File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0308, message 24


Date: Fri, 08 Aug 2003 11:56:54 +0300
From: "Leena Kakkori" <Lkakkori-AT-yfi.jyu.fi>
Subject: Vs: Heidegger in the media


I just wonder, what is that authentic work?  Heidegger speaks about the masterpieces. Is that the same thing? 

yours Leena


>>> that_pete-AT-yahoo.com 08/07 10:23  >>>
...

To my ear, the strongest echo in Summers's notion of real spaces is Martin
Heidegger, courtier of Nazism and critic of technology, whose gnomic 1936 essay
on "The Origin of the Work of Art" is worth considering again. Heidegger sees
the work of art in its material form. But this connection to the earth is
extended by the artwork's ability to force a clearing in the everyday exchanges
of existence. The artwork presents no particular truth - it does not "mean"
something or other. Rather, it offers the deeper truth of Being, a moment of
reflection on the fact that there is something rather than nothing. This is
what Heidegger means by art's ability to open up a world, to illuminate the
fourfold structure of earth, sky, mortals and gods: "By the opening up of a
world, all things gain their lingering and hastening, their remoteness and
nearness, their scope and limits ... A work, by being a work, makes space for
that spaciousness." Uselessness is not the artwork's essence but is an
important aspect of its otherness, its ability to arrest our attention. Art is
not a piece of equipment but a slab of existence. 

The authentic work therefore obtrudes upon our field of experience, forcing a
confrontation with wonder. Instead of the curiosity and marvel of the
spectacle-soaked everyday world, instead of the play of cheap novelty and
distracting images, we confront an existential insistence on the question of
what it means to be here.

Summers distances himself from Heidegger, citing the German philosopher's
"primitivising" and unpleasant politics. He might also have mentioned the
overly negative view of technology. But he should not be so hasty, or so
ungrateful. Heidegger offers, in just a few pages, what Summers tries and fails
to provide in an entire book: a sustained thought about the wonder of art. We
seek wonder fitfully and with misgiving, frequently disappointed and even more
frequently distracted by the nattering of critics and theorists, but somehow we
still know it when we feel it: the staggered attention, the clearing of
thought, and the shock of recognition that a work of art alone makes possible.
Historical comprehensiveness, analytic precision and conceptual shenanigans all
fail to illuminate this fully. They can, at best, weave a discursive web around
it, outlining the mysterious space of art's work. Only art itself can open up
that space from within. Art, like consciousness, cannot be translated into any
terms other than its own.

Australian Financial Review
http://afr.com/articles/2003/08/07/1060145791975.html 


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