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Martin Heidegger's Conception of Art as Truth
by Emanuel L. Paparella
2008-12-09 09:07:15

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“Art is historical, and as historical it is the creative preserving of truth in the work. Art happens as poetry. Poetry is founding in the triple sense of bestowing, grounding, and beginning. Art as founding, is essentially historical. This means not only that art has a history in the external sense that in the course of time it, too, appears along with many other things, and in the process changes and passes away and offers changing aspects of historiology. Art is history in the essential sense that it grounds history…The origin of the work of art—that is, the origin of both the creators and the preservers, which is to say of a people’s historical existence, is art. This is so because art is by nature an origin: a distinctive way in which truth come into being, that is, becomes historical.”
--Martin Heidegger (“The Origin of the Work of Art”)

Heidegger (1889-1976) remains one of the most influential of continental philosophers, despite his tarnished reputation due to a brief flirting with the Nazi party. He begins his analysis of art with this question: What is the origin of the work of art? What is being asked becomes clear once one understands Heidegger’s answer: “art is the origin of the work of art.” To understand this puzzling answer which sounds like a mere tautology one has to keep in mind that Heidegger has a holistic view of art. That is to say, every aspect of that complex phenomenon known as art is equally crucial to the understanding of what art is. Those aspects are fourfold: 1) the art object itself, 2) the artist (or in Heidegger’s terminology the “creator”), 3) the audience or viewer (or “preserver”), and 4) the work (in the sense of effect) of art.

Heidegger never mentions any specific theory of art, nevertheless he is implicitly critical of any theoretical account that privileges one or the other of art’s four components as the essential one. So, for Heidegger the work of art, itself an ambiguous term which refers both the art object and to its effects, can be understood with reference to its role in that complex phenomenon. Once this holism of Heidegger is grasped, it becomes easier to analyze his more specific claims. The most important of those claims is the assertion that art reveals the truth of Being. From time immemorial philosophers have linked art and truth, but Heidegger’s unique conception of truth as the disclosure of Being is essential for understanding his view of art.

Heidegger begins his complex analysis by first asking what distinguishes an artwork from other types of things, especially from what he calls “equipment.” An item of equipment such as a pencil or a hammer, undoubtedly plays a role in the various purposive projects which we undertake such as writing, building, etc. Superficially, equipment and artwork may appear similar. Both are created items of form and matter. A statue is a piece of marble on which a sculptor has impressed a form. A pencil is composed of wood and graphite, joined to make a useful object of writing. Heidegger agues that such a superficial view ignores the essential nature of the artwork: its ability to reveal truth.

This begs the question: how does an artwork reveal truth? By getting us to see objects outside their customary settings, revealing the broader contexts within which they exist. Heidegger provides some examples; three of them are the painting Shoes by Vincent van Gogh, an ancient Greek temple, and a poem about a Roman fountain. Although the “worlds” disclosed by each of these works are different from one another, they make available to their viewers the specific worlds, the historical cultures in which they were produced. As such, each work is an example of the essential nature of the artwork.

Throughout his analysis Heidegger uses terms such as “world,” “earth,” and “strife” to explain the rise and fall of human cultures. The easiest to understand is “world,” since we all use in much the same way as Heidegger when we talk of the world of the student, or the world of the writer, or the world of the villain. “Earth” is more difficult to grasp and interpret but it is basically the material underpinning on which culture erect their worlds. And finally “strife” refers to the essential conflict between world and earth; while it is true that cultures create worlds, it is also true that earth is not a mere passive element in the relationship. Earth fights with world eventually bringing culture down and allowing for historical development.

In his essay “The Origin of the Work of Art” Heidegger discusses the function of art but also the nature of art object, the role of the artist as well as the role of the audience. This conforms to his basic holistic approach to art. Heidegger distinguishes artworks from equipment by asserting that artworks proclaim their creation as part of their content. Although the usefulness of items of equipment distracts us from the fact that they are produced, works of art by their nature proclaim their status as creations.

What is striking about Heidegger’s holism is that it views both “creators” (the artists) and “preservers” (the audience) as essential for the constitution of a work of art, that is to say, essential to art as a whole. This resembles Barthes’ view that if there is no audience there is no meaning to a work of art. The material objects in themselves with no audiences are mere relics of former times. Obviously this cognitive conception of art as revealing the truth of Being is in stark contrast with both Plato and Kant’s conceptions which make a dichotomy between aesthetics and ethics but it remains a signal view pointing to a more complete and holistic view of the nature of art.

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Alexander Mikhaylov	2008-12-09 00:48:35
'This resembles Barthes’ view that if there is no audience there is no meaning to a work of art.' It seems like this question or rather a statement was a forerunner for consumeristic approach to art


Alexander Mikhaylov	2008-12-09 00:53:21
I know it would sound rather poetic but I could not refrain from saying it. 'What is the art?' I sometimes suspect that the very act of creation (creativity, that's it) is a human attempt to follow Creator. By the sheer act of creativity, no matter what medium we use, we try to recreate, not even a tiny part of the existing world which is available to us though our senses and intellect, but we attempt to imitate the act of creation itself, for imitation is one of the ways of leaning.


Emanuel Paparella	2008-12-09 04:47:39
Indeed, Mr. Mikhaylov, you hit the nail on the head. Nitzsche said that art makes life tolerable. Picasso, who was not much of a decent human being but a great artist, was overheard exclaiming while painting: "I am god, I am god." The ancient Greeks believed that the act of creation was extatic and took complete possession of a person. Indeed in the beginning was the Word which has several etymological meanings among which "the point of it all." So God is a poet and an artist. I suppose true art reminds us of the point of it all. A nihilist can hardly appreciate the act of creation and that is why, in my view, the jury is still out on some modern, wholly immanent within itself (as some modern rationalistic philosophy is like a snake eating his own tail) pointing to no transcendence beyond itself and showing no point to it all. Ironically, the same cynical people immersed in the box of immanentism will go around preaching ecological survival. I guess it is a way of keeping busy and keep away quiet desperation.


Sand	2008-12-09 08:24:58
When "art" is conceived and executed with an audience in mind it more or less becomes a commercial enterprise. There is nothing wrong with commerce in art except when it intrudes into the intimate inter-relationship between the artist, his materials, his delight in infusing his original concepts into material reality with his imagination. When it does so the artist is seduced into commercial production and becomes less of an artist. There is nothing wrong with an artist becoming a commercial success except when that detracts from the original instigation of creation.


Sand	2008-12-09 09:00:22
The inherent, instigational and most important audience in the creation of a work of art is the artist him or herself and whether or not there is a substantial addition to that original audience is irrelevant to the genuineness of the art. Many painters never acquire an audience beyond themselves. No doubt art can be a social phenomenon but that does not either negate or necessarily affirm the work itself.


Sand	2008-12-09 10:25:33
There is much talk of philosophers and theologists and politicians of the word being the beginning, the middle and the ultimate meaning of the universe and all that occurs within it but the word is a symbol of language itself and language is an abstraction of an abstraction of an abstraction, a distillation of the meager information accorded to humans through their highly limited sense apparatus which came into being for other purposes altogether and melded into a strange and intricate instrument for social interaction. Several of the major arts take this agglutination of abstractions and perform amusing and revealing acrobatics with it but it has its inherent clumsiness and oversimplification of reality and crippling vagueness which frequently hobble its possible agility. Like instant coffee powder or dried concentration of soup it requires the liquid equivalent of a human mind to acquire any real nourishment and almost all human minds add very personal flavors and other components which modify the vague output of the original intent. Many of the arts which do not deal in words but appeal to the original sense input of the observer such as painting, sculpture, music, the culinary arts, choreography, film, photography, also are abstractions of an essentially unknowable reality but impact the senses more directly from a totally different direction but nevertheless never can rid themselves of the taints of each individual observer. And these other unique approaches to reality are no less vital and true than those arts enmeshed in words. Unfortunately much of the analysis of the arts is made through words and to a huge extent words are inadequate to capture the dynamics of these other human activities and unfortunately assume they can make the final judgments in these matters. They are mistaken.


AP	2008-12-09 11:54:38
Personally, I feel like a miniature Ganesha in Buddha's paradise through the sheer act of creativity. A mix of La ilaha ill Allah with Raven-Logobola-Coyote. An interbreed of Shechinah with Kwatee too, at times. Definitely, I feel the pulse of the holy roots in my veins, all the way back to Abraham and his Lord. Nothing to comment about then.


Emanuel Paparella	2008-12-09 14:30:44
From time immemorial the materialist has said that fire and tools (especially weapons to dominate others) is what advances the destiny of humankind. Those who think otherwise have always affirmed that the first such powerful tool is language which precedes abstract thought and reflects primitive man’s reality and by which primitive man could learn who he was as a human being, and it alone explains the prodigious leap of man into culture. Most importantly, language reflects spiritual realities more than material realities. The present day post-modern philistine may misguidedly brand such a vision “art enmeshed in words” but it remains primary to an understanding of what makes the human being tick. Once we have done away with the likes of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and all those philosophers who have reflected and continue to reflect on the nature of language, we’ll be ready to go back to Plato’s cave. It has happened before despite Hegel’s contention that history can only be progressive. It happened seventy short years ago in an ultra-civilized placed called Germany where in 1933 they burned “art enmeshed in words” and were left with their animalistic instincts. From burning books eventually they graduated to burning people, by the millions.


Sand	2008-12-09 16:05:47
Since burning people was a popular sport amongst Catholic officials centuries ago I suppose they must have left an indelible instruction on history for others to follow. To believe that language is the only avenue for abstract thought is, of course, the unfortunate belief of those so mentally crippled that they cannot think in color, form, flavor, sound, and body motion. Artists, on the other hand, are well equipped to move within these lively inspiring abstracts.


AP	2008-12-09 16:19:30
"Hitler's close friend, Dietrich Eckart, told of overhearing Hitler showing off to a lady by denouncing Berlin in extravagant terms: ". . . the luxury, the perversion, the iniquity, the wanton display and the Jewish materialism disgusted me so thoroughly that I was almost beside myself. I nearly imagined myself to be Jesus Christ when he came to his Father's Temple and found the money changers." Eckart described Hitler as "brandishing his whip and exclaimed that it was his mission to descend upon the capital like a Christ and scourge the corrupt." And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables. --John 2:14-15" Very interesting photos over here too: http://nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm


AP	2008-12-09 16:40:11
"In this way, to understand a frog is to abstract the form of the frog, its essence, its definition -- all of which are the same thing for Aristotle -- and incorporate them into one's own mind. Thus, as an inquirer understands more highly actualized substances, his own mind, by assuming their forms, becomes itself more highly actualized. The picture is complicated by the fact that man’s unique potentiality among animals is to understand, and he becomes actualized by any exercise of his understanding. But it is also true that he becomes more actualized in direct proportion to the actualization of the objects he understands. As the understood substances become less earthy, and more ethereal, so too does his mind become more ethereal and less earthy. After all, he is incorporating their forms into his own understanding. Once a philosopher has mastered the individual, theoretical sciences, though, his next, and highest task is metaphysics: to consider the analogies between the lower sciences, seeing the central roles played in them by metaphysical notions such as form and matter, actuality and potentiality. In the final analysis, this is, according to Aristotle, to see God’s role in the universe – as pure form and pure actuality, underwriting the rest of existence by actualizing it. To see this role is to understand Aristotle’s God, and thereby to assume the most fully actualized thing there is or could be: the necessarily and eternally actual, thought thinking itself. By understanding God, then, the philosopher assumes God’s form, and since God is but pure form, this philosopher assumes, or perhaps even is assumed by, God. The details are not exactly clear, to say the least. What does seem clear, however, is that the penultimate rung in that ascent to purity seems to involve a plunge back down into the impurities from which philosophers so often wish to escape."


Emanuel Paparella	2008-12-09 17:06:10
It would be appropriate, it seems to me, given that the passage is in quotation marks, to give credit to whomever wrote this, even if one does not understand it or wants to denigrate it. You lost no time in equating Christ to Hitler, conveniently fortetting with Hitler that Christ was a Jew, but that is to be expected from ideological fanatics. Indeed fanaticism of the left is nothing less than the other side of the coin of the fanaticism of the right.


Sand	2008-12-09 17:16:00
To abstract a frog is to ignore some qualities and emphasize others which means it is a process of selective ignorance. But a frog, like any other physical thing is a complex structure whose many attributes were assembled for a huge number of reactions to the universe and to be eclectic about a frog is a matter of one’s personal outlooks and prejudices in selecting attributes. There is no such thing as a pure frog since no frog is precisely like any other frog, even within the same genus and species, just as no human being is precisely like any other human. When someone is describing an animal merely as a frog each listener evokes a mental creature with some general common characteristic but that each of these mental pictures would be like any other us most unlikely. And that is why language, which transfers generalities in communication, is such a monstrously sloppy tool and why it takes a very clever expert in its use to use it well and properly and why, throughout history, there is such a continual babble of interpretation and misinterpretation which can lead, as experience demonstrates, to ferocious and bloody conflicts.


Emanuel Paparella	2008-12-09 17:18:03
"... language which precedes abstract thought and reflects primitive man’s reality and by which primitive man could learn who he was as a human being, (Paparella) "To believe that language is the only avenue for abstract thought is, of course, the unfortunate belief of those so mentally crippled that they cannot think in color, form, flavor, sound, and body motion." (Sand) Mr. Sand thinks he has contradicted what I said but the reader can easily see that obviously, in his eagerness to cast aspersion on anything and everything said by those who disagree with his philistine mind-set, the self-proclaimed Grand Inquisitor in charge of political correctness in this forum becomes incapable to even read what is in fron of his eyes in plain English...That is quite a disease to be afflicted by. Pity.


Sand	2008-12-09 17:26:51
Your statement: "... language which precedes abstract thought and reflects primitive man’s reality and by which primitive man could learn who he was as a human being, (Paparella) As I clearly pointed out, there is no language which is not abstract thought. Language itself is a regulated matrix of abstractions which reduces perceptions to simplicities which ignore uniquenesses which are critical to art. If you are unaware of that you are in sad shape indeed.


Emanuel Paparella	2008-12-09 19:06:28
True to form, the point was either missed or distorted. No surprises there. The point was simple: before there were rational abstractions to describe reality there was an imaginative language which proceeded via images and myths. Animals of course perceive by sense perception only and never got to rationality and abstractions but for those cultural philistines, after all, man is nothing but a "naked ape" a la Desmond Morris. In fact, rationality and abstractions came much later for man but he was already different from animals once he had language. The problems with all grand inquisitors of every stripe and ideology is that in their eagerness to burn books (and people too ultimately...)they become unable to even identify the points of agreements with their interlocutors. Pity.


Sand	2008-12-09 19:40:57
Pity indeed that you cannot accord animals the ability to think abstractly. Pavlov himself taught dogs to slaver at the sound of a bell which is pretty abstract thinking. A current article in Science Daily on the web describes how dogs have a sense of injustice at being treated unfairly, There are many, many demonstrations of animals thinking abstractly about signals for catching prey and planning attacks etc. Birds have all sorts of abstract signals for danger and food and mating.Your overwhelming hubris at being a special kind of ape is amusing and typically ignorant.


Sand	2008-12-09 20:13:21
Was it really the Nazis that burned Joan of Arc and Giordano Bruno? Was Torquemada really a Nazi? Strange. I thought...


Emanuel Paparella	2008-12-09 20:35:54
You and your fellow materialists and logical positivist behaviorists have it all confused in your mind: behavior and behavior modification based on deterministic premises (so well known to grand inquisitors and thought policemen who wish to silence people who don't agree with their mind-set and change their way of thinking...), who torture people to modify their behavior...has precious little to do with abstract thinking and ethical behavior which is predicated on man's freedom to act responsibly and be held accountable to the natural moral law. You really ought to read Kant's Critique of Judgment some day. That is why we do not put apes on trial and sentence them to years in jail for misbehavior and incorrect thinking, albeit we sometimes misguidedly put them in cages for our amusement, which makes us less than animals in that respect. Yes, Hitler loved dogs. It is quite easy to modigy their behavior and delude ourselves that they love us even though we the modificator is a villain. I don't think Hitler loved cats that much.


Sand	2008-12-09 20:48:00
Why Paparella! Are you cringing again because I showed you the truth? Is the truth so brutal to you? It's brutal to me also but I have the guts to acknowledge and accept it. Did I mention Hitler? I mentioned dogs, but not Hitler. Lots of nice people like dogs too. But evidently you're a cat man. I also find cats capable of abstraction. And Mice too! Did you know about the breakfast mouse? THE BREAKFAST MOUSE There is a mouse Inside my house Who comes outside to see. When he comes out I look at him And he looks at me. With his teeth He mines my wall To make his living room And hall. My architecture, No conjecture, For his pragmatic taste. My house is just a warmer hole To make his Winter living space Where Summer always seems to be. When he comes out I look at him And he looks at me. The round small eyes To take in facts Like shiny headed ball top tacks Regard me with but little fear. Just let me sneeze - He'll disappear. But sometimes, When I'm drinking tea, Then he comes out. I look at him, And he looks at me. Since he's the guest And I'm the host I sometimes offer him Some toast Which he accepts most gratefully. And as he eats I look at him, And, he looks at me. I do not mind, In my house A single solitary mouse. But it happens frequently Mice start their own Community. I cast a worried look at him, And he looks at me. If he brings a girlfriend home With her suitcase, brush and comb, To have a family, Soon every nook and every cranny Will fill with kids and aunts and granny! Frankly, that's a bit too many. Nervously, I look at him And he looks at me. If he over-multiplies He'll fill the walls With small mouse cries. They'll gaze at me, Near and far, Eyes like Russian caviar. They'll drill my walls Like Swiss cheese Admitting in The Winter breeze And we'll cough and gasp and sneeze! This is what I could foresee. Panicking, I look at him And he looks at me. Toast in paw, He looks at me Trusting in humanity, Gnawing very steadily, Extending friendship readily. "Oh well," I think, "I'm sure he's single. Let him stay and hang his shingle. Allow this fellow to exist. Perhaps he's a misogynist !" My house is nice, we both agree. I smile at him. He grins at me. My house is like the Earth, You see. There's room for him And room for me. But we must plan Most carefully So space for both of us Is free. I at my chair, he in his hole Can make it very comfortably. I wipe my mouth, He scrubs his nose. I nod my head to him, and he Shows his tail to me.


Emanuel Paparella	2008-12-09 20:52:32
P.S. Your repeated attempt to justify and excuse the enormity and moral obscenity of an Holocaust (revealing of a latent admiration for Nazi tactics) by a comparison to the reprehensible behavior of a Torquemada is really pathetic and quite revealing of an authoritarian personality with much affinity with the Nazi mind-set and parading as liberal progressive left wing thinking. Indeed, disrespect for intellectual integrity is the first step to burning of books and eventually to burning of people, by the millions. I am afraid that the emperor remains naked despite Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition.


Sand	2008-12-09 20:59:28
See! Here we are again with burning problems. The USA and Britain who burned up people in Dresden and Tokio and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Nazis used gas. Don't you remember that? I was in the US Army at the time. Give up the grass, man! Evidently you can't handle it. Or are you drunk again?


Emanuel Paparella	2008-12-09 21:48:21
What the grand inquisitor fails to mention, of course, is that the Holocaust had no strategic value in the war whatsoever and was rationally and logically planned by a dozen men or so in a conference that lasted an hour and a half and executed in three short years and eliminated some eleven million innocent men women and children. As I said cherry picking and selective rationalizations worthy of the Nazi mind-set. Talking of being drunk and on joints!


Sand	2008-12-09 22:02:14
But what is this red herring of the Holocaust you keep shoving into the conversation to divert it away from our discussion of your being an ape with powers of abstraction? I never mentioned the Holocaust but we could be talking about cogitating pussycats or the nature of physical perception and how language is such an inaccurate match to reality and BANG! you shove in book burning and the Holocaust. I thought we were discussing the relationship of art to the artist and the audience but as soon as you found you couldn't accept that language was complete abstraction -WHOOPS! here we go with the Nazis and the Holocaust. Is that how you avoid discussing the issues? The Holocaust and the seven dwarfs with PhDs who killed seven million Jews is a pretty handy little gadget to swerve a discussion away from the subject.


Emanuel Paparella	2008-12-09 22:40:57
"Since burning people was a popular sport amongst Catholic officials centuries ago I suppose they must have left an indelible instruction on history for others to follow. To believe that language is the only avenue for abstract thought is, of course, the unfortunate belief of those so mentally crippled that they cannot think in color, form, flavor, sound, and body motion. Artists, on the other hand, are well equipped to move within these lively inspiring abstracts. (Mr. S.) AP 2008-12-09 16:19:30 "Hitler's close friend, Dietrich Eckart, told of overhearing Hitler showing off to a lady by denouncing Berlin in extravagant terms: ". . . the luxury, the perversion, the iniquity, the wanton display and the Jewish materialism disgusted me so thoroughly that I was almost beside myself. I nearly imagined myself to be Jesus Christ when he came to his Father's Temple and found the money changers." Eckart described Hitler as "brandishing his whip and exclaimed that it was his mission to descend upon the capital like a Christ and scourge the corrupt." (Ms. P.) As it turns out it was you and your bird of a feather religion basher Ms. P. that introduced the subject for the usual slanderous aims. Talking of being drunk. I suppose intellectual dishonesty is a form of addiction too.


Sand	2008-12-10 06:20:48
This was your post that dragged in "burning" inappropriately: Emanuel Paparella 2008-12-09 14:30:44 From time immemorial the materialist has said that fire and tools (especially weapons to dominate others) is what advances the destiny of humankind. Those who think otherwise have always affirmed that the first such powerful tool is language which precedes abstract thought and reflects primitive man’s reality and by which primitive man could learn who he was as a human being, and it alone explains the prodigious leap of man into culture. Most importantly, language reflects spiritual realities more than material realities. The present day post-modern philistine may misguidedly brand such a vision “art enmeshed in words” but it remains primary to an understanding of what makes the human being tick. Once we have done away with the likes of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and all those philosophers who have reflected and continue to reflect on the nature of language, we’ll be ready to go back to Plato’s cave. It has happened before despite Hegel’s contention that history can only be progressive. It happened seventy short years ago in an ultra-civilized placed called Germany where in 1933 they burned “art enmeshed in words” and were left with their animalistic instincts. From burning books eventually they graduated to burning people, by the millions. The second post mentioning Hitler was not by me but by AP. Again your dysfunctional reading abilities come to the fore. If you are not under the influence of drugs then there is something more basic in you requiring serious medical attention.


Emanuel Paparella	2008-12-10 14:01:03
Sand 2008-12-09 20:13:21 "Was it really the Nazis that burned Joan of Arc and Giordano Bruno? Was Torquemada really a Nazi? Strange. I thought... " Obviously there was a fanatical eagerness there also on your part to make the connection between Hitler and christ, Torquemada and the Holocaust which is indeed a pathetic and scurrillous comparison when one contemplates the enormity of the Holocaust without diminishing the reprehensible practices of the Inquisition (which in its executing arm was civilian and not clerical). One is left to wonder who is drunk and who is on drugs. I suppose bigots and fanatics of any stripe need no drugs, their ideology is their drug. Indeed, it's all there in Dostoyevky's The Possessed; and it all came to pass. For shame.


Sand	2008-12-10 17:25:24
Your implication that Jesus Christ was involved in the decision to burn Joan of Arc and Bruno is a clear indication that something is seriously wrong with your powers of reasoning. On the other hand, to dismiss the burnings as inconsequential because subsequent brutalities of a more numerous nature occurred betrays a rather callous nature not aware of the significance of the events.


Sand	2008-12-10 17:28:12
But your incessant fascination with denying that no brutalities have ever occurred under Catholic auspices is really not a matter to get entangled with here. We were discussing art.


Sand	2008-12-10 17:45:48
Goodness gracious that was a fuckup. It should read: But your incessant fascination with affirming that no brutalities have ever occurred under Catholic auspices is really not a matter to get entangled with here. We were discussing art.


Emanuel Paparella	2008-12-10 19:34:10
"...your incessant fascination with affirming that no brutalities have ever occurred under Catholic auspices is really not a matter to get entangled with here." (Sand) What fascinates me is your invincible ignorance of the Catholic Church and the blind bias which does not even permit you to read what right in front of your eyes. Here is what I wrote: "Obviously there was a fanatical eagerness there also on your part to make the connection between Hitler and christ, Torquemada and the Holocaust which is indeed a pathetic and scurrillous comparison when one contemplates the enormity of the Holocaust without diminishing the reprehensible practices of the Inquisition..." Anybody who knows English and can read knows that to call something rephrendisble is to disapprove of it. Why would I not find reprehensible what even a Pope has had to regret and apologize for? But you, sir, are simply unable to be objective and desist from your half truths and slanderous comments and prsent the whole story and the whole picture not what you like to cherry pick and what is convenient to your prejudice. That is something for a psychiatist, indeed.


Sand	2008-12-10 20:07:20
Hitler and Christ you say. What has that to do with art which we are discussing? More red herrings?


Emanuel Paparella	2008-12-13 14:48:42
You mean you have not noticed that you are unable to discuss anything in a civil way unless it agrees with your views?


Victim	2009-05-11 18:53:21
Your all Idiots. Thankyou


Rimbaudsdog	2009-12-07 19:38:10
You state that Although the “worlds” disclosed by each of these works are different from one another, they make available to their viewers the specific worlds, the historical cultures in which they were produced. As such, each work is an example of the essential nature of the artwork. The problem with this is that the art works do not disclose the historical cultures in which the 'artworks' were produced but disclose instead the culture of other as conceptualised by or in the culture inhabited by the observer. You have fallen into the trap of truth as correspondence - arguably try as he might H never fully frees himself from this and so the metaphysics he so dispises lingers on residually. Wishes Rimbaud