objecthood
The word "objecthood," by virtue of the contained suffix,
can be defined as the condition of being an object, or the object condition. "-hood" derives
from a distinct noun, which had the meaning of "person, sex, and state
or condition," which was applied to other nouns. The meaning of "objecthood" then
depends on the meaning of the word "object." The relevant definition
of the word is: "Something placed before the eyes, or presented to the
sight or other sense; an individual thing seen or perceived, or that may
be seen or perceived; a material thing" (OED) [See perception, senses.] The term in its broadness
presents a problem to media theorists. How is it that some objects
can be classified with, or viewed with special significance at the exclusion
of all other objects? More specifically, under what conditions are
objects declared art objects, and under what conditions do they remain
mere objects?
The specific word "objecthood" relates to theories of media via Michael Fried's
reliance on the term in his art theory and criticism. The term does work
in his essay "Art and Objecthood" by containing the anti-theses of art. Fried
is able to set up a system of valuation that valorizes objects in the world,
which by nature of their properties defy the condition of being an object (We
will go on to discuss, the condition of being an object as presenting spatial
continuity with the surrounding world). Art objects are composed with an internal
coherence and therefore are seem autonomous from the surrounding world. Fried's
claims about objecthood are formulated with and applied to objects that were
created in the mid to late sixties under the label minimalist art, or literalist
art as Fried calls it. Literalist art is work that acknowledges or foregrounds
its status as merely object, or its objecthood. With this polemical connotation "objecthood" has
duplicitous meaning in that "object" can also be defined as, "A statement thrown
in or introduced in opposition; an objection" (OED). In this light minimalist
art is cast as an anomaly or flagrant deviation from the normal conditions
of art.
"Art" and "objecthood" are then binary categories into which objects can be classified.
Their classification is dependent on whether they exhibit the qualities of banal
objects or are constituted to elide these qualities. The classification plays
out primarily in terms of shape. This makes good sense because shape is
defined as "External form or contour; that quality of a material object (or geometrical
figure) which depends on constant relations of position and proportionate distance
among all the points composing its outline or its external surface" (OED). The
picture plane as the residence of shape, depicted shape, has the ability to hold
a shape that is not "merely literal" or not object, by the fact that the picture
plane has the potential to be a coordinate plane that is autonomous from the
world. In order to fulfill this aspiration the support--the physical object
that is the painting hanging from a wall in a building--cannot be the shape the
dominates the experience of its contents. Fried analyzes minimalist art
as art that "seeks to occupy a position" in the world. As apposed to art,
literalism wants shape to only be considered in the domain of the world. Consider
the difference between the picture plane and Tony Smith's Die, 1962. Smith's
piece must be recognized as an object similar in status as any other object.
Its physical or literal shape is the only shape present, and therefore must clearly
define and affirm its existence in the viewer's spatial environment, the world.
It only "seeks to occupy a position in the world " [1]. The
picture plane on the other hand can contain shapes. Significantly, the
picture plane contains shapes that the viewer apprehends, but does not necessarily
have to perceive them in his actual spatial environment.
The distinction between the two can also be seen in terms of syntax. Unlike
art, the gestalt of objecthood necessitates that the only meaningful relationship
is between the thing and the surrounding space. The viewer is made conscious
that they are the critical factor in the situation; the objects relate to them
and for them. In art Fried claims, "all meaning is in the syntax." The
claim is that there is a correlation between situating constitutive elements
(shape) in an autonomous field and the perception that the constitutive elements
fully relate and are purposeful or internally meaningful. They seek their
meaning from one another. As opposed to Smith's piece the work of Anthony
Caro contains more than one element. These elements, if they form compositional
relationships that seem to have an underlying logic or order to them, present
themselves to the viewer as self-sufficient and internally purposeful. The
viewer is drawn to the compositional unity of the piece, not the unitary object
confronting them.
Although Fried is writing specifically about art and in the context of art
related dialogues, he relies on more general discussions about objects and
phenomenology. In order to see how Fried is able to claim that there
can be a distinction between the perception of objects and the perception of
art we need to examine how the perception of art and objects are thought of
philosophically.
Descartes, writing in Latin, uses the word corpus, meaning body,
to denote material things or the objects of the world. Descartes conceives
of body or bodies as all composed of the same elementary substance. "All
the matter existing in the entire universe is one and the same, and is always
recognized as matter simply by virtue of its being extended." [2] Body is not only seen as uniform, but also
in a rather strict dichotomy with the self. Thus bodies become associated
with externality. This polar conceptualization leads Descartes to conclude
that bodies are in their essence, indistinguishable from the world, the external,
and thus are indistinguishable from length, breath, and depth. [3] Descartes
thinking is carried out with an extremely clear dichotomy, and therefore the
contents of the world, are not investigated for particularity but are conceptualized
as unitary. Thus for Descartes anything which is perceived and has three
dimensionality is an object. Descartes would agree with Fried that objecthood
is the ability to "occupy a position."
The argument mentioned above, that the picture plane is in a sense "autonomous" from
the rest of space, could easily be overwhelmed by a Cartesian model, which
pointed to its physical dimensions in space as proof of its objecthood (Fried
terms this reading of shape of the plane as literal shape). The argument
could be challenged by arguments about whether the literal shape is noticeable,
but anyone who operated within the strict Cartesian dichotomy would never grant
something actually in the world, status as anything other than a mere body,
or object. Maurice Merleau-Ponty breaks down Descartes system
of binaries and conceptualizes the self and bodies as thoroughly intermeshed
and indistinguishable, especially with respect to the body. With
no clear distinction between subject and object, objects can be part of the
subject's being.
Paintings represent a set of objects that do just this. "I
would be at great pains to say where is the painting I am looking at. For
I do not look at it as I do a thing; I do not fix it in its place. My
gaze wanders in it as in the halos of Being ". [4] Thus
a special category of objects, paintings, especially eludes
the Cartesian binaries. Merleau-Ponty is able to make such an argument
by claiming that we do not distinguish ourselves by way of Descartes' model
of vision. Descartes used the analogy of a blind man with sticks that
triangulated the presence of other objects, to explain vision. Merleau-Ponty
differs, claiming that physically moving our bodies through space and perceiving
our own body before us is how we establish and differentiate the world. The
special category of objects, paintings, especially eludes this process, and
returns the spectator for a moment to a time when the dichotomy, between subject
and object, was not yet formed. The view of a painting does not move
to perceive and define the object before them.
Fried implicitly takes
up this line of reasoning by stressing how the viewer encounters the work.
Fried quotes Robert Morris as saying, "One is more aware than before that he
himself is establishing relationships as he apprehends the object from various
positions and under varying conditions of light and spatial contexts." [5] This
act that establishes objecthood is a reenactment of Merleau-Ponty's narrative of
establishing the subject and object. Note that in the quote consciousness
of the object and the self occur simultaneously. Conversely, with art
Fried puts an emphasis on art's ability to arrest the viewer before the work; "One's
experience of a Caro is not incomplete, and one's conviction as to its quality
is not suspended, simply because one has only seen it from where one is standing...a
single brief instant would be long enough to see everything, to experience
the work in all its depth and fullness, to be convinced of it forever." [6] During
the experience of art subject and object, space and time become collapsed,
negating the possibility of objects [see time, space].
Color being a formal property of art and a property of object is a key term
in classifying art and objects. Descartes relegates color to a secondary
property of reality. This allows him to construct a unitary and undifferentiated
model of objects, by making shape, a spatial property, the defining characteristic. "If
he had examined...color, then--since there is no ordered or projective relationship
between them and the true properties of things...he would have found himself
faced with a conceptless universality and a conceptless opening upon things
." [7] Painting confounds the Cartesian concept of "thing" by
making color a key component in the illusion of space, and therefore establishing
space and shape in terms other than dimension or without explicit or oblique
references to dimension. Here we see a key problem of objects, "which
properties define them? And the mobilization of what properties count as ordinary
and which as artful?" For Fried, painting's ability to create an optical
space particularly by means of color is key to its success as art; however,
he goes on to say sculpture encounters color as a property of objects in that
it represents a surface. [8]
What properties of the object must the art exhibit? In terms of color
the answer seems to be different for painting and sculpture. Clement
Greenberg argues that an art form "through its own operations and works, [determines]
the effects exclusive to itself and "narrow[s] its area of competence ." [9] Greenberg
then is claiming that different media determine what they are through self-analysis,
thereby establishing the appropriate formal properties to mobilize and utilize.
In a key passage Greenberg presents an argument comparable to Merleau-Ponty
and Fried as he writes:
All recognizable entities (including pictures themselves)
exist in three-dimensional space, and the barest suggestion of a recognizable
entity suffices to call up associations of that kind of space...and by doing
so alienate the pictorial space from the literal two-dimensionality which
is guarantee of the painting's independence as an art. [10]
Greenberg agrees that painting is art because it disrupts and replaces
the special continuity of the world, but Greenberg spells out the effect
of painting is due specifically to its formal properties.
The essential norms or conventions of painting are at the same time the
limiting conditions with which a picture must comply in order to be experienced
as a picture. Modernism has found that these limits can be pushed
back infinitely before a picture stops being a picture and turns into an
arbitrary object. [11]
Here Greenberg's dogmatic formalism re-enters taking weight away from the
preceding quote. The status of art is not dependent on the presentation of a
space disjointed from three-dimensional space, but is only such for painting
because this effect is a virtue of its formal properties. It is adherence
to form that makes any work other then mere object, not our perception not
as Fried and Merleau-Ponty argue. Here Greenberg echoes Clive
Bell, who in his 1914 Art attempts to separate art from other objects
in the world. Bell claimed that art was that which is constituted in
a significant form; however, an understanding of what a significant form
is relies on antecedently understood notion of art. [12] Looking
at this more archaic formalism we can see how Greenberg's historical telos
can be argued to be just a tautological as Bell's argument when trying distinguish
art from objects. These media that are undergoing self-analysis are
likewise antecedently understood as art. When asked what is art, responding, "Art
is that which is about art" doesn't answer much.
In this context we can see Fried's argument as an attempt to maintain a
distinct category of art, while escaping the form-art tautology of Bell
via claims about the distinct way the viewer receives painting. However, it is interesting
to note that one could argue that his conception of art, while citing its similarity
to Merleau-Ponty's understanding of what is special about painting, is an importation
of the effects of specific to painting. Fried's invocation of the
word "objecthood" as the antithesis of art allows him to set up polemical structure
with explicit value in it. By virtue of its opposition to the banality,
worldliness, and gracelessness of objecthood, art takes on transcendental significance.
Other writers do not distinguish art from objects by way of arguments about
perception or phenomenology, but examine the way art objects behave socially
to gain their status. Walter Benjamin's concept of the "aura" depends on art
as an object residing in specific spaces. The fact that forms of art such as
painting and sculpture must exist in one spatial location corresponds to their
social and class function. They are the media of an elite aristocracy
and middle class. They do not make themselves available to mass spectatorship. The
media's natural emphasis on authenticity and originality makes them available
for ritualistic purposes. The object's boundness to a specific space is requisite
for what Benjamin calls the cult value of non-reproducible art. However,
as a Marxist he sees cult-value as historically determined and in dialectical
motion. Therefore, art as a category will outlive cult-value and its
spatial specificity, in the form of reproducible art. This art, unlike
art with an aura, has no specific spatial location, and is unable to be located
as an object. It would be difficult to term the art of film as an object
in the sense that has been discussed above.
Raymond Williams starts from the premise that like all made objects, art
objects are materially produced within a society. However, art objects
become reified under formalism, such as Greenberg and Bell's. The rhetoric
of art theory claims these objects are distinct from other objects because
their production is defined by the "medium" in which they are constituted. William
tries to reveal the attempt to partition off art objects from other produced
objects as a response by the middle class to the alienation of labor. Therefore,
there is nothing intrinsic in the object or in the experience of it that distinguishes
it from the other objects produced in society. Rather it is a set of
social practices that define and declare the object art.
Tony Gibart
Winter 2002