Dada dump (and a re-boot)

Looking back at this blog over the last few weeks, it's apparent to me that I haven't actually written anything in awhile. But what I had intended to do (and didn't) was post a few more profiles of notable artists associated with Dada, then contrast their collectivist, random, and very expressive approach to that of Marcel Duchamp's "non-retinal" conceptualist approach, all as a means of differentiating "concept" and "expression" within a broader umbrella of aesthetic experience not limited to the visible qualities of an art work.

Unfortunately, I left town for nine days and kind of lost track of what I was thinking about on this topic. Or, for that matter, how I was going to relate it to poetry.

If you're one of those rare people who find this topic interesting, then you might see where I get hung up: "aesthetics" presumably precludes "concept" as an integral aspect of aesthetic experience - at least according to Kant and like-minded others. And, from a different angle, there are probably those who work in conceptualist modes that would scoff at any notion of aesthetics when considering the significance of conceptual art.

All of which I find absurd. Why? Because my own idea of aesthetics involves the perceivable structure of patterns - not confined to meaning, beauty, or any of the human senses - that can be appreciated as art. And I think there is a huge amount of overlap, so an opposition between aesthetics and conceptualism is, quite frankly, a false dichotomy.

Or, as Henry James asserted in "The Art of Fiction" (concerning the validity of experimentation by novelists): “The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.” To which I say (concerning the validity of artistic experimentation in general), Amen.

Beyond all this, I'd also like to argue that the "anti-art" of Dada might actually be considered "anti" only in the sense that it purposefully violates all preexisting notions of what art was supposed to be in its own particular era, i.e. that "art" was bound to formal appearance and craft (as fashioned by the artistic genius of notable individuals) even when the formal structures of these art works were highly innovative (as in the case of Impressionism, for example).

In other words, while Dada eschewed the conventions of craft, they still produced art which could be appreciated from an aesthetic point of view, i.e. "what meets the eye" is still the object of art. In Duchamp's case, however, he confounded the eye and directly engaged a world of human concepts and social dynamics that is only referred to by the art object. Which is to say, the "structure" of his art exists in the non-material (and very complicated) realm of human social experience as it is metonymically referenced by the object of art.

All of this, of course, constitutes a large mouthful of assertions that I don't currently know how to support. I also don't know if anybody else finds the subject half as interesting as I do. Still, it's a significant topic that is worth exploring, especially when considering the hegemonic realities of contemporary art and poetry. Or the fact that "conceptual" and "aesthetic" approaches don't appear to get along very well, at least not as well as they should.

In the process of studying this issue, I came across an essay by Marjorie Perloff that is far more interesting and relevant than anything I could personally write concerning the difference between Duchamp and the Dadas. If the topic interests you, I highly encourage you to click on this link and give it a ponder.

On a related note, Michael Solender and Lynn Alexander recently invited me to become a regular contributer to Full of Crow's On the Wing. The reason this is a related matter is that for my first essay there I want to explore conceptual art - focusing on Duchamp - as a type of "aesthetic" that -- while being neither visual nor representational -- still creates "beautiful" structures through a reflexive form of metonymy in which "what meets the eye" is considerably less important than what meets the interrelational core of a radically expanded concept of human subjectivity and social experience.

The challenge of course, is how to create a reputable argument for the appreciation of conceptual art as an aesthetic experience without making an intellectual fool of myself in the process. I'll post a link if and when it gets published.

In the meantime, I want to "re-boot" this blog and begin examining contemporary poetry as it is presently being written and published on the internet. Having recently posted the press release from VIDA concerning gender bias in established lit journals, I'll probably turn my attention toward writers who not only happen to be women but who also happen to be terrific poets.

Specifically, I'm thinking of writers like Kim Addonizio, Arlene Ang, Venus Khoury-Ghata, or Denise Duhamel. But if anyone wants to offer any other suggestions, I'm all ears - post it in the comment section and I'll take a serious look at the work of any poet you put forward. And, while you're thinking about that, why don't you take a look at a few varied works of creative brilliance and humor from Kimberly Kaye: Banjoetry

[Sometimes I hate it when people are waaay more creative than me ...]

An (untitled) divide

So far in my cursory study, I've probably given disproportionate weight to the social production of artistic ideals while ignoring the legitimacy of a well-formed sense of aesthetics. However, the key word here is ideals, and by this I mean the differing criteria by which opposing schools of thought divide on the nature and accomplishment of art, both historically and in the current era.

What I’m struggling to express revolves around the implications of Dada's “anti-art” and the supposedly universal judgement of aesthetic value explored by Immanuel Kant and exemplified by traditional canons of art and literature. In my last post on this subject, I counterposed Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy with Marx’ and Engels’ The German Ideology in a brief attempt to examine class privilege as it relates to the evolution of Western aesthetic and intellectual ideals. However, I think I need to balance this approach by engaging Kant a little further. Still, the different ways of thinking about art intrigue me.

I don’t have a problem with canons per se or the work they celebrate, but I do have a fascination (and a problem) with the ways in which traditional aesthetics are sometimes invoked to challenge the legitimacy of innovative practices derived from a non-aesthetic point of view. What fascinates me is the divide between opposing definitions of “art” and the limitations that emerge when we discuss (and “perceive”) the quality of work that develops from different sets of creative criteria. And by “creative criteria” I mean the structural difference between the logics of conceptual and aesthetic forms of visual art and poetry.

Returning to Kant’s analysis, the term “aesthetic” refers specifically to a non-conceptual, subjective perception of “the beautiful” and “the sublime” that is asserted not as a particular preference but as a universal quality to which everyone ought to agree – even if they don’t. Frequently they do, so from this perspective if art is considered only as an aesthetic endeavor (a common assumption) then work which ignores, violates, or challenges aesthetic criteria cannot be regarded as meeting formal standards of artistic (i.e. aesthetic) merit. Hence, the application of  terms like “anti-art” or “anti-aesthetics” to artworks which challenge or ignore traditional standards.

But what interests me specifically (as a poet) is the way in which influential institutions of visual art have embraced a broader definition of art that celebrates wildly innovative practices of conceptual complexity, while influential institutions of poetry seem to prefer an aesthetics reliant on clearly-stated verbal imagery that evokes an apolitical, emotional response from its reader. For instance, if you note the staggering difference between what is displayed in a typical museum of contemporary art and what is generally published in an issue of Poetry (or any other prestigious journal) then you might agree: institutions of contemporary art resist what is "merely" aesthetic, while institutions of contemporary poetry resist a poetics that foregrounds conceptual structure while ignoring aesthetic demands.

For me, this difference between visual art and poetry is puzzling.

I like a "disinterested" criteria in which restrictions are viewed with suspicion, and innovation is judged by standards that extend beyond aesthetic expectations. Of course, if I were a talented painter of beautiful landscapes, I might deplore the current turn of events in the world of visual art. Which leads me, finally, to a wonderful movie I saw the other night, referred to in the image at the top of this post.

(Untitled) tells a story about a struggling composer of atonal music, his brother (a commercially successful painter who can't land a gallery to exhibit his work), and the owner of a gallery that sells the brother's paintings from "the back room" while exhibiting cutting-edge, conceptual art in her featured exhibits. Circulating amidst this milieu are corporate buyers, private investors, gallery owners, and a variety of artists who exhibit a wide range of pretensions, dysfunctions, hopes, dreams, frustrations, and cravings for recognition that add a genuine sense of life and humor to a movie I enjoyed from beginning to end.

I found this at my local video store and was pleasantly surprised at the very effective way it hits on the nature of my "aesthetic/conceptual divide" in a truly wonderful and human way. It even weaves intelligent and nuanced examples of disinterested judgement throughout its dialogue, juxtaposing these against the different types of human self-interest that make the social dynamics of the contemporary art world so … well …. interesting. And, not least amongst all this, the filmmaker does a fabulous job of subtly inferring the largely unconscious (and thoroughly unrealized) inspiration that drives the musician/composer at the center of this story.

I highly recommend this movie, especially if you are that rare (and probably fictional) person who actually read all the way to the end of this blog post. As for the remainder of my aesthetic exploration – and a critical consideration of Dada – I'll get to that later.

For another perspective on issues of the contemporary arts, check out this short opinion piece from the Huffington Post: What Is Wrong With the Arts?

I think, therefore I am confused

I spent the better part of yesterday alternating between Kant's Critique of Judgement and several essays (by current writers) that explore, among other things, the aesthetics of anti-aesthetics. In fact, what occupied much of my time was an essay by that name: The Aesthetics of Anti-Aesthetics, written by David Myers of Loyola University.

Here's an extended quote:

... as a recursive function, this anti-principal is self-similar and must exist both inside and in opposition to the boundaries of its own determination. That is, the anti-function may operate with or without any formal argument other than itself.

These two basic characteristics – self-similarity and formal independence – make the anti principle paradoxical, and, for good or ill, incapable of conventional normative evaluation. Indeed, when looked at from within some normative context (i. e., from within some pre-existing structure yet to be ravaged), the anti appears little more than dysfunctional: random, chaotic, and incorrigible.

Yet so does play appear.

Hmmm. I like the idea of play. This morning my wife came home from an exasperating meeting and said, "I think, therefore I don't know." I immediately seized on her statement and replied, "I think, therefore I am confused." We both laughed, each in our own pertinent (frustrated) manner. Or maybe we laughed not out of frustration but because we felt like laughing, particularly over something that was playfully destructive.

And the moral of the story is ...

... I don't know anymore. Now that Kant has helped me identify the phenomena of human judgement as it operates in and between the two separate realms of "understanding" (nature) and "reason" (freedom), I neither understand judgement nor use it in a reasonable manner. For instance, this blog post: is there any point at all?

Probably not. But here's a final quote to chew on, from Marcel Duchamp:

This Neo-Dada, which they call New Realism, Pop Art, Assemblage, etc., is an easy way out, and lives on what Dada did. When I discovered the ready-mades I sought to discourage aesthetics. In Neo-Dada they have taken my readymades and found aesthetic beauty in them, I threw the bottle-rack and the urinal into their faces as a challenge and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty.

Understanding why Duchamp sought to discourage aesthetics, and why he presumably thought artists like Andy Warhol or Yves Klein had missed the point, doesn't really help me at this stage. Not that it’s difficult to understand – especially within the context of visual arts, the artworld, and a capitalist economy that distorts and subsumes existing notions of value – but I seem to have lost my way in this study of aesthetics. In fact, I don’t even know why I went down this path.

Incidentally, Kant's Critique of Judgement is a real page turner. [I can't wait to find out how it turns out.]