I want to pick up on this---the Stephen David Ross interview conducted by Rick over at Artrift. I have let this important interview slip.
We had got as far as discussing the fourth part of the interview, where Stephen David Ross was talking about the intensity and transfigurative experiences of art that are not only disturbing but threatening; and then connected them to Nietzsche's concept of the Dionysian, which identified suffering with existence.
The fifth part of the interview is a David Ross quote on mimesis.This is the quote:
"I wish to consider the extreme possibility that the distinction between great art and other art, high and low art, whatever and wherever that distinction may be, betrays the responsibility in art expressed by mimesis, to take every difference seriously…I think that we will never be able to tell at any time whether a work we consider poor, or weak, or broken, may not be found to be wonderful at some time in the future, because of changes in the nature of art, and the world. And second, more extreme, the distinction between good and bad, high and low, betrays art and the good…In its different works, popular, folk, kitsch art reveals the gift of the good because it opens, reveals, interrupts, touches heterogeneity, differences among individuals and kinds, everywhere in nature. Even familiar works hung on motel walls interrupt the blankness of empty space, ask us if we notice them at all why they are there, what they reveal, and what might illuminate that space instead. The possibility of art, high, low, mediocre, whatever – all distinctions that do not bear on poiesis or mimesis – bears the touch of the good in relation to the “finest differences,” differences beyond differences, toward heterogeneity. This bearing, expressing, of heterogeneity belongs to art as mimesis, is the gift of beauty." (Ross, GB,p. 93-94).”
In that text Adorno & Horkheimer use mimesis as counter rationality to a calculative instrumental rationality that has swept all before it modernity. Mimesis has a wider connotation than the conventional understanding of mimesis as the idea of art as an imitation of nature. It is connected to their thesis of a fissure or divorce between sign and image with sign operating in the domain of science and image in the domain of art. What they say is this:
"As a system of signs, language is required to resign itself to calculation in order to know nature, and must discard the claim to be like her. As image, it is required to resign itself to mirror-imagery in order to be nature entire, and must discard the claim to know her....The separation of sign and image is irredemiable."
If instrumental rationality is a form of identity thinking (ie., it subsumes the heterogeneous under the sign of sameness), then art is a refuge for the experience of the non-identical. The mimetic aspect of autonomous art lies in its expressing aspects of reality through its innovative form that were not perceivable before. Through mimesis art establishes a critical relation with social reality.
That is one account of Stephen Ross's conception of art as mimesis that expresses difference. I lot of what Ross says I do not understand, eg., "The possibility of art, high, low, mediocre, whatever.... bears the touch of the good in relation to the “finest differences,” differences beyond differences, toward heterogeneity."
What does "differences beyond differences, toward heterogeneity" mean?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at January 20, 2004 09:14 AM | TrackBackI am puzzled by the Stephen Ross's remark that “I wish to consider the extreme possibility that the distinction between great art and other art, high and low art, whatever and wherever that distinction may be, betrays the responsibility in art expressed by mimesis, to take every difference seriously…”
There seem to be at least two rather large assumptions here.
First is that art has anything to do with mimesis - a very debatable proposition.
Second, that it is peculiarly the responsibility of "art expressed by mimesis" to “take every difference seriously”. If this is in fact a “responsibility” (and to whom, or what?), why is it reserved to mimesis alone? If you thought, for example, that art was about expression or even “significant form”, why would you not, equally, have to “take every difference seriously” (whatever that means exactly)?
Posted by: Derek Allan on January 22, 2004 09:18 AMDerek,
I agree with your questioning of Ross's assumptions.I've struggled with thattextual fragment. A lot of it does not make sense to me.
In reponse to mimesis I have tried to give an account that accepts the modernist emphasis on form and how that form may be mimetic---it points towards form as sedimented content.
The reponsibility could be tackled along the lines of art's critical relation to society by giving expression to the mute aspect of lived reality that is covered over by the identity thinking of instrumental rationality. Arts 's responsibility (to furthering the process of enlightenment) lies in its gesture of negation and make people aware of the terror within everyday reality.
Of course, none of this is Ross---its Adorno---but it can illuminate why art would take difference (heterogeneity) seriously. It opens up a space to think otherwise to economic rationality, to resist one's historical condition, make an honest assessment of our lived social reality and oppose the continuance of the historical tre through the use of advanced techniques and new forms.
An Australian examaple would be the work of Tracey Moffatt in the above post.
.
Gary
I read your comment with interest. I have only ever skimmed through “Dialectic of Enlightenment” and intend to have a better look before too long.
Like you, I have some problem following Ross’s arguments. Without wishing to be unkind, he seems to me to have a kind of ‘rhapsodic’ approach to the theory of art. I am not an advocate of so-called ‘analytical’ aesthetics (which never seems to me to get to the point of actually talking about art) but the rhapsodic approach doesn’t appeal to me either.
No, I have no idea what "differences beyond differences, toward heterogeneity" means. I thought ‘heterogeneity’ itself meant a condition of difference, variety etc...
Maybe Ross will be a little clearer in your next instalment on him.
Derek,
Dialectic of Enlightenment is a powerful text, but it is a very difficult book, full of dense dialectical circles within circles and swirls.
You get glimmers that 'sink in' and then start working on your own mode of thinking.
Most of the aesthetic stuff is in Adorno's Aesthetic Theory. It deals with the categories of aesthetics and is much more accessible.
I too thought that heterogeneity roughly meant difference, diversity etc.
I also have trouble with phrases like the 'gift of beauty" in Ross's text. What has happened to the ugly? Or the sublime?
Gary
I confess I don’t place much importance on the categories of ‘beauty’, ‘the sublime’ etc that modern (and post-modern) aesthetics seems so interested in.
What interests me first and foremost is art itself – starting with the fundamental question: what is its human purpose? (In the sense of: why, after all, do we have it at all?) I don’t accept that the reason is: because we want/need ‘beauty’ around us (though *some* great art – eg Raphael – appeals to a sense of beauty). Nor do I think it is because we want/need experiences of ‘the sublime’ (though *some* art appeals to a sense of the sublime). Nor do I even think it has anything essential to do with the social/historical dimension of human experience (though I don’t think it is insulated from it). I think the reason is of a deeper, ‘metaphysical’ nature – which is why I am so interested in Malraux.
None of this is very relevant to Ross, except that it perhaps explains why I get a little impatient with notions such as ‘the gift of beauty’. In a way, thinking of that kind seems to me to trivialise art – as if its purpose were to provide a kind of superior form of decoration or mental titillation. But Ross is not alone in suggesting that. Lots of modern aesthetics seems to me to do the same. If it were really the case, I personally wouldn’t waste my time on the question ‘what is art?’. There’d be lots of more useful and worthwhile things to do...
Excuse this rave. Hope it is of some interest.
Cheers
Derek
Derek,
big questions.
I sidestep a lot of them by locating art within the Enlightenment tradition ---hence art is connected to truth and the good life.
How so? It lends a hand to easing human suffering
It's not satisfactory in terms of the metaphysical need--quite evasive in fact; but that's the European tradition I've inherited by living in Australia.
So I try and make do with what I've inherited even though I'm deeply critical of that inheritance.
Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on February 1, 2004 10:32 PMGary
Yes. They are big questions. But I don't think they are outside the Western tradition.
In general I try to avoid 'big words' when talking art theory so I use the word 'metaphysical' with some reluctance. But it is in fact a metaphysical need that art responds to, in my view. I mean a need as deep as the need for a religion or an absolute - though it's not the same as these.
How's that for a large claim!!
Cheers
Derek
to link mimesis to image is not so straightforward as you write - if you reread the last chapter about 'antisemitism' than you see adorno and horkheimer use mimesis in several senses.
if we take an author as l?than we see that mimesis is the origin of rationality and so also of irrationality.
if we than take (artistic) mimesis as a resistance principle against discursive language (conceptual), there still seems to me to be a problem because. A bit further in the text from the passage that you quoted, there stands indirectly that pure image is affirmative. so that a sincere criticism should try on an unsynthetical nonsymbolic way strife to the reunion of both sign and image.
my question is than: positive mimesis is it the sincere coupling of sign and image, or only the image - and thats why criticism is necessary for art to become true?
Dechen