[upbeat music] >> I usually like to
start out this class with this quote from C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis as you know was a great Christian apologist and writer. But he's also a world
class literary scholar. He was very well respected
for his work on Milton, Shakespeare, medieval,
late medieval writing. He wrote some books on that, including a book called
Experiment in Criticism and this quote is from that book. He says this about encountering art. The first demand any art
makes upon us is surrender. And that's an intimidating
word if you take it seriously. He wants us to surrender to an artwork? To one way or another submit
ourselves to what it is the way that it wants us to see the world, I mean isn't art a matter of
thinking through the world, thinking about the world, thinking about what it means to be human, who we are in this world,
what this world is, thinking about it in spatial terms, thinking about it by
configuring objects and forums in relation to each other. So he advises us to start by looking, look, listen, receive, get yourself out of the way. There's no good asking
yourself first whether the work before you deserve such a surrender, for until you have surrendered,
you can't possibly find out. You can't possibly find
out the merits of the work until you've entered the work. Until you've stepped yourself into its structure. You can't understand the construction of this room and
the merits of its construction until you submit yourself to it. You stand under its roof,
you stand on its floor. That is a risk because it
might be an unstable structure. It might fall out from under
you, it might collapse on you. I think that we'll
experience that happening in some of the work that we encounter in this course. But you can't know until
you submit yourself to it, or surrender yourself to it. I began this course with this quote, because I think it's especially
important for this course. I think this course more
than others in the department tends to be met with good deal more suspicion. Contemporary art is difficult. It just is really difficult. It's hard to digest, it's hard
to see what's going on in it, and many ways contemporary
art took a really philosophical turn and so
it's not picturing thing. It's not speaking in the
ways that you expect it to. It's speaking usually by screwing up the way that
it's suppose to speak. That has a sort of philosophical point, but it doesn't come at you directly. It presents something, kind
of hits you from the side. So it's difficult but I think, if we enter it together with this sort of giving it enough line, giving it enough benefit
of the doubt to enter it, try to understand it from the inside, and then if critiques are necessary, and they probably will be necessary, level those critiques from the inside, rather than from the outside
throwing grenades over the wall which is in all honesty how Christians in the arts have
operated for 100 years. I don't think so much anymore. 20th century, that was how
we pretty much operated. Throwing grenades over the
wall without understanding what was going on. From C.S. Lewis, who was not shy to criticize, certainly, we'll take this
kind of injunction to enter, to submit ourselves to it and try to find out what work is worth
continuing with and what is not. For the rest of the syllabus, I'm pretty much gonna let
you read it on your own. I'll let you read the course objectives, the course overview. Basically what this
course will look like is some days we'll spend here, and the purpose of our days spent here, is to build a framework. A framework for understanding
what's going on. Give ourselves some vocabulary, give ourselves some concepts
that we can use to understand what's going on in those contemporary galleries and art museums. Then we'll spend others of our class times going to those contemporary
galleries and museums. That's a really important
part of this class. It's kind of a balancing act. If we only spend our times in the museum, our time in the museums, we tend to be, somewhat confused about
what's going on there, some what baffled. But I think we're in
L.A., it would be a great, tragedy if we only spend our time looking at a projection in a screen. So we'll be sure to go out, spend some time in those museums, encountering the work directly. And then in addition to
that, you have readings. These readings you'll
have them every week. They are in a course pack that you can purchase from the book store. It looks something like this. How much is this running out of curiosity? >> Students: Fifty dollars.
>> It's what? >> Students: Fifty. >> Fifty, forty-four? Man.
[students laugh] I'll keep working on that. Every year I try to reduce the cost, didn't seem to have
worked this time around. Anyway, that course pack is put
together in such a way that it's a sampling meant to be a
sampling of some of the most prominent writers, essays, articles about art
over the last 60 years or so. Pick that up, read it diligently, we'll do a good job as you'll see today, of incorporating those
readings into class. If you look at the second
page of your syllabus, you do have some required materials. The first and foremost
is your course pack. In addition to that you need
to take notes in this class. You're not gonna turn them in
but you really need to have some space where you're
responding to and tracking what we're doing in class
'cause it's a dense course. Some of the stuff that we're
doing in here is pretty dense. You'll want to write it down so you're able to process
through it on your own. Just a couple of notes about
the course requirements, just so we're on the same page. First, attendance, I'm a
huge stickler for attendance. I just have no respect for absenteeism, to be honest. So I expect you to be here. I also know that life is sometimes
challenging or difficult, some things come up, conflict comes up, so I'll extend to you one
absence for whatever reason. Anything beyond that is just
gonna collapse your grade for the course. If something big comes up, let me know. I'm not a robot, I think
there are lots of more important things than contemporary art. So if something major comes
up, tragedy in the family, or what have you, let me
know, talk to me about it. Otherwise just be here, fair? Fair, okay. As far as participation, I really value your engagement, really value it. So you are always
welcomed to ask questions, you're always welcomed to stop
me in the middle of something and launch a question
or launch a disagreement or a clarification. Sometimes I'll skip over steps in the train of thought perhaps. That happens so back me up, how did you
get from here to there, you're welcomed to encourage to participate as much as as necessary for you in this class. Because that's the way
that we really digest and learn this stuff. Your education is not a matter of me delivering a bunch of stuff. Your education is you grabbing onto things and seeking out things. I'm just a facilitator for that. You're not passive, if
you are a passive student, you won't learn much and it
will just devolve into just memorizing of information or
not memorizing of information. Either way it's just information. What I care about is not information. I care about understanding, clarity of understanding. That's what we're seeking
so whatever we have to do to get that clarity is what we're after. As a side note on that, on the clarity business, I think, with my strategy in this class is to try to present as clearly as I can, an argument for each of
the works that we look at. I'm not gonna provide a whole lot of critique of those works. I'll leave that to you and
to classroom discussion. I may even say things I
don't agree with perhaps, as a means of presenting
the most forceful argument for this or that artist, this or that way of thinking about art. And then we can dialogue about it. I do put couple of notes in there, I just, prefer that you are tuned
in rather than tuned into phones or laptops or what have you. You'll have a couple of criticism papers to write in this class. We'll talk about that later, you can read over that on your own. You can read over those
assignments on your own. I'll talk about 'em a bit
in class at the beginning of each class as they come up, but you can read over those on your own. Any questions on any of that stuff so far? No, good. Good, you can read over that, yeah, okay, you can read all that stuff. The course calendar just to
make a couple of notes on it, what you see on the course calendar are what we're doing for the day, so it will either be in class
lecture or a field trip. You'll notice that the in class lecture is always divided into two parts. This class is scheduled
from 10:30 to 2:20. That gives us time to do field trips, but when we stay on
campus we're not going to sort of be in class
that entire four hours. We're gonna take a lunch
break halfway through. I guess in theory it's scheduled to be a 45 minute lunch break or so. So we have roughly three
hours of in class time. So we'll break every day about noon, take 45 minutes, come back,
and then go through it again. You have two lectures there because they are kind of
standalone lectures, each of them. And then you've got pre-class readings. Those are the ones that
you need to have done before you come to class. And then there are
additional resources there. Those additional resources
are in your course pack, but they're not required reading. Those are things that I
might reference in class, like there's this article, there's this. So I provide them to you
if you want to take another look at them or if you wanna
spend more time at the checkout if I've done justice to them or not. Any questions on that? On course calendar, syllabus in general? You'll note that our first field trip is two weeks from today. Those field trips are wonderful,
that will be a lot of fun. But they are also, they make our timing fairly unpredictable. Driving to L.A., is just it's not always predictable
how traffic will go. So on those days, I would
just really advise you to make your afternoon somewhat flexible, so that you don't have to
be back here right at 2:20, because I can't guarantee
that that will happen. Also regarding those field trips, we are going to have to drive ourselves, so we'll just carpool. So if you have a car and
you would be willing to drive on these field trips,
that would be wonderful, that would be great. Think about it between now and next week, and we'll discuss it a little bit at the beginning of next class, who can drive and do we have rides for everyone, good? And of course, we'll pay for
gas and mileage and parking and entrance fees and
all of that stuff, good? Any questions about any of that? Are you ready to get down to business? [laughs]
Yes! [students laugh] Okay, then let's do it! Can you see that okay? Clear and you can still see your papers? This is contemporary art trends. What is this class? In the context of the course here at Biola, it
does come after modernity. So you take, Western History one, Western History two, and then modernity. If you haven't taken modernity, that's fine, that class is going
through some restructuring. So it will actually
disappear and get absorbed into the other art history classes. But in that kind of train of thought, that our art history
courses are set up as, you could call this class Post-Modernity. It's whatever comes after
modernity, the Modern Age, whatever you studied in modernity. This is the class after that. It's kind of difficult to pin down what
post-modernity is though. Perhaps we shouldn't title
this class Post-Modernity, because post-modernity is
just, it's a slippery term. For one, it's just inherently ambiguous. I mean what does the prefix post mean? After. After modernity. So what is that? Which way do you move after modernity? There is lots of disagreement
about the proper way to move past modernity or multiple
interpretations about how we already have moved past modernity. There are a lot of suggestions
that we haven't moved past modernity at all. We find ourselves in some
kind of a hyper modernity, more intensified modernity. It's also unclear whether this
is a reaction to modernity. We title ourselves post
because we have responded to it and critiqued it and
distanced ourselves from it, or whether it is trying to
move onto something else, the next stage in thinking. Take modernity and improve on it, fix its errors constructively. So it's pretty ambiguous. And beyond that we might
not want to call our course post-modernity because
there's lots of speculation that post-modernity might be over. There are all sorts of people today who are saying that we
are in some sort of a post post-modernity, which sort of becomes ridiculous. Or an alter-modernity, something other. We'll try to understand
post-modernity in this class. We'll try to understand what
it is, what its features are, what its features are in art-making. But we'll stick with the title contemporary art trends. Multiple trends, multiple
kind of trains of thought that have been running
through the last 60 years, 65 years of art-making, that we'll try to track. We'll try to pull out some
of those major threads, those major trains of thought, and think through what they are. And thus where are we
in contemporary terms? Where are we in the train of thought? So that's what we're after. I put in here, if you're not clear about what
post-modern art looks like, this is post-modern art. We'll get back to Joseph Kosuth and try to understand him later. Once again I've mentioned that my strategy in this class
is to try to present a compelling case for the
artwork we're looking at, and that will include trying
to make a compelling case for post-modernity and post-modernism. Once again, I know that that causes that's not always been a very popular term or concept around
here, post-modernism. We might find ourselves like clenching up when the teacher says this
is a class in post-modernity, and I'm gonna give you an argument for it. But I think that's the honest
way to reach clarity about it, is to try to present a case for it, a case for what's been going on, and then we can kind of bat it around and
critique it from the inside, good? That'll be my strategy. Our time before lunch, I want to try to understand modernity. Get ourselves a running
start into this class, and really you could understand the first maybe two of our class periods as the late extensions of modernity. And then we'll try to
understand the post-modern term, the term past modernity. But if we're gonna come to terms
of whatever post-modern is, we've got to come to terms
with what the modern is, what modernity is. And once again, that's
a pretty ambiguous term. What is the modern? What do we mean by modernity? It's ambiguous because it
tends to mean different things in different subjects,
different disciplines, right? In philosophy, if you studied philosophy, you could start tracking
modernity with the Enlightenment. You would equate it with
Enlightenment thinking, or you might back up even further and start with the Renaissance. Basically Renaissance to
World War II as modernity. Or maybe it's tighter, it's
just the Enlightenment, maybe modernity is the
beginning of the 20th century. At any rate, it's somewhat
slippery and it's also slippery within the arts because
sometimes what we refer to as modernity in the arts, is actually a reaction to
modernity in philosophy, or in politics or something like that, where we call ourselves modern artists, because it's the appropriate work to make in the modern period is one
of reaction and resistance. But that means that modern art is actually sort of fighting against
what we mean by modern in some of the other disciplines. It's somewhat slippery but
we're going to for our sake, and this is fairly common within art history, the study of art history, we're gonna think about
modernity as starting some time in the mid 19th century, 1800s, and extending up to World War II or so. It will continue into the 70s, maybe we're still in modernity, but usually what we mean by modernity, modernism in the arts is, roughly impressionism
through abstract painting, abstract expressions and
maybe into minimalism. So we'll talk through that. I might also mention, we may have to distinguish
and this may be helpful, to distinguish between
modernity and modernism. And same with post-modernity
and post-modernism. What's the difference, what is an ism? When we say ism what are
we talking about, usually? What's that?
>> Student: A belief. >> A belief, we can call
it a worldview, a way of, a system of values, a system of ideas, a set of systems, ways of living life, specifically ways of thinking about life, I guess it would be worldview that would be modernism. So perhaps what are
the ideas in modernism? Modernity, we might refer actually
to the larger systems, there's larger systems. Where ism is more of the
thinking, the ideology, and the modernity is more of
the ways of living life, the context that we live in, the systems that govern our life. Technology, politics, those sort of
things, political structures, the things that shape your life, and shape the way that we are as people. If we do make that distinction,
then I suppose we could say that we are sort of all post-moderns, we're all post-modernity, in post-modernity or hyper-modernity. But we might not necessarily subscribe to forms of post-modernism. Anyway, let's try to understand modernity. What's going on in modernity? We're gonna take a running start into that and we're going to use one of
our texts for today's class, to help us understand this
and help us understand perhaps what modernism is,
what modernity is in the arts. The text we're gonna use before lunch, is by a guy named Clement Greenberg. Clement Greenberg was a
very prominent art critic in the mid 20th century. He is trained as a philosopher, I think he taught at Columbia off the top of my
head, I should know that. He was very prominent as an art
critic and very influential. Essay that we're gonna look
at as a means of understanding what modernism, modern art
is, is an essay called, Towards a Newer Laocoon. Towards a Newer Laocoon. What does that word mean, Laocoon? If we just look at the title, this might give us some
cues as to what he's doing. What is Laocoon? Have you heard that before? What is it? >> Student: It's part of Greek myth or like he was part of who's, he was a man, he was a Troy, and he was a son prophesied
and that gods sent. There's a big sculpture that-- >> Yes, this sculpture, yes! This is a Greek sculpture
about a Greek myth, Laocoon and his sons who, I believe you're right, were members, citizens of the city of Troy, he was warning, don't
accept to that horse. Don't let that horse
into your city because it's danger, it's not
a gift, it's sabotage. Right, you guys know
the Trojan horse story. In response to this, one of the Greek goddesses, I think it's Athena maybe who wanted this to happen
knew that Laocoon was sort of warning the people and so sent these snakes, these deadly snakes to bite Laocoon, destroy
he and his sons, yeah? >> Student: I think they are sea serpents. >> Sea serpents, good,
I'll agree with that. It's been awhile, I
should brush up on that before coming to class. At any rate, when Greenberg
is referring to Laocoon, he is referring to the sculpture. And why is this sculpture so important? It's certainly important to
the Greeks and to the Romans, but it became extremely important
to Renaissance art-making as well. You have Pliny the Younger
who says of this sculpture, this is a work to be
preferred to all that the arts of painting and sculpture have produced. This is has become a standard, the kind of artistic cannon
that we should follow in Western culture, in Western art-making. That this is for a variety of reasons, at the pinnacle of art-making, in its understanding of anatomy, its understanding of form and movement, it's encapsulation of the human condition, and on and on and on. It is at the pinnacle of art-making. What is Greenberg saying just
with the title of this essay? What do we need today? >> Student: A new standard. >> A new standard. A new pinnacle of art-making. Why, why would he say that
this doesn't work anymore? Why can't this be the standard? Well, I mean it's old. Maybe it's just boring to
have really old standards, that could be part of the argument. But I think even more
than that he would say, the context has shifted so
much that this isn't really intelligible in the same
way that it used to be. I mean, you've got mass communication. You've got television, radio, and newspapers, you've got capitalism, and socialism,
you've got totally different political structures
and economic structures. You've got so much
development within the arts, that this doesn't have as
much power as it used to. Or it doesn't have the same kind of power, or power in the same way. It can't encapsulate the human condition, and encapsulate our highest ideals in the same way that it used to. It's become mute in a way, or we've become deaf to it. We're tuned into other stations, to tie back into our technology, this is not technology. We're tuned into other stations. Clement Greenberg is
going to make an argument that whatever the kind of
pinnacle of art-making is, however we understand it,
it's gotta be a new standard. It has to be reconfigured. Let's try to dig through his article
and see what he's saying. So we first want to try to
identify, what is his diagnosis? What does he think is the problem? Why doesn't the old Laocoon work, the old standards work? What problem needs to be addressed? So if you have your essay,
you can take it out, and refer to it, if you
don't have it, that's fine, I'll try to put the
quotes up on the screen. But you might from now
on, bring those with you, bring your course pack with you, or at least articles
we're working on to class 'cause we'll refer to them
and read from them and so on. I want to start by just trying to get his diagnosis, at the beginning of this
essay, I think he lays it out. He says this starting from
the very beginning here. By the way these are clipped down. I'm thinking about you guys, these are clipped down so
that they're a little bit more manageable in length 'cause
they're pretty dense. It's pretty dense reading, right? I tried to clip it down so that you can concentrate on the few pages
that we're gonna talk about rather than the whole thing. That does mean however that
if you're interested in this, go back and read it, the
whole thing at some point. That may change your opinion. I'm trying to give you only
what we'll talk about in class so we can maintain focus. So starting from the
beginning, he says this. There can be I believe such a
thing as a dominant art form. Dominant art form. This was what literature
had become in Europe by the 17th century. When it happens that a single art is given the dominant role, it becomes the prototype of all art. The others try to shed
their proper characteristics and imitate its effects. The dominant art in turn,
tries itself to absorb the functions of the others. What happens when an art form is dominant? If literature for instance
becomes the dominant art form, then what that means is
that the other art forms like painting for instance, tries to shed the characteristics
that are unique to it, and tries to absorb the
characteristics of literature. Painting for instance that
does what literature does, or operates analogous to literature, yeah? >> Student: I was a
little I guess surprised, or confused when I read that just because I don't know it seems, I'm just wondering why that was the case to say that 'cause it seems
like painting has been such a primary art form. And is it, so he's saying
this because most art was narratively based or, like I guess can there be
art that is narratively based with a literary property
or qualities that is still properly accepted? >> Yeah that's a good question. So the question is, did you all hear okay? It seems like the question is, is it just narrative only
belongs to literature, or can that belong to
painting in its own way? If it does belong in its own way, how's the way painting
does narrative different and fully distinct from how
literature does narrative? Let's suspend that
question for just a moment. I'll show you some examples
and we'll try to get more of what he says but I think
that's a really good question to ask at this point. Is narrative and literary subjects the subjugation, a painting
subjugation to literature? Is that what he means or is
it more complicated than that? So we'll go on. The dominant art in turn
tries to absorb the functions of the others and the
confusion of the arts results, by which the subservient ones
are perverted and distorted. They are forced to deny their own nature, in an effort to attain the
effects of the dominant art. However, the subservient
arts can only be mishandled in this way when they
have reached such a degree of technical facility as
to enable them to pretend to conceal their mediums. In other words, the artist
must have gained such power over his material as to annihilate it, seemingly in favor of illusion. Just to make sure we're tracking with him, what is his diagnosis? In his words, if one art form is given a dominant role over the other art forms, then what results as a confusion. I think what he's after is
trying to correct confusions. The confusion, that's
sort of what drives him. We'll see later on next
week, he's very interested in Kant, Immanuel Kant, who's trying to, make the disciplines of a reason and an aesthetic judgment and so on self-sufficient, totally self-sufficient, so they're not being
confused and all wrapped up and muddled in other disciplines. So he's trying to correct the
confusion by distinguishing what's specific and unique
about each of the art forms. As long as one art form
is dominating the others, the confusion persists. And what does confusion look like? It looks like the subservient
ones like painting or sculpture being
perverted and distorted, so that they are forced
to deny their own nature in an effort to attain the effects of the dominant art, literature. They behave like literature
and they can only behave like literature when they
cease to cloak and withhold the way that that they
really are in themselves. As he says, how does this happen? How do they cloak themselves? It is by concealing the medium itself. The medium itself, so what's
the medium of painting? Paint and wood and canvas, something flat, an object that hangs in a room, the stuff that the thing is made of. The mediums of or media of sculpture, would be the stone, the wood, the plaster, whatever it's made out of. As long as those are
concealing themselves, in order to represent something else or behave in a literary way, then they're always wrapped
up in this kind of illusion where they are presenting
something other than themselves. Does that makes sense as his diagnosis? What he sees as a confusion, something
wrong, something off. What are his examples? He doesn't name names so much but we could certainly find
examples all over the place. When you looks at this, what do you see? What is this? The Death of Socrates? Greenberg would say,
you're already confused. This is not The Death of Socrates, this is paint on canvas. Precisely what it's doing
is concealing itself, or being arranged in such a
way that what you think about and pay attention to, the way you're impacted
by this painting is not the paint itself, the medium itself, rather you're launched almost immediately into thinking about Socrates and his what voluntary suicide execution. I would rather die, and hold true to the good,
the true, and the beautiful than to renounce it so I'll take the hemlock. Greenberg is saying that whole discussion is subservient, it's painting acting as a
handmaiden to literature. Very directly in this case. It's painting serving Socrates. It's literature very directly. It's a written form as being
more important and more dominant than the painting itself, the visual effect of the thing
itself, the forms themselves. So hard to see these
forms without seeing flesh and seeing fabric, seeing stone. As he goes on to say, on that opposite side
of the page over here, right hand column about halfway down, total subservience to literature
occurs when all emphasis is taken away from the
medium and transferred to the subject matter. That's what's happening in that
Death of Socrates painting. What is medium? That's the paint, the
canvas, that sort of stuff. What is subject matter? >> Student: What it depicts.
>> What is depicts. What the painting is of, Socrates. For instance. When the emphasis is
taken away from the medium and transferred to the subject matter, I think that's what he would say is subservience to literature. That kind of gets back to Amy's question, I think Greenberg would say, that narrative of any kind, and I think he might even go so far as to say representation,
subject matter at all, is subservience to literature. I don't know if that's fair. Simply because I don't know that, I mean, so what is literature? I mean, isn't literature I mean I think we would
be fairly disappointed if we were to read a book, and only draw our attention to the medium, and not the subject matter. I mean, I think what he's
calling for in painting is analogous to a book that doesn't say, it doesn't say anything. It's just forms on paper. Maybe in his scheme, literature is subservient
to something else. It's not necessarily the painting is subservient to literature, it's that all of them
are behaving as media. I mean he might have a point
in an instance like this where clearly the subject matter
is derived from literature. I don't know, yeah? >> Student: It almost
sounds like to me that he's taking away from what the
art actually is, almost like, somewhere it was about like being nothing, he's like simplifying it to being like, that's just a paint or just, words on a page instead of
trying to convey a message which is like, to me what I think of
most artist is doing, like The Death of Socrates,
like they're trying to like depict a story which is
the literature thing. Exactly what he's talking
about but it's almost like he's trying to take away
from that and so if like, he's mad or almost jealous of
what the artists are doing. I don't know, made me think of, he's trying
to simplify it and be like, why are you trying to go
do all these other things? At least that's what
was my first impression. >> The way you're reading
Greenberg's train of thought is that he is basically making
the paintings meaningless. He's trying to drain them of meaning. >> Student: Almost or just
simplifying it to being what it's made out of and with what the artists are trying to convey. >> That's right, and initially
that's gonna cause us sort of knee jerk reaction in us. Like oh why are you draining
the thing of meaning? What he's gonna argue and
we'll see this more next week is that I think he's actually
gonna say, would say, that the way that it means has to change. If the way that you
see a painting meaning, carrying meaning is through the narrative and the subject matter that it conveys, then yes, I am draining it of meaning, and unraveling its meaning and trying to withhold its meaning. But I think he would say, that is positioning the
meaning of the painting in the wrong place. We're gonna try to understand
the way that a painting can mean in a different way, not narratively and not in
terms of subject matter. What we'll see, second half of this class, is that if you don't have meaning or not meaning, if you don't
have narrative subject matter, as a way of having the
painting mean something, what do you have left? You have the meaningfulness of
form, the constructional form and you have the meaningfulness
of artistic action, artistic engagement. What the artist is doing
and the way the artist is present in the world and
present to the canvas is a way of, is meaningful. And so he would say, if you regard what I'm saying as a prescription for meaninglessness, you are still, you are stuck in the old Laocoon. >> Student: I was gonna
say like maybe it's good 'cause Greenberg's
trained to think too hard about what we're looking at. Like we, surpassed the simplicity of like, what they've done with
the colors or the forms and they're saying we go straight to, you know Socrates, instead of looking at the appreciation for the artist process or
whatever what have you. >> Yeah that's right, that in a way, he wants us to back up a step and regard, I mean he might say that this painting, if it doesn't mean Socrates
and that whole virtue and all of those things,
if it doesn't mean that, then we regard it as meaningless. He would say, ooh, I'm putting these words in
his mouth, he would say, ooh, you're a nihilist, 'cause you think that
form and color and medium and the activity of an artist
is meaningless until we tack meaning onto it. He would say, then you believe in an
essentially meaningless world. It's humans constructing meaning. That's in a sense nihilism. He wants to back us up
a step and say, nope, already meaningful. This already meaningful, if
you just let it impact you. The confusion of the arts
is one in which painting doesn't get to mean in
the way that painting can uniquely mean, the way
that it can mean something that literature can't,
that it can't do it. So he wants to revive the
meaningfulness of painting as uniquely meaningful
in ways that the other that music isn't or that literature isn't, yeah? >> Student: So is his focus
more on the relationship between the artist and then the medium? >> He's gonna focus on that, yeah. But he's gonna, I think he's
gonna put even more emphasis on the meaningfulness of form. So it's action, the
relationship between the artist and the canvas. We'll get into that a
lot second half of class, but it's also form itself. How does form itself, the
construction of form carry meaning before there's any narrative or subject matter attached to it. >> Student: So would you say he's like more about the process? >> Yeah, process, that's
gonna be important to him. So what he wants to do is
if this is subservience, taking emphasis away from the medium and putting it onto subject matter, he's gonna try to reverse the
flow and reverse the emphasis from subject matter,
downplaying subject matter, and up playing the medium,
emphasizing the medium. A couple more examples, I mean, he mentions the 17th and 18th
century as being the kind of heighth of the
concealing of the medium. I think it extends quite
a bit later than that, well into the 19th century. We have a painting like this and it's just hard to
look at it as a painting, as paint, as a medium. You're so immediately thinking about and feeling seduction, temptation, fleshy bodies, tempting this satyr and so on. That is what Greenberg will refer to as the sort of withdrawal of the medium for the sake of the subject matter. In some sense, the medium,
the paint becomes invisible so that we're able to see bodies, 'cause it's really hard to
see both at once, isn't it? Both paint, flat surface,
and bodies, yeah? >> Student: I was just
thinking it's interesting with this particular, as a painting, like,
produce the French rococo, because they weren't
really about anything. Like they really, in it of themselves, isn't there some quotation about like, artist getting better and
better at saying less and less as what they say nothing, basically any rococo paintings, so, that's an understatement because
it's not even at this point really about stories so much as it is just almost just a form which is also--
>> That's interesting. >> Student: As part of
his I guess his critique. >> Yeah that's interesting,
that's interesting. That in a way this is the sort of sort of early movements towards Greenberg, in that it's about feeling and sensation of the forms. It's just that Greenberg would say, well if that's what it's about,
why are you messing around with nymphs and satyrs
and things like that? Why flesh and body and all this illusion? Why not just let the forms themselves, the color
themselves that seduce you? Can the painting seduce you? Just to back up a bit,
I suppose we would say, that Greenberg would identify
traditional religious art as kind of having the same problems, a subservience to literature, within Christian art especially, it's subservient to which literature? >> Students: The Bible. >> Scripture or theology even. Images illustrating or
representing literature. He's not as bothered though, I think, about traditional Christian art, because there's this thing in, there's this sort of mode in religious art where the image offers itself and withholds itself simultaneously, especially in the Middle Ages. Especially in kind of
Byzantine iconography. The image emphasizes its flatness and he is gonna say that's a good thing. The Christians offered
the image and withheld it, emphasized its subject
matter and flattened it, as a way of saying, this is Jesus but this is only an image. Don't worship this thing,
this is just language, this is just a construction. It's just a construction and
you can't see it in a sense that these are heavenly realms. Your imagination can't shouldn't collapse the heavenly realms into the manageable, something easily manageable for you. Greenberg is gonna say this
is okay, this is better than what happens later on. But all through the Christian tradition, you have this dialectic
between offering an image, a representational image
and flattening it out, withholding it, making it appear
as a flat surface and as a as a figure, the Madonna
and Child for instance. And that's something for
further thought about traditional Christian
imagery that I think is fairly fascinating, that relationship between
the representation and the flatness, the substance of the of the image itself. Image as an object, image as an image. It's with the Renaissance
that things start running off the rails in Greenberg's narrative. What happens in The Renaissance? What happens between this and this? You have the increasing
illusion of the paint. The paint itself, the medium
itself, concealing itself, so that you see even
more and more seamlessly, the Madonna and Child in our space, as though to continuation of
our space, our visual space. He is of course gonna say, or regard this as the
transition from emphasis on medium to subject matter
and once you're there, then you have painting becoming totally subservient to literature. And totally operating as illusion. One thing you're gonna hear
as these artists in this kind of modernist movement, one thing you're gonna
hear over and over again, is an emphasis on truthfulness, reality, collapsing illusion and emphasizing the reality of the thing,
the scientific reality, which is the thing itself. This is an illusion. What we're interested
in is the thing itself. So you're gonna get
this kind of paradoxical or maybe initially confusing
emphasis on truth and reality. I guess both people or
people on either side of this argument are
going to just disagree about what we mean by truth
and reality in a painting. But certainly, there's plenty of argument, there's plenty argument
to be made of painting being subservient to literature. And that might not be a bad thing, but it might cause us to run over too quickly
what painting is itself. What does Greenberg then articulate as being the response? What's the response to this? If this is the problem, subservience that results
in confusion about the arts, then what's the response? You'll see that at the
bottom of the second column. We'll read some of that. He says this, as the first and most
important item upon its agenda, the avant-garde. He introduces the term avant-garde here. As the first and most
important item on its agenda, the avant-garde saw the
necessity of an escape from ideas which were infecting the arts with the ideological struggles of society. Ideas came to mean
subject matter in general, subject matter as
distinguished from content. Oh that's gonna be important. We'll sort that out here in a bit. Ideas came to mean
subject matter in general. In parenthesis, subject matter's
distinguished from content in the sense that every work
of art must have content. It must be meaningful. But that subject matter is
something the artist does or does not have in mind
when he is actually at work. This meant a new and
greater emphasis upon form, and it also involved the
assertion of the arts as independent vocations,
disciplines, and crafts. Absolutely autonomous and
entitled to respect for their own sakes and not merely as
vessels of communication. It was the signal for revolt
against the dominance of literature which was subject
matter at its most oppressive. That's kind of dense isn't it? Did you get any of that? We'll sort through it, what he just said, 'cause it's important to understanding his take on what the modern is. First, it's important to
point out that his response, what he sees as the
response to this confusion is the avant-garde. Have you heard that term before? In modernity I imagine
you covered that term. What does the avant-garde mean? What does the word mean? Or the term mean? Avant is, >> Student: Forward.
>> Forward. And garde is, guard. So what does it mean? It's a French term that
means the advance guard, or the forward guard. It's a military term. In kind of military movements, the rear guard are the
people who are in the back making sure you don't get
ambushed from the back, sort of following up,
protecting the kind of main, the main group from behind. So what is the avant-garde
then or the forward guard? Those who are out in
the front of everything. They see what's coming,
they see the dangers, they see the landscape,
they see the terrain, they see what's coming before anyone else. It's kind of self-congratulating
term really to title yourself the avant-garde
but basically it is, what the avant-garde do
is they are the artists who are out in front and
they see what has to happen and they see how things have to change, and how the whole community,
the whole army, the battalion needs to change direction
to avoid further error or what have you. So who are the avant-garde in 20th century art criticism and in Greenberg's use of the term? It's those artists who are out in front, who are working towards the newer Laocoon. They are going to articulate and identify what the new standards are
gonna be and what the new way of meaning in art is going to be. He gives us some very specific jobs for the avant-garde to do. At this point in 1940 he's
partially I think prescribing what artist need to do
but he's also identifying what they have been doing. What has the avant-garde been doing? He gives us a couple things
in that passage we just read. First, they need to remove
subject matter from art by distinguishing it from content. He says in that passage that I read, ideas were infecting the arts. Infecting. But ideas, what I mean by ideas, ideas came to mean subject matter. But that's not the same as
content, is what he wants to say. What is subject matter? We've already defined it. It's what a painting is about
or what an artwork is about. The sculpture that we were looking at has the subject matter of Laocoon. But what is content, what does that mean? What does word content mean in art? >> Student: What's actually depicted? >> What's depicted, yeah, depicted is gonna fall
back into subject matter. What's depicted, what it's
about, what images, the scene, that would all kind of funnel
back into subject matter. >> Student: Is it just like
everything that's contained in the image.
>> Yeah. >> Student: The form of it,
it's like the movement of lines moving the color or like-- >> Good.
>> Student: Even though it's like the action of I think
it's like bubonic plague, the act that artist has left on whatever, it's a painting. >> Good, so the kind of, the bigger, it's bigger containings. Evan did you have a-- >> Evan: Yeah I was gonna say like, it's what the painting is actually saying. What we see. >> Okay good.
>> Evan: More than that. >> What it means. >> Evan: Yeah.
>> Okay good. Taylor did you want to add onto that? >> Taylor: Her definition
how that differs, or what form is exactly. >> I think what he is
meaning here with content and usually what it means in
this kind of art discussions, is that the content, when it's distinguished from
subject matter is the meaning, the meaningfulness of the thing. You're right to say form and
what it contains more broadly because that's where he's
gonna put the meaning, but when he distinguishes
subject matter from content, he's distinguishing what is
pictured from what it means, how it means. What he's gonna say is to
get back to an earlier point, what he's gonna say, what he wants to do, is to say that if we remove subject matter from painting, we haven't removed meaning. We haven't removed content. When we remove ideas from painting, which he's going to say, what he means by ideas,
he says, ideas become attached to subject matter. Ideas are what you're trying to depict. I've got this agenda that
I want to communicate and that's what the idea is
or the subject matter is. But he's gonna say that's
not what it ends up meaning. The meaning is bigger than that. Meaning isn't necessarily tied to what you want the work to be about
or what you're depicting. After all, there are
million ways to depict the Madonna and Child,
same subject matter, and have them come out meaning
totally different things, totally opposite things. You can depict the Madonna and
Child, same subject matter, in total blackness and in total gold, and those are gonna mean
something incredibly different. The difference in the meaning
is in the form of the thing, not in the subject matter. Our earlier conversation about if you drain the thing of subject matter, does it become meaningless? Greenberg says nope,
it's still meaningful, we just have to let it
mean in a different way. We have to do that at the
beginning by distinguishing what it shows from what it means. So we gotta get those straight to understand what he's saying. He says this pretty directly, how do you distinguish between them? Well, it means, a new and
greater emphasis on form or the meaningfulness of form, asserting each of the arts
as absolutely autonomous and entitled to respect
for their own sakes, not merely as vessels of communication. That's what he means, this
vessels of communication business is what he is, his problem with subject matter, his problem with expressing
ideas in your artwork, it's treating the artwork
as an empty container to ram communication through. And he says when you do that, you're not doing justice
to the thing itself, the form itself. He gives us a timeline here. He gives us some examples. If you follow on the left
column of that second page. He gives some specific examples. The first one he mentions is Courbet. Greenberg says that Courbet is in many ways the kind of
first avant-garde painter. In fact, he says he says this directly. He says Courbet, the first
real avant-garde painter tried to reduce his art
to immediate sense data by painting only what the
eye could see as a machine unaided by the mind. You know the famous quote from Courbet. He was asked, why don't you paint angels? Why don't you paint religious scenes? >> Student: He was like
show me a name, show me, I'll paint the angel if you show me more-- >> Yes, good. If you show me an angel, I'll paint it. I'll paint anything that
the world presents to me. The world doesn't present angels, and it doesn't present
Jesus, it doesn't present historical narratives. The world presents this to me and so I will respond
to it in painting, yeah. And so Greenberg is going to say, that initial kind of the first beginnings of
that avant-garde trajectory is becoming in tune with
what presents itself and how, what presents itself means. It's still subject matter but he's saying, we're breaking off in
the right direction here. Secondly, in the following paragraph, he identifies impressionism as extending the avant-garde project, why? Because when you look at a
Monet painting for instance, what's the subject matter here? What's depicted? The cathedral at different times of day, but what does it, what's
the content of the thing? Does the painting have really anything to do with the cathedral? Not really, not really, I mean I guess, you could say that this is sort of, there's some sort of
transcendence that's happening, dissolving the cathedral, I can't enter 'cause I can't quite get
it or something like that. It's too mediated by light and
vision and changing context, I don't know. You could wrap the cathedral into the meaning of the painting. I think you have to really. Greenberg is gonna identify impressionism, Monet perhaps specifically
as being an important step in the avant-garde movement because it's so concerned with impression. The way the world presents itself. The color, the form, the
activity of painting. So when you look at a Monet painting, you see paint, you see brush strokes, and you see a person
responding sensitively to form and color and movement of light. And there's tremendous meaning in that. Does that make sense? But it's shifted away from the
subject matter, the emphasis, and more onto the form or
the response of the artist. Not entirely, the subject
matter's still there but we're moving in the right direction. Thirdly, he identifies
later in that paragraph, he identifies Manet. Manet meanwhile closer
to Courbet was attacking subject matter on its own terrain by including it in his pictures and exterminating it then and there. What does that mean? How is Manet including subject
matter and exterminating it, attacking it then and there? He does so in this painting by taking the conventions of painting. If you look at this painting, it's a weird painting, isn't it? I mean what is going on? In this painting, some sort
of scandalous what not. But you start paying attention
to it, it kind of like, what is this painting of anyway? And you start to realize, oh this is, these are all of the conventions
of traditional painting colliding with each other. So you've got the landscape,
it's a landscape painting. It's a nude painting,
there's a still life, there's a bather and there's the kind of, self-congratulating critics and observers, male observers who are
wrapped up in to the painting, observing all of this, sort of, [mumbles] in a non, kind of disturbed way as though, a nude sitting in front
of you is no big deal, with a kind of aesthetic detachment. He's taking all of these
conventions of Western painting and just annihilating them by wrenching them around each other. This painting is totally
confusing in the way that all of these conventions
are jarring with each other, but also the spatial
structure of it itself. Things are flying around, the bather is way too big,
she looks like a giant, she's not spatially located correctly. The thing is a total mess
but it's an intentional mess. If you give Manet enough
kinda, rope, enough line, what you find that he is
doing is drawing attention not to the subject matter,
not to the nude, the man, the landscape, those sort of things, but he's drawing attention to
the conventions of painting. This painting is about painting. About the conventions of
painting and that is why Greenberg is going to say
that Manet is attacking subject matter on its own
terrain by including it in his pictures, landscape,
bather, still life, et cetera, and exterminating it then
and there in the painting. You feel like you got your hands around Greenberg a little bit? Good. We need a break for lunch,
let me see if I can get just a little bit further
and then we'll break. I won't cut short your lunchtime at all. So first, we remove the avant-garde. What it does is it removes
subject matter from art but distinguishing it from
meaning, from content. We see that really directly with Manet. What does that painting mean? It's not subject matter
that carries the meaning. It means because of the
way that painting is wrapped around itself and we're supposed to
think about painting. But secondly, the second
thing the avant-garde does, is to expand the physical, sensorial power of the medium itself. If you're gonna shift the
emphasis from subject matter to form, yeah, to form, you gotta make the form more powerful, more noticeable than itself. And he starts saying
that on the second column of that second page
about three lines down, in the middle of that sentence there. He says, there's a common
effort in each of the arts to expand the expressive
resources of the medium, not in order to express ideas and notions, to use it as a vessel of communication. But to express with greater
immediacy sensations, the irreducible elements of experience. He wants you to have a sensory experience in front of the painting
and to be in touch with how sensations can be meaningful to us. And so, what is going to be his example? What other art form does this really well? Carries meaning through
form without subject matter or without subjugating itself to literature? >> Student: Music.
>> Music. And you get that about
halfway down the second column of that second page. Music, look to music as a role model. It is meaningful as pure form, as he says. When I go to the L.A. Phil, and I see, attend a performance of
Tchaikovsky, there's no, narrative over it. I mean I guess there could
be and there's narrative associated with it and musicians
will disagree about this but I'll channel Greenberg for a minute. There's no narrative, there's no lyrics, there's no subject matter. It's not about anything but it is extraordinarily meaningful. It moves me deeply. And how does it move me? It moves me by arranging form. Pitch, and rhythm. Lows and highs, fast and slows. It arranges those in
relation to each other and that moves me deeply. Why, says Greenberg, can't painting do the same thing? We got all the same tools. It's just a different medium. We've got color which operates in the same way that pitch might. We've got rhythm, in painting, we've got rhythm in painting, we've got fast and slow, we
have expansion and contraction, we've got all of that in painting. Why do you need to sort of
muck it up with subject matter? We could point to very directly, an artist who gets that and
is thinking exactly that, Wassily Kandinsky, who is
extremely interested in music. He wrote a little book called
on the Spiritual in Art. It's a fascinating little book where he talks about the
avant-garde and he points directly to music and he says, look, painting can do everything music can do, as long as we stop attributing the meaning of the painting to only what it pictures. If you just back off of all
of that and you let the color and the form work, it can
operate as a musical composition or in an analogous way
to musical composition. And that's an important point. They're using music as a role model, not as what painting should imitate. You shouldn't have painting
imitating music now. You should just have painting saying, well music can do it,
why can't painting do it? Kandinsky is going to
withdraw the subject matter, so maybe you have a landscape there, but it's so withdrawn, that what is important
about this painting, or what we have to
experience in this painting, is the relationship
between color and form, the way that it pulls
us in certain directions and opens us up in other
directions and so on. Kandinsky had pretty
elaborate theories about how art could operate in a
way analogous to music and thus you'll often see
his paintings just titled, Composition, as in, analogous to musical composition. So let's get to the main point here and then we'll break for lunch. What is the thesis then? We've been tracking Greenberg's essay, we've been identifying what
he sees as the problem, the diagnosis, what the response is, the avant-garde is the response. So what is the thesis? What does he say is the main
point here, the main argument? I think we get that on the third page in the first column underneath where it has the Roman numeral five. A few lines down. The arts lie safe now each within its legitimate boundaries and free trade has been
replaced by autarchy, meaning, self-rule. Purity in art consist in the acceptance, the willing acceptance of
the limitations of the medium of the specific art. And then jumping down just a bit, to the next paragraph. The arts then have been
hunted back to their mediums and there they have been isolated, concentrated and defined. It is by virtue of its medium
that each art is unique and strictly itself. To restore the identity of an art, the opacity of its medium,
the opacity of its medium. So the medium doesn't become transparent. It becomes itself, it
becomes opaque in a way. The opacity of its medium
must be emphasized. For the visual arts, the medium
is discovered to be physical hence pure painting and pure
sculpture seek above all else to affect the spectator physically. Through your eyes, the form, without just getting
into the realm of ideas. But to affect you physically. And so he says, he says
this in part that we read, purity in a nutshell, purity in art consists in the acceptance, willing acceptance of the
limitations of the medium of the specific art. It is by virtue of its medium
that each art is unique and strictly itself. This is the thesis. If you take nothing else
away from this essay, here it is, it's the second full paragraph in the second column of that third page. And this is it, this is his argument. The history of avant-garde painting is that of a progressive surrender to the resistance of the medium. Which resistance consists chiefly in the flat picture
plane's denial of efforts to hole through it for, I think he would put realistic in quotes, 'cause what is he
identifying as more real? The picture plane. So the resistance consists
chiefly in the flat picture plane's denial of
efforts to hole through it for realistic perspectival space. So what does avant-garde painting do? It doesn't allow you one point perspective and all of that illusion. It doesn't allow you to
hole through it and create a kind of false reality
and illusion of space, and figures in space, telling
stories about this or that. Avant-garde painting
needs to be in touch with what is really there and
progressively surrender to the materiality of the thing itself, and that means flatness. The painting has to be flat,
and it has to be forcefully, sensually alive, if you will. It has to strike you in the
same way that music strikes you. Does that make sense, you
follow what he's doing? Any particular questions come to mind, things that you were, talking about or specific questions? I usually give a little bit
of time right after lunch for, 'cause I don't know if you're like me, I think I'm a pretty slow thinker. Hopefully good thinker but slow, things take a little
while for me to sort of piece things together and I
find that if I go away to lunch, I'll have formulated my
question that I wanted to ask in class about 45 minutes later. When it's done, so anyway,
I usually make a little time right after lunch if there's anything rolling around in your head, yeah? >> Student: We were talking
about the painted sculpture. I was wondering if they
have something to add to these same ideas
comes flash photography? >> Yes, yes, yes, yes. [student talking in the background] Yeah, right. Photo kind of messes
everything up in a way. We'll talk about that here
at the beginning of this lecture, this afternoon's lecture. Photography kind of messes things up. One of the ways it messes it up other than undercutting painting, painting's ability to represent the world, it also is like, we were talking about literature in the first part of the class, what does literature do? What is the medium of
literature if it doesn't present something through it? Photography's kind of the same way. There have been lots of experiments with abstract photography, just
trying to take in light, in sort of abstract forms
or patterns or whatever, but it's kind of you know,
photography is kind of open mechanical eye towards the world. It sort of seems like a strange ideological gymnastics to restrict what it pays attention to, to only purer of color and form. I mean photography's just one
of those things where it's, it just so quickly represents and so inevitably has subject matter. It has subject matter
built into it if it is taking in anything that's
external to itself in a way. It's hard for photo to just be paper, a flat picture
plane, what with ink on it, paper exposed, you know? So photo causes a big
problem in all of this. It might have part it might have a role to
play in why photography is so important to post-modernism, 'cause it doesn't fit modernism very well. So that's kind of pointing ahead. Remember, we're still in modernism. Everything we're talking
about now is modernity. Photography is going to be a key, have a key role to play
in post-modern art. Does that kind of address your question? Okay good, yeah, Ian? >> Ian: It's also like video also? 'Cause it's like really,
I know photography is affected by it but video as well. >> Yeah video, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Video is gonna lend itself pretty we're gonna start talking about action, the activity of the artist. Video is gonna lend itself
really well towards documenting action, activity. So we have a turn
towards artistic activity and video's gonna be really
well suited for that. Video is also real well
suited as is photography for social critique. Both of those are reasons
why it's important, why those mediums are important to post-modern making is
because you already have so much use of photography
and video in advertising, in commercial work that once artist
take those up and start subverting them, criticizing
the way that they're being used in advertising or in
kind of broader culture, they're gonna be really potent media for doing that in a
way that painting isn't. I mean what, you know, how does painting do social critique? It doesn't have, not enough
people look at paintings for it to have any kind
of social criticism or a whole lot of it whereas if you take up the media that are so so much a part of everyday life
like photography and video. If you take those up and
you work inside of them, you've got a lot more
potential for social critique because they're already in social use. Does that make some sense? That's kind of foreshadowing
where we're going with post-modernism. We'll talk of the post-modern. Both great questions. Let's jump back into it. >> Announcer: Biola
University offers a variety of biblically centered degree programs, ranging from business, to ministry, to the arts and sciences. Visit biola.edu to find out how Biola could make a difference in your life.
