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The aesthetics fraud
To prepare this talk, I opened the Petit Robert, and I read, at the entry “aesthetic” and the beginning of the following definition: “science of beauty …” I immediately stopped my reading, because only in these three words make clear enough the imposture of Aesthetics, which I believe, for my part, as the false science of a false object.
False object, because what we call “beauty” is absolutely scientifically unsuitable: we speaks of a beautiful poem, a beautiful car, a nice gesture, a beautiful sunset, etc. This does not mean at all that there is no reflection on what is beautiful, but today I reject the consideration of this issue to speak only of the aesthetics as false science. Why a false science? Simply because aesthetics explains nothing just as arts. We immediately returned to the question: what is it to explain? And it is this question that I will start by answering.
You may know that there are two main explanatory perspectives: to explain it always returns to a phenomenon in principle, but principle -be careful here- is to be understood as a logically model and a chronologically contemporary antecedent phenomenon observed, either as an origin, a principle logically similar to the observed phenomenon, but chronologically earlier than him. I will immediately give you an example. Consider a bird perched on a branch. Suddenly, hop! He is gone. Well, the explanation is twofold. First explanation: why this bird has flown away? Because he heard the sound of a gunshot. Why has he heard a gunshot? Because Mr. Smith went out hunting. Why Mr. Smith has he gone hunting? Because he was fed up of his wife’s complains. (And you realize that we may well go back to the original domestic scene -this is the case to say! –the one of Adam and Eve). Second explanation why the bird has flown away? Because he is capable of flight. Why is he capable of flight? Because he has wings. Why does he have wings? Because he must ensure sustenance in the air. Why should he sustain them in the air? Because, given the gravity and density of the air…etc… So, first, the explanation has a chronological priority from the origin explanation which is by the logical antecedent model.
However, I will, first speak about art, the explanation by it origin. In a second time, I will talk about, in the same area of course, the explanation of model. And I will conclude by offering some thoughts. So, first, the explanation by it origin.
What has given this explanation by origin in our faculties of letters? History of art. What that means, except that it only adds obscurity to another? Indeed, the history of art explains nothing, for two reasons. The first is that this discipline has been unable to distinguish art (singular) and styles (plural), as when we say: “Roman style”, “Gothic style,” “Baroque style” etc. The second reason is that without having a proper theory of history that would clarify it, for example, concepts such as interaction, interference, influence, loan…it turns to the chronological catalog. You see that everything can be blamed for the History of Art, because it defines neither art nor history. This must be done! Knowing that it does not define anything, we understand that it is doomed to a totally useless encyclopedia.
Similarly, if you open a “History of Literature,” as large as it is, you will learn nothing about what some call the “literariness” No more than if you open a “History of Religions…” Look, I have a very good friend (she may be here tonight), who wants to read from beginning to end an enormous work of Mircea Eliade entitled History of beliefs and religious ideas. Obviously, she reached an age where these questions start to work on her! But then there! The book covers in two or three thousand pages, the whole world (I mean the whole world), since the “Stone Age” to today. This is an erudite work: this guy knows everything! Absolutely everything! So I told her: “But my poor dear, before you finish reading that thing, you are no longer of this world! Rather read one or two letters of Mother Teresa that have been translated into English”. Nothing to do. She objected me: “I am learning”. And that is what I want! I bet my bottom dollar that she will never know what a belief or an idea is (religious or not, it does not matter here.)
Let us return to our business. What is, however, interesting in the schools of letters, is the training received by the “art” students (that is relatively new). What does the expression, that the schools of letters have finally admitted that “All the same, in art, there is a little technical, a little manipulation, it should not be forgotten,” etc.? Under these conditions, you see that the existence of “art” is a sign of repentance so that clears a few teachers of Art History and Aesthetics of teachers to neglect the art. And then they have to take into account at least a little of “manipulations” to train those in my time we called drawing teachers. It is nevertheless true that training in art remains a poor relation, because as you all know, what matters in France at least, it is the bullshit.
More you spiel, the more you climb of steps on Jacob’s ladder of grades and treatments! While down there (we almost forget!) there are the Artists. They are not very troubles because they do not know cause any. And it is true: the experience taught me. When I was a young adult, Aimé Maeght had some interest in me because I made a few scribbles, and he presented me in his gallery, I met Giacometti, Miro, and Braque (and so on). Well, you can not imagine the intellectual idiocy of these people! Sad, but quite normal: cause of their art is not their thing. They do, and that, believe me, it is a sacred ball game (and then not given to everyone). What I just wanted to tell you is that there are people, like artists, with who do far exceeds the ability to explain what they do, and they do it very well. In other words, this is not because someone is not able to explain what he does (he will be a very bad teacher!) He can not show you how he does it. That is why, in my time, when speaking to an artist, they said, “Master.” It was not at all flattery: he was called “Master” as in corporatism; they spoke of “master craftsman.” Well, what did this master do? He showed in silence to his companions, what he knew to do, and they gradually “learner,” I mean they “took” from the master their practice.
So, the more bullshit, the higher we go up. Artists are down (Oh, if we could do without it!). At the level just above artists, you have the plastics, causing still a little. But as they work, so they tend to talk about what they do, too. A level above, there are the historians of art, who do nothing but talk, and the climax is what I would call the “Transcendental Aesthetic” in Malraux. Here we are in full nirvana is the mystical delirium, that is to say that completely derailed. And that, in general, for philosophers, who are the virtuous of this kind of sport.
And now for the explanation of “literary” by its origin. I turn now to the model of explanation. Here, I would be much shorter. Why? Because no thinker, never modeled, if only a small field of art… Except one! Believe me, I have read a lot about art (too much, indeed!). Well, the only book of Aesthetics that really made a difference to me, is the work of Pierre Schaeffer, a Polytechnic student (not a chance!), who has devoted his entire life trying to model; I mean to propose a scientific theory of music. He died like ten years ago, and his book, the first edition, in Seoul in 1966, entitled Treatise on musical objects. Well, what is needed here is to arrive to talk about a painting, for example, in terms as precise and technical than those used by Schaeffer to talk about music. Everything, absolutely everything, is to do! It should even begin to acquire or build, imagine a totally new vocabulary to talk scientifically not only about music, but also painting, dance, sculpture, etc. We are facing an absolutely colossal task, and may raise generations and generations of researchers! I used the phrase “scientifically speaking” to mean what? Simply what is known in science as the “nature” of theory. What is a theory? To see clearly, neither more nor less. You may know that the word “theory” comes from a Greek word theamai that means “see” and that given in English, the word “theater” (theatron in Greek).
That said, I come to the third part of my presentation, namely the one I will suggest some ways forward. I leave a note on the fundamentally abstract art. Usually, they speak of abstraction in terms of cognition (logos.) But what we must understand is that abstraction is not a matter of logic: it is a matter of technique. There would be no art if we did not have the technical ability of abstraction, and that is why all art is abstract. The “concrete art” does not exist, so there is no more “concrete music” than there is “concrete dance” and “concrete painting”, etc. Plato, Kant and Hegel had indeed found that art is abstract: they bound to the intelligible, and they were absolutely right. But the trouble is that, for them, the intelligible was the logos, that is to say the word, language, or the trial. Automatically, this reduction due to the logos has gone astray because they do not understand that there is in man a technical rationality. So it is not worth to read them!
To explore the abstract nature of art, it is better to study the drawings of children in a kinder garden class. But for that one that is interested in this child’s drawing, it took the venting process of painting done by the Surrealists to say this time of the modern art when art was no longer subservient to the resemblance. This has freed everyone. But what should grasp is why the kid’s drawing is necessarily and immediately, spontaneously, abstract. But as it does not give the ability to ignore the child, refuses to believe that it is rational and verbally and technically. Personally, I think we should consider the child’s drawing to study from life, technique abstraction. But for that it must make its production an object of study and not an object of admiration. We all tend, insofar as they are our little darlings who do this to save the museum. Even in schools, the masterpieces can be visited. It is the “gallery!” And I compare readily the child’s drawing of the cartoon. It said: “The cartoon? Minor art!. Absolutely not! The caricature drawing as a child, means a hell of analysis! Analysis of what? Everything that is there, and there are theories to the issue. But you quite realize the abstraction of caricature. A caricature is almost as abstract as a painting the Mona Lisa, which is perhaps in any Western painting, the height of abstraction!
Of course, we must go much further. When, for example, a mathematician sees an apple what attract his attention? The geometry of the sphere. But it is also what interests Cézanne! I mean that abstraction is exactly the same. The mathematician and the artist do not address the sphere of the same way, of course, but they are also abstract. Another example, take the high fashion. When you see a parade of models, you say: “It is not possible! No women will wear that! This is not done! It means that the eye of big fashion -Christian Lacroix, for example -is a geometric look exactly like the eye of the artist. What he captures in there, this is not the woman he could not care. A Dress Made by an artist in high fashion is not meant to be worn, as well as Cézanne’s apples are not made to be eaten. What interests Christian Lacroix is a geometric body, just as in architecture, we have a geometric habitat. Besides, is it a coincidence that “habit” and “habitat” are two words very related? (There is certainly no coincidence that the Latin word habitus, meaning “way of being,”) In short, the dress in “haute couture” and the Parthenon, is strictly the same thing! With Gagnepain, called “figure” almost geometric sense, these two types of art.
But this art abstraction is evident not only in technical rationality terms but also in rationality verbal terms . Thus, just as Cézanne’s apples are not made to be eaten, and the dress by Christian Lacroix, as it is an art, not made to be worn, so the message report called the poem is not to say something (example: “Honey, can you pass me the bread?.”) The poem is, basically talking without saying anything, since the message is taking he to be, just as in the figure, the path (or, if you want the gesture) is taken him to be. That is what showed in my opinion and definitely a great linguist, I am referring to Roman Jacobson. In his famous tests of general linguistics, published, also in 1966, analyzing the various “functions” of language, Jacobson makes room to participate in the “poetic function” as it defines how the message has “return to the message:” “The sight (Einstellung) of the message as such, the focus on the message for its own account, is what characterizes the “poetic function.” What does this mean? Jacobson takes an illustration the political slogan: I like Ike (Ike is the nickname of Eisenhower, presidential candidate of his country). You see clearly that the “poetic function” of Jacobson defines the method of producing a message that is also a quote to him, the concepts of rhyme and rhythm. In other words, a poem, phonologically (in the guise of sound) or semi logically (under the aspect of meaning) is a refrain and a cover. And this revival is the fact that the poem has to say, poetically, that is to say as it is Art, is nothing other than what it is. The poem gives us its own law. If I tell you:
“In Paris
On a gray horse
In Nevers
On a horse…?
…Green, of course! You have no more choice than Max Jacob had. That is what we call “inspiration.” You see it is quite simple: “In Paris …”
In short, you can say now that a poem is the linguistic structure is itself the object. This makes the importance of prosody (metrical verse, melody, rhythm, etc.) There is no question of talking to eye on the “final without end,” the “useful or pleasant,” the purging of the passions and the devil and all his train. You tell me that it is formal art. Of course it is a technicality, since the language is taking him to be not said! And just for music. I will tell you a true story from the life of Bach. One evening, Bach was playing a sonata in the living room of a German baroness as there are many. When he had finished interpreting his composition: “Ah! Master! It is wonderful!… But what did you wanted to say? Then Bach moved again to the keyboard, and replays his sonata. And when he had finished: “That, dear Baroness, which is what I meant.” It is, nonetheless, pretty darn interesting! This means simply that music, like poetry, works in closed circuit, and thus nothing can be “translated” as they say, nothing can “mirror” itself. His motto is: “My end is my beginning.” That is, if you want the snake biting its tail. Basically, the art factory that manufactures a point, that’s all.
So the figure in terms of technical rationality, is the equivalent of poem, in terms of verbal rationality. But this does not stop there, it also applies in terms of social rationality, as usual, is taking himself to be, its ceremonial, as also, finally, in terms of rational ethics, which behavior, is taking itself to be, its feat. It is here, complete what I told you some time ago about the “set” (as defined Gagnepain, this time) of the cultural dialectic, the tendency of any reinvestment of abstraction in favor, antagonistically or pole (structural) of abstraction, is the natural hub, what is still called “concrete.” Well, we must add a third referred Poem…, figure, ceremony and match achievement (in rhetoric, industry, politics and morality) in a performance endocentric (word coined from the Greek prefix endo-, meaning “in” and used to form the “endogenous” “endocardium,” “endoscopy,” etc.) that is to say, in a performance in which rationality is involved not in the outside world (it would be referred to something exocentric,) but inside (endo-) itself. You see, from the inability to avoid neologisms: new object to, new language. As I said, the snake biting its tail. But this is no way to be empty, because every time the process takes himself to be the poem is not empty: the message is full of itself, the figure is not empty, the book is full of itself, the ceremony is not empty, that use is full of itself, and finally the exploit is not empty, it is full of moral behavior in itself. In all these cases, the important thing is to understand that the aesthetic is, on every level, partly as other targeted, performance, but it characterizes the performance as it is still once endocentric.
And I would add that, of course, this is referred endocentric absolutely incompatible with the other two mentioned that they are exocentric: the poem is a poem in that it refrains (referred endocentric), it did not stop to say something (referred exocentric). It may be technically columns (referred exocentric), then these columns do young women called caryatids (referred endocentric) as the Greeks have done in this monument is located on the Acropolis of Athens and the called the Erechtéïon. Laying the foundation stone of a building can be a ceremony (referred endocentric) and be at the same time, a conspiratorial act done for the monument in question would collapse not (referred exocentric). Finally, you can do, without even suspecting it, the feat of beating the record of France’s one hundred meters (referred endocentric) just to catch your bus!
However, to remain in the kingdom of art, if you give this concept is a scope large enough (figure in the art of dance or figure skating, but also in the gymnastics ground, compulsory figures or figures free, etc.) you will see that this definition of art as the product of self-reference of a dialectical process of technical abstraction (I weigh each of my words), applies to all arts! I say absolutely everyone, from dance to the culinary arts, from architecture, sculpture, caricature, etc. I’m absolutely serious: take the time to think about giving you, yourself, some examples, you will see! It works! And if “it works” is that our hypothetical-deductive method is corroborated by the comings and goings between the observation of concrete and the theoretical hypothesis. Thus our theoretical position receives, not (yet) its clinical audit, but its validation. We have no access to proper scientific truth, however precarious and provisional as it is, but a proposal generally used in an explanatory model that is not built for the needs of a particular cause, but still operating in any similar occasion (if it was not the case, it would change the model, no more, no less).
In these conditions what would it be a true Science of Art? It is about analyzing the technical analysis implicitly made by the artist. In other words, here again what we have to do is to analyze an analysis “in double” in the mathematical sense, somehow. This complicates things! We analyze the analyzer! Do you realize the enormous complexity of the case? You can imagine that we will take centuries and centuries to achieve something!
And that’s not all! To be truly a science, it is necessary an experimental verification of the model that I just outlined.
And the rest is literature!… I mean, the imposture of an imposture that is suitable, before any unmasking of the strongest, if we want to progress.
About the Author
Jean-Luc LAMOTTE, Anthropologist and essayist
Disciple of Jean Gagnepain, he published an Introduction in the Theory of the Mediation in the publishing De Boeck (2001), and contributes, at present, to spread the thought of the Master.
Teacher who has passed aggregation by classical literature, he taught at first the linguistics to the College of the Letters of Beirut (University of Lyon), then professed during ten years in preparatory classes in the entrance examinations of the superior teachers’ training colleges (in Montpelier, then in Versailles).
His career led him, on the other hand, to put itself in the service of the distribution of our language and our culture abroad (Means-0rient, Morocco, the United Kingdom). He also had the honor to collaborate in the works of the service of the publications of the Académie française.
Since 1991, he dedicates itself to his researches in clinical anthropology, led within the framework of the activities of the School of Rennes (University of Haute-Bretagne).
Augustus Once and for All