The Future of Art: An Aesthetics of the New and the Sublime (S U N Y Series in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art)

151 Pages·1999·1.1 MB·English

by  Marcella Tarozzi Goldsmith

The Future of Art : An Aesthetics of the New and the
title : Sublime SUNY Series in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of
Art
author : Tarozzi Goldsmith, Marcella.
publisher: State University of New York Press
isbn10 | asin : 0791443159
print isbn13 : 9780791443156
ebook isbn13 : 9780585284767
language : English
subject Aesthetics, Art--Philosophy.
publication date : 1999
lcc : BH39.T3695 1999eb
ddc : 111/.85
subject : Aesthetics, Art--Philosophy.
cover
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The Future of Art

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SUNY series in
Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art
Mary C. Rawlinson, editor

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The Future of Art
An Aesthetics of the New and the Sublime
Marcella Tarozzi Goldsmith

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Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 1999 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tarozzi Goldsmith, Marcella, 1943
The future of art : an aesthetics of the new and the sublime /
Marcella Tarozzi Goldsmith.
p. cm. (SUNY series in aesthetics and the philosophy of
art)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-4315-9 (alk. paper). ISBN 0-7914-4316-7 (pbk.:
alk. paper)
1. Aesthetics. 2. ArtPhilosophy. I. Title. II. Series.
BH39.T3695 1999
111'.85DC21 98-54723
CIP
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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To the memory of Enzo Melandri in primis.

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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
Part One
The Historical Side of Aesthetics
Chapter 1
The Birth of Aesthetics 3
Art on the Offensive; The Role of Imagination; Self-transcendence; Desire's
Ignorance; Faust, Never Lost in Desire; Desiring the Will; The Despairing Will
Chapter 2
Art as the Organon of Philosophy 33
Real/Ideal; Salvific Intuition; Myths versus Mysticism; After Schelling; Prosaic
Myths; Art's Futurity; The Necessity of Art
Chapter 3
Philosophy as the Organon of Art 51
Sic Transit; Hegel's Triptychs; Beauty Surpassed; The Ultimate Rationality;
Myths and the Symbol; The Symbolic Sublime; The Circle; Conclusion

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Part Two
Art's New Truth
Chapter 4
Apprehending the New 71
The Subject Transformed; The Hidden Truth; Philosophic Art and Aesthetics;
The Emerging Meaning; The Function of Art; Neutrality; Art as the Organon
ofArt
Chapter 5
From Artifice to the Will 101
Art Uprooted from Truth; Nietzsche's Appearance; Expected Tragedies;
Rhetoric First; Being and Art: The Axis Nietzsche-Heidegger; Art: The Truth
of the Nonexistent; The Sublimity of Nihilism
Chapter 6
The Nothingness of Art 131
The Repercussions of Nihilism; Utopia and Nihilism: The Two Faces of the
Aesthetic; Renouncing the Beautiful; Unprecedented Form; Metaphor;
Sublime Allegory; The Aesthetics of Negativity; Conclusion
Part Three
Subjective Aesthetics
Chapter 7
The Role of Subjectivity 163
Art: Imagining the True; New Sensations; Hermeneutics; The Unconscious
Subject; The Ineffable; Tragedy and Comedy; Sublime Sublimity; Conclusion
Notes 195
Bibliography 209
Index 217
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work is dedicated to my intellectual friendships and friends who have inspired me through the years: to my sister
Alba Maria Tarozzi, for providing me with precious books, to Paola Vincenzi, Alessandra Sandri, Paoletta Dalla
Favera, and Véronique Fóti. And to Dr. David B. Friedman for giving me access to different ideas.
A special thank you to Carl Lesnor, whose help in deciphering French texts was invaluable. I also want to mention
Adele Lerner from whom I learned to keep records and to value what is worthy of value.
Thank you to my husband, David Goldsmith for his patience and impatience with me concerning my use of the
computer.
Thanks to the books that I have read, and to their authors both known and unknown to me.

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INTRODUCTION
The thesis presented in the following pages is both simple and enigmatic: my intention has been to ascertain the truth
of art in its different aspects, subjective and objective, in other words, that which is necessarily possible, meaningful,
and finally innovative. Once the priority of the work of art over theory has been accepted, philosophy is concerned
with amplifying art's meaning, so as to make it as fully as possible accessible to thought.
Since the aesthetic sense was born together with art, that is, simultaneously, and considering that much has already
been written about the structure and function of art since the official inception of aesthetic theory, and about the place
of art in the overall space of philosophical discourse, what remains to be considered here is the development of an
idea that points to the new and leads to a reevaluation of the work of art as being neither necessarily beautiful nor
necessarily ugly. Moreover, once it has been established that the structure of each work of art underlies and
determines the function of art (which may be quite different in each art form), the problem of whether the work is
perceived as being purely subjective or objective becomes only one aspect among many.
This does not mean that the privileged point of departure for understanding what is involved in a work of art is devoid
of subjective evaluations. The subject in question, however, must not be understood metaphysically as the substance
or determining structure of traditional philosophy. The subject that is invoked here is in the making, just as the work
itself is in the making, acquiring its truth and reality both by being

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perceived and by hiding that same truth. It is, therefore, a volatile subject, ready to cancel itself out once the
experience of art is replaced by different modes of perception. The new, since it requires a state of receptivity that is
quite alien to the subject as theorized by its proponents, excludes any definition. The new requires, instead, a state of
flux that can be ascribed only to a subjectivity in the making, never complete, and, therefore, never quite subjective.
Subjectivity encounters something that is ''material" and capable of being understood. In order to arrive at the union of
subjectivity and materiality, what is required is a plurality inclusive even of those theories which deny plurality.
Therefore, the first step will consist in examining those theories which are significant in terms of depth and
originality.
It should be reiterated that art and the aesthetic outlook on the world are to be situated on the same plane. To say
otherwise would be like saying that beauty is given a priori, to be admired and imitated. Even the beauty of nature
does not always provide the condition needed for advancing in the direction of art and subsequently of an aesthetic
theory. Art would have been invented without the help of a beautiful nature, since beauty is not a necessary
component of the work of art. Artists do learn from nature, but also from theory thanks to their extraordinary
perception. At the same time, philosophers learn from the artists how to use the hermeneutical instruments that will
reveal the meaning of the work of art. To the theoretician is given the task of shedding light on the externalizations of
genius, to the artists the difficult task of inventing the new.
The first part of this work starts with a discussion of what art is, according to a number of philosophers who ventured
to interpret the significance of an activity that transcends the everyday. The role of subjectivity, therefore, must be
considered, since the domain of art was viewed as the ideal terrain for the understanding of an inescapable freedom.
Friedrich Schiller, in combining together form and play, discovers one possible locus for the untruth of art.
Some mention must be made of why the philosophy of Immanuel Kant is considered only peripherally and only in
relation to the sublime. Kant opened the way to a view of art at least as influential as that of Georg Hegel or
Schelling; however, in my view, his work presents the defect of consigning art to taste, an approach that has been
defeated by history. Kant, notwithstanding his heroic transcendental deductions, tried in vain to give beauty
universality and autonomy. The role of imagination, which is an important component of the artistic and aesthetic
process, and the laudable

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exclusion of concepts from art, are, however, insufficient for explaining the experience of art. Schiller sought to avoid
Kant's intellectualism by focusing on a different aspect of art: that of reassuring that semblance is, after all, reliable, at
least in combining ethereal beauty with freedom.
In trying to ascertain the viability of the notion of subjectivity, whether it is adequate to the task of containing the
work of art, it became necessary to explore the role of imagination, desire, and the will and to point out the differences
and similarities of their respective domains. (Faust, this artist manqué, is an example of importance here, since his
elusive will brings about a self-transcendence which is neither real nor ideal to him.) But noting the insufficiency of a
merely subjective approach, since it leads to the disappearance of the aesthetic act, the second chapter examines the
role of myths and the necessity of art. Schelling provides the framework for understanding art as objective. He sheds
light as to how and why art must have the role of representing the real side of an infinite intuition, whose aim is to
reveal the truth of mythology and finally of allegory. Schelling's intentionally incomplete philosophy was easy prey to
Hegel's sarcasm, but his theory of the mutual informing of the real and ideal potencies in the different forms of art
indicates how the work of art can be the most accomplished and complete "object" that humans can ever envision.
Metaphysics aside, an attempt is made to show the interrelations that obtain within the work of art once mythology
leaves room for further intuitions. In foreseeing a future completion of philosophy, Schelling puts forth the idea of a
"positive" outcome for art.
"Philosophy as the Organon of Art" (chapter 3) takes into account a different approach to aesthetics. Considering that
an objective view of art's meaning encounters unsurpassable metaphysical problems, the attempt is made to make of
Hegel's aesthetics a viable alternative. Hegel's trinitarian rationality, his systematic use of the concept, however, leave
art open to negativity. Incapable of self-justification, art meets an honorable "death" at the hands of the concept itself.
The concept's all-encompassing voracity makes art something that must be sublated. Symbolic art, classicism,
romanticism, including the beautiful and the sublime, all concur in the defeat of their own premises. The Hegelian
system treats art as if it were something to be dismissed once the logical categories have again been purified from the
dross of sensuousness.
The Hegelian regression calls for a new beginning, which is undertaken in the three chapters of the second part, where
I examine the New, conceived of as that particular element which challenges imitation, art's

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relation to truth, and meaning. Wilhelm Dilthey's hermeneutics can be said to have started from the zero point where
Hegel left art. The emphasis on meaningful expression, the psychology involved in the appreciation of beauty and the
sublime, make art that human activity whose aim is to intensify the structure of intersubjectivity. Art so understood is
the result of creative acts excluding neutrality in any form. However, the notion of neutrality can still be used to avoid
a moralistic conception of art, it even becomes necessary when the idea that art must be beautiful (or ugly, for that
matter) tries to prevail at the expense of style.
To put forth style as the ultimate requirement for art may involve the danger of abandoning art to a decadent
formalism. "From Artifice to the Will" (chapter 5) reiterates the theme of the "resurrection" of art in a different guise,
with the additional awareness that art may perish at the hands of nihilism. Nietzsche is the philosopher who, in
consigning art to the artist of the future, to the Overman, and above all, to becoming, was well aware that art was in
shaky hands. The danger of nihilism, of decadence, lurks at every step taken in an impossible project, that of pleroma,
of an uncontaminated, unfragmented knowledge. Even so, art emerges as one of the few activities worthy of being
cultivated. Art is the outcome of the will to power, which, in this case, assumes the antimetaphysical function of
denying truth to its own creation. Thus, the possibility of a sublime nihilism emerges, a form of nihilism that
desperately denies its own premises.
The philosophical and artistic consequences of Nietzsche's thought have been enormous. To him we owe the
resurgence of rhetoric, the putting aside of beauty as the exclusive object of art, the attempts at saving what could be
saved, that is, the relevance of the whole aesthetic domain, which came to be conceived of as consolation and also as
having within itself the power to raise us to the sublime. All this is due to Nietzsche.
Chapter 3 of part two considers these factors as still pertinent to the contemporary world view, which has stressed
negativity at the expense of beauty. Once utopia has been discarded and the impossibility of beauty acknowledged, we
are ready to perceive the horizon of postmodernity. Yet this mode of understanding and interpreting the aesthetic
domain is far from having the last word. If a transition is in the making, this does not mean or indicate that
postmodernity is the definite answer to a philosophical crisis oscillating between the complete rejection of subjectivity
and the affirmation of its own negativity.
Negation not being absolute, part three or "Subjective Aesthetics" of this work reactivates the subjective role of
imagination together with the

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sublime, thus returning to themes from the initial chapters which have established the relevance for art and aesthetics
of self-transcendence. The subject that is here considered is not the Cartesian subject of certainty. The "aesthetic
subject" is that subject which puts itself in question when facing the sublime or when asking itself the question of its
own relevance vis-à-vis art. It is that type of subject which has resulted from the impact with a structure in which
neither the object nor the subject gains definite prominence. Considering this "partial failure" of the subject (it is not
completely subjective), even the role of the unconscious is limited to raising the question of the validity of its own
doing. Because of this, hermeneutics becomes the indispensable philosophical tool through which the truth of art
emerges as both transitory and constantly reconstituted. That is why the fleeting sublime has an important role to play,
and that is why this theme recurs at almost every step of the discussion. The sublime enjoys a privileged status
because the experience of beauty has been eroded by beauty's pretension to be beyond time. Its metaphysical ground
has collapsed and cannot be revived.
Hermeneutics provides few definite conclusions, these are the result of interpreting philosophical language as it has
been transmitted to us in such a way as to be held "hostage" to temporality. A method such as hermeneutics teaches
that the truths of the past can be explored in a manner that opens the door to new, previously unexplored truths.
Interpretation does require mental and linguistic tools capable of bringing to the surface what was implicitly said in a
different language. One of the functions of hermeneutics is to connect these different languages so that, within bounds,
it can be argued that everybody says the same thing in different ways. This paradox is exactly what points to the
newan indispensable category if art is to be understood iuxta propria principia .
The more one tries to find in the new the truth of art, the more the sublime will be seen as essential to the
understanding of art, and the human response to the sublime will become an essential part of not only the aesthetic
experience but also of theory. Art's "mechanisms," unforeseeable in their consequences, are responsible for the
sublime and for the new, and also for the tragedies and comedies to which we must become accustomed if we want to
retain the sense of a fertile uncanny. Nietzsche, I think, would accept this conclusion. In order to give their deserved
prominence to these aspects of art, I devote an entire section to considering the debated role of tragedy and comedy in
philosophical thinking. As antidotes to the stagnation of the "dead subject," tragedy and comedy

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(like irony) distort and alter truth. They make clear that truth, as traditionally understood, is something neutral that
must be questioned at every step. Psychoanalysis has attempted to question truth, seeing truth as that which eludes
consciousness. Nihilism has gone further in this direction, since it has made consciousness the irrelevant advocate of
acquired truths without resorting to any salvific remedy such as history (personal or suprapersonal) or the good.
Because of the intrinsic importance of these movements, psychoanalysis and nihilism are discussed here for their
contribution to aesthetic sensibility. However, psychoanalysis is not used for interpreting this or that work of art,
immanent criteria are sufficient for this task. The insights of psychoanalysis are more important when its concepts are
directed to art qua activity.
What is called in chapter 7 "the unconscious subject" is nothing but the volatile confluence of truths held together by
imagination and intuition, consciousness and the unconscious. That is why the subject is both the tragedy and the
comedy of truth. The subject is capable of ascribing meaning, if not to itself, at least to the truth of what results from
the amalgam of given perceptions, which nowadays are called "data." The unconscious subject is both subjective and
objective, comedy and tragedy. Especially in the present age the subject acts and reacts both at the conscious and at
the subliminal level. When it subjectivizes, it can extend the domain of the objective, and when it objectifies, it
expands the domain of the subjective. This chiasmus contains the truth of art qua self-transcendence, for self-
transcendence is the in-between notion needed to circumvent the nihilism that became prominent from Nietzsche on as
a barrier against systematism.
The new is an aesthetic category, but art requires also a formal style. In addition, the new is something objective but
not objectifiable, at least not at its inception; and it will remain ineffable until further notice. The Overman is far from
having a privileged viewpoint or perspective in this regard; indeed the Overman is pathetic more than tragic or comic.
But in an age in which the tragic is trivialized (together with the comic) one possible answer to the prevailing
indifference is to trust in the sublime. The sublime is the resolution of the tragic: in tragedy the subject is objectified;
in the sublime it is forgotten, to become that which is "not yet."
The truth of art consists, therefore, in transcending the subject of knowledge and the insidious recurrence of the
object. Hermeneutics finds there the becoming of its truth. But neither tragedy nor art's possible neutrality vis-à-vis
the object and the subject nor "art for art's sake" will ever

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give us a complete view of what art can be. Even the sublime, which is the supreme artistic "form," still deprives us,
because of its limited intelligibility, of the full meaning of art.
Art, but also aesthetics, can be said to rest on a metaphysical nothingness, which becomes the "ground" on which
subjectivity acts. Ineffable as art itself, subjectivity expands side by side with the sublime, whose ultimate significance
is to give us the highest point that art can reach. The sublime is privileged because beyond it nothing can be thought. It
is irreplaceable and dogmatic in its own way, it stands for a true beyond without beyond. (The sublime is dogmatic
because its intelligibility cannot be communicated to another agent, one either experiences it or one does not. It is the
result of an immediate apprehension.) It follows that an aesthetic theory reaches its consummation when it accounts
for the sublime. Even though aesthetics leaves the experience of the sublime unexplained because aesthetics cannot
show us its subjective or objective causes, a theory can at least make clear why the sublime is essential to art. Without
the sublime, art itself would become, after the "disappearance" of beauty, a "perfect" nihil. The sublime is the extreme
limit of art and of the subject itself. This fact brings the sublime close to nihilism. Even the will to power is permeated
with sublime intentions. However, nihilism must yield to the sublime to proclaim the priority of the senses and of a
sensuous truth.
I started from the subject, and after having subjected it to criticism, I return to a subjectivity which has been
transformed in such a manner as to become ineffable. This is the meaning of the aesthetic experience, of an aesthetic
act which belongs to the artist, to the receiving public, and to philosophynot in equal measure, of course, for to the
artist belongs the right, so to speak, of primogeniture. This is why artists understand their works in a way different
from the way of the philosopher, and that is why the two modes of apprehension complement each other, forming the
truth of an imperfect reciprocal self-transcendence.

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PART ONE
THE HISTORICAL SIDE OF AESTHETICS
In the beginning was the new
In the beginning is the new

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Chapter 1
The Birth of Aesthetics
Art on the Offensive
Quite literally, imagination, since Kant, Schiller, and Schelling, has been considered one of the sources of the
beautiful and, consequently, of art. For Schiller art is close to feeling, and its supreme task is one of uniting, like
intuition, what understanding separates. The synthetic proficiency of the aesthetic is something that must first be
imagined and second demonstrated; such a task is possible since imagination demands a transcendental fusion of
absoluteness and finitude. Forgetful of reason only to reintegrate it in the chiasmus that obtains between sense and
form, imagination, assisted by feelings and intuition (also an instrument of synthesis), forms an "insubstantial realm,"
1 of a higher order than that offered by sense-dependent reality. What the aesthetic has to offer is neither truth or
moral achievement, nor the useful, which is capable of taking care of itself; it is above all harmony and freedom, the
search for a precarious completeness. In Schiller the aesthetic has separated itself from nature and sheer sensuousness
(though it will reabsorb them at a higher level) and from absolute form. The intricate interconnections between these
two aspects increase the danger of one prevailing at the expense of the other, but Schiller insists that they can reach a
quasi-perfect union even by remaining distinct; and more cannot be expected given human finitude which can only
long for an ideal, whole, completion.
As an end in itself the "play-drive," as Schiller calls the middle road between the immanent, natural drive and the
rational one, offers serenity

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and, in terms of the artworks, a tempered classicism. It also gives freedom, but, looking carefully, that result which is
art is seen to be a determination which does not free itself from two different compulsions, and that is why freedom
here coincides with necessity. The realized reciprocity of which ideally the two human drives are capable will be
reflected in the finitude of the work of art. Finitude cannot reveal the "why" of art, beauty cannot be explained; 2 a
residue of empiricism (beauty is a fact, a given) is counterbalanced by the Kantian framework which leads in the
opposite direction: the formal, and therefore the antiempirical, is emphasized as explaining a "neoclassical" theory that
justifies music's emotionality and architecture's formalism.
The immanence of the aesthetic excludes the imitation of the ideal in its transcendent function, what we have is
semblance (Schein), whereby both the work and the ideal are semblances as compared with the inexplicable existence
of matter. Here Schiller suspends judgment; his agnosticism as to the "why" of beauty leads him to declare the
epistemological ineffectiveness of the aesthetic vis-à-vis truth. Yet, what cannot be denied is the human capacity to
assent to an inner moral law and to give form to the passivity of sensations. An always unstable equilibrium,
nonetheless an equilibrium, haunts Schiller's optimism as to the perfectibility of the human race via aesthetic
education. This tentative optimism will be shattered by the nihilism of the twentieth century. The utopian element
lurking here, if utopianism is not understood as the nowhere of art, consists in placing the aesthetic between a real
determination and an ideal one; one-sided it cannot be, for then it would be abstract. There is nothing bombastic about
a utopian element which makes art the rival of tragedy; Schiller's is a subdued utopia governed by taste, feelings, and
a reasonable amount of reason. Tragedy does not belong to pure art because it hides within itself a purpose, namely,
pathos;3 its freedom is therefore limited vis-à-vis the other arts. However, it is impossible, within Schiller's
framework, to assign to each art a definite place in a hierarchical order, as Hegel and Schelling did later; and this is