Art in its Time: Theories and Practices of Modern Aesthetics

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SOME MASKS OF MODERNISM chaotic movement of the modern city. In “looking for that quality which you must allow me to call ‘modernity’”—writes Baudelaire in his essay on Constantin Guys—the painter of modern life “makes it his business to extract from fashion whatever element it may contain of poetry within history, to distill the eternal from the transitory.” For, Baudelaire explains, “by ‘modernity’ I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable.” 5 Modern art seeks the eternal, that which art is supposed to embody, in the ever-changing new that characterizes modern society. We may compare this appreciation of modernity with that of a contemporary of Baudelaire’s: Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social relations, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relationships, with their train of venerable ideas and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become obsolete before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned and men at last are forced to face with sober senses the real conditions of their lives and their relations with their fellow men. 6 These often-repeated words from the Communist Manifesto tell only half the story toward which Baudelaire was feeling his way. Continuation of this social system, as of any, means stability of patterns of social relationships as a basis for continuing change. Later on, in Capital, Marx argued that the “constant revolutionizing of production” activated at once the reproduction of the social system and the generation of its eventual overthrow. Whatever its eventual fate, its continual reproduction gives society the appearance of nature, outside history. Means of production seem always to have been “capital”; the crucifix, removed from a church and taken to the museum for aesthetic contemplation, seems always to have been “art.” An example An example will clarify the import of these generalizations. Given the extent of the domain to which “modernism” can plausibly be applied, the choice of an illustrative object is almost arbitrary. Risking cliché, I choose a painting whose special place in the history of modernism is indisputable: Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon (Figure 2.1), now in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Although it was painted in 1907 and has become a cultural icon, it can give a sensation of newness 5 Charles Baudelaire, “The painter of modern life” [1863], in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, tr. Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon, 1964), pp. 11–13. 6 Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto [1848], (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), p. 58. 13
SOME MASKS OF MODERNISM even today. This seems due in part to the bright, fresh color, and to the overall intensity produced by the presence of that color throughout the painting. It is due too to the presence of a quickly brushed on, sketchy line in various places (such as the leg and foot of the leftmost figure and the side of the rightmost). And it is due, I suspect, to the range of differences across the picture—differences in style of representation, in the application of paint, from thin to thick, in the use of paint to create flat surfaces or modeled ones. This produces a suggestion of change, of rethinking and reworking, in principle continuable indefinitely (the picture has often been described as unfinished, though there is no evidence that Picasso thought of it as such). Finally, still today, it has a shocking quality, due above all to the distortion of Figure 2.1 Pablo Picasso, Demoiselles d’Avignon, June–July 1907, © 2003 The Estate of Pablo Picasso; ARS (Artists Rights Society), New York and DACS (Design and Artists Copyright Society), London. Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY. 14
Page 2: ART IN ITS TIME Art writing normall
Page 5 and 6: First published 2003 by Routledge 1
Page 8: CONTENTS List of illustrations ix P
Page 12 and 13: PREFACE In writing this book I have
Page 14 and 15: 1 INTRODUCTION The ten chapters tha
Page 16 and 17: INTRODUCTION ideology, as I am atte
Page 18 and 19: INTRODUCTION process as practically
Page 20 and 21: INTRODUCTION articulation of nonver
Page 22 and 23: 2 SOME MASKS OF MODERNISM The days
Page 24 and 25: SOME MASKS OF MODERNISM which it di
Page 28 and 29: SOME MASKS OF MODERNISM the faces o
Page 30 and 31: SOME MASKS OF MODERNISM Figure 2.2
Page 32 and 33: SOME MASKS OF MODERNISM Figure 2.3
Page 34 and 35: SOME MASKS OF MODERNISM private str
Page 36 and 37: SOME MASKS OF MODERNISM the artist
Page 38 and 39: ART AND MONEY action taken to turn
Page 40 and 41: ART AND MONEY Diderot’s version o
Page 42 and 43: ART AND MONEY Luxury and corruption
Page 44 and 45: ART AND MONEY financed not only by
Page 46 and 47: ART AND MONEY of Plato with whom th
Page 48 and 49: ART AND MONEY When a handful of spe
Page 50 and 51: ART AND MONEY might confuse the hon
Page 52 and 53: ART AND MONEY complaint about the r
Page 54 and 55: ART AND MONEY comparison with Kant
Page 56 and 57: ART AND MONEY experience of the bea
Page 58 and 59: ART AND MONEY worthy inheritors of
Page 60 and 61: BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME It is, we mus
Page 62 and 63: BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME strength. Cri
Page 64 and 65: BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME In Rousseau
Page 66 and 67: BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME two centuries
Page 68 and 69: BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME exemplified b
Page 70 and 71: BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME Figure 4.1 Jo
Page 72 and 73: BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME “beautiful
Page 74 and 75: BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME and political
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BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME The paintings
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BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME In this pictu
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world will be long in freeing itsel
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69 Figure 4.2 Eugène Delacroix, De
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BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME always has a
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the sublime and the beautiful—cal
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THE RATIONALIZATION OF ART “Spiri
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THE RATIONALIZATION OF ART als, wit
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THE RATIONALIZATION OF ART The dist
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THE RATIONALIZATION OF ART members
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THE RATIONALIZATION OF ART image, e
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THE RATIONALIZATION OF ART which de
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6 MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION IN THE AG
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MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION Almost none
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MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION models were
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MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION But we are
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MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION They repres
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MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION have alread
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MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION And they pr
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MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION It is evide
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MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION order of be
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MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION triumph as
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PORK AND PORCELAIN extent not only
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PORK AND PORCELAIN support of the B
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PORK AND PORCELAIN for the distinct
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PORK AND PORCELAIN of the very rich
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PORK AND PORCELAIN ment censorship
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PORK AND PORCELAIN private foundati
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8 THE AESTHETICS OF ANTI-AESTHETICS
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THE AESTHETICS OF ANTI-AESTHETICS o
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THE AESTHETICS OF ANTI-AESTHETICS
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THE AESTHETICS OF ANTI-AESTHETICS p
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THE AESTHETICS OF ANTI-AESTHETICS p
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THE AESTHETICS OF ANTI-AESTHETICS O
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THE AESTHETICS OF ANTI-AESTHETICS r
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THE AESTHETICS OF ANTI-AESTHETICS C
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANDY WARHOL Warho
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANDY WARHOL readi
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANDY WARHOL print
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANDY WARHOL and E
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANDY WARHOL 1989
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANDY WARHOL found
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANDY WARHOL ident
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Buchloh sees the political limitati
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANDY WARHOL conte
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THE AVANT-GARDE IN FASHION Figure 1
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THE AVANT-GARDE IN FASHION recast a
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Such a view is more plausible in re
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THE AVANT-GARDE IN FASHION “strip
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THE AVANT-GARDE IN FASHION the unif
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THE AVANT-GARDE IN FASHION long con
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THE AVANT-GARDE IN FASHION had its
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THE AVANT-GARDE IN FASHION wrong. A
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THE AVANT-GARDE IN FASHION One can
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CLASSLESS TASTE home or being aroun
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CLASSLESS TASTE Burning call “aca
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CLASSLESS TASTE It would be pervers
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CLASSLESS TASTE ing, as the boundar
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Adams, Abigail 48 Adorno, Theodor 5
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play 41ff Pocock, J. G. A. 28 n. 16
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