ways we can actually understand a work of an art

Introduction

The work of art is one that has fascinated almost all the great minds of the recent past. We cannot deny that art is something worth admiring. In fact the very nature of art is to endear a sense of appreciation, admiration and goodness. But in our society today it is obvious that there are some artwork which are controverted upon whether to call them beauty or not. Any artwork is supposed to portray that sense of sublimity. When an art work is said not to have such qualities as to communicate beauty it is not art. But what are the criteria for judging an art work as beautiful or not? Surely there are different views and human values and tastes differs when it comes to the appreciation of an art. One popular saying goes like this, “one man’s food is another man’s poison”. The problem of subjectivity and relativity seems to water down the very nature of arts since we cannot all appreciate a given work of art from the same perspectives and worldviews.

This takes us to the issue of arts criticism. What is it that makes a particular work, a work of art and not just a piece of stick or mumble of words? The criteria for judgments still comes to light. Surely because people can come to a consensus that a particular work of art is beautiful, there must be a criteria which they all must agree upon and to which the idea of subjectivity is annihilated. We live and experience differently. Our experience of the world varies and with this comes the divergence in our perspectives. A typical African man has a notion of nudity that is sharply different from that of a Westerner. There are some things we can call abomination in Africa and yet outside the confines of Africa, it is valued as a work of art worthy of public display and admiration. The judgment we make about art must transcend our immediate environmental and cultural orientation for us to have a somewhat universal and objective appreciation of art. But the problem now is the fact that it may seem impossible if not difficult to make a rational critical judgment of a work of art without applying our intrinsic or environmental orientations.

Therefore, this paper tends to explore the ways we can actually understand a work of an art and have a consensus in our appreciation of such work. This is what we shall be exploring following the essay of Arnold Isenberg titled “Critical Communication”. Our main preoccupation shall be to evaluate the theory of criticism which he seem to be propounding or propounded. His idea of judgment shall be critically reviewed but with particular concentration on the three value judgment or verdict which he posited. We shall thereafter, make a general evaluation of the entire paper and then conclude.

Theory of Criticism

Isenberg affirms that the theory of art criticism has undergone serious obstruction by a certain assault on the question of validity. He bemoaned the fact that there are more doctrines about the objectivity of a critical judgment than there is its import.  Coming to the issue of the theory of criticism, it is said that its deficiencies has led to the division of critical process into three parts. Isenberg mentions these three as; first, the value judgment or verdict; second, particular statement or reason; third, general statement or norm.

In explaining the value judgment or verdict, as he calls it, we can say that it is when we see a piece of artwork and give a kind of judgment towards it. This may come by such expressions like, “this song is interesting”; “this drawing is beautiful”. It is the initial judgment we give to any artwork and this comes from the idea that we have the ability to recognize beauty and sublimity in any artwork. If an artwork does not exhibit such beauty, we tend to give a negative judgment to it.  He calls this judgment an expression of feeling- an utterance that may manifest either praise or blame.[1] But our judgment of any artwork is always subjected and informed by our reasons. We always have a reason for preferring one piece of art to another. There is a sense of either beauty or absence of beauty in any artwork and this determine our appreciation of such artwork. This takes us to the second critical process which he identifies as particular statement or reason.

Furthermore, our appreciation of any artwork must be backed by reason. This shows that it does not just terminate at the level of feelings and emotions, our reason should be applied to understand what is communicated in any artwork for us to make a proper judgment. We say, for instance, that such and such artwork is beautiful because it has such and such qualities. In looking at this, it shows a certain level of ascendancy in artistic appreciation which moves from what we feel to what is inspired or reason to our belief and feeling. Isenberg opines that this statement has to do with the description of the content of an art work.[2] But in these statements, he posits that not every statement is about the quality, it may be about the nature of the drawing or the way it is placed, or even the background that the art work carries. This description of the art work is not always attempted for the purpose of its own sake. It is one that is controlled by some interests and purpose and not just to defending a critical judgment. We often use the two aforementioned critical processes together in sentences which are at once normative and descriptive. The descriptive nature of the second critical process is made critically useful and relevant because it is supported by the third critical process, which is general statement or norm.

As the name goes, general statement or norm is a kind of statement that relates the reason to what the norm is. It tries to make the reason to conform with objectivity. We may say that it tries to make it objective. It is based upon an inductive generalization which describes a relationship between some aesthetic quality and everyone’s system of aesthetic response. [3] Interestingly, Isenberg does not mean here that this process is an inductive generalization rather, that it is based upon an inductive generalization. This is due to the fact that in critical evaluation, we use such statement to vindicate anybody’s reaction to a work of art, to some other person(s) who do not share such effect. This is why he calls this process a rule, a generalized value statement.[4]

Having given these three process, we observe that there is a difference between explaining and justifying a critical response. If one is asked to give reason for one’s appreciation of a particular work of art, it is a fact that some statement about the object will necessarily show both in the explanation and in the critical defence of any reaction to it. In his distinction between explanation and justification, Isenberg alleged that explanations require inductive generalizations but such is not needed in justification. This distinction somehow render the original theory incorrect since general statements or norms based on inductive generalizations would be extraneous to the support of critical judgment. 

Critical Communication

Isenberg identifies the function of criticism as that which brings about communication at the level of the senses. It induces a sameness of vision, of experienced content. Communication, from his own idea, is a process by which a mental content is transmitted by symbols from one person to another.[5] This achievement of such thing as sameness of vision and experienced content, can bring about agreement or what he refers to as communion. By communion, he meant a community of feelings which expresses itself in identical value judgments.

He makes a distinction between critical communication and normal or ordinary communication. He identifies that in ordinary communication, there is a tendency that symbols might acquire a footing relatively independent of sense-perception. There is a doubt that is incurred on the issue of the interpretation of symbols being at a time completely unaffected by the environmental context. It is quite obvious that we do not depend on experience for the interpretation of compound expressions. The dependency may expose or make the passage obscure, vague and incomplete. Statements about immediate experience made in ordinary communication are such that, if for instance, a theory requires a certain flame to be blue, then we have to report whether it is or is not blue with no regard to shades or variations which may be of enormous importance when considered aesthetically.[6]

He makes an interesting point when he says that we are bound to the letters of our words. To facilitate this statement, he gives an example with this statement

                        “The expression on her face was delightful.”

                        “What was delightful about it?”

                        “Didn’t you see that smile?”

In the statement above, when we look at the clarity of the language, the speaker was able to communicate his meaning clearly, because of the clarity of his language in relation to her purpose, we cannot but accept that she was able to state her meaning clearly. In this case, it is the evaluation of the immediate experience. The idea of smile is understood with reference to the face being delightful. The idea of smile in the speaker’s mind is not that there is something delightful about smile at that particular moment but that the face is delightful by the fact  that there is smile on it. Isenberg asserts that there is understanding and misunderstanding at this level, in the sense that two people can come to a certain understanding of a particular concept or word like the one above. There are marks that will facilitate this understanding and there are means by which misunderstanding can be eliminated. But we cannot see this phenomena being identical with those that take the same names in the study of ordinary communication.

Conclusion

Isenberg tries to mark out in this article, the direction in which the exact nature of criticism should be sought. There is an issue concerning the relationship between the language of criticism and the qualities of the critic’s experience. But he has identified that the relationship between this two is neither designation nor denotation; the critic does not point to the qualities he has in mind. He affirms that the seeming function of language will explain the exhibition of abstract qualities, and it is this abstract qualities that is predominant in criticism.  

At the end of this essay, by way of recapitulating, we have tried to bring to limelight the very idea of Isenberg as poured on the pages of his article “Critical Communication”. We first started by explaining his theory of criticism which he divided into three processes. The enunciation of this processes swung us into the basic discussion of his idea of critical communication. We noted the distinctions he made between critical communication and ordinary communication. And by so doing, we hinted on his idea of language, communication and evaluation.

The idea expressed in this essay which portrays mainly the ideas of Isenberg may instigate perplexity in the mind of anyone that is new in the study of aesthetics. This may be due to the fact that the discourse seem to be vague and ambiguous. Nonetheless, an applause should be given to Isenberg who has, in an ingenuous manner, laid bare such ‘esoteric’ concepts with his ordinary language. Art is the engagement of every rational creature, we are surrounded by arts and we dare not keep a blind eye to this fact. Things in the world are fashioned in an ordered manner and this order, if we may say, is art.

---

[1] Cf. Arnold Isenberg, “Critical Communication” in Introductory Readings In Aesthetics ed. John Hospers (New York: The Free Press Ltd., 1969), p. 255.

[2] Cf. Arnold Isenberg, “Critical Communication” in Introductory Readings In Aesthetics ed. John Hospers (New York: The Free Press Ltd., 1969), p. 255.

[3] Cf. Arnold Isenberg, “Critical Communication” in Introductory Readings In Aesthetics ed. John Hospers (New York: The Free Press Ltd., 1969), p. 256.

[4] Cf. Arnold Isenberg, “Critical Communication” in Introductory Readings In Aesthetics ed. John Hospers (New York: The Free Press Ltd., 1969), p. 256.

[5] Cf. Arnold Isenberg, “Critical Communication” in Introductory Readings In Aesthetics ed. John Hospers (New York: The Free Press Ltd., 1969), p. 260.

[6] Cf. Arnold Isenberg, “Critical Communication” in Introductory Readings In Aesthetics ed. John Hospers (New York: The Free Press Ltd., 1969), p. 260.