THOUGHTS ON ART & THE PREHISTORY OF THE MIND
The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why - Jelaluddin Rumi
Every work of art is both what it means and what it is. In arts language, it has both content and form.
Form is very specific. It is exactly what it is. Meaning or content, on the other hand, is often ambiguous. The same form can mean different, often contradictory, things to different people. And one person may find multiple meanings in a single specific configuration.
Steven Mithen in his Prehistory of the Mind, writes about art as though what art means is all that matters. For him, in order to be art an artifact must be "either representational or provide evidence for being part of a symbolic code ..." (p.155) and, he says, " the three cognitive processes critical to making art - mental conception of an image, intentional communication and the attribution of meaning - were all present in the early human mind" (p.162).
Those who study art making know that many artists do not start with consciously preconceived images and those who do usually modify that conception to a greater or lesser extent in response to what happens in the developing picture or composition.
Regarding communication, the celebrated New York School painter, Clifford Still, stated, "Demands for communication are both presumptuous and irrelevant. The observer usually sees what his fears and hopes and learning teach him to see."
Susan Sontag in her essays "Against interpretation" and "On Style" makes the point that if we are caught up in attributing meaning to a painting we may fail to fully experience the work of art. She quotes another eminent New York painter, Willem deKooning, "Content (ie. meaning) is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It's very tiny - very tiny, content."
In fact, Mithen's three cognitive processes: mental conception of an image, intentional communication and the attribution of meaning, are not at all critical, or even necessary, for making art . They are, however, critical for writing and many of the artifacts he discusses may be better classified as early forms of notation or writing rather than of art.
Discussing Early Modern Human body adornment Mithen says, "Describing beads and pendants as 'decorative' risks belittling their importance. They would have functioned to send social messages, such as about one's status, group affiliation and membership with other individuals, just as they do in our own society today" (p.174).
No doubt jewelry does have these functions as does much painting and sculpture but from the artist's or artisans point of view, describing beads and pendants as merely "social indicators" risks belittling objects beautiful and interesting and often moving, in themselves, aside from their symbolic functions.
Art has been around by Mithen's count for thirty to sixty thousand years and some kind of engagement with the arts exists in virtually all cultures. These are the hallmarks of an important and successful adaptation. Until we better understand how art activity affects human cognition we should not be anxious to jettison its significant non representational and non symbolic properties.
Though Mithen's interest in art seems one dimensional, in his description of the development of intelligence he suggests a scenario that may contribute to a more complete understanding of art making and the appreciation of its formal qualities. Building on the ideas of Jerry Fodor at MIT and Howard Gardner at Harvard, among others he suggests that the modern mind evolved as consciousness became applicable to previously isolated and autonomous mental modules of social , technical, natural history and linguistic intelligence. He shares the view that consciousness first developed as part of the social intelligence module. Effective social interaction requires that you consider what you are thinking so that you can imagine what others are thinking. From there consciousness gradually spread to other separate intelligence modules.
"Quite how much knowledge was brought to a level of conscious awareness is unclear.....a large proportion of our mental activity is likely to remain closed to us in our unconscious minds."
Mithen continues, "Crafts people, for instance, often appear unaware of the technical knowledge and skill they are using. When asked how they undertake tasks such as throwing a pot they often have difficulty explaining what they do unless they can provide a demonstration. Actions do speak louder than words when technical knowledge is trapped within a specialized cognitive domain" (p. 190).
Our lack of awareness about how we make works of art and why art moves us suggests that perhaps the "art activity intelligence module" is still inaccessible to consciousness. Mithen believes that language is the means through which consciousness was spread to the various mental modules of intelligence. Language may have been ineffective in bringing conscious awareness to the module responsible for our art abilities because language seems unable to get at the essential qualities of art, ie. that which makes art art, rather than just communication or an indication of social position.
The famous French painter Paul Cezanne is just one of many many artists expressing similar sentiments when he writes in a letter to Emile Bernard, May 26, 1904, "Conversations about art are almost always useless."
Religion shares with art the fact that its essence cannot be put into language and, perhaps therefore has less access to consciousness. You can talk around it, use metaphors and analogies (and koans) but essential spiritual knowledge, like essential knowledge about art, seems to be experiential rather than propositional. It resists language.
"Whatever you can say about God is untrue." - Miester Eckhart.
In discussing Early Modern Man Mithen says," ..it is a struggle to imagine what it could possibly have been like to be such a skilled tool maker or natural historian, but not be aware of the depth of one's knowledge or the cognitive processes one uses." (p.148) You can't ask an early human toolmaker what this situation is like but any skilled articulate contemporary painter, composer or poet can tell you.
"If I knew where my songs came from I would go there more often" - Leonard Cohen
Never knowing how you succeed or fail is cause for much tension in the artistic life.
-- Anthony Thompson 10/03