DOI: 10.4324/9781315147505-5
Values and Competence 141 discourse of contemporary Western aesthetics, and the Western, narrow, definition of art are applicable to non-Western phenomena. Though it is indisputable that the discourse is largely local, I will argue, in tune with the rest of my argument, that it is emergent in relation to some universal tendencies of the human mind. As Gregory Currie has put it, “whatever humans do, they must have a biological make-up that allows them to do it” (Currie 2009, 2).
The use of concepts related to art is, however, far from uniform and often applies to phenomena that we do not typically consider art in the contemporary, institutional or historical sense. As I earlier indicated, the advent of conceptual art has had a significant bearing on how we understand art today. One of the points of the artistic revolutions of the early twentieth century was to challenge the traditional ideas about the quality of art. Traditional philosophical aesthetics held that an artwork was supposed to be admired for its beauty, but perhaps starting with Duchamp’s provocations, this was no longer the case. It is a brute fact that Western art has since largely abandoned “the idea that art involves the production of beautiful or aesthetically pleasing objects” (Currie 2009, 2). Accordingly, contemporary philosophical aesthetics has em-phasized the need to include the notion of an institution, of the artworld, in any overarching definitions of art. We might thus say, that this led to a separation of aesthetic value (and, accordingly, aesthetic qualities or experience) and artistic value. The former would be, predictably, asso-ciated with a sense of beauty or pleasure, whereas the latter with an in-formed appreciation of an artifact as a work of art. Although nowadays the two need not be correlated (a highly valuable artistically work can have little aesthetic value and the other way around), it would be rather hasty to abandon any sense of connection between the two. After all, for philosophical aesthetics, the two have been separated for no more than five decades, and probably only a little longer for the artists them-selves. It is just another brute fact that the human species has always spontaneously been involved in art-related behaviors, and what I wish to claim is that, corresponding with the previous paragraph, artistic value is emergent in relation to aesthetic value.
The question regarding the beginning of art is clearly a perennial one in the philosophy of art. Ever since archeologists started to discover ar-tifacts produced by prehistoric cultures that either did not appear to be simple tools with exclusively practical value, or being tools, were at the same time highly decorated, questions began to arise concerning their role, and consequently, their possible status as art. The lack of any in-formation about their status apart from the sheer fact of their existence makes it a puzzle that probably shall never be convincingly resolved.
Some things, though, can be definitely established. We know that hu-manoids used tools resembling axes made with exceptional and appar-ently unnecessary care regarding their visual qualities (colors, shape,
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symmetry) as early as 400,000 years ago (Currie 2009, 1). Ochre, be-lieved to be used for personal decoration (though this was most proba-bly not its only use), began to be collected around 100,000 years later ( Davies 2012, 4). More obvious personal decorations, such as those crafted from shells, bones, stones, amber, etc. date back to at least 40,000 years. Perhaps counting the decorative as art might sound controversial, but even though I wholeheartedly agree that it is pointless to discuss art nowadays without the notion of the artworld, I find the question whether prehistoric beads are really art quite uninteresting. Art is clearly an extremely fluid concept and I see it as uncontroversial to use both the narrow, artworld understanding of art, and the broader one associated simply with beauty or sensual pleasure. Apart from the decorative, other important artifacts related to art behaviors would typically belong to visual arts: painting and sculpture. Although some of the cave paintings admittedly contain “doodles and erotic graffiti” (Davies 2012, 3), others
“display breathtaking artistic skill, power, grandeur, and eloquence in abundance” (Davies 2012, 3). The puzzle of the cave paintings’ function and value was adequately summarized by Lamarque:
On the one hand, the surface perceptual qualities of the paintings naturally invite description in aesthetic or art historical terms. The techniques, pigments and materials have been studies and there is extensive commentary on the form and texture of the paintings, the ways that natural features of the cave walls are exploited, the recurring motifs, the fidelity of naturalistic representation (allow-ing for the ease with which the subjects can be identified), and the sheer power, economy of means, and vitality of the depictions. On the other hand, the paintings remain a complete mystery; they are uninterpretable, and the role they played in the cultural or social life of the peoples who made them is unknown, as are the attitudes, aspirations, values, and beliefs of those who viewed them.
(Lamarque 2005, 22) To this, Davies adds that even if the function of the cave paintings re-mains unclear, we can definitely assume that they were very important due to the difficulties that must have arisen during their creation:
their painters climbed beneath the surface of the earth with only candles or lamps for light. They erected scaffolds to paint high up on walls and ceilings. Some of the pigments they used had to be pre-pared by being heated to a very high temperature.
(Davies 2012, 4) The same meticulousness holds for multiple examples of early sculpture and carvings, as well as early musical instruments (Davies 2012, 4).
Values and Competence 143 Two important hypotheses have been proposed regarding the use of visual representations in the Paleolithic. One longstanding hypothesis put forward by anthropologists points to the connection between cave art and some cultural developments, such as magical and religious prac-tices (Currie 2009, 7–9). According to this theory, caves were considered boundaries between the supernatural and the natural worlds. The pres-ence of cave paintings could allegedly contribute to the experipres-ences of magical connection with the other world. As Currie notes, this theory
“associates the development of pictorial art with the growth of relatively sophisticated cultural practices such as storytelling and religion” (Currie 2009, 8) to which it can be added that it places the symbolic as pre-ceding the aesthetic: the capacity to symbolize is prior (and necessary) to the development of art and aesthetic sensibility. Another important hypothesis makes an opposite claim regarding the symbolic/aesthetic.
In a celebrated paper, Nicholas Humphrey argues that there are striking similarities between cave paintings and drawings made by autistic chil-dren with severely impaired language skills (Humphrey 1998, 165–191).
This, along with the fact that when autistic children do acquire lan-guage, the “Paleolithic” quality of their drawings declines, leads him to speculate that the style of cave paintings might be due to some form of linguistic impediment of the Stone Age humans. Although it is estab-lished that some form of linguistic communication must have existed “at least a million years ago” (Humphrey 1998, 173), Humphrey argues that there are good reasons to suppose that Upper Paleolithic language use was still limited to mostly interpersonal use: naming and talking about other humans. Special modules such as “technical intelligence” or “nat-ural history intelligence” were not in use, and a general language-based schema of knowledge was not necessarily present. Cave artists might have had little interest and skill regarding conceptualizing or classifying non-human phenomena, and thus, their works present a curious type of naturalism of representation: uncontaminated by language, painting without having to recourse to a concept that needs to be depicted. In the end, perhaps both hypotheses need not be mutually exclusive, as the painting could have had some form of magical or ritual use while being produced by humans of limited language skills.
Even if nothing conclusive can be said about the function or the source of the paintings, Humphrey’s hypothesis cannot be immediately rejected.
Moreover, one interesting implication of his claim is that the symbolic need not be prior to the aesthetic. If Paleolithic humans found something appealing in animal paintings, at the same time having limited concep-tualizing skills, then perhaps some aesthetic sensibility precedes sym-bolic content. If true, this might lead to revising some established beliefs about the relation between the two. One might specifically think of some development of Saussurean linguistics where the sign is given primacy over other cultural products, or where aesthetic value is associated with
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a deviation of code. Currie speculates that with such a reversal of the order of priority, it may be the case that aesthetic sensibility plays “its part in explaining the development of symbolic culture” (Currie 2009, 9), and consequently “the design-features of the natural world can be expected to trigger aesthetic responses and to create illusions of purpose, leading to ideas of magic and religion” (Currie 2009, 9) In the end, the claim that the symbolic emerges out of the aesthetic could be as valid as the one that the aesthetic emerges out of the symbolic.
Another important point is that even if the aesthetic could be in some sense prior to the symbolic, or to culture in general, it goes without say-ing that historically artworks have usually served other functions than just the aesthetic one. The insistence on the importance of art’s intrinsic value, on its the purely aesthetic or artistic qualities is quite a recent phenomenon. Before that art always played a non-aesthetic role, too (e.g., religious, political, ethical, ritual, cognitive, decorative). The point is, however, that beauty and the appeal to some aesthetic sensibility of those participating in a culture was an essential adjunct to the prolif-eration and successful circulation of the cultural products, along with whatever instrumental value was conferred on them, and institutions involved.
The fact that art has been used to facilitate the non-artistic areas of human culture leads to a question about the source of this need and its universal success. It is perhaps easy to point out the reasons for instru-mental and utilitarian uses of art in more advanced cultures (transmis-sion of ideologies, religious beliefs, advertising, propaganda, etc.), but what about prehistoric and possibly pre-symbolic times? In the language of evolutionary psychology, one could ask why would a species invest so many resources for a costly appeal to aesthetic sensibilities? One hypoth-esis is that this has something to do with sexual selection: being able to produce a decorated axe requires some skills useful for survival, such as manual and spatial skills, finding resources, general efficiency, etc. Some evolutionary psychologists would argue that decorated axes were, in fact, means of advertising one’s adaptive advantage (Currie 2009, 6–7).
Alternatively, it can be said that the objects themselves were appealing to the senses, which made their creators more likeable and having more prospects for reproduction. I will explore the relation of evolutionary psychology to aesthetics and, particularly, to literary aesthetics later throughout this chapter, but what needs to be addressed first is the bi-ological foundation of the aesthetic sensibility, as this is impossible to ignore when considering prehistoric, humanoid art-related behaviors.
In the language of evolutionary psychology, the sense of pleasure that members of a species feel cannot be disconnected from considerations regarding its adaptive value: enhancing or decreasing the chances of suc-cessful reproduction. The evolutionarily shaped mechanisms regulating reward and punishment made humans wired in to respond positively to
Values and Competence 145 these stimuli in the environment that increase the chances of survival and reproduction, and negatively to those that decrease the chances.
This is the source of the pleasurable feelings that humans experience while engaging in sexual acts, eating foods rich in fats and carbohy-drates, seeing landscapes that abound in features indicative of good conditions for life sustainment, or the pleasurable response to some physical features of fellow humans that indicate good genetic material, etc. The innate reactions of disgust and displeasure operate accordingly in reaction to the stimuli that are evidently harmful for the well-being of the organism. It should not be assumed, however, that feelings of pleasure will always involve aesthetic pleasure. Stephen Davies pointed this out, arguing against the claim that perceptual pleasure is equivalent to aesthetic pleasure and, thus, we should not assume that most reward-ing experiences that animals have are aesthetic in nature (Davies 2012, 13–14). The former need not entail the latter: if a hen responds positively to a male, her pleasure may be that of “lustful anticipation” (Davies 2012, 14), or a sense of looking right, rather than acknowledging the mate as beautiful. It is not clear whether the pleasure that animals feel takes on an aesthetic hue, “do they find what they see beautiful as well as pleasurable to look at?” (Davies 2012, 14).
As I pointed out earlier, before the emergence of modern art, aes-thetics saw the value of art in its being able to evoke the experience of beauty, sublimity, or, conversely, ugliness, dreariness, etc. Though, the sensual appears to be central to aesthetic pleasure, a theory that holds that every pleasure is aesthetic in the above sense seems too liberal.
In fact, it is a relatively new approach, whose naturalizing tendency is boosted by evolutionary psychology and biology. Modern aesthetics, at its inception in the eighteenth century, actually put forward a more bal-anced understanding of the relation between the aesthetic, artistic and the sensory experience, though I believe, following Davies’s discussion, that it should be rejected too, as it offers an excessively limited perspec-tive on what counts as aesthetic.
The theory I am alluding to is of course the one attributed to Kant.
Immanuel Kant opposed the idea that every kind of pleasure might be called aesthetic, even though he acknowledged that the subjective sense of pleasure is the basis of aesthetic judgments. The latter are, however, concerned with the experience of what he called “free beauty,” delight taken while apprehending the perceptual form of an object. This, in turn, requires an interaction between imagination and understanding. “Free beauty” means that it does not require extended conceptual apparatus, or a governing schema. This is why, as Davies claims, the delights of, say, a football connoisseur would not count as aesthetic in Kant’s sense: they require too much conceptual input to fall under “free beauty” (Davies 2012, 17). Likewise, the type of analysis characteristic of cognitive po-etics would not fall under “free beauty” as its meticulous dissection of a
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work using sophisticated technical jargon has little to do with the play between imagination and understanding. Rather than that, Kant’s idea of aesthetic pleasure entails a form of contemplation where imagination helps us to reflect on the object and conceive of it in terms of a unity and coherence which the human need for understanding demands, without any particular conceptual content. Moreover, Kant’s aesthetic experi-ence is supposed to be disinterested, disconnected from our personal goals, beliefs or practical interests.
Davies makes a point that perhaps Kantian aesthetics could work as a model for fine art appreciation, but it is too exclusive to account for a broader sense of aesthetic experience. I believe that the model is in-adequate for high-brow art appreciation, either, as I repeatedly demon-strated throughout this book that appreciating modern fine art requires specific knowledge about art-historical contexts, conventions, etc., but these are precisely the things whose relevance Kant rejects. Moreover, it has been argued that Kant’s model is too much concerned with natural beauty (Davies 2012, 17), mere contemplation of form (Davies 2012, 17), and that it unjustifiably privileges some sensory experiences over others (Davies 2012, 17). For instance, touch, taste and smell could not really lead to aesthetic experience on his account, as they are only “agreeable,”
rather than beautiful. The pleasures they afford, he claimed, are too sim-ple, unstructured, overly reliant on mechanical, sentimental reactions, and leave no space for the imaginative contemplation of “free beauty.” I suppose there is no reason to believe that the more proximal senses can-not afford aesthetic experience in Kant’s sense: one can easily imagine certain qualities of food consumption (preparation, serving, setting) that will more or less fall under Kant’s sense of beauty or sublime. John Dew-ey’s inclusion of the everyday experience as the source of aesthetic plea-sure (Dewey 1980) or Richard Shusterman’s development of Dewey’s theory that encompasses all sensory and bodily experiences ( Shusterman 2008) are good examples of aesthetic theories that compellingly argue against privileging some senses over the others.
Finally, as I argued in Chapter 2, it is questionable whether the notion of disinterestedness is really helpful in explaining anything regarding the experience of art. Out of the many attacks on the notion, Georgie Dickie’s remains probably the most famous one (Dickie 1964, 56–65).
Dickie enumerates a range of philosophers who seem to be claiming, sim-ilarly to Kant, that experiencing art in the proper sense necessitates an
“aesthetic attitude,” a special mode of distanced attention that enables the art’s audience to respond to it in a disinterested way without practical concerns. To counter it, Dickie proposes to ponder upon possible ways of attending to an artwork in an interested way. The examples include a spectator who watches a staging of Othello, thinking obsessively about his wife’s infidelity, or an art collector financially satisfied with a work being a good investment. These, Dickie persuasively argues, are in fact
Values and Competence 147 examples of inattention, not attending to the work at all. So, it cannot be maintained that there is a special aesthetic mode of attending to a work of art. We can attend to it, or not, but disinterestedness does not seem to be a helpful concept here. On the other hand, Patrick Hogan argues that Dickie himself admits that one can read a poem aesthetically or for other reasons, such as concentrating on its informational value, etc. (Hogan 1996, 161–169). This, Hogan claims, is indicative of the fact that we sometimes open ourselves to an aesthetic experience and sometimes we do not. Consequently, some form of aesthetic attitude theory should be kept. But here I would argue against Hogan: it is true that we can attend to a work with a different purpose in mind rather than just experiencing the aesthetic, but the point is that if such an endeavor is to be productive and informative in any sense, it must be underlain by an understanding of the work as an artwork. We simply have to identify and understand it correctly in order to pursue our specific goals regarding attending to it. This is merely a variation of my argument from Chapter 2 concerning literary theory: any investigation into the contents of a work that goes
Values and Competence 147 examples of inattention, not attending to the work at all. So, it cannot be maintained that there is a special aesthetic mode of attending to a work of art. We can attend to it, or not, but disinterestedness does not seem to be a helpful concept here. On the other hand, Patrick Hogan argues that Dickie himself admits that one can read a poem aesthetically or for other reasons, such as concentrating on its informational value, etc. (Hogan 1996, 161–169). This, Hogan claims, is indicative of the fact that we sometimes open ourselves to an aesthetic experience and sometimes we do not. Consequently, some form of aesthetic attitude theory should be kept. But here I would argue against Hogan: it is true that we can attend to a work with a different purpose in mind rather than just experiencing the aesthetic, but the point is that if such an endeavor is to be productive and informative in any sense, it must be underlain by an understanding of the work as an artwork. We simply have to identify and understand it correctly in order to pursue our specific goals regarding attending to it. This is merely a variation of my argument from Chapter 2 concerning literary theory: any investigation into the contents of a work that goes