Berger, Preface Prologue

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"This poet came from a country where the universal ugliness and vulgarity both-ered him even more than the criminal tyranny," writes Czeslaw Milosz about afellow exile from utopia, Joseph Brodsky.l Anyone who experienced the long,gray,Brezhnevite winter of the 1960s and 1970s in Moscow, lwarsaw, or EastBerlin will immediately see how exactly right this observation is. But how is thispossible? How could ugliness bother one to such an extent that it would influ-.nce one's moral and political decisions? How could it push one onto the roadwhich ends vzith exile? Have we not learned that the aesthetic and the ethical aretwo separate realms?And if there is no exit? Primo Levi describes how in Auschwitz a recollectionof a few lines from Dante, the words of Ulysses to his crew ("Consider yourorigin: you were not made to live as brutes, but to pursue virtue and knowledge")afforded him a rare moment of exaltation: "As if I also was hearing it for the firsttime: Iike the blast of a trumpet, like the voice of God. For a moment I forget whoI am and where I am. "2 Levi was too sober a participant not to observe that muchof the time a cultivated man was at a disadvantage in the Hobbesian world offorced labor and barrack life. And yet, the recollected verses "made it possible forme to re-establish a link with the past, saving it from oblivion and reinforcing myidentity."l Can poetry save lives, then?

The questions of the kind that Milosz's and Levi's observations raise lie at theorigins of this book. ril/hat, if anything, has art to do with the rest of our lives,and in particular with those ethical and political issues that mattdf'to us most?And will at least some of the art created today, under the more clement skies,meet this most exacting criterion of value and offer any help when recollectedby those drowning in some future deluge?Philosophical theorizing about the arts is almost as old as philosophy itself.


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ll:., trrrsl (lislltliut:,lt(.(l, "..rr,,1,1,.,,. t(.:,lr(r ltvr.l\. .rrr, ri nt ur,l ,,,,,,1,,r, ,rr, .\1..I.tlr"s/'rir'lrr'rlrrtl II,';ir'l'srl,'rl/,,,//(r s{)rr(',,1 tlr,. l,,.,r ;,1r1,,.,,1,1,,r.. lr.rr,.,,,lrtributccl to tllc clisciplittc ol ltcsllrctit's sirrt'r'it u,:rs t.sr.rl,lr,lr,.,l rr, rlr,.rrrr,ltllt.'lthe eighteenth cer-rtury (Kant, Schopcnhauct Nictzsclrt., l )t.u,t.y, l lt.it lt.1ilit.r. r.rrrt.readily to mind) and the discipline continues to flourish r.rl:ry (wirlr such yrr.rrc.-titioners on both sides of the Atlantic as Danto, Gadamer, Goodman, Idcocur,Scruton, and tVollheim, among others). \X4rile my book belongs to the broadfamily of philosoph ical art theories, a combination of three fu.to-., distinguishesit from the other books in the field known to me.First, ever since Plato philosophers have been much exercised by the ques-tion of what art is, have felt impelled to take on the problem of getting art,s on-tological sratus right, of finding away to distinguish u.t from oth"er entities. oneway or anorhe! this is still the guiding task of most philosophical work on artdone today. (Arthur c. Danto, for instance, writes: "In my view, the question ofwhat art really and essentially is . . . was the wrong form for the philosophicalquestion to take. . . . [T]he real form of the question should be . . . : what makesthe difference between a work of art and something not a work of art when thereis no interesting perceptual difference befi/een them?,,a) I do not think that thetask is unimportant (and, in fact, devote chapter 1 to it), I just think that oneshould not stop with it, that there are more interesting tasks ahead of us. $7emight want to say, in effect, Let's not worry too much ubo.rt the ontological sta-tus of this object, let's even concede in advance that it is art. \what ..ully mutt.r.is what happens next (the question I pick up in chapter 2): even if we grant tothis object the status of art, we still do ,ro, k.ro* *h.th.r and why we shouldbother ourselves with it. And to know this should be much more usef,._,I to usthan to know how to distinguish art from other entities. In short, I am trying toshift the focus ofaesthetics to the question, \fhat should the function ofart be,if art is to have a value for us?second, unlike most philosophers today, who define art primarily in terms ofeither poetry or painting, I tend to privilege music (without, I hope, doing graveinjustice to either literature or visual arts). My musical focus is pa.ti.,rludy .1.u.in chapter J, where the questioning acquires a more explicitly historical charac-ter than elsewhere in the book. The reason for this focus is my conviction thatmusic represents the central features and dilemmas of the social and historicalsituation of art today in a particula r7y radical, acute, and clear fashion. Thus thediagnosis of chapter 3 might be profitably read against the background of thecurrent Parisian debate concerning the crisis of contempo rary art,-adebate con_ducted almost exclusively with reference to the visual arts.jThird, the range of the questions I ask is not limited to those traditionally askedby writers on aesthetics, but also includes issues in poetics and hermeneutics.The two areas of inquiry that all too often ignore one another, the aesthetics ofphilosophers and what literary scholars now grandly call Theory, are here broughttogether. The question asked in the chapters devoted,o po.ri.. (chapters 4 and5) is, Given the functions of art identified above, how does art fulfiil them? In

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lrr slrolt, rrry lxxrk rlil'fcrs from other books in the field in that it shifts the focusol :rttcntiorr l:rorr thc question of what art is to the question of what art is for, itru'ltucs that urrrsic ofl'ers the best insight into the contemporary situation of therrlts, ancl it combines aesthetics with poetics and hermeneutics. The book ad-cllcsscs a heterogeneous audience, not only philosophers, but also literary schol-ilrs, art historians, and musicologists, and not only academics, but also profes-sional artists as well 2s 211 l6vs1s-in sum, anyone with a serious interest in thearts. This varied potential audience accounts for several stylistic, generic, anddisciplinary features of my text. Stylistically, I have attempted to keep the textfree of technicalities and write in relatively plain English, without dumbing itdown in any way. Generically, the text falls somewhere between a scholarly trea-tise and an essay: while I do not ignore other writers in the field and quote fromthem all too copiously, my main concern is to develop my own position ratherthan to demolish the arguments of my predecessors. And the disciplinary iden-tity of the book is deliberately vague: it inhabits the no-man's-land between thephilosophy of art,literary theory, art theory, and musicology.

(-,-"-"-:)I have been fortunate to be able initially to test various ideas developed in thisbook in conversations and seminars conducted with a number of friends and col-leagues over the last decade or so and I mention some of these occasions herewith gratitude. Andrzej Rapaczynski and \Tojciech Karpifiski will find in thesepages echoes of the discussion conducted intermittently in the museums and gal-leries of Italy, Paris, and New York. I have learned more about the nature ofpoetry from Stanislaw Baraiczak and Adam Zagajewski than from many a learnedtome. The late Carl Dahlhaus was most generous with his time during my yearin Berlin and was as dazzling and inspiring as a conversation partner as he wasas a writer. Like so many others, I have derived great benefit from the FacultySeminar on Interpretation which John Bender and David \Tellbery so ably di-rected at Stanford. Similarly useful were several faculty seminars for literaryscholars, art historians, and musicologists organized at the Stanford HumanitiesCenter by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. I have benefited also from the discussionsthat accompanied the conference on music reception which I co-directed withMichal Bristiger at the Institut fiir die \Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Viennaand the colloquium on music and narrative which I co-directed with AnthonyNewcomb at the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities of the Uni-versity of California at Berkeley and the Humanities Center of Stanford Univer-sity. The generous sponsorship of these events by the institutions just mentioned


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FRF,PAI ,N

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xll CONTENTSc. The Rise of Mimetic Music L20d. The Rise of Abstract Music 13)e. The Cold \War of Mimesis and Abstraction I39f. The Significance of Abstraction I52

Pnnr IIPoBTIcs AND HERMENEUTICS:Tug CoNTENTS AND IxTnnpRSTATION OF ARTvTORKS

CHAPTER 4POETICS I. DIEGESIS aNo MT,u,OSlSj THE POETIC MODESAND THE MATTER OF ARTISTIC PRESENTATION 165a. The Voices 166b. The Modes in Painting and Music t70c. The Author, Implied and Real, Dead and Alive 184

CH,qptrn 5POETICS II. NARRATIVE AND LyRTc: THE POETIC FORMSAND THE onJECr OF ARTTSTTC PRsSrNrArrON 189a. Narrative and Lyric 190b. The Forms in Painting and Music 196c. Action and Passion 202

CHaprnn 6HERMENEUTICS. INTERPRETATION AND ITs VALIDITY 213a. Interpretation: Metaphor and Metonymy 2L)b. Validity: Persuasion and Legitimacy 227

EPILoGUETHE PowER oF TASTE 235Notes 245SelectedBibliography 269Index 271

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"somebow it seems to fi.ll nay bead with ideas-only I don'tknow exactly utbat tbey are!"

Alice on "Jabberwocky," inLewis Carroll, Tbrough tbe Looking-Glass


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Tun Fuxcrtox AND VRIUN Or ANr

consider a discipline such as aestherics. The fact that there are works ofart is given for aesthetics. It seeks to find out under what conditions thisfact exists, but it does not raise the question whether or not the realm ofart is perhaps a realm of diabolical grandeur, a realm of this world, andtherefore, in its core, hostile to God and, in its innermost and aristocraticspirit, hostile to the brotherhood of man. Hence, aesthetics does not askwhether therc shouldbe works of art.

Max \Weber, "Science as a Vocation"

\ilhat is art? One is tempted to paraphrase St. Augustine's answef to another in-quiry: "\il{hat is time then? If nobody asks me, I know: but if I were desirous toexplain it to one that shouid ask me, plainly I know not."l Having said this, Au-gustine v/ent on to look for an answer anyrvay, and so should we. But first I shouldclarify the question, make it more precise, show that it is worth asking, and thinkwhat a satisfactory answer would have to look like.

Inapragmatic spirit, I take the question' \flhat is x? to be equivalent to, \fhatis the function of x? or, \il/hat is x for? \7e know what something is when weknow what can be, should be, or is being done with it' -W{hen someone asks, \il/hatis a hammer?, there is nothing better you can do than to take a hammer and drivea nail into a board with it. Our pretheoretical understanding recognizes in arta famtly of social practices, sustained by appropriate institutions, and evolvingwithin the historical context of continuous traditions. Art is what those whowrite poetry do, as well as those who write novels, and those who compose stringquartets (or perform them), and those who paint landscapes, and many others.Central to any understanding of a practice must be to grasp its point. \7e do notknow what someone is doing unless we know what his purpose or intention is.


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A I'l ll,llt{\' (tt,'At{ Is()(i:rl:rs(('tr,,l,ru',',rlrlryrrt,l,ll,,l.r,,...rrrtlr,,lr.,;,lr,,r,,,rrt,,ltlrr.r.arr.rr.,r,(facyl)yllrclrtrlt.ssiorrirl lrorll,t.oisl,rrl,lr, ,r,,rlr,.1J,;,, r,1.r..., { }11r.1.,,.s11y1;l,.,rl tlrisis Elias's awafcllcss that thc tt'ilr)siti()n Ilrrrr rlrt'( rrrlr:,rr( r'r. rt):uIr:irs':rr.t rlitl rrolhappen simultaneously in all artistic ficlcls, tlrirr irr ( it'r rrrrrr slrt.;rltirrg lurrtls, l.rinstance' it occuffed much earlier in literaturc (arrrl 1rlrilosr,1,l,y) rhan in nrusjcor architecture. The development of the market for books tlrat allowed a u/rirera freelance existence, horvever precarious, preceded by decades the develop-ment of comparable market institutions-*ch u, music pubrishing, copyright,or public s6nqs115-f6r music.Later, in chapter 3, I shall explain why it is plausible that various arts achieveda significant degree of autonomy long before the eighteenth century. Instead ofthe growing autonomization of art, one should rath'er stress th. g.o;.rg auton-omization of the artist as a feature of the modern izationpro."rrlo.r.e an artiststopsworkingfor a specific patron (a church, a court) and offers his productsfor sale to pa*ons whose identities cannot be fully specified i' ud,r,,'.., that is,once he begins to function within the market, he may be better ubl" to produceworks that embody his, rather than his patrons', ,rur.r.r, thereby increasing hisautonomy (even if in practice this autonomy is frequently undermined by thl in_creased economic insecurity). In fact, in Europe and its cultural extensions it hasbeen positively expected of the artist for mo.. than two centuries now, that hewill be autonomous and original in this sense. It is undeniable that the modern-

ization of art involves the autonomization of the artist, although the full com-plexity and the uneven character of this development as it pe.tuin, to individualarts should not be underestimated: unrike painiers, who, with their artisanal tra-ditions, found successful ways to exploit market mechanisms early on (think ofTitian's, or Rembrandt's, studios), composers began to devise strategies for func_tioning within the market only in the late eighteenth century, und ih.i. successeven today is not unqualified. (Mozart's is a paradigmatic .u.ly .ur., and theextremely small number of aft music composers, as .o-pur"i to painters ornovelists' who between his time and ours actually -unug.i to -uk. a living ascomp.osers is striking.) All the same, the autonomization of the artist and itscorollary requirement of originality surely contributed to the growing urgencyof the question concerning art's functior.. Not surprisingly, tri. p.o.!r. of urr-tonomization was accompanied by the birth of u g.ne.ui u.t th.o.y, the philo-sophical subfield of aesthetics.when it comes to the social situation o{ art, and,probabry to much erse aswell' w; are still living in the era that took shape decisively in the d..uJ", around1800, the era of inexorably increasing sociafequ arity and d,emocratization, theearly outlines of which were grasped with pu.ti.rrlur.iarity by Tocqrr.rrru. Todaymore than ever, the principal sources of support for those puirrt..r, composers,and writers who actually manage to make ulrri.rg from their art rake the formnot of the personal patronage of the rich and powerfur, but of the impersonalmarket or the state (acting either directry o. thro,rgh the mediation of the taxcode). No less today than in 1800, artists expect to be autonomous and are

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l:tl llottrrilrirrt'ts,tl,sl()tV()tt(.rvrlllrt..rl,l, t,,trllr,,;,,llr,r rilli,,rr,'.,rrrlt.llorrrlolaSill'csUltol tlrCrli:rlogrrt..("'l'lrt'sttlx.t.t{)tltVol orrr.|,,.,il1,,trr,\(!.ilt(,tlrcr,"$,r.ilt.sCharlcs Taylor, "will corrsist in tlris, tlrrrt ll'rrr tlrr.rrrrrrr..rrl.r1rr,rtr. 1,,,siti6rr 11rrt.can understand one's own stand and that ()l ()n("s ()l)l)()lr(.llt, lrrrl nol llrc otlrcl.way around."6)This sort of piecemeal local pragmatic negotiating, togcrher with huge dosesof plain violence, has characterized the practice of the modern age from its be-ginnings a few centuries ago. It may well turn out that the recourse to universalmeta-narratives, far from being the most central feature of modernity, has beenan important, but ultimately atavistic, sideshow, a nostalgic search for a suitablesecular replacement for the grand religious meta-narrative of the premodern era.on this account, the label of "postmodernism" would be no more than an at-tempt by lapsed Marxists to give their disenchantment the dignity of an epochalchange. what I am suggesting, in short, is that perhaps postmodernity is nota new era at all, but rathet a state of mind of the post-Marxist intelligentsia, un-precedentedly affluent (and hence ready to approach the world in the spirit ofcheerful play{ulness) and wary of any new commirmenrs.Be that as it may, whether'we are postmoderns or simply more than usuallyconfused moderns, our daily disputes about such issues as public funding forthe arts, or censorship, or university cumiculum make it abundantly clear thatwe need a theory of art, an answer to the question concerning the function ofart, no less than our ancestors living around 1800 did.It should now also be clear that the question we started with, what is art?,consists really of two questions rather than one: What is the function of art? andlwhat is the value of this function? one might look for answers to the first ques-tion in two ways. one might investigate it empirically-historically and finJ outwhat the function or functions of various arts have actually been once these artsachieved autonomy from their traditional contexts. or, one might explore theproblem in a more speculative-philosophical fashion and ask noi so much whatthefunction of the autonomousaft.,as andis,butratherwhatits hould, ot might,be. rf we decided to srop at our first question, if all we wanted to know was whatthe function of art actually is, the first line of investigation would be quite suffi-cient. The kinds of answers that this line leads to are well illustrated by Martha

\Woodmansee's well-supported historical claim that the idea of autonomous artwas introduced in late'eighteenth-century Germany to stem the commercializa-tion of literature promoted by the new social and economic situation of the artsin the marketplace,T or by Pierre Bourdieu's sociological claim that art todayserves the function of perpetuating class distinctions.8 (pascal had already no-ticed that beauty might be used to demonstrate power: "It is not mere vanity tobe elegant, because it shows that a lot of people are working for you. . . . It meansmore than superficial show or mere accoutrement to have many hands in one,sservice. The more hands one ernploys the more powerful one is. Elegance is ameans of showing one's power."r) such claims may be illuminating in iheir ownway, particulady, if one does not assume that they tell one all one needs to know

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A I'l ili( )t(\' ( )t' Atr I'lrtgirrs lo lltil trrt'itt sotttt'\\/rrys, ()r, nr()r( ( rrr, r.rll1, rr lr,.rr rlr, ;rr;rr lit.t.itst.ll r.rrrrsinto dilJicrrltics, that ir nccrl lirr.rr rrrtlR.(.xl)lt( tt tlr|ot1, ;p; rrt rrl;rtirr1l tll(. l)()it)l iil)(lthe norms of the practicc ariscs. ()ncc l;oln, ir llr('()ry rrrrry rrt't1rrir.c an iptcr.laldynamic of its own and develop more or less indcpcrrrlcrtly of any pronrpringsfrom a stalled practice. But it may also begin to influence the practice, to help itrun more smoothly by making its norms more transparent and by correctly iden-tifying its point.This sort of two-way traffic between practice and theory is to be expected inany areaofsocial action that has achieved a certain degree ofmaturity. The aes-thetic domain is no exception. Alasdair Maclntyre points out that a practiceevolves within the historical context of the relevant tradition.

lw]hen a tradition is in good order it is always parrially constitured by an ar-gument about the goods the pursuit of which gives to that tradition its partic-ular point and purpose. . . . A living tradition then is an historically extended,socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely in part about the goodswhich constiture this tradition.llThis book is a contribution ro the ongoing argument about the point of art,a contribution in which I pay close attention to what eadier participants in thisparticular debate had to say and try to keep in mind the relevant features of thesocial practice of art itself, features ofthe practice as it is pursued today and asit has evolved over the past few centuries.The argument about the point of art is particulady timely today, when publicattitudes toward afi are ambiguous at best. General appetite for certain, evenfairly elite, art forms seems to be broader and sharper than ever: ry to get a goodseat at any malor opera house (if you can afford one) or to look at paintings atan overcrowded Matisse retrospective. But at the same time, in the UnitedStates at least, art is not enjoying good press, its function is much contested,and a consensus as to its ultimate value can no longer be taken for granted. Anunexpected and involuntary alTiance of right-wing populist politicians and left-wing populist academics, unwitting Platonists all, suspects art of corrupting theyoung, whether by seductive images of morally unconventional behavior, or bythe insidious perpetuation of socially and politically undesirable distinctions andattitudes. Art-bashing has again become salonftihig.This rise of old political and new academic philistinism is surely an indirectproof that art still retains its power to disturb and unsettle comfortable bureau-cracies. But it would be unwise and complacent to dismiss current trends in thisway and not to notice that they are based on some compelling, even if confused,intuitions. In particular, the suspicion that artmay be much more relevant to ourmoral, social, and political concerns than the ideology of artistic autonomy seemsto allow needs to be taken seriously and carefully examined. The new antiaes-thedc attitude deserves attention, and not simply because it may endanger thesurvival of some artistic traditions and practices; after all,we do not even knowyet whether these traditions and practices should be continued and why. It de-

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t2 ATHEORYOFARTthat it provides us vdth more than enough unambiguous material.) As alreadystated, our task is not to invent a new social practice, but rather to improve orsimply clarify the ongoing one. If most of the art as we know it cannot do the jobwe think art should be doing, our theory would turn out to be not a theory of artat all, but a theory of something else, something for which we had illegitimatelyappropriated the name of art.In short, we want to find out what the function of art should be if art is to beconsidered a worthwhile occupation, and we know that this function would haveto be culturally important, or better yet, indispensable, one that can be fulfilledonly by art, and, moreover, by much of the art that already exists.

,----- Panr IAESTHETICS:,IHE E,XNS OF ARTWORKS

Berger, Preface Prologue

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