Black Bucket Essays
Volume 1, Issue 1
“The survival of my own ideas may not be as important as a condition I might create for others’ ideas to be realized. ”
- Mel Chin
Nicole Herbert
Mel Chin’s quote asks us to consider the relationships between artists, spectators and the works of art that mediate between the two. By focusing on the role that the artist can play in initiating or realizing ideas in others, Chin counters the Romantic aesthetic orientation that emphasized the ego of the artist and subscribes instead to more contemporary aesthetic models which focus on the viewer.1 Broadly categorized under the heading Reception Theory, these later models presume that works of art exist as signs of communication rather than vehicles of personal expression.2
While it may seem strange and anachronistic to reference more contemporary aesthetic ideas alongside those from the 18th and 19th Centuries, I have found that the Romantic model and its entailed psychological influence continues to pervade artistic discourse. For example, my high school students enter art classes assuming that art is about their personal expression and is synonymous with a therapeutic orientation towards creation. Where does this idea come from and what are the implications for the interaction between art and ideology when the personal and individual continue to predominate?
In the early 20th Century, cultural producers started to question this relationship and began to create and theorize about artistic experiences that had the potential to challenge the status quo. Examples of this emphasis can be found in a range of disciplines, including the political theory of Gramsci, the literary ideas of Schlovsky, the artistic aims of Constructivism, and the theatrical work of Brecht. In each of these arenas, the audience was considered in relationship to challenging preconceptions and dominant modes of thought, which perpetuated existing hierarchies.
Later in the 20th Century and in reference to the way Minimalism countered psychological tendencies inherent in Abstract Expressionist approaches to creation, Hal Foster discusses how this orientation constitutes “a ‘death of the author’ (as Roland Barthes would call it in 1968) that is at the same time a birth of the viewer” (Foster: 50). While these aesthetic models each shifted importance to the spectator, more recent discussion has centered on the assumptions that were made about the audience in these instances.
Foster discusses how perceptual experiences with Minimalist works of art did not take into account the perspectives of historically and culturally marginalized
populations (43). Similarly, Eagelton examines how in early Reception Theory “the act of reading produces a kind of human subject which it also presupposes”(69).
While the spectator was more considered in each of these instances, the audience was perceived in limited ways. Unlike psychological aesthetic models, which permit a limited social scope for art, Chin’s quote underscores his emphasis on spectators’ ideas, as opposed to his own concepts. The challenge for contemporary aesthetics lies in finding the balance between acknowledging the subjective experience of culturally and historically contingent spectators, while maintaining more objective critical distance from social mechanisms, which aim to neutralize art that seeks to challenge the status quo.
1 For a more detailed account of Romantic notions of the artist ego and the historical development of a psychological orientation towards art, see Mukarovsky 1978: 150 – 168.
2 Terry Eagelton discusses the development of reception theory in “Phenomonology, Hermeneutics, Reception Theory” in Literary Theory (Eagelton: 47-78).
Bibliography
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction 2nd Edition. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
Foster, Hal. The Return of the Real: The Avant Garde at the End of the Century. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996.
Mukarovsky, Jan. Structure, Sign, and Function. Tr. John Burbank and Peter Steiner. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.
Volume 1, Issue 1
“The survival of my own ideas may not be as important as a condition I might create for others’ ideas to be realized. ”
- Mel Chin
Nicole Herbert
Mel Chin’s quote asks us to consider the relationships between artists, spectators and the works of art that mediate between the two. By focusing on the role that the artist can play in initiating or realizing ideas in others, Chin counters the Romantic aesthetic orientation that emphasized the ego of the artist and subscribes instead to more contemporary aesthetic models which focus on the viewer.1 Broadly categorized under the heading Reception Theory, these later models presume that works of art exist as signs of communication rather than vehicles of personal expression.2
While it may seem strange and anachronistic to reference more contemporary aesthetic ideas alongside those from the 18th and 19th Centuries, I have found that the Romantic model and its entailed psychological influence continues to pervade artistic discourse. For example, my high school students enter art classes assuming that art is about their personal expression and is synonymous with a therapeutic orientation towards creation. Where does this idea come from and what are the implications for the interaction between art and ideology when the personal and individual continue to predominate?
In the early 20th Century, cultural producers started to question this relationship and began to create and theorize about artistic experiences that had the potential to challenge the status quo. Examples of this emphasis can be found in a range of disciplines, including the political theory of Gramsci, the literary ideas of Schlovsky, the artistic aims of Constructivism, and the theatrical work of Brecht. In each of these arenas, the audience was considered in relationship to challenging preconceptions and dominant modes of thought, which perpetuated existing hierarchies.
Later in the 20th Century and in reference to the way Minimalism countered psychological tendencies inherent in Abstract Expressionist approaches to creation, Hal Foster discusses how this orientation constitutes “a ‘death of the author’ (as Roland Barthes would call it in 1968) that is at the same time a birth of the viewer” (Foster: 50). While these aesthetic models each shifted importance to the spectator, more recent discussion has centered on the assumptions that were made about the audience in these instances.
Foster discusses how perceptual experiences with Minimalist works of art did not take into account the perspectives of historically and culturally marginalized
populations (43). Similarly, Eagelton examines how in early Reception Theory “the act of reading produces a kind of human subject which it also presupposes”(69).
While the spectator was more considered in each of these instances, the audience was perceived in limited ways. Unlike psychological aesthetic models, which permit a limited social scope for art, Chin’s quote underscores his emphasis on spectators’ ideas, as opposed to his own concepts. The challenge for contemporary aesthetics lies in finding the balance between acknowledging the subjective experience of culturally and historically contingent spectators, while maintaining more objective critical distance from social mechanisms, which aim to neutralize art that seeks to challenge the status quo.
1 For a more detailed account of Romantic notions of the artist ego and the historical development of a psychological orientation towards art, see Mukarovsky 1978: 150 – 168.
2 Terry Eagelton discusses the development of reception theory in “Phenomonology, Hermeneutics, Reception Theory” in Literary Theory (Eagelton: 47-78).
Bibliography
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction 2nd Edition. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
Foster, Hal. The Return of the Real: The Avant Garde at the End of the Century. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996.
Mukarovsky, Jan. Structure, Sign, and Function. Tr. John Burbank and Peter Steiner. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.
