From: Patsloane <Patsloane-AT-aol.com>
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 14:51:08 EST
Subject: Re: PLC: A theory about theory [was Anyone get Gass?]


> Freud was perceiving artistic phenomenon not as an art theorist, but as a
>  psychologist -- same 'data', different 'informings'.

Not the same data.  Freud knew one or two things about art, and he didn't know
enough. He was in much the same position as the person who knows one or two
things about the practice of medicine, just doesn't know enough, and is not
permitted to practice medicine for that reason.  

>  	But I think Pat's objection wasn't just against (all) theory, but against
>  'general' theory.  Though difficult to detail this distinction, it strikes
me as
>  a good one.  Foucault makes a similar distinction toward the end of his
life
>  between the philosopher and the specific intellectual, the former, a la 
> Sartre,  was for him bankrupt.

Reg, this is exactly what I'm saying.

>  > 5. Critics and theorists now and always have determined what "art" is,
and
>  > what constitutes the canon, and what  body of folk comprise the important
>  > artists. It cannot be otherwise.

George or Howard? This is about as off-base as arguing that political
theorists determine who should be president.  The above statement can only be
true in the sense that you've insisted on defining anyone and everyone as a
theorist, on the grounds that anyone and everyone "has a theory." This is
about like calling anyone and everyone a philosopher on the grounds that
anyone and everyone "has a philosophy." If you're going to insist that the
words only be used in the broadest possible sense, and you're going to argue
against ever allowing  them to be used in a narrower sense, then you're always
going to be confused.
 
>  > 6. You then have the notion that there is some theory free corpus
knowledge
>  > of which constitutes knowledge of "art history," again as if that were
>  > monolithic and existed without psychological/political/economic
parameters.

No. I'll for the sake of argument go along with your insistence that anyone
who ever says anything about anything "has a theory," and is therefore a
theorist.  So we're all theorists always, as you wish it. And that is not the
issue. The issue is that there are about 24 surviving pieces of free-standing
sculpture from Classical Greece.  Anyone and everyone has a right to theorize
about (make statements about?) Classical Greek sculpture. I happen to prefer
the theorizing (statements?) of people who've taken the time to  look at the
sculpture--who were exposed to the data.  I happen to dislike the theorizing
of people who don't think it's necessary to look at the sculpture or expose
themselve to the data. 

Certainly it's possible for anyone to bullshit about anything. My students do
it all the time.  You've not explained to me why the "theorizing" of any
ignoramus should be respected as highly as the theorizing of a well-informed
person.  When the question comes up, you repeatedly turn it aside by telling
me that my taking knowledge seriously is just the irrational tic of an old-
fashioned liberal.  

If what you mean is that all human communication is theorizing, or "has an
underlying theory," and there are no grounds for preferring any theory above
any other, then it follows that you must see  no distinction between a wise
person and a fool. That anyone's opinion is as good as anyone else's under any
circumstances. In art, it's the "I don't know anything about art but I know
what I like" theory.  That even erroneous statements of fact and unwarranted
assumptions are not faults in a theory if that is genuinely that person's
theory.  Whew.  A bit extreme for me, but you're entitled to your opinion.
But what can we talk about?  Whatever subject I want to bring up, you want to
circle back to the claim that the subject does not exist.

>  I've 
>  found the state of the philosophy of music pretty abysmall.  Sure there's 
> plenty  of music theories -- eg. Schenker, post-Schenkerian, Schoenbergian, 
> Hindemith, etc., -- but most philosophers of music seem to have never taken
a course > in  music theory, and that's one reason, I think, why people who
work in and
>  theorize about musical materials generally don't pay any attention to what
>  philosophers have to say about it.

Reg, this is exactly what I'm saying about all too many art theorists.  Did
Freud ever study art? of course not.  That's why we get so many arguments
about how it's possible to theorize about art without knowing anything about
art.  Essentially, the argument is "why isn't an ignoramus as good as anyone
else?"  

>  	Good theoretizing/criticism incorporates the object of art into itself,
and 
> its
>  fairly easy to do this in lit-crit (cite a bunch of passages) or art theory
>  (where one can easily indicate/reproduce figures) but its damn hard to talk
>  about music at all, much less critically incorporate it into one's
criticism
>  unless one has some 'ground level' facility with music theory.  So, it's
not 
> so
>  much a matter of being theory-free or encumbered, etc., as it is (I think 
> for
>  Pat and for me) with have a certain 'critical proximity' to the critical 
> object.

Reg, not as easy as it looks in lit crit.  When a person "theorizes" about T.
S. Eliot, but only read one of his poems, I can pick it out pretty easily.
They issue generalities that may apply to that single poem, but they don't
seem to realize that the generalities can't be stretched to cover all of his
poems.  Getting back to the visual arts, I have a pain in the neck optician
who likes to tell me his theories about art. According to him, various styles
can be explained by realizing that the artist "had something wrong" with his
eyes.  His prize "insight" is that van Gogh had xanthophilia, an actual
pathology in which the person "sees everything yellow."  

On hearing this gem, I asked  the optician if he was was familiar with van
Gogh's <Sunflowers>, the famous version that uses lots of yellow. Yes, he
loves it and hung a postcard repro in his kitchen.  Has he ever seen any other
van Gogh paintings? does he realize that the <Sunflowers> is somewhat atypical
and that van Gogh actually uses lots of colors other than yellow? No to the
last two questions. I was so irritated I actually brought him a book about van
Gogh and showed him the color reproductions, just to make the point that he
was overgeneralizing from the one painting he'd seen.  Went in one ear and out
the other. Two years later, when I went in to have my eyes checked again, he
was again recounting his xanthophilia theory. Why shouldn't he just ignore the
data that doesn't fit his theory? Freud does the same thing.  

pat sloane


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