Let’s start at the beginning of the end
Like all good postmodern stories our story begins to end before it even begins. Concept Art traditionally looks towards philosophy and ‘highbrow’ academic traditions as the source of validation in their ideas. Science was born out of philosophic (or Natural Philosophy) thought and mathematics lie at the heart of scientific understanding. So understandably mathematic and scientific discoveries remain deeply influential in the field of philosophy and all of these fields influence ideas in art. If we take a brief glance at a skewed history of modern science and philosophy we soon find a tangle of issues and principles that put the assertion of concepts and rational thought in a more appropriate light.
The latter half of the 19th century would come to be known as the ‘high water mark’ of conceptual certainty in modern society. Scientists and Classical Physicists had (following the work of numerous great thinkers like Newton, Leibniz and Maxwell) reasonable cause to believe they were on the brink of discovering the elusive ‘Unified Theory of Everything’ but little did they know what lay in store for the sciences in the new century.
Georg Cantors (1845-1918) work on transfinite number and his ‘Continuum Hypothesis’ placed even the formerly grounded world of mathematics into the chaotic pit of subjectivity. Cantor dared to peak at the space between 1 and 2 and found the hierarchy of infinites, madness and death. If the numerical system is infinite does that mean it has no beginning, no end and perhaps most importantly no centre? In an infinite system all points are simultaneously the centre and not the centre of the system so what then is 0 or 1? If there is no beginning or end to numbers then 0-1-2-3 is revealed as the arbitrary invention that it really is. If mathematics is proven to be subjective, abstract invention then the ‘House of Cards’ of conceptual authority tumbles. The solid ground of physics was also shaken at this time by a collection of ideas and discoveries that led to weird new (anti) scientific theories like Quantum Mechanics, parallel dimensions, Werner Heisenberg’s (1901-1976) ‘uncertainty principle’, non-linear time, probability, atomic theory, string theory and so on. It was in the early 1900’s that the ‘Theory of Relativity’ emerged and all things from then on have become relative. Things are to be understood as existing by their relationships to their surroundings. It was also at this point that the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) after publishing his first book ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’ famously abandoned philosophy to become a gardeners assistant. In the arts it was the time of the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ and Picassos Cubism, Greenberg’s Formalism, Modernism and Post-Modernism.[1] Once the strange new world of life at the atomic level began to reveal itself science, philosophy and art were permanently altered. Ideas when taken to their extremes break apart, they sprout multiple heads assume a variety of positions and ultimately descend into the chaos of the absurd. The realm of science has pushed the limits of discovery to its breaking point. In a variety of fields like mathematics, physics and astronomy science has arrived at the startling idea that the nature of the universe is unknowable and the understanding of such a universe require the relinquishing of conceptual empirical certainty.
Our nature, our experience of reality itself has no basis in empirical rational thought. What is the rationale behind love or the equation for beauty or measurable weight of consciousness? If the world of ideas is an abstraction of reality then haven’t we, by inventing abstractions like language, math, philosophy, science and conceptual art, just cut ourselves off from the reality we attempt to describe? Abstract systems of thought begin to define words and ideas that are only relevant to the systems they inhabit. The issue stems from thought and is compounded through expression. These abstractions of reality and thought become not just morally relative but completely and utterly relative.[2] These lines of inquiry create issues that are ironically unsolvable by thought alone.
Ideas pushed to their limit produce their antithesis.[3] Indeed the antithesis in rational thought is to be thought of as the groundwork or context for its counter assertion. From this vantage point we see that not only antithetical positions in art are simultaneously valid they actually need each other to be understood. Nietzsche in his 1886 book ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ posed this question.
"HOW COULD anything originate out of its opposite? For example, truth out of error? or the Will to Truth out of the will to deception? or the generous deed out of selfishness? or the pure sun-bright vision of the wise man out of covetousness?”[4]
Nietzsche understood that antithetical positions were an illusion created by our perspectives; our desire for good and evil is a desire for judgment and control. For our cause (patient reader) the game[5] of conceptual hierarchies played within art today is an attempt to validate works and artists that support the regime of ideas. Artistic institutions, galleries, universities, auction houses and academic art publications promote art that supports their authority. Can we really equate ourselves with high philosophy, game theorists or psychoanalysts? For example if a philosopher is to analyze and critique the form in which their ideas are communicated the philosopher in question would traditionally be critical of the process of writing and of language (think Socrates, semiotics and Derrida). But what is the artist to do when required to critique the form in which their ideas are communicated? What form does art take? Painting, performance art, sound art, land art, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photo media, crochet, film? No matter which step an artist takes in this new world he/she is physically and mentally unable to cover all the shifting conceptual ramifications of his/her work. We manage the great new influx of art and artist by measuring the conceptual preface or framework provided by the artist against the conceptual heritage of genuine intellects. Should we only make room for ‘smart art’ and intelligent people in our artistic community?[6] So long as we hold onto this illusionary field of value we, as a society will continue to produce diminished, stale, repetitive artworks and as a result be a diminished people.
Philosophy itself is an elaborate network of thinkers studying themselves. Thinkers, thinking about thoughts and thinking how their various thoughts on thinking are understood in the minds of others. Philosophy is an intellectual reverberation, an atonal drone emanating from the buzzing skulls of sophists. Conceptual artists seek to adorn their art with the hard work of academics. They declare from their New York loft apartments “Let’s dress ourselves in the clothes of Philosophers, Psychoanalysts, Architects! Linguists!” They attempt to mimic the (intellectually) elite, for the (social) elite collecting the coins that spill from the impossibly rich. We as an audience are caught in a puppet show for puppeteers who live off the breath of academics (not unlike Abramovic and Ulay in their collaborative piece ‘Death self’.1) Art, it seems has gone to bed with philosophy and woken up with a venereal disease.
[1] Post-Modernism is the idea suiciding, falling on the very sword it crafted.
[2] Can we talk about up or down or left or right in this world of ideas? Is it possible to define even a right or a wrong in this phantasm, this realm of spirits and fog?
[3] The people’s revolution produced Stalinism, scientific inquiry produces a faith in science and the serious tone of Abstract Expressionism was the kiln that fired Pop Art.
[4] Nietzsche, Freidrich (1886) Beyond Good and Evil (pg.13)
[5] http://encyclopediadramatica.com/The_game
[6] Does it follow that the smarter the person is the greater the work they produce?
1 http://www.designboom.com/cms/images/andrea06/ma17.jpg
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