1.9 - Morawski, Stefan - Art and Aesthetics and the Crisis of Culture (en)

7/30/2019 1.9 - Morawski, Stefan - Art and Aesthetics and the Crisis of Culture (en)

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Art and Aesthetics and the Crisis of Culture

Art and Aesthetics and the Crisis of Culture

by Stefan Morawski

Source:

PRAXIS International (PRAXIS International), issue: 1+2 / 1990, pages: 104-116, on www.ceeol.com.
http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.dibido.eu/bookdetails.aspx?bookID=0a3d3f96-8ad3-4089-b110-89e4753b2d5chttp://www.ceeol.com/


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AESTHETICS AND ETHICS IN CONTEMPORARY POLlSH THOUGHT

Steran Morawski

My scheme in this paper is to pinpoint first the main issues of interwar thoughton the crisis of culture and then to focus on contemporary conceptions with respectto this question. In the final concluding section, I shall tackle present-day art andaesthetics in the context of their interplay with the broader cultural background.Let me stress that their intertwining does not mean simple interdependency., Artand aesthetics beyond any doubt uncover the fact of the erosion of some of themost fundamental values. However, artists and students of aesthetic problems givevent to the rages and hopes of our times because they were and are directly incited by the crisis of culture. Thus, if there is a dependent relation, it rather followsin a single direction.I have to leave aside the eighteenth and nineteenth century antecedents. It isinstructive that the apogee of the conceptions which examine the decline of cultureemerged in the period between 1912 and 1932. The slaughter of World War Itriggered off multifaceted critical analyses of social and existential reality. Alreadyin 1912 Rathenau in a short study Zur Kritik der Zeit (following the Weberiananalysis of the Geist des Kapitalismus) tried tentatively to argue that the demandsof organizing a more complex organization of social life as well as technologicaldevelopment bring on modernization, uniformity, managerial rules, and the primacyof pragmatic values. Civilization takes command over das Seelische; sciences,loyalty to the state, calculated rationalism and bureaucracy win priority at the priceof a degradation of the old ethos based on religion, community and intimacy.Spengler wrote his great work during the period of the Great Cataclysm. In the1920s Berdiayev published reflections On the Sense ofHistory, Ortega y Gasset'sThe Revolt o/the Masses opened up new vistas in 1930, and in the following yearJaspers spoke alarmingly in his Die geistige Situation der Zeit of the victoriousurbanization, democratization and Americanization which had resulted in the lossof self-identity and a feeling of helplessness. At the end of that decade Maritainlaunched his project of an integral humanism with its theocentric orientation, andMannheim discussed in the year 1935 the process of thorough social reconstruction bound to the emergence of rational functionalism which was said to have spreadover all areas of culture. The early 1940s produced Toynbee's studies on thevicissitudes of our civilization, the masterpiece ofAdorno and Horkheimer on thedialectic of enlightenment and penetrating theses on the philosophy of history byBenjamin. They drew on Jewish theology which contains the following elements:a lost paradise, mankind's recurring defeats, and the nostalgia for an Urgeschichtewhich then becomes transformed into an utopian project of regained freedom andjustice. The remarks on Bachofen and Fourier plus the gravitation to the Jewish


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Praxis International 105messianism are the reverse side ofBenjamin's critical attitude towards the presentday culture. There are no linear developments which lead to the expected realmof h u ~ a n s ~ l f - ~ e a l i z a t i o n . On the contrary, the course of history has to be ruptured,the dIscontInuIty between ruinous civilisation and the liberatory dream must beaccepted as irrevocable.I mention here only the most renowned examples to which one should add Freud's1930 essay Das Unbehagen in der Kultur. The questions these writers dwelt onincluded the decline of culture and the inevitable approaching spiritual desert(Spengler, Witkiewicz, Benjamin, Freud) (insofar as our lot is doomed to catastrophic defeat conditioned by cosmos-like cycles), the extinction of spiritual needsand humanity's instinctive prerequisites and the dream of a rescue deriving fromour protest and resistance (Heidegger, Jaspers, Berdiayev, Schweitzer, Huizinga,Adorno and Horkheimer) which, among other possibilities, can and should relyon religious faith or proper philosophical thinking. Another question of the samesignificance concerned the very foundation of the perceived cultural crisis: it wasto be either nature or nature-like history (Freud and Spengler) or a social worldwhich deprived human beings of supreme values (among others, the religious onewithout which, as Berdiayev, Maritain and Toynbee maintained, mankind mustgo astray and its culture become barren). The crucial question pertained to thespecific social mechanisms which were delineated as poisonous and damaging tothe whole of culture. Spengler (when describing a Faustian type of culture withits characteristic features propelling mankind towards the last stage) grappled withthe same symptoms which other thinkers emphasized, without referring tometaphysical premises or Biblical metaphors of the Deluge and Day ofWrath.The cult ofmoney, superficial democratization, the idealization of technology andscience, the absence of authentic philosophy, the replacement of a chivalrous ethosby conventional moral codes, the oscillation of the state ofmind between extremes(i.e. mere hedonism or mere intellectualism): these Spenglerian motifs return inanother context in the work of such critics as Ortega y Gasset, Huizinga, K. Jaspersand Berdiayev. Polish writers were especially sensitive to the growth of amaterialistic world view through their encounter with political demagogues andSoviet authoritarianism. An ant-like society governed by illiterates and whichdestroys privacy and civil liberties marked for them the very end of culture. Somescholars (Znaniecki) thought that efforts could and must be made to counter thesedevelopments while others (Witkiewicz) found that there is no defence left because,alas, the masses are happy when their elementary needs are gratified and gainconfidence by means ofpowerful pressure groups. Ortega y Gasset inveighed againstthe welfare society which, by functioning smoothly, reduces everything andeverybody to one dimension, namely the gaining ofmaximum comfort. He railedagainst the appalling wilderness of the big metropolis where anonymity andspecialization allegedly merged together with widespread vulgarity, humbug andviolence. Thinkers like Jaspers, Russerl and Heidegger observed the monstrousexamples of a decline in civilization's moral culture. But they emphasized firstof all that symbolic culture (religion, the arts, philosophy, science) commits suicidethrough its overinstitutionalization. Those arguments reiterate in Berdiayev's orMaritain's discourse although for them the primordial cause of the spiritualopaqueness or nihilism was forgetting God and neglecting the Church. Adorno


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106 Praxis Internationaland Horkheimer's The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944-1946) elaborated theLukacsian idea of ubiquitous reification and alienation. Nothing was said thereabout the Soviet Union, most probably because of the historical context. Instead,German Nazism and the American cultural industry were interpreted as the twodisastrous outcomes of instrumental reaSOD. Enlightenment, which had started asa program of human emancipation, had reached - they concluded - the borderof Unreason, enslaving both rulers and ruled.Synthesizing the above selected and juxtaposed ideas we can identify the commonthread which ties together those phenomena characteristic of the interwar culturalcrisis. The syndrome embraces massification (false or apparent democracy),bureaucratization of which the utmost expressions were despotic police-states,domination of pragmatic values (leaning on the managerial organization, functionalexpediency and welfare as the ultimate goal), supremacy of the instrumental reason(tied to technology and the idea of exact sciences as the major achievements ofthe human mind), degradation of religious feelings (barring the human ethos fromthe secret transcendent sources), and deterioration of philosophical ideas, borrowedchiefly from comrnonsense or scientific theorems and methodological devices.Culture then was explicitly or implicitly understood as a set of peculiar values,menaced by the civilization which exerts its dynamic influence to further an opposingaxiological pattern that is founded on material worth, institutional framework andscientific-technological attainments. Culture can then mean a way of being or away of having. The first is the quest for the highest possible meaning of life, thesecond the conquest of nature and the most effective administration of social reality.When did the turn from one to the other begin? According to Spengler, civilization is the final stage of the cultural cycle lasting for about 1,000 years, but theFaustian physiognomy of culture bears already all the features of the final collapse

of civilization. Hence the year 1700 can be seen as the borderline. Berdiayev andMaritain established it earlier - in the aftermath of the Renaissance which dethronedreligious values. Ortega y Gasset as well as Adorno and Horkheimer pointed tothe beginning of the nineteenth century as a result of the Industrial and FrenchRevolutions. Most thinkers shared their conviction. From Freud's perspective (theconflict between the libido and culture which makes us self-controlled and neurotic),the critical stance is preserved in the reservoir of mankind's history, but he tooconceded that the sequence from religion as the dominating illusion to sciencesand technology results from socio-historical occurrences. The more there is ofculture and its regulation the richer the accummulation of taboos and frustrations.Modern times accelerated the flow of intrinsic stimuli.Whichever turning point in the past we accept, it was obvious to all critics thatthe negative factors they identified exploded in the twentieth century. They weregrasped as negative from the evaluative viewpoint held by each of them separatelybut they converged in most points. It wasWorldWar I, that expansionist murderousrivalry, which shookminds as the most spectacular symptom of the cultural illness.One has to choose between opposed sets of values and norms. The choice dependson a worldview adopted consciously or unconsciously. Philosophy of culture isthe clearest expression of such a commitment. It opts for either the religious, ecstaticor the comfortable existence . . . it determines whether the ambush waiting for usis missionary enthusiasm and utopian blueprints, or the eagerness to cultivate good


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Praxis International 107management and everyday profits. The option against the second which, accordingto all these thinkers, gives priority to the seductive gains of civilization and menfalling prey to them, implies the crisis of culture. For only the first choice meansthe reassessment of the genuine hierarchy of value.The year 1945 should be regarded as a line of demarcation; Heidegger, Adorno,Jaspers, Arendt and Toynbee elaborated their ideas and simultaneously conceptslaid down earlier were developed and enriched. However the whole civilizationaland cultural pattern changed as a result of a fourfold revolutionary transformation:in information, technology (rooted in the exact sciences) and the socio-politicalsphere (which manifested itself in two forms: the strengthened Leviathans and,on the other hand, the emergence of an alternative movement contesting the statusquo in all its aspects). World War 11 unmasked the death throbs of culture to amuch greater extent than the years 1914-1918. Moreover, it brought nuclearnightmare and ecological problems which did not exist before. Earlier in the UnitedStates, Henry and Brooks Adams together with certain Freudians proclaimed apessimistic prophecy against the dominating trend of thought. Now, after the UnitedStates reached the top position among the most advanced countries, it came forthwith analyses concerning the critical status of culture. The disproportions betweenthe disorienting triumphs of civilization and a culture in danger of strangulationbecame more and more evident. The naturalistic tendency which prevailed in theepoch of the Adams brothers receded entirely. No one dared to speak about whatappeared to be a crisis-like, socio-cultural entropy. The great naturalist, K. Lorentz,who is the exponent of the same methodological attitude regardless of whetherits object is nature or society, when treating the facets of the crisis in Der Abbaudes Menschlichen (1983) speaks only metaphorically of the "sacculinization" ofmankind (from the crustacean, sacculina carceni, a symbiont which degeneratesas a result of a parasitic existence). Indeed, a regressive evolution is seen asderivative of a social debilitation. The mind threatens the soul. The neo-Freudianorientation reached its peak in the fascinating works dating from the fifties byNorman Brown and Herbert Marcuse, but it marked the end of this approach'sinfluence rather than the opening of new horizons. Spengler had no successors- he was recalled only as a brilliant diagnostician of culture under the pressureof a civilizational development. The idea of a cultural crisis shifted towardsphenomena which advanced as the fundamental symptoms of the newly visiblepattern. Production for production's sake as well as increasing consumerism, theprevailing technological scientific syndrome, the supremacy of social organization,the unprecedented demographic growth, the spread ofmass-media mastermindingeveryday life - all these elements clash with the philosophical self-analysis ofscientific rationality, the paradoxical recurrent' 'illiteracy" (because the educational systems, overloaded with mind-numbing contents and removed from thepressing issues of our times, have failed), the religious revival in its diversemanifestations, the counter-cultural revolt against rigid codes and worldviewsimposed by political and academic headquarters. Why is there a crisis? There issuch a great number of authors, books and arguments that I can select only themost salient examples. Take the reports of the Club ofRome and E. Schumacher'sformula that "small is beautiful". They campaigned against the calculated growthof production which widens the gap between the North and the South, stabilizes


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108 Praxis Internationalinequality in each social system, destroys the resources of Nature by blind exploitation and petrifies the hierarchical order. Take the denlystification of the mythof the machine by Lewis Mumford and many others, undermining the axiom oftechnological society which makes us slaves of hardware and sophisticated artifactsand lifts the computer to the rank of a sacrosanct idol. Let us remember Feyerabend'sbooks wrestling with Scientific Reason, his crusade for the neodadaist "anythinggoes" , his argument that it is not the context of verification but of discovery whichis principal. Take many other scholars who speak of tacit knowledge and pointto the gradual decline of the scientific ethos from the times of Bacon and Newtonuntil our own epoch. The truth which is and should be a power falsely pretendsto be the primary basis of a worldview. Let us recall Paul Goodman's or Illich'sprogramme of deschooling society in order to get rid of absurd learned rubbishand the manipulated training of conformist children and youngsters. Let us assessthe brilliant analyses of Baudrillard concerning the abundance of goods exchangedaccording to the rhythm of fashion, the vertigo of advertisenlents intertangled withthe rule of obsolescence, the frenetic obscenity (as he calls it) of everything forsale. No feeling of alienation, no sense of tragedy, no intimacy and even no creativeimagination can be saved in a hyper-realist society, where consciousness is numbedby the multi-dimensional spectacles offering pleasure but leaving their audiencestotally passive. Take G. Debord's or R. Vaneigem's assault on the present-dayLeviathans which allow for clever managerial governing under the disguise ofdemocratic slogans. Leviathans which produce military-technological-scientificcomplexes, dependent on the Corporations or Political Bureaus, generating ananonymous, uniform and standardized social existence. Let us remember Roszak'spenetrating reflections on where the wasteland ends, on our hyperintellectualizedheritage, the elimination of genuine communities, the robbing of people of theirspontaneity and authenticity. Take John Paul 11' s encyclical letters and homilieson the Secrets of Transcendence without which harm is done to hunlan ethos. And,primarily the innumerable works on the religions of the Far East which are expectedto rectify the disfigured or decrepit West European minds. The new gnosis is thusconsidered to be a palliative for a senseless existence amidst super-affluence. Finally,the self-consciousness of philosophy which crosses the thresholds of a metaphilosophical anxiety: Derrida's deconstructivism levels philosophy with literature,depriving it of any firm frame of reference with the exception of intertextualconnections and infinite interpretations. Deleuse'sand Guattari's "rhisonlatic"theorem refers to the amorphous plant stem instead of the routinely assumed byphilosophers grass-roots of existence. Moreover, they too dislniss any differencesbetween Artaud's vision and strict philosophic procedures. P. Sloterdijk speaksof the preponderance of "zynische Vemunft' 'which took the place of critical reason,still tied to some ultimate values. The more so when we are reminded that theParisian thinkers drew radical consequences from Heidegger, the late Wittgensteinand recent hermeneutic conceptions. Their main counterpart which articulates thesharpest critique of the above thinkers remains either the theological-philosophicalbelief in the absolute truth of Being and the telos of human destiny or the defenceof emancipatory reason in a renewed continuation of the principles of the FrankfurterSchule (Habermas) or else E. Bloch's philosophy of hope and concrete utopia.As the ideas of the cultural crisis gained their apogee at the turn of the last two


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Praxis International 109decades, I have no need to ask forgiveness for not taking into account quite a numberof authors. It would be, however, simplifying the problem to hide the fact thatthere are many advocates of the opposite view. For instance, van Lier argued thateither man will realize a full symbiosis with the world of machines, or perish.Other proponents of technological expansion say that only microprocessors canbe the salvation for an overcrowded and overworked mankind. J. F. Lyotardappraises the postmodern condition and unconditioned pluralism based on differentiation plus competition (le differend) because, as he sees it, it defends us againstmental totalitarianism. Daniel Bell approves of the postindustrial society basedon scientific production which became highly operational. For those authors theidea of a crisis is blatant speculation or nonsense. Still another group is in agreement with the criticisms of the existing culture but cleanses them of romanticnostalgia for a "Gemeinschaft" forever lost to the past. Typical instances of suchan approach are provided in "The Third Wave" by A. Toffler or J. Naisbitt'sdetailed description of the current mega-trends which he endorses as urging selfcorrection in terms of the existing culture. I signal these facts not for the sakeof completing a panorama of solutions but to conclude my summary presentationin a cautious way.A crisis cannot be grasped in general. It is always a debacle from somebody'sviewpoint according to accepted axiological criteria. As culture is a value-generatingdomain, we should each time inquire which culture it is, under which circumstancesand pressures it ranks values in this or that manner, and why and whether civilization(understood as a complex of instrumental activities, material goods and hierarchizedinstitutions) becomes its prime mover. The conclusions seem to confirm purerelativism. I deem that this is not the case. Is it not illuminating that the valueswhich are hailed by all critics of the cultural crisis are constantly recurrent themesand precisely those which are cherished through the ages in different civilizations?The critics' appeals and warnings do not say that we are between the hammerof science, technology, hitherto education, and organizational strategy and the anvilof their disappearance. They ponder instead, following the Adorno-Horkheimerstrategy of thought - a one-sided development of our culture and its disasters whichmake impossible the realization of freedom together with equality, authentic selfexploration and creativity of every individual together with the commonwealth,operative reason together with an awareness of the existential secret. Thus thepeculiar set of values chosen as the genuine core of culture is not reducible tothe caprice ofnostalgic eccentrics or backward-looking scholars. Perhaps we shouldassent to it as the permanent stock ofhuman axiology against the idolizing of science,technology, the world of the mass media, and the pragmatic mind. It is entirelypossible that the convictions expressed by the thinkers mentioned above are firmenough to stand the test of time. Perhaps with them we can still believe that thetendency to bestow supreme value on the achievements ofmodern civilization isnot inevitable - that it can be reversed by collective protest and action.Most representatives of thought dealing with the crisis of culture admitted thatit would be a mistake to exempt any part of it as immune or impervious to theillness permeating all aspects ofmind and practice. Hence art was often mentionedas facing the naked hostility of new civilizational developments and forced to adoptnew narratives based on tenets alien to its tradition. Such a rough estimate of the


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110 Praxis Internationalsituation of artists does not give full justice to the rather intricate interconnectionsbetween the reflections on the cultural crisis and its artistic counterpart. Theassumption of the cultural crisis often rekindled the old debate about the possibleexceptionality of art and its special place in the struggle against the detested newhierarchy of values which are the putative or evident progeny of the modem civilization. This standpoint opened distant vistas, betting on a better future for mankindprecisely by art, and ruling out any adjustment of the status quo. The kernel ofthe controversy ofwhether the cultural crisis is irrevocable or not by odd coincidencereappeared here in the hidden form of a permanent contest pervading the artisticvocation. In the interwar period we can distinguish four main solutions to theproblem under examination: (1) Art is said to be the token of a cultural crisis aswell as a parallel symptom of it, relative areas which are more or less resilientbut equally unable to resist the distress of the troubled consciousness, the senseof drifting and dismay; (2) Some thinkers plausibly mentioned that the artist mustpromote his heroic protest even if he receives unavoidable, stunning blows. Hedoes not agree to be totally dismissed or incited to worship the new gods. He strikesback by using contempt, scorn, irony, anger etc. (3) Yet other authors developedthe idea that artists, who are maltreated by the new civilizational wave, themselvessuspend their own heritage under mounting external pressures. They can, however,safeguard their dignity and rise again despite the repeated harrangues. It is nota condescending attitude to believe that art complies with the world in a highlybeneficial way if only it does not bend to sheer pragmatic demands (of course,this does not mean that it evades the obligations to enrich man's extra-aestheticrealm). Thus art as an eternal value in fact never starts from society. (4) Finally,there was presented the view according to which art keeps aloof from the worlddevoid of sense and pervaded. by crisis, opposes the convergence of alienated forces,and continues to denounce fraud and farce, or, despite the pessimistic undertones,remains devoted to utopian visions. I derive the fourfold distinction from theconception of: 1) Spengler, Freud; 2) Witkiewicz, Ortega y Gasset and Benjamin;3) Heidegger, Berdiayev and Maritain; 4) Adorno. None of these was posited asan incontestable proposition. All the authors, regardless of their suppositions,proceeded from the premise that art in the era of a crisis must succumb to thesame civilizational disease, but they differed about the degree and the means ofits potential response. They did not engage in aggressive polemics betweenthemselves as they belonged to the same family of critics, radical or moderate,who did not set up any new hierarchy of values, but attacked the old one. Spenglerdefied the idea of lofty art by showing how new social conditions violate the oldborders between the aesthetic kingdom and life around it, and how the positionof a genius grew continually more fragile. History turned a new page ofCaesarism,corrupting the creative mind. Art is no longer organic; it became subjected tomechanization and mere intellectualism (Der Mensch und die Technik 1931). Therules of the market became art's deadly sins. Freud's conception of art is builton the axiom that it cannot eliminate the opposition between the principle of realityand that of pleasure. The artistic creation like any other is a symbolic mask coveringthe repressed instinctive energy which, of course, resurfaces, a fact which the originof the function of jokes and witticisms highlights in a particularly distinct way.As a substitute for genuine gratification art does not help to escape from the crisis


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Praxis International 111of culture. At best it masquerades happiness by means of the aesthetic Vorlust,and thus the costs of sublimation are inevitably traumatic frustrations. Ortega yGasset wrote prolifically in the early twenties about the new poetry, music, theatre,fine arts and novel, as compared to the traditional creative work. These reflectionsled to his influential essay on the dehumanization of art (1925) which was a kindof prologue to the Revolt ofthe Masses. He confrrmed the view launched by Spenglerthat the eschatological mission of art is over. New art is deprived of its transcendent aspirations; it recalls sport, games and pastimes and corresponds to theage of youth which takes priority in habits and manners. The artists - stated theSpanish philosopher - do not attach any great significance to the function of theirmessages. In a word, the status of art dwindles because culture succumbs to civilizational forces which crush the inherited axiological hierarchy. Nevertheless, weare told simultaneously, this new production embedded in the artist's awarenessof self-defeat (his sensibility lets him treat his own world with irony as a useless"farce' ') is at odds with the prototypicalman in the street and his superficial aesthetictastes. Thus art as a sign of the crisis becomes also the sign of dissent. The revoltof the artist against the revolt of the masses should be translated into a clash betweenthe aristocracy of the spirit and the spiritual barbarians.St. I. Witkiewicz stressed the same idea. Art cannot hide before the democratictrend. It is debased mass culture which predetermines the death of the best artimbued with metaphysical, existential values. Nonetheless, the genuine artists donot give up. They contest against all forms of instrumental control by neuroticeruption, unexhausted experimenting with form, mockery of the cosmetic devicesof their up-to-date colleagues, turning their backs on the mass audience, vyingagainst the victorious trends and continuing a search for the no longer attainableabsolute.Benjamin's double standards (approval of the new breed of art as a result ofhistorical necessity and challenge to the prevailing moods and attitudes) are to beseen through all of his oeuvre. The often cited essay on the serial reproductionof artworks in the technical era (1936) refers to the first standard. His PariserPassagen (a reflection on Baudelaire and the surrealists) underlie the secondstandard. No doubt the apparent incommeasurability of the two criteria derivesfrom the Brecht-Lacis impact, their impassioned critique on the one hand, andthe influence of Adorno together with the Frankfurt thinkers on the other hand.In Heidegger as well as in Berdiayev and Maritain we come across the samereasoning concerning the status of the artist within the framework of trash culture,which harasses real values or makes them irrelevant. All these thinkers - omittingFreud's discourse - repeated the negative arguments mentioned above with respectto trivialized contemporary art but in counterdistinction to the views also citedabove they did not stop at emphasizing the moral obligation to challenge - by heroicsor irony - the status quo. It is not enough to run against the prevalent order, theysaid. The duty is to reverse the tendency and such a reversal is possible. Heideggersaw strong reasons to continue Rilke-like poetry or van Gogh-like painting whichaim at alethea. The true artist should and can be the caretaker of an existentialbecoming, sweeping aside not only all everyday nuisances but also a metaphysicalbeing, which is fixed for all time. Berdiayev, just as all religious-mindedphilosophers, assumed that art can be reborn. The return to the everlasting Divine


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112 Praxis InternationalSource is to be demanded, the more so as the teurgic impetus which he presentedin The Sense ofCreation (1915) is inherent in man's best drives and aspirations.Berdiayev had doubts about whether culture by itself does not desacralize eachof its elements, reducing the religious Secret to the symbolic shibboleth of a givencult. Maritain did not share these fears since his theo-centered humanism was muchmore earth-bound. Art can go astray in agonizing times like ours, but the wayback to the sacrum is always open and inviting. He emphasized oscillations withregards to the avant-garde movements, their metaphysical nostalgia which needspure form. What about the crisis of art? Does it take place or not? No simple alternative emerges at this point. The critical status of art is obvious because of thedecline of culture but the first and the second are potentially strong. No final verdictis passed; it is the free will of man (as an individual and collective subject) thatdecides about a good or evil apocalypse.Adorno, whose views did not differ in this respect from Horkheimer, althoughthe latter did not elaborate them that extensively, took another position. The cultureof our epoch is really in the stage of decay and we cannot help it. There are nevertheless at least two domains of spiritual activity in which the menaced axiologycan be rescued and transformed in the future: philosophy (strictly speaking, negativedialectics) and art. Both can be shelters of criticism against the status quo andutopian projects. In The Dialectics ofEnlightenment the genuine mimetism is juxtaposed with the false one. The previous one, originally connected with magic, cannotbe revived, but there occurs also "aesthetic magic" , founded on Schein, a selfsufficient, self-contained artistic microcosmos. Art, when not deceitful (a fact whichtakes place most often within the framework of the cultural industry) fulfills theprimary condition of constituting the alternative autonomous micro-world. In thehistorical epoch of a self-defeating Instrumental Reason great art - always a strugglefor freedom - unveils the feigned order of things, the Whole, in fact disintegrated.It is the artist who exposes the Wahrheit der Unwahrheit. In other words, art informsabout the crisis of culture by reflecting it. The alternative reality remains anchoredin the socio-historical basis, here and now. That is why Beckett is the most outstanding prophet of our fear-inspiring civilization by showing the inevitability ofthe catastrophe and at the same time, having the courage not to accept it.What then is the difference between, let us say, Adorno and Benjamin orWitkiewicz? A significant difference is that according to the first the catastropheis not decreed once and for ever. Art as the radical negation of the status quoforebodes another organic society founded on Humanittit. Art should observe thetraditional paradigms. There are some similar traits in Benjamin's understanding

of allegoric modernism and Adorno' s concept of modern art as Mimesis ansVerhiirtete und Entfremdete. Nevertheless, Benjamin opted for a surrealist thrustto counter serial production which was based on transgressing the aesthetic principles similarly to Breton's formula of' 'the window onto the world". Witkiewicz'soption also dwelt on demolishing the inherited aesthetic order. Adorno's thoughtfollowed another course. The dictatorship of the mass media goes together withthe disenchanted world which undermines the survival of art (Entkunstung). Sothe paradigmatic practicing of art is not only self-defensive but also rescues thewhole of culture from a merciless attack. I do not forget that Adorno' s ideas weredeveloped after 1945 and that their full embodiment is contained in the posthumously


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Praxis International 113issued Aesthetic Theory. However, all authors ofmonographic studies agree thatits Grundmotive were signalled or else analysed in his essays from the late 1930sand early 1940s. The paradoxical solution rests, in this case, on philosophicalartistic truths rendering the essence of the cultural crisis as abnormalcy, and willynilly on participation, despite the refusal of the satanical forces (dissonant musicis the phenomenon corresponding to the entirely administered society). It seemsto me that Adorno's conception is not quite consistent. Art has to be the basisof protected values and the anticipation of the positive era but its modernistexpression reflects the alienation and meaninglessness triggered by the system ofobsessive commodities. The absurdity of the world around us embraces cultureand art. Thus this conception oscillates between art versus crisis and art in crisis.Possibly, this inconsistency determines the peculiarity of Adorno' s views.The inter-war fourfold pattern of thought on the crisis of art must be confrontedwith the aesthetics of artists, both theoretical and practical, of that period. Thebest minds were obviously aware of the fact of a degrading culture. ValeryandMalraux, Eliot, Kafka, Klee and Schonberg voiced their opinions in an unequivocalfashion. There existed a catastrophic trend which began from Eliot's The WasteLand, comprises the whole oeuvre of St. I. Witkiewicz, touches upon E. Barlach,K. Kollwitz andM. Beckman, involves Joyce's Ulysses and the poetry of Cz. Miloszin the late Thirties, and culminates in Th. Mann's Doctor Faustus. I cite at randoma few examples of this attitude. All those artists practiced art in a manner whichcorresponds to the signalled above conceptions ofWitkiewicz, Benjamin or Adomo.In the post-World War 11 period some of the ideas previously set forth werecontinued - for example, by Adorno, accompanied by H. Marcuse. It is noteworthy that the latter's Adorno-oriented Permanence of Art, his last work, waspreceded by Eros and Civilization (1956), an emancipatory reinterpretation ofFreud.Similar stands were found in other intellectual doctrines. It will do to quote thepapal homilies and encyclics or the renaissance of the Russian icon and the worksof Father Florenski; religious thinkers reiterated the conviction of art's potentialrenewal, with which we are familiar from the times of Berdiayev and Maritain.Roszak shares this view. The hermeneutic analyses of Gadamer defending theactuality of the beautiful, entrenched in feasts and rituals as well as in the selfsufficient work of art prolonged the perspective of the Heideggerian conception.Yet one should hardly maintain that those approaches are most frequent andsignificant. On the contrary, there are legitimate reasons to state that the patternof thought on the crisis of art underwent a considerable transfonnation. The majorityof scholars pondering on production for the sake of production or on consumptionfor the sake of consumption, on the mystification of technology or the internationalrevolution as beneficial powers, agree that art had alas to surrender to the newcivilizational flood. Jean Beaudrillard's case is quite telling as regards this particularquestion. Art becomes absorbed by the mass media; the spectacle of a constantsimulation brought finally the hyper-realist culture. Within these frontiers one istoo weak to distinguish between reality and virtuality; the same vertigo of advertised commodities is the most palpable result of one and another. Vaneigem andDebord drew from this state of affairs the accusation of the art establishment whichplunged into a crisis so deep that also the contest of the new avant-garde became


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114 Praxis Internationalopposite end, J. F. Lyotard holds the view that art flourishes precisely thanks toenfranchisement from' 'le grand recit", the terror-laden conception which lay claimto absolute certainty whence and hither mankind is making its way. Derrida's attitudeis the same. Its premises claim that deconstructivism has to put right the ailingculture. What is arresting in those standpoints taken by the French philosophersand by the exponents of the neoanarchist Internationale Situationiste is their frameof reference. They do not speak of art but of anti-art or, if one prefers anothername, post-art. Thus five fundamental facts must be established with respect tothe examined issue in the recent context:1. The crisis of art was grasped and chronicled by the artists themselves whoinfluenced directly the approaches of the intellectual outsiders, dealing withthe phenomenon;2. The idea of anti-art vis-a.-vis the crisis of culture was formulated in a differentmanner and with different aims. The artists asked whether culture is really ina critical situation and if so, should they conform with it or contest it;3. Depending on their definite position either the dialectics of disenchantment andre-enchantment (continuing the Weberian formula) appeared as the topicalsolution;4. The artists' stratagems acted on the deliberation of the theorists of culture intheir wrestling with the issue of the invincible commercialization of all valuesversus the utopian transcendence of the status quo;5. The artist's anti-aesthetics forced the academic aestheticians to follow the avenuechosen by the former and to attempt critical self-reflection.With equal if not greater strength than their forerunners (the dadaists and productivists), the artists of our time responded to the civilizational challenge and the newrevolutionary changes which I listed in the previous section. Already the theatre

of the absurd (by its very label) and the anti-novel brought on the process of anall-over reification, referred directly to the mainstream of social life. Of course,there occurred in each case a revolt against the existing artistic management andits idols, although the purpose was chiefly not to upset professional adversarieswith a new' 'ism" but an outburst of boundless energy with regard to the culturalestablishment. The decisive factor in the new strategy from pop-art to conceptualism was the questionofwhether they conceive the world around us as conformingto the premises of healing mankind or indicted it because of the distressing enslavement of every individual. Here runs the main line of demarcation. Their anti-artis engaged in either fostering new civilizational alternatives or dispensing withthem in a search for other options which could restore the expected state of things.It is not a facile task to locate each artist, his endeavours and achievements alongthe continuum between the two extremes of: "Yes, I voluntarily approve" and"No, I categorically reject". Anyhow, among the former there is no clear agreementas to the prevalence of the crisis of culture. Some say that it is overwhelming usand we cannot take up any offensive against its channels; others deny any criticalstatus of culture. The exponents of such an approach were, no doubt, AndyWarholand R. Buckminster Fuller, followed by many hyper-realists and artists fascinatedby the computer, video, laser applications etc. At the opposite vanguard point e.g.the Viennese activists, Beuys, J. J. Lebel, Beck and Malina, the Fluxus people,


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Praxis International 115the militant nea-feminist performers, the early Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Cortazarand Godard. Here was unanimous agreement that culture is endangered. All offeredtheir Own myths of liberation. That is why from their perspective the disenchantmentof the world became unbearable whereas the tech-artists in their majority believethat the new weaponry is really Promethean, Le. that it can re-enchant the world.Their opponents, when they are inclined at all to envisage any Wiederzauberung,ally themselves with the counterculture or alternative movements against thetechnological Deities and Mass Media Ceremonies.The artistic approaches paralleled the ideas of the philosophers of culture who

enacted insights already current in the anti-art programmes and manifestos,stimUlating in turn growth of the self-consciousness of the recent avant-garde. Thefeedback has been working for quite some time and became enhanced with thedebate on modernism versus post-modernism, chiefly with the controversy betweenHabermas and J. F. Lyotard. It also is connected with our problem. Its concernis whether culture is dying or simply assuming a new shape, and whether the pursuitof the emancipating reason should be treated as a disastrous delusion or whetherthere is a sound method in this madness. From the viewpoint of Lyotard, thedialectics of disenchantment and re-enchantment has to be swept aside. Its removalwould be the best possible therapy for the mind and each type of creative practice,because we do not yet know what will emerge from the experienced breakthrough.What we should know for certain is that the captivating nostalgia after any absolutehas become discredited. From the premises of Habermas, which I am inclinedto share, art or anti-art cannot escape from the ought against the status quo andin consequence from design of a future that justifies the present-day refusaL Inthis sense modernism is alive. The struggle for the highest stake takes place.Habermas' assumptions entail the concept of a second or rather third disenchantment which is self-paralyzing. It means a blatant resignation from any resistance,the kneeling down before the altars of ubiquitous commercialization, the rejectionof any ethos of the Ich kann nicht anders type.Finally, the anti-aesthetic clue. Irrespectively whether instrumental rationalityis considered positive or threatening because it turns means (technology, communication, advertisement) into goals, anti-art made it unequivocal that the traditionallysettled aesthetic procedures have to be given up. If our observations pertainingto Documenta are also in this case precise, the aesthetician reflecting upon a returnto the canvas beyond the once sanctioned artistic virtuosity faces the dilemma ofa fragmented, kaleidoscopic culture which no longer confirms the meaningfulnessof art .. An anti-aesthetics which stems from anti-art can meet the following, at

least, four countermoves which try to regain the legitimacy of aesthetics withoutart as its subject-matter:1. It deals with the mass production for TV and film, detective stories, bookson drugs, devotional publications, Church fairs, light music, etc. It is an art

consciously banalized, nurtured by the abused schemes of a plot, characters,iconography, melody and harmony in high artistic circulation. The artists'paradigms correspond to it but by means of the dismissal of the original noveltyand taking for granted that this type of production a priori presumes quickconsumption and oblivion:


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116 Praxis International2. Another domain of inquiry would be the aestheticization of the phenomena ofsocial life, sport-gardens, parks and primarily the ways of expressing oneselfin fashion, codes, gestures, public speaking, civil manners, in a word - decorum.

The boundary between the former area and this one contains, for instance, artlike journalistic reports, diaries, memoires, as well as industrial design as awhole, with beautiful goods for sale;3. Aesthetics may also concentrate on the beauty ofNature, referring to the classicalparadigms of measure, symmetry, properties and harmony;4. Its field of reflection could be absolute, a divine order of things, with beautyas transcendence which is hardly sizeable and expressible in a verbal medium.The countermoves evoke a strong rejoinder. It is said in connection with (1)

that it concerns aesthetically uninteresting matter, often of almost non-existentimportance; in the second case, it is argued that today no discernible style of lifecan be found as it could be in the times ofCastiglione orWilde, whereas the paraartistic compositions of parks or public spectacles etc. do not reveal the facetsof ingenious creativity. With reference to (3), doubts arise concerning the restrictivecharacter of classical beauty and the assumption that symmetry, proportion, harmonyengender by themselves the artistic realm; in the last case, the objection is thatit is theo-aesthetics, founded on philosophical-religious options, and thus that itconcerns more ontology than aesthetic or artistic values.Of course, one can continue the rebuttal by pointing out to the arbitrariness ofthe pros and cons. From our standpoint much more significant is the fact that allcountermoves set out from the premise of a crisis of culture. The first insofar asthat which is worth considering here pertains to the trivialization and democratizationof art and the ways of transplanting the artistic high achievements into a saleablelow circulation. The second, because the question of what role is played here bythe principles of commodity and pastime has to be examined; why does art ratherremind us of fashion, and with which sense is the asesthetic decorum of publicplaces or ceremonies endowed (does it drug or awaken the mind)? The third andfourth points are most certainly of a self-defensive nature: they aim at recreatingman's union with the cosmic and transcendent powers in order to profoundlyre-enchant the present-day social world.We live among debris, the scattered fragments of broken mirrors. Anti-art andanti-aesthetics are still lanterns which help us orient ourselves in the civilizationallabrynth with the purpose of getting out of it. The thread of Ariadne is not beyondtheir potential. This is the task of all sensitive and reflective people of our time.The thread must be unravelled from a worldview able to set culture again on itsway. Either by saying, as John Paul 11 did, "Do not be afraid" to start on apilgrimage towards the abandoned Christ, or by re-establishing an earthly ethosof freedom and community without transcendence or by pointing to another possiblesalvation. Innovation and tradition in an organic epoch will then reappear, andcould be realized in their normal interplay. If my survey and analysis seem tobe sheer platitudes or mere trickery with indeterminate terms and meanings, then

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1.9 - Morawski, Stefan - Art and Aesthetics and the Crisis of Culture (en)

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