The Function of Art and Artists

William Blake.
"Urizen as the Creator of the Material World"

It is at our death that we can take stock of our life and review all of our experiences. It is not until the moment of death that experience emerges and the validity and authority of our lives reveals itself. Therefore we can assert that all experience is contextual and historical. It is dependent upon and subject to a life and death process, a moment of existence extinguished by the next. Art can be said to serve as an extraction of experience from a river of contextual histories.

As artists, we are mining experiences from the momentary deaths that occur internally and externally. Every form of representation is a linguistic (symbolic) translation of the original. Our artwork represents a translation of an original experience into the language of our medium. The artist serves as a translator.

While each significant experience forms meaning within us, this meaning is inherently our own and is held tightly within our own context. Our artwork should not be an affixing of opaque meaning, but rather a transparent translation of the unique experience. Translation is not intended to impart meaning or understanding for a particular audience, but should be a translation to a particular language. “No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener (Benjamin p.69).” The original experience does not exist for our audience (Benjamin p. 70) but rather is a moment of “hidden significance” (Benjamin p.72) that is revealed through our efforts to translate it.
To concern ourselves with a particular audience is to affix our understanding to the work and to extinguish its life by restricting its existence to the temporal functionality of particular contemporary ideology. “Art’s essential work is not to make statements, or impart information, because this necessitates audience understanding which is inherently redundant (Benjamin p.69).” For art to have any lasting value, the artist must recognize the expansive and transformative nature of language and ideologies, and strive to create work that is stimulates contemplation of meaning rather than conveyance of meaning.

In Walter Benjamin’s essay Task of the Translator, he describes methods for effectively translating original texts from one language to another. “A real translation is transparent; it does not cover the original, does not block its light, but allows the pure language, as though reinforced by its own medium to shine upon the original all the more fully (Benjamin p.79)”. Languages are differentiated by their word elements. Within multiple languages different words may describe the same referent and offer us a very literal translation of denotative content. However the connotative meaning can never be literally translated from one language to another. The translator must have artistic license to convey meaning through the construction of new scenarios or syntax that would lead towards the formation of a connotation that is more faithful to the original experience. To describe a rose blooming in the desert to someone that lives in a rainforest we might have to explore other analogies or metaphors for abundance and rarity rather than simply substitute the words for desert and rose. Where there is no literal translation possible we must help form what Benjamin calls “pure language” by supplementing the new with the original. . If we accept the idea that all languages have the same representational intent, fragments of the original may be embedded within the new language.

Of greater risk to the translator is the pitfall of embedding information and meaning into the translation. “The context of the now will never exactly mirror that of the original” (Benjamin p.71) and the value of information is limited to “the moment it is new” (Benjamin p. 90). Everything that has history has a life. Our artwork is the creation of an afterlife for the moment of experience. If we embed too much meaning and information from one specific period we will create work that has a short life and limited afterlife. We create significance by extending the afterlife of the experience through the creation of artwork that acknowledges the natural history of our existence and translates it in a manner that can extend beyond the limitations of historical information and meaning.

As artists we can take these theories and apply them to our task of translating our physical and spiritual experiences into a visual language. The very act of translation elevates the original while at the same time it can never equal it. It is a process of signification that simultaneously elevates and distances, creating an aura of its own.

Acknowledging that are art has a life of its own helps us understand the possibility of an afterlife through the etching of our art into the collective memory of our audience. A loved one may die, but they continue to exist within an afterlife of stories that continue to be told and reside in our memory. Pascal wrote, “No one dies so poor that he does not leave something behind.” Storytelling itself is a process of compression, distillation, and signification that is almost a lost art form. The success of the story being told is in its successive reproductions, or its afterlife.

Great stories are based upon our personal experiences or the retelling of someone else’s and they acquire their authority and validity from our acknowledgement of death. It (the story) is based upon a narrative that is distilled from our own mortality and evolves through the interconnectivity of events (experiences), which in turn builds wisdom.

Wisdom is only truly created through experience. Storytelling is rooted in an oral tradition that connects the presenter to an audience, which becomes a “performance” and therefore a wisdom building experience. Walter Benjamin’s 1936 essay The Storyteller asserts that the contemporary culture has lost its connectivity to experience and wisdom with the rise of the novel and other forms of mass news media. We are buried in information that is so specific as to blind or disconnect us from the larger whole. The founder of the magazine LeFigaro, Villemessant, once wrote “To my readers, an attic fire in the Latin Quarter is more important than a revolution in Madrid (Benjamin p.88).” The sheer volume of information in contemporary mass media is a hindrance to being able to commit a story to memory or to consider us apart of a larger natural history. Information is a differentiating factor of language. The contextuality of information makes it too easy to define the characters within the story as “the others”, thereby removing our audience from assimilating the story into their own existence.

Benjamin suggest that the greatest stories are derived from personal narratives or the retelling of someone else’s experiences. A narrative without detailed information leaves it up to the audience to interpret the experiences within the story for themselves. If you provide too much information and/or explanation the audience is removed from having an experience of their own resulting in a loss of wisdom. Information is the diffusion of truth and the dismissal of the continuity of natural history.

The telling of stories as distinguished from transmitting news or writing a novel, leads to the re-actualizing the experience for the audience. Benjamin uses the example of the Greek storyteller Herodotus and his tale about the Egyptian King Psammentus who was compelled to witness the pending death of his family and servant. Although the King remained stoic at the sight of his children passing by, he was moved to tears at the sight of his old servant. Herodotus recounts the actions that occurred without giving us the meaning of the actions, leaving it open for contemporary interpretation of what it means to be a leader of a nation. A story should be void of too much detail or interpretation. It should provide just enough to “arouse astonishment and thoughtfulness” (Benjamin p. 90) Compactness is achieved through the removal of excess psychological analysis, which makes the story more easily committed to memory.

Translation and storytelling are interrelated. In order to be affective the artists must commit a destructive act (Benjamin p. 158) by removing themselves from the experience being transmitted to the audience via the artwork. Benjamin writes, “Thus traces of the storyteller cling to the story the way the handprints of the potter cling to the clay vessel (Benjamin p.92).” The less the artist interprets for the audience, the more the original experience is transmitted and assimilated into the audiences’ own experience. Explanation closes off the audience from having to contemplate or relate to the story. The modern novel or cinema usually has an ending that precludes the audience from engaging in deep contemplation.


One method of storytelling that is effective for its succinctness without the malice of interpretation is that of the Chronicler. The chronicler emphasizes the deeds and actions relevant to the events. A modern newscast may recount the Nazi Holocaust by stating “From 1939-1945 six million Jews died in Nazi concentration camps.” This presentation of information makes it far too easy to isolate an audience from the experience of the story. A chronicle of the events might describe “Abe, who was 42 at the time and a father of three children, was taken…” Individual narratives of the people who were removed from their career, family, and homes and taken by train in hordes to prisons where they were systematically killed in gas chambers would be presented with out explanation. The redundancy would become epic. Information and interpretation offers brevity and isolation to an audience who then moves about their lives without knowledge and wisdom of the larger natural history.

However, one factor necessary for the creation of contemplative artwork, and the action of contemplating on the part of the audience is the need for a craftsman like patience. Nature’s perfection is due to the accumulation of causes over great amounts of time (Benjamin p.92). From seed to bloom, earth to mountain peak, if we are to contemplate that which we find perfect, then we must recognize the achievement of perfection is through the accumulation of effort over great periods of time. The human pursuit of this is perfection through craftsmanship. Benjamin describes the need for “boredom” or the built in redundancy of craftsmanship to form a situation for the mind to be receptive to active listening. In my own limited experience I have noted the change in pace and wisdom within the workplace. My first job in college was in a print shop that had been operated for over 50 years. Two of the employees had been working there for over thirty years. They practiced the craft of offset printing with a slow rhythm of experience and at break times discussed all the world events that had been contemplated in the interim. Today, my colleagues fly from task to task and read technical manual after technical manual and are out of contemplative breath. Paul Valery has said “Modern man no longer works at what cannot be abbreviated.” The modern age of technology has created a pursuit of abbreviation that doesn’t permit the mind the space to wander. “It is almost as if the decline of the idea of eternity coincided with the increasing aversion to sustained effort (Benjamin p. 93).”

Capitalism feeds our amnesia about death, which leads us to production and consumption practices that are not sustainable and are without conscious of the rest of humanity. Capitalism is the anti-aesthetic of the art of storytelling. It is fueled by statistical information and is an ideology that reduces contemplation to that of immediacy and the simple selection of the lowest price.

Marx prognosticates Capitalism’s cannibalism of itself (Benjamin 217) and Benjamin’s essay Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction suggests technology’s role in abolishing the ritualistic art object; with the cult value of art replaced by its exhibition value. Art’s ritual contemplative value is being replaced with the social practice of consumption. Originality and authenticity, which are the nucleus of history and context, are called into question by the reproductive capabilities of Photography and Film. Mechanical and technical reproductions dislocate the meaning of artwork from the art object itself and become mediums of transmission. The aura surrounding the original, or even replicas of the original is diminished through processes of digital reproduction that are not subject to historical processes of decay. A Gregorian chant performed in a monastery or Michelangelo’s statue of David loses much of its aura when transmitted via compact disc or DVD into our homes.

While transmission of art diminishes its aura, it has the potential to exceed ritualistic function by impacting culture through the creation of practices of consumption. Mozart’s Requiem Mass is liberated from the Cathedral and reaches a broader audience at a symphony hall, and an even broader audience through radio broadcast. This exhibition value exceeds the traditional cult value of art. Cultural formation is occurring rather than cultural affirmation. One can argue that Art’s ritualistic origins were limited to the function of affirmation of hegemony, and that the increase in art’s exhibition value through mechanical reproduction actually empowers art to create culture.

However, one cannot overlook the potential negative of the modern producer/consumer paradigm. Even in art, one cannot help but question whether the art that receives acceptance within the capitalist marketplace is not authentic, but rather subject to the role reversal of consumer as producer. Does art’s participation in mass media turn over the role of producer to the consumers, like the Nielson ratings dictating how many sitcoms and crime dramas are produced for television? Modern art’s adoption of capitalist ideology suggests that its fate will be tied to that of capitalism.

Art exists within ideology as an Ideological State Apparatus (Althusser p. 104). Historically, art’s cult value was more easily identified with a centralized and unified ruling class ideology. In the age of the Internet and mass media, we see the existence of the structure of ideology, and the plurality of ideologies that are competing for dominance but still operating under the umbrella of the hegemony ruling class. While ideologies are social/historical, ideology itself is a system that all artists operate within. “Ideology is a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real condition of existence (Althusser p.109).” Ideology reflects the truth of our perceptions but perception is not truth or reality. This is important for artists to realize. Even if we remove our interpretations, and limit information within our translations of experience, the process of signification (or encoding) that is occurring through the expression of any imagery is representation of ideology.
The French philosopher Louis Althusser describes how we operate within the ideological system. First of all we are born into it. Ideology is similar to the linguistic theory of a concept image map. Secondly we always inhabit an ideology through a process of recognition and distinction of our beliefs from other beliefs. Our own process of differentiation between the illusions of others as compared to our own “truths” assigns us to our ideology. Finally, ideology interpellates, or calls you by name. It is the call to action in an advertisement or the acknowledgement of a friends greeting. We are subject to the Subject of ideology. There are no belief systems without believers and there are no cultural practices without ideology. To deny our participation in ideology is to be running from our shadow. Art’s role within capitalism has empowered it to participate in social formation in a much more direct way. The exhibition value of art is a means of interpellation to the audience. Ideology is the realm where viewpoints can be debated and behaviors modified. By recognizing the existence of multiple ideologies as well as the structural system of ideology we can choose whether or not to add significance for or against dominant ideologies through the experiences we select to express within our art.

To summarize, we have expressed the function of art as the translation of experience into a visual language, analyzed the life and afterlife of artworks, and we have chronicled the dislocation of meaning and the replacement of aura with mass media exhibition value. Everything is tied to a natural history of life and death. And as such I would like to leave you with one more idea. While mass media is shrinking the distance between art and audience, and in the process extracting it from its ritualistic function, over time the aura may return. What was once a momentary blip of transmission on a television screen can appear to have no aura, no attachment to object but with time and retranslation it can achieve greater distance and elevation. The objects and imagery of any period will ultimately define the collective memory of the next generation. What was once a news broadcast of John F. Kennedy uttering the words “Ich bin ein Berliner!” has taken on greater significance as an expression of an event that interconnects to Ronald Reagan’s statement, “Mr. Gorbachov, tear down that wall!” Over time, even the most seemingly insignificant expression can end up being synopsis for a whole ideology or cultural period. What task is required of the artist within this superstructure? To live, be aware of their existence within ideology, and translate the meaningful experiences of their narrative or the narrative of significant people that they come into contact with. There is no formal effort required (or appropriate) to reach a particular audience, no rhetorical explanation necessary, nor fame to be sought. As artist we create from an internal desire to express what is meaningful to us. Leaving everything out the work but the minimum necessary to create memory and to send our work into the afterlife...

Bibliography
Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schoken Books 1969)
Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press 2001)