Abstract
Having outlined the scope and terms of reference for this book in chapter one, in the second chapter of my essay I briefly review the work of Rosalind Krauss and Paul Crowther. Both of these scholars have addressed a similar series of questions and subject matter in their research, namely, both have written about how we perceive and understand three-dimensional art. In reviewing Crowther and Krauss’ published work I attempt to illustrate the different perspectives each has taken in their research in this area. Krauss has considered the expanded field in which modernist three-dimensional artwork resides and of which it is an intimate part. She offers a Klein Group model to account for the structural composition of the three-dimensional artwork. Crowther on the other hand addresses the ontological nature of abstract three-dimensional art. He proposes eight distinct ontological elements in his theoretical depiction of this content domain. Both of these approaches are extremely germane to my research and I use the characteristics of Crowther and Krauss’ research to set the scene for my own theorizing on this subject in the form of a structural mereological/ontological account, which I propose and discuss in subsequent chapters.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
The two authors have both produced a great deal of writing that is relevant to the current essay and which I could have included in my writing. However, my choice will be extremely focused upon the topic of this book: abstract three-dimensional fine art. Therefore, I will concentrate exclusively upon the selected texts of: Krauss (1979, 1986) and Crowther (2007).
- 2.
- 3.
This is nowhere better illustrated than in Harrison and Woods three texts that together present important art writing that covers the era of 1648 up until 2000 (the three books each take one historical era: 1648–1815 (Harrison et al. 2001) 1815–1900 (Harrison et al. 1998) and 1900–2000 (Harrison and Wood 2002).
- 4.
See for example: originally in Spanish as, “La deshumanización del Arte e Ideas sobre la novela” (1925) republished in English as, The Dehumanisation of Art (1968).
- 5.
In addition to authoring studies about individual artists, Krauss has also written about broader aspects of art practice, in for instance: Sense and Sensibility: Reflections on Post ’60s Sculpture; Grids, You Say; and Sculpture in the Expanded Field.
- 6.
Examples of such theorists include: Jacques Derrida; Jacques Lacan; Jean-Francois Lyotard; Maurice Mareau-Ponty; Ferdinand de Saussure, and others.
- 7.
Writers in October included Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault and within the journal Krauss published scholarly articles on: deconstructionist theory; post-structuralist art theory; postmodernism; psychoanalysis; Feminism.
- 8.
Krauss’ concern is broader than mine in that she has considered the emergence of photography as fine art as this developed at the same time and in a similar way to modernist painting. Within this context, Krauss also concentrates on the role of various aspects of fine art that act as signs to the work’s location and significance in a social context.
- 9.
I devoted considerable time considering Krauss’ understanding of the two-dimensional work of art in my earlier book (Hackett 2016). In this current text I will only briefly mention Krauss’ theorizing as this applies to two-dimensional art-space as this enables me to introduce my writing on abstract three-dimensional art. The reader interested in two-dimensional forms of abstract art is guided to my earlier book.
- 10.
To attempt to develop knowledge in regard to how we understand the making and experiencing of artworks I have produced mapping sentences that have focussed upon abstract painting, art criticism and art education.
- 11.
I developed this mapping sentence through considering how I could bring these different mapping sentences together in a useful and valid manner.
- 12.
As a mathematical concept the Klein group requires the understanding of complex mathematical terms, which Kraus does not describe or expand upon in her usage of the model.
- 13.
The eponymous Cayley Table, developed by Arthur Cayley, is a depiction of a finite group of variables arranging in a square table that shows all possible products of the elements of the group.
- 14.
Kraus’ Klein Group four model is the simplest format of presentation of group elements.
- 15.
The use of double negation also occurs in propositional logic, where double negative terms may be added without changing a propositions meaning. A biconditional statement is an equivalence relation as on any occasion in which “not, not A” (¬¬A) occurs in a well-formed formula, under classical logic double negation may be replaced with the simple positive term “A” without altering the truth or meaning of the well formed formula.
- 16.
At many points during this section of this book I use information on Hasse diagrams, partial ordering analysis, etc., taken and adapted from Guttman (1991).
- 17.
What Krauss means by these terms is as follows: Ground = a perspectival lattice; figure = perception; not-figure = reflection, frame; not-ground = field as figure, retinal surface.
- 18.
I interviewed Professor Krauss to explore her figure-ground understanding of the grid. She emphasized the importance in formulating her thoughts of post-modern philosophy and especially Levi-Strauss’s essay on myth and she noted how myth is central to several Modernist painters. In the interview she stated her belief that the figure–ground/not figure–not ground binary distinction is an essential combination that “takes” the visual field “down to the bare bones”. She acknowledged Mitchell’s (1995) criticisms of her ideas regarding the “silence” that is present in a grid, a criticism with which I concur. She also said that her work was influenced by Fred Jameson’s book “The Political Unconscious”. She concluded by providing references to her more recent articles, work and thoughts.
- 19.
I provide greater detail about Krauss’ Klein Group and figure–ground relationship in relationship with two-dimensional abstract art in Hackett (2016). The conversion of information we gather through our senses into thoughts seems important in Krauss’ model. Krauss sees vision to be the ground whereas figure she claims to be constructed cognitively outside of ground through an active, motivated process. Through being conceptually stringent her Klein group, she states, offers an account all the associations between the concepts located at the poles of her diagram. Moreover, she claims that the Klein group makes visually apparent the rational construction of visual perception through showing on the upper and lower axes the differences between the two different forms of visual perception. She states that the upper axis embodies the theoretical difference between figure and ground and the lower axis questions figure/ground in Modernist artwork, not-figure versus not-ground as empirical (contextual/cognitive) visual experience. However, this appears to be a self-sustaining argument: She asserts that the model is total and rigorous in its statement due to the structure she uses to construct it and then claims its utility in answering the questions from which the model was formed.
- 20.
When the frame acts as a figure, it exists through a subtractive serial logic, as outside and inside, “… the figure and the frame turning the painting into a map of logical relations and the topology of self containment. Whatever is ‘in’ the field is there because it is already contained ‘by’ the field, forecast, as it were, by its limits.” (Krauss 1994, pp. 18–19, original emphasis). Such an image, as is the graph itself, is one of immediacy and self-complete enclosure.
- 21.
In this present section I will speak of the unique aspects of Krauss’ initial paper. I leave discussion of her thinking that are similar with what she had to say later in Fat Chance, until I discuss this paper.
- 22.
As I have previously noted, Krauss employs a very similar diagrammatic representations in her expositions of two-dimensional art.
- 23.
As we will see in a moment, Krauss enters into this exploration by proposing a mereological account not only of sculpture but also of two-dimensional artwork.
- 24.
This was apparent in her work on figure and ground.
- 25.
Krauss cites Jameson’s writing about postmodernism and says that video came to stand for itself. I assume Krauss singles out Jameson simply for the reason he uses a Klein group in his writing.
- 26.
In the notes on the book-jacket of Krauss’ (2010) review of her art criticism, Perceptual Inventory, it states that the art critic’s role is to constantly revise his or her ideas regarding contemporary art; its direction and its significance. These are fine and laudable words, which are not supported by Krauss’s later writing. When commenting upon sculpture, Krauss demonstrates little growth in her thoughts over thirty years and is still propounding an overly simplistic model for perception and understanding. It is also somewhat confusing to discover that Rosalind Krauss also wrote about double negatives and sculptural space in her 1997 book Passages, in which this phrase was included in the title of the last chapter. However, this writing comes from an earlier era of Krauss’ thought and in this text the double negative she speaks about is taken to have an entirely different meaning.
- 27.
Crowther introduces and then discusses concepts such as: style; image, temporality; metaphysical depth; notions of the art canon; context; cognitive structure.
- 28.
Indeed, Crowther states that the rest of his book could be understood as an extension of the thinking of Kant. Like Kant, Crowther also argues that judgements of taste make a claim to objectivity.
- 29.
Crowther offers a normative aesthetics based upon artists as the intrinsic creators of images that are referenced to the art historical differences that the artwork posses.
- 30.
If we did not possess contextual visual space Crowther envisions that we would perceive a flat, two-dimensional world.
- 31.
Crowther states that his eight dimensions appear to him to be a comprehensive structure for conceptual space whilst he allows for the possibility that these dimensions may be sub-divided and/or combined in a way that enables these new entities to be dimensions themselves.
- 32.
My critical comments also apply to other understandings and depictions of how observers experience fine artworks.
References
Bachrach JE (1977) Dickie’s institutional definition of art: further criticism. J Aesthetic Educ 11(3):25–35
Crowther P (2007) Defining art, creating the canon: artistic value in an era of doubt. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Dickie G (1974) Art and the aesthetic: an institutional analysis. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY
Dickie G (2000) The institutional theory of art. In: Carrol N (ed) Theories of art today. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, pp 93–108
Feldman EB (1994) Practical art criticism. Pearson, Boston, MA
Fokt S (2013) Solving Wollheim’s Dilemma: a fix for the institutional definition of art. Metaphilosophy 44(5):640–654
Greimas AJ (1984) Structural semantics: an attempt at a method. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE
Guttman L (1991) Louis Guttman in memoriam: chapters from an unfinished textbook on facet theory. The Israel Academy of Science and Humanities and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
Hackett PMW (2016) Psychology and philosophy of abstract art: neuro-aesthetics, perception and comprehension. Palgrave, Basingstoke
Harrison C, Wood P, Gaiger J (eds) (1998) Art in theory: 1815–1900 an anthology of changing ideas. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford
Harrison C, Wood P, Gaiger J (eds) (2001) Art in theory 1648–1815: an anthology of changing ideas. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford
Harrison C, Wood P (eds) (2002) Art in theory 1900–2000: an anthology of changing ideas. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford
Houston K (2012) Introduction to art criticism, an: histories, strategies, voices. Pearson, Boston, MA
Krauss, R. (1979) Sculpture in the expanded field. October 8:30–44
Krauss R (1986) The originality of the avant-garde and other modernist myths. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Krauss R (1994) The optical unconscious. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Krauss RE (2010a) Perceptual inventory. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Krauss RE (2010b) Fact chance. In: Krauss RE (ed) Perceptual inventory. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 21–27
Mitchell WJT (1995) Picture theory: essays on verbal and visual representation. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Oppy G (1991) On davies institutional definition of art. South J Philos 29(3):371–382
Simon J (1989) Breaking the silence. Art Am 76:143
Stecker R (1986) The end of an institutional definition of art. Br J Aesthetics 26(2):124–132. doi:10.1093/bjaesthetics/26.2.124
Wollheim Richard (1987) Painting as art. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hackett, P.M.W. (2017). Sensing the Art Object. In: The Perceptual Structure of Three-Dimensional Art. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48452-5_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48452-5_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-48450-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-48452-5
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)