Andrew's Wiki
Theory Ag (changes)

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Basic

• Burger’s Method: he finds out that there’s something called the “institution” that mediates between art and society
  • “there is a historically specific institutionalization of aesthetic praxis in every era….not external to the concept of the work of art” xxxvii (the concept, ‘work of art,’ means something diff in every age)
  • definition of art NOT actually autonomous, from history that is
• Historical Shift: from Aestheticism to Avant-Garde
  • “developing skepticism toward language and the change in the relation of form and content…inherent in the developmental logic of the developmental logic of the institution ‘art,’ ie, the specific institutionalization of the commerce with art in bourgeois society.” xiii
  • late 18th c: art critiques society via content
    • during 18th c, art becomes autonomous (“apartness from the praxis of life”)
  • mid 18th c: “skepticism toward language and meaning” begins, “an increasing consciousness on the part of the artist of writing techniques, how material is applied, and its potential for effect.” xiii
    • what’s truly happening? well, “semantic atrophy” which is a necessary but negative result
  • Symbolism and Aestheticism: now attention is turned to form instead
    • “form becomes the preferred content of the works:” that is, its SEPARATION from society is the content of the works
    • the separation of art from society is now “intensified” (and art has to scream out loud its autonomy)
  • So for Burger, aestheticism “severs itself consistently from all social relevance” xiv: as it develops “special realm called aesthetic experience” leads to people thinking autonomous art = “social inconsequentiality”
    • only thing “aestheticist modernism” can do is “give body to social criticism by the stylistic weapons it tried to use to undermine the homogeneous ideology of bourgeois society.” xxxvi “passive” where A G is “active”
      • of course keeping in mind that Burger knows that A G would only happen when the historical moment was right, ie A G needed aestheticist modernism before it b/c only that would make the institution of art clear, b/c only then was the bourgeois institution at its end (b/c of the radical separation) and thus perceivable (“Minerva’s owl only begins its flight as dusk emerges,” said Hegel Philosophy of Law)
      • and yet I think, why are you an artist if you want praxis? go out and throw the little streets upon the big, then. stop making art. (reminds me of K M’s reaction to feminism: she was glad they were doing it, but said that she didn’t want any part of it, found it boring—and yet you see how much critique of patriarchy she got in anyway!)
  • As A Consequence, artists now want to plug back into social praxis
    • how did this happen? “art comprehended the mode in which it functioned in bourgeois society, its comprehension of its own social status” xiv
    • in the 1920s “first movement in art history that turned against the institution ‘art’ and the mode in which that autonomy functions”
    • while EVERY OTHER kind of art accepted autonomy, A G art refuses it. That’s what makes it special.
      • A G: “Their effort was not to isolate themselves, but to reintegrate themselves and their art into life. It is no accident that the active, even aggressive artistic manifesto…became the preferred medium of expression for the avant-garde artist of the twentieth century” xxxvi
      • A G: not only to “destroy” the bourgeois institution of art, but also “permitted its existence and significance to become visible and perceivable in the first place” xxxvi
      • A G: rejected the organic work of art (“internal semantic plenitude that escapes simple fixations,” rather than “ideological demarcations that enclose the work of art from external considerations”): thus collage and montage significant: ””The avant-garde saw that the organic unity of the bourgeois institution of art left art impotent to intervene in social life, and thus developed a different concept of the work of art. Its concept of art sees a chance to reintegrate art into social praxis if artists themselves would create unclosed, individual segments of art taht open themselves up to supplementary response. The aesthetic fragment functions very differently than the organic whole of romantic artwork, for it challenges its recipient to make it an integrated part of his or her reality and to relate it to sensuous-material experience.” xxxix
• Burger doesn’t identify modernism w/A G; he thinks them separate: modernism may turn on the conventional linguistic patterns of art, but doesn’t necessarily turn on “art” itself, doesn’t quarrel with the institution of art
• As Adorno said in AEsthetic Theory, “it is the characteristic of the non-organic work of art using the principle of montage that it no longer creates the semblance of reconciliation…The insertion of reality fragments into the wokr of art fundamentally transforms that work…They are no longer signs pointing to reality, they are reality.”
  • b/c it “admits actual fragments of empirical reality, thus acknowledging the break, and transforming it into an aesthetic effect.”
  • whereas “organic work of art…pretends to be like nature projects an image of the reconciliation of man and nature 78
  • Adorno’s words: “the negation of synthesis becomes a compositional principle” that is negation of reconciliation: not “unity of meaning”
• Burger: “the parts ‘emancipate’ themselves from a subordinate whole; the parts are no longer its essential elements…the parts lack necessity” 80 you could’ve had diff elements, a diff order “refusal to provide meaning” b/c avoids “total impression that would permit an interpretation” and the shock will be “Stimulus to change one’s conduct of life” 80
  • also means that you think of the “principles of construction,” on art-making, meaning-making itself 81
• “art is detached from daily life…it cannot be integrated into that life” “The lack of tangible effects is not the same as functionlessness…but characterizes a specific function of art in bourgeois society: the neutralization of critique.” 13 so art plays role “in the development of bourgeois subjectivity”
  • art understood as diff from all other activities by the 18th century, with Kant’s aesthetics: “non-purposive creation and disinterested pleasure, this whole was contrasted with the life of society which it seemed the task of the future to order rationally, in strict adaptation to definable ends” “does not fall under the principle of maximization of profit”
  • Kant’s 1790 Critique of Judgment: “subjective aspect of the detachment of art from the practical concerns of life is reflected” between senses and reason (“The delight which determines the judgment of taste is independent of all interest”), that is it’s detached from practical contexts
    • how separated? aesthetic judgment universal, whereas reason and bourgeois interests are particular; he also separates it from morality; “Between sensuousness and reason” so taste is “free and disinterested” hence universal

Notes from Eysteinnson

• Theory rests on the “institution of art,” relative autonomy from economic base (Marx and Marcuse based)
• Though art “contains an element of social criticism, since it holds up a picture of a better world” (that’s Ey’s own words), it nonetheless “remains without tangible effect, ie, it cannot be integrated into that life” (Burger’s quote).
  • Hence, art is “the neutralization of critique” due to art’s relation to real life
  • Historically, eighteenth century = art still political
    • But during the 19th century, though, “art wants to be nothing more than art,” culminating in aestheticism. (Burger’s words)
• Okay, so here we have Burger’s “apartness from the praxis of life” about art institutionally in bourgeois society
  • Aestheticism puts into content the assumption art already had by this moment in history
• What’s the next step?
  • Self-criticism: the avant-garde
  • AG: “The other side of autonomy, art’s lack of social impact, also becomes recognizable. The avant-gardiste protest, whose aim it is to reintegrate art into the praxis of life….” (Burger’s own words)
  • AG: “their primary target is art as an institution such as it has developed in bourgeois society” (Burger’s words)
  • Fatal flaw: you still need the autonomy of the art sphere in order to have “a critical cognition of reality” so you can’t ever truly integrate art and life
    • I say that Burger suffers from a logical flaw here: just because they want to make art direct life, doesn’t mean that they want to destroy the different between the two spheres. They want to be special and have independent thought (see Breton’s insistence on intellectual freedom), and they want to imprint art onto life. That doesn’t mean there was never a difference. The art will be made before the effect is made on society, and it will remain this way so you can keep changing and not get static (another one of Breton’s points)
• Eysteinnson’s Critique of Burger
  • Burger seems to assume “regular” modernism to be just another part of bourgeois literature that dupes you
  • His “institution of art” is too narrow and assumes a homogeneous system of reading and writing
  • Too limited to individual movements (rather than history practice)
  • Depends too much on intentions of artists and movements
  • Dislikes Burger’s assumption of the “clear link between art’s relative autonomy and its role as a neutralizer of social critique” (166, Burger’s words)
    • Not all art will be “false satisfaction” (166)
    • As Habermas points out, though some of the bourgeois’ “beautiful art” may indeed just trick it into feeling satisfied and happy, “radicalized art” presents “the negation rather than the complement of its social practice” (in H’s words)
  • Content not “unilaterally determined” by art as an institution
  • Burger skirts the issue of form and only talks about content
  • Wonders why we should even value an art that gets back to the life of material, bourgeois stagnation.
    • Desire for integration is the true complicity.
    • Admits that Burger does mean a new, revolutionary life-praxis is what they want to jolt into being through their art, but says that Burger never really proves it
  • It’s reductive to say that the AG only unleashed its guns against a conception of art alone
    • In fact, the AG’s true aim was “bourgeois life-praxis and conventional language and discourse” says Burger (173)
  • Ey refers to “form-content dialectic” that still allows for critique and that stems from Habermas and Adorno
• Burger critiquing Lukacs’ “organic realism”
  • Realism creates that organic social whole it pretends merely to record
  • “seeks to make unrecognizable that it has been made”
    • lack of self-consciousness of artifice seen as a moral problem
  • “Organic lit” even existing just shows how detached art is from reality
    • danger of whitewashing history from the work (but I would say of course you can still find hints of history in it)

My Reflections

• Seriously, dude doesn’t trust Adorno even though he depended on Adorno (art’s separateness is the key to its radical nature)
• Is the difficulty of modernism truly a kind of protective coat that makes it invisible to the forces of commodification?