Art is a human product. So is science and philosophy: mathematical systems and logic, the backbone of these disciplines, must be produced by the human mind in order to appear in the world. However, the ontological status of this production is difficult to determine: the experience of evidence, of understanding, is practically regarded as a (ontological) given norm to which the human production of mathematical systems and logical thought must follow. In this it shows itself as an element to which humans rely on; it makes possible inter-subjective understanding, and is a precondition for universality. There exists inside the production something given. Also the applicability of this element on the natural world indicates a possible point of convergence of world and human mind, or, of given and produced.
But understanding as phenomenon can be said to reach far beyond formal logic and mathematics. Broadly it can be seen in the arts, in experience of music, literature and poetry, film, painting etc. Also negation of understanding can be said to be an experience of the force of understanding – an experience of not understanding. Eventually psychological and deeper spiritual capacities like empathy, joy, wonder and conscience can be regarded as forms of understanding because it establishes a connection between a given 'outer' object or event and a subject; none of these phenomenon emerge without the active relation to an 'Other'.
The ontological status of 'understanding' or cognition in this broad manner is even more difficult to determine because it is evident that cultural and psychological factors are partly determining the development of these capacities.
The historic nature of these phenomenon and capacities show that they are part of a cultural development or evolution, that they are not static and fixed given elements of the human mind, but evolving capacities influencing both historical human self-determination as well as the cultural products emerging out of this process.
In this situation the ontological determination of understanding in a broader sense, as the potential cognitive capacity of the human being, should be seen as an experimental and experiential project and not to be elaborated and implemented (in pedagogy, medicine, psychology etc) in advance of actual new experiences. Therefore the experience of understanding or thinking and the experience of the world should be sought to converge, and here art shows itself to be a privileged way of experimentation and exploration.
Modern art, emerging in the 20th century, is more than anything else influenced by two factors: One is the gradual shift of attention in regards of aesthetic evaluation of an object, to evaluation of aesthetic as something inherent in the productive activity of the experiencing subject, a shift from focus on “what is seen”, to “the process of seeing”, as well as the introduction of critical thinking into this process. The other, which is deeply related to the first aspect, is the deconstruction process of the “material”, the abstraction and isolation of elements, as is seen in the breakdown of tonality, of figuration in painting etc etc..
The isolation of the elements of sensation from their given wholeness produces a negation of given meaning (for example a-tonality as the negation of tonality, as negation of a system which automatically produces meaning) leads to focus on the activity of the subject as that which must create and uphold the relations inherent in the work. At the same time this leads to a strong focus on the sensible, to what is actually heard, and thereby to the act of hearing and not the psychological result of listening. Meaning is not given emotionally, but must be created out of intensified awareness, and this requires critical (or self-conscious willed) attention. This results eventually in 'the death of the subject', because the subject as it is given in ordinary experience as self-representation must be forgotten and annihilated in the consciously willed act of sensing.
This being a very complex issue, we never the less allow us to extract a general perspective: The strong focus on the subject and its eventual dissolution and death, and the parallel movement concerning “the given” material, is a movement of convergence of world and human, of given and produced. Modern art is thus reflecting and creating the conditions for a transformation of “what is seen” and “the process of seeing”; the activity of seeing is found by giving attention to a work which does not immediate reveal itself, and the work of art is only found (created) by this activity. To experience a work of art is becoming a creative process.
Turning to the initial question of understanding we can from this post-modern aesthetic perspective see the artistic event as an event where both subject and object emerge. Not a pre-given subject confronting a stable work of art as an object, with understanding as a third mediating function, is the situation, but all 'three' emerging, as a simultaneous creation of the bridge and the two shores as well. “The given” in a situation, and “the produced” are transformed through each other, and created anew. This is a search for the new and unexplored, a seeking of “zones of experimental relations connected to new forces and events of new ways of seeing” (1). The death of the subject and the deconstruction of meaning in modern and post-modern thought and art can then find new and unexpected perspectives and meaning: death as the precondition for the emergence of something new, a resurrection to new life. In this way art is an exploration of reality, a project with both political and ontological consequences.
Notes:
(1) John Rajchman on Deleuze and his conception of aesthetics in a seminar at the University of Oslo, Oct. 06