An Answer or Two for Sparshott

An Answer or Two for Sparshott Arthur C. Danto The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 35, No. 1. (Autumn, 1976), pp. 80-82. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28197623%2935%3A1%3C80%3AAAOTFS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism is currently published by The American Society for Aesthetics.

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AFTERWORDS

(9) Are the statements that empty paintings make all synthetic, or all analytic, or some analytic and some synthetic? O r are they such that one cannot determine which they are? What ways are there of deciding which of these alternatives is correct? (10) Do statements made by empty paintings have truth values? If so, how is that value to be determined? Or, if a statement made by a painting may be neither true nor false, what is meant by calling it a statement? (11) Is the truth or untruth of the statement made by a painting relevant to the merit of that painting? (12) Is it logically possible that any statement about the concept of art made by an empty painting should be untrue? If so, are any in fact untrue? (13) If all statements made by empty paintings are true (and this is indeed what the vulgar way of talking about them suggests), how can one be sure that this is so? Does the fact that a statement is made by an empty painting suffice to make it true? If so, are statements made by empty paintings (or the paintings themselves in so far as they make statements) performative utterances? (14) Has any critic ever accepted as true a statement made by an empty painting that he was previously disposed to think untrue? If so, is it ever clear by what means persuasion was effected? (I suppose even the emptiest painting hardly amounts to an argument.) But, if not, do we ever have good reason to believe that the work did make the alleged statement, rather than affording the occasion for the critic to make a statement of his own beliefs? (15) Would a painter's affirming or denying

that an empty painting of his made a given statement, or even that it made any statement at all, be relevant to deciding what statement, if any, the painting in fact made? If it would not be relevant, is it not strange that a work should make a statement of which its author was unaware? Of course it might reveal something, or be symptomatic of something, of which the artist was unaware; but can one do something unaware that is analogous to writing a philosophical essay? (16) Is the statement made by an empty work perhaps always of the form, "There exists a painter who can get away with exhibiting such a painting as this in this gallery at this time?" But if that is all that is meant by saying that empty works make statements, should it not be made clearer that no more is meant? And would that not be a statement about the artworld rather than about the concept of art? (17) If the suggestion in question 16 is correct, does not every non-empty painting similarly make a statement to the effect that "This is what painting can be here and now?" If so, do not non-empty paintings have the concept of art as part of their content no less than empty paintings do? (18) If the suggestion in question 16 is correct, is the present state of the artworld such that anyone can get away with anything; and, if so, is it not impossible for an empty painting to say anything interesting? Are there any circumstances in which statements made by empty paintings could or, would be interesting? If so, what might thse circumstances be? Do empty paintings ever in fact make interesting statements? If so, what are they? F. E. SPARSHOn'

Victoria College, Toronto

AN ANSWER OR TWO FOR SPARSHOTT

Loosely following a famous model in the philosophy of perception, I have often found it useful in the philosophy of art to imagine a set of objects, only some of which are artworks, where the members of the set, though to every outward appearance indiscernible, have nevertheless very different structures and meanings, and radically different ontological affiliations. Consider, to begin with, a painting described by Kierkegaard, which was to have been of the

Israelites crossing the Red Sea. T h e result was a square painted allover red, the artist explaining that "The Israelites had already crossed over, and that the Egyptians were drowned." Kierkegaard comments that the result of his life is like that painting, "a mood, a single color." So next to Kierkegaard's work let us place another exactly like it, this one by a Danish portraitist who, with immense psyd~ological penetration, has produced a work called

Criticism and Countertheses "Kierkegaard's Mood." Next to this imagine displayed a work, which resembles the previous two as much as they resemble one another (exactly), entitled "Red Square" a witty bit of Moscow landscape. O u r next work is a minimalistic exemplar of geometrical art, which, as it happens, has the identical title. Now comes "Nirvana," a metaphysical painting based on the artist's knowledge that the Nirvanic and Samsaric orders are identical, and that the Samsara MTorld is fondly called the Red Dust by its deprecators. Here now is a surface grounded in red lead, upon which, had he lived, Giogione would have painted his "Sacred Conversation," a red surface which, though not an artwork, is not without art-historical interest. Finally I shall place a surface painted, though not grounded, with red lead: a mere artifact which I exhibit as a specimen of something whose philosophical interest consists solely in the fact that it is not a work of art. An album of photographs of my show, to which the present words might stand as foreword, would be singularly monotonous, even if in full color, though it contains paintings which belong respectively to the genres of historical painting, psychological portraiture, landscape, religious art, geometrical abstraction, as well as images of just objects. Clearly, which are which is not to be told from scrutiny of the displayed red squares. We must rather refer to the intentions of the artists when artists there were, and depending upon what they wanted to say by means of these works will be the latters' several readings. And the structures of tlie works themselves will vary as a function of these readings. I n some paintings, the corners, for instance, will be part of what they are, in some not (Nirvana, for instance, is logically cornerless). I n some of them again, the surface of the object will be the surface of tlle work, though not in every instance: Kierkegaard's painting will be of the surface of the Red Sea, which cannot be identical with the surface of the painting itself. And so forth. I t seems to me wholly natural to say that the different artists are making different statements by means of much the same objects, as speakers may be said to make different statements by means of much the same sentence. And only with reference to the statements can we say what the work is about, if it is about anything at all: that it is about an historical, or at least biblical episode, about a person, a place, a metaphysical entity, or a shape. Possi,bly, even, we may say that some of them are about concepts. And if

paintings may make statements about concepts, why not the concept of art? (If need be, we can add a square of blank red canvas which makes such a statement). Tchelichew once did a painting all in reds, primarily to show, contrary to a received theory, that it could be done. A recent show at the Parsons-Truman Gallery had seventeen objects grouped under the title "This Doesn't Look Like a Work of Art"-though the show failed in this if only because, in 1976, the title, taken as description, will be false, since nothing can any longer be classed a work of art on how it looks. I n every instance, however, the artworks in question, whatever they may have looked like-books and ladders, for examplehave the concept of art as part of their content. MThen the concept of art becomes something which works of art not only satisfy-as ostriches satisfy the concept of ostriches-but something they also contain as content, then works of art will have attained a degree of self-consciousness which almost transforms them into exercises in the philosophy of art itself, inasmuch as this too has the concept of art as its content. T h e empty artwork I envisaged in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace owes its ontological citizenship as a work of art to the fact that it is connected to a philosophical theory it has internalized, and without which it would collapse into a mere swatch of untouched canvas. Perhaps it is not exactly equivalent to a philosophical paper o n art, inasmuch as the latter will seldom be an instance of a work of art, except when the latter expression is used as a term of appraisal. So it will be just because it is an instance of what it is about, an artwork after all, that this exceedingly minimal effort remains an artwork and n o t a philosophical essay. I t has the logical status of a hat used to show what "hat" means: an exhibitive definition which no eye would be fine enough to tell apart from a hat which lacks, as most do, any lexical identity whatever. T h e work is paradoxical, in that what it fails to refute is the theory that artworks all are about something: in meaning to refute that theory, it proves to be about the theory it rejects. I t fails through the treacheries of self-exemplification. Sparshott is therefore right in suggesting that there after all is a difference: an artwork which exemplifies what it is about, or which cunningly fails to do this, has at best a n analogical relationship to a metaphilosophical paper which is at once a piece of philosophy and something which fails to satisfy the criteria it lays down.

AFTERWORDS

But I wasn't supposing that the work was to a philosophical paper, just because it sought to make a philosophical statement. I only thought that the work itself was so minimal and the statement it intended to exemplify so rich, that if that is what the artist was interested in, he might better lay down his brush and begin to write. Mine was the sort of somewhat condescending advice once given Jean-Jacques Rousseau by a Venetian prostitute: Lascia le donne e studia le matematiche. From the above it follows that it will not follow from the mere fact that an unprimed square of red canvas is exhibited that its content will be the concept of art. Works can have this concept as their content without being unprimed squares of canvas, and can be the latter without having this concept as their content. T o find out which do and which do not requires arthistorical investigations into what statements are intended, and the interpretive analysis of what the statement is about. So the answers to (2) and (3) are negative, (4) is irrelevant, (5) has been answered, and (6)'s answer is emphatically No: a great deal more than just the object displayed is required to identify what statement is being made, and this is so even in less contrived examples than the ones I have furnished. (7) very largely depends upon the statement and the critic, and (8) very much depends upon the statement, though I would carelessIy propose that two different critics cannot both be right, though it is easy to confuse that situation with one in which critic A knows which statement "Red Square" makes, but happens to be looking at "Kierkegaard's Mood," whereas Critic B knows what statement the latter is making, but happens to be looking at "Red Square." T h a t paintings may misexemplify their own statement shows that truth-values attach to the latter, and in the contested work, I suppose its having truth-value contributes to its merit, inasmuch as it would be difficult to see whence it might otherwise derive merit, supposing it to have any merit at all. T h e remaining questions may, I think, be left as exercises for the reader, though one question haunts me, and I should like to take this opportunity to respond to it. Sparshott asks: "Has any critic ever accepted as true a statement

made by an empty painting that he was previously disposed to think untrue?" (14) and "Are there any statements made by empty paintings which could, or would be interesting? (18). Imagine instead of a painter-it cannot matterwe think of a printmaker who splashes ink on a plank and prints it, showing just that. One artist did that, my friend Shiko Munakata, the great modern master of the Japanese woodcut, dead, alas, a year ago. Shiko once wrote the following: I advise the layman to spread India ink on an uncarved board, lay paper on top of it, and print it. He will get a black print, but the result is not the blackness of ink, it is the blackness of prints. Now the object is to give this print greater life and greater power by carving its surface. Whatever I carve I compare with an uncarved print and ask myself, "Which has more beauty, more strength, more depth, more magnitude, more movement, more tranquility?" If there is anything here that is inferior to an uncarved block, then I have not created my print. I have lost to the block. T h e critic certainly can learn something from this statement: the distinction between the black of the ink and the black of the print would redeem any essay in the philosophy of art, few of which are so stunningly enlightening as this. Could he learn this by looking at a black print if he knew what statement Munakata was making? I think he could, though clearly not by studying the print alone without benefit of understanding. Munakata's marvelous print of Mt Fuji, from his composite work "The 53 Stations of Tokaido," comes as close to a black print as any of his I know, but very few who see it appreciate its profundity. Would there be any point in doing a black print more than once? I thould think: one might decide to do no other kind, everything else "losing to the block." Could "anyone get away with it?" I am not sure what "it" means, but I know that anyone who understands the black print would no longer understand what "getting away with it" meant.

Columbia University

ARTHUR C . DANTO