Heidegger describes artworks much like things we observe in any other situation. Particularly they 'appear' to us and their actuality merge with our thought of it. He also describes how artwork can be different from normal experience in that the context of the artwork can be severed from it's actual context. This poses a puzzle for the observer to parse together what something is outside of the context we would normally observe things in our day to day observations.
Heidegger address the puzzle of the observer of art but not that of the creator of art in this paradox. Heidegger seems to diminish the actual role of the artist as some sort of channel for art to express itself. However when an still life is set up before painting, the idea of the object is considered. The ability for the viewer to distinguish the foreground from the background is an important step.
In a forest there is an anarchic array of trunks of trees which over take the field of vision. To experience the entire tree that is above ground we have to move our head and cannot receive the image in one instance. This is why many landscapes are of fields flanked by tree lines. It's easier to perceive out of context when there is a clearing or reduction of things. While we are in the woods we are percieving without confusion. A painting of the deep woods would be disorienting to the observer in a way that it isn't when there is context surrounding it.
Heidegger's observation that the reduction of context of a perceived object in art may not be as special as he describes it. His description seems to be pure Art peering through observation is at work in this case. This simplification is done by the Artist to be sure and not some outside abstraction. Yet this simplification may open itself to open interpretations.
Aristotle was keen in logic to reduce words to the conventions we recognize in in algebraic equations. X's and Y's stand for something distinct and lack alternative interpretations. It is known that language and words opens itself to ambiguities that can complicate communication of distinct ideas. The simplification of the still life or the landscape isn't to reduce ambiguity but mainly to have clear recognizable objects. Without this simplification there would be no interpretation rather than many because nothing is clear. However, few would admit art's simplification is to plot objects on an x and y axis.
In this way art more readily codifies observation in language. Yet what can be said with visual language is more vague than even a word that can mean more than one thing. Heidegger is preoccupied with truth being what is revealed by an object. Truth of an art work is not the understanding of it as a linguistic entrapment of observation. The understanding of an individual work of art is it's truth and not the entire field of art itself. Heidegger's paradox of art still persists in how we derive meaning from something out of context. Our role as this discussion making is distinct from our role of observers of reality. Yet this idea of 'World' Heidegger uses is used for the revealing of truth which reality and art both do. In both cases we are still building our World and inhabiting it.
note: Heidegger's views on art captured from his writing "The Origin of the Work of Art"
No comments:
Post a Comment