Ulus Baker
A
rough draft for doctoral thesis.
It
could be interesting to note that the birth of photography, invented as the
"héliographe"
of Nicéphore Niepce coincides with the death of the Great German
philosopher
Hegel., to whom we owe an interesting foundational thesis on the history
of
arts and aesthetics. This thesis is a little bizarre and ambiguous, in spite of
its
Hegelian
clarity, and it is the continuation of the entire Hegelian system of
philosophy.
Hegel declares that the age of art has been achieved, this is the end, and
we
have now to enter into the age of aesthetics. Already in his Phanomenologie des
Geistes,
he develops his theses on this "end of art", which corresponds to the
dialectical
achievement of history. Since everything is, according to Hegel, the
achievement
of self-consciousness, always in three formal stages, or rather the
dialectical
self-development of the Idea, so is the case of the art. Certainly there is a
"history
of art" which is elevated at a philosophical certitude in Hegel, and this
development
is both historical and evolutionary. Although we are here quite distant
from
Hegel's dialectical conventions, there seems that there is a historically
important
question
about "modernity" which should pass through the bizarre and
idealistic
assertions
of Hegel. This is the very ambiguous nature of everything "modern",
as
Hegel
declares that now "it is time to..."
The
evolution of the universe, for Hegel, is the panlogical paradigm which should
be
assumed
to govern history. The evolution of arts is also part of this panlogic history,
and
obeys to the same dialectical roots as history in general. However, art is
unlike
thinking
or philosophy, since it is developed through the particular, not the universal.
As
Kant would say, though art is disinterested, it is still obeying to the general
rules
of
historical development.
And
what is this historical development? Hegel invokes the earliest form of art,
the
"symbolical"
stage of art, when the disinterestedness was not yet fully developed. Art
and
religion largely coincided, and a divine giantism prevailed (Egyptian pyramids,
Greek
temples...) Or everything was reduced to ornamental, symbolic figurations --
the
small, traditional artisanship, as in the Indian, Chinese, Arab Orient, but
also in
Europe.
Hegel's reasons can easily be understood since the major and dominant
branchs
of art in this first epoch were architecture and sculpture. According to Hegel,
architecture
and sculpture with their three-dimensional, "topographic" allure is
closer
to
the Nature (alienated in the Nature, in the extension and matter) and though
they
posses
gigantic formations like pyramids, they obey to the rules of symbolic
ornamentations.
Thus, the ornament and its symbolic repetition constitutes only a
façade,
a superficiality and is part of tradition, rather than reasoning. According to
Hegel's
formula, this is a stage when self-consciousness is religious, closed onto
itself,
and functioning through a formal self-realization of consciousness as merged
with
nature (alienation).
Then
comes the second stage, dominated by painting: one can see how one of the
three
dimensions has gone, and painting is basically two-dimensional. Other branches
too
tend to develop, but fundamentally under the guidance of painting, from Middle
Ages
up to the Renaissance and the Baroque. This two-dimensionality means that the
role
of consciousness increases, since an abstraction and an avoidance of pure
symbolism
occurs. It is certainly more difficult to "understand" a picture than
a
sculpture,
and even the knowledge of symbols has been transformed: later, Johann
Huizinga
will describe how there was a late medival struggle between the Church and
popular
religion of the masses, the later endangering the authority of the Church not
by
their lack of faith, but their overdose of faith into images and icons. It was
as if the
religion
was "crystallized into images", and this was nothing but the waning
of the
middle
ages.
To
return to Hegel's aesthetics, the third and last stage comes when music and
poetry
dominate:
this is certainly the Romantic epoch, when the intimate friends of Hegel the
Philosopher
were poets like Goethe, Hölderlin and Lessing, and great musicians like
Mozart
and Beethoven. The consciousness or the Spirit functioning through the
"particular"
is here in its highest possible level and power. Music is not
"dimensional",
it is fully abstract, disinterested and pure. And in poetry, everything is
reduced
to pure consciousness, to the language in which peoples and individuals are
born.
This is the ultimate stage of the art, almost its "end" or
"telos". One could even
say
that this was nothing more than Hegel's courtesy to his poet friends.
Yet
Hegel is rather concerned, when talking about the "end of the history of
art"
(history,
according to Hegel, is ending everywhere, as it is achieved in the Prussian
state
where Hegel is living, and the age of philosophy starts with Hegel), with a
question:
in what sense the art, as the realm of the particular, should pass into the
universal
and the general? When he declares the birth of an age of aesthetics and the
end
of the history of art, he assumes that the universality will reign from now on,
and
it
is nothing less than a philosophical concept. Hence, philosophy is something
beyond
art, for the latter has always remained as the realm of the particulars
--things,
perceptions,
singular objects, events etc. It is difficult that art "thinks",
since it cannot
generalize,
universalize. It depicts something particular, and the entirety of the Idea is
only
revealed in art as a "part". Thus, the "age of aesthetics"
to come is not a higher
stage
of the history of art, but the lower stage of the age of philosophy, declares
Hegel.
Aesthetics is philosophical, rather than artistic.
Throughout
our comment on Hegelian aesthetics, a burning question is always alive.
Hegel
declares the age of aesthetics, but we are today, almost two hundred years
later,
in
such a historical position that we can questioned what has really happened in
this
Age
of Aesthetics. The subtlety of history has perhaps marked Hegel's death with
the
invention
of photography, a totally new aesthetic experience, and approximately one
and
half century later, we are watching television. Thus, such questions, to be
interpreted
from Hegel's perspective would soon arise? Is photography a picture, a
sculpture
or architecture? A rather strange question haunts the historians of
photography:
why photography waited for the beginnings of Nineteenth century
(1830's)
in order to be invented, while the chemical photographic recording was
already
known by the alchemists just as the camera obscura, which has been used
since
Middle Ages by the painters.
Theses
on Hegel’s Aesthetics: the evolution of “art”... increasing role of
“consciousness”
and decreasing presence of the “matter” (topographic arts versus
abstarction)
–Hegel’s last movement: when he declares that there is still something
beyond
“art”—philosophy... the formula: the age of “art” is closed, we are entering
into
the age of “aesthetics”...
Hence,
we believe that the Hegelian aesthetics and the way in which it terminates the
"history
of art" to declare the age of aesthetics have something to tell us about
the
new
"technical" materiality of arts. We have already mentioned that
photography was
born
approximately when Hegel was about to die. This means that no one can know
what
would Hegel say about the age of technical images, determined by the birth of
photography,
which has developed its own cultural and artistic norms. From
photography
to the "cinématographe" of Lumière, up to the television-video and
digital
imaging techniques, everything which pertains to "modern" images (as
Hegel
himself
declares that we enter into the "modern age" only through his
philosophical
system)
belongs to the "age of aesthetics" declared by Hegel. And they are
already
defined
by their "ambiguity" --an image which is fundamentally different from
the
image
of the painter, usually taken by a "hunter" of images and visions,
rather than by
a
painter who chooses his or her mise-en-scène and completely renders it into his
or
her
painting.
--fundamental
implication of the Hegelian thesis for the “new materials” of
Nineteenth
century: photography and cinematography as “ambiguous” materials... the
age
of aesthetics –up to aestheticism... Hegelian vision criticized: the Kantian
Sublime
returned... philosophies of Aesthetics –notably in Nineteenth century there
emerges
an anti-systematic (therefore Anti-Hegelian wisdom of aesthetic philosophies
–especially
with Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Soren Kierkegaard...)
--Baudelaire
and “representation”: the Symbols and Signs...Painter of the Modern
Life
–a commentary... a history of portrait photography... nature morte or
Stijlleven...
its
cultural history, arising from the memento mori .. about the social evolution
of the
photographic
image –no anticipation by Nicéphore Niepce ...
--Against
Freud –Gaetan Clérambault –erotomania and photography... again... Tarde
and
“valeurs-beautés” (theory of “beauty values” in contradistinction to
--the
false image... van Meegeren and Vermeer... Melville's "shape-images"
against
"form-images"...
Zarathustra
and the "untruth" --untruth appears in the person of the
"truthful man",
developing
on the line with the politician, homo religiosus, the man of morality and at
the
last instance, the artist, each of them defined by a degree of untruth. Deleuze
insists
that only the artist is the most truthful among them, being capable to represent
untruth
in its ultimate degree: "The artist too, in his turn, is a falsifier, but
this is the
ultimate
degree of power of the false, since he wants the metamorphosis rather than
taking
the form of the 'true', that of the True and the Good..." (192***)
--Godard's
Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle: --Dionysus by Jean Rouch... on the
meaning
of the term "cinéma-vérité"...
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