Page 28 - Studio International - January February 1975

as the constituent unit of perception, we it is "real"; it is given as the infinite sum into reality. This has nothing necessarily
have gained for the thing a positive of an indefinite series of perspectival to do with 'craft', with the 'hand-made'
status, both in itself and in our views in each of which the object is given, for its own sake. The individual made
perception of it. We have to make a but in none of which is it given thing is distinct and separate from other
continuous effort, however slight, to exhaustively'. things because it is distinctly and
separate the individual thing from other But the thing is positive not only to separately made : the act of making may
things and from the world in general : sensory perception, and perhaps not be through hand, tools, machines. The
when the thing is new or unfamiliar this primarily. We identify and separate individual presence of useful things in the
intention to recognize is brought into the things with words by naming them. Here past, before the era of mass production, is
open. Equally, the thing itself, Merleau- we come to the distinction between thing evident to us now, but scarcely, if at all,
Ponty argued, is in some way and object I made in our last discussion. to the men who made and used them. The
simultaneously present in ourselves as For perception the terms are function of the thing, its generic name,
well. 'The one who sees can possess the interchangeable: or perhaps 'object' is covered its individuality. Function also
visible only if he is possessed by it, only preferable — literally something 'thrown dominated the making; the craftsman
if he is it.' Things exist, he says, not only in the way' of perception, an obstruction would use the most appropriate tools and
in themselves or in the consciousness of to vision or physical passage. 'Object' is economic techniques to complete the
the viewer separately, as classical the neutral limiting description to what work, to make the table or chair. These
philosophy proposed, but in terms of is over against ourselves, 'subject'. Thing conditions apply to the sculpture as much
visibility, that is, of their availability to in contrast is the affirmative, inclusive as to any other things made in non-
the perception of the single onlooker and term; Heidegger notes the meaning of industrial cultures. They apply with
of all other actual or potential viewers. the old High German word 'thing' as a greater rigour because we are, or should
And yet to no one onlooker is the thing gathering, corresponding to the Latin be, conscious of them, to our own
wholly given up; its visibility can never `res' — 'business', matter — in the sense of sculpture. The name, the element of
be exhausted. Its reality consists in its what concerns, what bears on men. Some function is stripped away, revealing the
constancy of presence to each and every resonance of this earlier meaning is still thing wholly exposed. It is for nothing,
onlooker. The perception of the thing is preserved in modern English. 'Thing' about nothing, except for itself, and about
not an intellectual act — 'an intellectual certainly has the more weighty and serious its own being-in-the-world. It has to do
act would grasp the object as either presence. nothing, except maintain its own
possible or necessary. But in perception Things matter. existence in the world (which, as we shall
`Object' with its connotations of see, may demand a great deal.)
`objective', impersonal, etc. has become Sculpture also, in the past, was used,
Brancusi
Sleeping Muse 1910 associated with the products of was brought into being for a function.
Bronze, 27.2 cm high
technology and mass production: objects Looking at it today we respond to it as
Duchamp without separate identity, whose 'life' sculpture and overlook its imagery or
Bottle Rack 1914
depends solely on their 'use'. No longer ritual purpose. But the relation between
useful, they are 'used up', finished: they the made thing and function is a
are 'objects of consumption', ingested by fundamental one. Things demand to be
the human system and finally evacuated. used. Equally a use, or it may be a habit,
`Objects without use and without value, demands things to embody it. And
to be thrown away', wrote Giacometti in a because sculpture is the last and only
celebrated phrase, describing the made thing — in the sense I have
ambition for his object — sculpture of the described — in our culture, it is intensely
193os. It is notable how this (presumably) subject to the pressure of use, even if the
ironic programme should have been function is the degraded one of prestige
accepted at face-value by 'advanced' art or commerce.
in recent years : sculpture (and painting Those of you who will doubtless argue
too) is wholly identified with 'object'. that to make a thing is a meagre ambition
Thus depreciated and misrepresented, for sculpture might consider for a moment
sculpture — the idea of sculpture as how far the pre-existent concept of 'the
physically real — is easily disposed of, on monument', the visual habit of 'gallery
the analogy of the characteristic cycle of sculpture' engenders work for which
modern production. there is no real need, which will not
The ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp, sustain itself in itself, and is not even
which inaugurated the reduction of protected by function as was sculpture in
sculpture to mere objects of mass- the past. That is, when there was a need
production, can be compared with the for sculpture, work of an ordinary or
work of his friend and contemporary, indifferent character would be 'carried' by
Brancusi, to illustrate the clear its function, while originality was
distinction within sculpture between rendered acceptable through the
object and thing. Seen together in the continuity of habituated forms.
same room — with Brancusi's Sleeping Now, all sculpture must face scrutiny
Muse or Sorceress, as in the Hayward as thing. The thing, unique, self-evident;
Gallery during the 'Pioneers of Modern infinitely exposed, but visually
Sculpture' exhibition — the Bottle Rack, inexhaustible — thus infinitely concealed.
for example, betrays its nature not by its Any sculpture made today must expect
form, or its material, or its size, in to withstand this scrutiny if it is to stand
specific : but by the combination of these in itself. •
elements which completely divests it of
physical presence. Now that the impact
of surprise has been eroded by fifty years Books
of art history, the object is revealed for Edmund Husserl : Ideas, London, 1967
what it is — wholly commonplace, Edmund Husserl : The Paris Lecture,
completely lacking in the uniqueness that introduction by F. Koestenbaum, The
is the essence of the individual thing. Hague, 1967
The thing can gain a place in the world M. Merleau Ponty: Phenomenology of
Perception, London, 1962
once only. The presence of the thing — of M. Merleau Ponty: The Primacy of
Brancusi's carved Sorceress, or any one of Perception, North Western University
the distinct bronze casts of the Sleeping Press, 1965
Muse — this presence, presentness, M. Heidegger: The Thing, in Poetry,
derives from a unique and separate entry Language, Thought, New York, 1971

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