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Created: March 4, 2002
Latest Update: March 4, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Reinterpreting the Meaning and Production of Art

Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individaul Authors, February 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

From: A Tradition Transfigured: Aesthetics, Art, and Culture in Reformational Scholarship By Lambert Zuidervaart. Calvin College. Conference on Christian Scholarship . . . for What? September 27-29, 2001. backup Link added March 4, 2002.

"Another consequence--and I need to say this explicitly--would be that worldview interpretations of artworks will seem inadequate, because they presuppose an Enlightenment paradigm that is too thin and rigid to do justice to artistic interaction. It's not only the case, as Seerveld indicates, that the spirits pervading art are rarely so fixed and readily discernible as worldview talk suggests. And it's not only the case, as Wolterstorff argues, that the expression of worldviews is only one action accomplished via artworks and not always the most important one. In addition, it is inadequate to think of art as the production of discrete artworks into which artists pour worldviews that interpreters then distill. This paradigm for art is just as problematic as the banking model of higher education, according to which learned professors stuff valuable information and ideas into the receptive vaults of students' minds, from which the students regularly withdraw their interest (pun intended). In fact, the worldview model of Christian higher education also needs reexamination, as I'm sure others have said at this conference. "
(About half way down the file.)

" Philosophical aesthetics since Kant has tended to make autonomous artworks central to the field of art. So dominant has this tendency been that it might seem self-evident to think everything in art revolves around the artwork and to define the roles of artist and audience in relationship to the artwork. In addition, and for the most part, post-Kantian aesthetics defines artworks as peculiarly aesthetic objects. Reformational aesthetics has not thoroughly challenged this tendency. One does finds uneasiness along the way, however: to call attention to worldviews, spirits, or actions modifies somewhat a postKantian emphasis on aesthetic objects. Yet the notion of the artwork remains central to Rookmaaker's worldview interpretations, Seerveld's discerning of spirits, and Wolterstorff's elucidation of art in action--it is always the work of art by which worldviews get expressed, spirits go to work, or actions are accomplished."
(Scrolling down just a little further.)

"Philosophers need to reexamine their categories, and where necessary change them, to make sense of ongoing cultural developments. This does not imply fawning endorsements of whatever artists are up to. But it does imply understanding the reasons and motivations for artists' dissatisfaction with the cultural, political, and economic settings in which their efforts take place." (Scrolling down just a little further.)

"The phrase "cultural co-workers" introduces the third new direction in Reformational aesthetics. This one may strike you as paradoxical, since it involves a turn from aesthetics to cultural theory. Another way to formulate the turn would be that the concerns of philosophical aesthetics will move closer to cultural studies, social theory, and a philosophy of culture. In fact, this redefinition of the field is already underway in Europe and on other continents. Eventually it will pervade Anglo-American aesthetics as well, where one already sees greater attention paid to popular culture, urban design, environmental aesthetics, and the human body. In Germany the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften) are being redesignated as cultural sciences (Kulturwissenschaften). This implies a shift from studying the human mind (Geist) to studying materially embedded and embodied cultures (Kultur). Moving from aesthetics to cultural theory would require a similar shift within philosophy." (Scrolling down just a little further.)

No time right now to go into great detail. But I find this article very stimulating. In many ways he's talking about reinterpretation in many of the same ways that Seyla Benhabib is. Scan it for now/ we'll get back to a discussion soon. And we'll study this in Reinterpreting Social Theory next Fall.

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