"The Use-Value of Contemporary Art"
In the closing lines
of his lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel summed up the reason for
his protracted interest in art in the first place: "For
with art", he asserted emphatically, "we are not dealing
with something merely agreeable or useful, but rather with the
deployment of Truth." Today, few would be inclined to make
such exorbitant claims of art; and yet, should we be prepared
to relinquish all exigencies with regard to the art work's use-value?
The question is what we want to mean by "merely useful".
For Adorno, art was not merely useless, but was somehow radically
useless, and therefore a subversive force in a world of all-pervasive
utilitarian rationality. This notion of art as the Other of such
rationality - that endless chain of ends and means, which makes
usefulness an end in itself, is so deep-seated in contemporary
intellectual culture that the very question of the "use-value" of
art smacks of philistinism. "What is the purpose of usefulness?" asked
Lessing over two-hundred years ago, though question rings like
a present-day quip. Art works, wrote Hannah Arendt, "are
the only things without any function in the life process of society….
They are deliberately removed from the processes of consumption
and usage and isolated against the sphere of human life necessities." While
we may applaud this attempt to preserve art as an autonomous
sphere, irreducible to the functionalist logic of consumer products,
it is ultimately dissatisfying that art's value be founded on
its uselessness. Certainly this is not art's specificity. After
all, despite what Arendt asserts, many things are useless - and
art works scarcely spring to mind as most useless amongst them
(though it is imperative to distinguish the use-less from the
merely futile, which often heeds a utilitarian logic). What we
require is a more discerning understanding of utilitarian rationality.
One that would acknowledge art's specific use-value, while recognizing
its difference from the "merely useful". Because beyond
its uselessness, its purposeless finality, art must be of some
use to us - why, otherwise, would we bother to engage with it?
Each time we judge one work superior to another, the arguments
we use to do so must presuppose some notion of the appropriate
use of art. The concept of use-value was briefly introduced by
Marx on the first page of Capital, in opposition to exchange
value. While the term needs to be fleshed out in entirely different
terms with regard to art, Marx is right to note that every useful
thing is a whole made up of many different elements, and that
consequently its use-value - multiple and both context-specific
and user-determined - is realized only in the course of its use.
The question is, therefore, value for what - and for whom? My
hypothesis will be that art's use-value is inseparable from its
heuristic value - that is, its ability to foster discovery, draw
attention to the overlooked. But this too is inadequately specific,
inasmuch as documentary film or even bracing conversation can
do the same. What, then, can art do that no other symbolic configuration
can? Does art not, in fact, have a role to play in the life process
of society? The question of the use-value of art is about identifying
a universally recognizable function, genuinely specific and exclusive
to art. ©2000 Stephen Wright
Mr. Wright was recommended by Martha Rosler.
Stephen Wright
Born 16 October 1963
in Vancouver, Canada
Studies: 1990-
Ph.D. Thesis in Comparative Literature (Universite de Paris III, Sorbonne)
"The Situation of the Narrator in the Contemporary Novel": at the crossroads
between literature and philosophy, a contribution toward a theory of the narrative-immanent
subject Researcher in philosophy (Universite europienne de la recherche, Paris)
Seminars in contemporary Aesthetic Theory: normativity and the empiricist challenge
Seminars in Practical Reason, focusing on the scope of critical theory after
Habermas
1986-89
Research in philosophy at the Frei Universitat, Berlin
1985-86
D.E.A. in Comparative Literature (Universite de Paris III, Sorbonne)
Research paper on The Politics of the Avant-garde movements
1984-85 Masters Degree
in Comparative Literature (Universite de Paris III, Sorbonne)
Masters Thesis on Bertolt Brecht: in and against tradition
1982-84 Bachelor of
Arts in Political Science (Carleton University, Ottawa)
Full academic scholarship
Professional Experience
Current
Lecturer at the School of Fine Arts, Brest (France)
Course on critical "interfacing" - ie. teaching third, fourth and fifth-year
students the critical and discursive tools required to grasp and situate their
work
Editorial-board member of the journal Mouvements: politique,
societes, culture
Founding member of the Paris-based, progressive, socio-political journal -
a forum for in-depth debate on current issues for both an academic and non-specialised
readership
European Editor, Parachute
Contributing editor of the bilingual, Montreal-based contemporary art magazine
Independent literary translator
Translations include: novels by Francois Maspero; screenplays by Peter Greenaway,
Manoel de Oliveira; poetry by Jacques Provert, Guillaume Apollinaire and Henri
Michaux; essays by Andre Malraux, Jacques Lacan, Rainer Rochlitz, Jean Clair
Author of numerous texts on contemporary art and / or political theory
Independent contemporary-art curator
L'incurable memoire des corps, thematic exhibition, September
2000, Paris
Languages: English,
French, German (spoken and written) |