Heidegger on Art: A Short Overview

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.