Relics



See also:  [(art) concepts]
           [Presence]

           

Relics

Tribal relics

An important distinction *must* (should?) be made between the art-ness of a thing and the thing-ness of the thing. As our dear friend, Robert Plant Armstong puts it so elloquently as quoted in"THe Powers of Presence: Consciousness, Myth, and Affecting", by Robert Plant Armstrong, LCCN NB 1098.A753, ISBN 0.8122.7804.6 (Univ. Penn Press, 1981, Philadelphia??). [P.7] (THe Powers of Invocation; THe Powers of Virutosity) BEGIN BLOCK QUOTE A "work of art", in our Western sense, is an object or even caused to be "a work of art" by vitue of the fact that it abides in an estate of perceptible, moral, psychological quality - of excellence. [ie, virtuosity] The Mona Lisa, for example, is caused to be a "great" and "powerful" work of art because of the excellence of its conception and execution, and not at all because it is a representation of a particular historical personage. [it *is*, but that's not the point here. Indeed...]
Yet there are cultures, for example, those in Black Africa, where the work is caused to be what it is -- to own its power -- precisely [emph mine] becasue of its "who-ness" or "what-ness", and not at all because of the excellence of its execution, moality, or expression. This a point [that] traditional anthropologists and traditional aestheticians seem to miss -- attempting instead to find "principles" of "beauty" or "harmony" or "vitue" or "rhythm" or "symmetry", whose exercise in excellence is presumed to be the cause of the thing's or event's becoming a "work of art"[.] Thus, transfrerring to an alien culture the un-examined preferences of their own [western culture]. An ancestor figure amonth the Dogon of Mali [Dogon mask, sur-mounted by an ancestor figure -- the one with the full figure of the ancestor stands with the left hand slightly forward and turned down at the wrist] is what it is precisely because it enacts ancestors, and not because it may do so in a fashion [that] we Westerners might deem of surpassing excellence or "beauty' [Note 01] [and then again...] [P.49] Notes (this section only) [1] This is *not* to say that artists like Modigliani, Van Gogh, etc did not see this inner beauty. I think that was not so much a mis-understandin on their part of the "what-ness" of the works (there was that to be sure), but rather that they saw that all of the supposed *conventions* of what beauty was supposed to be (especially in terms "acceptable" by the salon and of course THE ACADEMY. Also, this being the romantic period (and artists are nothing if not hopelessly lost dreamers and romantics), so to "connect" with that innocent state of "primitivism" would indeed be a strong force and emotion; and, it still is. {Back to the TEXT} [2] {Back to the TEXT} [3] {Back to the TEXT} [4] {Back to the TEXT} [5] {Back to the TEXT} [6] {Back to the TEXT} [7] {Back to the TEXT} [8] {Back to the TEXT} [9] {Back to the TEXT}

The Usual Suspects