Page 57 - Studio International - May 1971

influences at the work's inception. domain of that which is common to any 1G. Charbonnier, Conversations with Claude Levi-
. . every cultural object is reducible to
If recipient's experience of that domain. Strauss, Jonathan Cape, London.
2
(in) ostensive definition, the object which is
its manifestations, that is, to psychological If we reject the notion that art is a sub-class meant is brought within range of perception and is
objects'10, then art may be seen as a of objects, in favour of the view that art is a sub- then indicated by an appropriate gesture.' Rudolf
Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World, University
fundamentally apperceptive operation directed class of information, then art appears in the of California Press, 1969.
towards the mental set of those psychological context of a continuously contemporary 'A photograph of a bridge is a picture of a particular
objects which constitute our continually informational array, formed, in large, from our bridge whereas the word 'bridge' does not necessarily
contemporary sense of individuality within immediate perception of the external world. indicate any existing bridge. I nevertheless hold that,
encountered within an art context, the word has
culture-as-a-whole-which might explain art's `Semantic labels' help orientate art information `nowhere to go' but to concrete particulars.
whatever does not belong to the structure but to
intellectual promiscuity; art may be a cultural within the larger informational field. The 4
relationship rather than a cultural entity. If art identificational function of the semantic the material (i.e., anything that can be pointed out in
concrete ostensive definition) is, in the final analysis,
does operate at the intuitive rather than the component should be stressed-we may subjective.' Rudolf Carnap, op. cit.
discursive level, than all this would be conceive of a 'semantic threshold' which may 'Rudolf Carnap, op. cit.
conducted mainly through emotional channels : not be exceeded by a work if it is not to take the °Rudolf Carnap, op. cit.
7 'it is crucially important to learn to see abstraction
. . our ordinary experience of ourself and the form of an assertion and so be subject to the not as the visual characteristic of a range of objects
world is infused with many shades of adversive criteria 'true or false', thus becoming (the idea is semantically ludicrous), but as a faculty of
thought.' Charles Harrison, 'A very abstract context',
and aversive emotions . . . if the purely factual compromised in its art identity. That the
Studio International, November, 197o.
aspect of experience needs to be organised to tendency of a work to diverge in its significance 8 Rudolf Carnap, op. cit.
recurrent invariances, so does this part.'11 is seen as a problem is evidenced by the wide 9 While we may feel we know what is meant here by
`private language', it is worth emphasising that if a
. . emotions function cognitively not as use of the 'self-referential' format, where
`private language' is understood only by the person
separate items but in combination with one signification is as far as possible recursive and who speaks it, then use of the word 'language' is
another and with other means of knowing . . . convergent. Such preoccupations may tempt inappropriate. Even interpreted liberally, assuming
quantity or intensity of emotion is no measure of one to make analogies with mathematics. the term is being used metaphorically to describe
some sort of personal system of encoding, we may still
its cognitive efficacy. A faint emotion may be as It has been suggested that art works want to know how far it is possible to decode, to
informative as an overwhelming one . . . this is represent propositions and that these have the translate this language into terms we can all under-
something all attempts to distinguish the logical form of a tautology. The analogy is stand.
"Rudolf Carnap, op. cit.
aesthetic in terms of amount or degree of partially applicable, in so far as we must 11 Ervin Laszlo, System, Structure, and Experience,
emotion overlook.'12 acknowledge the essentially axiomatic nature of Gordon and Breach, New York, 1969.
To mention the emotions is to elicit an art, in that the art work is subject to no external "Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art, Oxford
University Press, 1969.
emotional response; it is not suggested here that testing but need only be consistent with the "Abraham Moles, Information Theory and Esthetic
the function of an art work is to provide an artist's own assumptions, but is less appealing if Perception, University of Illinois Press, 1966.
emotional experience-life is already full of we contrast art expressions with, say, 1 4 Claude Levi-Strauss, quoted by Michael Lane in
his introduction to Structuralism: A Reader,
them-but rather that the 'apprehension matrix' mathematical expressions. A mathematical Jonathan Cape, 197o.
which art supplies is most predominently expression is unequivocal in what it asserts and
emotional/intuitive. Art does not provide any we may recognize, for example, that (x+ 1)2 =
new experiences, facts, or concepts-it x2+ 2x+ t is tautological and that x = x+ i is
`rearranges' these things; it provides a 'frame of absurd. Art, however, is equivocal in what it
mind' to enclose commonly accessible facts and asserts to such a point that we may reasonably
concepts we already have. doubt whether it actually asserts anything at all,
Works which use commonly understood signs and thus doubt whether (pv—p) may be any
cannot help but signify some object beyond more appropriately said to be the form of an art
themselves. This referential aspect of a work `proposition' than (p.~p); from this it follows
might be termed the 'semantic component' of that art is not `necessarily true' but rather that
the information transmitted by that work: considerations of either its truth or its falsity are
. . a military order, an electrical circuitry simply irrelevant.
diagram, a coded message, instructions in case Certainly, truth and falsity are not applicable
of fire, a technical manual, a musical score, etc., criteria in art. The elements of a work assume, in
all convey essentially semantic information. They their mutual relations, an autonomous status
prepare acts, forms of action, and in general, subject only to criteria of internal coherence.
semantic information has a clearly utilitarian, We do not ask 'is it true', but only 'is it valid'
but above all logical character. It sticks to acts within the terms of its own axioms. Appreciating
and to meaning.'13 this we may be led to use a metaphor which
The 'extra-semantic' component of an art seems to fit these facts and so speak of tautologies
work functions as an exclamation, asserting in the 'language of art'-but the metaphor is
nothing, produced in regard to an object misleading; art has no language.
domain indentified by the semantic component Logic and mathematics may express a 'frame
of the work. The semantic component in turn of mind' in abstract variables and relations-
asserts nothing but functions as a 'label' or logical structures absolutely independent of any
`pointer', thus annexing the particular content experiential content which might be attributed
of the recipient's experience of the signified to them-but at the levels of abstraction where
object domain. `Pointing' here, however, is more art is viable, . . structure . . . is the content
explicit, closer to 'tracing', than is ostensive itself apprehended in a logical organisation
definition. While being explicit with regard to conceived as a property of the real.'14 The
the recipient's own experience it must neverthe- paradoxical nettle always to be grasped is that of
less not be open to refutation on empirical reconciling the art work's status as an empty
grounds. It is here that an uncompromised work structure with its existence as an assembly of
exists as an abstraction from the signified object meaningful signs. q