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R. G. Collingwood and the art experience
Filed in Art - February 6, 2007I was interested in what R. G. Collingwood had to say about making art, so I’ve spent some time finding out what else he had to say.
He is the author, apparently, of one of the major aesthetic theories. I won’t bore you with that now, because a) I didn’t agree with it when I read it, and b) I’ve already forgotten the details. However, even if I didn’t agree with his conclusion I did find some of the things that he had to say along way interesting.
This is Nigel Warburton interpreting Collingwood on artists at work:
His point here seems to be that a work of are need not be tangible. It can exist merely as an idea in the head of the artist. Typically artists do make objects when they express their emotions artistically. Their involvement with the medium – whether it be paint, clay or some other material – can be integral to this. But these objects are simply the means by which observers can construct the work for themselves in their own mind. The real work exists in the form of the ideas in the mind of its creator, and of the person appreciating the work.
And this is Collingwood direct on looking at art:
…the value of any given work of art to a person properly qualified to appreciate its value is not the delightfulness of the sensuous elements in which as a work of art it actually consists, but the delightfulness of the imaginative experience which those sensuous elements awake in him. Works of art are only means to an end; the end is this total imaginative experience that they enable us to enjoy.
I keep coming back to this view that the art object itself is trivial. That it is where the making of the object led the creator, and where it prompts the viewer to go, that are important.
Talking as a viewer rather than producer, the artworks which don’t work for me are the ones which take me nowhere. Even be they ever so important to the creator, or to another viewer, if they evoke no response in me then they might just as well be blank canvases for me.
Once you invoke the experience of the viewer, I’m no longer sure I understand what you mean when you say that the object itself is trivial. The specific attributes of the object affect the response of the viewer; did you not mean to dismiss those as unimportant?
February 6, 2007 @ 9:09 pm
I have also read R.G.Collingwood’s tome – The Principles of Art – and found that it explained just what it said on the tin. I am not quite sure he said that the object is “trivial†but rather that the “idea†was the fundamentally important thing; surely this is right. This line of thought is what produced the whole ‘conceptual art’ movement and although there are many learned art critics who dismiss it all out of hand it has, I think, a point.
Collingwood also had a lot to say about craftsmanship and how this alone could never be art. Look at the issue the other way round; a perfectly crafted object without some meaning behind its creation couldn’t be called art – bland, sterile and vacuous are some adjectives that spring to mind. The Mona Lisa is one of the great art works of any generation but copyists can reproduce it almost perfectly to such a degree that it is almost impossible to tell from the original. But these copyists could have never produced the original. That took an original mind with an original concept. The craftsmanship of da Vinci and the final painting is of course vitally important but the point is that any good craftsman could have produced the necessary “craft†had the artist been able to communicate his “idea†or “vision†to them. Of course this communication may have been impossible to achieve verbally and so the “art†and “craft†of the Mona Lisa are intertwined. But this isn’t always the case. On other occasions it is sometimes perfectly possible to communicate the artistic vision. Modern sculptors often use craftsmen to realise their work, especially in large works of public art; the Angle of the North in Gateshead or The B of the Bang in Manchester are two examples.
A technically proficient photographer who can produce perfect technical images does not produce art. A technically incompetent artist with a camera and an original mind doesn’t produce great photographs. But in the matter of art I have no doubt where the “art†lies. The finished artefact is the “word made flesh†– to borrow a Christian metaphor.
February 6, 2007 @ 9:13 pm
Oren,
I mean trivial in the sense of a means to an end. Like any other means to an end it is a necessary thing (assuming for the sake of argument that there are not a multiplicity of means), but not the important thing. The important thing is the end.
John Ellis made a similar point that last time that this subject came up. Yes, let us celebrate the history of great images. Let us be glad that they exist. But if the idea that Collingwood was expressing holds any merit, then we need to recognise that it is not something intrinsic to the object that is critical, but what the object prompts us to think. This would go a long way to explaining why plain white canvases are art to some people and not to others, and why something held in esteem by one generation is thought worthless by the next.
So, on this reading, it is not the specific attributes of an object, but the interaction between object and person that is important.
This would explain why Brooks Jensen can talk for fifteen minutes about an image he finds wonderful, but I find boring.
Maybe ‘trivial’ is too strong a word, because something necessary, but not sufficient, is, after all, necessary.
February 6, 2007 @ 9:24 pm
Frank,
I don’t claim to have read the original, only a good account of what Collingwood said. I’ll be writing a short review of the book in a few days.
Look at your Mona Lisa example from the point of view of a viewer/audience. If a copy (whether excellent or not) can prompt the “imaginative experience” that Collingwood writes about, why should we be concerned about the fact that it is a copy (legal concerns aside)?
If the idea of the producer and the imaginative experience of the viewer are the important bits, then the object, if not trivial, becomes a vehicle of reduced importance.
And if the objected is a well crafted, non art, object (i.e. the producer only had craft concerns when making it) but it still prompts an imaginative experience on behalf of a viewer – what then? Is that imaginative experience any the lesser for the craft nature of the prompt?
February 6, 2007 @ 9:36 pm
I mean trivial in the sense of a means to an end. Like any other means to an end it is a necessary thing (assuming for the sake of argument that there are not a multiplicity of means), but not the important thing. The important thing is the end.
But then every object is trivial, and you’re no longer telling me something distinctive about photographs or about art in particular. All utility (the universal “end”) derives from subjective experience.
February 6, 2007 @ 9:53 pm
Oren,
you’re no longer telling me something distinctive about photographs or about art
But that’s the point. Some people imbue Art objects with an enormous amount of significance. Witness any discussion about the difference between art and craft. In fact what Collingwood was doing was trying to identify the attribute that was sufficient to make something Art. However, his own arguments seem to lead in another direction – that there is no special feature of these objects.
The object that prompts the ‘imaginative experience’ in you could be mass produced (Duchamp), or a craft object, or a Van Gogh (or insert artist name of choice).
February 6, 2007 @ 10:10 pm
In which case, we are in vigorous agreement.
February 6, 2007 @ 10:17 pm
In which case, we are in vigorous agreement.
:-)
February 6, 2007 @ 10:25 pm
The object is a vehicle for representing the artistic vision. Duchamp’s urinal is art precisely because it makes the very point that craft is not art and that art is what the artists wants it to be.
No matter how much craftmanship goes into an artefact, unless it is inspired by an artistic imagination then I would contend that any imaginative experience on behalf of the viewer can extend no further than admiration for the craft – it will be a lesser experience.
Without the artistic vision everthing else in the final product is meaningless.
February 6, 2007 @ 11:33 pm
@Frank Harkin
How do you define “artistic imagination” and/or “artisitc vision”?
Or (another version of the same question) how do you identify that you’re dealing with one, both when considering the creator of a (potential) art object, and when considering the (potential) art object itself?
Is it the case that, if the creator of an object says that a particular object he/she has created IS art, then it is, always? (No matter what the viewer thinks).
Is it the case that, if the creator of an object confirms that he or she had no particular artistic vision in the creation, then the object ISN’T art, always? (No matter what the viewer thinks).
Why is admiration for craftmanship necessarily a lesser experience than an artisitic experience?
If you saw what turned out afterwards to be a superb copy of an excellent piece of art (OK, say Mona Lisa) and experienced it as anything but bland, sterile and vacuous, but felt as though you had had an imaginative experience, would you have been wrong?
There isn’t, that I know of, an emoticon expressing a genuine and polite desire to learn, but that’s what I intend.
February 7, 2007 @ 10:16 am
potentilla
Those are big questions you ask and I am not sure I am up to the job. But anyway, here goes. For me, an artistic imagination or artistic vision is one that is both unique and creative. True creativity goes beyond experience; it produces something that never existed before and is usually formed by great insight. The craftsman is always working from experience; everything he does is fashioned with the benefit of hindsight, what he has been taught and the techniques he has perfected over time – there is no real insight in the work he produces. Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was a unique creative vision – he was trading beyond experience and his vision and insight were unique. The copyists are trading on da Vinci creativity – they create nothing and have no originality. When the viewer looks at a copy of the Mona Lisa and gains some experience of the artists imagination it is da Vinci’s vision, insight and creativity they are experiencing – not the copyists. It follows that the art lies in da Vinci’s imagination.
Admiration for craftsmanship is fine but it is admiration for a skill. The crucial element of art is the unique creative insight. That is not something that can be taught as a skill can. Artists have a unique way of looking at the world and the human condition that is beyond most of us; they tell us something new about ourselves. Craftsmanship can never do this.
How do you know when you are dealing with a truly unique creative imaginative artefact? That’s a tough one. And no, it is not enough for someone to say that this is art and it is so because the ‘artist’ said so. Equally, it is not enough for the viewer to declare that something is art and it is therefore ‘art’. There will always be debate about individual artists and their work but over time if enough informed views accept that a particular artefact is art, then we can accept it as such.
February 7, 2007 @ 8:14 pm
Frank,
Your comments explain art/artefacts/crafts clearly enough, in their context. But in the art world, it appears as if things are even more confusing. There is some discussion going on over here that references this article about photographic plagerism.
The art world constantly feeds off itself, recombining elements from earlier work. The line between art and craft never seems to be very definitive.
February 9, 2007 @ 2:55 am
Kent,
The Slate article (second link in comment 12) is interesting in a journalistic sort of way.
I wonder if I should be ‘inspired’ by it to write something similar :-)
February 9, 2007 @ 8:45 am
You are all wrong.
October 9, 2008 @ 4:04 am