The introduction of a historical perspective in aesthetics is usually traced back to Hegel’s 1820 lectures on fine art. In his Lectures on Fine Art Hegel outlined the historical development of art–Symbolic art Classic art and Romantic art — in terms of the development of spirit and of humanity, and observed that “art, considered in its highest vocation, is and remains for us a thing of the past,” and he meant art works no longer emerge as adequate media of self-reflection in modernity. It is philosophy that has taken on this task. Though artworks with their sensuous form will continue to be produced, it is philosophy that adequately reflects our deepest truths and values in modernity’s form of life.
So what becomes of modern art once art has fulfilled its role of the highest vocation?
Hegel argued that only when art has finally fulfilled its historical possibilities can it be brought to philosophical clarity about itself. Aesthetics can only begin at the point when art, considered in its highest vocation, no longer holds a historical future. Only then can we know conceptually what art is. Secondly, what emerges from within the dissolution of Romantic art is an independent art that develops freely in itself, comes to terms with its own limits, develops its critical potential into an art of its time. This explores the rich particularity of human existence and the common place and avoids being marginalized as mere decoration or something pleasant or superfluous. It makes significant the insignificant which would otherwise be lost in the course of everyday life.
What is stressed in Hegel is the key role of philosophy and criticism in reflecting about the new role/status of the work of art in modernity. In this era science (natural and social) has replaced philosophy. Philosophy is challenged to say something about why it matters, or what it means, that “thought contents” once took specific artistic forms; and what happens (historically) to those same artistic forms and practices as they are historically shaped by thought.
So what can be said about contemporary art objects, philosophically or otherwise? Has photography like the other visual arts fractured as it struggles with its loss and survival? Does photography have the capacity for continuous self-transformation in order to retain its distinguishing features?
In the late 20th century Arthur C. Danto adopts Hegel’s end-of-art thesis as a reference point concerning the historical link between art and knowledge in the contemporary era. Danto’s interpretation of artistic developments after the time of Hegel reformulated Hegel’s end of art thesis with an argument for the end of the big art historical narratives in the late 20th century, the privileging of philosophy over the historical appearance of art, and the spread of artistic pluralism in pictorial modermism, and contemporary art becoming increasingly reflective. Danto treated discussions of modernist and contemporary art as occasions for criticism, as distinct from philosophy. This raises the issue of an aesthetic philosophy’s relation to art criticism and art history.
At a time when the art gallery/museum functions as the entombment of the past the digital photographic image has become an integral part of our culture whilst our knowledge that we live in a culture dominated by images, by spectacle, surveillance, and visual display is utterly commonplace. The turn to images and visual culture was called the pictorial turn by W.J. T. Mitchell in his Picture Theory. This commonplace is subject to critical and historical analysis in What do Pictures Want.
This section of Light Paths assumes that we should not give up just yet on taking art seriously and this involves a shift from a subjective (the traditional artist-as-genius paradigm) to an inter-subjective model of artistic practice centred around public significance and dialogue. It includes reviews, interviews, articles from a variety of open sources, which are of relevance to, and help to inform, contemporary art photography. The writing about contemporary photography is much broader than academic photography journals, such as Photographies and Philosophy of Photography as it includes criticism.
A lot of the writing about photography is buried away in academic journal articles that are difficult to access because these journals have been placed behind expensive paywalls. The exceptions are some writing in open source journals such as Image and Narrative. An example is the Vol. 8, Issue 1, the Thinking Pictures issue. Hence the need to develop writing about a photographic culture so that this kind of writing can be easily accessed so as to broaden our understanding of the culture of photography in Australia and view a photographic culture from different perspectives. This involves exploring the inter-relationship between words and images.