Derrida ââåthe Truth in Painting Art History the Art of Art History

Book by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger

The Origin of the Work of Art

Cover of the 1960 High german edition
Author	Martin Heidegger
Original title	Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes
Country	Federal republic of germany
Language	High german
Published	1950
Preceded by	The Question Concerning Engineering
Followed by	What Is Called Thinking?

"The Origin of the Work of Art" (German language: Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes) is an essay by the High german philosopher Martin Heidegger. Heidegger drafted the text between 1935 and 1937, reworking information technology for publication in 1950 and again in 1960. Heidegger based his essay 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 significant of a "thing", mark the philosopher's first lectures on the notion of fine art.

Content [edit]

In "The Origin of the Work of Fine art" Heidegger explains the essence of art in terms of the concepts of being and truth. He argues that fine art is not only a way of expressing the chemical element of truth in a culture, only the means of creating information technology and providing a springboard from which "that which is" tin can exist revealed. Works of fine art are not only representations of the way things are, only actually produce a community's shared agreement. Each time a new artwork is added to any civilization, 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 exist a provider of the other. "Neither is without the other. Nevertheless, neither is the sole support of the other."^[1] Art, a concept split from both piece of work and creator, thus exists as the source for them both. Rather than command lying with the artist, fine art becomes a force that uses the creator for art's own purposes. Besides, the resulting work must be considered in the context of the earth in which it exists, non that of its artist.^[2] In discovering the essence, however, the trouble 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 cover the individual parts, simply without understanding the parts, you cannot comprehend the whole. Applied to art and artwork, we notice 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 agree of this circumvolve y'all either have to define the essence of art or of the artwork, and, every bit the artwork is simpler, we should start there.^[3]

Artworks, Heidegger contends, are things, a definition that raises the question of the meaning of a "thing", such that works accept a thingly character. This is a broad concept, and so Heidegger chooses to focus on iii dominant interpretations of things:

1. Things as substances with properties,^[5] or as bearers of traits.
2. Things every bit the manifold of sense perceptions.^{[half dozen]}
3. Things as formed affair.^[7]

The 3rd interpretation is the about dominant (extended to all beings), just 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."^[viii] The reason Heidegger selects a pair of peasant shoes painted by Vincent van Gogh is to found a distinction between artwork and other "things", such as pieces of equipment, as well as to open up up experience through phenomenological description. This was really typical of Heidegger as he often chose to study shoes and shoe maker shops as an example for the assay of a culture.^{[ citation needed ]} Heidegger explains the viewer's responsibleness to consider the diversity of questions nigh the shoes, request not only about class and affair—what are the shoes made of?—but bestowing the slice with life by asking of purpose—what are the shoes for? What globe practise they open up and vest to?^[nine] In this way we tin can get beyond correspondence theories of truth which posit truth as the correspondence of representations (form) to reality (thing).

Next, Heidegger writes of fine art's ability to prepare an agile struggle between "Earth" and "Earth".^[10] "Earth" represents meaning which is disclosed, not merely the sum of all that is set-to-hand for one beingness but rather the web of significant relations in which Dasein, or man beingness(s), be (a table, for example, as function of the spider web of signification, points to those who customarily sit down at it, the conversations once had effectually it, the carpenter who made it, and so on - all of which point to farther and further things). So a family unit of measurement could be a world, or a career path could exist a globe, 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 set-to-mitt. Both are necessary components for an artwork to role, each serving unique purposes. The artwork is inherently an object of "world", as information technology creates a world of its own; information technology opens upward for us other worlds and cultures, such equally worlds from the past similar the ancient Greek or medieval worlds, or different social worlds, similar the world of the peasant, or of the aristocrat. However, the very nature of fine art itself appeals to "World", every bit a role of art is to highlight the natural materials used to create information technology, 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 groundwork is necessary for every meaning explicit representation. In this way, "World" is revealing the unintelligibility of "Globe", and so admits its dependence on the natural "Globe". This reminds us that concealment (hiddenness) is the necessary precondition for unconcealment (aletheia), i.due east. truth. The existence of truth is a product of this struggle—the process of art—taking place within the artwork.

Heidegger uses the instance of a Greek temple to illustrate his formulation of world and earth. Such works every bit the temple help in capturing this essence of art every bit they become through a transition from artworks to fine art objects depending on the status of their world. Once the culture has inverse, the temple no longer is able to actively engage with its surroundings and becomes passive—an fine art object. He holds that a working artwork is crucial to a community and then must be able to exist understood. Nevertheless, as presently as meaning is pinned down and the piece of work no longer offers resistance to rationalization, the engagement is over and information technology is no longer agile. While the notion appears contradictory, Heidegger is the showtime to admit that he was confronting a riddle—i that he did not intend to answer as much as to describe in regard to the meaning of art.

Influence and criticism [edit]

The principal influence on Heidegger's conception of fine art was Friedrich Nietzsche. In Nietzsche'due south The Will to Power, Heidegger struggled with his notions about the dynamic of truth and art. Nietzsche contends that fine art is superior to truth, something Heidegger eventually disagrees with non because of the ordered relationship Nietzsche puts forth only considering of the philosopher's definition of truth itself, ane 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 improve for finding truth. (In fact, Heidegger is employing a revised version of the phenomenological method; see the hermeneutic circumvolve). Meyer Schapiro argued that the Van Gogh boots discussed are not actually peasant boots but those of Van Gogh himself, a particular that would undermine Heidegger'south reading.^[11] During the 1930s mentions of soil carried connotations which are lost for later readers (run into Blood and Soil). Problems with both Heidegger and Schapiro'due south texts are further discussed in Jacques Derrida's Restitutions - On Truth to Size ^[12] and in the writing of Babette Babich. A recent refutation of Schapiro's critique has been given by Iain Thomson (2011). Heidegger's notions about art have made a relevant contribution to discussions on artistic truth. Heidegger's reflections in this regard also affected architectural thinking, particularly in terms of reflections on the question of abode. Refer to the influential work in architectural phenomenology of: Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci, Towards a Phenomenology of Compages (New York: Rizzoli, 1980); and see also a contempo treatment of the question of dwelling house in: Nader El-Bizri, 'On Domicile: Heideggerian Allusions to Architectural Phenomenology', Studia UBB. Philosophia, Vol. sixty, No. 1 (2015): 5-xxx.

Editions [edit]

• Heidegger, Martin. Off the Beaten Track (Cambridge: Cambridge University Printing, 2002). Translation of Holzwege (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1950), volume v in Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe.
• Heidegger, Martin; trans. David Farrell Krell (2008). "The Origin of the Work of Fine art". Martin Heidegger: The Basic Writings. New York: HarperCollins. pp. 143–212.

See also [edit]

• Being and Time
• Contributions to Philosophy
• Deconstruction
• Hermeneutics
• Postmodernism

Notes [edit]

1. ^ Heidegger (2008), p. 143.
2. ^ Heidegger (2008), p. 167.
3. ^ Heidegger (2008), p. 144.
4. ^ Vangoghmuseum.nl
5. ^ Heidegger (2008), pp. 148–151.
6. ^ Heidegger (2008), pp. 151–152.
7. ^ Heidegger (2008), pp. 152–156.
8. ^ Heidegger (2008), p. 156.
9. ^ Heidegger (2008), pp. 146–165.
10. ^ Heidegger (2008), p. 174.
11. ^ Shapiro M. (1968), The Notwithstanding Life as a Personal Object in The reach of Mind: essays in memory of Kurt Goldstein, ed. by K. Simmel, New York: Springer Publishing, 1968.
12. ^ Derrida J., (1978), The Truth In Painting, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. ISBN 978-0-226-14324-8

References [edit]

• Thomson, Iain D. (2011). Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity. Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-1-107-00150-3.

Further reading [edit]

• Renate Maas, Diaphan und gedichtet. Der künstlerische Raum bei Martin Heidegger und Hans Jantzen, Kassel 2015, 432 Due south., ISBN 978-iii-86219-854-2.
• Harries, Karsten. "Fine art Matters: A Critical Commentary on Heidegger's Origin of the Piece of work of Fine art", Springer Science and Business Media, 2009
• Babich, Babette E. "The Work of Art and the Museum: Heidegger, Schapiro, Gadamer", in Babich, 'Words In Claret, Similar Flowers. Philosophy and Verse, Music and Eros in Hoelderlin, Nietzsche and Heidegger' (SUNY Printing, 2006)
• González Ruibal, Alfredo. "Heideggerian Technematology". All Things Archaeological. Archaeolog, Nov 25, 2005.
• Inwood, Michael. A Heidegger Lexicon. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1999.
• Haar, Michel. "Disquisitional Remarks on the Heideggarian reading of Nietzsche". Critical Heidegger. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.
• Dahlstrom, Daniel O. "Heidegger's Artworld". Martin Heidegger: Politics, Fine art, and Engineering. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1995.
• Van Buren, John. The Young Heidegger. Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana Academy Press, 1994
• Guignon, Charles. The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
• Bruin, John. "Heidegger and the Earth of the Work of Fine art". The Journal of Aesthetics and Fine art Criticism, Vol. 50, No. 1. (Winter, 1992): 55-56.
• Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. 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 Piece of work of Art: An Explication". The Journal of Aesthetics and Fine art Criticism, Vol. 32, No.2. (Wintertime, 1973): 257-265.
• Pöggeler, Otto. "Heidegger on Fine art". Martin Heidegger: Politics, Fine art, and Engineering. New York: Holmes
• Schapiro, Meyer. 1994. "The Yet Life as a Personal Object - A Note on Heidegger and van Gogh", "Further Notes on Heidegger and van Gogh", in: Theory and Philosophy of Fine art: Style, Artist, and Club, Selected papers iv, New York: George Braziller, 135-142; 143-151.
• Thomson, Iain D. (2011). Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity. Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-1-107-00150-iii.
• Zaccaria, Gino. "The Enigma of Art. On the Provenance of Artistic Creation". Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2021.(https://brill.com/view/title/59609)

External links [edit]

• Thomson, Iain, "Heidegger's Aesthetics" The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_the_Work_of_Art

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