Plato

Modern readers may find it puzzling that Plato praises beauty while condemning art; for we have come to assume that these go together. We tend consequently to suspect that Plato lacks a properly developed concept of art. But Plato is not at all guilty of overlooking the point that art aspires to be beautiful. His thesis is that it cannot attain this aim though it may appear to do so. It is because of this deficiency, and because he believes that the experience of true beauty is of such paramount importance, that Plato is so severe on artists. [...]

In Book X of the Republic Plato labours the point that an artistic representation of something, e.g. a bed, stands at 'third remove from reality', i.e. from the ideal Form of the bed. Whereas a craftsman who can make a bed knows what a bed is, i.e. the Form of a bed, a painter, Plato insists, only knows what a bed looks like. Works of art are in his view only a very inferior means of bringing us into contact with the true objects of knowledge, viz. the Forms.

A.L. Cothey: The Nature of Art (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 30/31.

 

Mediæval Theology

All bodies have a likeness to good things which are invisible.

Richard of St. Victor: Benjamin Major, II, 12 (PL 196, col. 90). [Quoted by Umberto Eco: The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, trans. Hugh Bredin (London: Radius, 1988), p.138.]

In my judgment, there is nothing among visible and corporeal things which does not signify something incorporeal and intelligible.

John Scottus Eriugena: De Divisione Naturae, V, 3 (PL 122, cols. 865-866). [Quoted by Umberto Eco: The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, trans. Hugh Bredin (London: Radius, 1988), p.138. ]

La nature n'est 'belle' qu'aux yeux de qui la regarde comme le grand livre à travers lequel nous parle le Créateur: la 'beauté' renvoie à une entreprise de communication.

Hubert Damisch: Fenêtre jaune cadmium (Paris: Seuil, 1984), p. 63.

Zen

Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that the mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got the very substance I am at rest. For it is just that I see mountains once again as mountains and waters once again as waters.

Ch'ing Yuan [Quoted by Arthur C. Danto: "Artworld", p. 579. See also: Arthur C. Danto: The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), p. 134.]

Lewis Carroll

         “Did you ever make real life into a drama?” said the Earl. “Now just try. I’ve often amused myself that way. Consider this platform as our stage. Good entrances and exits on both sides, you see. Capital background scene: real engine moving up and down. All this bustle, and people passing to and fro, must have been most carefully rehearsed! How naturally they do it! With never a glance at the audience! And every grouping is quite fresh, you see. No repetition!”
          It really was admirable, as soon as I began to enter into it from this point of view. Even a porter passing, with a barrow piled with luggage, seemed so realistic that one was tempted to applaud. He was followed by an angry mother, with hot red face, dragging along two screaming children, and calling, to some one behind, “John! Come on!” Enter John, very meek, very silent, and loaded with parcels. And he was followed, in his turn, by a frightened little nursemaid, carrying a fat baby, also screaming. All the children screamed.
          “Capital byplay!” said the old man aside. “Did you notice the nursemaid’s look of terror? It was simply perfect!”
          “You have struck quite a new vein,” I said. “To most of us Life and its pleasures seem like a mine that is nearly worked out.”
          “Worked out!” exclaimed the Earl. “For any one with true dramatic instincts, it is only the Overture that is ended! The real treat has yet to begin. You go to a theatre, and pay your ten shillings for a stall, and what do you get for your money? Perhaps it’s a dialogue between a couple of farmers--unnatural in their overdone caricature of farmers’ dress---more unnatural in their constrained attitudes and gestures--most unnatural in their attempts at ease and geniality in their talk. Go instead and take a seat in a third-class railway-carriage, and you’ll get the same dialogue done to the life! Front-seats--no orchestra to block the view--and nothing to pay!”

Sylvie and Bruno, 1885. Chapter 22: Crossing the Line.

Dada

"L'Art est partout, excepté dans les temples d'Art, comme Dieu est partout, sauf dans les églises."

Francis Picabia: "L'œil cacodilate."

Marcel Duchamp, who did to representation what Friedrich Nietzsche did to religion, used the ready-made to "present", not to "represent". Johns and Rauschenberg, etc., are the "counter-reformers" who collaged real objects into the representational space of their paintings.

Osvaldo Romberg : "Art to Art. Life to Life." Faith, Ridgefield: Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, 1999.

 

Ludwig Wittgenstein

The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connexion between art and ethics.

Notebooks, 7-10-16.

Aesthetically, the miracle is that the world exists. That what exists does exist.

Notebooks, 20-10-16.

Es könnte nichts merkwürdiger sein, als einen Menschen bei irgend einer ganz einfacher alltäglichen Tätigkeit, wenn er sich unbeobachtet glaubt, zu sehen. Denken wir uns ein Theater, der Vorhang ginge auf und wir sähen einen Menschen allein in seinem Zimmer auf und ab gehen, sich eine Zigarette anzünden, sich niedersetzen, u.s.f., so, daß wir plötzlich von außen einen Menschen sähen, wie man sich sonst nie sehen kann; wenn wir quasi ein Kapitel einer Biographie mit eigenen augen sähen, – das müßte unheimlich und wunderbar zugleich sein. Wunderbarer als irgend etwas, was ein Dichter auf der Bühne spielen oder sprechen lassen könnte, wir würden das Leben selbst sehen. – Aber das sehen wir ja alle Tage, und es macht uns nicht den mindesten Eindruck! Ja, aber wir sehen es nicht in der Perspektive.

1930. (Vermischte Bemerkungen, p. 17.)

 

Jean-Paul Sartre

Le réel n'est jamais beau.

L'Imaginaire (Paris, 1940), p. 245.

Nouveau Réalisme & Nul

All machines are art. Even old, abandoned, rusty machines for sifting stones. (...) A beautiful oil refinery or your Johanniterbrücke, which are supposed to be solely functional, are important additions to modern art. So, art is also: the achievements of engineers and technicians, even if they express themselves unconsciously or purely functionally. Art is everything. (Do you think art ought to be made only by 'artists'?) And: art is everywhere – at my grandmother's – in the most incredible kitsch or under a rotten plank.

Jean Tinguely: Art is revolution. National-Zeitung, Basle, 13 October 1967.

 My Poetry is the World. 

Herman de Vries [In Reader 1985]

Ethnomethodology

Undergraduate students were assigned the task of spending from fifteen minutes to an hour in their homes viewing its activities while assuming that they were boarders in the household. They were instructed not to act out the assumption. Thirty-three students reported their experiences. [. . .]

"A short, stout man entered the house, kissed me on the cheek and asked, "How was school?" I answered politely. He walked into the kitchen, kissed the younger of two women, and said hello to the other. The younger woman asked me "What do you want for dinner, honey?" I answered, "Nothing." She shrugged her shoulders and said no more. The older woman shuffled around the kitchen muttering. The man washed his hands, sat down at the table, and picked up the paper. He read until the two women had finished putting the food on the table. The three sat down. They exchanged idle chatter about the day's events. The older woman said something in a foreign language which made the others laugh."

Harold Garfinkel: "Studies of the Routine Grounds of Everyday Activities." Social Problems 11, 3.

Nelson Goodman

Most works of art are bad.

Of Mind and Other Matters (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 138.

Works of art often do not function as such, and non-works often do.

Of Mind and Other Matters (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 145.