Worldmaking and Practical Criticism

Worldmaking and Practical Criticism James S. Ackerman The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 39, No. 3. (Spring, 1981), pp. 249-254. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28198121%2939%3A3%3C249%3AWAPC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism is currently published by The American Society for Aesthetics.

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Aesthetics and Worldmaking

An Exchange with Nelson Goodman*

From time to time new books appear which are destined to influence aesthetic thinking to a degree far beyond the expectations of the aestheticians of the time of their publication. Nelson Goodman's Languages of Art (Indianapolis, 1960) is one of the most referred-to works in the field of American aesthetics today, yet many major journals of aesthetics of that era did not even review it. Goodman's W a y s of W o r l d m a k i n g (Indianapolis, 1978), far from being ignored today, is being scrutinized by both admirers and critics of Goodman's work. T h e editors present here some different reactions to W o r l d m a k i n g by scholars in art history, letters, philosophy, and literature. Professor Goodman has kindly responded. His remarks, which constitute the conclusion of this piece, in no way represent the end of the discussion.

Worldmaking and Practical Criticism As A HISTORIAN-CRITIC, I look to the philos- openness of W o r l d m a k i n g to a plurality of ophy of art for help in articulating my ideas perspectives I found great support. Insofar about the art of the past in teaching 2nd as it deals with art, it struck me as standing writing. I am concerned with the practical in relation to classical aesthetics as relativutility of aesthetic writings and not with the ity theory does to classical physics. T h e brief resolution of problems in aesthetics. Need- comments that follow are concerned with less to say, I don't often find what I'm look- parts of the book that are most useful to ing for, but that is not because the disci- those of us who write about works of art, pline of aesthetics is more parochial than and particularly with the chapter entitled others; all disciplines are self-involved, and "When is Art?" that is itself a thesis in that my own to an exceptional degree. Nelson it implies that an object may be a work of Goodman's writings are among the few I art in one context and not in another. find useful, and W a y s of W o r l d m a k i n g arT h e chapter title was chosen as an echo rived at an especially opportune time be- and a substitute for the question "What is cause I had been trying to articulate a criti- Art?" central to most classical aesthetics. cal method that would permit the evalua- T h a t seemingly innocent and obvious query tion of works of zrt without absolutes; that is, without preestablished criteria or standparerlthedc refererlres in the following against which the measures says are to Nelson Goodman, Way3 of World. the work of art or any of its parts.' In the making (Indianapolis, 1978).

GOODMAN,

implies that the answer, whatever it might be, would precede and control a person's encounter with any object that might appear as a work of art. I t was an invitation to the establishment of absolute criteria. It could not help but lose credibility as a stimulus to investigation as the evolution of modern art showed us how unpredictable and uncontrollable art can be. Anyone who has tried to understand the art of the last twenty-five years, and particularly that of the last decade, must be convinced of the futility of attempting to define art-in-general.2 T h e need for recasting the question was also perceived by analytic philosophers, more or less as a byproduct of their assault on universals, but analytic philosophy, in its dependence on ordinary language, lacked the instruments for dealing with artistic facts that depart radically from ordinary experience. Goodman's alternative question, when is art? is called forth most urgently by found art. He refers to the stone in the driveway, which is merely a stone until it is selected for exhibition, at which point it may qualify as art by virtue of the fact that it exemplifies its properties of color, texture, dimensions, etc. Thus works of found art, such as the urinal exhibited (with the title Fountain) first in 1917, and much of conceptual art, which could not qualify as art by traditional aesthetic criteria, may be discussed without blockage from preconceived requirements. But Goodman's primary intention is not to incorporate the extreme gestures of the avant-garde so much as to offer a means of dealing with all works, and especially those that are nonrepresentational, by demonstrating that they may be symbolic in a sense that qualifies them as art simply by exemplifying or showing forth some of their properties. Goodman's concept of exemplification, already developed fully in Languages of Art, is his most original contribution to critical discourse. Works of art are commonly said to convey their import by representation and/or by expression. Exemplification is a third and distinct means of symbolization or communication. Of the many properties a work has, some are ex-

ACKERMAN

emplified;3 in the case of a painting, these properties are "those that the picture makes manifest, selects, focuses upon, exhibits, heightens in our consciousness, those that it show forth . . . stands as a sample of" (p. G5) ."The properties to which ijt bears this relationship of exemplification vary with circumstances and can only be distinguished as those properties that it serves, under the given circumstances, as a sample of" (pp. 64f.). A major function of the concept of exemplification as I understand it is to qualify the abstract properties of works of art as symbols, as conveyors of meaning in themselves, rather than through associations that a viewer makes with something else. Thus the great intersecting black strokes on a white ground in a painting by Franz Klein simply stand for a particular structure of intersecting black strokes, a confirmation, which is not to be read as suggesting edifices nor (to recall the proposal of Harold Rosenberg in his widely acclaimed essay on Action Painting) as records of the artist's physical motions in executing the work. Exemplification in this sense is the offering of a visual conformation that stands for itself, as a way of structuring a world, a visual equivalent of, say, a mathematical structure with a sensuous superstructure peculiar to painting. Exemplification, however, may in other situations have a referential function, as Goodman illustrates in his discussion in the same chapter, of samples. Because Goodman's application of his general theory to aesthetics is based on a conception of art as symbolic communication, it is essential for him to challenge the widespread assumption that the work of art is a fusion of two discrete elements-form and content. Form, or the abstract vessel in which content is conveyed (shape, composition, color, line, texture, etc.) is, according to that view, intrinsic to the work of art, while content, which is the symbolic element, is extrinsic in the sense that it presents entities or ideas that have an independent existence. As Goodman points out, the distinction both of form and content and of extrinsic and intrinsic characteristics becomes mud-

Aesthetics and Worldmaking died in nonrepresentational art (a medieval interlace, a Mondrian picture), and still more muddied in Dada and conceptual art. And once these weaknesses are revealed, it becomes clear that even "representational" art employing traditional symbols lacks clear borderlines between symbol and form, intrinsic and extrinsic elements. These considerations lead to a critique of the extreme formalist position in criticism, which Goodman characterizes i n his own words (p. 59): What a picture symbolizes is external to it. and extraneous to the picture as a work of art. Its subject, if it has one, its references-subtle or obvious -by means of symbols from some more or less well-recognized vocabulary, have nothing to d o with its aesthetic or artistic significance or character. Whatever a picture refers to or stand for in any way, overt or occult, lies outside it. What really counts is not any such relationship to something else, not what the picture symbolizes, but what it is in itself-what its own intrinsic qualities are . . .

This position is easily demolished in fine by a detailed demonstration of the inseparability of form and symbol. i he. critical positidn that Goodman so easily dispatches is not, however, one that anybody takes seriously these days. It flourished briefly in Bloomsbury (Roger Fry, Clive Bell) in the 1930s, alongside early work of the New Critics of literature. Goodman should have taken on a more formidable adversary, such as Clement Greenberg who, though he believed that what he called "literary" elements were extrinsic, and that what matters is the way such elements are handled, was far from suggesting a simplistic separation of content and form.4 His position, to put it in oversimplified words, is that art is about art; the significant content of a work is what it has to communicate about the historical issues of presenting an image-issues that in recent times have involved dealing with the flatness of the picture surface, with the illusion of space, with the treatment of the edge, etc. Such issues are the subject matter of Abstract Expressionist art, which has been a major object of Greenberg's attention. Though I cannot accept Greenberg's attempt to isolate art and its history from its physical and social surroundings, I consider him to be the most

impressive critic of recent art, and the generator of much serious criticism among later writers. For that reason I think that Goodman should have presented his own argument so as to test his symbolic theory against the strongest contemporaiy descendant of the idealist tradition. Goodman's answer to "when is art?" has I wo stages. T h e first might be represented as follows: to be a work of art an object or act must, by virtue of its representation, expression or exemplification (or any combination of these), symbolize. But this is not yet sufficient, because symbolization need not be aesthetic, as the instance of the tailor's sample demonstrates. T h e aesthetic object or act must also be distinguished by five symptoms (pp. 67f): 5

1) syntactic density

2) semantic density 3) relative repleteness 4) exemplification 5) multiple and complex reference These are not sufficiently articulated in this essay to warrant discussion; a more extended exposition of the first four is presented in Languages of Art,6 but even there they do not seem to be at the center of Goodman's interest, and they offer an inordinately cumbersome and imprecise apparatus that I cannot imagine anyone using in actual critical writing. If we abandon absolutes, we run the risk of accepting a completely unfocused pluralism. I n two final chapters called "The Fabrication of Facts," and "On Rightness of Rendering," Goodman tries to avoid that risk by distinguishing right from wrong representations within any one of the plurality of realities he admits. "The multiple worlds I countenance are just the actual worlds made by and answering to true or right versions" (p. 94). I find it easier to visualize the process of verifying this truth or rightness in the sciences-which are concerned primarily with the processes of experimentation and proof-than I do in the arts. When Goodman says: "whether a picture is rightly designed or a statement correctly described is tested by examination and reexamination of the picture or statement and

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what it refers to in one way or another" criticism, however, knowledge of the artist's (p. 139), I want to know enough about the work and ideas usually figures significantly output and interests of the artist and his in interpretation, and can be helpful in arculture to have an inkling of what the pic- bitrating such disagreements as the one just ture might refer to (particularly if it is ab- suggested. Clement Greenberg's ability to stract), and enough about the process by explain Abstract Expressionist works was which the observer examines and reexam- greatly enhanced by his intimacy with the ines to have confidence in it and to be able major artists, who guided his thought and to emulate it. Goodman has refused to dis- were guided by it. Like all historians of past cuss either the artist's input or the obszrv- art, I try to understand the motivations and er's role in the validation process. He im- aims of the artists I study, reading their plies that the rightness of a work of art is writings (realizing that they may intentiona feature of the work itself, but in a key allv or unintentionally mislead and that I passage explaining this view, the observer may not understand them in the way that makes an impertinent appearance (p. 137): the writer did), examining other works by the same artist and by contemporaries, seekrightness of design, color, harmonics-fairness of ing - out the aims of their patrons and reada work as a sample of such features-is tested by ing contemporary criticism. No amount of our success in discovering and applying what is exemplified. What counts as success in achieving such indust-rv assures that I shall discover accord depends upon what our habits, progreswhether a picture is sad or soberly joyful, sively modified in the face of new encounters and but the chances are that it will help. Works new proposals, adopt as projectible kinds. of today's artists often quote or refer to But this observer has been deprived of other works of art; one cannot grasp what his autonomy. H e belongs to a cohesive they exemplify without some knowledge of group ("our success"; "our habits") that can the artist's intention. T h e early work of be counted on to react consistently. If my Jasper Johns, for example, such as his Flags interpretation of the passage appears to be and ~ a r ~ e t were s, commentaries on the picking nits, it is only because the system of loose, post-Cubist space-evoking brushwork validation strikes me as flawed in that it of certain Abstract Expressionist pictures postulates aesthetic objects that can be right which was given an ironic twist by being versions of something. I cannot accept the applied to the representation of obje.cts that concept of autonomous aesthetic objects. in actuality are absolutely flat and smooth. T h e aesthetic experience can occur only Much of conce~tualart is to be understood when an observer is on hand to have it; it in part as criticism of the established values is compounded not only of emanations from of collecting, private ownership, museum, the object but also of the mode of receptiv- and gallery exhibition, the physical pzrmaity of the observer. T h e event differs a little nence of the work of ant, etc. whether or or a lot for different observers. not these values are overily referred to in Suppose Goodman sees a picture as exem- the works. T h a t we must reconstruct what plifying order or expressing sadness and 1 we can of the artist's intention in order to see it as exemplifying entropy or expressing orient our approach to his product is, howsober joy. Presumably we would both rightly ever, not to say that what we get out of a report our understanding of it, but together work of art is limited to what the artist we would be unable to testify that it was intended to put into it. a "right version" of anything. What arbiThinking of the absence of the contributration of our disagreement is possible? 1 tion of t h e artist from Goodman's system, am sure that Goodman would not want to I realize why I have had such difficulty imagtake a poll of qualified observers, in spite ining how I would apply his concept of exemplification in writing about particular of his reference to "our habits." Goodman has-for reasons consistent with works. T h e answer is probably that, where his theory-separated the artist as well as the Goodman would say that a flag picture by observer from the work of art. I n practical Johns exemplifies Abstract Expressionist

Aesthetics and W o r l d m a k i n g technique, I would say that the artist adopted that technique in his picture. T h e former statement would be correct (though an observer who did not consider the artist's contribution would probably not come to make it), but the latter is a more natural and easily grasped way of speaking. I should emphasize that it is applicable also in cases where an artist does not consciously address an observer through the exemplified property (for example, I assume that most Impressionist painters took the rectangularity of their canvases as a given and were not interested in having their works exemplify it). Considering the complex interactions among the artist, the work and the observer, I have reservations about Goodman's attempt in his final chapter to establish art on the plane of science as a way of worldmaking that produces right versions of a particular world. I agree that the revelation of a new world through the work of art that occurs when we first grasp its import may be comparable to the illumination we get from encountering a scientific discovery or hypothesis. But the understanding given us i n our first encounter with the work of art is renewed and enriched at every subsequent encounter, whereas once having grasped a scientific "truth," we do not return to the statement of it, but encorporate it into our consciousness and move on. T h e scientific "truth" that becomes superceded is relegated to historians to be examined as a cultural phenomenon; we return to it only for nonscientific information or pleasure. Whether with relief or reluctance, we must ultimately face the fact that our gratification in the initial and repeated encounters with art, while it is to be explained partly in the expanded understanding we get, is not entirely susceptible to rational, philosophically respectable analysis. It is akin only to love or affection. T h e object of our love may or may not open new vistas to us and may or may not have virtues recognized as desirable-he or she may indeed have vices that repel us in others. But the object of love or of art moves or stimulates or mystifies us on every encounter and continues to do so as long as the relationship is sustained.'

T h e ultimate validation of rightness of design is thus inevitably elusive, because what can be right for me in a work of art or in a friend or lover may not be right for you. I accept this uncertainty even though I would not expect every physicist to explain magnetism in different and possibly conflicting ways. T h e possibility that my explanation of a Romanesque tympanum or a Picasso collage might differ from and conflict with yours is acceptable. T o read or hear both might be enriching, providing both of us were intelligent and receptive. Indeed, nobody would welcome a situation in which we both perceived the works in the same way and our interpretations differed only in style and expression. I n stating this, I am not exactly correcting Goodman, because he says that the worlds of two observers can differ as much as those of two objects. My disagreement rests in my refusal to accept the proposition that the rightness of the work can be validated. If he would accept my amendment that the rightness of the experience (the dialog between the work and the viewer) is what matters, we could sign a treaty. But then, of course, the worlds of art and of science would move a little farther apart. My differences with Goodman are due principally to our diverging aims. He is interested in universal processes of worldmaking and I am interested in understanding and explaining the particular worlds made by artists. Because he wants to show that the artists' worlds are in many ways like those of scientists or philosophers, he has deemphasized the elements of the aesthetic response that differ from other kinds of perception.8 I am grateful for a book that gives us a way of orienting ourselves to pluralistic world views at a time when any effort to preserve a unitary system could make us either anachronistic or misanthropic. Goodman offers to the critic and historian a way to accept and to understand the art of all times and places without forcing us to change our sights as we approach each individual object. He also gives to the arts a stature they are not always accorded in the academic world, seeing them not just as

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paths to gratification and diversion, but as a mode of worldmaking as essential and fundamental to culture as that of science, religion or philosophy.

attention to or exemplifying their rectangularity. In 1940, however, canvases were so universally painted on rectangular surfaces that the format had no symbolic significance. An instance of a property of a work of art that is virtually never exemplified would be its weight, JAMESS. ACKERMANthough an equally statistical datum such as size frequently is exemplified, as in much contemporary Harvard University painting where the huge dimensions are integral to the import. James S. Adterman, "On Judging Art Without 'See, e.g., his Art and Culture; Critical Essays Absolutes," Critical Inquiry, V (1979), 441-69. (Boston, 1961). 2Ever since the Romantic period, avant-garde arGoodman avoids two generators of aesthetic retists have disrupted some aspect of the tradition in sponse that are so universal in appeal that they are which they were trained, but the disruption I refer rarely noticed in writings on aesthetics, which may to here is of a different kind. Manet, Cezanne and be an indication of elitism: skill or finesse of execuPicasso, while radical, still produced art that could tion, and splendor, or the richness, brilliance or be interpreted according to criteria rooted in the preciousness of materials. These were, in fact, two Renaissance. Christo, Oldenburg, and Samaras mainstays of medieval art theory. :though they refer with irony to the Renaissance eNelson Goodman, Languages of A r t (Indianaptradition) do not. I should add that I think that olis, 1976), pp. 252R. while the first trio were much greater artists than We can lose our responsiveness to works of art the second, the latter are unquestionably artists, as we "fall out of love" with people. A common case though much of their work does not conform to any is that of outgrowing our admiration for an object, accepted definition of art. perceiving in it some superficiality or flaw as we Format is an instance of a property that is exembecome more sophisticated observers. plified at one time and not at another: in 1440, the 8For another interpretation of Goodman's ideas painted portion of most altarpieces was integrally directed toward art historians, see Epi Wiese, "A joined to an elaborate Gothic frame. Altarpieces Goodman Primer for Art Historians," Art Journal, with rectangular frames at that time were calling XXXVI (Fall, 1976), 39-44.

Music Considered as a Way of Worldmaking NELSONGOODMAN'S main contribution to aesthetics consists in his having removed the barrier between science and the arts. He did it not by simply declaring art to be science or science to be art, but rather by showing that both coincide in the essential respects of creating and using symbols. Creating and using symbols justify, however, our speaking of cognitive activities and calling the results cognition. This is not at all to deny striking differences between science and the arts. Of course there are such. Considered, however, from the encompassing viewpoint of the theory of symbols, these differences appear rather as distinctions within the sphere of the cognitive. They do not allow any identification of the boundary between science and art with the division between cognitive and noncognitive. Everything to which we may make symbolic reference falls within the range of our understanding, but human

understanding is diversified according to the manifold methods of symbolization or, to use the words of Goodman's new book, through the various ways of worldmaking. It is of little interest to define the limits of understanding, but it is of considerable importance to describe the manifold forms of understanding. Goodman's quite promising idea that the arts to be conceded cognitive functions would however have remained just another slogan, had he not undertaken the attempt to develop a general theory of symbols, one which allows describing the structure of various symbol systems, and thereby enables comparison. Thus, in Languages of Art was developed the theory of notation. Investigating the question as to what requirements must be met for an ideal notational symbol system yields five conditions of notationality.1 These conditions then serve as parameters in further investigations.