HEIDEGGER
ON ART
Heidegger
argues that, in fact, everyone does have a general idea of what art, artworks
and artists are, but it is difficult to define precisely. It is easier to say
what they are not. They are not the stones, fields and trees of the natural
landscape. Neither are they the ordinary things made by humans such as shoes
and desks, that is, what may be generally called equipment. From this ordinary
understanding, Heidegger argues that the difference does not distinguish three
regions of being but rather defines a hierarchy, where equipment plays a
central role. The things of nature are on the bottom rung as a storehouse of
materials waiting to perfected as equipment. Artworks occupy the highest rung
as equipment with some special added value.
The
whole range of beings from stones to statues are really conceptualized as
elements of a technological framework. Furthermore, this framework does not aim
simply, or even mainly, at efficiency: coherent structures of connectedness of
"in-order-to" structures. Instead, the real measure employed by
technological thinking is "reliability." Shoes work best when they
don't pinch; indeed, when we do not notice them at all. This flies in the face
of our normal experience of artworks: surprise and awe. He realizes this by
examining a painting of peasant shoes by Vincent van Gogh.
The
painting reveals that the essential worth of the peasant shoes is reliability.
The painting also reveals the world of the peasant and makes us aware of how
different this world is from our own or that of a ballerina. In short, the
painting reveals reliability in, a way that we do not usually come upon
reliability. Finally, the painting reveals that efficiency and reliability
cannot be the last word about the fields these shoes trod, the shoes themselves
and van Gogh's artistic expression of this world.
For
Heidegger, poetics is not merely a matter of literary studies. He traces the
word back to its Greek root (poiesis) which means making in general:
production. In Heidegger's worldview, production is the essential way of
Being-in-the-world of Western man. In a golden age, this was realized as a
flowering of the arts; in the modern age, production has become mechanical
reproduction of equipment that lacks authentic value. It is a theme that can be
found as early as Being and Time but which he focused on explicitly in
the post-war years as a "critique of technology."
During
this period, he wonders whether the nihilistic tendencies of the present age
are rooted in the beginning of science (Greek geometry) or the industrial
revolution. In either event, thought itself cannot think its way out of the
modern predicament. Only through a dialogue with artists can Western culture
liberate itself from the frameworks within which it has imprisoned itself.
When
Heidegger looks at Van Gogh's painting of a peasant woman's old shoes, the
painting shows him the world of the peasant woman. Not only the shoes, but the
working in the fields, the evening rest after the shoes are removed, etc. He
says that he does not know this world before looking at the painting. The
artwork is not a representation of images I already have; it is the production
of new images. The artwork shows the truth of something in the context of its
world. The artwork:
sets
to work the truth of the thing
brings
the thing into the light of Being
lets
the Being of the thing shine steadily (Origin, 36)
Art
sets truth to work; it is not mainly about beauty or the sublime. Heidegger
asks if this association of art and truth is a revival of the classical
definition of art as an imitation of nature, where imitation means aedequatio,
homoiosis (correspondence of idea and thing). However, he denies that art
is an imitation, representation or reproduction of anything already existing.
The
artwork opens up in its own way the Being of beings. This opening up, i. e., unconcealing (aletheia),
the truth of beings happens in the work.... Art is truth setting itself to work....
What is this setting itself-to-work?" (Origin, 39)
The
way to what is at work in the artwork can be found neither in the artist nor in
the audience. In great art, the artist releases the artwork to exist by itself.
In terms of the audience, the typical experience of art today is no experience
at all. To place artworks in museums or libraries destroys them. Even if left
in their original setting, they cannot be experienced due to the nihilism of
the present day. For Heidegger, in the age of nihilism, there is no art at all.
The search for the "origin of the work of art" is also a search to
recover art, to re-establish art, to restore the original power of art.
The
Van Gogh painting of shoes was chosen to deconstruct the classical definition:
art is an imitation of nature. Heidegger showed that the painting is not a
picture of shoes but rather a revelation of the world of the peasant woman.:
the fields and sky, sun and rain, labor and rest, etc. Next, Heidegger chooses
a non-representational work from a world that is completely forgotten: the
temple at Paestum.
Artworks
are typically "set-up" in museums in order to display them to a
public. In the history of Western museum curation, two purposes of display have
been proposed. One purpose is the preservation of national symbols. For this
purpose, museums collect and commission portraits or statues of leaders,
paintings of victory, the beauty of the national landscape, the magnitude of
national architecture, etc. The second purpose is conservation of works so that
they may be available as models for future artists and the education of the
public. In short, artworks are set up in museums in order to save the past. On
the other hand, when an artwork is originally "set-up," for example
the temple at Paestum, the purpose is to initiate, to open up a new world.
Heidegger describes three aspects of initiation:
consecration-the
holy is opened up and the god invoked
measure-the
artwork defines practices
force-the
artwork gives power to a world created by the artwork (Origin, 44)
Because
the temple has been built, humans may gather at this place under the protection
of the god. Market places and dwellings will also be constructed to provide for
this gathering. Out of this will come a vital community with the power to
sustain itself.
The
World is neither the totality of things nor the structure of things. Heidegger
says, "the world worlds." The world is an activity of decisions and
involvements, setting the pace of time and the horizon of space. The world is
the "Open," a free place in which events can happen. The world is
possibility and power. "The work as work sets up a world." The work
also "sets forth the earth."
In
the production of equipment, a form is imposed on matter. If the production
process is successful, the matter disappears into the usefulness of the
equipment. On the other hand, in the artwork, the matter is
"set-forth" as something special to be seen. In a technical manual, language
is neutralized and disappears; in a novel, language (diction and syntax) stands
out. In the temple, the stone is carefully selected and arranged to provide an
impressive and delightful image. But, at the same time, the luminous surface of
the stone makes us attentive to the shining sun; the massiveness of the stone
makes us aware of the strength of the ground to bear such a weight. The great
artwork not only draws our attention to it but also arouses our sensitivity to
the material environment. This making matter important is allowing matter to
enter the "Open" as "Earth."
The
setting up of a world and the setting forth of earth are two essential features
in the work-being of the work. They belong together, however, in the unity of
work-being. This is the unity we seek when we ponder the self-subsistence of
the work and try to express in words this closed, unitary repose of
self-support. (Origin, 48)
However,
this unity is not the repose of balanced elements of the classical ideal. The
relation of World and Earth is Striving (Streit) as constant Agitation (Bewegtheit)
in the artwork because World is the self-opening and Earth is the
self-secluding. The story is always struggling with language; the figure with
the stone, the dance with the body.
The
difference between the typical drama and the struggle of World and Earth in the
work of art is that neither decisively triumphs over the other in a great work
of art. The "denouement" of the striving of World and Earth in the
work appear is mutual support in their opposition to one another. The support
for this opposition derives from the activity of artists and the audience.
Recall that the Anglo-American school of modernism attempts to avoid the
problems posed by the hermeneutical circle by excluding the role of the artist
and audience. On the other hand, Heidegger accepts the circularity as a
necessary condition for thinking seriously about artworks. He has entered the
circle by bracketing the question of the role of the artist and audience, that
is, by focusing on the artwork. But this is not to deny that the artist and audience
have nothing to do with the process of truth coming to be in the artwork.
In
the concluding section of The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger considers
the role of the artist and audience, but he rejects the traditional understanding
of these two which is based on a technological framing of the world. From this
point of view, poetics in the broadest sense is primarily a matter of making:
using natural resources to make equipment or artworks. Certainly, the mastery
of materials has some importance in this matter, but since the artwork is
essentially concerned with the happening of truth, it is not making but rather
knowing which is primary. This results in a reversal of the usual order of
dependency in the relation of artists, artwork and audience.
The
artist "brings forth" the artwork by maintaining the harmonic opposition
of World and Earth. If we watch a film of a modern artist, for example Pablo
Picasso or Jackson Pollack, it is clear that they do not have some fixed image
toward which they are working. Each artistic gesture resolves some tension
between line, color field and empty canvas, and at the same time, poses a new
tension. Paul Klee described his artistic activity as "taking a line for a
walk." Even in the case of Renaissance masters, where the final product
seems to be a matter of transferring a design to canvas, wood or plaster, the
variety of sketches that precede such works show that playful interaction
between artist and work is important.
In
"Poetically Man Dwells," the argument of which is based on some lines
from a late poem by Friederich Holderlin (1770-1843) (1951), Heidegger argues
that poetic activity is taking a measure of the fundamental poles of human
experience, the Fourfold (earth, sky, divinity and mortality). Poetic measuring
does not capture the interval between two points; such a determination is the goal
of technological thinking: measure as framework (Gestell). Rather, poetic
activity stretches out the differences and blurs the boundaries.
As
perceptive, noetic beings, humans span toward and come near the measure, but
human logos, explanation, logic fails to grasp the measure because the
measure is fleeting, never fixed. The measure is a harmonic opposition which
lasts for a moment, then vanishes. Poets have the power to intensify the
harmony and thereby retain its mystery in poetic language.
Imagination
is the human faculty that combines the heterogeneous. In this case, the
imagination combines the familiar and the alien, the knowable (measuring as noein)
and the unknowable (the measure as legein). Poetic imagination is a
matter of making decisions about the harmonic balance of World and Earth such
that it can unfold as a basis of cultural life while remaining itself baseless.
"Every decision, however, bases itself on something not mastered,
something concealed, confusing, else it would never be a decision". (Origin,
55)
The
artist is forever playing with possible harmonies of World and Earth, pushing
the opposition of World and Earth to ever greater extremes. For a work of art
to find repose depends on the audience preserving the work of art. This repose
does not mean a final resting place in museums and tourist sites. To be so
archived is the death of the artwork. To be framed as Exhibit 63A, comprehended
by a three minute "walking guide" explanation, is to shift the work
from imagination to memory, from noetic perception to logocentric memorandum.
Just
as a work ... is essentially in need of creators, so what is created cannot
itself come into being without those who preserve it. Preserving the work, as
knowing, is a sober standing within the extraordinary awesomeness of the truth
that is happening in the work. . .. Yet knowing does not consist in mere
information and notions about something. He who truly knows what is, knows what
he wills to do in the midst of what is. (Origin, 66-68)
Art
is one way of setting truth to work. It is a way of truth that sets up a world
and sets forth the earth; it decides upon a gestalt and thrusts it forward into
existence, it moves a people to ecstasy and encourages them to preserve the
truth of the artwork.
By
preserving the work of art in its truth, the audience founds the possibility of
the truth of the culture. When artworks become emblems of state power,
educational excursions for school students, resources for practicing artists,
the culture begins to lose its foundations and so ceases to be a culture.
Heidegger
argues that the founding function of preservation has three modes: (a)
bestowing, (b) grounding and (c) beginning. As bestowing-preserving genuine art
is not a development or progress based on the past. It is always
"unfamiliar" and "extraordinary." As grounding-preserving genuine
art never happens for no reason and with no purpose. It already calls to a
people to gather in its openness. Art demands that the people preserve it. As beginning-preserving
genuine art already contains its end in its beginning. The beginning is the
first of a series which leads in an unknown direction from the point of view of
the beginning. The beginning as origin is at the same time the first as the leader,
the judge. Art not only opens up and grounds, it also provides a measure to
judge and resolve the strife of truth in the artworks.
In
this essay, Heidegger reverses the usual order of dependency in the artist,
artwork, audience structure. The artist depends on the truth happening in the
artwork to enliven his/her imagination. That works remain vital depends on the
way the audience preserves them. In "Poetically Man Dwells," the
reverse seems to be the case. In order for there to be a culture that genuinely
appreciates art, there must first be artists that challenge the public. Of
course, as a modernist, the artwork itself always retains a primary role for
Heidegger. Nevertheless, Heidegger's inability to fully comprehend his own
modernism and dispense with the technological framework of artists making
artworks for audiences may be a result of his failure to fully consider the
artworks of his own time. Though he praises the modern work of the Basque
sculptor Eduardo Chillida (1924-2002), who illustrated Heidegger's Art and
Space (1969), for the most part his examples come from 19th century
poetry and painting.