"When the avante gardistes demand that art should become particle again, they do not mean that the contents of works of art should be socially significant. The demand is not raised to the level of the contents of individual works. Rather, it directs itself to the way art functions in society, a process that does as much to determine the effect that works have as does the particular content."
Art in bourgeois society
- projects the image of a better order
- protests the bad order that prevails
- relieves society of the pressure of those forces that make for change
- confined to ideal sphere
- element of freedom / element of noncommittal / absence of consequences
Attempt to eliminate art as an institution
- purpose or function
- production
- reception
Intended purpose or function
- avante gardiste art = disjointure of the work and praxis of life = essential content
- aesteticism = functionlessness of art becomes manifest
- avante-gardists counter functionlessness not by an art with consequences within existing society, but by sublation of part in the praxis of life
(sublation - The act of taking or carrying away; removal)
(praxis - Practical application or exercise of a branch of learning
- when art and life are one- praxis is aesthetic / art is practical = intended purpose of art becomes impossible to define
Production
- autonomous art is produced by the individual
- concept of genius (which has been distilled to psychological motivations & availability of artistic means
- pseudo-romantic "inspiration" now seen as self-deception of producers
- individual as creative subject has been let stand
- "force of pride" which sets off creative process renews individual character of artistic production
- avante-gardists reply is not the collective as subject of production, but radical negation of individual creation
- Duchamp: urinal, bottle drier - negates, even mocks individual creativity
- Duchamp unmasks art market where signature is worth more than quality of work / questions the individual as creator
- meaning comes from contrast of mass-produced object and signature/art exhibit
- this kind of provocation cannot be repeated endlessly
- provocation has been accepted into the museum, new interactions are not provocative, only adaptive affirmation of individual creativity
- historical avant-garde is now accepted as art / neo-avante-garde gesture of protest is inauthentic
- "Having shown to be irredeemable, the claim to protest can no longer be maintained"
Reception
- public reactions during Dada manifestation are collective, but still clearly reactions (responses)
- avante-gardiste intention to do away with art separate from praxis of life = eliminate antithesis between producer and recipient
- Tzara & Breton's work have the character of recipe = polemic attack on individual creativity of artist & possible production on part of recipient
- this production is not artistic production, but rather liberating life practice
- all that remains is an individual who uses art as "an instrument for living one's life as best one can."
"In late capitalist society, intentions of historical avant-garde are being realized but the result has been a disvalue."
- eg. pulp fiction - not instrument of emancipation, one of subjection
- eg. commodity aesthetics - form as mere enticement, practical art, but one that enthralls.
(Enthrall - To hold spellbound; captivate: To enslave.)
"Given the experience of the false sublation of autonomy, one will need to ask whether a sublation of the autonomy status can be desirable at all, whether the distance between art and the praxis of life is not requisite for that free space within which alternatives to what exists become conceivable."
Looking at the failure to remove the "individual" from art, is it even a good thing to remove the individual from art? Is distance between art and life practice required to be socially/politically imaginative?
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