Desacralized art

What place does art hold in our lives? ? What relationship does it have with our culture and our uses? ? Can we still talk about “ Art » when financial issues and the power of the market contradict the idea of ​​its autonomy, or when biennials dictate the rhythm and expectations of artistic production subordinated to a device and a theme ? Is there still works » when they become performance and event, process rather than object, should we not then consider in reverse order to free them from fetishization and reification ? Should we not change our Ways of thinking » by paying more attention to “ Ways of doing things » ?

The ambition ofArt and art makers is to indicate ways of responding, inviting us to reflect not only on our beliefs about art and the uses of the word “ art “, but to what do “ art “. Far from deploring a lost status, far from prostration before a commercial reality, opposing both by reflecting them back in mirror, Jean-Pierre Cometti defends the idea that art cannot be dissociated from its “ Factors “, i.e. all of the elements that make that a thing, under given conditions and for a given time, can be proposed and perceived as art. These factors are material or perceptual, historical and cultural, they involve modes of apprehension and mental schemes, and thereby possibilities of identification of what we qualify as art in a given context, they illuminate and structure the conditions reception of the works.

By emphasizing the operativeness of these factors, by deploying them in their plurality and by linking them together, the author occupies a unique place in the field of the philosophy of art, since he is thus located both in the extension of the work of Nelson Goodman and John Dewey (not counting the recurring influence of Wittgenstein and Musil). Relying on the one hand on Goodman, who substituted for the insoluble question “ what is art ? » this other « when is there art ? », he retains the criticism of essentialism and amplifies the emphasis placed on the conditions of operation. Goodman referred to it as “ activation » the physical and material conditions which ensure that the works function, Cometti broadens the use of the term to include the analysis of the mental, social and institutional devices which enable us to identify such a thing not only as art, but also as such or such art, qualified in such and such a way. Like Dewey on the other hand, he defends a pragmatist position and anchoring it in a living experience that should never be underestimated. Understanding a film or a novel is “ enter into a relationship that draws on prior experience » (p. 18). In doing so, he distances himself from “ radical relativism under the constraint of rigor, which leads to something akin to unrealism » by which Goodman qualifies his own approach. Because if we cannot isolate artistic productions from their modes of activation and identification processes, we cannot dissolve them there. ; artistic practices and achievements do have a reality and a public existence in the experience we have of them and in its effects (we must therefore understand both what constitutes art and what art does). This is why it is also important not to indulge in words and myths, to clarify situations and expectations in order to better appreciate an art that “ remains a social affair whichever way you look at it » (p. 202).

Without retracing the details of often tight discussions (among others on the “ ontological turn » and the “ propensity for reification » of analytical philosophy (p. 181), or on fiction or on the analyzes of Danto), without following all the investigations gathered here (certain chapters taking up versions already published elsewhere), we can identify three strong axes in the argumentation: the consequences of an ontological regime separated from art, the insistence on the temporal dimension, the exhibition as a paradigmatic and problematic process.

“ The power of a misunderstanding » and its challenges

Digging the furrow of his previous books where he pleaded for a philosophy of useCometti tracks here the persistence of misunderstanding already denounced, that of an autonomy of art. This conception presupposes an idea of ​​the work, thought of as an organic, closed totality, endowed with supposedly intrinsic properties, conceivable independently of the processes of reception that we have of it. He shows here anew that we must take the measure of such “ myth “, not only in its historical and philosophical edification, but also in the aporias and paradoxes that it generates both on the level of artistic practices (for example in the “ chess » of the avant-gardes), only on the theoretical level. He therefore paints the picture of a “ backlit ontology », showing what is implied by this belief in an autonomous, self-sufficient art, in works whose identity and qualities would impose themselves. This belief is doubly questionable: on the one hand factually, the complex history of the processes of attribution, promotion and recognition of works shows the inanity of such a position, as well the Mona Lisa has not always been considered as a “ masterpiece » (p. 30) ; on the other hand philosophically, we can denounce what underlies it, and the bipolar network (sterile but anchored in our habits) which opposes the object and the subject, understanding and sensitivity, facts and values, and radicalizes a dichotomy between objective realism and subjective relativism. However, relativism condemns neither the arbitrariness of a subjectivity, nor the idiocy of a private language, it is compatible with possible consensus ; in fact, these works, “ without qualities » (intrinsic), « enter into a system of socially and historically defined descriptions, which means that they refer to habits and uses » (p. 48-49), they are therefore part of a shared and shareable memory and background – we identify, for example, a representation of a sacred character by the stylistic convention of the painted halo.

Temporality at work

One of the merits of this book is to insist on the double temporal dimension of art, and of our thoughts about it. On the one hand, as this background can also be that of our expectations and prejudices, that of our habits and mental schemes, we must track down the resistance of certain conceptions of art – hence undoubtedly under the pen of Cometti , the reiteration of themes from one book to another and the insistence on uncovering paradoxes to shed light on the different uses of the word “ art “. On the other hand, it is a question of drawing all the consequences of this inscription of art in practices and experiences, in order to counter the fetishization of an artistic object, removed from time, appreciated for its properties independently of this which would connect it to social and cultural interests. Art is always activated by processes that put it “ in working order » here and there, in a way that is never exclusive, invariable or definitive both in aesthetic experience and in artistic production.

For this a-temporal fetishization, we must therefore substitute the temporal relativity of processes, and for this ontological regime separated from a pure and autonomous art the plural of “ crumbly ontologies ” because the borders there become labile and moving – we can also say them “ ephemera » (p. 69). This does not lead to the dissolution of artistic reality, but on the contrary invites us to better consider it in its multiple modalities. The works are not “ intransitive » and do not have their meaning in themselves, they are in relation to a context of meaning and to the circumstances of their activation, they can therefore also have the value of archives or documents. At the same time, contemporary art is committed to reclassifying what is no longer part of the creation of “ works “, but of the performance, the event, the action and the interaction ; the document can then extend practices that are no longer embodied in an object. From this perspective, we must think about the “ friability » usual caesuras rather than their opposition: the work in the first case documents the process which generated and activated it, in the second, it is the document which testifies to the activation process, but in all cases , art is less in the reified result than in the activation. It is also important to consider the “ ways of doing things » like acts — significantly, the chapters of this second part of the book have verbs in the infinitive as titles.

The exhibition as a paradigmatic and problematic process

Particular attention is paid to the exhibition process – often paradoxical in that it removes the work from the conditions of its production (thus reinforcing the myth of an autonomous and “ autized “) while offering it to attention and under the conditions of experience, thus activating it through display devices. Once again, this shift in perspective, on what makes art (and not on what it is), makes the usual lines of demarcation porous, whether that between arts which are exhibited and those which, like performance, have nothing to expose, or that between performances and installations, which “ are in fact less a genre (…) than a dimension of works with regard to their necessary activation » (p. 144). To this contextual and temporal dimension are added, in an often less explicit but also effective manner, devices for “ select “, “ standardize “, “ convince » of what there is to appreciate, thus requesting methods of identification.

The author suggests that contemporary art, as disconcerting as it sometimes appears, is perhaps not so far removed from “ retinal » — « it is and it is not Christ » we can say to ourselves in front of a painting that represents him ; this logic of “ the double persuasion » is it so different from the one which makes us look at the “ Brillo box » as being and not being a common object (p. 117-118) ? In the last part of the book, Cometti develops an idea (outlined in other chapters) according to which these processes of activation and selection give power to new decision-makers: the commissioners who, in their dual managerial and curatorial function, classify and bring together productions for the benefit of the work/exhibition, with a title that takes on performative value ; with the experts, they also contribute to an evaluation taken up by the market. A critique is thus put in place upstream, silent and without judgment “ mute “, that is to say not subject to public discussion processes. The risk then is that it supplants the effectiveness of the traditional critical function.

Of course, perception is always in context and “ the work » (if the word still applies) only has a public existence, but it is important to preserve the openness of this public space and to maintain the possibility of a critical function. Highlighting the diversity of art factors, the porosity of classifications, the plurality of ephemeral ontologies, can certainly contribute to this. ; In any case, this book encourages us to redeploy this dimension through the enlightening perspective of our ways of making and thinking about art.