Aesthetic value: beauty, ugliness and incoherence This is a repository copy of Aesthetic value: beauty, ugliness and incoherence. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/3239/ Article: Kieran, M. (1997) Aesthetic value: beauty, ugliness and incoherence. Philosophy, 72 (281). pp. 383-399. ISSN 0031-8191 eprints@whiterose.ac.uk https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Reuse See Attached Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing eprints@whiterose.ac.uk including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. mailto:eprints@whiterose.ac.uk https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ promoting access to White Rose research papers White Rose Research Online Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/3239/ Published paper Kieran, M. (1997) Aesthetic value: beauty, ugliness and incoherence, Philosophy, Volume 72 (281), 383 - 399. eprints@whiterose.ac.uk Aesthetic Value: Beauty, Ugliness and Incoherence M A T T H E W K I E R A N I: Beauty and Aesthetic Value From Plato through Aquinas to Kant and beyond beauty has tradi- tionally been considered the paradigmatic aesthetic quality. T h u s , quite naturally following Socrates' strategy in The Meno, we are tempted to generalize from our analysis of the nature and value of beauty, a particular aesthetic value, to an account of aesthetic value generally. When we look at that which is beautiful, the object gives rise to a certain kind of pleasure within us. T h u s aesthetic value is characterized in terms of that which affords us pleasure. Of course, the relation cannot be merely instrumental. Many activities may lead to consequent pleasures that we would not consider to be aes- thetic in any way. For example, playing tennis, going swimming or finishing a book. Rather it is in the very contemplation of the object itself that we derive pleasure. As Kant puts it: IVe dwell on the contemplation of the beautiful because this con- templation strengthens and reproduces itself. T h e case is analo- gous (but analogous only) to the way we linger on a charm in the representation of an object which keeps arresting the attention, the mind all the while remaining passive.' T h u s contemporary philosophers have, following this tradition, defined aesthetic value in terms of our delighting in and savouring an object with pleasure.* An object is of intrinsic aesthetic value if it appropriately gives rise to pleasure in our contemplation of it. Of course background knowledge of particular art movements, cate- gories or artistic intentions may be required to perceive an artwork appropriately. Nonetheless, given the relevant understanding, it is ' Immanuel K a n t , The Critique of Judgement, trans. J . C . Meredith, (Oxford 'niversity Press, 1951), Book I , Section 12, p. 64. * See, for example, Kendall Walton, ' H o w Marvellous! Toward a T h e o r y of Aesthetic Value', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 5 1 , No. 3, pp. 499-510, Malcolm Budd, Values of Art, (London: Penguin, 1995), pp. 1-44, and Jerrold Levinson, 'Pleasure, Aesthetic' in David Cooper ( e d . ) , A Compatriot to Aesthetics (Oxford: Blackwells, 1992), pp. 330-335. Philosophy 72 1997 383 Matthew Kieran in attending to and savouring u h a t is presented to us that we are afforded pleasure. Of course, we may delight in many things that are presented to us which are not beautiful, such as the comic and the tragic, which we still wish to characterize as aesthetic. \Ve cannot, of course, say they are aesthetic by virtue of the pleasure deriving from their beaut): For often what is tragic or comic is far from beautiful at all. Hence if we are to grasp the essence of aesthetic value, we need a more general characterization. T h e standard move is to use the same form of explanation, where beauty mas taken as the paradigmatic aes- t h e t ~ c qualit?; to derive a general account of aesthetic value. T h e classic account given by Beardsley locates aesthetic value, in quali- ties which vary from the beautiful to the comic or tragic, in the for- mal unit?; complexity and intensity of an object's formal and cog- nitive features.' \l.'hat unites all the various aesthetic qualities is the peculiar delight me take in the development of a theme, the elegance of the representation and so on. T h u s , it is thought, Lve can use the characterization of aesthetic value to generate general principles of aesthetic evaluation. T h e core thought is that what we take delight in is itself delightful, in terms of unit?; harmon); coherent structure and complex development. 11: Counter-Examples However, this standard picture of aesthetic value seems far from adequate if we consider the folloxving kinds of cases. Firstly, con- sider the case of punk. I take ~t that the whole point of punk, incor- porating both music and fashion, was to achieve both maximal ugli- ness and incoherence. T h e point of putting studs or safety pins through noses, dying scruff\; unkempt hair in g a r ~ s h colours, dress- ing u p in black bin bags, tartan zipped trousers and slashed T-shirts was precisely to achieve an incoherent, ugly look. T h i s was, in part, in contra-distinction to the highly stylized, slick and formal empha- sis on elegance that was taken to be predominant at the time. Similarly the use of discordance, guitar feedback and yelling stood in stark contrast to the overblom n, overproduced formalit~es of con- cept rock and the smooth, polished rhythms and harmonies of disco. If one searches for the qualities of coherence or complexitj- in punk music one is not onll- likely to be disappointed but be In for ' iLIonroe Beardsley, Aesthetrcs ( Y e n T o r k : H a r c o u r t , Brace a n d Fl'orld, 1958), S e c t ~ o n 24, pp. 456-470, a n d AIonroe B e a r d s l e ~ , ' O n T h e G e n e r a l ~ t y of C r ~ t i c a l Reasons', Journal of Philosophy, Yol. LIX, S o . 18, 1962, pp. 477-186. Aesthetic Value: Beauty, Ugliness and Incoherence a very painful and unpleasant experience. Which is why many peo- ple find it unintelligible that anyone should like punk at all. But if someone looks for and savours the sheer brute ugliness and inco- herence of it all, then they will derive pleasure from it. An analo- gous example in the case of classical music is the work of composers like Stockhausen and John Cage. T h e point of their music lies in contra-distinction to the setting u p and development of themes and harmonies that typified classical music heretofore. I t is also important to note that the positive evaluation of quali- ties such as ugliness and incoherence are not confined to the sphere of music or the transitory zeitgeist of fashion. I n visual art there is a long tradition of the rendering of grotesques, both real and imag- inary; one only has to think of late Michelangelo, the late Renaissance generally, Francis Bacon or Andreas Serrano. I t seems that we do derive a peculiar delight from the portrayal of distorted physiognomies or the rendering of grotesques. Indeed, many art- works not only involve distinctly repulsive emotions, thoughts and depictions but use repellant materials as well. So even though an artwork may be constituted from repugnant materials, depict per- verse scenes or people, we may be afforded pleasure by attending to them rather than being repelled by them. One reason for this might be that alluded to by John Constable: T h e r e is nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may,-light, shade, and perspec- tive will always make it beautiful.' Subject matter we would ordinarily find disgusting might afford pleasure if it is artistically manipulated in a certain way and we are constrained to regard it in a certain light. T h e peculiar orange medium bathing the crucifix in Andreas Serrano's Piss Christ con- stitutes a peculiarly pleasing, luminous light if looked at indepen- dently of the material's associations. T h u s the contribution of materials we would normally consider repugnant, such as various bodily fluids, may constitute valuable features of an artwork. But it is crucial to recognize that the appeal of such works lies not merely in the way the subjects are rendered but in the very grotes- query of the image itself. T h e high degree of unpleasantness involved often seems central to some artworks. We miss the entire point of Serrano's Piss Christ if we fail to realize what the medium is. T h e very fact that the urine the crucifix is bathed in is high- lighted in the work's title ought to indicate its central relevance to the work. If we just looked at the luminous, aesthetically appealing ' John Constable as quoted in C. R. Leslie, iVlemoirs of the life of John Constable (1873), Chapter 17. Matthew Kieran liquid bathing the crucifix without knowledge of its constituent material, we would have missed the point of the work. For the work's point lies in the juxtaposition of the meaning and associa- tions of the medium used and the crucifix suspended in it. Consider, in a similar vein, the 1928 Buiiuel and Dali film U n Chien Andalou where several different parts are played by the same actor and actress, where the landscape outside the window changes arbitrarily from landscape one minute to cityscape the next and where the juxtaposition of surreal images and stark edits all con- tribute to the film's maximal incoherence. T h e very point of the film is its lack of coherence, its opaqueness to attempts to analyse and make sense of it, whilst textured images such as the grotesque slitting of a donkey's eyeball continue to haunt the mind. T h e point of these examples is that we, or at least some of us, seem to value in art images or music which are assumed to fall out- side the sphere of aesthetic value because they are ugly, grotesque or incoherent and that is their very point. T r u e , aesthetic theorists such as Beardsley may deny such works have any aesthetic value at all. But then this severely weakens the force of their claim to ha\,e captured the notion of aesthetic value, since many people clearly do value such qualities in artworks and, moreover, they are valued as such in many acclaimed masterpieces. T h u s , Lve might be tempted to conclude, the typical picture of aesthetic value must be inade- quate. 111: Cognitive Value O n e possible reply to such an objection is to claim that the examples cited are not really counter examples at all. For we must be careful to separate out cognitive value from aesthetic value. It seems clear that in art we value many different qualities, from the expressive to the cognitive, and not merely the aesthetic. It is crucial that we rec- ognize that artistic and aesthetic value are not co-extensive. A game of football or chess may have great aesthetic value, due to the sheer artistry and elegance of the players, yet we would hesitate to call such things artworks. Conversely, most conceptual art, Dada art- works or the music of John Cage and Stockhausen may almost entirely lack aesthetic value and yet clearly be considered artworks due to their expressive nature or cognitive content. I n these cases even if the work does possess aesthetic value, this seems almost entirely incidental to the reasons we attend to and value them as art- works. T h u s , it may be claimed, what xve value in the counter-examples Aesthetic Value: Beauty, Ugliness and Incoherence cited are not any putative aesthetic qualities but rather the cognitive attitudes represented or explored through them. For example, punk took off not merely as a reaction against the slick, stylized, heavily produced music of the time but as, in essence, an anti-establishment cult which aimed to tear down the supposed walls of snobbery, materialism and bourgeois aspirations. T h i s is why, it might be said, many people do not and cannot enjoy punk music. For only if one takes punk as expressive of a certain attitude, and identifies with that attitude, will one derive any satisfaction from listening to, see- ing or being a punk. Just as in the fifties there was an angry young man syndrome underlying popular culture so too one might consid- er punk in the same light. For both in terms of fashion and music punk saw itself as standing against the values and aesthetics of tra- ditional British society. Indeed, the phrase anti-aesthetic used of such movements may be a telling one. For it seems plausible to hold that what is valued about punk is the underlying attitude rather than any intrinsic aesthetic merits possessed by the music. Similarly it might be said that the grotesqueries of late Michelangelo are valued because they express a disenchantment with the religious order of the world after the fall and sacking of Rome. Moreover grotesque, ugly and incoherent art- works may be valued by virtue of the way they enable us to explore our cognitive attitudes, beliefs and desires. So, in the case of a Francis Bacon, though horrifically ugly and repulsive, the work may have great appeal and artistic value because it enables us to confront and explore what it would be like if humanity were rotten, diseased, corrupted and distorted. T h r o u g h engaging with such artworks we may learn and develop our cognitive understanding of what certain human possibilities would or could be like.' O u r pleasure in such cases may arise from the provocation of cer- tain attitudes or our cognitive curiosity. Artworks or movements devoted to the grotesque or incoherent are concerned to provoke certain attitudes or explore our fascination with certain anomalies which violate our standard social and moral categories. Francis Bacon's creations violate the natural order, the way humanity appears to be, and for this very reason compels our curiosity, inter- est and thus attention. Yet, at the same time and for the same rea- sons, we find them aesthetically disgusting and repugnant. T h e abrogation of society's standard categories may be where both the fascination and aesthetic repugnance of such works lies. Therefore, though they lack aesthetic value, such works may be of great artis- tic value. j Noel Carroll makes a similar point about the value of horror films in his The Philosophy of H o r r o r ( N e w York: Routledge, 1990), p p 158-1 95. Matthew Kieran So cognitive value may explain why we attend to intrinsically unpleasant things in art and value them as such. Furthermore, in engaging with artworks, we can afford to explore repulsive, grotesque and incoherent apparations and situations in a way we could not in the real world. For we cannot be threatened by an imaginary state of affairs in the way we could be if what we were imagining was actually happening. Hence kve may enjoy contem- plating the ugly or incoherent in art, a matter which might not so readily give rise to pleasure if the situation represented were part of our everyday world and constituted an actual threat to ourselves. After all, the threat of chaos and incoherence in our lives hardly gives rise to pleasurable delight. By contrast, in art we can experi- ence what sheer chaos, ugliness and brutality might be like, and per- haps what it would be appropriate to think and feel, without the potentially terrible cost which would follow in the real world. Therefore we can consider, provoke and satiate our curiosity about the grotesque, the ugly and the incoherent in art in ways we could or would not do in our everyday life. Perhaps then, by divorcing aesthetic from artistic value, such an account can completely explain why we value such artworks. Even as a psychological matter, it is often difficult for us to explore our curiosity about creatures, possibilities and events which challenge the way we categorize the world. T h i s may be due to social taboos or real emotional and physical threats. However, in art these constraints fall away and we can provoke, extend and indulge our curiosity. So the cognitivist can claim to resolve the challenge to the traditional picture of aesthetic value. For he rejects the notion that we aesthetically value the disgusting, ugly or incoherent, whilst nonetheless recognizing their cognitive virtues in works of art. T h e unpleasant appearances, thoughts and feelings are conceived of as unfortunate by-products of the cognitive pay-off. If we are to explore the ideas, concepts and categorial violations which give rise to the value distinctive of such artworks, the unpleasant by-prod- ucts are unfortunate but necessary. T h u s our interest in the ugly, incoherent or obscene lies in the curious violation of our social norms and conceptual framework. T h e fact that they are aestheti- cally unpleasant and repel us is the price we must pay. Consider, in this light, the appeal of the Dada art movement. T h e use of and delight in radical artistic practices used to subvert attempts to impose sense upon art, literature and the world was associated with a radical political standpoint. T h e reaction against figuration and artistic attempts to render the human world intelligi- ble suggests that Dada saw itself in direct opposition not merely to the artistic but, more generall?; to the broader political and social Aesthetic Value: Beauty, Ugliness and Incoherence status quo. Perhaps without the use of these radical techniques which fractured the audience's ability to make sense of what was going on, Dada would not have been able to question or stand against the way society was conceived to be. T h u s it is not that ugli- ness and incoherence are themselves intrinsically valuable in aes- thetic terms, but rather that under certain circumstances they can be used to make us confront and explore certain possibilities about our own society, possibilities we would not otherwise think about: T h e word Dada symbolizes the most primitive relation to the reality of the environment; with Dadaism a new reality comes into its own. Life appears as a simultaneous muddle of noises, colours and spiritual rhythms, which is taken unmodified into Dadaist art, with all the sensational screams and fevers of its reckless everyday psyche and with all its brutal reality. T h i s is the sharp dividing line separating Dadaism from all artistic direc- tions u p until now ... Dadaism for the first time has ceased to take an aesthetic attitude toward life, and this it accomplishes by tear- ing all the slogans of ethics, culture and inwardness, which are merely cloaks for weak muscles, into their components." Indeed the whole point of foregrounding the construction of the artwork, in Dada, Brechtian theatre or nem wave French cinema, is to make us stop and think about the ways in which we can be lead into thinking certain institutions, social practices and structures are 'natural' and therefore cannot be changed. T h u s the usually nega- tive value of incoherence can have a positive value when it is artis- tically used to get us to see things in a new light. One key means of doing so in twentieth century art clearly involves the fracturing of our experience of the work, thereby foregrounding the verj- ways in which we attempt to impose sense upon our n o r l d . IV: The Appeal of the Grotesque Yet though the cognitivist's explanation is partially adequate it can- not prove wholly so. For what is left out of the cognitivist account is the actual delight we feel in attending to repellent, ugly and inco- herent artworks. I t obviously makes sense to claim of a' Dada piece that it is just not incoherent enough, of a Stockhausen performance that it was just too harmonious or to say of a punk that he is just not as grotesque as he should be; and in all these cases we are disap- ' Richard Hulsenbeck, 'First German Dada Alanifesto ("Collective Dada hlanifesto)"', pp. 254-255, in Charles Harrison and Paul LYood (eds),Art i n Theory 1900-1 990 (Oxford: Blackwells, 1992). Matthew Kieran pointed. T h e cognitivist equates these claims to the demand that they should explore more fully the relevant categorial violations. But the assimilation is a false one. Imagine Piss Christ had the same title but did not in fact use urine as its medium. Since we can treat the work as if constituted by urine this would hardly lessen the work's exploration of the divine as a being both of our human world and yet violating our standard cat- egories. Yet, for some at least, this would significantly diminish the force and appeal of the work itself. On the cognitivist account, Piss Christ would be a better art~vork with a different medium. Yet this is the exact opposite of what is the case. If the original medium was replaced then many would deem it to be of lesser value as art. T h i s is precisely because we enjoy and value the uncomfortable oscilla- tion between the beauty of the image and the repulsive material it is actually constituted out of, independently of whether it extends our curiosity about the image violating our standard conceptualization of the world. Secondlq; the cognitivist's account works far better for our appre- ciation of Francis Bacon or Andreas Serrano than it does for ugly, brutal, chaotic images of war or grief. Whether a depiction of war or grief is valued as art does not seem to depend upon its violation of our categorial schemes at all. For example, the work of Goya, ugly) brutal tribal sculptures of various war gods, Picasso's Guernica or Weeping Woman seem, if anything, to confirm and extend, rather than abrogate, our understanding of violence, war or grief respec- tively. T h u s Picasso states: If someone wished to express war it might be more elegant and literary to make a bow and arrow because that is more esthetic, but for me, if I want to express war, I'll use a machine-gun!' T h e value of Guernica or Weeping Woman lies not in their con- fronting us with searing, repellent violations of our standard con- cepts. Rather, their value lies centrally in their exploration of the vicious nature of grief and n a r respectively; which we can all rec- ognize and whose sheer raw poxver we should find discomforting, animalistic and repugnant. ICIoreover, the pleasure we feel does not just derive from the fact that the ug14; grotesque subject of the work is not a threat or open to our apprehension in el~eryday life. For in everyday life me sometimes do come across those unfortunate enough to be deformed, horrific conflicts or vicious forms of grief upon which, rather unfortunately, people are inclined to dwell. No ' Picasso as quoted in a conversation on Guernica recorded by Jermoe Seckler in 1945 excerpted in Herschel B. Chipp (ed.), Theories o f IWodern Art (Berkley: C'niversity of California Press, 1968). p. 488. Aesthetic Value: Beauty, Ugliness and Incoherence doubt we are all familiar with the fact that pedestrians and traffic habitually slow down to take a good look at some unfortunate acci- dent victim. T h e cognitivist account fails not only to recognize that we may enjoy and savour the fundamentally repugnant, ugly and incoherent in art but, just as significantly, that some do so in their everyday lives. T h e cognitivist response fails to hit the target. Even though part of the reason grotesquery, ugliness and incoherence are valued in art concerns their relation to our categorial schemes, this cannot be the tl-hole story. For many people just do delight in the presentation of the grotesque, ugly or incoherent features themselves. Hence the appeal of the Grotesque O l d IVoman, after Quentin Massys, c. 1520, to be found in the National Gallery, London, or Christian Schad's depiction of A g o s t a t h e Pigeon-chested iWan a n d R a s h a t h e B l a c k D o c e , displayed in the Royal Academy's German Art in the Twentieth Century exhibition. If a beautiful, coherent, non- grotesque and elegant subject and artistic means could be found to express the same attitudes a work would not necessarily be better, as it would have to be according to the cognitivist. If U n C h i e n A n d n l o u expressed the same point, the possible incoherence of the world, but was edited in such a nay that it did so coherently and devoid of horrific images, Ive would have lost rather than improved the work's value Of course, perhaps a certain attitude or disposition is required to delight in such features. One might even think that those who are petrified by the possible meaninglessness of the world will be unable, psychologically speaking, to cope with attending to works and features which manifest this possibility or delight in it. But the fundamental point is that we do not value ugliness, grotesquery or incoherence in the examples cited merely because they are taken to represent an attitude. For those who value them, the works and their typically repellent features are delighted in and savoured. T h u s we can make sense of the complaint, made of a portrait of a grotesque, Dada piece or a punk rock track, that it is just not ugly, repugnant or incoherent enough. V: Relational Value 4 different response would be to claim that although we do delight in the sound or look of features such as ugliness or incoherence it is only by virtue of their relation to other features of a work or other artistic movements. Consider the following quotation from Shakespeare's Twelfth Aright: Matthew Kieran O! what a deal of scorn looks beautiful I n the contempt and anger of his lip." Part of the point of Shakespeare's lines is precisely that the nor- mally distorted and horrific features of scorn and contempt them- selves become beautiful and pleasurable to dwell upon when mani- fested in the features of one who is both beautiful and beloved. T h u s what is normally repellent and harsh to look upon maq: given a certain context and relation to other features, become beautiful and pleasing. So, following Sible?; it may be claimed that the aes- thetic value of features such as ugliness and incoherence may be, properly speaking, relational and wholly context dependent rather than being, as is the case with beaut); of autonomous aesthetic value." Take aTvay the relation and ive would not savour these fea- tures at all. For example, the deliberate incoherence and ugliness of punk rock or Stockhausen were valued in contrast to ~ v h a t had gone before. Xamely, a highly polished structural coherence and de\,el- opment of themes and harmonies which seemed too slick and empty. T h u s , in contrast to the formal elegance and beauty of prior music forms, punk and Stockhausen were enjoyed precisely because they xvere not polished, slick or finished but grating, raw and appar- ently uncontrolled. It is a general feature of our understanding of art that it is neces- sarily comparative.'" O u r understanding of the nature and point of an artwork depends not just on attending to a work in isolation but, necessarily, to its place in an artist's oeuvre as a whole, the relation of the artist to a particular mo\-enlent and the relation between the movement to lvhich he belongs and the movements he conceives himself to be reacting to; lvhether it be in terms of repeating, extending or repudiating particular artistic traditions. A work's artistic value is intelligible if and only if \ve grasp its various rela- tions to the works and movements that preceded it. Consider once more the Dada art movement. Only in the light of a classical art tradition and attempts to capture the essential, unchanging, eternal values of art which reasserted itself after the catastrophe of ITorld \Tar I , with which the avant garde's glorifica- tion of n-ar and machine aestheticism had been associated, can lve make sense of the assault attempted by Dada on the cultural prac- tice of art. Only given the predominant classical conception of art "Shakespeare, Tzcelfth Sight (1601), Act 3, Section 1, 1. 159. Frank Sibley, 'Aesthetic C o n c e p t s ' , Plzilosopltical Reciezc, h l . 68, 1959, pp. 421-450. ' I ' See David H u m e ' s essay. 'Of t h e S t a n d a r d of T a s t e ' in his Selected Essays (Oxford University Press, 1993), S . Copley a n d A . Edgar (eds), pp. 133-1 54. Aesthetic Value: Beauty, Ugliness and Incoherence can we make sense of Marcel Duchamp's readymades as a jokey attempt to refute the presumption that good art must manifest an essential property or transcendent value. Only in the light of a rea- soned, traditional conception of art do the essentially irrationalist and deconstructive techniques of Dada make any sense. For if the classical tradition had not existed prior to Dada then far from con- stituting an art movement what was produced would, in the most literal sense, have been nonsense. Similarly, only in the light of a great classical tradition stretching from Monteverdi through Mozart and Beethoven to Elgar, does the music of John Cage or Stockhausen make any sense. For such movements are essentially negative in a deep sense; they are essentially repudiations of the artistic traditions that had evolved and developed pre\~iously over many ages. Take away the tradition that is being repudiated and such music or art makes no sense. O n this story, then, features such as ugliness and incoherence may possess intrinsic aesthetic value but, unlike beauty, this value is only parasitic. T h e i r value is wholly supervenient on their relations to and the negative evaluation of other works and artistic traditions. Take away the prior works and traditions and the relation to what is being repudiated disappears and, consequentl\; what merits the works have would vanish. Hence, one might suggest, punk music died a predictable death once popular music became vital once more instead of slickly pursuing empty disco formulas. RJoreover, for those who continue to delight in the classical tradition, the appeal of Cage and Stockhausen remains deeply puzzling and unintelligible. T h e point is that features such as ugliness and incoherence may have an intrinsic aesthetic value only in certain contexts; where such features are used to react negatively against other artistic traditions. But beauty and coherence, by contrast, have an independent aes- thetic value which is not reducible to particular contexts and rela- tions, though what makes something beautiful may \\ell be context dependent. VI: Freakish Delights Konetheless, although an appreciation of artistic traditions is required to understand how certain ~ v o r k s or artistic movements came about, and thus grasp a large part of their value, it cannot be the whole truth. For in the case of Stockhausen, U n Chien Andalou and the portrayal of grotesques, we do consider the ugly and inco- herent features of the work to possess a certain positive aesthetic worth, independently of their relation to and our negative evalua- Matthew Kieran tion of other works o r artistic movements. Hence, for example, we might like both soul music, Elgar or Hollywood films and the kind of works typified by punk, Stockhausen's music or U n Chien Andalou. Of course, part of the value of the ugliness and incoherence man- ifest in representational works which bear these features lies in their artistic rendering and the oscillation between the work and what it depicts. Moreover, part of the enjoyment of these features arises from a contrast between the way the artistic object is and the way it could have been. For example, U n Chien Andalou works precisely because it sets u p all sorts of expectations and then proceeds to frus- trate them at every conceivable t u r n . T h e characters change, just as a narrative line suggests itself it is cut off, the images clash and so on. Similarly, part of the attraction of grotesques lies in the very disjunction between what, had they been normal they would have been like, and the distorted, corrupted, freakish physiognomies we see before us. We look at what is presented to us and value it at the meta-level for its frustration of our expectations and the oscillation between what we see or hear and ~ v h a t we would normally expect such works or people to be like." Yet the attraction cannot entirely rest at the meta-level. For we may just delight in and savour what is ugly and incoherent, which ties in with a certain kind of human fascination for the freakish or horrific. Indeed, consider Leontion's story as recounted by Plato in The Republic: he noticed some corpses lying on the ground with the execution- er standing by them. H e wanted to go and look at them, and yet at the same time held himself back in disgust. For a time he struggled and covered his eyes, but at last his desire got the bet- ter of him and he ran up to the corpses, opening his eyes and say- ing to them, ' T h e r e you are, curse you,-a loeely sight! Have a real good look."' T h e point is that Leontion's delighting in the corpses, analogous to punk's delight in complete ugliness or incoherence in both style and music, suggest that it is the grotesque features which are themselves delighted in. Of course, one might hold that it is a purely contin- gent matter as to whether people actually savour intrinsically I' T h i s kind of line is suggested by Jerrold Lei-inson, 'Pleasure and the Value of [Vorks of A r t ' , B v i t i s h Journal of A e s t h e t i c s , Vol. 3 2 , No. 4, 1992, p. 300. l 2 Plato, T h e Republic, trans. D. Lee, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), 2nd edn, Book I\: pp. 215-216, 1. 439e-1.140a. T h e italics are my own, to emphasize that Leontion delights in the sight of the corpses. Aesthetic Value: Beauty, Ugliness and Incoherence unpleasant features such as ugliness." T h e thought is that it is not the intrinsically unpleasant features and our subsequently unpleas- ant response that are delighted in but, rather, only the features of the object which give rise to an unpleasant, unsavoured response. Recognizing that delighting in the grotesque, ugly and incoherent may be aesthetically rewarding does not entail that what is ugly, grotesque or incoherent is a contingent matter. For there are certain ideal human standards by virtue of which it is appropriate to derive pleasure from certain things and be repelled by others.I4 Certain tastes or sensations are pleasurable under certain standard and nor- mative human conditions. In normal cases where someone fails, say, to delight in quenching their thirst or in being reunited with a friend we look for an explanation. If the failure to derive pleasure from such cases is beyond the standard limits of taste or desire vari- ation, then it must be explained in terms of the subject's divergence from our norms of desire. However, in secondary cases, where we can inhibit or modify the standard conditions through interference or convention, then sensations which are typically unpleasant may become pleasant and vice versa. T h u s , a delight in our reponses to ugliness, incoherence and the grotesque may constitutively include negative or positive evaluative thoughts and are individuated according to their formal object. Ugliness, incoherence and grotesquery which give rise to a response of disgust may intrinsically afford great pleasure, though we might evaluate them as undesireable.15 For we may delight in what we (ought to) desire not to desire.I6 T h e attractions of activi- ties such as sado-masochism are not reducible to the controlled rit- ualistic role play which enables people to engage in and enjoy activ- ities that, outside such a controlled artificial context, would both be highly dangerous and socially threatening. T h e fact is that such activities are pursued because they focus upon and afford a pleasur- able delight, which is savoured, in the infliction of pain and brutal- ity. But such a delight is intrinsically perverse since our evaluation I' See Kendall Walton, M i m e s i s as M a k e Believe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 257, and Alex Neill, 'On a Paradox of the Heart', Philosophical S t u d i e s , \'ol. 65, 1992, pp. 53-65. " See Alasdair MacIntyre's 'Pleasure as a Reason for Action' in his A g a i n s t t h e S e l f I m a g e s of t h e A g e (London: Duckworth, 1971), pp. 173-1 90. See Berys G a u t , ' T h e Paradox of Horror', B r i t i s h J o u r n a l of Aesthetics, 1'01. 33, No. 4, 1993, pp. 339-344, makes this point in relation to o u r enjoyment of fearful and horrific fictions. '"ee David Lewis, 'Dispositional Theories of Value', A r i s t o t e l i a n S o c i e t y S z ~ p p l . V o l . , Vol. L X I I I , 1989, pp. 113-137. Matthew Kieran of such a delight resulting from a perverse desire ought to be nega- tive: we ought to be ashamed of desiring and delighting in the painful, the brutal and the downright dangerous. Indeed, if some- one were not only to take delight in such activities but evaluate them positively, then we would take this as a mark of a perverse charac- ter. As I have argued ugly, incoherent and grotesque artworks can and sometimes do afford us aesthetic pleasure. Hence from Bacon's bru- tal vision of the human condition through Picasso's searing depic- tion of grief to Serrano's Piss Christ, Stockhausen or punk rock we can appreciate why many people appropriately consider them to possess aesthetic value. Typically unpleasant features, characters or states of affairs may be of aesthetic value and cannot be wholly explained away as unfortunate by-products of something else we derive pleasure from. Rather they may afford pleasure, at least to those with an aesthetic sensibility directed toward the chaotic, ugly and incoherent, in attending to them. So the standard account of aesthetic value holds good but only if we are careful to distinguish, as too many people often fail to do, between aesthetic and artistic value. Hence it makes sense to complain that a punk's outfit is not inco- herent enough, that the grotesque depicted in a portrait is not ugly enough or that U n Chien Andalou could have been more fractured. Moreover, we do not delight in these appearances merely because they confirm our responses as appropriate. Leontion does not thrill to the sight of the corpses merely because it confirms to him that he is the kind of person who is afraid of death. For Leontion's pleasure is not dependent upon him refraining from looking at the corpses but rather precisely in his dwelling upon them. T h e very sight of the distorted, dehumanized corpses is an essential part of the delight he takes in his enjoyment of looking upon them. Such unpleasant sights themselves can actually afford us a peculiar kind of aesthetic pleasure. Of course we may need to have a certain attitude or disposition in order to take delight in the ugly, grotesque or incoherent. I think this is certainly true of much post-modern and nihilistic art, which places primary aesthetic value on the chaotic, incoherent and grotesque, certainly above and beyond formal elegance, grace and unity. Hence the aesthetic value here is perhaps best captured in terms of Kant's dependent beauty. But in so far as Kant's contrast between free and dependent beauty is meaningful, not all the delight we take in ugliness and incoherence is dependent.'' " Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement, trans. J. C. Meredith, (Oxford University Press, 1951), Book 1, Section 1 6 , pp. 72-74. Aesthetic Value: Beauty, Ugliness and Incoherence Sometimes, we just do delight in the appearance of ugliness. For example, in Yorkshire there is a great tradition of gurning. Gurning essentially involves competing to see who can pull the most distort- ed and ugly faces possible. Similarly, the pull of freak shows would be unintelligible if we did not derive pleasure from gazing on the ug14; grotesque and deformed. T h u s , atypically at least, we do derive pleasure from and delight in the grotesque, freakish or chaotic. What I have tried to show is that far from constituting counter examples to the traditional understanding of aesthetic value, if worked out carefully, ugliness and incoherence, contrary to first appearances, conform to it. What this points up, pace Beardsley et al, is the danger of deriving overall aesthetic principles of evalua- tion from the paradigmatic case of beauty. What we delight in, aes- thetically speaking, may be far from delightful. VII: Ethical Afterthoughts I t is important to point out that a perverse fascination for and delight in the freakish is, in a significant sense, perverse. Of course, it might be pointed out that art which confronts and pushes back the boundaries of our ethical and social taboos may be valuable in chal- lenging various prejudices. T h u s confronting the viewer with the ugly, the grotesque or incoherent may usefully challenge our com- fortable assumptions about normality, beauty and the ways in which we make sense of our world. But it is far from clear that pushing back the boundaries of our ethical and social presumptions, at least for its own sake, is a good thing at all. For the corrosion of our natural human bonds may lib- erate us, but liberation from the self-discipline of moral and social restraints upon the violent, ugly and brutish aspects of our animal natures is clearly a bad thing. What marks out human civilization, as distinct from animal behaviour, is precisely our self-conscious suppression and sublimation of our animal natures toward what is, humanly speaking, rational. Artworks which cultivate the delight in our baser non-rational appetites are thus humanly impoverishing and bad as art.18 Indeed, it is interesting to note that the preoccupation with inco- herence, violence and perverse pleasures in art tends to occur after ''See hIatthew Kieran, ' T h e Impoverishment of A r t ' , BritishJournal of Aesthetics, Vol. 35, No. 1 , 1995, pp. 15-25, and 'Art, Imagination and the Cultivation of Morals', Journal of Aesthetics and A r t Critirisnz, Vol. 54, S o . 3. Fall 1996. Matthew Kieran the apparent perfection of a form of a certain kind. For example, Jacobean drama's preoccupations are partly a result of the perfec- tion reached by Shakespearean tragedy; so there is nowhere left to go but down toward pandering to our more perverse pleasures." T h e slide toward decadence is deeply interesting. But although aes- thetically valuing such things ma!- well be the mark of a juvenile or morally bad character, this is a separate matter from the question of- pure aesthetic value. Artistic value is broader than mere aesthetic value. TThen people object to something as obscene they are often not disputing that the work concerned has, or can be seen by some to have, aesthetic value. Rather what underlies the condemnation is the thought that though aesthetically attractive in a certain light, what is represented and how it is conveyed is morally repugnant. A morally or religiously obscene image is not denounced merely by virtue of the subject matter, but because the focus of interest is merely the particularities of the ugl?; repulsive medium used, for instance the urine in Andreas Serrano's Piss Christ, or the tedious, unimaginative con- centration upon the perennial repetition of images of violence and death, as in Damien Hirst, or images of sexual congress, as in the work of Jeff Koons, without any distinctively artistic achievement. I t is interesting to consider in this light John Ruskin's thoughts on the late Renaissance in The S t o n e s of Venice. Ruskin recognized that the art of the period was devoted to the pursuit of pleasure, which we would characterize as aesthetic, but did so only given a debased delight in brutal mocker); monstrosity and deformity at the expense of insight into or the transcendence of our human condition. Hence when describing a sculpture at the base of the t o u e r dedicated to S t . hlary the Beautiful Ruskin comments thus: A head,-huge, inhuman, and monstrous,-leering in bestial degradation, too foul to be either pictured or described ... in that head is embodied the type of evil spirit to which Venice \vas aban- doned in the fourth period of her decline.'" Ruskin is not disputing that, seen under a certain light, the sculp- ture may be aesthetically rewarding. Rather he is objecting to such things as 'evidences of a delight in the contemplation of bestial vice, and the expression of low sarcasm, \vhich is, I believe, the most hopeless state into which the human mind can fall.'" T h e point is that we can give a story about the aesthetic appeal of such images, ' ' I T h i s example mas suggested to me by Roger 1Vhite. "' John Ruskin, T h e S t o n e s of Vetzzce (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1874), Vol. 111, Chapter 111, Section XI: p. 1 2 1 . 2 1 Ibid., Section X1'1, p. 1 2 1 . Aesthetic Value: Beauty, Ugliness and Incoherence yet the kind of interest rewarded by this form of aesthetic attention is a perversion of art proper. Perhaps, as Robert Hughes has sug- gested, a large part of the story may be told in terms of the degen- eration of modern art coupled with an obsession with the external vagaries of fashion and the commercial m a r k e t p l a ~ e . ~ ~ What this does suggest is the extent to which, though producing aesthetically appealing works, such artists and much contemporary art has failed our culture. But this leads us into Plato's worry about the arts and that is a question that can only be addressed elsewhere." Unicersity of Leeds '' Robert Hughes, ' T h e Decline of the City of Mahagonny' in his -Yothing If S o t Cuitical (London: Collins Harvill, 1990), pp. 3-28. 'I Plato, The Republic, trans. \T. K . C. Guthric, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1956), Book X, pp. 421-439. T h i s paper is a h e a d > - modified version of one presented at the Flemish Society of Aesthetics conference in Antwerp, 26-29 September, 1996, in whose proceedings a summation of the earlier version is due to be p u b - lished. I would like to thank all those present, and Roger if'hite, for their helpful comments.