Devouring Gods: Negativity, Catastrophe and the Will in Romantic Aesthetics and Art
Topical Overview
This course will cover a span of history stretching for the end of the Renaissance up to the 20th century. But I have organized the course around the 19th century, because it strikes me that this is the period in European history in which we first begin to encounter ideas which resemble our own, and person with who we can identify. Whether this proves to be true or not, we shall discover over the next fifteen weeks. We shall spend that time investigating not simply others, but also ourselves, as we compare our own reality to those of our cultural predecessors. Let me state right up front however, that in making these comparisons, our goal is never to race to conclusions regarding whose ideas and livestyles were right, and whose were wrong. First and foremost we seek simply to understand past thinkers and cultures and artifacts for what they may have been.
To begin, let us recall that the 19th century is that period generally associated with philosophical and scientific positivism, would seem to emerge as a natural continuation of the Enlightenment, continuing the prior era’s ongoing project of disseminating empirical truths, popularizing scientific knowledge and clearing away noxious superstitions. It is the 19th century, after all, which first produced what we today recognize as contemporary biology and medicine. Surgical anesthesia, for example, was first introduced in 1846. Additionally, it is in the 19th-century that we witness the birth of such modern amenities and luxuries as public utilities (gas and electrical lighting, as well as modern sewers), the locomotive engine, the telegraph and the telephone, and the photograph. Yet for all that the new technologies and burgeoning industries of the 19th century might seem to display the triumph of modern science, this period nevertheless is one marked by a deep-seated fascination with darkness, the unseen and the unknown. Further, it is in the 19th century that western culture first which not only marshals together unprecedented forces of production, but also brings into being never before seen forces of mass consumption. It is at this moment in history that we witness not only the birth of the restaurant, but also the birth of the department store and the modern museum. At approximately the same moment, both food and art become popular commodities, objects of a mass desire. What could be the source of all this hunger?
This course will be strategically centered around the Romantic era, that dark gap between the Enlightenment and the Age of Positivist Science. We will attempt to determine what influence this historical moment, often dismissed as a mere detour or lapse on the forward march of Reason, might exert upon modern (as well as post-modern) art and culture. Do the outrageous and supposedly vacuous speculative theories of Idealism and Nature Philosophy represent merely a momentary nose-diver in the course of human progress, or does Romanticism, the great era of Negativity, in fact exert a powerful though infrequently acknowledged influence upon the shape and direction of western culture?
Course Goals:
The purpose of this course is not to indoctrinate the student or to pass along a specific repertoire of immediately recognizable masterpieces from the past. Rather, instead of memorizing a list of images, names and dates, we will devote this semster to using the history of art as a training ground in which to begin mastering a set of concepts, skills and sensibilities which we will later take with us out into the field. My hope is these tools will allow us to engage, as much as possible without prior prompts, unknown works of art, from both the past and present, wild they are still in a wild state. To continue with this set of metaphors, we explore that extent to which it is possible to view art, like archeological specimens not yet removed from the digging site, not yet package for the public in textbooks, not yet tagged and dated and reconstructed in museum displays. Our aim, perhaps an impossible one, is to begin making informed critical statements about the intellectual and political implications of specific embodied meanings which have yet to be taken out of their “wild” state.
For instance, when visiting an exhibit of the work of the uncanonized artist Janine Antoni (classical busts sculpted out of chocolate and soap), what is one supposed to say? Is it smart or stupid, hip or lame, serious or just a joke? I have designed this course in the interest of teaching students to be comfortable with the initial bewilderment and silence such art provokes, and then slowly to begin forming an articulate response to the gauntlet such unfamiliar art throws down.
Though typical courses designed for non-art-majors tend to take the form of a general or period survey, I have designed the content of this class otherwise. We will look at a variety of paintings and sculptures from a historical period spanning approximately 250 years, 1580—1830. This swath of time begins in an age of great private collections and ends in an era which sees the rise of the public museum and national galleries. So, yes, we will focus our attention will focus upon art works. But, additionally, we will spend much time investigating the historical and material conditions which have allowed these works to appear in the first place, as well as the historical and material conditions specific to the development of a uniquely modern aesthetic sensibility. My goal is to show how various artifacts of the past have been deemed of greater or lesser value, or relatively worthless, according to an identifiable set of (moral) values and (hidden) technologies operating within modern critical consciousness. We want to learn to see the production process in an expanded form, to discover that the art work is not completed with the final stroke of the painter, but rather with the naming of the piece, its reception into a specific cultural apparatus such as the museum, as well as a complex network of critical responses. Thus, we will trace a history, stretching up to our own day, in which reception and consumption increasing become conscious modes of production.
University courses, especially those in the Honors program, demand that both teachers and students share the responsibility of working toward insight and understanding. This course will be no exception. I will do my best to explain key texts as clearly as possible. You, in turn, must complete the readings, so that my explanations can find a ground in actual writings, as well your thoughtful comments and questions. Further, I will depend upon you to provide much of the course content, by supply the images we will discuss. I will use the readings and lectures to develop a context into which you will then place paintings and sculptures of your own choice. I do not intend to teach you the intrinsic meaning of these pieces, but rather hope that striking meanings will come into being as we complete these art objects through our own staged acts of reception. And I hope that you will remember these objects and meanings, not because they are authoritative, but rather because you participated in their creation and witnessed the moment of their birth.
In keeping with the Honors Program's declared intention to foster a scholarly community amongst its students, I have set up this easy-to-use, on-line community journal for our class. Each of you will be required to post at least two responses to our course readings there each week, as well as two comments on the responses of other students. The journal is a major component of this course, and participation there is every bit as important as attending lectures and discussions. Many of you will even find you learn far more on the journal than in the classroom itself. Failure to participate actively on the journal will lower your grade drastically. Enthusiastic and helpful participation there will raise it to the same degree. The purpose of the journal is two-fold: 1) to allow us to stay in contact for logistical reasons, and also give you a glimpse in miniature at how learning occurs and knowledge is assembled by real scholars--not as isolated individuals but rather within an open and interactive community of researchers. It is in this journal that you will place the images of the art objects you want to discuss. As we all participate together in this community, we will find ourselves steadily producing our own semi-public gallery, as well as an accompanying body of critical commentary which, in miniature form, will replicate the entire complex of technologies, texts and bodies necessary for art to function as a total institution.
Assignments:
Journal participation will count for 50% of your final grade. A final paper will count for the other 50%. We will also undertake some of drawing exercises and field trips. These will not count toward your final grade, though I believe you will find they contribute greatly to your appreciation and understanding up art methods and media.
Schedule:
The course schedule will remain flexible with regard to dates, but the reading assignments will proceed in the following order.
Introductory Unit—Identifying Our Preconceptions, Collecting And Honing Our Tools (these readings, the most difficult of the semester, on electronic reserve)
Week 1 Course Introduction and Syllabus Art As Secular Ritual: The Anatomy Of Sacrifice
Leo Steinberg—“Contemporary Art And The Plight Of Its Public”
Week 2 A Material Vision: Marxism and Form Clement Greenberg—“Toward A Newer Laocoon”, “The Plight of The Public”, “The Avant-Garde And Kitsch”
Painting As Agony: A Transcendental Aesthetic Michael Fried: “Art And Objecthood”
Week 3 Saturn In The Age Of Aquarius: Toward A New Age Of Sense And Sensibility Susan Sontag: “Against Interpretation”, “Notes On Camp”
The Structuralist Turn: The Obsolescence Of The Object Rosalind Krauss: “The Originality Of The Avant-Garde”, “Sculpture In The Expanded Field”
Historical Unit—Applying Our Tools, Staging Encounters (books available at U of U bookstore)
Week 4 De Profundis Clamavi: Soul As Fugitive: Teresa of Avila—The Life of Saint Teresa By Herself
Week 5 Cogito And Its Vicissitudes: The Great Installation Descartes—Discourse on Method and Meditations
Week 6 Mer De Glace: Death Of The Author Spinoza—Ethics
Week 7 Renegade Robots: Puppets Of Desire Diderot—Rameau’s Nephew/D’Alembert’s Dream
Week 8 God Of Thunder: Dynamic Ontology And State Ideology Clausewitz—On War
Week 9 Natura Eligans: The Biology of Charles Darwin-Voyage of The Beagle.
Week 10 Cogito Unbound: The Return to The Cavern Comte de Lautremont-Chants de Maldoror
Week 11 Homo Fastidius: Compulsive Grooming J. S. Mill—Utilitarianism And Other Essays
Week 12 Femina Lucida: Cameralogical Investigations Virginia Woolfe--To The Lighthouse
