Aesthetics and conceptual art

The following is an edited extract from a dialogue I took part in which originally appeared on http://www.beardscratchers.com/ (currently undergoing reconstruction - I'll put a direct link here when it becomes available), on the general topic of aesthetics. My interlocutor, in bold type, was a student of art history.

More than any other area of philosophy, in my opinion, philosophical aesthetics needs to be linked directly to aesthetic experiences, so that we don't remain wholly on the level of theory. Examples are good; or even better, let's start with direct 'criticism' (in the broadest sense - slapping a few labels on your reaction to a piece of art first of all), and then try and tease out more general implications. Unlike mathematics, where one's reaction to the shape of a specific triangle has to be suppressed in order to recognise the abstract properties it shares with other triangles, aesthetics is an area of theory which acknowledges its own basis in particular, sensuous experiences. Longinus' or Burke's discussions of the sublime are very good at exemplifying (reading Burke is a whole aesthetic experience in itself: meditating on which parts of a woman's body he finds most aesthetically pleasing, he calls attention to the region "about the neck and breasts; the smoothness; the softness; the easy and insensible swell; the variety of the surface, which is never for the smallest space the same; the deceitful maze, through which the unsteady eye slides giddily, without knowing where to fix or whither it is carried." Mmmm...sorry, got carried away there!)

Burke however, like Kant, was more concerned with aesthetic experience in general - our reactions to landscapes, people, animals or everyday objects. The question which has come to the fore of discussion since those two were writing back in the eighteenth century is, what links our aesthetic experience in general with the category of 'art'? I think it is a particular delineation of the contents of our experience, a certain 'marking off' in space and time - one which is emphasised in traditional art by the frame of a painting. By using a device like this, the painting is almost asking us to direct our attention in a certain way, to focus on it, so that everything outside the frame - both in the outside world of the gallery and in our just-passed thoughts and sensations of that hour or that day - is put, for the time being, out of focus, relative to the things within the frame. Which is not to say that there can't be a relationship between inside and outside - that the painting can't engage with feelings or beliefs that we had long before stepping in front of it, or that it must only be appreciated 'in itself' - but this relationship must be of a certain kind. It can be comparative, symbolic or metaphorical, for instance: allegories do this quite bluntly, but something 'realistic' like a Vermeer also creates its own little world, in which certain people or objects, or even something as insubstantial as the light entering a room, incite one's memory or sympathy, relate subtly to one's 'external' thoughts.

What I think it should not be - this would destroy the 'focus' I mentioned earlier - is a casual, everyday or 'environmental' relation (I'm grasping around for the right word here), such as exists among the other things one might find in an art gallery: when you go in the door, your attention scans over the walls, the labels, the skylight, the security guard etc, and you think, 'yep, typical art gallery' - you recognize the scene and nothing in it holds your focus. But if you do that with the paintings as well - and let's be honest, it's often hard not to much of the time, unless we happen to be real connoisseurs - then we're missing the aesthetic experience they are trying to provoke; this is 'gallery drift', where you walk past a wall of paintings with a glazed expression, glance at their labels for five seconds, look up, think 'oh yeah, another one of those...maybe the next one's more interesting...', and move on. Big 'blockbuster' exhibitions of famous artists often encourage this tendency.

In my opinion - I'm sure some of you artistic people out there will disagree, and please do! - a lot of modern, 'conceptual' art can do the same: partly because it challenges the traditional idea of 'framing' (the object, or by implication, one's attentive experience of it) by explicitly calling up our 'environmental' idea of 'what belongs' in an art gallery, or what should be in or out of focus, and trying to disrupt it. This is a great tactic for capturing one's attention straight off - 'a urinal in an art gallery?! wow - crazy! that'll shock the bourgeois!' (Duchamps) or 'hey, there's nothing in this gallery...wait a minute, they just turned the lights off...and they've gone back on again: this isn't just part of the gallery, this is the artwork. Now that's clever.' (Martin Creed). But once the point is realised, does it actually encourage the separate, sustained focus one needs to have an aesthetic experience? It challenges 'gallery drift', it makes one stop in one's tracks for a moment - but this kind of art also relies on our characteristic inattentive mode to achieve its instantaneous effect; what it doesn't do is help us out of it, because all too often there isn't the depth to develop our focus. You couldn't really say that Sarah Lucas or Tracey Emin create a 'world' with their art, one that draws you in in the way that Vermeer does - rather, they rely on the everyday 'world' of the gallery. (I don't want to exclude all modern art and sound horribly conservative, so I'll add that some modern installations can create their own world out of the gallery space - Joseph Beuys and Rachel Whiteread have done it for me.) So, in that sense, when people pose the question a propos of Lucas or Emin, 'but is it really art?', they do have a point; such art may have value of a kind, but it isn't a kind that links our experience of it with other cases of 'aesthetic' sensation, something that is not only pleasurable, but 'marks itself out' from the rest of our experience, instead of blurring together (like too many similar boozy nights on the town!).

We no longer care about what art is, but what art can do and mean for people. Dada, conceptualism and Fluxus broke the mold of what art had to be, and I'm sorry if you lament that, but wake up and smell the coffee! Things have changed! A great deal of art these days is certainly not 'pleasureable' and may not 'mark itself out' from its environment, but that is no longer the ideal for many artists. I find it exhilarating that artists today are seeing themselves as political and social commentators rather than living room decorators, and I think it is this politically and socially conscious strain of art that we should nurture. We would be missing something if we abandoned the current practice of contextualizing contemporary art exhibitions with art historical ones, but I would hate to favor traditional painting and sculpture over the exciting things happening today.

What is important about much contemporary art is that it does blur boundaries. It colors the way we interact with our environment and other people. Artists like Rirkrit Tiravanija and Lee Mingwei personally interact with visitors in and outside of the gallery, the former cooking and eating meals with them, the latter asking them to give him a tour of locations of personal importance. Acts such as these require a sustained focus and surely result in later reflection on the part of the viewer/participant. Before you retort by saying that such artists cannot interact with every visitor, let me add that the resulting documentation of such events, exhibited in the gallery space, also requires sustained attention from viewers. Furthermore, there is still opportunity for a high level of craftsmanship if your aesthetics must require it. Artist Sarah Sze installs sculptural landscapes in uncommon places with uncommon materials. Last summer at Minneapolis's Walker Art Center, she created aquatic environments out of surgical supplies that were displayed under glass tiles in the museum's conservatory. These landscapes were wondrously complex and delicate.

In response to your Martin Creed reference, I would like to cite an artist who can actually pull off conceptual pieces that hold viewers' attention: Robert Gober. He created one of the most arresting conceptual pieces I have ever seen, which I saw installed at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston a few years ago. He installed a fake window high up on the wall of a small room. Outside the window, which was barred to look like a jail window, was a bright blue sky. As soon as I walked into the darkened space, I felt claustrophic, sad and hopeful all at once. The work does not occupy a discrete space in the gallery but had the kind of magnetic impact that a painting can have. Yet Gober's window goes further than any painting can because it is formally beautiful but also affects the space around it, transforming it into a place that feels radically different from the gallery in which it places itself.

It is difficult to find works that satisfy all the requirements that many critics seem to put forth: that it be formally beautiful, maintain the viewer's attention and inspire contemplation, and have significant meaning. Works like Sze's can only offer meaning such as the viewer, curator, or artist herself projects it. Tirivanija and Mingwei's work cannot touch all viewers in the way the artists would like, but they continue their work anyway. After all, it is the gesture that counts and not just the time spent or the belly filled.

The Robert Gober sounds great, and that's precisely the kind of (supposedly) 'conceptual' art that I think connects to our non-artistic aesthetic experience in the way I'm talking about. The fact that it's not a painting makes absolutely no difference to what kind of art it essentially is. The way in which modern media allow the artist to affect so much more strongly the space the viewer finds him/herself in is a major advantage over painting; but I wouldn't say that this new use of space has anything innately conceptual about it - rather, it strengthens the potential of the core aesthetic experience. It's new, but it's still an 'artistic' resource in the strong, aesthetic meaning of the word I've been using.

As for Fluxus, it did explore, and cross, the boundaries - in music for instance, John Cage did much to disrupt those between music and noise, music and silence, musical performance and other kinds of performance. A lot of his work, and that of others at the time such as LaMonte Young, was very definitely not music by any even vaguely sensible use of the word; but as I said cautiously a propos of Emin, that doesn't mean it can't have value of some kind. The value you stress in conceptual art is that of social and political commentary, which is all well and good as an aim. But - this'll lead to more controversy, but what the hell, it's interesting - can it be a central aim of art? It seems to me that much of the most significant social and political commentary is in words, not in installations. Writers can express their vision of society precisely, at considerable length, utilising scores of ideas backed up with hard analysis, facts, metaphors and powerful rhetoric: artists are limited to ambiguity and a low level of structure to their 'commentary'. Until you show me a conceptual artist whose work has had, or could have, anything like the influence that the writings of Plato, Hegel, Marx and company have had on Western society, I remain unconvinced. Good traditional (in the broad sense, i.e. aesthetic) art can, as a side-effect, change the way people look at society; but the visceral impact that enables it to do so has nothing to do with concepts, or being clever - it arises from an aesthetic engagement.

Obviously I haven't experienced the works by Tiravanija and Mingwei that you cite, so I can't say for sure that they wouldn't have an impact on me, but your description doesn't convince me that their activity belongs in the same class of 'art' as Gober, or Whiteread. Again, it may have value - the similar ideas and antics of the Situationists back in the 50s-60s I think are great, wish I'd been there; and given that it doesn't have a recognised name, 'art' might do as well as any; but I think it's more a species of utopian philosophy-in-action than a genuinely aesthetic endeavour. If you think my critical requirements too narrow, I'll say that craftsmanship isn't a big issue for me. Craft doesn't guarantee aesthetic appreciation; the latter depends on values that go beyond pure skill. And I take back any suggestion that art has to be 'pleasurable', since in order to sustain it you'd have to stretch the meaning of pleasure so far as to be incomprehensible. But distinctiveness, depth, a 'metaphorical' rather than 'environmental' relationship to reality, and thus the capacity to create a 'world' - these feel to me to be important characteristics of art that are more valuable to explore than to throw aside.