I would like to preface the final third part of this essay with a surprising find that I came across during my research. It is a text by Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749 - 1832), which fits in with example no. 3, about the authenticity of an artist:

The artist must always remain true to himself!

I have already explained that this means the communicative element of authenticity is lost, as it is all about referring to oneself. Once again, I realised how modern Goethe's reflections seem because they take an enlightened stance on current cultural positions.

The poet always met the famous call of the god Apollo in ancient Greece: "Man, know thyself", with the highest respect, but also with the suspicion that this was perhaps a desire of a secretly allied priesthood wishing to confuse people with the seemingly unattainable demand to recognise themselves. To distract them from their necessary activity in relation to the outside world and seduce them into false inner contemplation. Goethe hits the nail on the head with his delusion of self-awareness, which we constantly have pushed upon us and recommended to us in nearly everyday. He counters this with strong reservations:

"The most favourable, however, are our neighbours, who have the advantage of comparing us with the world from their point of view and therefore of gaining closer knowledge of us than we ourselves can gain alone.

Man only knows himself insofar as he knows the world, which he only recognises in himself and only in it. Every new object, well observed, opens up a new organ in us."

Source: Goethe's Theory of Colours, 1810

Goethe's thoughts are characterised by the fact that every person has an individual disposition (demon), which forms the basis for the development of their spiritual personality. However, he also points out that this development is strongly influenced by circumstances (Tyche, fate as chance, both happy and painful, for example through the forces of nature, an unpredictable course of life), which mould subjective desire (Eros) by outlining the individual course of life with necessity (Ananke = fateful power, e.g. that of a deity). Thus, in Goethe's view, all human development towards individuality is always formed in the interplay of subjective dispositions and the influence of external phenomena. Just as we breathe in and out, authenticity develops from the interplay of "inner space" and "outer space", just as compellingly as art does.

I hope that I have sufficiently explained how nonsensical and wrong it is to demand authenticity from an artist, as is unfortunately common and unchallenged.

There is another equally or even more widespread nonsense that needs to be addressed. It is claimed that art has a high value if it "affects" the recipient: one feels affected by it, then it is effective and of quality. However, what exactly is meant by being affected is usually not explained. Is it a feeling that is mentally processed and categorised? How is it categorised?

If you look at what was once expressed by the term "consternation/ affectation", it is extraordinarily surprising to discover the roots this term once had, and you realise that consternation in relation to art is a stupid and completely useless label. It does not lead to any aesthetic judgement. I would like to explain this in more detail:

Consternation originally characterised a way of speaking in ancient Greece, with regard to ideas about human destiny. At this time, the birth of European civilisation (around 600 - 400 BC), a distinction was made between two forms in which fate revealed itself to mankind: Tyche and Moira.

Tyche is the fate we suffer when something good or bad suddenly and unexpectedly happens to us personally.

Moira is the fate that we have in common with all people, natural and unalterable, for example that we all have to die at some point.

If we are hit by a car on the road, it is not an unavoidable necessity bound to occur at some point, but a coincidence, fate from everyday life. Both Tyche and Moira are affected by natural circumstances - for example death - or that something can happen to us, such as an accident. And now very precisely: the person who is struck by fate, i.e. who experiences deep suffering or happiness from something "existential", is in this sense an affected person: it must be something that deeply shakes or even changes their entire existence.

On the basis of this ancient idea, there is a kind of continuation of this understanding of being affected as an existentially profound experience in subsequent Christianity. In the Old Testament teachings, in the second book of Moses, 33, this is the story of Moses' wish to be allowed to behold God’s glory. This developed into what is probably the most important source for theologically orientated aesthetics. It is about the so-called "Visio dei", the view of God, the medieval paradigm of aesthetics. However, God restricts Moses' desire. He tells him he cannot see his face, because no human being would be able to bear it and would die immediately. God offers Moses to walk past him and then he can look at him from behind, the back, when the event is over. But he is never allowed to see the face of God. So it is in retrospect, from memory as it were, that the request is fulfilled. That is why religious art is generally an art of remembrance. Not only in Christianity, by the way.

Whoever sees God is affected and falls down dead. In this correct understanding of being affected, those who feel affected by art should drop dead. It is never the immediacy of the encounter that is decisive, as is constantly claimed in the vernissage code, but the mediocrity.

The sentence by the poet August Graf von Platen (1796 - 1835) in his poem "Tristan" is very well known in literary studies:

"He who looks at beauty with eyes

is already doomed to death."

This is definitely the adoption of the biblical event into literary art.

I could cite other examples of being affected, such popular ones as Orpheus and Eurydice and the prohibition to look back when they both look at the underworld (Hades). Eurydice does not obey the ban, is affected and falls down dead.

So the understanding of consternation is always filled with the deepest existential meaning! It always means something fundamental, especially when one speaks of being affected in connection with a work of art. But today it is chic to talk about being affected, as it is supposed to show something like sensitivity and is thus permanently present in cultural chatter. Affectation has nothing whatsoever to do with an aesthetic process within art. But, and I would like to underline this, barely anyone has a stable basic knowledge these days, we are detached from a properly understood tradition and so make deficient judgements about art.

Before I give you some examples of texts from Swiss cultural journalism, as mentioned at the beginning, I think it useful to clarify the conceptual understanding of "art". The main point here is to differentiate between three terms: Art, artwork and culture. These three are generally used as if they had the same meaning. This is probably a source of blatant misinterpretation within these related terms.

What is art? This frequently asked question can be answered very precisely, contrary to widespread claims that it is impossible to know exactly: Art encompasses everything that is not nature. It is not natural but artificial, man-made. Art is mankind's culture of the beneficial and useful. It therefore makes no sense to use the terms art and culture separately, as both claim the same thing and are identical: the objective world in which we live.

A work of art, on the other hand, is something completely different. It is always an objectivation that we lift it out of our objective lifeworld into a purposeless form: as a work of art. The work of art is always handcrafted. This craft can, of course, be taught, more about this at the end.

An example to help you understand what I mean: we use an objective language to be able to communicate with each other. That is useful. An objectification, on the other hand, that rises above this language without purpose is, for example, the form of the poem. This linguistic form of objectivation stands above objective everyday language.

The structure of the spirit objectified in this way (poem) can be imagined in three layers:

- that of a material carrier (canvas...marble...triad in music of fundamental, third and fifth....

- and the spiritual good (ideas) contained in it

- living spirit in the exchange between work and recipient.

To summarise it clearly in aesthetic terms: a work of art is always an objectification in the form of a singular totality, purposeless, unique and a wholeness. A work of art is never wrong or right or even moral! It refers to nothing outside itself and is infinitely interpretable in this self-referentiality.

For those who would like to delve deeper into these considerations, I recommend a speech by the philosopher of religion Romano Guardini (1895 - 1965), which he gave on the occasion of the reopening of the Stuttgart Academy of Fine Arts in 1947: "On the Essence of the Work of Art" (available as a book). Or Martin Heidegger's writing: "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes" (Reclam, No. 8446, 1960) Note: both scholars are concerned with the "work of art" and not with art!

Proof of the inadequate knowledge and understanding of art and culture is the common installation of a "Ministry of Art and Culture". The separation of the terms is nonsensical. A "Ministry of the Arts" would be more appropriate.

 

Now to art journalism. Firstly the article by Peter Meyer entitled "Art and Meaning" in the NZZ of 26 March 2005. Compared to the level of content of similar articles in the following years, Meyer offers outstanding quality, above all from his secure basic knowledge, which has not been achieved since in the NZZ. This may also be the reason why his text is still available on the Internet today. And rightly so!

Nevertheless, there are also some uncertainties in his explanations. I would like to offer some explanatory thoughts on one of them.

The title of his article is incorrect, because he is not concerned with art at all, but with the work of art. His title should correctly read: "Artwork and meaning". In the subtitle, "Thoughts on the current discussion about art" should be replaced by "work of art".

I would like to comment on the following section of the text: "Art and Meaning":

Meyer writes: "Art must have a statement. This is the conviction that, if understood incorrectly or one-sidedly, has led to the devaluation of the aesthetic that we are currently experiencing. The term "statement" in connection with art is problematic for several reasons, if only because one cannot actually have statements, but can only make them, but especially because it has to serve for two different things that are often confused and mixed up. In a precise reading, it refers to something in the artwork that can be translated into the rational or into the language of the real world and that is intended to have a critical, in some cases instructive or even missionary effect in this real world."

It is wrong to demand that a work of art must have a message. Meyer is absolutely right. He later uses an example from art lessons at school, when the teacher asks the pupils: "What does the artist want to tell us?" Nothing at all! This question is the fall from grace of aesthetics.

This is all correctly stated, but nevertheless insufficient, because every work of art also has an expressive communicative character, which does not result from its meaning, Meyer is right again, but from its interpretability. Although the work does not mean something by itself or is only trapped in a meaning, it is always addressed to a recipient, indeed it is even dependent on a dialogue with her or him. Thus the work is consubjective in the Kantian sense, connected with the recipient. Its interpretability results from its openness, a free complex of signs with many empty spaces. It is these empty spaces, i.e. where I would like to be myself at the moment, we have to fill in when we look at the work of art and give it its actual meaning through active attention. This dialogue with the work gives it its meaning. By looking at it, listening to it, reading it and being captured by it in an instant, the aesthetic moment is fulfilled. So: a work of art always includes its expressiveness, its form of representation and symbolic representation in a material. Even if it is often said today that it is a silent or mute work of art intended to express precisely nothing, this muteness must nevertheless be expressed artistically and the artist  must show what silence looks like! To claim that I see everything in myself but cannot express it, it is such a mystical state (very modern) that one cannot look at and express, is insufficient. The "clear depth" (G. F. Wilhelm Hegel, 1770 - 1831) can always be communicated, rationally. The "murky depth" (Hegel) is of course not. ("The Phenomenology of the Spirit") However, a work of art always requires clarity.

"The duty to hold back drivel is an essential condition for all education." (Hegel: "Lectures on the History of Philosophy")

Instead of "meaning", one could also speak of a so-called "fulfilling form" of the work of art and its potential for happiness for the recipient, which dispels all the inciting, provocatively coercive and highlight bluster of the dialogue.

Despite this subtle but important correction, I would like to emphasise once again that Peter Meyer's entire essay is of very high quality and presents a kind of journalism rarely found in the feature pages of newspapers today.

To demonstrate this, I have chosen a text by Gerhard Mack, one of Meyer's successors on the NZZ culture department. I already mentioned him in Part II of this feuilleton regarding his misuse of the term "present". Mack epitomises exactly the representative of the superficial, deficient cultural journalism of our time: always well informed, but with a lack of sound basic knowledge. This means that he does not know the forms to which he can and should assign his information correctly!

In his NZZ article of 19 January 2025 "Is this art?" he writes
"So even if in our highly individualised liberal societies it is almost impossible to say authoritatively what is considered art and what is not, it is fair to say that overall, if art is to be interesting, it has to do with freedom, with transgressing boundaries that exist in the respective society."

He makes a completely false assertion, as you can see from what I have already explained: we can say with certainty what art is, but not what makes a work of art a work of art. Mack apparently doesn't recognise this subtle philosophical difference. If art is supposed to be interesting, then he has a completely wrong interpretation of art. If art, or more correctly, a work of art, is supposed to be interesting, then it pursues a purpose and is therefore never a work of art. Furthermore, a work of art has nothing to do with "freedom" but is always freedom. Its greatest good is mankind – us ourselves!

An example of cultural drivel from his text: "... it is always about opening up perception." My question is, how is this to be achieved? Openness is always intrinsic to perception. Openness is inherent to it and cannot be added to it from the outside. He goes on to write: "... it is about increasing what can be represented and said." In principle, everything is representable, or the representable does not exist. Likewise, everything is always sayable, or the sayable does not exist.

I think these few examples of nonsense are enough to show how stupid such texts are. But there are unfortunately more examples of deficient content. In the NZZ of 16 March 2025 with the headline "Highlights from art and culture", which I referred to at the beginning of my article. I only want to mention this briefly because this text, "Ein Hoch auf den Fehler" (Celebrating the Mistake), does not deal with art or, more precisely, with the work of art at all. The focus is on the work of Claudia Caviezel, who describes herself as a Swiss textile artist. "She breaks every mould", is the postulation, only to be followed by half of the article about product design and its sales in various companies, actually mentioned by name (advertising?). She is the winner of the "Swiss Grand Prix for Design" and her products are presented on a grand scale at the Kunsthaus St. Gallen: "... on closer inspection, these take up the momentum of the wrought-iron banisters of the art museum. "Glitch" thus visually combines traditional Swiss wrought ironwork with Latin American textile techniques and uses modern digital means to elevate this combination to a surprisingly unique sensory experience. ... The wildly colourful carpet also raises questions about the status of the blur between technology, artificial intelligence and human creativity..." This is simply ridiculous.

It seems to be about AI (= machine data processing) and human creativity. I have already written in detail on the understanding of human creativity in previous essays, so you can form your own judgement.

The author of this article, Silvia Tschui, promises in the title: "To discuss fundamental questions about creativity in times of artificial intelligence"... and finds "a triumphant answer." However, there is almost nothing of this in her text. Instead, the term "glitsh" is casually and unappetisingly bandied about.

 

Finally, I would like to come back to my topic "Can art be taught?" I have certainly not answered this question adequately, but I have tried to give a well-founded answer and hopefully provided some food for thought.

I would like to mention one great master, the painter Auguste Renoir (1841 – 1919). Throughout his life, he remained faithful to the combination of craft and ideal. In a letter from 1911, he wrote: "... whatever importance one may attach to the secondary reasons for the decline of our crafts, the main reason, in my opinion, is the absence of any ideal. The most skilful hand is always only the servant of thought. That is why I fear that all attempts to restore the old crafts are useless. Even if it should be possible to train skilful workers in our vocational schools who have completely mastered the technique of their craft, they will not be of much use if they have no ideal to serve as a standard for their work... Painting is a craft like carpentry or blacksmithing, it follows the same rules..."

I began with thoughts from Johann Wolfgang Goethe and I would like to end this essay with them.

Goethe: "In true art there is no preparatory school, but there is preparation; the best, however, is the participation of the weakest pupil in the business of the master. Excellent painters have emerged from colourists.

All art must be preceded by craft."

© Martin Rabe & Sibylle Laubscher