Pynchon's "muse" (was ...

[jbor]

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>From: "Otto Sell" <o.sell at telda.net>

Thanks Otto. Welsch's explanation and examples make the point very clearly
and effectively imo.

http://www.uni-magdeburg.de/iphi/ww/papers/Beyond.html#text8

from 'Aesthetics Beyond Aesthetics'

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    a. Examples from the visual arts
 
 Just think of a painting which you all know: Goya's 'Shootings of 3 May
1808' in the Prado Museum. This picture cannot simply be received in an
aesthetically contemplative manner. It offers not just an exciting color
dynamics and compositional innovations, but simultaneously carries out the
interpretation of a historical event, and its aesthetic impulse aims for a
specific understanding of what's portrayed: things such as this shooting are
no longer to occur, this pattern of events is to be breached.

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/G/goya/may_3rd.jpg.html

 Several perceptual modes intersect in the perception of the work: the
observational manner of the picture and its artistico-aesthetic arrangement,
the expressive manner of its dynamics, the historical manner of the events
of 3 May 1808, the narrational manner of a shocking model plot, and the
appellative manner of future intervention and prohibition. The explosion in
the picture aims for the end of such deeds and simultaneously detonates the
process of merely 'aesthetic' representation and reception. The picture
pierces the contemplation-cocoon in favor of a multidimensional perception,
transcends it towards contexts of communication and life.3

 A general finding can be derived from this: the perception of art is not
restricted to a single aesthetic feat. Rather, a multitude of feats and
diverse perceptual modes cooperate in the perception of a work.

 A traditionalist aesthetician would probably object: of course several ways
of perceiving are in play with respect to Goya's picture, but only one of
these is the specifically aesthetic one, and this is the one to be dealt
with exclusively *in aestheticis*. This argument, however, comes close to an
oath of disclosure. One would be admitting that in this 'aesthetic'
constriction not even art, but at best one element thereof, can be
understood. An aesthetics which limits itself to an 'aesthetic' of this sort
would render itself recognizable as a narrow-gauge aesthetics.

 Furthermore, quite often intericonic perception is required. An artwork can
contain explicit references to other artworks. Manet's 'The Shooting of
Maximilian' of 1868, for example, obviously has Goya's work as a foil - just
as his 'Déjeuner sur l'herbe' has drawings of ancient river gods by Raphael,
preserved through etchings by Marcantonio Raimondi, as its subtext, and his
Olympia has Titian's 'Venus of Urbino' - and through this Giorgione's
'Slumbering Venus' - as model.

http://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/cjackson/manet/p-manet22.htm
http://www.tam.itesm.mx/~jdorante/art/impresi/iimpre19.htm

http://danzig.hku.nl/ictb/user/martin2/lichaam-lust/manetd.html
http://www.calliope.free-online.co.uk/helen/pic8.htm
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/T/titian/titian_venus_of_urbino.jpg.html
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/G/giorgione/venus_asleep.jpg.html

 Or take Marcel Duchamp's Mona Lisa parody 'L.H.O.O.Q.' of 1919 as a further
example. Its intericonic structure is evident. In addition a semantic
dimension is to be included: the sequence of letters in the title is to be
read as "elle a chaud au cul" - "her ass is hot". How ridiculous the retreat
to mere aesthetic contemplation would be in this case! In order to
understand a work such as this you must not only see, but also know,
suspect, make inferences. Things here are not settled by orientation towards
self-referentiality alone. Reflexion is more important than contemplation.

http://www.boijmans.rotterdam.nl/onderw/thema/imitatio/imi6b.htm

 In such cases, it is evident that the perception of the latter work has to
include the recognition of the former and an assessment of how the
predecessor is appropriated, praised, ridiculed, exploited, or whatever.
Otherwise our perception would simply be deficient. If now someone would, in
view of such works, still cling to contemplation as the sole legitimate
aesthetic outlook, then petty-mindedness would be close, and censorship not
far distant. Whatever doesn't reveal itself to the merely contemplative
approach is then faulted, denounced and dispensed with. "That's no longer
art", these people will say, or "it's just a marginal effect at most" which
is "unworthy of attention".

 Single artworks can require quite unexpected kinds of perception -
perceptual feats which for another work would be completely irrelevant.

 Take Munch's painting 'The Scream' as example. You haven't actually
perceived it until you've heard a scream - an incessant scream which makes
you tremble. Visual perception, in this case, must proceed through to an
acoustic one.

http://www.museumsnett.no/nasjonalgalleriet/munch/eng/innhold/ngm00939.html

 Or in some of Malewitsch's works our perception cannot contain itself to
seeing the elements distributed on the canvas, rather it must - especially
when confronted with black fields - break through the painting's plane and
extend into the cosmic (and this I mean quite literally: once your
perception of a black field shifts to the proper perception of black -
which, in physicists' terms, means of nothingness - your glance is absorbed
into a tunnel and thrown out into the cosmic).

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/M/malevich/b_square.jpg.html

 Pollock's drip paintings require kinaesthetic perception. You literally get
to dance (and perhaps Barnett Newman's statement that the painter is "a
choreographer of space" creating "a dance of elements, of forms" could best
be applied to Pollock).

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/pollock/lavender-mist/pollock.lavender-
mist.jpg

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