ART AND REALITY

📝 Content Excerpt

Concrete situations are what we talk about all the time, what we take for granted. We for example say: they sat there and they were fine. Nothing is as easy as identifying concrete situations via persons, mental states and the things of daily life in space and time. At the same time it is absolutely impossible to describe a concrete situation in an exhaustive way. This thing that a situation can be described in a vast number of ways is not an accidental property of situations, but on the contrary it is what characterizes situations. A situation that can be described in only one way is not a situation. When we try to define a situation based on one single description we prevent ourselves from experiencing it.

There is no reason to believe that a request to art that it should continue to find new forms is relevant. The historical consideration that such a request will have to be founded on, requires an impossible comparison of situations. History is concerned with descriptions from specific points of view and is not reality. In the attempt to compare situations, one reduces situations to something that can be fully understood. This is not in compliance with our knowledge of situations. If one attempts to define what art is, one only sees one’s own description of it, and this description can never be exhaustive.