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Metaphor(m): Engaging a Theory of Central Trope in Art
Mark Staff Brandl |
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Prelude
Tropi, Agon et Quo
Vadam
Theories are constructed
objects. ... They assembled a theory.
--George Lakoff (The Conceptual Metaphor Home Page)
(1)
A Personal Beginning
In the early 1980s, the artworld was in an uproar. It was
increasingly clear that Modernism had, surprisingly, indeed been a "period,"
not the ultimate state of culture, and furthermore that it was slowly coming
to a close. Postmodernism seemed a little insipid, even unappealing at first
as diverse anti- or retro-styles vied for the pole position. French literary
theory of a Deconstructivist bent slowly became hegemonic, a situation still
now in place. Yet, for most artists and authors, Post-Modernism (still
capitalized and hyphenated at that time) seemed an opportunity to seek new
theoretical inspiration, to free oneself of the previously prevailing
Formalism, also termed the New Criticism in literature, while hopefully also
offering a way to avoid the trap of what threatened to be a cynical mise
en abyme of sophistry under the first influences of Poststructuralism.
In heated discussions in New York and elsewhere, artists sought out new
interpretations of the inevitably intertwined dialectic of form and content.
Art was clearly not all about form, it was plain to see that creators had
something to say, to discover. Equally, art was not all about the inability
to say anything,
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(1)
George Lakoff, et al.,
Conceptual Metaphor Home Page (University of California at Berkeley
website, http://cogsci.berkeley.edu/lakoff/), page: http://cogsci.berkeley.edu/lakoff/metaphors/
Theories_Are_Constructed_Objects.html.
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Prelude
iii
about illustrating the
unreliability of form as sole content. There was a widespread recognition
that, indeed, form was a tool for discovery and yet also the discovery
itself. Through that fissure, the great beast, long considered dead,
re-arose in a new and splendid form: ludic trope. At first the source of
inspiration for many artists, including myself, was Jacques Derrida and the
Yale Deconstructivists such as Paul de Man.
Jacques Derrida was a French literary philosopher and the founder of what is
called Deconstruction. He argues that much of philosophy rests on arbitrary
dichotomous categories, sees language as writing, uses the metaphor of
"text" for all experience, and suggests that there is no possibility of
intentional meaning. Deconstruction can and has been disparaged as
nihilistic, solipsistic, and a-political, but has also contributed greatly
to the contemporary critical analysis of art and society, attacking
seemingly fixed notions of gender, race, and privilege. I found
Derrida's notions most interestingly presented in Writing and Difference,(2)
and Margins of Philosophy,(3) although Of Grammatology(4)
is his most popular book. Many of the theorists affiliated with Yale
University in the late 1970s, including Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, J.
Hillis Miller, and Harold Bloom, are especially influential in literary
criticism and, influenced by Derrida, are called the "Yale Deconstructivists."
One of De Man's key texts in my opinion is The Resistance to Theory.(5)
Theory
in this vein remains the most powerful force in literature and art
departments in universities around the US and indeed the western world. As a
rather trendy art gallery owner once commented to me in 2003, "Aren't ALL
contemporary artists Derridaian and poststructuralist now?"(5) While this
may appear to be true, many of the artists, authors and students who
identify themselves with poststructuralist thought do not fully understand
it, not truly applying their own preferred theory. They are generally citing
it as an influence for fashionable reasons, verbally espousing many of its
tenets, such as the impossibility of fixed
-------------------------------
(2)
Jacques Derrida, Writing and
Difference, trans. Alan Bass (London & New York: Routledge, 1978).
(3) Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago &
London: Chicago University Press, 1982).
(4) Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
(Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).
(5) Paul de Man, The Resistance to Theory (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1986).
(6) Susanna Kulli, personal communication, St.Gallen, Switzerland, 2003.
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Prelude
iv
interpretation, the death of the author, and others. Denis Dutton describes
this situation in his article of 1992, "Delusions of Postmodernism" from the
journal
Literature and Aesthetics:
That
contemporary artists are as eager as ever for attention as unique
individuals is demonstrated by the fact that they tend to treat their work
as an expression of individual subjectivity in discussion and
documentation. That the privileged position of the author/artist is not
entirely dead in the minds of artists is also indicated by the unceasing
tendency of artists everywhere--including those who style themselves
"postmodern"--angrily to dispute hostile critical interpretations of their
work which "fail to comprehend" their intentions, which "miss the point"
of their work. For many artists, complete freedom of interpretation is
fine as a general philosophical theory applied to other people's work, but
not to their own. (7)
What
began as a situation promising a possibility for more free artistic play,
has unfortunately now become the dominant master of the academy. Renowned
art historian, psychologist and art critic Donald Kuspit has asserted in an
email that, "In the artworld, followers of Derrida are not against hegemony;
they now possess almost complete hegemony." (8)
It
was in this context that my study of literary theory arose -- perhaps a bit
defensively, yet also out of enthusiasm. In fact, it was more of a return to
previous pursuits than a new interest. Throughout my university studies and
in my free time I have been actively involved in aesthetics, the analytical
philosophy of art. This passion operates in concert with my ardor for and
interaction with the possibilities of an "extended" interpretation of the
(supposedly dead) medium of painting, of installation art, of comics as an
artform, and of display sign-painting. Indeed, I even began my doctoral
studies in the department of English Language and Literature (called in
German 'Anglistik') in order to concentrate on the linguistic options of my
endeavor. Later, after I had completed the learning of Latin as a portion of
my studies, another opportunity arose as the University of Zurich finally
had a scholar of modern and contemporary art as a professor, Dr Philip
Urpsrung, whom I met personally when we both were speakers at the convention
of art historians in the US in Boston, The 2006 College Art
-------------------------------
(7)
Denis Dutton,
"Delusions of Postmodernism,"
Literature and Aesthetics 2 (1992): 23-35.
(8) Donald Kuspit,
Email to author, Dec. 2004.
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Prelude
v
Association conference.
Almost simultaneously I became acquainted with Dr Andreas Langlotz of the
University of Basel, an expert in cognitive linguistics. These events led me
to change to art history, leave my original, more orthodox literature
advisor, and begin afresh with the stimulating new influences of Ursprung
and Langlotz. Professor Ursprung understood not only my focus, but
encouraged me to reach for a whole new form of dissertation, suggesting not
only that I investigate other artists' works, both historical and
contemporary, but that I also include my own art in it as an integral
component, the performative presentation of the creation of these
dissertation works and an attempt to analyze them with the tool of my
theory. I was thrilled and yet presented with a whole new range of
challenges, which I hope I master.
At
first my theoretical research consisted of working my way through key books
and articles by and about the most influential poststructuralist
practitioners of literary theory and of what has come to be called
"critical" theory, the expansion of literary critical theories into the
discussions of socio-political questions. Simultaneously, I intensified my
already existing involvement with contemporary analytic aesthetics. In
both fields, I was seeking points of conjecture which I felt illuminated my
understanding of art in unexpected ways, yet also rang true to my experience
as an active artist, art critic, art historian and appreciator of
contemporary art by others. I was inspired by concepts from many thinkers,
as I describe in the next chapter, yet not the entirety of anyone's system.
I have thus sought to incorporate ideas I find enriching from a variety of
sources into my own theoretical construction. I now realize that an ulterior
motive was also to be able to theorize myself out of the constraints of
theory, fighting fire with fire as is often my wont. I sought to discover
philosophers offering pertinent, contemporary analysis which, however, also
acknowledged agency, that creators were responsible makers of meaning and
not mere symptoms of societal flaws. In truth, I heartily hoped for
theorists who would go even farther, searching for ones who suggested
intelligent means of resistance to an at that time ever-increasing dominance
by the radical right of politics and mass media; likewise, seeking
methodologies which could serve as insurrection against the even then
quickly hardening academic stifling of art in consensus and market
sophistry. Books important to me then included Hans-Georg Gadamer's
Truth and
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Prelude
vi
Method, (9) Bakhtin, Essays
and Dialogues on His Work edited by Gary Saul Morson, (10) Arthur C.
Danto's The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art, (11), John
Lechte's Julia Kristeva, (12) Cornel West's Prophetic Reflections:
Notes on Race and Power in America, (13) and R. A. Sharpe's
Contemporary Aesthetics: A Philosophical Analysis. (14)
I
learned from all these and more. However, most crucially, I found the
greatest revelation in the cognitive linguistic approach of George Lakoff
and others and in the antithetical revisionist theory of Harold Bloom.
Combined, they accorded genuinely with my experience of art while also
electrifying me with new possibilities for understanding art, its production
and its producers. Cognitive linguistic theory was first widely introduced
in Lakoff and Mark Johnson's Metaphors We Live By (15) and
Lakoff and Mark Turner's More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic
Metaphor. (16) Bloom presented his theory initially in a trilogy
of books beginning with The Anxiety of Influence.
(17)
Trope and Struggle
Although also first appearing in the late 80s, cognitive
metaphor and the embodied mind concept took until the turn of the millennium
to begin affecting the practice and understanding of creators and scholars.
Cognitive linguistics, especially the subdivision of it
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(9)
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, revised trans.
Joel Weinsheimer and
Donald G. Marshall (New York: Seabury Press, 1989).
(10) Gary Saul Morson, ed., Bakhtin, Essays and Dialogues on His Work
(Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1986).
(11) Arthur C. Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art
(New York: Columbia
University Press, 1986).
(12) John Lechte, Julia Kristeva. (London: Routledge, 1990).
(13) Cornel West, Prophetic Reflections: Notes on Race and Power in
America. (Monroe, Maine:
Common Courage Press, 1993).
(14) R. A. Sharpe, Contemporary Aesthetics: A Philosophical Analysis.
(New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1983).
(15) George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago:
The University of Chicago
Press, 1980; paperback, 1981).
(16) Lakoff and Mark Turner, More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to
Poetic Metaphor (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1989).
(17) Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1973).
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Prelude vii
which I will use the most called cognitive
metaphor, is largely based on the ground-breaking work of George Lakoff and
his two collaborators, Mark Turner and Mark Johnson. Lakoff, who began as a
student of Noam Chomsky, initiated research which led to the creation of an
important interdisciplinary study of metaphor, now generally called
cognitive linguistics. Theorists involved in this approach advance the
hypotheses that metaphor is the foundation of all thought, that linguistic
elements are conceptually processed and that language is chiefly determined
by bodily and environmental experiences.
The desire for an imminent fundamental change linked to a new understanding
of trope is indeed in the air, not only for me; ever more frequently,
artists and authors have begun to refer to metaphor and cognitive metaphor
theory. For example, Frank Davey, a Canadian poet with an involvement in
theory, states the following in an interview with Héliane Ventura in the
journal Sources:
Lakoff
and Johnson suggest that many of our habitual metaphors are connected to
our culture's ideological investments. ... To some extent their work
appears to be related to various projects of Deconstruction, in that they
raise to consciousness the hidden assumptions of banally figurative
language. Political and economic metaphors, they write, "can hide aspects
of reality," "they constrain our lives," they "can lead to human
degradation." But they also argue that ordinary language is necessarily
metaphoric, that cultures need the conceptual frames of metaphor to
provide perspectives and coherence. And I recall that as well they examine
metaphors around women--women as food ("a real dish") or as fire ("hot
babes," "hot stuff," "kiss of fire," "torrid romance" etc). It's this ...
kind of metaphor that I play with in Back to the War in poems such
as "The Complaint," or "Sweets," or "The Fortune Teller." ... The 'link'
that metaphor requires isn't foregrounded in [my poems] but is merely
latent until it is made by the reader.... (18)
Likewise,
art critic Barry Schwabsky writes of the influential New York painter
Jonathan Lasker in Art in America magazine:
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(18)
Héliane Ventura, "An Interview with Frank Davey,"
Sources, Revue
d'études anglophones
17 (August 2004):
74.
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Prelude
viii
Jonathan Lasker once told me
he thought the Minimalists had been trying to make an art without
metaphor, and in fact had succeeded; but the point having been proved, he
continued, there's no longer any urgent motivation to produce more
metaphor-free work. (19)
Cognitive linguistics and
Bloom's revisionism were a revelation to me. I found Bloom's notion of
agon to supplement Lakoffian conceptions splendidly. Bloom sees the
primal activity of the creative life as one of struggling with and
overcoming one's influences by revisionistically, willfully and yet
imaginatively misunderstanding them. In cognitive linguistics and agonistic
revisionism, I discovered theories which read true to my experiences and
additionally offered openings to the world, criticizing the solipsism and
sophistry of much other current literary theory by, among other strengths,
subsuming their rivals' insights.
It can now be seen that the Late Modernist
attempt to undermine metaphor, as described by Schwabsky and Lasker above,
although necessary at that time, did not actually function as expected, but
was rather a negational, metaleptic trope in itself. Moreover, Davey
expresses a perception that there is a continuation between Derrida and
Lakoff , an opinion both controversial and, surprisingly, held by many. In
his eyes as a working poet, he finds aspects of Deconstruction and cognitive
metaphor to be akin, something that both factions would heartily rebuff. The
continuum containing both these theories is that of the free play of tropes.
The fascination and excitement of encountering and applying new conceptual
systems can lead to productive discoveries, both in the hands of creators
and of scholars, whatever their final political status becomes. Applying
novel theories can produce new discernments into literature and art
contemporary with a given philosophy, but also into aspects of the nature of
creativity across a broader time span.
Lakoffian
theory offers an, at this time, atypical model, in that it acknowledges
agency -- that is, the individuals who make art experiences. This renders a
chance to investigate into and speculate on the nuts-and-bolts of creation.
The cognitive theory of metaphor is also unusual in that it is a theory more
concerned with concepts than with words alone, thus fostering application to
a wide range of art forms. An important facet of cognitive linguistic theory
is that metaphors are embodied, that is, that mental concepts are
constructed
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(19)
Barry Schwabsky,
"Jonathan Lasker - Brief Article," ArtForum
(September 2000). Cited from <http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_1_39/ai_65649484>
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Prelude
ix
tropaically out of bodily experiences. These foundational perceptions can
furthermore lead to what he terms "image schemas," which can then be used to
structure somewhat less physical events. This has potentially significant
implications for the poet, the painter, the novelist, the critic and the
scholar. It is indeed one of the main tools I have chosen to employ. In my
dissertation, Lakoffian theory will be applied to the competitive discovery
of trope within aspects of form in visual art.
Lakoff
believes that a proper appreciation for metaphor cuts through the perpetual
clash between the so-called "objective" view of trope (that it is purely
literary, almost decorative) and the so-called "subjective" view (that it
has no direct tie to experience). He promotes an alternative that stresses
the centrality of metaphor to our thinking processes, and thereby to our
language and other actions. Hence, I see cognitive metaphor theory similarly
offering an alternative to Formalism and Poststructuralism by subsuming them
both.
This study will use theory derived from cognitive linguistics
as a method of augmenting the range of poststructural thought and
revivifying appreciation of the formal discoveries of authors and artists.
Cognitive
metaphor theory proffers a mode of thinking which can be applied to the
analysis and creation of art, while accentuating the efforts of the makers
of these objects. After the object-only orientation of Formalism, after the
medium-only focus of deconstruction, this may lead to a feeling of
liberation, of agency. Nevertheless, this is a theory which brings with it a
new sense of the burden of the past. Whereas the Formalist Modernists felt
free from the past and the Deconstructivist Postmodernists are endlessly
tangled in an inescapable present, authors and artists as viewed through
cognitive metaphor theory are directly responsible for fashioning their own
tropes through the processes of extension, elaboration, composition and/or
questioning. This they accomplish in and through the formal parameters of
their work, with enough cultural coherence to be able to communicate, but
enough originality to be significant. Important tropes cannot merely be
selected from a list; they are discovered and built out of revisions of
cultural possibilities, in fact, fought for and won. Thus Harold Bloom's
theory of antithetical revisionism also contributes an important component
to this paper, as he writes:
But
again, why should someone crossing out of literary criticism address the
problematics of revisionism? What else has Western poetry been, since the
Greeks, must be the answer, at
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Prelude
x
least in part. The origins and aims of poetry together constitute its
powers, and the powers of poetry, however they relate to or affect the
world, rise out of a loving conflict with previous poetry, rather than out
of conflict with the world. ... This particularly creative aspect of a
kind of primal anxiety is the tendency or process I have called "poetic
misprision" and have attempted to portray in a number of earlier books.
(20)
The heart of Bloom's
theory of misprision is the concept of an indispensable, antithetical agon
of each poet. With poetry being the chief artistic discipline for Bloom, the
word poet may also be replaced here with artist, which is what
I will do. Revisionism is exalted to the central fact of artistic
creativity. Agon is Bloom's term for the conflict arising from the
anxiety of influence. Each and every author must wrestle with his or her
precursors, the ones who inspired them to be writers in the first place. In
amendment of Bloom, though, this "loving conflict" also transpires with the
world, as it involves tropes of bodily experience as outlined in Lakoffian
theory. Creators seeking individual ways to convey their experiences within
their media, are necessarily forced to fence with comparable expressions of
similar experiences by their predecessors, therefore primarily with their
predecessors' tropes. Cognitive metaphor theory offers an important basis
for the study of art and literature, in particular their formation. Bloomian
agonistic misprision completes the portrayal of the process by which
creators arrive at the cognitive tropes so described.
The
theory of central trope which I will be developing within this dissertation
is postmodern, as dscribe. It is a model describing the construction by
authors and artists of distinctive central tropes in the tangible forms and
processes of their media. They achieve this by means of an agonistic
struggle with predecessors' tropes, doing so in order to uniquely articulate
personal perceptions and experiences.
Such tropes in
the hands of artists are both metaphoric and meta-formal, thus yielding the
punning term metaphor(m) in my title. This word describes and
embodies the core of the theory. For creators, artistic value is grounded in
form, the way a work is made and its technical aspects. Yet, turning
Formalism on its head, these attributes in themselves are significant only
due to their meta-properties as tools and modus operandi involving context,
tropaic content and cultural struggle.
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(20)
Harold Bloom, Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1982;
paperback, 1983), vii-ix.
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Prelude
xi
This Dissertation
Cognitive metaphor theory will be put in the
service of art and art historical theory. In this dissertation, then, I will
develop a theory of how meaning is embodied in Modern and Postmodern
creativity. I view my hypothesis as the elucidation of a theoretical yet
concrete tool with which artists create. Based in part on linguistic theory,
metaphor(m) is a general theory of trope in art, which links content and
form with historical and critical cultural awareness. I will apply my theory
to visual art, especially to painting and installation art. The artists will
include the famous and the less well-known, historical and contemporary,
friends and foes, a smattering of all of these. I have been studying an
applying my theory to Charles Boetschi, Vincent van Gogh, Gerhard Richter,
Wesley Kimler, Stuart Davis, Jackson Pollock, Donald Judd, Leonard Bullock,
C Hill, Bill Viola, Robert Rauschenberg, Sigmar Polke, Lawrence Weiner,
Marcel Duchamp, George Brecht, Jack Kirby, Gene Colan, Jonathan Lasker,
Stephen Westfall, David Reed, Mark Francis, Mary Heilmann, Edith Altman,
Annette Messager, Joseph Beuys, Richard Long and many others. Who exactly
will turn up in my dissertation I cannot yet say for certain. Topics will
include specific and close analysis of artworks and media. While the theory
of central trope will be in dialogue with a number of theorists and creators
within my discussions, this dissertation is intended to be a work of
performed theory, not an exhaustive monograph on a single artist nor a
purely personal reflection. Rather, I will test my thesis through the study
of chosen subjects, while simultaneously working through the implications of
the theory on my own art as manifested in the planning and creation of a
painting-installation. In this way, I will probe metaphor theory's bounds
and limitations, as well as its depth and utility in the study of creative
works. Thus my theorization will be embodied performatively, and what is the
creation of art, especially paintings, if not mentally guided bodily
experience.
I
will create this dissertation in the traditional form of a book, but with
the addition of an actual installation. If successful, both will manifest
the process of creation displaying, in open performance, the slow but steady
making and finding of a metaphor/m. However, much like Sigmund Freud's
psychotherapy of himself, this may not be completely possible, opening my
dissertation to the rich possibility of partial failure. In either event, it
will be a thoroughly dialogical approach to production, uniting performance
and reflection in a manner perhaps best describable as a Deweyian
double-loop learning procedure or a Gadamerian hermeneutic circle of
understanding. Philosopher and education reformer John Dewey proposed that
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Prelude
xii
learning was
more than the prevailing view described as error and then correction. He
believed learning to be a reiterating process of testing, learning,
correction and within re-testing modification of the underlying goal could
be altered, thus seeing it as two loops of correction. The philosopher of
hermeneutics, Hans-Georg Gadamer proposes that understanding is accomplished
by coming to a situation with preconceptions, testing these and then
necessarily altering ones judgment, resulting in ever repeating circles
through which one then
deepens the comprehension of any whole through knowledge of its parts
encountered in subjective yet open investigation.
Within
the writing and the concomitant creation of the art, I will perform a guided
tour of the installation, but one changing and allowing alternate paths,
perhaps enlisting the various aspects of such an exhibition as tropes and
forms: labels, comments, catalogue essay, sketches, plans, etc. Each chapter
of the dissertation, then, will embody the idea of the chapter through the
inclusion of analytical discourse, a painting, sketches and plans for the
installation, and a comic sequence featuring an investigation of how the
(meta-)discourse is being applied in the art works, in a plurogenic, braided
interlacing of registers, a methodology much inspired by Giuliana Bruno's
book Atlas of Emotion. (21)
My
"painting installations," which I term
Panels,
are wall and room-filling works wherein a group of large painted canvases
are surrounded by additional painting directly on the wall, thereby
transforming the space into huge, readable, sequential "pages" of a walk-in,
"comic book." Second, there are the somewhat more detached paintings I term
Covers. These works are paintings in gouache, ink, acrylic and oil on
paper, wood panel, or canvas. They are recognizably based on the structure
of comic book covers, with title, bold lettering, price, date, numbering,
image and so on. Both types of artworks are frequently presented together as
one large installation.
Furthermore, important portions of the dissertation will be
posted on-line on an art "e-zine" as blogs, allowing for additional "viewer"
and reader discussion. My hypostatization of central trope will center on
testing it in the production of a Covers and Panels
painting-installation. Thus, I will be imagining, conceiving, and
bringing-into-vision the concept of central trope in art, as proposed in my
subtitle. Some Modernist critics are
-------------------------------
(21)
Giuliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion: Journeys
in Art, Architecture, and Film (New York: New Left
Books, Verso, 2002; paperback, 2007).
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Prelude xiii
dismissive of the possibility that various art forms and media might have
any similarities or effects upon one another. Most famously advocated by
Clement Greenberg, this form of Modernism asserts that each art must be
rendered "pure" by concentrating solely on what separated it from other
disciplines, especially demanding an anti-literary stance in visual art. By
contrast, my theory of central trope denies such separation, claiming an
underlying level of tropaic reasoning to be integral to literature, visual
art and creative works in other media, perhaps even postulating a necessary
postmodern impurity. Application of a conceptual theory of metaphor to art
history remains a relatively unexplored -- but potentially very rich -- area
of research.
In
addition to the text, artworks, and series of on‑line e‑zine articles
(called blog posts) as mentioned, my dissertation chapters will include
sequential art (called comics), as well as sketches for the installation and
occasional groups of paintings concerning tangential, associational
thoughts. The image preceding this "Prelude" was the first Cover
painting. The page following is the first of the meta-sequences in comic
form. In the completed book, the "Introduction" will either precede or
follow this chapter, as of course introductions are best written after the
entire text has been completed, but are presented at the beginning. The
topic of the next chapter is "Wandering and Surveying: Links and to Literary
Theory and Contemporary Aesthetics." It is a "placement" of the theory
within the world of literary theory, as well as a discussion of related
approaches or influences from contemporary analytical aesthetics.
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This is the beginning post of the on-line, in process, version of my PhD dissertion, which I am writing under the direction of Prof. Philip Urspung at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. My second reader is Prof. Andreas Langlotz at the University of Basel, Switzerland.
Spannend!
I had to ask my dictionary several times for help and had to reread the chapter several times, too.
Interesting thoughts in a way I haven't thought of for a long time.
I always thought Derrida to be kind of ok, but that he never gets the point - and as well wondered why all my fellow students loved to be so poststructuralistic.
Merely being more like esoteric group...
I'd say, one could use the old Beuys phrase for Duchamp about that:
Das Schreiben von Derrida wird überbewertet!
Hi, Mark,
I'm honestly impressed. For one thing, it's impressive the way you reached out for comments beyond your thesis adviser or dissertation committee, if there's a parallel to that outside the United States. Second, it's a lively, persuasive argument. You have the ability to keep the tone and communicative reach of informal English while using the jargon of the sources you're invoking. (I myself hate "hopefully," but I'm old-fashioned.)
I honestly can't speak to how much deconstruction is still hegemonic. On the one hand, I still don't encounter it in American philosophy. On the other hand, in the art world I wouldn't know the extent to which the greater public interest in such sociological and political themes as feminism, multiculturalism, and so on has largely displaced it. Of course, context will vary between museum shows/catalogs, undergraduate textbooks that I edit in sociology or readers in philosophy, and graduate programs, which are more specialized. All that aside, I like your insistence that it's both problematic/hegemonic and still contributes something. I, too, still remember and value New Criticism, as well as how much then changed.
This is personal interpretation, but no question Minimalism took on different meanings once it became impossible to see abandonment of metaphor as a lasting achievement. I would, though, see other possibilities besides then seeing it purely as negation. One can see it, first, simply in its time: in any art-historical period, a limiting occurs that should be seen in context as an opening. Second, one can see the strategies as themselves metaphors not necessarily about the negative. For example, its pointing to space, when it means a space defined by an object and by human beings (including the viewer), is a representation just like single-point perspective was. Finally, its forms could be assimilated to other, more arbitrary metaphorical discourses over time. That may have started with, say, Smithson's whole gobbledygook or with Flavin's naming something a "Monument to Tatlin." It continues as others tweak its strategies with representational aims or with the aim of showing breakdowns in representation. That kind of thing is all over the galleries now, where it's still geometric or abstract but with hints of everything under the sun.
John
Dear Brandl,
Great to hear from you and your exciting dissertation project. I am glad you were able to change your professor. Your aim to develop a theory of how meaning gets stuffed into modern art sounds very ambitious. But I must admit it is a thing we artistic analphabets have been waiting for. I wish you the strength to continue and stay focussed and most importantly enjoy the whole journey.
Best wishes,
Urs Kalberer
Thanks for your comments Urs, John. Danke Alex! I'll get to them soon. I appreciate it a lot!
That is just the prelude. My notions are quite non-, if not anti-, de Manian, even somewhat anti-Deconstructivist in general. You will see that I am based primarily in Lakoffian cognitive linguistics. I have, however, aopted and adapted highly the "revisionist" notion of Bloom (who himself criticized his Yale Decon colleagues clearly). Of course I know all about de Man's past --- it was front page news and deserved to be, and throws serious questions at his relativism.
In my next (first) chapter you will see the complete journey I made through the various theorists and aestheticians, searching for kinfolk.
Thanks for the thoughts on style, John H., as you yourself are such a fine art critic. I would say Decon is fully hegemonic in the artworld (not in analytic aesthetics, whose philosophers have taken crap from the artworld theoriophiles due to that)--- it is so taken for granted as the basis, in a debased form, that it is often seemingly transparent now. I like decon in the hands of feminists, where it is a tool, not a culdesac, and which they use to accomplish tasks. I don't like it as nihilistic sophistry.
Most importantly, this will be a journey, a tour of a Denkprozess as painting installation and book. Please continue to contribute, all of you. Let's see where I went. And where I go. Quo vadam?!!
In recent years, there has been an acceleration of research within many fields concerned with the body’s relationship to the 'mental' understanding, cognition. A new understanding is developing through the interaction of the fields of philosophy, philosophical anthropology, and others. Here Brandl's work in aesthetics or so-called theory and art history could be especially important. The newest thought thoroughly challenges Cartesian dualism and the denial and objectification of the body, which is the clear (yet unacknowledged) basis of Neo-Conceptual 'puritanism' as Brandl calls it. Additionally, neurophysiologic research and cognitive metaphor theory, (as well as dynamic system theory), presents a change that confronts such dominant yet unproductive theories of mind over body. This is fresh ground for assaulting the tired corporate, hierarchical metaphors operative in Neo-Conceptual art, while reinvigorating theoretical possibilities for the body in painting, in positive application, not just feebleness or the abject.
Finally made it thru the Prelude. Love where your going. Very inspiring. I've a longer reply, but my email stopped sending to you again. My ISP is putting in a new email system, maybe that will fix it. I'll get it to you somehow, even if I have to mail it!
JE Hoke
Dear Brandl,
Sorry it’s taken me so long to respond to your thesis prelude. I appreciate the work you must have put into it.
Good job! I’m very inspired by where you seem to be going with the metaphor (metaphorm) direction. (love the pun) Had to read it with a dictionary on my lap, (which broke continuity, but I do love my dictionary.) I’m starting to understand how you fell in love with the word trope, and appreciated your personal story of how you got to where your going. Love that your going to make it into an exhibit. (and by the way I found your sketchy portrait drawings of people absolutely exquisite.)
I’ve got more questions than the critical dialogue you might need. Most of this response is just getting excited about where I hallucinate connections to some of the stuff I’ve written and am interested in. But you’ve accomplished the first rule of an exhibitionist; “leave them wanting to know more!”
My POV
Your going to have to put me in the category of uneducated but interested reader. I know I’m not the audience you wrote this for, so I hope my uninformed view helps. I’m professionally proud of my ignorance, it’s where I have to be to stay ‘fresh’ for my day job of interpreting science for tourists. This populist POV has obviously bled into my own drawing and writing, that I hope of serves a sort of socialist/democratic idealism. Honestly, I just want to share the same excitement I have for arcane subject matter, and inspire as many people as possible. Friends I haven’t met yet. Your writing inspires me to study a little harder. I’ve never read any Lakoff or Bloom, etc. I have always depended on you to explain modern art philosophy to me!
You make me want to read your references, but honestly, I’ll probably only read snippets. I hope you elucidate the philosophies of the individuals your reacting to as you go forward. It’s uncommon in philosophical writing to do that. That’s why I rarely read original works that are often cited in the stuff I like to read. I’ve found that reading original work by philosophers is like listening to a drunk who disregards you, and argues out loud with someone who isn’t there.
On with it….
MODERNISM
I got excited by your shared distaste for reductionist /modernist/formalist/minimalism that we were submitted to in college and still suffer from today. I also love your telling of the meaningless solipsism of Postmodernism. I love the retro aspect that Postmodernism has taken in many works, but don’t understand how this brings things forward. (All the fun big philosophical questions has been covered long ago. Since then it’s been bantering about details. Important details, but hardly inspiring in a larger sense.)
AGON
The importance of Bloom’s ‘Agon’ I’m unclear about—if I understand it to be the agony artists have about dealing with predecessors in art. This would depend upon if you aspire to take on the current societal definition of yourself as an ‘artist’. If it is, then yes, you’re forced to take on the hegemony of popular cultural definitions, and have to defend and establish yourself within those historical-cultural definitions. (Freud established that most of our neurosis/suffering comes from dealing with our identities within popular cultural restraints.) But it makes me think of the Dadaists (then Surrealists for example) who didn’t seem to be reacting to their artistic predecessors, as much as they were inspired by current politics and other movements in science, psychology, and literature. But yes, they did ‘suffer’ until society accepted them as artists.
I guess I’m reacting to the inclusive art history we were given in college, that taught that art was some continuum that only reacted to itself and never the socio-political-cultural surroundings that artists (as real people) react to, and are inspired by. Personally, I guess I suffer from never being as good at replicating the etchings of Gustave Dore, but that’s minor compared to dealing with my anxiety about re-interpreting the writings of historians and scientists I use as info resources. But that seems different from the ‘agon’ (agony) your talking about. Need to understand this better. Please help.
COGNITIVE THEORY
Makes me want to read Lakoff. But I haven’t so far. I’m more familiar with it in terms of Piaget’s and John Gardner’s as learning theory, (rejecting behaviorism, giving us choices, etc.) I’m inspired about how your going in terms of metaphor. Like it a lot. I read more evolutionary consciousness stuff, and it clicks nicely. (Like Daniel Dennett’s ‘ Consciousness Explained’) and then there’s my interest in Alchemy, which is all about metaphor and explaining it thru dramatic-symbolic pictures. ( like comics! ) and like dreams.
RANT…
I’m fascinated about how Cognitive Theory and your ideas on metaphor resonate with theories of consciousness I’ve read. Particularly the unique ability humans have to create disassociated abstractions. (Human’s can imagine a purple elephant then paint it yellow in their heads, apes and other animals can’t.) Other animals are very literal about the world, while human’s are, well . . . metaphorical! This ability to handle abstractions and recombine things in our heads make us great at ‘futuring’, and being terribly inventive, but also lead us to be disassociated from the world in general. (Making us host to all sorts of related neuroses that animals don’t normally exhibit.) In fact this disassociation is reflected in the way our brains are wired. All of our senses (except smell) are routed through the amygdala which reroutes sensations, sometimes inappropriately. There’s an ancient saying which says “You might not see God, but you can smell him.” This sense of disconnection is reflected in human cultural history by all the religions that aspire to attain the spiritual state of oneness, communion, mystical union, etc, etc. Think of all those early animistic religions that sought to identify, and actually become specific animals. Animals seen as naturally and integrally part of, and ‘one’ with nature. (typified by the prehistoric guy with horns image we used once..) Sartre said, “We are doomed to improvise.” I guess one could also rephrase this to read, “We are doomed to metaphor.”
MY CONNECTIONS (right or wrong)
Your metaphor(m) idea seems to connect with my ideas about ‘mental modeling’ (that I use to glorify my penchant for designing paper models.) See “Why Build a Model…” PDF article.
Liked what I took as your direction towards the importance of the body and physical form, in making metaphor, as creating art in general. See “Art like Alchemy…” PDF essay, from pages 151-152 at the end of my book..
As a final rant on modernism and metaphor that might relate, I’m sending the summative last page of my recent Tomb of illumination zine. See “on Modernism..…” PDF
Excited about your exhibit. Hope you can muster up some simple explanatory copy panels for the ‘Illiterati’ like me. And maybe some interactives! Forgive my brain fart, but couldn’t help but think you need a ‘ Thaumatrope’ – or turning miracle, for the exhibit. I’m sure you’ve seen these, and must have considered it. The relation to metaphor and the pun is to delicious not to share.
Enough for now.
I do love where you seem to be going. I share these examples of my own stuff, to see if I’m understanding where your going. I know you need to focus on the rest of your dissertation, but would love a response.
Jeff
Hi Jeff!
Thanks for the FABULOUS extensive feedback. That is what I was hoping for from you in particular, as I have always treasured your insights and ability to speak clearly --- from our days studying art at the university together, to our Field Museum work to our occasional collaborative artworks (a photo of "Staff and Eddie" on-line here). I'm sorry I took so long to get back to answer this, but I have had a couple art shows, the stolen art works as mentioned elsewhere here on this site and most of all painting, teaching and getting feedback from my two professors, Philip Ursprung and Andreas Langlotz, on my newest chapter, wherein I survey and discuss all the major theoreticians I will be using, bouncing off of, or even attacking.
It was a difficult chapter to write, the real serious scholarly stuff and all, and still try to make readable. I got wonderful input from the both of them. Andreas is an excellent linguistician, and one in "my" chosen direction of cognitive metaphor. Philip is not only an important art historian concentrating on contemporary art, but one who can write very well and readably, no small talent that, and in two languages! He, in fact, gave me important stylistic critical suggestions as well as historical ones. I know such readability in difficult subjects is something you treasure and achieve too. Especially in your fabulous book, The Museum of Lost Wonder (link).
I'm happy you like the "metaphor(m)" (™) play on words. I think it works well. Th. Emil Homerin al loves the word. Several others wanted far less playful things. More scholarly-sounding seriousness, I guess. My professors now are comfortable with it.
Also the word "trope." I was searching long and hard for a more general word for what I am interested in. I use the term trope when figurative language or images in general are meant. Metaphor is the usual term for the idea. Unfortunately, though, this word is used in two distinct applications, one general and one particular. Confusion often results from this failure to distinguish the species from the genus. Metaphor may mean alternately either figurative expression itself, the genus — therefore identical with figurative language or trope — or that particular instance thereof, the species, usually described as follows. Other terms bring other difficulties. Various general terms include trope, figure and figurative language. The latter two would cause a problem when the theory is applied to visual art. Anything containing the word language is not interdisciplinary enough and figure in visual art is widely used to mean the human form (e. g. “figure painting”).These terms are inadequate as they clearly reinforce views of the subject opposite to those I espouse. Connotations such as figure skating or ornateness come to mind, decorative fancy. There are linked terms such as scheme, conceit, symbol, rhetoric, poesy, poetics, analogy, etc. Yet each expresses a particular idea somewhat askew of my intentions. In short, the problems with the term reflect old, deficient and competing theories of the thing itself. Trope is also difficult because it is derived from turning, as if metaphor were a silly twist on normal “transparent” speech. Most disheartening is the (mis-)use of the word trope in the current artworld to mean something like an unconsciously used symbolic reference, usually used to dismiss stylistic opponents, suggesting they do not know what they are doing. However, in general for my purposes, it seems that trope and its concomitant adjectives tropological or tropaic are the most promising. So I'm going with them!
In Chapter Two, I will go into the particulars of the theory I have built out of all my wandering, surveying and contemplation. In Chapter One, which follows the Prelude you are discussing, I went into the theorists I am using, attacking, and so on. I do indeed hope I have made it readable enough. PLEASE call me out on this throughout my book chapters as they appear whenever I have NOT! You are one of the people I envision as my ideal audience --- intelligent, educated, yet not inundated in this particular subculture of Theory. Additionally, your drive to "populist" or democratic presentation of complex, perhaps highbrow, ideas, is in unison with my own desires, even when I don't reach them. You read my "target" well --- I am anti-reductivist to an extreme, IMpuritan, I like to say, and yet also highly critical of PoMo theoretical solipsism, especially as adjoined with praxis-level sophistry. I do not agree, though that all big philosophical questions have been covered; I would rephrase your statement to say several answers to the Big Questions have been beaten to death. There are many ideas that need to be addressed in completely fresh ways. I think cognitive metaphor theorists are doing this. Big breakthroughs often come from simple criticisms of what seem to be small details, which then in fact alter everything when re-envisioned.
I love your suggestion of dramatic-symbolic picture (like comics!) as a metaphor for, well, metaphor. Brilliant. In response to Sartre, I would assert that metaphor frees us to twist and turn the "is" of the world, looking at it in new ways which necessarily includes "ought to be."
About Bloom --- that will come clearer, I hope. Certainly I hope it did in Chapter One, which you should be able to read on-line shortly after I answer this, so I won't go into depth here. There are two Blooms, though. Harold's own thoughts, and what I have purposefully misread them as (to do a Bloom on Bloom). My take is probably much closer to your thoughts than to any truly "purist" reading of Bloom himself (if that is indeed even possible). Yet, even in Bloom's own theory, your ideas are more reflected than you may imagine. In short, it is the agon ("struggle", not really agony, although that is linked) with predecessors. BUT, by that he means you fight it out, Not that you accept a current definition of your position. If you do the latter, you are in Bloom's terms a "weak" creator. You might even be good, but are not taking on the entirety of your problem. You are sticking to what is expected and then modifying some aspects. This is what traditional artisan-type artists did pre-Renaissance, e.g., and they were often amazing. However, since at least the Renaissance and certainly since Modernism, a Bloomian Agon must include battling over the very role itself. A small part of this is the popular cultural clichés, images, and so on, but more important is the role the creators thrust themselves into. In my adaptation of this, especially in my own work and YOURS, I would thoroughly agree that a further complexity comes in, in that we, and many other artists I treasure, no longer limit ourselves to other (fine) artists as predecessors. I have comic artists, philosophers, historians, poets, musicians, scientists and others mixed into my composite predecessor-image; you have many of these, alchemists, populist scientist/authors, and others in your mix as well. Thus the Bloomian Agon (at least as I will use it) is indeed an important part of your struggle, which has always been against simple formalist pedigrees divorced from society and history.
One final thought --- I LOVE the thaumatrope idea. I will most definitely steal your suggestion and make one. It fits the newest understandings of trope wonderfully (I am thinking of "conceptual blending" in particular). Thanks! And thanks in general for your distinguished comments. I hope you find the time to keep up such feedback in my future chapters. It is like the discussions we had that I so treasured when we were working and collaborating together (link).
Keep up the playfulness of the title!
Mark:
I've enjoyed your prelude and the comments. I'm just an artist who reads a little. I sense you are the same and I appreciate your style. I'm working on a new piece of furniture inspired by one of my favorite art forms - the Japanese tea bowl - a useful object that carries some art with it. My fantasy object might be a piece of contemporary furniture painted by Cy Twombly, and I'm sort of making that piece myself. I 'm also interested in the Japanese screen as a serial depiction of space and loved the link to the book on abstract comix elsewhere on Sharkform. My new piece in this vein is called “Six Views of the Hozu River”. I'll post a photo on Facebook when I have it. I'm looking forward to following your work and responding in more detail.