Grice at the Arts College

--- by JLS
------- for the GC

--- In Commentary to "culturism", J. Kennedy writes of the:

historical avant-garde', who are not all, these days, drawn from the upper classes. I spent three years submerged in the world they built themselves at a tiny arts college, and there was this continual problematic experience (only on the part of the students, it seemed) of attempting to divide works that might have an obscure or complex design for a reason, and a heap of other works that seemed to be equally prized (or more) that were simply very heavily encoded, to provide the experience Kramer terms 'culturism'.

I will let of course Kramer respond in the appropriate thread, or this -- etc. In any case, it provokes me good. I was once involved with an arts college and never understood them. So details welcome. My experience is with an US-based arts college. I was involved in a graduate programme and came to know the people lecturing on 'aesthetics', and never quite understood a thing. In fact, whenever I found myself having to attend those arts courses (the other in my alma mater with aestheticists Presas and Moran) I would lecture on just Grice, and found it fascinating!

--- I have now grown up out of the simplicities of most aesthetic theory and think that 'art' has NOTHING to do with 'aesthetics' which should be strictly Gricean in nature and along the lines of F. N. Sibley's collected papers ("Aesthetics", Clarendon Press). -- "Aesthetic properties" are sensual second-order properties:

-- the teapot is yellow.
-- The teapot's yellow is nice.

(ii) indicates an aesthetic property.

----

But back to Art. For that Presas seminar, I had to research and did on 'conceptualism', which in a way IS like 'concettismo'. I focused on, as I recall a few American and English artists -- and one Italian: Gilbert Droesch.

Joseph Kosuth, the American, was quoting Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic, to the effect that

'aesthetic' judgements, rather than emotional outbursts -- as Ayer did think they were -- were 'analytic'. This is silly but Kosuth argued for it:

'This is a piece of art'

is, for Kosuth, ostensive, and analytic. It defines the utterer's intention to treat the thing as a piece of art.

---- (Kosuth explicitly cites Ayer on this).

Then I used Keith Arnatt's piece of art -- in "Art Movements since 1945" by Lucie-Smith, a Jamaican. Arnatt photographed himself holding a sign that read:

"I am a real artist".

I surveyed opinions on this and we agreed again that Kosuth was being funny and Gricean. I approached him later on on this, and he just went, "Oh, that was an early piece!". By the time he was photographying trash in the London dumps.

----

Then I discussed and corresponded with George Passmore (born Devon) and Gilbert Proesch (born in the Dolomites and who still keeps his strong accent), better known as,

"Art For All"

or G & G

They present themselves (and perhaps their selves) as "work of art". Notably in their performance of "Underneath the Arches" where they echo to Flanagan and Allen.

There was also a discussion by me with R. Walker, "Contemporary Art" (Thames and Hudson series -- Art after pop) which reproduces a page from the Coventry-based "Art and Language" group by Heritage and Atkinson. These authors were Gricean culturismic figures: they talked about art as if they meant it.

Perhaps Yoko Ono falls in this category too, as I was recently discussing elsewhere her Grapefruit -- the idea that art is in the idea -- or Gricean intention -- rather than in the fulfilment of it.

In my more theoretical work to back up these manifestations I analysed three levels (following Goodman) of the language (so-called) of art. There's first the semiosis which is understood as

-- syntactic -- the work of some conceptual artists with combinations of signs.

-- semantic -- Kosuth's "Three Chairs" for example, at the NY exhibit: the chair which is real, the chair which is the photo of the chair, and the chair as defined by the dictionary.

-- But I claimed that the constitution of the 'art' object requires a third level which is

-- pragmatic: here is where the Gricean intention features large.

When I was involved with this arts college, I was able to provide some of my thoughts in a mimeo that I may have somewhere, and where I played with Catherine Lord. She (and later people cited by Lamarque in his good compilation of "Analytic" Philosophy and Aesthetics -- citing Urmson and Sibley and not just Grice -- of this 'Oxford' movement) was perhaps one of the first to deal explicitly with Grice. But my reading of her "Gricean approach to aesthetic instrumentalism" sort of disappointed me, and I had to read a bit more of Scruton (his "Aesthetic Understanding") to get at the Gricean gist of it. Finally I found it in a good collection in Cambridge University Press, "Pleasure and aesthetics". I was able to connect then the idea of

--- the teapot's yellow is nice

with the instillation of 'pleasure' in the addresee. Whoever painted the teapot yellow, and with this or that SHADE of yellow, provokes a 'pleasing' experience in the addressee. Surely, watching the sun come down is ALSO pleasing. But when we combine 'aesthetic' with 'non-natural' we get at the gist of the grice for the mill, as it were.

For this "Pleasure and Aesthetics" conservative book from Cambridge U. P. argued that the Gricean intention on the part of the utterer is not merely instrumental (as Lord argued, or just 'intentionalist' alla Beardsley's 'fallacy'). Rather what the Gricean arist is proposing is TO INCREASE (in a sort of maximin strategy based on some principle of efficiency) the utility of pleasure.

I tend to agree with that view. If I go to the opera (as I'll do tomorrow, for a local production of "Lady Macbeth") I expect the whole proceeding will be 'pleasing' enough (to the ear, the eye, and I hope not displeasing to the nose). Etc.