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Zangwill
Nick Zangwill – Eu não acredito que alguém deva se preocupar com o que é
novo ou velho. Nas Humanidades, pode haver um valor duradouro em visões
antigas. Beethoven está na moda? Esta não é uma boa questão.
Rodrigo Cássio – Na sua obra, Clive Bell e Roger Fry são criticados
por suas posições sobre a “forma”, ao passo que Clement
Greenberg, embora rejeitando o nome de formalista, é
considerado um pensador sutil deste conceito. Como você
classifica Greenberg?
Nick Zangwill – Bell e Fry, a despeito de suas virtudes, foram longe demais ao
restringir a significação estética a questões formais. Este é um erro menor do
que negá-las completamente, como fazem os antiformalistas. Em todo caso,
há beleza na representação que está além da beleza formal das linhas e cores
em uma superfície, e além da beleza formal das formas plásticas
tridimensionais. É isso que nos diz o senso estético comum e a experiência.
Muito se objeta que essa análise não se adequa ao surrealismo ou à pop art.
Mas talvez isso seja pior para o surrealismo e a pop art (que, afinal, podem ser
muito triviais). Greenberg foi um crítico hábil que podia trazer à tona as
virtudes formais da pintura em seus escritos. Mas eu diria que Greenberg
pode ser demasiado voltado para os EUA: o que dizer de Dubuffet e Richter na
Europa? Eles não entraram na narrativa americanista e triunfalista de
Greenberg.
Nick Zangwill – O formalismo moderado foi concebido para ser uma visão
sensata e bastante desempolgada, que reconhece os valores formais suscitados
pelos aspectos não representacionais da forma [design], a configuração
espacial das cores e linhas na superfície, mas também outros valores estéticos
que dependem de conteúdo representacional, ou ainda de outras funções não
estéticas, como a história da produção [das obras].
A crítica de arte formalista não deve ter medo de abordar a obra como forma
visual, independente do contexto, do conteúdo, da história, das posturas
políticas, dos papos pseudo-intelectuais dos seus vendedores e assim por
diante. Todo mundo, na verdade, reconhece as qualidades formais da arte,
especialmente os artistas, mas você não espera que falem delas – é como
quando levantamos para ir ao banheiro. Fale sobre a forma como crítico, e as
pessoas ficarão felizes por ter esse importante aspecto da experiência
reconhecido e valorizado.
Fico feliz que as pessoas no Brasil estejam lendo Roger Scruton. Beardsley e
Sibley não escreveram para um público amplo, mas são pensadores
importantes dos anos 1950 e 1960. Em um exemplo, Sibley se interessou por
saber como a elegância da pintura está relacionada aos elementos que a geram
(ver o artigo Aesthetic/Nonaesthetic, na Philosophical Review, 1965). Ele
argumentou que se trata de um tipo de dependência que não nos permite
generalizar para outros casos. Não há regras para a descrição estética.
Beardsley discordou, apresentando um número determinado de princípios. O
trabalho de Sibley nos permite levantar problemas sobre o formalismo.
Minha piada filosófica sobre o Brasil é que os seus fundadores criaram o lema
nacional errado. Eles erraram ao escolher a constante lógica “e”, em vez de
“se, então”. O lema atual diz “Ordem e Progresso”, quando deveria dizer “Se
Ordem, então Progresso”. Eu adoraria voltar ao Brasil para aprender mais
sobre este imenso país e sua população diversa, além de participar da sua vida
intelectual.
Nick Zangwill – I don’t think one should worry about what is old and what is
new. In the humanities, there may be a lasting value in old views. Is
Beethoven fashionable? It is not a good question.
How did I get to formalism? I studied almost no aesthetics as an
undergraduate or as a postgraduate student. However, as a reasonably
rounded person, I enjoyed various aesthetic pursuits. After I finished my
doctorate on metaethics and I started teaching philosophy, I found out about
aesthetics. I was surprized by the anti-formalist consensus, especially in the
USA. So I started articulating and defending formalism, which I thought the
more common sense view. Anti-formalism seemed to have a blindness to what
is obviously important. Moreover, the arguments were not as good as the anti-
formalists thought they were. Indeed, they were mostly blatantly question-
begging or of limited force.
Rodrigo Cássio – In your work, Clive Bell and Roger Fry (The
Bloomsbury Group) are criticized for their positions about “form”,
and Clement Greenberg, although he rejected being called
formalist, is considered a subtle thinker of this subject. How do
you classify Greenberg?
Nick Zangwill – Bell and Fry, despite their virtues, went too far in restricting
aesthetic significance to formal matters. That is less of an error than denying
them altogether, as anti-formalists do. Nevertheless, there is beauty in
representation that goes beyond the formal beauty of lines and colours on a
surface, and beyond the formal beauty of the three-dimensional “plastic”
forms. Or at least so says aesthetic common sense and experience. Perhaps the
emergence of formalism in Bell and Fry coincides with the modernist
movement in painting at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.
Nevertheless, they made claims with a more universal scope. I think
Greenberg’s claims were supposed to be restricted to the significant or
interesting art of a particular era. Greenberg was probably not making
universal claims, claiming merely that the best art of his time had dominant
formal concerns and values.
Many would object that his analysis does not fit surrealism or pop art. But
perhaps, so much the worse for surrealism and pop art (which, after all, can be
very trivial). Greenberg was a skilful critic who could bring alive the formal
virtues of paintings in his writings. But I would say that Greenberg can seem
too USA-centric: what about Dubuffet and Richter in Europe? They do not fit
Greenberg’s somewhat USA-triumphalist narrative.
Rodrigo Cássio – In The Metaphysics of Beauty your articles on
aesthetics produced in ten years (1991-2001) were published,
including the discussion about formalism. Could you explain your
moderate aesthetic formalism proposal?
Think of the layout of wording in graphic art. The letters may fit into the space
around them better or worse, which may rise to a great art in East Asian or
Islamic calligraphy. The test is that it looks right. What is called kerning for
the printed word means that an “i” and an “m” take up different amounts of
space. Without kerning, a printed text looks horrible. The meaning of the
words is another matter, although that may interact with the design of the
lettering. Nevertheless, matters of pure visual design are inescapable, even if
there is more to a work of visual art. If you try to see paintings just as artifacts
of meaning, ignoring their visuality, that is impoverished, indeed it is a
disaster. Postmodern approaches, of course, are particularly disastrous in this
way by foregrounding meaning so that it blocks out anything else.
I have moved a little on how I characterize the issues. In the 2001 book, The
Metaphysics of Beauty, I emphasized sensory properties, such as colours and
sounds, and the arrangement of these. But now I would emphasize
appearance properties, such looking a certain way. (See my “Clouds of Illusion
in the Aesthetics of nature”, Philosophical Quarterly, 2013.) I think that all
beauty depends on appearances, the way thing look or sound. Sometimes
other functions and meanings are combined with appearances to produce a
complex beauty. But without appearances there is no beauty. On this I
disagree with Plato in the Symposium. I think that there is no higher beauty. I
would recommend Branko Mitrovic’s book Visuality for Architects, on these
issues.
Nick Zangwill – Visual art can be more or less formal and more or less
meaningful. I am not against content in art, for there can be interesting
form/content combinations. The trouble comes when you get preachy and
didactic political art of the sort you are probably describing, which is usually
tedious to look at as well as politically superficial. But then the artists are
presumably trying to sell their work by tying it to some fashionable political
cause. Radical chic is often good marketing. Since Elvis Presley, clever
business people have understood that rebellion can be marketed. The “Elvis
Effect”, as we might call it, can take on a life of its own as people internalize
the attitude (otherwise known as “false consciousness”).
Formalist art criticism should not be afraid to address the work as visual
design, irrespective of context, content, and history, political postures,
pseudo-intellectual sales-talk and so on. Everyone in fact recognizes formal
qualities of art, especially artists, but you are not supposed to talk about it, like
going to the toilet. Talk about it as a critic, and people will be happy to have
this important aspect of the experience recognized and valued. Moreover,
curators do take form into account when choosing between similar works with
similar meanings. The trouble is that it is hard to talk about form well, as
Greenberg does. Still we should try, since it is in fact important to those
consuming and making art.
Nick Zangwill – Aesthetics in Brazil is mostly not done in the clear and
argumentative English-speaking style, and has been left to post-modern
nonsense and doctrinaire French and German political “discourse”. This is a
shame since it is mostly irrelevant to actual art creation or experience, except,
as I noted before, as advertising. Throwing up a cloud of confusion and
difficult vocabulary is rarely a sign of profundity and is usually the attempt to
avoid clear light in the hope that others cannot see through you.
I am glad that people in Brazil are reading Scruton. Beardsley and Sibley did
not write for a general audience, but they are important thinkers from the
1950s and 1960s. Sibley was interested in how the elegance of painting, for
example, relates to the elements that generate it (see his
“Aesthetic/Nonaesthetic”, Philosophical Review, 1965). He argued that it is a
kind of dependence, one that does not allow us to generalize to other cases.
There are no rules for aesthetic description. Beardsley disagreed. He came up
with a limited number of principles. Sibley’s work allows us to raise issues
about formalism.
The question is: what is responsible for elegance and beauty? Do the
responsible features sometimes or always include the history or context of the
thing as well as its present physical nature and appearance. If so anti-
formalism of some kind is correct. If not, formalism is correct.
Nick Zangwill – I have twice been Visiting Professor, once in the Music
Department at Sao Paulo University (USP) and once in the Philosophy
Department at Unicamp.
Intellectually it was very stimulating. I gave many papers around the country,
mostly on metaphysics or epistemology or Logic. I did not give a single
aesthetics paper. I had the privilege of meeting the great Brazilian logician
Newton Da Costa at Porto Alegre.
There is some very good philosophy in Brazil, but it seems that it is mostly on
the logic, metaphysics and epistemology side of thing, rather than in the value
areas, which are left to the continental traditions. I hope this will change. I see
some change in ethics, but not yet much in aesthetics and political philosophy.
I had a great time in Brazil, in many ways. I had a friend in Rio who took me
to some wonderful rodas de samba, and I enjoyed caipirinhas and even tried
dancing forró. I also travelled to Buenos Aires for Tango, and the divine lomo
beef. Also, I always dreamed of visiting Brasilia, which I finally did. I
remember looking at pictures of those buildings as a child. Oscar Neimeyer is
wonderful. Lina Bo Bardi is also impressive.
My philosophical joke about Brazil is that the founders of the nation got the
national moto wrong. They chose the wrong logical constant: “and” rather
than “if…then”. The motto actually reads “Order and Progress”, whereas they
should have chosen “If order then progress”. I would love to return to Brazil,
to get to know more of the huge country and its varied people, and further
participate in its intellectual life.