The Aesthetics of Horror and Disgust
Justin Lieberman
The method of art
making in which the interpretation of the work is entirely determined by the
artist is a relatively new concept. This particular approach may be seen as one
that directly opposes modernism. As meaning ceases to become ambiguous, the idea
of a center (god, science, universality of experience) is driven from the work.
In the past, a work’s ambiguity has often been seen as strength. For 2 reasons:
1.In modernism,
this ambiguity was said to have lent the work Autonomy. By not relying on an
existing pre-ordained set of signs in order to make a statement (in the sense
that language does) the work separates itself from and declares itself independent
of the existing world.
2.In post-modernism,
ambiguity is sometimes seen as a metaphor for the lack of certainty as to the
truth of commonly agreed upon meanings attributed to signs or symbols.
Modernism’s reliance on the presumption of the universality of all human
experience in certain absolutes is a reliance contingent on faith. Such a method
of art making can never dwell in the concrete reality that is the world. Post-modernism’s
assumption that communication is impossible fails to recognize the reality of
the discourse through which we understand ideas as they are presented to us.
Both of these ideas
are reliant on a belief system of art’s role in society as a purveyor of
mystic truths. These truths may be metaphysical, social, and cultural.
Both bastardize the clarity of their message through the meaningless valorization
of ambiguity.
If, as Bataille
proposes, the two dominant modes of human interaction are indeed appropriation
and excretion, (1) then artists in order to communicate or represent the world
in which they live must acknowledge this and act accordingly. The artist who
presumes to create original artworks is doomed to a series of mute, incommunicative
gesticulations, like one who has suddenly lost his voice. These are the gesticulations
of the artist who attempts to communicate broad universal truths. The viewer
recognizes this attempt and unconsciously substitutes his own ideas for the ones
the artist has intended. Two deaf old women conversing with each other make all
the gestures, little nods of understanding, pauses in speech, and signs of recognition
that people who understand one another do, but it is merely the hollow shell
of a conversation that they are carrying out.
A work of art may
fix its interpretation and thus attain clarity by utilizing signs as they have
come to be understood by a particular audience w/o altering their meaning. Then
re-presenting these signs to said audience in combination. Taking signs whole
and unaltered into a work is appropriation. The re-presentation of these signs
is excretion.
In the 1960’s the group of artists known as the Vienna Actionists executed
a series of performances that carried the idea of transgression in art to extremes,
which had yet to be even hinted at, by art that preceded them. The artists Gunter
Brus, Hermann Nitsch, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, and Otto Muhl used blood, self-painting,
animal sacrifice, self-mutilation, and sex in an iconoclastic and self-destructive
way that was often ironic and humorous (particularly in the cases of Brus and
Muhl) rather than spiritual in its associations. The extremity of their transgressions
have made subsequent attempts at transgression in an art context seem pithy by
comparison. For the contemporary artist, the creation of work that relies on
physical or sexual violence for its transgression is no longer viable, as these
are everywhere in our culture and have ceased to constitute a transgression at
all.
After the death of art, (was it ever alive?) what options are open to the artist
that he may continue his practice? I suggest the one-liner as a possible solution
to this problem. The one-liner makes use of both appropriation and excretion
simultaneously as it evades the essentialism inherent in the grand idea. In its
combination of appropriated elements, the one-liner functions as a stepladder
to it’s own implications, which can be manifold. Each person’s reaction
reveals something of both the joke and themselves. So, in the same way that a
joke provokes different reactions based on the context in which it is told, so
does the artwork whose interpretation is fixed reflect back each viewer’s
particular perception of it. In this way the object asserts itself and may stand
in judgment even as it is being judged. However, there is a problem with this
game-like system of art-making and art criticism in which the shuffling of variables
is of primary concern.
Herbert Read, in
his essay ‘Psycho-analysis and the problem of aesthetic value’ (2)
attacks the Freudian psychoanalytic view of art as reductive, placing too much
importance on the subject of a work of art and not enough on its formal qualities,
which he sees as art’s primary concern. In a way, this is true insomuch
as an art with no formal qualities would be little more than a game itself, a
useless diversion. Art must bear some relationship to real lived everyday experience.
But how? The experience of art calls into question any notion of the real to
begin with. In our suspension of disbelief before a work of art, what had once
seemed concrete reality begins to crumble. Bataille says of poetry: “…starting
from the moment when this unreality immediately constitutes itself as a superior
reality, whose mission is to eliminate (or degrade) inferior vulgar reality,
poetry is reduced to playing the standard role of things…”(3)
I believe there is yet another solution to the problem of ambiguous meaning,
and this is to expand our definition of art to include objects which have no
meaning at all. Specifically, objects that were not created with the intention
of becoming works of art.
Art that serves
a purpose, i.e.; is not useless, renounces its status as art and becomes merely
applied art. (4) Although it does not necessarily follow that all useless things
are art, I believe that the intention to create a real thing and its subsequent
failure could also constitute a work of art. I refer to a real thing in the sense
that art and real things are often identical in appearance. (5) Heidigger referred
to these failed pieces of equipment as present-at-hand, meaning that they made
themselves ostentatious through the frustration experienced at their attempted
use. (6) Heidigger found this ostentatious-ness to be bland and boring, but is
art so different? The object in question would possess a number of interesting
qualities. In some ways it would resemble a kitsch object by carrying with it
the history of it’s own debasement. But it would also be linked to the performative
in that this would be a compressed physical history of debasement rather than
a cultural one. It differs from the readymade in that it is not a functioning
real thing made useless by its declared status as art. More likely it was made
useless by poor design or craftsmanship. Whereas the readymade could be put back
into use with little effort, the new type of object is dead to the old world
of useful things and may only go on living in its artificial zombie-like state
as a work of art. It differs from a camp object in that it is not a failed work
of art. It possesses no such glamour. As a failed real thing it is difficult
to surpass in its banality which is beyond intention. Broken machines and crumbling
architecture are like blind spots in our vision. Memory glosses over them as
if they weren’t there. Because of their invisibility, they are the haunt
of crime and this makes their banality ominous. The laughter that accompanies
the failed real thing is a cold and heartless one.
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1.Bataille, Georges. “The Use Value of D.A.F. de Sade (An Open Letter to
my Current Comrades) (1929-30)”, in Allan Stoekl (Ed.), Bataille, Georges.
Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press
2.Read, Herbert. (1950), “Psycho-analysis and the Problem of Aesthetic Value”.
The Forms of Things Unknown: Essays Toward an Aesthetic Philosophy. New York:
Faber and Faber, pg. 76-93.
3.Bataille, Georges. “The Use Value of D.A.F. de Sade (An Open Letter to
my Current Comrades) (1929-30)”, in Allan Stoekl (Ed.), Bataille, Georges.
Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, pg.97
4.Richter, Gerhard. “Notes, 1988”. The Daily Practice of Painting:
Writings 1962-1993. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, pg.170 Here, Richter
is referring specifically to art objects that function in a practical way, be
it socially, politically or even culturally. Graphic Design for example.
5.Danto, Arthur. “Works of Art and Mere Real Things”. The Transfiguration
of The Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press, pg.3
6.Heidigger, Martin. The Origin of the Work of Art
