Hegel, Bürger describes a progressive decline in the usefulness of art, which he characterises by an inability to arrest meaning and, consequently, an inability to reflect on shared experiences. He argues that this decline has happened as a result of artists continuously neglecting the content of their work in favour of form. Bürger’s central thesis is that avant-garde artists sought to counter this decline by reintegrating art into people’s communal lives. Interestingly, he claims that this attempt was never successful. This is interesting because it frames contemporary avant-garde art (henceforth “post avant-garde art”) as being void of purpose or function. I think that such a conclusion is mistaken. In this text I shall therefore argue that post avant-garde art can be thought of as having a similar function to the movement that inspired it. Furthermore, I shall suggest that by reflecting on the nature of post avant-garde art, we can further develop our notion of what it means for art to be “useful”. In so doing I will draw upon Jenefer Robinson’s paper “Expression and Arousal of Emotion in Music” and, for the sake of brevity, I too will focus my attention specifically on music.
II
Before one can begin to decipher the question of how form, content and use relate to one another, it is first necessary to define the terms themselves. Aesthetician James Shelley defines form as the perceptual properties of art. It is worth noting that, whilst perceptual properties are generally [1] understood as the things people see and hear, it can also apply to emotional responses like feelings of pleasure and displeasure. On the other side of the coin there is the concept of content, which is defined by Bürger himself as the “statement” of a work of art.[2] Take for example Edward Munch’s Scream.[3] Its ability to represent anxiety is its content, whereas its form denotes structural qualities like proportions, lines and shapes. That said, content is not exclusively associated with the communication of philosophical ideas, for it also manifests the cognitive-representational value of art. If one were to imagine a painting depicting a castle, then its content is “it being a castle” while its form is the manner in which being a castle is expressed. By viewing the distinction in this light it is easy to see why art’s ability to express anything is generally defined in terms of content. As we will see, however, a conceptualisation of form as being expressive is not impossible.
III
As for usefulness, Bürger suggests that art has come apart from our praxis of life, by which he means that experiences of art are no longer contained within people’s engagement with the rest of the world. Rather, art is something which today is experienced in an autonomous manner, in what Bürger calls art’s special sphere of experience. This, he continues, makes art functionally non-representational, as it can no longer be used to communicate between people or give a critical cognition of reality (i.e. criticise society).[4] It is in relation to this development that Bürger conceptualises the Avant Garde movement of the 20th century: He suggests that this movement was upheld by a cluster of artists who reacted against content loosing its agency. Instead of being bound together by a specific style, Avant Garde artists – Bürger writes – were loosely grouped together by a shared dominant principle: defamiliarisation. Their work was often associated with experimental concept art, i.e. art created by artists seeking to represent or stimulate ideas,[5] thus emphasising the cognitive aspect of art rather than the immediate sensations that may be produced through form. In Bürger’s view, the movement should be thought of as an attempt to intervene in social reality. He summarises this project as follows:
“The avant-gardiste work neither creates a total impression that would permit an interpretation of its meaning nor can whatever impression may be created be accounted for by recourse to the individual parts, for they are no longer subordinated to a pervasive intent. This refusal to provide meaning is experienced as shock by the recipient. And this is the intention of the avant-gardiste artist, who hopes that such withdrawal of meaning will direct the reader’s attention to the fact that the conduct of one’s life is questionable and that it is necessary to change it. Shock is aimed for as a stimulus to change one’s conduct of life; it is the means to break through aesthetic immanence and to usher in (initiate) a change in the re cipient’s life praxis.”[6]
As mentioned above, Bürger maintains that the Avant Garde movement failed in reintegrating art into our praxis of life. This raises the question of whether or not art will forever be plagued by a fundamental ineffectiveness. I will now begin to reject this notion. In so doing I will make use of a spatial metaphor describing the “three-dimensional space” in which a work of art is experienced. This I will call its artistic space.
IV
The purpose of this metaphor is to examine how the conditions constituting experiences of art (referred to as “dimensions”), changes art’s ability to influence people in different ways (referred to as “volume”). The “dimensions” of an artistic space are the following: (i) the number of people taking part in a work of art’s reception, (ii) the function of the artwork, and (iii) the time-interval during which the artwork is experienced. The volume of such an artistic space determines its ability to exist as integrated into the practical struggles of everyday existence. This, broadly speaking, is how Bürger defines usefulness in relation to art. We can compare the usefulness of art from the middle ages with contemporary art by utilising this metaphor: Art of the middle ages involved (i) multiple people experiencing it together with one another by virtue of it (ii) having a sacral purpose, and thus it was (iii) experienced by people in a continual manner as part of their everyday life. Consequently (volume), such “sacral art” had a social role which was integrated into the collective struggles of the members of a community. In comparison to this, art is now experienced in a much more local and individual manner. For (i), the reception of contemporary art is made up by individual acts, because (ii) its function is to provide solitary aesthetic experiences, meaning (iii) its presence in our shared consciousness is only fleeting. As a result (volume), the influence of contemporary art in our practical lives is severely limited.
Now, whilst I too find art being attached to practical life contexts a sufficient condition in labelling it “useful”, I do not believe it to be a necessary one. Moreover, I reject the idea that art loses its ability to communicate universal experiences as a result of its content no longer existing within our praxis of life. Instead, I believe that universality can be thought of as a property of form as well, and that this function is sufficient in calling art useful to some degree. Because, whilst art may indeed be incapable of effectively commenting on shared external experiences, it can arouse internal emotions that are universally shared among different people. For it is certainly the case that all people experience the same emotions of sadness, nobility, aggressiveness, tenderness, etc. Of course, one could respond to this premise by stating that art, in arousing emotions, does not communicate something universal to us in the same way that content is able to do, the reason being that emotions are not found within the artworks themselves. However, turning now to Robinson’s text, we will see that form is indeed itself capable of expressing emotions to us and can thus be said to communicate universal experiences.
V
In her text, Robinson examines the relationship between music arousing emotions and music expressing those same emotions. In her theory, content is reduced to a kind of “guide”, giving the mind some idea of what complex emotions an artist is trying to evoke (such as angry despair, unrequited passion, etc). Consequently, it is not the content of a song that actually expresses emotions, but rather its large-scale formal structures.[7] She writes:
“Just as the formal structure of a piece of music can be understood in terms of the arousal of such feelings as uncertainty, uneasiness, relaxation, tension, relief, etc., so too can we understand the expressiveness of that piece of music in terms of the arousal of those and similar feeling. […] Emotional expressiveness in music frequently corresponds to or mirrors its formal structure”.[8]
Her theory stands out among representational theories of art, most of which argue that cognitive aspects grounded in content determine the expressiveness of all art. Unlike Peter Kivy, for example, who argues that music evokes emotions in so far as it has qualities that resemble something we already find emotional (meaning that the emotional qualities are projected through perception rather than discovered by feeling) , Robinson suggests that sounds express emotions directly onto us. As a result of Robinson’s emphasis on emotions being caused by form rather than content, art is able to express these universal experiences without its content having to be submerged in our praxis of life.[9] This view is therefore compatible with content’s subservient role in contemporary art.
VI
Returning now to my previous metaphor: I want to suggest that, by making the dimensions of an artistic space smaller, its “volume is concentrated”, not only metaphorically but also practically. What I mean is this: An artwork, being consumed individually in its special sphere of experience, is in a position to affect people emotionally in ways it cannot do when it has to adhere to determined social functions. The ways in which people engage with art today allows for experiences that – seeing as they are not guided by some overarching function or principle – speak only to the situations that perceiving subjects are in. This, in turn, allows for people to “invest” their personal dispositions in their experiences of art. Art’s ability to influence individual people is in this way concentrated specifically on them. For example, if a person listening to a sad song is hurting because of a breakup, then that person will find their emotional state intertwined with the music itself. This kind of intimate relationship to art is not possible when the dimensions of the work’s artistic space are broad and interpersonal. Therefore, it is inconceivable that sacral art, whose content is completely determined by its social function, could ever engage people in such highly personally charged, emotional ways.
Now, I think that this concept of artistic space – which describes the opposing forces between that which allows art to be submerged in people’s communal lives (through content) and that which enables art to directly affect people’s emotional lives (through form) – can help us understand post avant-garde art. On the subject of such art, Bürger writes the following: “[A]rt has long since entered a post avant-gardiste phase. We characterize that phase by saying that it revived the category of work and that the procedures invented by the avant-garde with anti artistic intent are being used for artistic ends.” His proposition can be separated into two premises: First, that post avant-garde artists seek to make their work distinct from non-artistic objects (in comparison to much Avant Garde art which often blurred the line between a work of art and a mere object).[10] Second, post avant-garde artists create their work with the intent of providing aesthetic experiences in the Kantian sense, which is characterised by the experience of pleasure through form. From this it can be deduced that post avant-garde artists seek to weaponise form – very much unlike artists belonging to the original avant garde movement who had little interest in it.[11] I do not mean to say that they try to discover new ways of constructing form. Instead, I want to suggest that they seek to examine how far form can be taken with regards to creating art that, through disagreeable or foreign feelings, still generate’s something people find valuable. Thus, post avant-garde art is dependent on art in general existing within these smaller artistic spaces.
How can all this be used in understanding post avant-garde art? To take an example, there is the “music” of Masami Akita (a.k.a Merzbow), whose abrasive use of sound is almost painful to listen to. Having no content, his work cannot be thought of as having any determined social function. As a result, it could not have been created before art was decidedly moved into its special sphere of experience. Consequently, the reason for experiencing Akita’s art must be discovered by each and every person in a wholly individual manner. Yet – for reasons I soon will make clear – his music can still, through form-induced-shock, reflect on universal (internal) experiences – most notably on the sadomasochistic relationship people may have to pleasure. Just as with the original Avant Garde movement, then, shock and defamiliarisation is fundamental to post avant-garde art. As we will see, however, there are clear differences in how this plays out.
In showing these differences, I want to draw attention to one of the most distinguished examples of avant-garde “music” there is, that is to say John Cage’s 4´33. 4´33 is a composition which instructs performers not to play their instruments during the duration of the piece. Hence, 4´33 consists only of the sounds of the environment. However, although 4´33 is a near silent work, it still has content by virtue of it making a statement through that silence: That we should strive towards liberating ourselves from the ways in which we project restricting relationships and structures onto sound – and that we can come to elevate sounds that lack structure, meaning or formal qualities and thus appreciate them in ways generally reserved for music. However, whilst the work is indeed legitimately profound, 4´33 was initially met with much in the way of blind rage.[12][13] People were not only confused by it; they were shocked ways that forced them to reevaluate themselves in ways in line with Bürger’s account of avant-garde art.
Akita’s music, too, enrages people. However, in contrast to 4´33, people are shocked by the explosiveness of its sound rather than the ideas it represents. This explosiveness forces participating subjects to face their relationship to sound and pleasure. Can these abrasive sounds still arouse feelings of pleasure? With regards to the original avant-garde movement, then, artists sought to shock people by manifesting concepts in their art that were foreign to the spectators, challenging them on a cognitive level. post avant-garde art, on the other hand, creates shock-value through tension between that which is pleasurable and that which is oppressive in form. We can therefore see that – even though post avant-garde music is in many ways different from the work of Dada, John Cage, etc. – it is cut from the same cloth and adheres to the same end: To question the very people experiencing it.
Of course, there are other post avant-garde artists who still make use of content but give it a subservient role. For example, on the climax of her song “MAY FAILURE BE YOUR NOOSE”, the lyrics of musician Kirstin Hayter (a.k.a Lingua Ignota), repeatedly recite the same line: “Everything burns down around me, everything burns down”. The message is clear: Hayter is referencing the state of mental turmoil that she had previously gone through. Now, in line with Robinson’s theory, these words only serve as a loose guide regarding her wish to communicate crushing emotional distress to the listener. The emotions are, to a much greater extent, communicated by the form of the song – its harrowing distorted noise which is manically folding in on itself. Similarly, much of Hayter’s music contains themes of social issues like domestic violence. These themes are not only complemented by the songs sound or form, but are rather subordinate to them. The emotions induced by the form are so intense as to shock listeners into becoming personally affected by the subtext of the music. The lyrics thus provides a direction for the emotions, but the the overall impression left upon the subject owes its force and vivacity to the sound of the music. Hence, whilst the effectiveness of music to act as models of political action and social understanding is indeed limited today, post avant-garde music tells us that art can still be used to transfer feelings of experiences onto others. I believe that this example, together with the discussion on Akita’s work, has shown that post avant-garde art can be said to mediate between people, even as it is experienced in a special sphere of experience.
Conclusion
I have defended two claims in this text. The first one is that post avant-garde art, by utilising form, is able to communicate universally experienced emotions. The second and concurrent claim is that such art, similarly to the avant-garde movement of the 20th century, is able to shock people into engaging with their own lives. I conclude from this that post avant-garde art is not void of usefulness in the way that Bürger’s theory implies it must be. Moreover, by utilising the concept of artistic space I have argued that Bürger’s concept of usefulness is too narrow, as it is limited to the critiquing the social structures in which individuals operate, and consequently neglects the usefulness affiliated with emotion, passion and empathy.
[1] Shelley, James. The Default Theory of Aesthetic Value.
[2] Immanuel, Kant. Critique of Judgement.
[3] Bürger, Peter. Theory of the Avant Garde, p19
[4] Ibid, p23
[5] Ibid, p18
[6] Ibid, p80
[7] Robinson, Jenefer. The Expression and Arousal of Emotion in Music, pp19-20
[8] Ibid, p19
[9] Kivy, Peter. Emotions in Music
[10] Bürger, Peter, Theory of the Avant Garde, p57
[11] Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgement.
[12] Herwitz,Daniel A. The Security of the Obvious: On John Cage’s Musical Radicalism.
[13] Dodd, Julian. “What 4’33 ”Is”. Australasian Journal of Philosophy
differensmagazine.com 