This is the seventh and last part of Rick's interview with Derek Allen on Malraux's theory of art. It was the post that I lost on the weekend, much to my dismay.
In the interview Rick mentions that Derek has recently presented a paper entitled ‘André Malraux and the Function of Art’ to an aesthetics conference at Sydney University organized by the Sydney Society for Literature and Aesthetics.
The paper is not online. None of the conference papers are. Neither are the major academic journals online. Even though aesthetics has become rich and varied aesthetics remains a closed academic shop--an academic speciality. The exceptions are Contemporary Aesthetics and Canadian Aesthetic Journal There is still a lot of work to be done to overcome traditional aesthetics as an academic discipline and develop a critical theory of the image.
The topic of the interview is the function of art. Is there one function of art? asks Rick
Derek says that 'function' in his paper meant the creative act. However function also has a another meaning----the end of art practices. So what can be said about that.
Derek responds by highlighting the way that Malraux breaks with traditional aesthetics. He says that:
"..it is certainly true that, in Malraux’s view, the creative achievement that we today name ‘art’ has not always been directed to the same end. Indeed, he insists very strongly on this point. In Ancient Egypt, for example, as he points out, the concept ‘art’ was non-existent and the purpose of those objects from Egyptian culture that we now call art was, quite specifically, to promote the well-being of the departed in the Afterlife. That was their function, their very raison d’être. One can find many similar examples in other cultures."
Derek adds that:
"Malraux wants a theory of art that fully acknowledges this – a theory that does not try to fudge the issue by claiming that, irrespective of what they may have said or done, the Egyptians ‘really’ saw their Pharaoh’s image in his mortuary chapel as what we term ‘art’, or, as some try to argue, as an instance of ‘the beautiful’".
This is break away, or a rupture from traditional aesthetics. It represents an overcoming of aesthetics. Derek then adds:
"It is, to my mind, one of the key questions facing aesthetics today, and one to which it has so far failed to give a good response, or even to raise in clear, unambiguous terms. Malraux is seeking – and to my mind successfully finds – a theory of art that deals with this."
Rather than fudge the issue Adorno made some steps along these lines. He saw both art and science evolving out of magic with art aiming at mimesis. It is only a step because in Aesthetic Theory he mentions that:
"...the autonomy art gained after having freed itself from its earlier cult functions and its derivatives depended on the idea of humanity. As society becomes less humane art becomes less autonomous. Those constituent elements of art that were suffused with the ideal of humanity have lost their force." (p.1)
Hence the place and function of contemporary autonomous art has become uncertain.
So though art steps out of magic Adorno sees the cultural practices of Ancient Egypt in terms of the cult function of art or its derivatives. And again, when talkign about art's wound:
"Having disassociated itself from religion and its redemptive truths, art was able to flourish. Once secularized, however, art was condemned, for lack of any hope for a real alternative, to offer to the existing world a kind of solace that reinforced fetters autonomous art had wanted to shake off."(ibid, p. 2)
Adorno's main concern is with the function of autonomous modern art. When talking about the origins of art he mentions prehistoric art. So he sees art as changing, rather than art being born in a secular liberal society. But he gives it a twist that brings him close to Malraux:
"Works of art become what they are by negating their origin. It was only fairly recently, namely after art had become thoroughly secular and subject to a process of technological evolution and after secularization had taken hold, that art aquired another important feature: an inner logic of development." (ibid, p.4)
Art sees art as a process of becoming. he then says:
"Art should not be balmed for its one -time ignominous relation to magical abracadabra, human servitude and entertainment, for it has after all annihilated these dependences along with the memory of its fall from grace."
Malraux is much sharper. The concept ‘art’ was non-existent in Ancient Egypt and the purpose of those cultural objects from Egyptian culture are not art. I think that Walter Benjamin is more radical than Adorno on this and so is closer to Malraux.
to be continued.
art has no history, history has art
Posted by: meika von samorzewski on July 25, 2003 12:38 PM