Commentaries on the Turner Prize by Leslie Gillon
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The Uses of Reason in Critical Judgement: Commentaries on the Turner Prize by Leslie Gillon A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment for the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Central Lancashire March 2016 University of Central Lancashire STUDENT DECLARATION FORM Concurrent registration for two or more academic awards *I declare that while registered as a candidate for the research degree, I have not been a registered candidate or enrolled student for another award of the University or other academic or professional institution __________________________________________________________________ Material submitted for another award *I declare that no material contained in the thesis has been used in any other submission for an academic award and is solely my own work __________________________________________________________________ Signature of Candidate ________________Les Gillon____________ Type of Award ____PhD__________________________________________________ School ____Humanities and Social Sciences_________________________ Abstract Through an analysis of critical reviews and other commentaries on the annual Turner Prize shortlist exhibitions, I examine a philosophical problem which has put into question the rational basis for evaluation in art criticism: the lack of any agreed criteria for the evaluation of artworks. This problem has been most often addressed within philosophical aesthetics through two contrasting approaches: the attempt to formulate evaluative criteria, and the denial that such criteria are either possible or necessary. My response to this meta-critical issue is an interdisciplinary study, in the form of an analysis of published commentaries on the Turner Prize, that examines theories of critical evaluation against an empirical investigation of actual critical practice. The Turner Prize has a number of advantages as a case study. Extensive media coverage of the competition means that it is possible to study a wide range of sources intended for the art-going public, that contain a large body of examples of comparative critical evaluation, and as an annual event it offers the opportunity for both synchronic and diachronic analyses. Moreover, the regular presence of artists whose work has been characterised as ‘conceptual, ensures that many of the commentaries focus on an area of art that presents a particular challenge to aesthetic theory and critical practice. In order to develop a critique of criteria based approaches, the contrasting approaches to art criticism taken by Noel Carroll and Frank Sibley are explored within an analysis of the critical reasons given to justify evaluations of Turner Prize exhibits. Suggestions are offered for ways of developing alternative approaches, drawing upon theories of the aesthetic developed by Suzanne Langer and Kendall Walton. Contents 1. Introduction: the Turner Prize and the problem of evaluation 1 2. But is it Art? 16 3. Tomma Abts: form and value 51 4. Noel Carroll and the art of the pratfall 76 5. But what does it mean? 107 6. Martin Creed: ideas in an empty room 135 7. Ideal critics and the uses of reason 157 Bibliography Acknowledgements My thanks to my supervisors, Brian Rosebury, Peter Herissone-Kelly and Paul Humble, for their excellent advice and guidance. My thanks also to Jennifer Hartshorn for all her support and encouragement. 1. The Turner Prize and the Problem of Evaluation The Problem of Evaluation Each year when the Turner Prize is awarded, the Tate Gallery issues a short statement to explain why the winner’s artworks were chosen as the best. In the weeks leading up to the announcement of the winner, the work of all the nominees will have been reviewed and appraised many times in the press and those critics too will have given explanations for the judgements they have made. When critics pass judgements on works of art, there is an assumption that they are not simply offering their own opinions or confiding their personal tastes. Their statements are read as normative and they seem to offer reasons for their judgements. Since reasons are given to support judgements, it might seem safe to assume that those justifications are based on general principles: that some kind of agreed criteria are applied. However, the controversial nature of the Prize and the avant gardism of many of the nominees have prompted some to wonder what criteria are actually being applied, both by the Turner Prize jury and by the professional art critics whose published verdicts are often at odds with that of the jury and also often at odds with each other. These questions about the criteria by which excellence in art is judged are not confined to debates about the Turner Prize. They have been a very longstanding feature of debates within the field of philosophical aesthetics; current academic papers on the subject regularly address issues raised in the writings of Hume and Kant. If the Turner Prize jury wanted to find assessment criteria to use in their work, there is no shortage of possible criteria on offer: beauty, skill, didactic value, emotional expressiveness and originality are among the many that have been suggested by writers on the subject. Monroe Beardsley1 proposed 1 Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism 1958 1 coherence, unity and intensity as the three criteria; for Clive Bell it was what he called significant form. 2 However, it would not be a straightforward matter to decide which of these criteria are the correct ones to apply to The Turner Prize; indeed it is not a straightforward matter to decide which of these criteria are the correct ones to apply to art in general. The problem is not that there are no criteria, but that there are too many. Not all the criteria that have been proposed are compatible with each other; different suggested criteria often reflect different views about the nature of art and its purpose. There is no one set of (what have been called) aesthetic3 principles that commands unanimous approval. One problem that dogs any attempt to formulate such principles is that it is often found that their application seems to inevitably throw up exceptional cases or yield results that seem perverse. As Sydney Hook describes the problem: Just as soon as anyone offers a criterion or rule for a judgement of excellence, someone else will show that in fact we make judgements of excellence, which are widely shared by competent critics, independently of the criterion, or that some work of art to which the criterion or rule clearly applied was not uniformly judged excellent by competent critics.4 This has led some to be sceptical about the possibility of formulating any universally agreed criteria and to deny the need for such aesthetic principles. Frank Sibley5 was one of those who took that view, and we will consider some aspects of his approach to the role of the critic within this study. If there is a problem with the reasons critics offer in support of their judgements, then that has significant implications. If the relationship between critics’ judgements and the reasons they give for those judgements is questionable, then it might be said that the very reasonableness of criticism as an activity must also be in question. If the task of those who claim that 2 Art 1913 3 I use the term ‘aesthetic’, here and throughout, as defined by Sibley in Aesthetic Concepts ,ie, denoting a quality that requires ‘taste’, sensitivity or perceptiveness in order to be discerned, rather than a quality that is readily discernible to anyone who has normal vision. 4 Hook (ed.) Art & Philosophy: a symposium. Introduction p49 5 Approach to Aesthetics 2001 2 evaluation is impossible, unless based on critical criteria, has been to formulate those criteria or explain their absence, the task of those who deny the possibility of general criteria has been to explain how critical evaluation can nonetheless claim to be a rational activity. Of course, for the professional critic, one possible way of dissolving the problem might be to conclude that evaluation is no more than expression of preference and has no place in critical practice. Indeed, there is evidence of the extent to which non-evaluative critical practices have taken hold in the field of professional art criticism. In 2003 a survey conducted in the United States found that three quarters of professional art critics believed that the evaluation of artworks was the least important aspect of their work.6 In 2009 Noel Carroll published On Criticism7, partly in an attempt to counter this apparent ambivalence on the part of professional art critics about the importance of evaluation. While the survey appeared to show that most professional art critics considered the evaluation of artworks to be peripheral or irrelevant to their work, Carroll argued that evaluation is the central and essential purpose of criticism. In his view, the downgrading of evaluation would amount to a dereliction of duty on the part of the critic. Carroll places the blame for this retreat from critical evaluation on the emergence of philosophical positions and critical fashions that have led critics to feel that, ‘there is something counter-productive, suspect, illegitimate, or even impossible about regarding criticism as essentially evaluative.’8 In the course of his argument for evaluation he challenges a number of the anti-evaluative arguments and assumptions that have emerged from a range of twentieth-century philosophical tendencies and ideas, ranging from anti- intentionalism to post-modernist critical theory. Carroll also attempts to counter the arguments of those who would downgrade critical evaluation on the grounds that, if there are no agreed standards 6 Rubinstein 7 Carroll 2009 8 Carroll p19 3 against which the artwork can be measured, any evaluation given by a critic must be purely subjective. In response to that argument, Carroll denies that it is impossible to formulate appropriate criteria against which an artwork can be evaluated.