The Origin of the Work of Art
Encyclopedia
The Origin of the Work of Art is the title of an article by German philosopher Martin Heidegger
. Heidegger drafted the text between 1935 and 1937, reworking it for publication in 1950 and again in 1960. Heidegger based his article on a series of lectures he had previously delivered in Zurich and Frankfurt during the 1930s, first on the essence of the work of art and then on the question of the meaning of a "thing," marking the philosopher's first lectures on the notion of art.
Heidegger begins his essay with the question of what the source of a work of art is. The artwork and the artist, he explains, exist in a dynamic where each appears to be a provider of the other. "Neither is without the other. Nevertheless, neither is the sole support of the other." Art, a concept separate from both work and creator, thus exists as the source for them both. Rather than control lying with the artist, art becomes a force that uses the creator for art's own purposes. Likewise, the resulting work must be considered in the context of the world in which it exists, not that of its artist. In discovering the essence, however, the problem of the hermeneutic circle
arises. In sum, the hermeneutic circle raises the paradox that, in any work, without understanding the whole, you can’t fully comprehend the individual parts, but without understanding the parts, you cannot comprehend the whole. Applied to art and artwork, we find that without knowledge of the essence of art, we cannot grasp the essence of the artwork, but without knowledge of the artwork, we cannot find the essence of art. Heidegger concludes that to take hold of this circle you either have to define the essence of art or of the artwork, and, as the artwork is simpler, we should start there.
Artworks, Heidegger contends, are things, a definition that raises the question of the meaning of a "thing," such that works have a thingly character. This is a broad concept, so Heidegger chooses to focus on three dominant interpretations of things:
The third interpretation is the most dominant (extended to all beings), but is derived from equipment: "This long familiar mode of thought preconceives all immediate experience of beings. The preconception shackles reflection on the Being of any given being." The reason Heidegger selects a pair of peasant shoes painted by Vincent Van Gogh
is to establish a distinction between artwork and other "things," such as pieces of equipment, as well as to open up experience through phenomenological description
. This was actually typical of Heidegger as he often chose to study shoes and shoe maker shops as an example for the analysis of a culture. Heidegger explains the viewer's responsibility to consider the variety of questions about the shoes, asking not only about form and matter—what are the shoes made of?—but bestowing the piece with life by asking of purpose—what are the shoes for? What world do they open up and belong to? . In this way we can get beyond correspondence theories of truth
which posit truth as the correspondence of representations (form) to reality (matter).
Next, Heidegger writes of art's ability to set up an active struggle between "Earth" and "World." "World" represents meaning which is disclosed, not merely the sum of all that is ready-to-hand for one being but rather the web of significant relations in which Dasein
, or human being(s), exist (a table, for example, as part of the web of signification, points to those who customarily sit at it, the conversations once had around it, the carpenter who made it, and so on - all of which point to further and further things). So a family unit could be a world, or a career path could be a world, or even a large community or nation. "Earth" means something like the background against which every meaningful "worlding" emerges. It is outside (unintelligible to) the ready-to-hand. Both are necessary components for an artwork to function, each serving unique purposes. The artwork is inherently an object of "world", as it creates a world of its own; it opens up for us other worlds and cultures, such as worlds from the past like the ancient Greek or medieval worlds, or different social worlds, like the world of the peasant, or of the aristocrat. However, the very nature of art itself appeals to "Earth", as a function of art is to highlight the natural materials used to create it, such as the colors of the paint, the density of the language, or the texture of the stone, as well as the fact that everywhere an implicit background is necessary for every significant explicit representation. In this way, "World" is revealing the unintelligibility of "Earth", and so admits its dependence on the natural "Earth". This reminds us that concealment (hiddenness) is the necessary precondition for unconcealment (aletheia), i.e, truth. The existence of truth is a product of this struggle—the process of art—taking place within the artwork.
Heidegger uses the example of a Greek temple to illustrate his conception of world and earth. Such works as the temple help in capturing this essence of art as they go through a transition from artworks to art objects depending on the status of their world. Once the culture has changed, the temple no longer is able to actively engage with its surroundings and becomes passive—an art object. He holds that a working artwork is crucial to a community and so must be able to be understood. Yet, as soon as meaning is pinned down and the work no longer offers resistance to rationalization, the engagement is over and it is no longer active. While the notion appears contradictory, Heidegger is the first to admit that he was confronting a riddle—one that he did not intend to answer as much as to describe in regard to the meaning of art.
. In Nietzsche's The Will to Power
, Heidegger struggled with his notions about the dynamic of truth and art. Nietzsche contends that art is superior to truth, something Heidegger eventually disagrees with not because of the ordered relationship Nietzsche puts forth but because of the philosopher's definition of truth itself, one he claims is overly traditional. Heidegger, instead, questioned traditional artistic methods. His criticism of museums, for instance, has been widely noted. Critics of Heidegger claim that he employs circuitous arguments and often avoids logical reasoning under the ploy that this is better for finding truth. (In fact, Heidegger is employing a revised version of the phenomenological method; see the hermeneutic circle
). Meyer Schapiro
claims that the Van Gogh boots represented are not really peasant boots but those of Van Gogh himself, a detail that would negate Heidegger's reading of the importance of the shoes' purpose inferred from the visual. (Problems with both Heidegger and Schapiro's reading are discussed at length in Jacques Derrida
's Restitutions of the Truth in Pointing ['Pointure'] and in the writing of Babette Babich
). Yet, his notions about art have made a relevant contribution to discussions on artistic truth. For example, Gadamer
uses a lot of Heidegger's work in his book Truth and Method.
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
. Heidegger drafted the text between 1935 and 1937, reworking it for publication in 1950 and again in 1960. Heidegger based his article on a series of lectures he had previously delivered in Zurich and Frankfurt during the 1930s, first on the essence of the work of art and then on the question of the meaning of a "thing," marking the philosopher's first lectures on the notion of art.
Content
In his article, Heidegger explains the essence of art in terms of the concepts of being and truth. He argues that art is not only a way of expressing the element of truth in a culture, but the means of creating it and providing a springboard from which "that which is" can be revealed. Works of art are not merely representations of the way things are, but actually produce a community's shared understanding. Each time a new artwork is added to any culture, the meaning of what it is to exist is inherently changed.Heidegger begins his essay with the question of what the source of a work of art is. The artwork and the artist, he explains, exist in a dynamic where each appears to be a provider of the other. "Neither is without the other. Nevertheless, neither is the sole support of the other." Art, a concept separate from both work and creator, thus exists as the source for them both. Rather than control lying with the artist, art becomes a force that uses the creator for art's own purposes. Likewise, the resulting work must be considered in the context of the world in which it exists, not that of its artist. In discovering the essence, however, the problem of the hermeneutic circle
Hermeneutic circle
-Definition and usage:The hermeneutic circle describes the process of understanding a text hermeneutically. It refers to the idea that one's understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference to the...
arises. In sum, the hermeneutic circle raises the paradox that, in any work, without understanding the whole, you can’t fully comprehend the individual parts, but without understanding the parts, you cannot comprehend the whole. Applied to art and artwork, we find that without knowledge of the essence of art, we cannot grasp the essence of the artwork, but without knowledge of the artwork, we cannot find the essence of art. Heidegger concludes that to take hold of this circle you either have to define the essence of art or of the artwork, and, as the artwork is simpler, we should start there.
- Things as substances with properties , or as bearers of traits.
- Things as the manifold of sense perceptions.
- Things as formed matter.
The third interpretation is the most dominant (extended to all beings), but is derived from equipment: "This long familiar mode of thought preconceives all immediate experience of beings. The preconception shackles reflection on the Being of any given being." The reason Heidegger selects a pair of peasant shoes painted by Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
is to establish a distinction between artwork and other "things," such as pieces of equipment, as well as to open up experience through phenomenological description
Phenomenological description
Phenomenological description is a method of approaching phenomena within the area of phenomenology that attempts to understand the structure of lived experience rather than explain it...
. This was actually typical of Heidegger as he often chose to study shoes and shoe maker shops as an example for the analysis of a culture. Heidegger explains the viewer's responsibility to consider the variety of questions about the shoes, asking not only about form and matter—what are the shoes made of?—but bestowing the piece with life by asking of purpose—what are the shoes for? What world do they open up and belong to? . In this way we can get beyond correspondence theories of truth
Correspondence theory of truth
The correspondence theory of truth states that the truth or falsity of a statement is determined only by how it relates to the world, and whether it accurately describes that world...
which posit truth as the correspondence of representations (form) to reality (matter).
Next, Heidegger writes of art's ability to set up an active struggle between "Earth" and "World." "World" represents meaning which is disclosed, not merely the sum of all that is ready-to-hand for one being but rather the web of significant relations in which Dasein
Dasein
Dasein is a German word famously used by Martin Heidegger in his magnum opus Being and Time, which generally translates to being in its ontological and philosophical sense Dasein is a German word famously used by Martin Heidegger in his magnum opus Being and Time, which generally translates to...
, or human being(s), exist (a table, for example, as part of the web of signification, points to those who customarily sit at it, the conversations once had around it, the carpenter who made it, and so on - all of which point to further and further things). So a family unit could be a world, or a career path could be a world, or even a large community or nation. "Earth" means something like the background against which every meaningful "worlding" emerges. It is outside (unintelligible to) the ready-to-hand. Both are necessary components for an artwork to function, each serving unique purposes. The artwork is inherently an object of "world", as it creates a world of its own; it opens up for us other worlds and cultures, such as worlds from the past like the ancient Greek or medieval worlds, or different social worlds, like the world of the peasant, or of the aristocrat. However, the very nature of art itself appeals to "Earth", as a function of art is to highlight the natural materials used to create it, such as the colors of the paint, the density of the language, or the texture of the stone, as well as the fact that everywhere an implicit background is necessary for every significant explicit representation. In this way, "World" is revealing the unintelligibility of "Earth", and so admits its dependence on the natural "Earth". This reminds us that concealment (hiddenness) is the necessary precondition for unconcealment (aletheia), i.e, truth. The existence of truth is a product of this struggle—the process of art—taking place within the artwork.
Heidegger uses the example of a Greek temple to illustrate his conception of world and earth. Such works as the temple help in capturing this essence of art as they go through a transition from artworks to art objects depending on the status of their world. Once the culture has changed, the temple no longer is able to actively engage with its surroundings and becomes passive—an art object. He holds that a working artwork is crucial to a community and so must be able to be understood. Yet, as soon as meaning is pinned down and the work no longer offers resistance to rationalization, the engagement is over and it is no longer active. While the notion appears contradictory, Heidegger is the first to admit that he was confronting a riddle—one that he did not intend to answer as much as to describe in regard to the meaning of art.
Influence and criticism
A main influence on Heidegger's conception of art was Friedrich NietzscheFriedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
. In Nietzsche's The Will to Power
The Will to Power
The Will to Power is the title given to a book of selectively reordered notes from the literary remains of Friedrich Nietzsche by his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and Heinrich Köselitz...
, Heidegger struggled with his notions about the dynamic of truth and art. Nietzsche contends that art is superior to truth, something Heidegger eventually disagrees with not because of the ordered relationship Nietzsche puts forth but because of the philosopher's definition of truth itself, one he claims is overly traditional. Heidegger, instead, questioned traditional artistic methods. His criticism of museums, for instance, has been widely noted. Critics of Heidegger claim that he employs circuitous arguments and often avoids logical reasoning under the ploy that this is better for finding truth. (In fact, Heidegger is employing a revised version of the phenomenological method; see the hermeneutic circle
Hermeneutic circle
-Definition and usage:The hermeneutic circle describes the process of understanding a text hermeneutically. It refers to the idea that one's understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference to the...
). Meyer Schapiro
Meyer Schapiro
Meyer Schapiro was a Lithuanian-born American art historian known for forging new art historical methodologies that incorporated an interdisciplinary approach to the study of works of art...
claims that the Van Gogh boots represented are not really peasant boots but those of Van Gogh himself, a detail that would negate Heidegger's reading of the importance of the shoes' purpose inferred from the visual. (Problems with both Heidegger and Schapiro's reading are discussed at length in Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
's Restitutions of the Truth in Pointing ['Pointure'] and in the writing of Babette Babich
Babette Babich
Babette E. Babich is an American philosopher known for her studies of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Hölderlin as well as for her work in aesthetics, including the history of ancient Greek sculpture, and continental philosophy, especially continental philosophy of science and technology.- Selected...
). Yet, his notions about art have made a relevant contribution to discussions on artistic truth. For example, Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 magnum opus, Truth and Method .-Life:...
uses a lot of Heidegger's work in his book Truth and Method.
Primary literature
- Heidegger, Martin. Off the Beaten Track (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Translation of Holzwege (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1950), volume 5 in Heidegger's GesamtausgabeGesamtausgabe (Heidegger)Heidegger Gesamtausgabe is the term for the collected works of German philosopher Martin Heidegger, published by The Gesamtausgabe was begun during Heidegger's lifetime...
. - Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings, "On the Origin of the Work of Art." 1st Harper Perennial Modern Thought Edition., ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: HarperCollins, 2008, pg. 143-212).
Secondary literature
- Harries, Karsten "Art Matters: A Critical Commentary on Heidegger's Origin of the Work of Art", Springer Science and Business Media, 2009
- Babich, Babette EBabette BabichBabette E. Babich is an American philosopher known for her studies of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Hölderlin as well as for her work in aesthetics, including the history of ancient Greek sculpture, and continental philosophy, especially continental philosophy of science and technology.- Selected...
. "The Work of Art and the Museum: Heidegger, Schapiro, Gadamer," in Babich, 'Words In Blood, Like Flowers. Philosophy and Poetry, Music and Eros in Hoelderlin, Nietzsche and Heidegger' (SUNY Press, 2006) - González Ruibal, Alfredo. “Heideggerian Technematology.” All Things Archaeological. Archaeolog, November 25, 2005.
- Inwood, Michael. A Heidegger Dictionary. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1999.
- Haar, Michel. “Critical Remarks on the Heideggarian reading of Nietzsche.” Critical Heidegger. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.
- Dahlstrom, Daniel O. “Heidegger’s Artworld.” Martin Heidegger: Politics, Art, and Technology. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1995.
- Van Buren, John. The Young Heidegger. Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994
- Guignon, Charles. The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
- Bruin, John. “Heidegger and the World of the Work of Art.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 50, No. 1. (Winter, 1992): 55-56.
- Lacoue-Labarthe, PhilippePhilippe Lacoue-LabarthePhilippe Lacoue-Labarthe was a French philosopher. He was also a literary critic and translator....
. Heidegger, Art and Politics: The Fiction of the Political. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1990. - Derrida, Jacques. Restitutions of the Truth in Pointing ['Pointure']. Trans. Geoffrey Bennington & Ian McLeod, Chicago & London: Chicago University Press, 1987.
- Stulberg, Robert B. “Heidegger and the Origin of the Work of Art: An Explication.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 32, No.2. (Winter, 1973): 257-265.
- Pöggeler, Otto.”Heidegger on Art.” Martin Heidegger: Politics, Art, and Technology. New York: Holmes
- Schapiro, Meyer. 1994. “The Still Life as a Personal Object - A Note on Heidegger and van Gogh”, ”Further Notes on Heidegger and van Gogh”, in: Theory and Philosophy of Art: Style, Artist, and Society, Selected papers 4, New York: George Braziller, 135-142; 143-151.
External links
- Thomson, Iain, "Heidegger's Aesthetics" The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)