Architecture and the Ethics of Authenticity 31

ARCHITECTURE AND THE ETHICS OF AUTHENTICITY 31

Architecture and the Ethics of Authenticity

TOM SPECTOR Oklahoma State University

Silos, mills, sheds, and refineries: Across most approach to architecture. Though architects of Oklahoma's gently rolling prairie found these ideas to be adequately motivating countryside these artistically uninformed for many years, these justifications eventually structures often provide the only vertical proved to be hollow. Instead of providing punctuation to a landscape otherwise made of worthy goals and ideals, the belief in the mostly horizontal lines. One of the pleasures necessity and the transformative effects of of teaching architecture here is to participate modernism turned out mainly to legitimize in the intellectual progress of students -- only another set of aesthetic preferences. As many of whom hail from rural areas and have Virginia Postrel heralds with undisguised traveled little - as they eventually come to pleasure: "Modern design was once a value- regard these structures with much the same laden signal -- a sign of ideology. Now it's just admiration expressed for them some 80 years a style, one of many possible forms of ago by Le Corbusier in his rallying polemic personal aesthetic expre~sion."~All that is left against the arbitrariness of nineteenth century after giving up on the quest to 'get it right' in architecture; Ven Une ~rchitecture.' Like Le the metaphysically and ontologically strong Corbusier, many of my students would have sense, is to 'get it right-for me.' Although their work emulate these structures' aesthetic pursuit is still considered an unselfconscious formal muscularity, frank important facet of a fully human existence, it materiality, and technological pragmatism; is primarily as a form of individual pleasure- aesthetic qualities that emerge indirectly from taking and self-discovery; not as a vehicle for having only usefulness in mind. Most students societal improvement. would gladly trade in whatever cultural elan they gain along the way in studio, during Since aesthetic preference can no longer find summer semesters in Europe, or in cover behind such notions as progress or architectural history class, for the ability to advancing human solidarity, to express create work with such qualities, and Iwouldn't oneself aesthetically these days is to be disagree with them. utterly exposed. This more radical sense of the arbitrariness of aesthetic preference has, The yearnings of today's students to capture of course, occurred within the context of the the authority of unselfconscious design demise of positivism in all the arts: The idea emerge from a different, and more radical, of aesthetic progress has become sheer sense of the arbitrary than Le Corbusier naivety, vanity, nostalgia or all three. We can confronted. In place of what in hindsight no longer count on necessary beginning appears to be the relatively narrow problem of points, nor on convergence towards important the arbitrariness of the prevailing style and ends. Movement occurs, surely, but it is the backwardness of taste, they experience rudderless at the same time it is willful. Arthur aesthetic pursuit itself as arbitrary. When Danto perfectly diagnoses this radical sense of pushed to answer: "Why this form? Why this the arbitrary: "It is part of what defines material?" Le Corbusier would have cited the contemporary art that the art of the past is pressing, inescapably rational logic of available for such use as artists care to give it. contemporary technology, industrial What is not available to them is the spirit in production, and the Zeitgeist coalescing to not which the art was made."3 The safest merely permit, but to require, a modern response to the challenge "Why this form?" is 32 GElTING REAL: DESIGN ETHOS NOW

"Why not? Do you have something better?" overcome the limitations of what Charles The Corbusian reply, "Because it is the correct Taylor has identified as our culture of formIu4 can no longer be given. authenticity; a culture which so prizes the living of authentically individual lives that the What remains after draining off a sense of exercise of choice and self-expression are all common purpose and direction in one's artistic that are left as ultimate goods.6 The apex of work is that the expression of aesthetic vision such a culture is to live the life of the 'artist', through the art objects one creates for public and most architecture students indeed cite the display, if the object is truly the result of desire to exercise artistic creativity as the personal vision instead of the deliberate primary reason they enter architecture school repackaging of popular taste, must ultimately (The opportunity of making the world a better be an attempt to advance one's will. Form can place runs a distant second.)' Taylor argues no longer be good because it is heading us in that when choice and self-expression are the right direction, but only because enough elevated over a regard for the content of one's people assert a preference for it. Thus, the choices, culture becomes susceptible to the entirely reasonable yearning arises for things paired dangers of the trivialization and that take their forms by necessity, rather than flattening of all values. We architecture by the assertion of someone's artistic professors oblige our students' desire to be willfulness over the rest of us; a preference creative artists by giving them instruction in for 'mere real things' over art objects. Sensing the compositional techniques of what can only the willfulness behind the art object, a be called neo-modernism, (or modernism lite: willfulness whose objective cannot be trusted, modernism sans its bloated ideology), which, we sensibly recoil. Such real things as silos with its premium placed on abstract and sheds -though quite likely imposing composition and turning away from forms of structures which alter their immediate the past, turns out to be an ideal medium for environments - are created without the added the expression of one's individuality but imposition of willful artistic intent. They can inevitably an uncomfortable fit with the stay enmeshed with the countryside, or we imperatives of community. Thus, while neo- can single them out for aesthetic appraisal. modernism no longer entails the moral Artworks, contaminated with aesthetically baggage of improving the lot of mankind, this informed intentions, only rarely merge with void in values has been amply filled by its the scenery. Instead, they all too often seek ability to facilitate students' personal journeys us out; they won't leave us alone. They try of expression much more ably than could, too hard. We seek refuge from them in the say, classicism, with its anachronistic ontology real and the everyday. "Why are you asserting of correctness. Architectural neo-modernism is all this art on me?" we ask. We cannot live in tailor-made for the culture of authenticity, for such a suffocating environment as the not only does it eschew ontologies, in its thoroughly artistically intentioned one. Adolph employ one could never be accused of Loos' story of the "Poor Little Rich Man" whose pandering to popular taste. environment is so completely designed that he "was precluded from all future living and This freedom of self-expression modernism striving, developing and desiring" comes encourages, however, does not come without back to haunt us again, but attuned to a cost. For now, in addition to the desire to slightly different situation. Whereas Loos was clothe the personal exposure they experience satirizing 'total design,' we are concerned just for having design tastes, students also instead to avoid 'total art.' What we desire feel the tremendous burden of having to from the silo or shed (or for that matter, a somehow justify a design vocabulary which is relaxed interior with a 'lived in' look) is presented as at bottom a matter of personal nothing less than artless art. preference, and therefore beyond justification in the strong sense of having an ethical, The Declining Fortunes of Authenticity ontological or metaphysical basis. Grain silos and mill buildings do not have to account for The attraction of unselfconscious design stems themselves in this way. Somehow, their status from more than the hypocritical desire to as mere objects insulates them from all this. cloak aesthetic preferences in claims of necessity in order to surreptitiously have one's This status is not, however, invulnerable. It way. It is symptomatic of a desire to has, in fact, long been under attack by the art ARCHITECTURE AND THE ETHICS OF AUTHENTICITY 33

world. Ever since Duchamp presented his Duchamp's Bottlerack and Fountain and readymades, art has repeatedly subverted Warhol's Brillo Box and real bottleracks, and blurred the status of mere objects. Since urinals, and Brillo boxes can only be the idea of aesthetic progress is now, understood from the point of view of the ironically, a thing of the past, a work of art no intentionality built into the artwork by the longer has to take certain forms to be artist and the cultural, historical context in progressive, hence it can now look like which those intentions were sown. Lacking anything. Danto greets this turn of events these culturally emergent properties, Margolis with enthusiasm: "These artistic possibilities thinks, art simply fails to exist.12 For Margolis, are but realizations and applications of the then, it is the status of art, not of mere real immense philosophical contribution of the things, that is at risk. 1960s to art's self-understanding: that artworks can be imagined, or in fact The question of what makes something a work produced, which look exactly like mere real of art is not, of course, quite the inverse of things which have no claim to the status of art the problem troubling my architecture at all, for the latter entails that you can't students. They are less concerned with define artworks in terms of some particular identifying the characteristics that enable art visual properties they must have.... This alone to preserve its status, than they are with finished the modernist agenda..."' Thus, the preserving the characteristics that enable the question of art's telos which occupied much of mere real things they admire from acquiring twentieth century theory and history has been art's tarnish of arbitrary willfulness. Margolis' supplanted, as Walter Benjamin predictedg diagnosis, however, is a helpful starting point (though in an unexpected way-not as a for this project as well. Silos, grain elevators, denigration of its aura brought on by the and sheds retain their amateur status as mere availability of widespread cheap mechanical real things as long as they aren't produced reproduction, but instead as a preoccupation with the taint of willful artistic intent. The real with the limits of aesthetic production itself), problem is that it appears that what students by the question of authenticity: "What makes yearn for is an oxymoron; the the difference between an artwork and unselfconsciously-designed work of something which is not an artwork if in fact architecture. Students' desires to design they look exactly alike?"1° As a result, the objects as unassailable as grain silos and cow ability to aesthetically appreciate the sheds (or medieval Italian hill towns if they've structures of the Oklahoma prairie is been to Europe), then, becomes a cruel catch- simultaneously easier to come by, for it is 22; they can only hope to achieve the made a less foreign idea by these aesthetic qualities they most admire if they developments in the art world, but it is also don't try to pursue them. Active pursuit of compromised by the prospect that these these qualities turns the real object into an objects could easily become fodder for artistic artistically intentioned object, and hence it appropriation. This instability makes loses the very quality that made it desirable in emulation of their aesthetic qualities all the the first place: It loses its quality of authentic more elusive. unselfconsciousness by its artistic intentionality. Yet, how can the aesthetic component of Joseph Margolis' reassuring and fortifying design-a component that goes back to the answer to the question of authenticity is to earliest formulations of what a work of dismiss it as either a non-question or else the architecture should provide-just be ignored? end of art, for, he argues convincingly, a work An architect can never design just a grain silo of art has never been able to be reduced to or a shed; she can only design these things the mere matter from which it is made. A weighted down with the cultural baggage of work of art can only ever be understood as aesthetic sensibility and intent. She can only such by considering amongst its raw materials design a 'silo' or a 'shed.' Her very education, its cultural context; its emergence out of its and her growing self-awareness as a designer, culture as well as its historical situation." prevents the removal of the scare quotes Thus the mere fact that Duchamp, pop, and because she can no longer design within a more contemporary artists made great hay by tradition or without artistic intentionality. intentionally making artworks physically indistinguishable from mere real things has no This situation can only be termed perverse, standing at all. This visual similarity between but it degenerates still further from perverse 34 GElTING REAL: DESIGN ETHOS NOW

to dismaying in the face of most of the philosophical subtlety allowed him to elicit out roadside vernacular of contemporary times. a mode of existence that makes the practice Sheds and mills may have been the noble of culling everything into the mutually prairie vernacular in Le Corbusier's day, but exclusive categories of artwork/mere real the K-Marts and fast food joints that make up thing appear clumsy, inelegant, and the folk building or utilitarian design of our undiscerning. The attraction of this times could hardly be more base. Thus, a intermediate category immediately presents more ready-at-hand and less nostalgia-prone itself. source of aesthetic value is sadly unavailable either. We can predict with smug certainty A basic feature of equipment is serviceability. that these structures will never find their "Both the formative ad and the choice of LeCorbusier to look upon them with erstwhile material-a choice antecedently given with aesthetic favor (thus omitting Robert Venturi's this act-and, accordingly, mastery over the ironic appreciation of such environments). The conjoining of matter and form, are all perversity of the quest for authenticity grounded in such servi~eability."'~Clearly, for acquires a tragic dimension when it emerges Heidegger, a grain silo is equipment, not a that the search for the elusive quality of mere thing, and hence is a halfway object. architectural authenticity is both part of, and Perhaps it is just this halfway quality that made all the more difficult by, students' makes such things so appealing. They are developing self-awareness evolving from their approachable and human when the work of search for a uniquely individual design vision. art can be overpowering, and the mere real This search for one's individual voice, if thing utterly mute, indifferent, and Taylor's diagnosis is correct, characteristically impenetrable. But it also suggests the leads further into the self and away from the possibility that this category of existence is so engagement with the world that would guard highly unstable as to be of little help. against such searches lapsing into triviality. Heidegger's example of the peasant shoes in This search too readily becomes merely an van Gogh's painting, ironically, gives further exercise in exercising one's power of choice as credence to this worry, because here, the evidence of one's emerging individuality. equipment has expressly been turned into an artwork, an article that now has the added Between Art and Mere Thing ingredient of self-consciousness that art adds and can never subtract. The very adof taking What is desired is a meeting ground, an the peasant shoes out of context to examine intermediate position between the mutually them as equipment has rendered them no exclusive categories of artwork and mere real longer the very thing they were intended to thing, where objects can be admired for their exemplify. This problem doesn't appear to be own sakes without taking on the additional isolated to Heidegger's choice of example. The burden of artistic willfulness. This is a problem is, as Margolis intimates, that as soon category Heidegger, presciently, sought to as an item of equipment is singled out, provide with the concept of 'equipment.' "Only dislodged from its work function for aesthetic a stone, a clod of earth, a piece of wood are regard, it rapidly loses that quality that made for us such mere things."13 "A piece of it an item of utility in the first place. But only equipment, for instance, footgear, also rests by singling out a pair of work shoes, or a grain in itself as finished like a mere real thing, but silo, for scrutiny as an impressive object in its it does not have the character of having taken own right, can awareness of the existence of shape by itself like the block of granite. On its aesthetic qualities even arise. This process the other hand, equipment displays an affinity of an object's sliding between categories with a work of art insofar as it is something happens all the time, when, for example, a produced by the human hand.... Thus a piece piece of pottery, a finely turned wood bowl, or of equipment is half-thing ...and yet it is a well- made sword is brought out of its something more; at the same time it is half cupboard and displayed on a shelf. Equipment art-work and yet something less ..."I4 Grain is a category of object that, to the degree the elevators and sheds, as big pieces of object becomes the subject of aesthetic equipment, fit well into this mediating scrutiny, appears to annihilate itself. Such category which doesn't tarnish everything as objects can tolerate only a few furtively sly an artwork simply because it is brought forth glances before they begin to succumb to the with an eye towards aesthetics. Heidegger's degradation of being regarded as art. ARCHITECTURE AND THE ETHICS OF AUTHENTICITY 35

Though Heidegger's formulation may be Contributing to the instability of the status of inadequate for these purposes, the sought- such objects as grain elevators in our culture after intermediate category may yet exist. is what Michael Benedikt (following Joseph Both the categories of folk art and of industrial Pine and James Gilmore) has identified as the design appear to do much the same work as effects of the "experience economy" on our does Heidegger's equipment, but with greater perceptions and valuations of things in the conceptual stability, because both incorporate world.16 In a mature capitalist economy such a concern for use and a sophisticated as ours, the repackaging of goods and aesthetic consciousness from the start. Folk services as experiences of various kinds-a art is distinguished from contemporary art, dining experience instead of dinner, a not by regard for the everydayness of things, shopping experience instead of a department certainly not by a difference in craftsmanship store-in order to differentiate goods and or attention to materiality, but instead by its maximize return on investment tends to willingness to accept quite severe cultural and appropriate large sectors of the world into material constraints on its items of commodities for private consumption, and production. The characteristic that most architecture is no exception. To the degree distinguishes folk art from contemporary art, that a building or a work of art is perceived as then, is the level of questioning each is willing an experience, it loses its status as a material to sustain. Folk art, unselfconsciously, doesn't thing; as something with an independent interrogate its very conditions of existence the existence. The upshot may be "a disturbing way contemporary art has become compelled shift in modern culture, namely, the loss of a to do. By accepting its existential givens, folk healthy balance between what is real life and art doesn't suffer from the exacerbated what is not-between what is authentic and willfulness of the contemporary artwork. what is not-and the balance between these Though as a category, folk art is both stable qualities that architecture has historically been and clearly occupies an intermediary position, instrumental in providing."" Benedikt's it is something of a stretch to attribute either diagnosis of architecture's slide into LeCorbusierls or my students' high regard for experiential subjectivity dovetails well with prairie vernacular as a form of folk art Danto's insights on the art world and with appreciation. For while the prairie vernacular Taylor's on the quest for individuality. For all may well enjoy the untroubled cultural fit of three, authenticity becomes the pivotal topic. folk art, part of its appeal is its absence of the Danto sees it as a one of the most interesting sentiment and ties with the past that partly topics in contemporary art. For Benedikt, the defines folk art. problematization of authenticity signals a retreat from some of architecture's most long- Industrial design provides a category of standing values. And for Taylor, the search for existence between artwork and mere real personal authenticity has deviated from the thing too, but not without discarding some of culturally healthy mode of self-discovery as a the aesthetic resources common to both folk dialogic process engaged in reciprocally with art and architecture. While the category of others into a kind of connoisseurship of industrial design may well fit a grain elevator, subjective personal experience and self- its not grain elevators per se that architecture expression. students are hoping to achieve, but instead, works of architecture with the visual authority A Different Approach to Authenticity of grain elevators. The situation is better characterized as an architect 'doing' industrial The accumulated effects of authenticity's design, or perhaps achieving culturally subjective turn can be observed in another resonant industrial design. Once this chasm example drawn from the Oklahoma between architecture and industrial design is vernacular, though not from the prairie this acknowledged, it appears that one may do time, but from an aging part of Oklahoma one or the other, but not both simultaneously. City: from the district known as Bricktown. In But the possibility of having both Bricktown, a derelict zone of aging simultaneously is more what the attraction of warehouses is undergoing rehabilitation at unselfconscious design entails. Thus, while great public expense into a themed outdoor these intermediate categories hold promise, mall dining and entertainment district. Even they each come up short in certain crucial the very name "Bricktown" suggests the aspects. careful aesthetic framing for the purpose of 36 GEmNG REAL: DESIGN ETHOS NOW

commodification what was formerly generosity towards appropriation that people nondescript yet real. Between what were once are encouraged to take possession of them. the loading dock backsides of mostly three- Though the direct path from artwork to mere story brick buildings a canal has been dug to real thing is foreclosed to the artist (or provide both identity for the development as architect), a building can be appropriated back well as another dimension to the experience into realness, as Benjamin thought, by its of a visit as the hoped-for boatloads of public: "Buildings are appropriated in a tourists glide up and down its three-block twofold manner: by use and by perception--or length. At Bricktown, structures never rather, by touch and sight ....Tactile designed with 'experience' in mind become appropriation. ..occurs much less through rapt co-opted into service by this subjective attention than by noticing the object in attitude toward authenticity and begin to lose incidental fashion."lg Buildings that encourage their material reality in the process. The the Benjaminesque distracted inhabitation of questions concerning authenticity begin to them, rather than constantly requiring people multiply. Which buildings are new? Which to take notice of how cleverly they are recreate and simulate the old? Which are assembled, are the ones most likely to garner intact? And which have suffered such a the same kind of affection that the vernacular blurring of the material and the experiential structures of the Oklahoma countryside enjoy. that it is no longer possible to tell? The Students who want to emulate those qualities pressing into service of these old utilitarian must become, to some degree, psychologists structures as a new backdrop for tourist and sociologists of human use of form and experiences brings the problem of maintaining space, for only then can they provide the the status of mere real things into fresh relief. necessary amount of, but not too overwhelmingly much, artistic assertion in While Bricktown illustrates the thorough their designs to intrigue but not bully. Their subjectivization of authenticity, it also buildings may again aspire to the status of suggests a way back. Though only marginally mere real things, just not the same kind of unselfconsciously designed real things they successful as a tourist experience, the district have come to appreciate: The realness of has increasingly become a popular destination accommodating human activity with a certain for local residents who are seeking a more laissez-faire generosity will impart to their intensified urban environment than is usually works all the authenticity currently available. available to them. The locals use Bricktown in Things go from aesthetically distanced to piecemeal fashion as it suits them: for lunch, immediate through repeated contact, use, and a picnic, a rendevous point, a place to kill a appropriation for many diverging ends. They little time. By so doing the locals have begun then become knit into the fabric of a real life, to fold Bricktown into the everyday life of the their autonomy crumbles, and aesthetic city, and the district is becoming a real place distance collapses. They become part of the all over again, despite the intentions of its dialogue of authenticity. Happily, against the boosters. Its not (nor will it ever be again) the odds this is what has begun to happen at same kind of real place it once was, but it is Bricktown. That places such as Bricktown can on the road back to a new reality through begin the journey back to mere real thing is a public appropriation. This process illustrates heartening demonstration. It intimates that well what Taylor terms the dialogic nature- the quest for an architecture not crippled by the negotiation, and the openness to outside aesthetic self-consciousness is still a possible interpretation required for the process of and worthwhile pursuit. It also provides establishing a non-deviant non-trivial architecture students with a handy measuring authenticity to reestablish itself." By rod for the progress of their own journeys encouraging multiple and possibly contentious through self-definition. They can measure appropriations of their buildings, architects their progress by the degree to which they can aspire once again to creating objects with feel secure enough to release a certain at least some of the status of mere real amount of control in their work for the sake of things. encouraging others to possess it and make their own interpretations. Thus, the trick is not necessarily to emulate primal, primitive siloesque forms to achieve an architecture of toughness and necessity, but rather to design buildings with enough ARCHITECTURE AND THE ETHICS OF AUTHENTICITY 37

References Danto, Arthur C. After the End of Art: Arendt, Hannah. ed. Walter Benjamin: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. Illuminations. New York: Harcourt Brace & World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. 5. 1968 Tr. Le Corbusier. 'Architecture is the masterly, correct by Harry Zohn. Relate Walter Benjamin's "The Work and magnificent play of masses brought together in of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". light." 29.

Benedikt, Michael. "Reality and Authenticity in the LOOS, Adolph. Spoken into the Void: Collected Experience Economy" Architectural Record, 11/01. Essays 1897-1900. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982 (for the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Danto, Arthur. After the End of Art: Contemporary the Fine Arts, and The Institute for Architecture and Art and the Pale of History. Princeton: Princeton Urban Studies. 125-127. University Press, 1997. Taylor, Charles. The Ethics of Authenticity. Danto, Arthur C. The Transfiguration of the Cambridge, MA: Haward University Press, 1991. 4: Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art. Cambridge, MA: Taylor speaks of "the dark side of individualism is a Harvard University Press, 1981. centring on the self, which both flattens and narrows our lives, makes them poorer in meaning, and less concerned with others or society." Hofstadter, Albert and Kuhns, Richard, eds. Philosophies of Art and Beauty. New York: The Modern Library.1964. Heidegger, Martin. "The "self truth and self-wholeness are seen more and Origin of the Work of Art." more not as means to be moral, as independently defined, but as something valuable for their own sake." (64-5) This quest for authenticity as a Le Corbusier. Towards a New Architecture. New personal retreat into the innermost reaches and York: Payson & Clarke, LTD. 1927. genius of the self, however, is ultimately self- defeating. "Authenticity involves originality, it Loos, Adolph. demands a revolt against convention." (65) The search for authenticity, to avoid flattening of Margolis, Joseph. Art and Philosophy. Atlantic meaning and triviality, requires the personally Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1980. liberating strategies of "(i)creation and construction as well as discovery, (ii)originality, and frequently Margolis, Joseph. What, After All, Is A Work of Art? (iii) opposition to the rules of society and even University Park: Pennsylvania State University potentially to what we recognize as morality." but it Press, 1999. also requires "(i) openness to horizons of significance (for otherwise the creation loses the background that can save it from insignificance) and American Institute of Architects 2003 Internship (ii) a self-definition in dialogue. That these demands Survey. Washington, DC: AIA. may be in tension has to be allowed. But what must be wrong is a simple privileging of one over the Postrel, Virginia. The Substance of Style. New York: other ..." (66) Harper Collins, 2003. 9. ' American Institute of Architects. "Preliminary 2003 Taylor, Charles. The Ethics of Authenticity. Internship and Career Survey Results" 60% report Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. 'putting creative abilities into practical use' as the most important reason for entering the profession. Le Corbusier. Towards a New Architecture. New Washington: American Institute of Architects, 2003. York: Payson & Clarke LTD. 1927. See esp. 25-31, "Thus we have the American grain elevators and Danto, After the End ofArt. 16-17. factories, the magnificent FIRST FRUITS of the new age. THE AMERICAN ENGINEERS OVERWHELM Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Arendt, Hannah, WITH THEIR CALCULATIONS OUR EXPIRING ed. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical ARCHITECTURE." 31. Reproduction" 219-254. Postrel, Virginia. The Substance of Style. New lo Danto. After the End of Art. 125. York: Harper Collins, 2003. 9.

l1 Margolis. Joseph. What, After All, Is A Work of Art? University Park: Pennsylvania State University 38 GETTING REAL: DESIGN ETHOS NOW

Press, 1999. 68. "Artworks are physically embodied l4Heidegger, 659. and culturally emergent entities." Is Heidegger, 658. l2 Margolis, 32. "If, by the impossible, Danto were right, then there'd be no art at all... To admit art in l6 Benedikt, Michael. "Reality and Authenticity in the the first place means denying that the perception of Experience Economy" Architectural Record, 11/01. an artwork, or the visual appearance of any artwork, could possibly be confined to whatever was l7 Benedikt. relevant to the perception, or the mere appearance, of 'mere real things' (in Danto's idiom)." ''Taylor. Esp. 33. l3 Heidegger, Martin. "The Origin of the Work of Art" tr. by Albert Hofstadter in Philosophies of Art and Benjamin, 242. Beauty. Albert Hofstatder and Richard Kuhns, eds. New York: Modem Library, 1964. 653.