How to judge a work of art today (original) (raw)
Related papers
2017
How to judge a work of art? This question, already present in the Critique of the Power of Judgment by Immanuel Kant, was updated in France in the early 1990s (thus more or less two centuries later), when the Esprit and Télérama journals dedicated some issues to what was called a “crisis” in contemporary art, namely the supposed loss of normative criteria allowing one to evaluate artworks. Following their publication, several French philosophers – among which Marc Jimenez, Yves Michaud, Gérard Genette, Jean-Marie Schaeffer, and Rainer Rochlitz – took part in a public debate on judgment, which more or less explicitly centered on the third Critique, in terms similar to those employed by Kant himself in 1790. Underlining the specificity of this debate, the present paper intends to (re)examine the issue of the judgment on works of art, by presenting and responding to two types of relativism and establishing a dialogue between Kantian aesthetics and contemporary philosophical discourses.
How to judge a work of art today? Contemporary echoes of Kantian aesthetics
How to judge a work of art? This question, already present in the Critique of the Power of Judgment by Immanuel Kant, was updated in France in the early 1990s (thus more or less two centuries later), when the Esprit and Télérama journals dedicated some issues to what was called a " crisis " in contemporary art, namely the supposed loss of normative criteria allowing one to evaluate artworks. Following their publication, several French philosophers – among which Marc Jimenez, Yves Michaud, Gérard Genette, Jean-Marie Schaeffer, and Rainer Rochlitz – took part in a public debate on judgment, which more or less explicitly centered on the third Critique, in terms similar to those employed by Kant himself in 1790. Underlining the specificity of this debate, the present paper intends to (re)examine the issue of the judgment on works of art, by presenting and responding to two types of relativism and establishing a dialogue between Kantian aesthetics and contemporary philosophical discourses. Comment juger une oeuvre d'art ? Cette question, déjà présente dans la Critique de la faculté de juger d'Emmanuel Kant, fut réactualisée en France au début des années 1990 (soit près de deux siècles plus tard) quand les revues Esprit et Télérama consacrèrent plusieurs de leurs numéros à ce qui fut appelé une « crise » de l'art contemporain, soit la perte supposée de repères normatifs pour juger les oeuvres. Suite à ces publications, plusieurs philosophes français – parmi lesquels Marc Jimenez, Yves Michaud, Gérard Genette, Jean-Marie Schaeffer et Rainer Rochlitz – prirent part à un débat public sur le jugement, qui se concentra plus ou moins explicitement sur la troisième Critique, en des termes proches de ceux employés par Kant lui-même en 1790. En soulignant la spécificité de ce débat, cet article entend (ré)examiner la question du jugement sur les oeuvres d'art, en présentant et en répondant à deux types de relativisme et en établissant un dialogue entre l'esthétique kantienne et les discours philosophiques contemporains.
Critique of the Power of Judgment in the Context of Art's Technological Reproducibility
In the notorious paragraph 9 of Immanuel Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment, the author asks, rhetorically, whether when we perform a pure judgment of taste, taking pleasure in a beautiful object comes first and only then does any aesthetic judgment follow or if it is the other way around. While elaborating this question by way of other parts of the third Critique, namely, the hierarchization of various types of art, the possibilities of cultivation of taste, and the unnecessity of the actual presence of an object for aesthetic evaluation, I would like to emphasize and strengthen the political intimations which are otherwise more emphatic in Kant's other texts. In the second part, these traits will be related to the concept of an object of art as understood by Walter Benjamin and how it relates to emancipation, which was an important concern for both thinkers.
Contemporary echoes of Kantian aesthetics
In the early 1990s, the Esprit and Télérama journals dedicated several issues to what was called a “crisis” in contemporary art , namely the supposed loss of normative criteria allowing one to judge and evaluate works of art. Following their publication, several French philosophers – among which Marc Jimenez, Jean-Pierre Cometti, Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Gérard Genette, Yves Michaud and Rainer Rochlitz – took part in a public debate which more or less explicitly centered around the Critique of Judgment, in terms similar to those employed by Kant himself in 1790. Indeed, the art world has appeared divided since then: one side (which includes, among others, Jean-Marie Schaeffer and Gérard Genette ) argues that judgment can only be subjective (left to each individual’s appreciation), while the other side (on which Rainer Rochlitz can notably be found) contends that judgment can be objective (by resting on impartial properties or criteria). Not only do these two antagonistic positions correspond respectively to the thesis and antithesis of the Kantian antinomy relative to the judgment of taste , they also exclude what allowed Kant to resolve this apparent aporia: the notion of common sense. A detailed analysis of the aforementioned positions nevertheless calls for a complexification of this somewhat schematic description of the current debate. Other philosophical legacies deserve to be recognized and examined; a semiotic study of the main expressions used (“contemporary art”, “aesthetic judgment”, “artistic criteria”) also sheds light on linguistic differences – which can contribute to the distortion of the debate and to the caricaturing of the positions at hand; contemporary art, finally, has redefined the debate’s fundamental terms, since it has questioned several notions and definitions which seemed to be given until recently – starting with the very idea of “work of art”. If, in its general outline, the current debate therefore can be apprehended through the Kantian treatment of the issue of the aesthetic judgment, it is not limited to his framework of analysis, and those convergences and divergences will be highlighted here. This presentation will therefore reexamine the issue of the judgment of works of art, by challenging Kantian aesthetics through contemporary artistic philosophical discourses and practices.
Judgment and Contemporary Art Criticism
2010
"The book is a result of a conference and reading room (held in 2009 at Emily Carr University and at Artspeak in Vancouver) that investigated the role of valuation in art criticism, this publication features commissioned texts by forum presenters and respondents. Examining the efficacy and function of art criticism, the publication focuses on the role of judgment in contemporary art writing and includes transcriptions from forum discussions with the audience. Contributors include: Jeff Derksen, Diedrich Diederichsen, James Elkins, Maria Fusco, Sven Lütticken, Tom Morton, Kristina Lee Podesva, William Wood, and Tirdad Zolghadr. ISBN 978 0 9738133 6 4 - published by Artspeak and Fillip, Vancouver"
On Aesthetic Judgments and Contemplative Perception in the Critique of the Power of Judgment
Con-textos Kantianos: International Journal of Philosophy, 2020
The paper argues that much of Kant’s largely formalistic account of aesthetic appreciation stands on the idea that the judger is able to engage with the object of her judgment purely sensibly and hence non-conceptually or non-cognitively. This is to say that the judger must be able to ground her judgment on the immediate sensory affection by the object (which makes her judgment an aesthetic judgment of sense) or on the object’s sensible form (which makes her judgment an aesthetic judgment of taste). The paper also argues that these two purely sensible grounds, accessible in the aesthetic examination of objects, underlie the feeling involved in such judgments. In broader terms, the paper outlines how Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment suggests what might be called a contemplative model of perception.
Aesthetic and Artistic Verdicts
Croatian Journal of Philosophy, 2019
In this article I propose a way of thinking about aesthetic and artistic verdicts that would keep them distinct from one another. The former are refl ections of the kinds of things we prefer and take pleasure in; the latter are refl ections of other judgments we make about the kinds of achievements that are made in works of art. In part to support this view of verdicts, I also propose a way of keeping distinct the description, the interpretation, and the evaluation of works of art. (And along the way, I worry about whether we offer the same kinds of interpretations of the objects of our aesthetic pleasures, properly considered, that we clearly do offer with respect to works of art.) The thesis I propose-the achievement model-is not original with me. What is original, perhaps, is that it is posed as an alternative to two other views of artistic evaluation, namely the appeal to "ideal critics" and the appeal to one way of understanding our preferences with regard to works of art. I do not attempt to show that each of these alternatives meets with insuperable problems; but I do indicate what I take to be the substantive content of those problems. In the end, in order to fl esh out the thesis I propose, I borrow some material from the literature on human well-being concerning how we determine what an achievement is.
Irish Marxist Review, 2020
This article is an extract from Chapter 2 of John's forthcoming book "The Dialectics of Art", due to be published by Haymarket in December 2020.
What Matters in Contemporary Art? A Brief Statement on the Analysis and Evaluation of Works of Art
(Peer-reviewed Journal) Art Style, Art & Culture International Magazine, 2019
[Peer-reviewed article by two scientific committee members of the magazine] This essay seeks to provide an idea of the basis of the main theories of contemporary art criticism. It begins with the assumed knowledge and tradition of the Academies of Fine Art, with their ideal of beauty and classical structure. The importance of such traditional references has its origin in the Renaissance in the 16th century, in Florence with Giorgio Vasari (1511-74), in Haarlem with Karel van Manda (1548-1606) and, above all, in Paris with Charles Lebrun (1619-1690) of the French Royal Academy, which established the first strict rules for the fine arts and was a reference for Europe as a whole. Academies of Fine Art were established in the major European capitals, and from the 19th century, in the Americas and worldwide. The themes and rules presented over the course of history always related to the functions of art and the legacy of classical thought as tradition. However, values and ruptures, ethics, ideologies and political ideals, and the progress of science have conditioned the fundamental importance of the renewal of Western thought. This essay concerns the decline of tradition in the arts, the lack of ideologies guiding modern art, and the transition to contemporary art. The main theories that marked this transition period-20th and 21st century-are analyzed with respect to the art, its criticism, and the theories to the understanding and transformative sense of artistic creation. Such creativity usually appears strange or transgressive to the public and primarily to be seeking a legitimation of the artist's autonomy of choice and freedom of thought. On the whole, this essay presents the main aesthetics notions relating to the critical analysis of traditional European cultures and, more recently, American ones too. American culture, in which the languages of art are based, is analyzed for its effect on occidental philosophy. Both theories of art and contemporary aesthetics are emphasized so as to better understand the work of art's current aim with regard to the discernment of theoretical, prescriptive, and ideological thinking in the visual arts. Cite as: Wagner, Christiane. 2019. “What Matters in Contemporary Art? A Brief Statement on the Analysis and Evaluation of Works of Art.” Art Style, Art & Culture International Magazine, nº 1, (March): 68-82. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5168105