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The Reenchantment of Art. - book reviews
Art Journal, Summer, 1993 by Bradford Collins
During the past two decades the Western art world has offered evidence of a growing conviction among its participants that their products and activities are of little real consequence to an inhumane capitalist culture blindly and dangerously out of control. This combined sense of inconsequence and pessimism is, I believe, the philosophical core of Postmodern art, the hard nub of certitude inside most of the styles, approaches, and theories that have been assigned that label. This fact does not, however, sufficiently characterize the Postmodernist phenomenon, because its oft-remarked pluralism reflects a genuine variety of responses to these core beliefs, from cynical accommodation to esoteric endgame commentary, from modest social instrumentalism to surrealistic solipsism. Since about 1970 what we have been witnessing, in short, is the emergence and development of an assortment of Postmodernisms.
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Not surprisingly, the contemporary field also includes those who resist the darker assumptions within these various manifestations, those still attracted to the old Modernist hope that art can contribute significantly to positive social change.(1) Artists of this persuasion are rare, however. Most of those who belong to this camp are critics and theorists whose intellectual roots predate 1970. The books under review are fine examples of this conservative phenomenon, partly because they suggest its diversity. Their authors represent three different Modernist strains: Arnheim the scientific, Werckmeister the political, and Gablik the primitivist. Moreover, each would reinvigorate his or her particular brand of Modernism by countering the recent vogue for defeatist Poststructuralist literary and philosophical ideas. Although all three prescriptions for artistic reform are problematic, Werckmeister's and Gablik's do contain useful material for those in the arts who would confront the crises of contemporary art and culture both realistically and positively.
The exception, I think, is Rudolf Arnheim's To the Rescue of Art: Twenty-six Essays. The book is a collection of his short writings from the past fifteen years, eight of which appear here for the first time. The noted psychologist of art assembled the collection to address what he sees as an unprecedented crisis in the visual arts: for the first time in history "art as such seems to be questioned and endangered". Signs of this emergency include "a lack of discipline and responsibility," "a vulgarity of taste," "a triviality of thought," and a "readiness to make do . . . without the engagement of the full resources that used to be the conditio sine qua non of respectable art." The current "insufficiency shows up in the poor level of much of the work produced and the low standard of what is critically accepted".
Arnheim apparently believes that all of these ills--none of which are documented or otherwise historically analyzed(2)--derive from the skeptical relativism espoused by philosophers such as Richard Rorty. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) Rorty questions the notion of objective truth: "We understand knowledge when we understand the social justification of belief, and thus have no need to view it as accuracy of representation." According to Arnheim, this adolescent skepticism--"unbecoming a seeker of the truth"--has "spread, like a cloud of poison gas, from philosophy through our intellectual world". The view that "there are no . . . objective criteria" has led, he rather sweepingly claims, "to a widespread agreement that anything goes". Arnheim would counter that disastrous influence, and thus remedy our many artistic ills, by redirecting our attention back to objective artistic standards: "What needs to be done, it seems to me, is to revive and explore the principles on which all productive functioning of the arts based".
The book is not devoted to systematic explorations of these principles, however, but to "filling in gaps and clarifying obscurities by examples derived from various areas". The first four parts are devoted to an extremely wide range of topics, which include the shortcomings of formalism; negative space in architecture; art therapy; the difference between visual images and verbal language; Picasso's Guernica; the art of psychotics; the nature of sculpture; and the art of the blind. Levels of sophistication also vary widely. Professionals, to whom the collection is addressed, will probably be annoyed by material like "Seven Lessons in Art Appreciation," which speaks down to them. Arnheim seems willing to run this risk in order to hammer home his conservative message. Sprinkled throughout the essays are recurring references to the values of balance, order, clarity, and generalized expression. In his insightful essay on the bull in Picasso's Guernica, for example, we find: "Intensification through abstraction--is this not one of the devices of great art?". "Perceptual Aspects of Art for the Blind"--written for art educators who work with the blind--includes this aside: "The need to integrate the elements of a coherent whole is as dominant in haptic perception as it is in any other organic process".
