Why Matter Matters Roscopic Level in the Oblivion of the Canon (People Don’ T Understand an Annunciation
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4! ARTICLES Why Matter Matters roscopic level in the oblivion of the canon (people don’ t understand an annunciation or a flight into Egypt because they do not Maurizio Ferraris know what they are). I would add that the Università di Torino main client of art has changed, as it is no (Italia) longer the Church but the government: art- ists now have to simulate social interests just as they had to simulate religious interests in 1. Work of Aura the past. And the public does no longer go see art in the church, but at exhibitions, ow do you picture your funeral? pushed by the media and advertisements. As If you think you’ ll opt for a civil a result, the only occasions in which there is ceremony, then you know there talk of sacred art is when it comes to provo- H will be relatively improvised cations, such as Piss Christ by Serrano, Kip- speeches and applauses: the impromptu is penberger’ s crucified frog, or Cattelan’ s likely to prevail. There will be no structur- John Paul II crushed by a meteorite. ing ritual, no formal apparatus to make the To counter this trend, the Catholic pain bearable. And yet the same might hap- Church is now seeking to recover a relation- pen in a religious ceremony, if it were to ship with art that would not be subordinated mimic the civil rite and acquire its uncertain- or mimetic, by designing a Vatican pavilion ties and difficulties: imagine it took place in at the Venice Biennale or involving contem- an ugly church with poor ornaments, and porary artists in ancient churches (think of the speeches did not make use of a high reg- the altar by Parmeggiani in the cathedral of ister but of everyday language. The experi- Reggio Emilia, Kounellis’ bishop’ s chair or ment of the funeral is somewhat extreme the candlestick by Spalletti). The results are but, in the end, appropriate (as it affects eve- not obvious, because the difficulties of sa- ryone) to address the difficulties of sacred cred art are only the strongest symptom of art – currently confused with profane art, the difficulties of art in general – as authori- which is not in its golden age either. tative and even conservative commentators Why is it so? Camille Paglia, in Glittering have recently pointed out, see Marc Fuma- Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to roli,2 Jean Clair3 and Roger Scruton.4 Art, in 1 Star Wars, speaks of a crisis of the spirit. fact, seems to be realizing Nietzsche’ s Gone are the days of the cathedrals, and re- prophecy about humanity after Copernicus: ligion is no longer the subject of art. Accord- ing to the author, this is manifested at a mac- !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 Claire 2011. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 Fumaroli 2009. 1 Paglia 2012. 4 Scruton 2009. PHILOSOPHICAL READINGS ISSUE VI – NUMBER 2 – SUMMER 2014 ARTICLES 5! it is “rolling off toward the x”, without an of hyper-conceptuality. It is not true, as is end and without an orientation. always repeated following Benjamin, that in Now, it is easy to see that many sectors of the age of mechanical reproduction art has contemporary art are in crisis. It is even eas- lost the aura resulting from uniqueness. ier to see that the “return to religion” talked What has happened is exactly the opposite, about for the past twenty years has largely the artwork is now essentially a work of been a false alarm: it has not lead to any real aura, the result of a fully spiritual consecra- change of customs or beliefs, which remain tion by which any object is transformed into secular in all respects. However, I find it too artwork, museums are transformed into easy and simplistic to establish (as Paglia temples, visitors turn into pilgrims and peni- does) a direct relationship between a spiri- tents, and art dealers become merchants of tual crisis and an aesthetic crisis. There aura.6 surely is a relationship between the two but, Assuming that, if exposed in a favourable if anything, it is the reverse of what the location and with the appropriate ritual, any- author posits: the hyper-spiritualization of thing can become a work of art, means plac- art, become conceptual, is what has caused ing transubstantiation within artistic produc- the aesthetic crisis. This phenomenon was tion: the artist consecrates any object, trans- described very well by Hegel: while ancient forming it into an artwork, through reading classical art develops an “aesthetic religion” a devotional text written by an art-critic. So characterized by a strict correspondence be- it is true that there is no more sacred art tween form and content, in modern romantic (with sacred subjects) and that we no longer art content (the spirit, the concept) prevails know how to build beautiful churches. But over form. Christ on the cross is not nice to in new and often beautiful cathedrals – mu- look at, what matters is the spiritual signifi- seums – we are engaging in a perpetual ado- cance of the scene: here, in this extreme con- ration. If this is the case, then, art is not ceptualism, we have the most powerful ante- dead, but more alive than ever, and indeed it cedent of Duchamp. has taken the place of religion. All romantic art – as well as its heirs, the One can always object to this interpreta- avant-garde, which not coincidentally tion that “conceptual” is not equivalent to mainly took place in the Christian world (to “spiritual,” that the spirit may be mystery my knowledge there are no Islamic, Jewish, and revelation, while the concept is trans- Confucian, Taoist, or Hindu avant-gardes) parency, clarity, and often a futile game. It – develops this hyper-spiritual vocation. might also be objected that the aura of con- The claim made by contemporary visual art ceptual works is an aura of plastic. Sure, but that beauty is not at its centre5 is a statement the problem is that in order to restore the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 5 Benjamin 1968. 6 Dal Lago – Giordano 2006. ISSUE VI – NUMBER 1 – SPRING 2014 PHILOSOPHICAL READINGS 6! ARTICLES myth – perhaps to create a “new mythol- the couple “law and art”,7 we will notice that ogy” as the romantics dreamed two centu- the former is not extrinsic to the latter (un- ries ago – the will to do so isn’ t enough. Af- like what would happen if, say, we tried to ter all, the whole story is already written in explain artworks through their authors’ pa- War and Peace: at the eve of the battle of thologies according to the couple “psychia- Borodino, Napoleon, the bourgeois and En- try and art.”) lightened emperor, contemplates the picture For the past century conceptual art has, in of his son, the King of Rome. His opponent, fact, been contractual: it deals with the eco- Kutusov, kneels in front of the icons. The nomic data (the world of art is above all the outcome of the battle is uncertain, while that art market) and seeks to broaden the defini- of the war will be disastrous for Napoleon. tion of art, renegotiating the implicit con- But in the long run, in the two centuries that tract between buyer, author and user to the separate us from Borodino, Napoleon’ s point of essentially becoming a contract it- principles have had the upper hand. We are self. In fact, the only concept used by con- now more able to see the limits of those ceptual-contractual art is, after all, the law of principles, in art, economy and politics, as art, the canonical idea that an artwork is a well as in our own lives. But we are also physical thing, made by an author and en- aware (or at least this is my steadfast belief) dowed with an attractive appearance. There- that spirituality and the divine are bound to a fore, it is necessary to contradict the canons, power we have to acknowledge, but with move around them, expand them, remove which we can not reconcile if not in an illu- them, and all this, rather perversely, happens sory form, sacrificing the values, merits and through a tool that is traditionally associated pains of modernity. with the canon and legality: the contract. The powers of the contract are great, as it has a performative dimension and allows one 2. Contractual Art to do things with words, as suggested by the English philosopher John L. Austin,8 the t is important to define the meaning of theoretician of speech acts, who noted that “concept” in the phrase “conceptual the words “I do” at a wedding do not merely art.” In what sense is Duchamp’ s bottle describe a ceremony, but produce two new I rack more conceptual than the School social objects, a husband and a wife. The of Athens by Raphael, who manages to em- same thing systematically happens with body in the single gesture of Aristotle’ s documents, which allow one to certify, half-raised hand the via media character of document, archive, name, and so forth ac- ethical virtues? In hindsight, the notion of conceptual art is a legal concept: if we take !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 7 See Donati 2012, Ajani-Donati (eds), 2011. 8 Austin 1962. PHILOSOPHICAL READINGS ISSUE VI – NUMBER 2 – SUMMER 2014 ARTICLES 7! cording to a dual mode which I believe can ”Empty Artist,” an exhibition without be traced back to the following: “weak works, in which the user was issued a con- document” (record of a fact) and “strong tract for the sale of a “zone of immaterial document” (inscription of an act).