In
order to look at the issue of the possibility of the ‘ethical’
encounter with an art object a logical starting point is the work of
Emmanuel Levinas. Rather than metaphysical ontology, Levinas
maintained that ethics was the ‘first philosophy’ as it was the
interaction with the ‘Other’ that gave meaning to our existence.
Levinas’ work, beginning with the Totality and Infinity (1961) is a
critique of Western philosophy, in particular Heidegger and Husserl.
Levinas’ concern is that Western philosophy has been preoccupied
with Being and the self, at the expense of what is otherwise than
Being, what lies outside the self as infinite and alterior, the
Other. The term ‘Other’ can also be found in the work of Hegel
who introduced it as an important part of self-consciousness1.
Levinas
discusses the possibility of the ethical encounter with the ‘Other’
and places particular importance on the face-to-face relationship
between it and the self. Being face-to-face with the Other forbids a
reduction to sameness and simultaneously creates a responsibility for
the other in the self. As human beings we are not inherently ethical,
with our most primal desire being to kill the other and remove the
threat of the unknown, as Hegel puts in Phenomenology of Spirit
(1977) ‘each consciousness pursues the death of the other’2.
Levinas argues that by putting ourselves face-to-face with the other
we are unable to carry out this desire, as by turning to face the
Other we are acknowledging their demand of ‘thou shalt not kill
me’. We should hold the belief that we are all responsible for all
others but I (the self) am more responsible than all others. In
accordance with Levinas the Other is superior or prior to the self
and the mere presence of the Other makes demands before one can
respond by either helping or ignoring them. At this point, one may
draw parallels between these moral concerns and that of the Bible,
‘turning the other cheek’ being of particular relevance.
For Levinas, the Other is always
unknowable and cannot be made into an object of the self. There is
inherent asymmetry to the Other: the Other is and shall always remain
‘other’. In attempting to appropriate and grasp the character of
the Other we are in a sense killing it, ceasing to allow it to exist
as other. Gwendolyn Bays (1948) puts it rather succinctly when she
writes ‘in understanding my friend's mind I must first "freeze"
it, encompass it, and in this sense kill it’3.
She writes this in reference to Simone de Beauvoir’s novel
L'Invitee (1943) (often translated as ‘She Came to Stay’) which charts
the relationship of Pierre and Francoise (widely accepted to be a
thinly veiled representation of Beauvior herself and Jean-Paul Satre)
and the damaged caused by a young girl named Xaviere who threatens to
break them apart. The character of Francoise can choose to exile
Xaviere or take her under her wing, and it is by her ‘adoption of
Xaviere (that) she had pursued the younger girl's death, and her
generous acceptance of Xaviere's competition had itself been a
strategy of containment.’4
Another
important element to make reference to in the work of Levinas is the
differentiation that is made between the act of ‘saying’ and the
‘said’. The two are distinguished in that the ‘saying’ is
irreducible to one meaning and infinite, it is the act of
communication, whereas the ‘said’ is what is conveyed in the
saying and can is normally reduced to something finite (there is
obviously the potential for misinterpretation but this is of little
consequence). In short, it is the act of communication that is more
important than the information that is being communicated. The act of
paying attention to the ‘saying’ is ethical in that it shows
non-indifference to the Other, regardless of what is being ‘said’.
The ‘said’ is potentially of little relevance, it is allowing the
Other the opportunity to say that is our responsibility, not
interpreting and making assessments of the ‘said’. An example,
which allows us to relate to this, is perhaps that of banal
conversation. It is the act of engaging with someone, of
acknowledging them and allowing them the time and space to speak to
us that is of importance, not the content of the day-to-day
pleasantries that are being exchanged. It is the act of friendship,
not the comments about the weather that are meaningful in such a
scenario.
Now
let us expand upon this idea of the ethical encounter. If we take the
concept of the Other to mean not just the rest of mankind but in fact
to all objects that are outside ourselves, and move away from the
idea of the encounter as being a social one, could we perhaps apply
the idea of the ethical encounter to the encounter with an art
object, with the art object as the ‘Other’? Let us look at how
such an application might work. Initially it could be said that any
attempt to be face-to-face with the art object, to acknowledge its’
attempt at ‘saying’ is the basis for an ethical encounter. By
allowing it to make demands of us (our time, turning and facing it)
we are allowing the art object to be prior to ourselves, which
Levinas suggests, is ethically sound. So far, so good. This however,
is rarely the extent of our encounter with the art object. There is
undeniably, consciously or otherwise an attempt on the viewer’s
part to make sense of the meaning of a piece of work, an attempt to
decipher the ‘said’, to draw conclusions about the status of the
object as ‘other’.
If
we are to agree with Levinas, then surely this is the making of an
unethical encounter, attempting to conceive the other and take it on
as a part of the self. Expecting to leave an encounter with an art
object with a coherent understanding of what it is that has been ‘said’ is
effectively destroying it’s ‘otherness’. Not only this, but
upon assessing what we believe to have been ‘said’ we make
judgements as to the competency of the ‘saying’. It is also true
to say that on occasion, we may deny an art object a face-to-face
encounter because of what we believe the content of the said to be.
If we believe that a work may be offensive or irrelevant, we may
decide to avoid seeing it, denying it the potential of saying. On
occasion we may turn away from a work that we deem unworthy of our
time, in which case are we not shying away from Levinas’ plea that
we must be responsible for the Other more than the Other must be
responsible for us? We are punishing the Other for not giving us what
we hoped it might, this itself cannot be seen to be ethical, nor can
imposing limits upon it’s worth and value. Perhaps then the most
ethical way to encounter an art object is to ask nothing of the
object, to expect to learn nothing and place the importance on the
fact that the art object is ‘saying’ something, regardless of
what that is. However, if we were to function in such a manner then
surely no art work could be held as being of higher merit than any
other, that fact that an art object was ‘saying’ something,
regardless of how banal would be enough for it to be heralded as
worthy of our time. While this may seem an ethical practice, it seems
deeply counterintuitive and potentially rather destructive. If all
work was to deemed of the same merit, what would be the incentive to
create something truly exceptional. Levinas, it seems, is already
causing us problems.
If
we take this idea, potentially unwisely, yet further, could it be
said that by hailing an art object as one of artistic merit we are
making premature assumptions of its’ meaning and worth? This could
be seen as an example of placing too much emphasis on the ‘said’
than on the ‘saying’. We are placing upon it our own pre-existing
expectation that it will have some meaningful content or contribution
higher than alternative objects or Others. Perhaps in differentiating
between an object and an art object we are claiming to know something
definitive about the ‘unknowable’, in which case our encounter
becomes unethical as soon as we ascribe the label ‘art’. We
believe that a painting will have something more relevant to tell us
than a table, so the painting is placed in a specially designed space
and the table is reduced to a servant, forgotten under a pile of
papers and coffee mugs. What is the solution, do we spend our time
having ‘encounters’ with tables, or should we use ‘David with
the Head of Goliath’5
as a handy place to balance a beverage?
If
we are to extrapolate (somewhat uncompromisingly perhaps) Levinas’
ideas into the world of art we seem to be at risk of writing off
criticism, theory and curation and any encounter with an art object
as inherently unethical. A critic should not make any judgements
about a piece of work, because one Other should surely not be held in
higher regard than another. Art Theory could be seen as trying to
make claims about the otherness of Other, and in doing so the Other
is destroyed and effectively killed, leading us into deeply unethical
territory. Curating an exhibition is making claims as to knowledge of
otherness and of the ‘said’ as being meaningful in some way and
worthy of the title of ‘art’. So what is the answer, do we allow
Levinas’ ethics to chip away at the foundation of art appreciation
and criticism?
There
seem to be two possible ways to escape from the bind into which
Levinas, his ethics and this line of enquiry seem to have placed us. Firstly we may
choose to reassess the relationship we should expect to have with the
Other and question whether asymmetry really is the most ethical
relationship to expect to have. Zizek’s ‘Neighbor and Other
Monsters’(2005)6
leads us to look at symmetry in a slightly different way. If
asymmetry leads us to always be more responsible for the Other than
they are for us, we are placing ourselves in a privileged position.
We are claiming to be the ones with moral responsibility, which could
be seen as claiming to be the higher being. Further to this point,
surely an ethical relationship with the Other should rely upon a
balance of equality, with equal responsibility on both sides and a
free exchange of ideas and knowledge. One could argue that the
ethical way to encounter the Other is by engaging from a level
playing field and recognising the shared experience we have with the
Other who exists within the same time and space as us. This could
lead us into difficulty again however as it would be hard to claim
this is the relationship we have with an art object, while we may
expect to gain something from our encounter with an art object, one
cannot reasonably claim that the art object gains anything from us.
The
second route to take perhaps to abandon the idea that an encounter
with an art object must necessarily be ethical. Let us cast an eye
over the life of an art object. In the creation of a work in the
first place an artist is claiming to have something of relevance to
say, something that we need to hear. Surely these potential delusions
of grandeur are not particularly ethical and could be, (in fact often
are) judged to be misplaced. Questions could be asked as to how
ethically sound it is for one to self-appoint as someone whose voice
should be more loudly heard than that of others’, surely this is
not placing the demands of the Other as prior to the self.
The
subject matter of an art work is another topic in which ethical
considerations come into play. An often contentious issue is that of
nudity and sexual explicit content, where the line falls between art
and pornography, if indeed there is one. An example of a casualty of
such debate is a photograph by Nan Goldin that was part of her
‘Thanksgiving’ series, which was seized by police after the image
of a naked child was deemed ‘pornographic’ and potentially
criminal7.
Ethical issues are by no means confined to the subject matter of a
work of art, the way in which such work has been created does not
escape scrutiny. Austrian artist Valie Export was trialed in 1977 for
cruelty to animals after tying a bird to a perch and pouring hot wax
over it as part of a performance8.
Other
areas of the ‘art world’ can hardly be seen to be entirely
ethical, the cut throat world of art business is surely one that
cannot be said to be always ruled by ethical and moral ideals. The
selling and acquiring of works is sure to have winner and losers. In
March of this year New York based art dealer Lawrence Salander
pleaded guilty to grand larceny and fraud after admitting to selling
artworks he didn’t own up the value of $120 million, little of
which is expected to be recovered9.
If this is the background to the object we encounter, it seems to me
that to expect that encounter to be a purely ethical one may be a
little naïve, or at least a little idealistic. To place the confines
of ethicality on an artwork, as we perhaps limiting its potential of
‘saying’?
Also,
in engaging with an encounter with an art object it is fair to say
that we are already expecting something of it. The relationship will
always be a little one sided, we have nothing to offer it, aside from
our attention and yet we are anticipating that it will be able to do
something remarkable for us. We hope that it will convey some truth,
uncover a secret or hand us some precious wisdom or insight and ask
for little in return. This is potentially unethical, yes, but to make
the demand that we abandon these expectations in order to restore our
ethics seems to be to destroy the encounter itself.
Perhaps
it is that Levinas is potentially the ideal, an existence in which we
have no prejudicial ideas. No expectations exist of a person or
object or our encounter with either and we continue to respect the
idea that the Other will remain ‘other’. This instinctively is a
aspiration for the social encounter, to not expect anything from
another person, to not wish to reduce their differences into
something that we can understand and conceive, although this could be
potentially lonely existence. One in which we do not expect anything
from anyone else and all moral responsibility falls at our feet.
While it may be wrong to try to fully conceive the Other, our
relationship with the Other seems important in order to be able to
gain anything from our encounter with it. To attempt to extrapolate
this in regards to the encounter with an art object does not seem to be a workable example. If the Other was always the unknown, and works of
art were seen as the Other, then art, literature music and indeed the
rest of mankind would be able to teach us nothing, and to allow it to
would be to destroy it. We would be left unmoved and mystified by any
such encounter and even if it is supposedly ethical, it doesn’t
seem to be in any way desirable.
Maybe
it is wrong to be looking to have an ethical encounter with such an
object. Perhaps the ethical encounter should have no more
pre-requisites than that we allow ourselves to give time to the art
object, that we allow it to do it’s saying. Whether we manage to
grasp the ‘said’ is hugely subjective, some work will shout at
us, others will whisper quietly in a language that is barely
decipherable, and there are some that will remain mute. It is my
belief that the most rewarding encounter with an artwork shocks us,
haunts us, unsettles us and disrupts us, and where does one begin to
look for the ethical in that?
1
Hegel, G. W. F. (1977)
Phenomenology of
spirit. Trans. A. V.
Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2
Hegel, G. W. F. (1977).
Phenomenology of
spirit. Trans. A. V.
Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (pp. 113)
6
Zizek, S. (2005) ‘The neighbor
and other monsters’, in Zizek, L., Slanter, E. L and Reinhard, K.
The Neighbor: Three
Inquiries in Political Theology, Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press.
8
http://viennanet.info/polemics/valie-export-in-belvedere
[14 Nov 2010]
9
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5983268.ece
[14 Nov 2010]
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