some mulling I did a while back. . .
Problems of the Self: Pure Subjectivity without Content and Creative Production
According to Hegel the work of art is bifurcated into idea (content) and the materialization of the idea into a certain form. The content and form are so closely tied together that it makes no difference as to whether we evaluate the work in relation to one or the other. Embodied in the very production of
[i]both of these characteristics is the artist’s own subjectivity without content, that is the self as producer. As Giorgio Agamben points out, the evaluation of a work of art occurs then on two levels, the creation of the aesthetic judgment and the identification of the viewer with the artist’s subjectivity. Obviously the self is tied to any mode of production, but also it seems that the self is inherently tied to the finished product once completed. What are the implications of this? Does this phenomenon distract from the idea of a work of art?
The spectator of an artwork receives everything that may be in it through aesthetic representation. Embodied in this aesthetic representation is the artist’s own free creative principle or subjectivity, which rises like a pane of glass in between the viewer and the work filtering all that is being received.
The spectator sees himself as other in the work of art, his being-for himself as being-outside-himself; and in the pure creative subjectivity at work in the work of art, he does not in any way recover a determinate content and a concrete measure of his existence, but recovers simply his own self in the form of absolute alienation, and he can possess himself only inside this split.
Regardless of whether such a violent schism exists between spectator, object, and maker, the point is well made that there is an alienation that occurs in trying to grasp the subjectivity of the artist’s own being in relation to what is created. The artist himself must be aware of this, but cannot consciously appropriate it in an honest way, and must remain open to the materials and form that his own subjectivity might take.
What happens to the artist who, having become a tabula rasa in relation both to the matter and to the form of art’s production, discovers that no content is now immediately identified with his innermost consciousness? This is not a problem and is the reductive nature of art production. The artist’s innermost subjectivity has no content. Agamben connects this back to Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics in which a notion of the artist’s production as self-annulling is posited. The artist knows that his own artistic subjectivity is of absolute essence for which all subject matter is indifferent. However this artistic subjectivity separated from content is so abstract that it destroys all content through its constant attempt at transcending and manifesting itself. Posed with this problem the artist is in a constant state of negotiating the paradox presented by having no content and the need for content. The production of art is therefore an annihilation of the self through the superimposition of content onto a work. In this respect art is a negation in that it is only able to achieve its true purpose of representing man’s highest truth of being in the world by the act of reflection. However, it seems that this type of thinking quickly falls into a sort of romantic nihilism.
The antinomy of art production as seeking to define the self while nullifying the self has been dealt with in many interesting ways. Two artists whose work indirectly addresses this problem are the late Henri Michaux and Matt Mullican. Both attempt to get at a more “pure” form of creative production through outside means of stimulation: hallucinogens in the case of Michaux and hypnosis for Mullican. Both methods are an endeavor to turn the form of subjectivity with no content into the content of the work through the backdoor mode of the subconscious.
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| Henri Michaux, Mescaline Drawing, c. 1950's |
Henri Michaux is an artist opposed to a static idea of the self. Already a prolific writer and visual artist by the early 1950’s, after a tragic accident leading to the death of his wife, Michaux embarks on a series of drawings and paintings executed while under the influence of mescaline. The drawings capture what Michaux called vibrations. The imperceptible being perceived is recorded. The drawings are complex and dense with information – line upon line converging, tangling, weaving, and feeling. The lines make up landscapes of a sort. There is no doubt that they are interesting. However, most of the best works seem to take on a similar form. There exists a chasm, a split, in the composition of almost all of the early drawings. A subconscious repetition occurs perhaps metaphorically splitting between selves or dividing the viewer from the artist. . . This tear, while interesting, becomes incredibly redundant and holds the work back from any kind of progress. . .
Deleuze and Guattari and the problem of drugs and causality: “The more incapable people are of grasping a specific causality in extension, the more they pretend to understand the phenomenon in question. There is no doubt that an assemblage never contains a causal infrastructure. It does have, however, and to the highest degree, an abstract line of creative or specific causality, its line of flight or of deterritorialization. . .It is our belief that the issue of drugs can be understood only at the level where desire directly invests perception, and perception becomes molecular at the same time as the imperceptible is perceived.” The unconscious is that which is hidden from the system of perception. . .
[ii]
Michaux’s warning, You will no longer be master of our speeds, you will get stuck in a mad race between the imperceptible and perception, a race all the more circular now that everything is relative. – miserable miracle.
Matt Mullican and hypnosis. Consciousness while in a trance . . . Responsibility? Mullican always making a tape line divide between himself and the audience. Repeating his actions from past performances. Progress? Accentuating the schism that occurs between viewer and maker.
Does this attempt what Agamben warns about – making mere form into content, turning the artistic inner subjectivity into the content – reaching the subconscious is a way around this, but even this does not work. The same motions and actions appear over and over again – stuck in their own intangibility. Why does one’s inner subjectivity want to repeat conger up the same forms continuously. Does the artist truly need the content side of the work? Yes! These modes of production are not viable or sustainable. An attempt to reach pure subjectivism without content leads in circles because of this subjectivity’s need to actualize and surpass itself, the result of which is repetition. . .
[i] Giorgio Agamben,
The Man Without Content trans. Georgia Albert, Stanford University Press, 1999.
[ii] Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,
A Thousand Plateaus, capitalism and schizophrenia, University of Minnesota Press, 1987; p. 284.
