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THE AESTHETICS OF VIOLENT EVENTS
| A catharsis of the aesthetic response is
the transformation of affects, the explosive
response which culminates in the discharge
of emotions. Vygotsky.Psychology of Art. (1925) |
Art as a Catharsis.
INTRODUCTION
For many people discussions regarding the
aesthetic response to violent occurrences
and human tragedy seem inappropriate. Intrusiveness
at a time of death, painful loss and trauma
appear to be in bad taste and even ghoulish.
Over-invasive photo-journalistic media reports
of murder, aviation and vehicle wreckage,
terrorist bombings, natural disasters and
warfare are often resented as tasteless or
sickening attempts to make money out of the
morbid appetites of the pathologic. There
are those who have an unwholesome interest
in death. Such people derive a vicarious
pleasure from second-hand horror experienced
safely via the two-dimensional surface of
a newspaper, a TV screen, computer monitor,
or art gallery exhibit. In this essay I examine
the aesthetic or anti-aesthetic characteristics
of the artistic representation of violent
accidents from the perspective of John Dewey's
experiential view of the aesthetic. The method
is by way of a re-examination of one of my
own historical canvasses - a collage produced
forty-three years ago as an emotional response
to a traumatic experience. I have been careful
to restrict the account of my own aesthetic
Deweyian type experience which led to the
production of the artwork referred to in
the text. References to the central artefact
and examples of other works of art depicting
a similar subject are made strictly within
the context of the Deweyian aesthetic approach.
CHAPTER ONE
1. 1 Experience as the Aesthetic of Accidental
Horror
Many years ago my friends and I were driving
home from another city when we were rapidly
overtaken by an erratically driven speeding
car. Within minutes its swaying red tail-lights
had disappeared into the winter blackness
ahead. Some time later we spotted a broken
roadside fence and a car that lay upside-
down in the field below with its lights still
on and its wheels still spinning. Having
parked in a lay-by, we dropped down into
the field and sprinted towards the stricken
car. I stumbled over something solid in the
long grass but hurried on.
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| figure. 1. Author's personal archive item. |
The roof was flattened but inside the squashed
metal, above the sound of music from a still
functioning radio, a young man's barely audible
voice whispered 'How's our kid?' In the Liverpool dialect this term does
not refer to a baby or child, but to a brother.
Someone, it might
have been me, mouthed the lie, 'He's alright - don't worry.'
Later to our utter horror it became apparent
that the object I had stumbled upon some
time earlier was the severed head of one
of the occupants. The next evening's newspaper
reported that there were only two people
in the car that night. Our kid, the young
driver had been killed outright, and his
older brother had died later in hospital.
For the rest of this essay I shall only refer
tangentially to the upsetting details of
the accident that happened that dreadful
night.
Chapter 1. 2 Catharsis
It is said we that we benefit pyschologically
and experience a degree of relief by sharing
our experience of horror and tragedy with
others. The concept of catharsis was introduced
by Aristotle, who maintained that
| Drama excites emotions which are purified
by a purging of emotional tensions. [1] (Aristotle. Poetics chpts. 9,24,25) |
Pragmatist aesthetics can be said to have
originated with John Dewey. His goal was
to breach the suffocating dominance of the
art galleries and museums which he accused
of separating the objects of high art from
real life into isolated compartments or categories.
Hickman quotes Dewey's complaint that…
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Our present museums and galleries to which
works of fine art are removed and stored
illustrate some of the causes that have operated
to segregate art instead of finding it an
attendant of temple, forum, and other forms
of associated life. [2] (Hickman. 1980. p. 394)
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Whereas the aesthetic approach of disinterestedness
or personal detachment characteristic of
aesthetic contemplation by Kantians and others
recommended a certain emotional distancing
in the quest for perceptions of form and
beauty, for Dewey, the essence and value
of art is not to be found in such artefacts
and works of art themselves, but in the dynamic
and developing experiential activity through
which they are perceived, generated and created..
Hence a Kantian style esoteric disengagement
from the perceived object as a feature of
aesthetic methodological discipline was not
a feature of Dewey's philosophy of aesthetics.
Chapter 1. 3
Creating an Aesthetic Experience
I was a car salesman for the Main Ford Dealership
in the city. By a quirk of fate, a breakdown
truck arrived dragging behind it the wreck
of the very car we had seen in the field
the night before. The company were engaged
in a marketing project at the time which
consisted of a Public Art Competition. A
new car was offered as a prize to the budding
artist who submitted the winning entry depicting
a work on the theme of road safety. The manager
suggested a member of staff should submit
something to demonstrate an interest amongst
the personnel on the understanding that as
an employee if I won I would be willing to
donate the car to the winner of the second
prize.
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I feel sure that Dewey would have agreed
with me as I stared at the rectangular collage
with its symbolic representations and shattered
fragments of the wreck that its intended
message could not be circumscribed by the
wooden frame.
Chapter 1. 4
Disinterestedness and the Deweyian Aesthetic
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Something beautiful arises from being
conscious of this representation with an
accompanying sensation of delight.
[3] (Kant. 1973. p. 43)
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The recommended Kantian criterion of an austere
or strong form of judgemental disinterestedness
as an approach to art is an aesthetic attitude
far removed from Dewey's more subjective
conception of the products of human creativity.
This strong form which confines attention
exclusively to the internal relations of
the work of art is the variety most often
associated with Kant. It is claimed that
there is also a more moderate version which
intellectualises the association between
the intrinsic and extrinsic and external
aspects of the artefact. There is a weaker
version of disinterestedness where more latitude
is allowed regarding the artefact and the
real world to which the viewer is exposed.
For the classical Kantian individual the
engagement with the beau arts was a formalistic
renunciation of the worldly experiential
appetites and desires of everyday life in
favour of a contemplation of the work's formal
properties.
This curiously remote approach was entirely
different - almost a mirror image - of the
Deweyian aesthetic, in which the appreciation
for objects of art emerges from our everyday
life encounters with the world as we experience
the environment. Such Deweyian aesthetic
occasions are often very emotional experiences,
rich in personal significance and nostalgic
implication symbolising wistful aspects of
our present or former lives. Our encounters
with the aesthetic are sometimes accompanied
by tears or laughter and are frequently linked
to a mood of à la recherche du temps perdu in which we associate a song, a film, a
play, a work of art, a building or a landscape
with a person, (perhaps a lover) or treasured
place or thing.
For John Dewey, there is no tight- lipped,
buttoned-up aesthetic approach. I see his
main endowment to art as grounding the natural
locus of a humanising aesthetics in the domain
of philosophy. Much of his approach is redolent
of an existentialist connection to the world
in which we find ourselves. A world of the
individual rather than the institution, in
which the aesthetic is all around us and
not confined to authorised establishment
foundations where we enter and speak in subdued
voices to pay homage to artefacts pronounced
beautiful or meaningful by a small coterie
of the stipended artistic cognoscenti.
Dewey continually reminds us that what differentiates
the aesthetic is what marks off an experience
from experience in general.
Franke underlines Dewey's experiential aesthetic
when he writes…
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In short, art, in its form, unites the very
same relation of doing and undergoing, outgoing
and incoming energy that makes an experience
to be an experience. [4] (Franke. 1999. p. 246)
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The tense state of mental or emotional strain
or suspense of the experiential activity
is in an aesthetic process of re-creation
that brings a Deweyian style consummatory
closure of which he wrote so much. The nature
of the experiential consummative closure
differs from artist to artist. For the mentally
disturbed Van Gogh it was the therapeutic
colourful sunflowers and fields of poppies,
for the spiritually disturbed Hieronymus
Bosch it was scenes of the utmost devilish
depravity.
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Karel van Mander concluded that Bosch's paintings
are, often less pleasant than gruesome to
look at. [5] (Gibson. 1973. p. 9)
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Edvard Munch and his The Scream
The angst-ridden screamer on the bridge speaks
(or screams) for itself. Some say his paintings
reflect Munch's sexual appetites and anxieties
which lends support to Dewey's claims that
it is experience which engenders the artistic
aesthetic. Figure. 3. The Scream. 1893. Oil,
tempera and pastel on cardboard. Nasjonalgalleriet,
Oslo.
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The intensity of Kant's distain and the gulf
that exists between the two aestheticians
can be judged from some of Kant's pronouncements.
What he judged tasteless has been pin-pointed
by Diane Collinson who writes that…
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Non-formal properties, on Kant's account,
are therefore not objects of the judgement
of taste.[6] (Collinson. 1995. P. 144.
To drive the point home Kant
again writes.
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In painting, sculpture, and in fact all the
formative arts. In architecture and horticulture,
so far as fine arts the design is what is
essential. [7] (Kant. 1973. p. 67)
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Regarding Dewey's differentation of what
he calls 'an experience' (rather than mere
experience) D. W. Prall, one of the many
critics of Dewey, has picked that up and
pointed out that it is more difficult to
isolate particular unique experiences than
Dewey claims.
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Everything that is perceived takes on some
degree of interest, is emotionally toned;
that therefore nothing in the world of science
lies outside the experienced, and hence art
as experience is just art as art. [8] (Prall. 1935. p. 388)
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I disagree with Prall. I am completely persuaded
that Dewey makes out a convincing case for
the importance of the aesthetic as an individualising,
pervasive, unique experiential singularity
which stands out from our ordinary experience.
Mathur makes a point similar to Prall, regarding
the difficulty of separating-out experience.
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Without the control of this individualizing
pervasive quality the whole aesthetic situation
will fall apart and render aesthetic essence
unintelligible. An experience blends in an
imperceptible manner descriptive and normative
elements, giving rise to misinterpretations
of his theory of art. [9] (Mathur. 1966. p. 321)
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Again, I dispute this accusation. Dewey drives
home the point that AN EXPERIENCE is distinguished
as to its apartness from the stream of lesser
or non-events encountered amongst the day
to day of the existential continuum.
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Experience in this vital sense is defined
by those situations and episodes that we
spontaneously refer to as being real experiences;
those things of which we say in recalling
them, that was an experience.
[10] (Dewey. 1980. p. 37)
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My own intention was to offer of warning
as to the dangers (particularly for young
men) of reckless driving. With regard to
didacticism in art, Rosalind Hursthouse poses
two pertinent questions. I will answer her
points in a formal manner:
Question
1. Hursthouse: Can art be morally educative
or formative by conveying moral truths, or
by aiding our grasp and understanding of
moral truths, and hence give us moral knowledge? [11] (Hursthouse. 1995. p. 241)
Answer
Yes. Art can be educative in conveying the
oughts and ought-nots of the majority opinion
regarding how we should conduct ourselves
in the world.
Question
2. Hursthouse: Can art truly represent reality
(and hence convey moral truths and yield
moral knowledge?) [12] (Ibid)
Answer
Yes. Art can represent what is objectively
real in the world and didactively communicate
the nature of prevailing public opinion regarding
the way we ought comport ourselves in relation
to others
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CHAPTER TWO
2. 1 Is the Depiction of the Circumstances
of Violent Death Art?
The more obliging Mather thinks differently.
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Ugliness is not in things…in states of mind.
So that when art takes the morally ugly it
transforms it into kind of beauty.
[14] [Mather. p. 255)
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Encouragement indeed from Mather for someone
whose motivation is neither money nor acclamation.
Nevertheless there is a view that sees ugliness
as a form of insincerity engendered by an
artist manipulating the viewing public to
his or her advantage for extra-aesthetic
(i. e., financial) or other purposes. Is
Stella Vine's above use of Princess Diana's
car as a work of art by in bad taste? She
could of course claim the similar ethical
motive of didactic road-safety as I did.
But, in view of the princess's public prominence
are we persuaded of this? Sadly I am not
totally convinced. Fellow pragmatist aesthetician
Richard Shusterman who is sympathetic to
Dewey's ideas and makes a case for a modern
re-evaluation of aesthetics in the context
of pragmatic philosophy also identifies a
slight tendency in Dewey to make conciliatory
gestures towards modern art, but of not personally
becoming involved in any in-depth discussion
of contemporary artefacts:
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Dewey vaguely gestures toward a revalidation
of popular art, complaining that popular
arts were not thought of as art because they
obtained no literary attention. Yet he himself
fails to give popular art more than the most
fleeting mention. While his text does contain
aesthetic analysis, with illustrations of
works of high art and of non-Western folk
art, there is no real discussion of contemporary
popular arts. [15] (Shusterman. 2002.)
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Chapter 2. 2
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Diana Painting Goes on Display.
London Evening Standard 16.07. 2007.
Figure. 4.
'We are repelled because we perceive duplicity'
[13] (Garvin quoting Pepper. p.405.)
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The Deweyian Experience
What would Dewey have made of Stella Vine's
painting of Princess Fdiana's car crash or
Andy Warhol's rendition of the burning crashed
car? Would he have considered it kitsch?
Prall seems to answer the question in this
quote,
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Dewey claims that art is more moral that
moralities, that indifference to praise and
blame constitutes 'moral potency.' [16] (Prall p. 389)
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Milan Kundera wrote about kitsch.
He called it 'The unbearable lightness of being.’
[17] (Kundera 1982.)
For him kitsch offered a sanitised view of
the world
which served to eliminate everything with
which we
find difficult to deal. It precludes questioning
and
provides all the answers. |
Dewey contrasts such an experience with incipient
experience in which we are distracted and
do not complete our course of action. An
experience for Dewy is also marked off from
other experiences, containing within itself
an individualising quality. Dewey believes
his theory of an experience is in accord
with everyday usage. For Dewey, life is a
collection of sequential histories, each
with their own scenarios beginnings and conclusions.
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BBC - Thursday 17th May. 2007
WARHOL CAR CRASHES SALES BARRIER
A new record was set for work by Andy Warhol
when a painting of a car crash sold for $71.7m
(£36. 3m) in New York.
[Fig.6.] (Green Burning Car. Warhol. 1963.) |
Dewey's message is a plain one. Empirical
methods can just as easily be applied to
art and the aesthetic as they can be to science
or any other domain of human enquiry. The
fact that my experientially engendered canvas
was in the form of a three-dimensional collage,
and in that sense it was (what at that period)
would be called popular art leads me to suspect
that it is doubtful if Dewey would have approved
of the piece. Nowhere in his writings have
I been able to a find him refer to such a
medium.
I am not of course claiming that he would
have either rated it highly or dismissed
it out of hand. But after what Shusterman
wrote of Dewey, that he only gestured towards
popular art, I doubt if he would have been
very impressed. He may perhaps have approved
of its experiential genesis and the novelty
of its scavenged materials. For him works
of art are important examples of an experience
where separate elements are fused into a
unity, although, rather than disappearing,
their identity is enhanced. In that sense
- if only in that sense, the great man may
have nodded his approval.
Did I have what Dewey would have described
as a sublime experience? For me, sublimity
is experienced in many ways. To undergo an
emotional sensation can range from the contemplation
of a beautiful sunset, a romantic dinner
with the beloved, an awe-inspiring revelation
of the presence of God, or a realisation
of the indeterminacy of life, as in my experience
of the aftermath of that car accident demonstrated.
Art reveals to us how those experiences may
be profoundly meaningful.
Holderbrand records a reply to Santyana criticism
of Experience and Nature in The Journal of
Philosophy, vol. XXIV of 1927
Dewey writes,
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Everything which is experienced has immediacy,
and ... every natural existence, in its own
unique and brutal particularity of existence,
also has immediacy, so that the immediacy
which characterizes things experienced is
not specious. [18] (Holderbrand. 2003. p. 84.)
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Chapter 2. 3 Conclusion
The debate about what is and what is not
appropriate to show to the public is frequently
as interesting as the images themselves.
During the direct observation of an horrific
accident event the spectator is exposed to
the sickening presence of elements of reality
that have no defined location according to
his or her every-day environmental coordinates.
The opposite number of culture is not nature
but horror. The natural usually has a clean
and distinct conceptual outline in a culture.
Dewey had his critics amongst whom probably
the most prominent was the Italian idealist
Benedetto Croce. Others go to far further
extremes than the Italian's rather malicious
remarks suggesting that Dewey's ideas were
old ones and not original,
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An Italian reader is pleasantly surprised
to meet on every page observations and theories
long since formulated in Italy and familiar
to him. [19] (Croce. 1948. p. 203)
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Thierry de Duve is one of them, though he
does not single out Dewey individually as
the target for his ire,
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Anything visual can be called art ... the
sentence this is art is a convention. Historical
knowledge alone is required to make and judge
art, some intellectual curiosity or interest
for the logic of Modernism, some strategic
desire or interest to see it further extrapolated
and tested on mere institutional grounds.
Art fades into art theory.
[20] (Thierry de Duve. 1993. p. 254)
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Thierry may well have a point. But as most
of us see an unmade bed every morning of
our lives, I doubt whether it is true that
we see judge the artist Tracey Emin's unmade
bed as a work of art. Could it be that our
surprise and delight at the sight of the
unkempt exhibit resides in the wonder and
astonishment that an unmade bed could be
considered by the art establishment as a
creative artefact in the first place? Does
the bed conceal covert clues and messages
we are not equipped to detect, in the sense
that Picasso's Guernica assumes an entirely
different significance once the obscure allusions
to the Spanish Civil War are explained to
us? If Dewey's pursuit of those aims has
sometimes provoked accusations of a lack
of clarity then I make allowances. I am sympathetic
to his humanity, generosity of spirit and
lack of elitism and his general commonsensical
peoples approach to aesthetics.
Dewey claims that what he calls an experience
is one in which the material of experience
is fulfilled or consummated in art, as for
example when a problem is solved, or a game
is played to its conclusion. His theory was
not borne out completely as far as I was
concerned. The collage depicting the aftermath
of the accident did not entirely expunge
the horror from my soul. It was AN EXPERIENCE
classically and qualitatively distinguished
and individualised in strict compliance with
the Deweyian classification, but the Deweyian
paradigm of consummation did not work. He
writes of knowledge being transformed in
aesthetic experience so that,
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It becomes something more than knowledge
because it is merged with non-intellectual
elements to form an experience worth while
as an experience. [21] (Dewey, 1958, p. 290).
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That last quote makes sense to me for researching
his theory with its explanation of the link
between experience and aesthetics has afforded
me a second chance to exorcise the ghosts
that have disquieted me all these years.
I owe a debt to Dewey. Thanks to him for
me the spirits of those two boys have finally
been laid to rest. It did not happen in the
execution of the collage but in the writing
of this account.
My own fretful spirit is now
finally at ease.
REFERENCES AND IMAGE SOURCES
[1] Aristotle. Poetics chpts. 9,24,25. Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/aris-poe.htm
accessed 30.03.2008.
[2] Hickman. Larry. E. Essential Dewey: Pragmatism,
Education, Democracy..1998. p 394 Indiana
University Press, 601 North Moreton Street,
Bloomington. USA
[3] Kant. Emmanuel. Critique of Judgement.
1973. p. 43. Tran. J. C. Meridith. Oxford
University Press.
[4] Franke. Astrid. Pragmatism and Literary
Studies p. 246. Ed. Winfried Fluck. Pragmatism
and Literary Studies. Vol. 15. 1999. Gunter
Narr Verlag, Tubingen. Germany.
[5] Gibson. Walter S. Hieronymus Bosch. 1973.
p. 9. Thames and Hudson. New York. [6] (Collinson.
Aesthetic Experience. 1995. P. 144. Philosophical
Aesthetics. Rd Oswald Hanfling. Blackwell
Publishers. Basil Blackwell Ltd. I08 Cowley
Road, Oxford. OX4
1JF.
[7] Kant. Emmanuel. Critique of Judgement.
1973. p. 67. Tran. J. C. Meridith. Oxford
University Press.
[8] Prall. D. W. Untitled Review. Jul. 1935.
p. 388. The Philosophical Review, Vol 44,
No. 4.
[9] Mathur. D. C. Consummatory Experience"
in Dewey's Aesthetics. p. 321. The Journal
of Philosophy, Vol. 63, No. 9 (Apr. 28, 1966),
pp. 225-231
[10] Dewey. John. Art as Experience. p. 37.
1980 [1934]. New York: Perigee Books.
[11] Hursthouse. Rosalind. Truth and Representation.
1995. p. 241. Philosophical Aesthetics. Rd
Oswald Hanfling. Blackwell Publishers. Basil
Blackwell Ltd. I08 Cowley Road, Oxford. OX4
1JF.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Garvin. Lucius. The Problem of Ugliness
in Art p. 405. Philosophical Review. Vol.
57. No 4. Jul. 1948. pp. 404-409.
[14] Mather. F. J. Concerning Beauty. 1935.
p. 255. Princeton University Press. 41 William
Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 USA.
[15] Shusterman. Richard. On Pragmatist Aesthetics.
2002 Fathom Knowledge Network. http://www.fathom.com/feature/35630/index.htm
16] Prall. D. W. Untitled Review. Jul. 1935.
p. 389. The Philosophical Review, Vol 44,
No. 4.
[17] Kundera. Milan. "The Unbearable
Lightness of Being."1982 [ 2004.] Harper
Collins Publishers, Westerhill Road, Bishopbriggs,
Glasgow G64 2QT
[18] Holdebrand. David. Dewey and Idealism.
P. 84. 2003. Beyond Realism and Antirealism:
John Dewey and the Neopragmatists . Vanderbilt
University Press. 2014 Broadway, Suite 320
Nashville, TN 37203.
[19] Croce. Benedetto. On the Aesthetics
of Dewey. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism, Vol. 6, No. 3. 1948), pp. 203-207.
[20] Thierry de Duve. 1993. p. 254 Journal
of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.
[21] Dewey. John. Experience and Nature,
1958, p. 290 New York: Dover Publications,
Inc. [originally. 1925]
IMAGE SOURCES
Fig. 1. Private archive element.
Fig. 2. Private archive element.
Fig. 3. Munch. Edvard. The Scream. 1893.
Oil, tempera and pastel on cardboard. Nasjonalgalleriet,
Oslo. Source. Web Museum at ibiblioPage:
Fig. 4. Anna Davis, Evening Standard 16.07.07.
Painting of Princess Diana's Car Crash. The
canvas shows paramedics surrounding the mangled
wreckage of Diana's car - with the words
from Chris De Burgh's hit Lady In Red written
over the top - goes on display tomorrow,
nearly 10 years after the fatal Paris crash.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/
Fig. 5. Harris Johnson, "A Car Crash,
Somewhere", watercolor and gouache on
paper, 2006 Car-crash Somewhere. two-car
smash painting. August 10, 2007 http://ugallery.blogspot.com/2007/08/car-crash-somewhere.htm
Fig. 6. BBC - Thursday, 17 May 2007. Warhol
Car Crashes Sales Barrier. The 1963 painting
Green Car Crash. A new record was set for
work by Andy Warhol when a painting of a
car crash sold for $71.7 m (36.3m) in New
York.
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