A few questions first in order to broach this expansive subject.
Q: What or who is Lyotard?
A: Jean Francois Lyotard was a French philosopher/theoretician who wrote about post-structuralist thought, aesthetics, politics and attempted to explain Postmodernity and the sublime.
Q: What is a (the) Sublime?
A: The Sublime in general terms is an effect on the mind usually experienced in the face/knowledge of a force or event that first overwhelms it, threatening annihilation and terror only then to abate and give way to euphoric relief.
Q: Why care about it?
A: Philosophical concerns seem tedious and extraneous to regular life and its problems but they underpin systems of belief that mould and shape societies so should not be ignored or treated with indifference.The ideas embodied in post structural philosophy have made their way into the mainstream consciousness through advertising, art, literature, politics and education systems.
Q: What or who is Lyotard?
A: Jean Francois Lyotard was a French philosopher/theoretician who wrote about post-structuralist thought, aesthetics, politics and attempted to explain Postmodernity and the sublime.
Q: What is a (the) Sublime?
A: The Sublime in general terms is an effect on the mind usually experienced in the face/knowledge of a force or event that first overwhelms it, threatening annihilation and terror only then to abate and give way to euphoric relief.
Q: Why care about it?
A: Philosophical concerns seem tedious and extraneous to regular life and its problems but they underpin systems of belief that mould and shape societies so should not be ignored or treated with indifference.The ideas embodied in post structural philosophy have made their way into the mainstream consciousness through advertising, art, literature, politics and education systems.
Tin Can Artists Shit No: 004 - 1961 Piero manzoni There is a need to periodically examine the ideas that percolate down from the rarified academic stratosphere of thought into the morass of ordinary life. While people get on with their daily business, social constructs and value systems are under constant evaluation/modulation and ideas that are challenging perceptions and values shared by the many are seeping in through transgressive cultural activities everywhere. Ideas such as deconstruction, appropriation, death of the author and the sublime permeate every strata of modern life and yet most of it goes unnoticed as if pedestrian in value.
I should say rather, when an idea is finally accepted as "normal" or "everyday" then it is no longer visible or subject to scrutiny. Some ideas "shock" initially and then with persistent re-presentation are eventually subsumed by the mainstream power structures. I cite for example here Piero Manzoni the Italian artist who produced 90 tins of his own excrement as art in 1961, each of which was to be valued at the price of gold which was $37 at the time. Sothebys sold a tin in 2007 for 124.000 Euros proving that a precedent once established carries enormous power over time.
Since then we have seen artists simulate or actually perform acts of socially transgressive behaviour in public including but not limited to, piercing, hanging, humiliation, rape, masturbation, defecation, menstruation, murder and cannibalism with a numb public nervously giving assent or pretending not to see. Manzoni's tins of shit are the little stones that, once thrown at art, released the avalanche of detritus, which followed soon after. This stream of "performance art" wasn't what Jean Francois Lyotard had in mind as examples of the "sublime" but they serve to demonstrate that not all "art experiments" are legitimate or even beneficial though they might provoke shock or intelligent discourse. This kind of art is in fact anti-sublime because after the initial controversy the art points back to the artist (the known) and stasis, instead of the "unpresentable" the unknown, which then leaves us in a perpetual state of "frisson." The power of ideas to change the world is staggering and the "sublime" as a mode of feeling and experience is a "tour de force" capable of altering our perception of life.
I should say rather, when an idea is finally accepted as "normal" or "everyday" then it is no longer visible or subject to scrutiny. Some ideas "shock" initially and then with persistent re-presentation are eventually subsumed by the mainstream power structures. I cite for example here Piero Manzoni the Italian artist who produced 90 tins of his own excrement as art in 1961, each of which was to be valued at the price of gold which was $37 at the time. Sothebys sold a tin in 2007 for 124.000 Euros proving that a precedent once established carries enormous power over time.
Since then we have seen artists simulate or actually perform acts of socially transgressive behaviour in public including but not limited to, piercing, hanging, humiliation, rape, masturbation, defecation, menstruation, murder and cannibalism with a numb public nervously giving assent or pretending not to see. Manzoni's tins of shit are the little stones that, once thrown at art, released the avalanche of detritus, which followed soon after. This stream of "performance art" wasn't what Jean Francois Lyotard had in mind as examples of the "sublime" but they serve to demonstrate that not all "art experiments" are legitimate or even beneficial though they might provoke shock or intelligent discourse. This kind of art is in fact anti-sublime because after the initial controversy the art points back to the artist (the known) and stasis, instead of the "unpresentable" the unknown, which then leaves us in a perpetual state of "frisson." The power of ideas to change the world is staggering and the "sublime" as a mode of feeling and experience is a "tour de force" capable of altering our perception of life.
Le Dejeuner Sur L'herbe - 1863 Edouard Manet The form of "sublime" being described here is an event that disables the normal relational function between "reason" and "imagination." The mind is incapable of grasping the enormity of an event/object and in its attempt to define the borders of such object there is a sudden awareness by reason of its limitations and the imagination then comes into play. Lyotard accords this aesthetic effect one of the highest honours because he believes it is the thing that continues to make art vital in a time when "grand narratives" such as "absolute freedom" or "historical progress" have become invalid. He states in, "What is Postmodernism?" "I think in particular that it is in the aesthetic of the sublime that modern art (including literature) find their impetus and the logic of the avant-gardes (experimental artists) finds its axioms." What does he mean by this? Simply, the tradition of making and then judging art by the same strict set of (language) rules had finally been disqualified by capitalism and the marketplace by the late 19th century. Art had represented life, the world, the "visible" and followed a mimetic mandate formulated by governmental elites until artists began to break free, think here, Manet, Delacroix, Turner etc. Newfound freedom released the artist to paint unorthodox subject matter in a myriad of styles. The final break with representation of the "real" probably occurred with Malevich's square paintings slamming open the door for "abstraction" and the opportunity of "presenting the unpresentable." Lyotard states that, "art has the best potential for demonstrating the sublime" and that this in turn is our best hope for maintaining "indeterminacy," which he defines as a "differend," which is simply a term for the "gap" where reason and imagination fail to meet and comprehend their object.
Simply put, where the art object no longer bends itself to predetermined models (modes of mimesis) it tries to present the fact that there is an "unpresentable" and no longer imitates nature but according to Edmund Burke, "the actualisation of a figure potentially there in language." What does this mean? We see something, (a painting) we don't know what it is, we look and look but we only see colour and form, maybe line. We start to frame the artwork but conceptually it escapes us! We don't really know what we're looking at. Frustration and maybe anxiety set in and we either dismiss what we see or we continue to wrestle with making meaning. We swing between pain and pleasure as we stand before the art object. This is the "sublime" feeling and it offers hope because it always alludes to the never ending arrival of the thing that is "happening." This is good because it assures us that something is in fact always "happening" which allays our fears of the "last moment" or the time when nothing will happen again! This we intimately know is when obliteration occurs and is an all subliminal pervasive fear. So then, the "sublime" is a majestic aesthetic intervention allowing us an ongoing, open ended dialogue with artworks. This in turn guarantees freedom by perpetually deferring the closing down and control of language systems which can and do subordinate whole societies to terror and extermination. That sounds crazy but don't believe me, check out Hitler's Germany, Mao's China or Pol Pot's Cambodia. Art was the first thing to be destroyed or come under control for devious purposes.
Simply put, where the art object no longer bends itself to predetermined models (modes of mimesis) it tries to present the fact that there is an "unpresentable" and no longer imitates nature but according to Edmund Burke, "the actualisation of a figure potentially there in language." What does this mean? We see something, (a painting) we don't know what it is, we look and look but we only see colour and form, maybe line. We start to frame the artwork but conceptually it escapes us! We don't really know what we're looking at. Frustration and maybe anxiety set in and we either dismiss what we see or we continue to wrestle with making meaning. We swing between pain and pleasure as we stand before the art object. This is the "sublime" feeling and it offers hope because it always alludes to the never ending arrival of the thing that is "happening." This is good because it assures us that something is in fact always "happening" which allays our fears of the "last moment" or the time when nothing will happen again! This we intimately know is when obliteration occurs and is an all subliminal pervasive fear. So then, the "sublime" is a majestic aesthetic intervention allowing us an ongoing, open ended dialogue with artworks. This in turn guarantees freedom by perpetually deferring the closing down and control of language systems which can and do subordinate whole societies to terror and extermination. That sounds crazy but don't believe me, check out Hitler's Germany, Mao's China or Pol Pot's Cambodia. Art was the first thing to be destroyed or come under control for devious purposes.
The question then is, what "relevance" does the "sublime" have to contemporary lives in a modern technological world? In attempting to answer this question we can identify the links to modern experience through multi faceted, multi media societies. Take a good look around and see what influence modern art has had on your life. You may not recognise it at first but soon you'll see all the major art styles represented in advertising, print media and fashion. A thousand different variants of Impressionism, Expressionism, Pop and Op abound in soft edge, hard edge, Colourfield, Neo and NeoGeo in every space and on every product you could imagine! Everything gets consumed by a tireless commercial system that continually re-processes things ad infinitum. The world is threatening to drown in a sea of commercial mediocrity where everything gets endlessly re-hashed and sold. This in itself is creating a form of sublimity where the pain and pleasure of choice is becoming a major problem for many consumers. Lyotard writes that art can continue to provide the experience that acts as a salve or tonic to the banal and mundane. He championed artists like Cezanne, Kandinsky, Duchamp, Newman, Rothko, Adami, Buren and Ettinger because in their work he saw the conceptual limits of man displayed and this for him was a lesson for anyone who felt too high minded about the possibilities of the humanistic Enlightenment project.
The "sublime" can be encountered wherever great art brings you to the place where words fail, the imagination flounders and the mental task of delineating the edges of what you can understand grinds to a halt. If this occurs don't panic, don't run, just enjoy the anxiety and failure of intellect and find pleasure in the thing that is "presenting" the ever deferred "unpresentable" because this is what great art does! A wild and stormy landscape will always be just an imitation of reality that you know is an illusion but a brooding, expansive abstract with mysterious eliding forms will captivate with its contiguous push pull sense of presence and absence and will always seem to bring you back to the deliciously and inexhaustibly deferred point of arrival!!
Read more of Lyotard's writing:
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge pdf
Lessons on The Analytic of The Sublime
Read more of Lyotard's writing:
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge pdf
Lessons on The Analytic of The Sublime
