Abstract art

One of Jimmy Akin's co-bloggers (Tim Jones) has started an interesting discussion about the value of abstract visual art.  I want to throw something out there because I think I have if not a good answer, at least the start of a good answer (aside from Yay for abstract art because I like it! and Boo for abstract art because I hate it!).

The question is, is non-objective art (e.g. abstract paintings, sculpture, etc. that depict no recognizable subject) capable of substantive communication?  My answer is yes, conceivably, but not to any large extent in our culture at this time, and not in the near future either.  My reasoning is in the extended post.

Whenever I express my dissatisfaction with abstract art, there often seems to be someone who points out that music with no words (like much of the ouerve of composers I like) is likewise abstract art, but I don't have a problem with that.  Aside from the ad hominem character of this argument, this is an unsatisfying answer, but although I have a strong intuition that there is not an equivalency here, I only just recently came up with the words to express my problem with this.

The difference is not anything essential, as though abstract art is intrinsically incapable of communication the way non-verbal music is: the real difference is that in our culture (and probably in most cultures), there is a strong and broadly shared cultural consensus regarding a "vocabulary" of musical elements and what they symbolize, whereas no such thing exists at this time for painting or sculpture. Conceivably, one could arise, but it doesn't exist now the way it does for music, and it would probably take a long, long time to build it up and make it a widely shared part of the culture.

Somewhere along the line, the structural elements of music became so strong and gained such a footing in the culture that they became able to stand on their own without having to serve as a vehicle for words. People may interpret the same piece of music somewhat differently, but there is enough common ground that people can reliably communicate with it.  To take a simple example, play a minor chord.  There is a consensus about what that "means."  It sounds (to oversimplify) "sad."  Play a major chord.  It sounds "happy."  To be sure, this may not be universal - music isn't always and everywhere primarily about expressing "feeling" - but it doesn't need to be, it just needs to be broad enough.  It is, though.  And that is just one example.  There are any number of elements - tempo, timbre, rhythm, voicing, harmony, where a certain choice will elicit a fairly predictable range of responses.

Where is this in painting and sculpture?  Is there such a thing as a widely-recognized vocabulary of elements whereby a certain color scheme is widely understood as symbolic of something, and using a certain line or shading is indicative of something else?  Yes, to some extent, but there isn't a cultural consensus broad or strong enough for those elements to stand on their own most of the time.  If individuals' interpretations of a piece are so scattered all over the map that there aren't a small number of ballpark clusterings or some sort of strong correlation, or if you have to be inducted into a very small and esoteric interpretative community in order to have a meaningful dialogue with the source, then the answer to the question posed at the beginning of this post is still no.

However, if someone or a school of someones can bring this sort of cultural consensus into being, then he or they will likely go down in history.  I can't say this is what I'll be spending my time doing, but if you have the talent and influence to be that guy, well, there's history to be made.

Comments

[PeterTerp]

Of course, if the consumer of art is constructing its own system of interpretation, then I'm not sure that it's safe to say that the art is necessarily "communicating" anything. The image might inspire, but it isn't necessarily transferring an intended meaning from an originator to an audience.

It's always hard to generalize these things once one starts thinking about critical theory.

There are some artists who intend to communicate through art, and there are some artists who only intend to communicate the idea that they are not trying to communicate. And, of course, there is a whole spectrum of artists seeking levels of ambiguity in between.

But in a post-modern world, there are artists who will intentionally try to create art that resists a standardized system of interpretation...and if a system could be devised, it would either mean the artist had failed or that the critic had completely destroyed the work of art. (And maybe creating meaningless art is ultimately an impossible task, since the act would, in itself, be its own meaning.)

There may be artists who simply want to create a new system, a new series of signifiers, and they would be happy if someone unpacked their art and turned it into a new language.

And there might be artists who would be delighted that their art inspired some unintended system of signification.

Still, we are such a visual culture at the present that it seems to me that we do largely buy into a culturally defined "vocabulary". Think about the movies and TV. There are all kinds of visual signifiers that we interpret and cause reactions out of us, even if we don't know the labels for them and even if they do not have a "recognizable subject."

The "problem" with abstract art is perhaps that it often intentionally rebels against those signifiers, and that's what makes it so jarring. It breaks our schema. On the other hand, it also often makes us self-conscious of why it surprises us...which then leads us to think about those very conventions it breaks. Thus, it isn't necessarily meaningful in itself because it's meaning relies on making us question the meaning of what is not there rather than what is.