Avant-Garde Art and the Problem of Theory Author(s): Nol Carroll Source: Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol.

29, No. 3 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 1-13 Published by: University of Illinois Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3333533 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 10:14
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Art and the Problemof Theory Avant-Garde

NOEL CARROLL

One of the most influential modes of criticism with respect to contemporary fine art proceeds as though the avant-garde artwork were itself a piece of theorizing. Undoubtedly, the crucial precedent for this approach was the practice of Clement Greenberg.1 In Greenberg's criticism, the artwork appears to function as a critique, in the Kantian sense. Artistic choices are deciphered as meditations on the nature of painting or sculpture and upon the very conditions of possibility thereof. As is well known, Greenberg was an essentialist in these matters. For example, he regarded two-dimensionality as the defining attribute of painting, and he interpreted the emphasis on the picture plane in the works of certain Cubists and Abstract Expressionists as at least an acknowledgment, if not a demonstration, of the theoretical proposition that painting, in reality, is flat. Succeeding generations of critics have often parted company with Greenberg's essentialism. In the early seventies, avant-garde artworks were often not thought to reflect upon the nature of artistic media, construed essentially, but, in the manner of the phenomenologist, were thought to

reflect upon the spectator'sexperience of the art object (or performance).

Today, of course, phenomenology has given way to semiotics and poststructuralism as the favorite critical idioms. And, as a result, avant-garde artworks are conceived of as theoretical reflections upon the nature of signs and codes, as those are thought to function culturally and politically, rather than as reflections upon either the nature of artistic media or on the cognitive or perceptual experience of the spectator. Yet for all these shifts in critical frameworks, one thing remains constant. The avant-garde artwork, in often rebus-like fashion, is supposed to advance a theoretical contribution-about the nature of an artistic medium, about cognitive and perceptual processes or experience, or about the operation of signs and codes in contemporary life, and so on. And the task of the critic is to explicate the artwork by illuminating the theoretical insight the artwork putatively NoelCarroll is Professorof Philosophyat the Universityof Wisconsin,Madison.He is
a past contributor to this journal whose most recent book is The Philosophyof Horror. Journalof Aesthetic Education,Vol. 29, No. 3, Fall 1995 @1995 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Noel Carroll

projects. The artwork, in other words, is a theoretical vehicle, and a critic interprets the work by isolating the theory the work supposedly advances. Of course, the view of the avant-garde artwork as a species of theorizing is not the only critical approach at large today; but it is a particularly powerful one, often deployed over the last twenty years in such commanding journals as Artforum and Art in America. However, despite its popularity, this approach to the avant-garde artwork raises a host of problems. One wonders, for example, if avant-garde artworks are really theoretical (i.e., contributions to theoretical knowledge), then shouldn't they be evaluated in terms of the truth value of the theories they reputedly propound? After all, if these works are theoretical contributions, shouldn't they be assessed in the way one would assess a theory? And this, needless to say, might have the untoward consequence that artworks that promote false theories be regarded as primafacie failures. If truth is beauty, then falsity, it would seem, is at least aesthetically demeaning. Also, perusing the critical literature, one is often struck by the regularity with which the theory that given avant-garde artworks are said to promote coincides with the theory-be it aesthetic, phenomenological, poststructural, and so on-that the exegete upholds. This, in turn, sparks the suspicion, on occasion at least, that the art critic is using the avant-garde artwork rather in the way that a ventriloquist uses a dummy. That is, the elliptical and often obscure structure of the avant-garde artwork may provide a point of departure for the critic to expatiate upon his or her own favorite views of aesthetics, phenomenology, or poststructuralism. Whether a critic is "reading into" a work in this way, of course, is a matter to be decided at the level of practical criticism on a case-by-case basis. One would not wish to claim that all the theories critics have associated with avant-garde artworks are impositions. However, given the enigmatic structure of the avant-garde artwork and the fetishization of theory in contemporary art criticism, the actual probability of such theoretical impositions is especially high, and extra care needs to be exercised in order to avoid them. The proponent of the theory model of criticism of the avant-garde artwork may be able to meet the worries briefly sketched in the preceding two paragraphs. However, there is an even deeper problem with the model, one which will preoccupy most of the rest of this article. The style of criticism with which we are concerned regards the artwork as theoretical.This appears to presuppose that the artist is some kind of theorist and that the artwork is either a theory or some sort of theoretical contribution-a meditation upon, a critique, a definition, a semiotic dissection, a deconstruction of, or a demonstration concerning the nature of traditional art or representation or cultural codes and of their social functioning. But there are serious questions to be considered with respect to this presupposition: primarily, does it seem plausible to believe that, strictly speaking, avant-garde art, as

Avant-GardeArt

we know it,2 has made or will make anything we might be willing to call a theory or even a theoretical point? One straightforward way in which to understand the notion that avantgarde artworks are theoretical is to think of them as vehicles of active theorizing, that is, as proposing general claims, sketching systematic relationships, elucidating underlying principles and substantiating said hypotheses with evidence and argument. And this is how critics speak about much avant-garde art. Often we are told that this or that artwork makes some general point about all art or about all art of a certain form. A given flat painting may be said to demonstrate that painting as such, that is, all painting, is flat, or that a Happening shows that an artwork in general cannot be readily distinguished from its context (pacethe formalist view that artworks are autonomous objects). But there are several questions we want to raise about such claims. First, how do individual artworks manage to generalize their supposedly theoretical points? Is it simply an art-world convention that avantgarde artworks refer to larger (more general) classes of objects? But even if this is the case, how do we fix the generality of that reference in particular cases? How do we ascertain that this painting is referring to all paintings or to all paintings of a given genre or to all art? The problem here is that avantgarde artworks usually lack the logical devices for specifying their range of generality. And, furthermore, without such explicit devices we may just doubt that they are coherent generalizations at all. Apart from the formal problem of the lack of a device in such artworks for generalizing the reference of their putatively theoretical points, there is also a substantive problem with the view that avant-garde artworks make theory. Typically when one advances a theory, one is involved in marshaling support for the theory by presenting evidence or mounting arguments; that is, normally theorizing involves defending the general hypotheses the theory promotes by adducing confirmatory data often in concert with some forms of demonstrative reasoning. However, are either of these sorts of processes either actually or possibly present in avant-garde artworks as we know them? First, let us take up the question of evidence. It might be thought that the artwork itself provides evidence for the theoretical position it purportedly articulates. But in that case two puzzles arise. First, one wonders how a single artwork could supply persuasive evidence for a claim about all painting, or all sculpture, or all art. Moreover, and more importantly, one recalls that these individual artworks were expressly designed to correlate with specific aesthetic viewpoints or with a particular parti pris in mind. Thus, it does not seem that they could ever serve as evidence of a non-question-begging sort. Why should a Morris Louis canvas, created under the influence of Greenberg's ontology of painting, be taken as a confirmation of the theory

Noel Carroll

of flatness that it purportedly presents? Clearly one can make a work that somehow fits a theory; but the existence of such a work does not show that the theory fits all the works it claims to elucidate. Of course, it may be said that the artwork itself is not the relevant evidence for the theory it espouses, but rather that it points outside itself to confirmatory evidence. This, however, runs into one problem we have already noted-the characteristic lack of devices for specifying the reference of such artwork/theories-as well as some problems to be developed below. Constructing or making a theory clearly involves more than simply pointing to some evidence. That evidence must be structured in arguments and counterarguments of all sorts-inductive, deductive, abductive, and so on. And this, in turn, would appear to require a conventionally organized, generally coherent mode of presentation. But that is something that the avant-gardist eschews. What is at present called avant-garde art, by definition, is a disjunctive, fragmented, and disorienting mode of communication. Avant-garde works, as a matter of their very nature, are meant to subvert expectations in the tradition of epaterla bourgeoisie.But the construction of a theory or the articulation of a theoretical point requires logical connections, connectives and devices for specifying reference. Yet such things and their analogs are just what the avant-gardist deletes in order to accomplish the arresting effects that make his work avant-garde. The kind of ellipticality the avant-gardists employ to shock, to disorient, and to surprise is dysfunctional for proposing and arguing for a theory or a theoretical point. That is, the goals and methods of theory construction and those of avantgarde art making are incompatible, or at least clash in a way that suggests that avant-garde artworks will never articulate theories or argue for them, since that process is not possible to sustain at the same time one constantly seeks to subvert the viewers' expectations via disorienting, elliptical, and intentionally obscure imagery. Avant-garde works deliberately undermine conventional connectives; but theory cannot proceed without them. One might suspect that the preceding objection to the notion that avantgarde artworks make theory is really predicated on the presumption that theory construction requires language and that avant-garde artworks are nonlinguistic. However, this is not my present objection. For avant-garde works of fine art may contain language and, furthermore, there is avantgarde literature; and yet, if our argument is correct, these endeavors are as well unlikely conduits of theory.3 For the point is that whether or not an avant-garde artwork contains language, it will, given what it is to be avantgarde (in terms of structure), obscure logical connections and reference in a way that is antithetical to theory construction. Our skepticism about the prospects of avant-garde artworks generating theories, that is, is based on the perception that what is, in principle, required structurally of a piece of

Avant-GardeArt

theory construction is in conflict with what is, again in principle, required of avant-gardeart making. Perhaps my claim that the avant-garde work of fine art cannot be a vehicle for making theory will remind some readers of Arthur Danto's claims about the end of art. For Danto maintains that once the reflexive ambitions of fine art reach the point where people like Warhol and other Pop artists begin to trade in works indiscernible from real things, then self-conscious art making putatively reaches the end of art history insofar as further progress in the project of self-consciousness is no longer possible in the media of painting and sculpture. Further progress can be made only through the idiom of philosophy. That is, according to Danto, painters and sculptors, once they have framed the question about the nature of art in terms of indiscernibles, can pursue the issue no further by way of making paintings or sculptures. Instead, they will have to write philosophy. In this sense, the avant-garde artist must give up making art and start making philosophy if the question of the nature of art is to be evolved beyond the recognition of the problem of the possibility of artworks indiscernible from real things. Thus, for Danto, one cannot be an avant-garde artist and propound theory because there is a tension between making art (e.g., painting) and theory. But my argument is different; it is that there is a tension between something's being avant-garde art and it's being a theory, since avant-gardism by nature requires disjunction and ellipticality, whereas theories ideally gravitate toward synthesis and explicitness. Consequently, though my argument may sound like Danto's, it is different inasmuch as Danto apparently believes that avant-garde artists cannot pursue theory and remain artists, whereas I contend that the problem is that avant-gardeartists cannot remain avant-garde and manage to propound anything that we would regard to be theory in their artworks. For it is improbable that the sorts of arguments and presentations of evidence requisite for theorizing can be accommodated within the conventions of disjunction and dissociation that are constitutive of avant-gardism. Of course, the proponent of the idea that avant-garde artworks are theoretical may agree that such works do not propound arguments or present evidence, and yet still hold that certain avant-garde works are theoretical. Here it might be maintained that the works in question are not to be compared to full theories but only to the assertion of general propositions. To repeat an earlier example, a Happening might be thought to amount to the proposition that "artworks cannot be easily distinguished from their contexts." The Happening is not proffered as evidence for this theoretical generalization but is merely a vehicle for asserting it; likewise the Happening does not argue for the theory with which this assertion might be associated

Noel Carroll

but just introduces a general idea about art. Joseph Kosuth seems to have something like this in mind when he writes: Works of art are analytic propositions. That is, if viewed within their context-as art-they provide no information about any matter of fact. A work of art is a tautology in that it is a presentation of the artist's intention, that is he is saying that that particular work of art is art, which means-is a definition of art.4 Thus, on this model-where the artist is virtually an analytic philosopherthe artist need not argue or mount evidence within his artwork because the artwork, as an analytic proposition, is necessarily true. Apart from Kosuth's strange conception of analytic propositions-which, inexplicably, contains psychologistic elements-and apart from the general question of whether there are analytic propositions,5 the notion that artworks are vehicles for asserting tautologies concerning the definition of art is highly suspect. Many of the theories that are associated with avant-garde artworks do not appear to be such that, if true, they would be analytically true. For example, the theoretical claim, often associated with abstract/reflexive art-that realistic paintings engender illusions of reality in viewers-seems to make an empirical, psychological claim, not a conceptual one. However, there is an even more profound problem here. Namely, avant-garde artworks do not appear to be analytic propositions for the simple reason that, in general, these works are not propositions at all.6 In order to be a proposition or an assertion, theoretical or otherwise, an avant-garde artwork would have to contain "an indexical part, which answers the question 'What are you talking about?' and a characterizingpart, which answers the question 'What about it?' Neither of these by itself is sufficient."7 Thus, for a painting to assert the proposition "All paintings are flat" would require that the painting have an indexical (and, in this case, a quantificational) element that pointed to its subject-all paintings-as well as a characterizing element corresponding to the predicate "... are flat." Even if we generously extended the notion of predication to the possession of a property and said that a Morris Louis painting is itself a characterizer because of its emphatic flatness,8 we would still require an indexical unit of it. That most avant-garde artworks lack all the requisite logical machinery of propositions is, I believe, irrefutable. Therefore, except in very special cases,9 avant-garde artworks are not theoretical propositions, analytic or otherwise.10 So far, we have challenged the notion that the avant-garde artwork is theoretical by interpreting theoretical,in this context, to mean either that the avant-garde artwork constructs a theory or that it projects a theoretical assertion or proposition. And we have argued that, strictly speaking, each of these alternatives, in turn, is unlikely. However, it is open to a critic who endorses the artwork/theory model to deny that the possibilities so far

Avant-GardeArt

canvassed are exhaustive. That is, there may be some interpretation of the notion that avant-garde artworks are theoreticalthat we have not foreclosed. A prime candidate here might be the widespread notion that avantgarde artworks elicit theoretical insights from spectators (rather than making theoretical assertions or full-scale theories outright). That is, the avant-garde artwork neither states nor develops a theory but rather, by subverting the expectations of audiences, leads them to grasp some theoretical point. The avant-garde artwork is maieutic; it provokes the recognition of theoretical points by spectators by initially disorienting them through its elliptical and obscure structure. The avant-garde artwork is didactic, but it educates by inducing the participation of the spectator. The audience fills in the fragmented, often juxtapositional work by postulating a theoretical insight which not only makes sense of the work at hand, but which has implications for art or representation in general. This maieutic model of the avant-garde artwork is reflected in one of the most frequently employed ways of critically explicating avant-garde art. The critic tells a sort of narrative. First a spectator, sometimes referred to as "one," is said to stand before an artifact that challenges his preconceptions either about art in general or art of a specific type. Perhaps an example might be Duchamp's Fountain. The work, then, is said to subvert the spectator's expectations concerning sculpture, putting the viewer at sea. However, by disrupting the spectator's nonreflective or complacent attitude, the work puts the spectator in a position to recognize the point behind the urinal-that any object can be art if so nominated by the right person in the right context. The subversion of the spectator's expectations, then, is thought to lead or to force the viewer to the recognition of a theoretical point. For a full-blooded instance of this form of criticism, consider this extended analysis of Jenny Holzer's Truismsby Hal Foster: This bedlam-effect is strongest in her Truisms (1977), an alphabetical list of statements which together confound all order and logic. First presented as public-information posters on New York City walls (and since as T-shirts, electronic signs, plaques, works of art), the Truisms not only "place in contradiction certain ideological structures that are usually kept apart" but set them into open conflict. This contestationby-contradiction is also contextual for the Truisms expose the false homogeneity of the signs on the street among which they are often placed. An encounter with them, then, is like an encounter with the Sphinx: though one is given answers, not asked questions, initiation into our Theban society is much the same: entanglement in discourse. the point This entanglement is a continual displacement-to where the readerbegins to see, first, that (s)he is not an autonomous individual of free beliefs so much as a subject inserted into language and, second, that this insertion can be changed. The experience of truistic entrapment cedes to a feeling of anarchic release, for the Truisms expose the coercion that is usually hidden in language, and once

Noel Carroll exposed it appears ridiculous. Essentially, this releasecomes of the recognition that meaning is a rhetorical construction of will more than a Platonic apprehension of an idea-that however directed toward truth, it is finally based on power. This is not a nihilistic insight: it allows for resistance based on truth constructed through a contradiction. And this indeed is the one genuine truth that the Truisms express: that only through contradiction can one construct a self that is not entirely subjected.

Here Foster pictures a viewer ("the reader") confronted by an array of contradictory truisms. This purportedly undercuts our expectations and, upon reflection, we interpret the point behind this gesture-this compilation of contradictory cliches-as proposing such things as: the messages that surround us in everyday life are likewise contradictory; meaning is a construction of the will; the viewer is not an autonomous subject; truth (such as it is) is to be constructed through contradiction. The artwork does not establish these claims in the manner of a full-scale theory nor does it assert them. Rather, through its subversive organization, it draws these recognitions from the spectator after the fashion of Socrates in the Meno. This model of explicating avant-garde artworks is quite pervasive in the world of the fine arts and has analogs in other areas as well, for example, Brecht's alienation effect. It presumes a certain scenario whose complication and resolution are embodied in an initial crisis-the subversion of expectations-followed by a revelatory insight, for instance, that social codes are contradictory, which makes sense of the artwork as a rebus-like reflection, of general theoretical import, on some larger class of objects, whose members like the artwork itself are self-contradictory. The artwork is an object lesson that enables the participatory viewer to grasp a putative theoretical verity amidst his or her own experience. There is no reason, in principle, to suppose that this process of subversion/recognition could not be operative in the typical interaction of viewers with avant-garde artworks. The hypothesis of subversion/recognition is a bit of armchair psychology, and, as such, its confirmation or disconfirmation is an empirical matter. However, despite its popularity as a means for critically analyzing avant-garde artworks, the maieutically conceived subversion/recognition hypothesis would appear to have little basis in fact. There can be little doubt that the avant-garde artwork-born of the urge in subverting the general spectator's to outrage the bourgeosie-succeeds But the expectations. hypothesis goes on to predict that from this initial a series of cognitive states will emerge, culminating of bewilderment stage in theoretical insight. Once conventional and familiar modes are undercut, the scales fall from our eyes and truth is revealed in a way that recalls Heidegger's broken hammer. However, the movement from one stage of this scenario to the next seems too hasty. What guarantees that the typical spectator will move from the subversion stage to the recognition stage?

Avant-GardeArt

How does the critic who uses this model know that once the typical spectator's expectations have been subverted that spectator won't simply remain dumbfounded, never ascending from the cave of complacency to the level of theoretical insight? That is, in the case of the general spectator, interaction with the avant-garde artwork may be likely to halt at the point of the subversion of expectations, leaving the mass of spectators befuddled and confused. The defender of the maieutic model may respond by agreeing that there is no guarantee that every avant-garde artwork will move the viewer from the experience of subversion to that of recognition. Instead, we will have to look to each work-in terms of its internal structure and contextual placement-in order to see whether it guides the spectator from incredulity and bemusement to insight. However, even in advance of such exhaustive research, I think that we have reason to be skeptical about the widespread application of this model of exegesis. Isn't the commonly acknowledged hostility of the general viewing public to modem art attributable to the fact that they don't understand it, which, in part, is a result of their being stalled at the stage of subverted expectations? Avant-garde works often manage to outrage their audiences; but that outrage does not appear to be widely cashed in in terms of insight. The subversion/recognition model presents itself as a causal scenario; however, the recognition it predicts will emerge from the subversion of expectations seems unreliable with respect to the general viewer. Thus, avantgarde artworks are not likely to be theoreticalin the sense that they typically produce theory maieutically. Coupled with our earlier rejections of the notions that avant-garde artworks either propound theories or project theoretical assertions, this implies that avant-garde artworks are not theoretical in any straightforward sense (i.e., where being theoretical indicates that the work in question either contributes to theoretical knowledge or makes some theoretical point).12 But if I am correct and avant-garde artworks are not theoretical, problems still remain about the basis upon which avant-garde artists and critics suppose such artworks are theoretical, and about what is really going on when they make such a supposition. In order to deal with these issues, it is perhaps useful to speculate about the way in which a proponent of the artwork/theory model might respond to our rejection of the subversion/recognition scenario. That rejection rides upon challenging the likelihood that general viewers will seize insight from the jaws of their confusion, and maintaining rather that they will probably remain in a cognitive muddle. Here, it might be objected that the case depends upon thinking in terms of a typical viewer. Instead, it might be urged that we think in terms of an informed viewer, one who knows about raging art-world debates and the theories and stylistic options that subtend them.

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Noil Carroll

Confronted with the elliptical, disjunctive, and obscure articulations of an avant-garde artwork, informed viewers (i.e., usually critics, art lovers, art students, artists, gallery workers, museum tour guides, some intellectuals, some academics, and so on) may respond to the subversive novelties before them by matching them to some preexisting theory or philosophical debate known to be current or to be gaining currency in the art world. The kind of thinking going on here resembles that of charades, where the task of the audience is to associate the discontinuous symbolization of the performer with an antecedently known title, phrase, or sentence. The avantgarde work is often like a rebus, set in the high (and limiting) context of the art world. The informed viewer uses what he knows of historical and prevailing artistic styles, contrasting stylistic options, and their associated theories to identify the polemical position to which the artwork is aligned by means of eliminative reasoning, abduction, homology, literalization, and so on.13 Foster, for example, matches Holzer's Truisms to the now popular dicta of poststructuralism, using the associated theory as a kind of hermeneutical key to the work. I think it is undoubtedly true that some such processes of interpretive interaction occur between the informed viewer and the avant-garde artwork. Nevertheless, two important points want to be made here: first, that the interaction above is not really accurately described on the maieutic model of subversion/recognition; and second, that even if this account of the informed viewer's interpretative interaction is apt, it does not show that the avant-garde artwork makes a theoretical contribution or demonstrates a theoretical point-at best it shows that said work obliquely alludes to some preexisting and perhaps preestablished theory. The informed viewer's interpretative interaction does not support the maieutic model for avant-garde art for several reasons. The maieutic model proposes that the artwork is educative, that it elicits a theoretical insight from the viewer. But with the informed viewer, this has got things reversed. He doesn't acquire the theoretical point from the artwork; rather he must already know the point in order to understand the artwork. There is no sense in saying that such a viewer learns the theory from the piece before him; he already knows it. And since the viewer already knows the theory, it is oxymoronic to say he learns it from the artwork. Moreover, one wonders whether it is proper to say that the informed viewer's expectations are subverted by such a work. The informed viewer of art by now expects structural and stylistic innovation from avant-garde artworks and, rather than disrupting his train of thought, these novelties serve to cue the appropriateness of certain forms of interpretive play, such as associating this or that theory with the artwork on the basis of various stylistic and contextual clues. It may be true to say that the informed viewer comes to recognize the

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11

theory that is associated with the artwork, but this process of recognition doesn't work in the way that the maieutic model suggests. That is, such a viewer is not brought to a recognition of some theoretical point by coming to see an unexpected commonality between the deviant forms of the given artwork and a larger class of artworks or representations. Rather the viewer makes a charade-like hypothesis that makes sense out of unconventional symbolism. And, again, it makes no sense to think of this process as didactic, since the informed viewer learns nothing new in the way of theory. Nor does such a work persuade the informed viewer of the viability of the theory. If such a viewer accepts the theory that the artwork mimes, it is because the exegete is already a convert.14 Furthermore, it should be obvious that a charade of a theory or of a theoretical assertion is not itself a piece of theorizing. Avant-garde artworks may refer or allude to theories,15 but this doesn't make them theoreticalin any strong or straightforward sense-that is, in the sense that they can be thought to make, propound, demonstrate, or teach theory. Avant-garde artworks, as we know them, are fully parasitic on independently developed theories; Surrealism is not a contribution to psychoanalysis, but presupposes psychoanalysis as a condition of its own intelligibility. Avant-garde artists in creating their artifacts and performances are not engaged in theoretical work. At best, they obliquely refer to such work. One might wish to say that in this they are intertextual. But in saying avant-garde artworks make intertextual references to theoretical writings and debates, we should not confuse such allusions to theoretical work proper. One would not wish to deny that a great deal of avant-garde art is somehow connected to theory. The writings of critics and artists indicate that it is. But the nature of that relation seems to me to be muddled in art-world discourse. The avant-garde artwork is called theoreticalhonorifically, in an attempt, one suspects, to boost the seriousness with which it is regarded. But the avant-garde artwork is not an example of a theory, a statement of a theory, or an object lesson in a theory. It is rather an allusion to or an emblem of a theory. It does not work out or through a theory, but operates like heraldic insignia for some theory which for either philosophical, sociological, or political reasons is a theory that is antecedently held, newly held, or which is an emerging idea in the art world. The "theoretical" artwork becomes an occasion for those affiliated with the view to celebrate it communally. The avant-garde artwork in this light is a symbol around which a new viewpoint coalesces and consolidates. The "theoretical" artwork becomes a pretext for exegetes-professional and otherwise-to rehearse their convictions. Thus, in fact, it might be better to regard such avant-garde artworks as akin to flags rather than theories-though why the art world should be so obsessed with theory and want such flags to which to pledge allegiance is a topic for another essay.16

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Noel Carroll

NOTES 1. See Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961). 2. The qualification "as we know it" above is intended to acknowledge that artistic conventions, perhaps as a result of being apprized of the sort of objections made in this article, could be redesigned in a way that would accommodate theorizing. But our subject is rather avant-garde art as we know it. Also, that we are speaking of avant-garde art here is also significant. For more classically composed art, especially literary art such as Tolstoy's War and Peace, may contain legitimate theorizing insofar as, unlike avant-garde art, such work may employ logical connectives and specify their reference. 3. As the use of avant-garde literature in this argument should indicate, though my arguments in this article are posed in terms of avant-garde works in the fine arts, I believe that arguments of the sort I use in this article can be applied to the pretensions to theory of the avant-garde across all the arts. 4. Joseph Kosuth, "Art after Philosophy, I and II," in IdeaArt, ed. Gregory Battcock (New York: Dutton, 1973), p. 83. 5. See, for example, W. V. Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," in his Froma Logical Point of View (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953). 6. The qualification in the sentence above acknowledges that there are some avantgarde artworks, primarily clustered in the area called Concept Art, that are propositional. See, for example, Adrian Piper, "Three Models of Art Production Systems," in Conceptual Art, ed. Ursula Meyer (New York: Dutton, 1972), pp. 202-3. Such an example indicates that avant-garde artworks can have the kind of structural elements discussed earlier. However, the ones that do are so rare that they should not deter the general thrust of the argument above. That is, the existence of a work like Piper's cannot be used to recuperate all those cases of so-called "theoretical" artworks that lack the requisite logical structure. Harcourt, Brace and World, 1958), p. 372. This, by the way, is more easily said than done. For any given work will possess a wealth of properties. How will we go about determining which of these are to count as the characterizer(s) in the relevant theoretical proposition? Clearly, it would be absurd to regard every property the work possesses as connected to characterizations the work is thought to project. But what principles enable us to discriminate between those properties that are connected to characterizations versus those that are not? If we cannot answer this question, then we have further reason to doubt the viability of the notion that avant-garde artworks are equivalent to theoretical assertions. 9. See note 6. 10. Perhaps an artwork could be thought of as being theoretical in a negative sense-it might deliberately counter an existing theory, aesthetic or otherwise. One might think of some of Duchamp's ready-mades in this way-as counterexamples proposed to challenge the idea that sculptors must literally mix their own labor in their pieces. But even in cases like these it still seems somewhat strained to say that the artwork is a piece of theory, because it is not the artwork alone that refutes existing ideas but the artwork plus the theoretical debate that accompanies the introduction of the new work and which, in turn, leads to its categorization as art, that is, if the counterexample works. For one does not refute existing ideas simply by violating received conventions and categories. Those violations themselves will have to be supported by theoretical exercises external to the work. But even though, for the preceding reason, I am not disposed to think of such works as clear-cut examples of theorizing, I would agree that this mode--call it the artwork-as-counterexample-has the strongest credentials for being considered theoretical. Needless to say, however, not all avant-garde artworks can be regarded as even attempted counterexamples. 11. Hal Foster, Recodings:Art Spectacle, Cultural Politics (Port Towneshend, Wash.: Bay Press, 1985), pp. 108-9 (emphasis added). 8.

in thePhilosophy 7. MonroeBeardsley,Aesthetics: Problems (New York: of Criticism

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12. Here, of course, it is open to the proponent of the artwork/theory model to show there is some straightforward conception of making a theoretical contribution that avant-garde artworks can and do characteristically implement which I have neither noticed nor foreclosed. But, at this point, the burden of proof rests with the defender of the artwork/theory model. 13. The type of ratiocination here should not be mistaken for theorizing but is rather a process of exegesis. Hypothesizing a theme-even if it is theoretical in nature-that makes sense of an artwork is not a species of theory building but is a matter of interpretation. 14. We have argued above that the maieutic model of the avant-garde is probably mistaken-that such works do not teach the uninitiated, but rather leave them bemused. This finding will pose a special problem for those-often motivated politically-who endorse the subversion/recognition model for its educative, evangelical potential. For avant-garde works designed in accordance with this approach are unlikely to guide uninformed viewers to the realization of some (emancipatory) theory (e.g., we are not autonomous subjects), and will rather stupefy them. Informed viewers may recognize and applaud the liberatory allegiance of the avant-garde artwork, but that is because they already know it and perhaps share it. That is, subversion may not be a useful strategy of address when it comes to the typical viewer. 15. For a discussion of some of the ways in which so called "theoretical" avantgarde films refer to theories, see my "Avant-garde Film and Film Theory," Millennium Film Journalnos. 4/5 (1979): 135-43. 16. Some speculation in this direction can be found in my "Anti-illusionism in Modem and Postmodern Art," in Leonardo21, no. 3 (1988).