Spontaneous Order is not just the domain of the market. It arises anywhere out of opposing constraints on human action, and in the most surprising of places. Language is an oft-cited example – how a massive community comes to learn and accept the same sounds and the same structures to mean the same things in order to communicate – and how that changes. Culture itself is a spontaneous order; an emergent property of the interactions of a group of individuals. It is orderly, yet uncontrolled by any central or top-down authority.
The art world is a fascinating example of spontaneous order. The market works as spontaneous order because people can in general be counted on to act from economic motives to equilibrate supply and demand, but the motives of art are entirely different. But as we will see, motive is indeed the key to art culture as spontaneous order.
Art and Motive
There are two axes on which we can describe the motive of artistry: first the artists’s with regard to himself, and second the artist’s with regard to his audience. catharsis to commodity, and extolling to entertainment, respectively. In reality, any piece of art is a combination of these separate motives, so we speak of proportions and continua rather than of categories.
Catharsis is art as an end in itself. It is the ideal of the artist who creates only for himself. Most art in public view which professes to be cathartic is probably less so than the creator would have us believe, and in fact, the vast majority of cathartic art is probably not public. Cathartic art is only so bound by convention as the author’s mind, and the most innovative art in any medium probably has a good deal of catharsis in it.
Commodity, on the other hand, is art as a means to personal ends. Not that that’s a bad thing. Any artist who intends to personally gain from his art at all (whether monetary or not – i.e., art created to gain respect) would create from this motive. We must admit some degree of economic motive in art, but we may allow it to be small.
Commodity art is the most common among art in public view, for publicity is the standard of success for commodity art. Because the artist is bound by the preferences of his audience, commodity art tends to take fewer risks. The more commodified an art piece is, the more distance between the artist and the creation, simply because it’s being created for an audience, and not for the self. Art for hire – graphic design, for example – would be the most purely commodified art. The subject is dictated by the client, and the artist is concomitantly least personally invested in it.
The second axis, from extolling to entertainment, is the response the artist intends to invoke from the audience.
Extolling cathartic art springs from a genuine appreciation of the subject and the desire to see others appreciate it in the same way. It is art that points beyond itself. Examples include (hopefully) a lot of praise music, religious iconography, the “help starving babies in Africa” compilations that come out periodically (assuming the music is supposed to get the masses to help on their own, and not just to raise revenue), most of Deviantart, and documentaries based on anything more than detached historical interest. Fanart is the ultimate in extolling cathartic art, because out of all of these, it is created with the least regard for audience. C.S. Lewis says praise is the consummation of enjoyment, and the extolling catharsis is an expression of that.
Down the scale to more commodification are the starving babies compilations, which if we’re honest, are probably done more for good PR than for genuinely wanting to help. Extolling commodity art tends to be uninteresting except as history. It includes advertisements, and the host of portraits commissioned by kings and nobles. The artist is dispassionately exhorting you to appreciate something; something he himself has no necessary interest in beyond his wage. People are naturally skeptical of this, so its success is based on how well it can masquerade as the cathartic variety. (as an analogy, when people are hired to give glowing testimonials for a commercial).
Entertainment art is art that, for the audience, regardless of its purpose to the author, is intended to exist for its own sake. It’s the difference between Power Rangers and Captain Planet: one is mindless entertainment, and the other wants to instill a message. Power Rangers exists for its own sake, where Captain Planet exists for the sake of extolling its message.
Cathartic entertainment art is probably the vast majority of art which is created, most of which never goes public. Doodles in the margins of a notebook, aspiring photographers who never gain the confidence to go pro – people who create for fun or release. It is entirely self-existent: it exists for its own sake both for the creator and the audience, which in most cases are the same in this category.
Commodity entertainment art is, again, not very interesting artistically (though the successful among it is indeed entertaining). Most television and movies fall under this category. They are created for the sake of the audience, but have no point to make, and as far as the viewer is concerned, are entertaining in themselves without reference to anything else.
Order from Tension
Most of the art world probably lies halfway in between commodity and catharsis. To be successful as self-standing art (as opposed to art for another purpose – a magazine, for example), it must be cathartic enough to be interesting, and yet commodified enough to be acceptable. The infectious passion attendant to an artistic catharsis is what makes art interesting, while the commodity motive keeps art grounded in what people actually enjoy. This tension is the driving force behind culture, catharsis always pushing the limits of acceptability, and commodity always informing the artist by the success of others’ and his own previous work what the people enjoy.
Likewise, people are more comfortable with entertainment than extolling. Extolling art puts pressure on the viewer. But extolling art is where you change peoples’ behavior. The advertising industry is shaped by this tension: advertisements have to be entertaining to disarm the reflexive distaste people have against it. The extolling is the defining feature of advertising; what makes it worth anything. Yet the entertainment is what makes it acceptable – the commodity motive itself driving another tension on this axis, where there is no cathartic motive to balance it.
Having spoken of the tension between cathartic and commodity art in general, and the tension between entertainment commodity art and extolling commodity art, there is no need to speak of a parallel tension between entertainment catharsis and extolling catharsis, for entertaining catharsis, being generally for private consumption, has a negligible effect on culture. We can thus say that the three quadrants which are relevant to what we might call art culture operate under tensions which produce the spontaneous order we see reflected there. There is a two-way information flow between artist and patron, out of which a dynamic order arises to maximize the felicity of both.
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Ben Triplett says: Jul 07, 2010 at 13:54This is interesting…surely the difference between subject versus object, particular versus universal, and intrinsic versus extrinsic have fought battles throughout the ages within the realm of art. I think this becomes clear in a consumer society, and is dealt specifically in pop art such as Warhol, Lichtenstein, Wessellman and Jasper Johns, who force their audience to appraise the value of their work in the mind of a consumer.
I would argue a step further to say that art serves greater purpose than catharsis is many senses as a form of “metaphysical communication”. While catharsis (which I am understanding to mean sublimation) captures a general sense of communicating the metaphysical, it seems to have a quality of being able to control meaning within a piece. My experience with art (which I think would be somewhat shared by other artists) has been that metaphysical meaning arises during and after the process, as well as before. Catharsis occurs as a partnership between the metaphysical bursting forth, as well as being drawn forth from the artist as medium. I draw from Nietzsche, as well as Schopenhauer, in understanding the role of the aesthetic in communicating a metaphysical reality (albeit, I alter their understanding of the metaphysical as a Christian).
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Ben Triplett says: Jul 07, 2010 at 13:55I meant to mention, this is a fairly nice analysis of art in a consumer society!
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thrica says: Jul 07, 2010 at 14:18Sublimation! Ariel didn’t like my use of the word catharsis, but we couldn’t think of anything better. Sublimation is a good one. And metaphysical communication might be more precise than extolling, too (communicative art, maybe?). Being relatively new to the philosophy of art, I’m rather at a loss for terms sometimes. I’m glad you’re already there waiting for me. :)
As for your second paragraph… I’m still thinking about the consumption and appreciation side of art; haven’t gotten there yet.
It’s funny how art as commentary on art (which seems like a relatively new thing, coming with postmodernism, though I speak with trepidation because I’m no art historian) throws a wrench in a lot of theories of art. I imagine that’s their point. Can art be deliberately ugly to make a statement? Even so, there is beauty in some sense in that statement – a second-order beauty – that still garners appreciation in the lack of obvious aesthetic (first-order) beauty.
Mm, that’d make an interesting blog post.
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Ben Triplett says: Jul 07, 2010 at 16:32I would be careful, within the post-modern critique, in wielding the term art, however. Art as commentary on art isn’t always so simple. While it might appear to communicate this aphorism, dadaism is also a commentary on human nature within the bounds of a war-torn world. Is the nothingness in art, or in all of us? Some pop-art seems to be specifically about the consumption of art…yet some actually questions aesthetics as an abstract idea.
I will say, people who tend towards this issue: art as commentary on the abstract principle of art…such as Jeff Koons…generally don’t belong in the conversation with the greats of history in my book. Many of these artists double as businessmen, which would bring me to doubt the purity of their interest in art as anything other than a means to a lucrative end. While they have no doubt added to the millenia-long conversation, I put little credit in their contributions.
Of course, one could make the argument that over the course of history, all art has been commentary on art. All artists draw from, and react against influences. In this way, art as commentary on art has always existed.
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Ben Triplett says: Jul 07, 2010 at 16:33By the way, thank you for heading the note with one of the most noble forms of art: graffiti!
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thrica says: Jul 07, 2010 at 17:55Do you think they’re less free from commercial interest than anyone else in history? I think I would doubt the purity of anyone’s interest in art, or at least of anyone who called himself an artist, if that were the standard.
Or do you mean that sort of art is truly disingenuous, and just cynically gaming a system for profit which has by some historical accident come to value junk?
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Ben Triplett says: Jul 07, 2010 at 21:08In history? Certainly. In the last few hundred years…maybe, maybe not. The idea of art as a product for consumption, especially on the level of the artist belonging to higher classes in society, is fairly recent…considering the possibility of belonging to different classes is a bit more fluid in the presence of a free market.
Specifically, the notion of an artist drawing millions for a painting is a more recent development, excluding very exceptional artists who were able to gain the interest of royal benefactors. Of course, many people lived off of their craft…which is the root meaning of the word “art”. Yet, I doubt riches were the telos of art for many artists. In the sense that artists chase abundant wealth above the efficiency of their craft, I would deem an artist faulty.
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Starving Artist says: Jul 10, 2010 at 22:45Ben: Anyone who attempts to sell something to someone else is, essentially, a businessman. And artists are some of the most cunning businessman out there. Art is a people-driven profession. So not only does the artist attempt to profit by selling the product–in a gallery, by commission, by performance, etc.–but they must also sell themselves and their personality as an artist by making connections with powerful people, to be their own advertisers, more or less. UNC even requires that all studio art majors take a class in order to learn the practical, nitty-gritty aspects of selling art and identity. I think that that’s part of what Cameron is saying, that very few artists occupy any extreme on the so-called axes of art, but rather a point somewhere in the middle that tends to both the mythological vision and the logic of finance.
Is an artist who happens to be wildly lucrative necessarily “faulty?” I think that’s a dangerous judgment, and an unfair one. For some reason, people are more apt to read a visual artist’s financial success as “selling out” than they are the success of, say, a writer or a musician. Are writers and musicians not also incredibly attentive to the demands of the public? Why should an artist not also be attentive to those demands, and desire the success of their work, both on a metaphysical and a financial basis?