A little earlier, in the school debate contest, I heard that the new students of our department’s 2006 cohort put on an excellent performance. The final loss was really not a matter of ability; apparently we drew the position “Super Girl is art,” and our opponents were, incredibly, the School of Art……
Some people say that “Super Girl is art” is practically like saying “Snow is black” — there’s simply no way to argue it. At the time, I thought that made sense too, and could only sigh at our bad luck. But after thinking it over carefully later, it didn’t seem to be quite that way. If I had to choose a position now, I would actually rather choose to say that Super Girl is also art.
Why do we tend to think that “Super Girl doesn’t count as art”? The reason is that we often feel Super Girl is vulgar, even low-brow, and has nothing to do with elegance or beauty. I don’t like Super Girl either; I think it is too restless and flashy. But to conclude from these feelings that Super Girl is not art, one basic assumption is already being taken for granted in advance: that “art” must be a “good thing.”
But must “art” necessarily be “good”?
At this point, the problem becomes rather similar to “what is science.” People tend to link “science” with “good”; science is always pure, noble, and anything bad must certainly not belong to science. Thus scientists’ “wrong” views or methods, or fraud and deception in scientific activity, are all regarded as personal, accidental factors outside science. Those theories of scientists that have been proven absurd are classified as “pseudoscience,” and only those that are “correct” count as science. But once this happens, scientific activity in its original completeness is torn apart; science eventually becomes, of course, the spokesperson for “correctness” and the possessor of “truth,” but this radiant image is only the result of artificial makeup and grooming.
The scientist is one who “seeks truth,” not a holder of truth. “Truth” itself should indeed be “good” and perfect, but those who seek truth are not always perfect. Science, as a human activity, can also become something dirty and evil. Art is similar: art is not “beauty” itself. The word “art,” whether considered from its etymology in ancient Greek and Roman usage or from the literal meaning of the Chinese characters, originally meant “craft” or “technique.” As a form of human undertaking alongside science and religion, art can be said to be a kind of technique that pursues “beauty,” tries to approach and express “beauty,” and does not naturally possess the quality of being “good.” As an activity, art may be noble and beautiful; of course, it may also be dirty, flashy, and so on. And just as with judgments about “what is correct,” the standards for judging “what is beautiful” are not transhistorical; there is no eternal, unchanging standard outside time and space that can determine what is true or what is beautiful. Even if such a standard existed, human beings would not be able to master it. Therefore, ideas such as “what is good belongs to science, and what is bad belongs to the devil” (in Tian Song’s phrase), or “what is good belongs to art, and what is bad belongs to vulgarity,” are probably too simplistic.
It should be noted that although there is no transhistorical arbiter for questions like “what is true” and “what is beautiful,” we can indeed reflect on and reexamine science or art by comparing and clarifying historical changes in evaluative orientations. In the ancient Greek philosophers’ view, scientific activity was merely based on “the nature of the desire to know”; the meaning of scientific inquiry was “the pursuit of truth” itself, with no other utilitarian demands. By the modern era, however, utility, profit, effectiveness, and the like have increasingly become more important benchmarks when people evaluate scientific activity. Pure inquiry has come to be seen as impractical; only science as “the primary productive force” is more admired. From seeking truth to seeking profit, science increasingly submits to “technology,” and even becomes technology’s appendage; it is hard to say that this is not a kind of degeneration. In a similar shift from free creative activity to utilitarian activity focused on results, “art” too has a tendency to deteriorate from the pursuit of “beauty” into the pursuit of “eyeballs.”
However, even degenerate art is still art, just as scientific activity in history was not driven only by people who upheld so-called “scientific spirit.” “Scientific spirit” is something abstracted into an ideal; the forces that truly drive scientific development also include utilitarian, desire-driven, mystical, and other motivations. We may, according to our own preferences, strip away so-called “scientific spirit,” but we have no right to strip science itself away, or to remove all the things that do not suit us. Similarly, we can say that “Super Girl” is very far from the ideal “artistic spirit,” but as a technique that tries to create sensory pleasure for modern audiences, it cannot be casually rejected as a special form of art; indeed, one could even say that this form of art is precisely a typical representative of the dimension of “art” in modern civilization.
2006-11-04
Latest comments
- Gu
2006-11-04 17:25:32
In another context, I do not emphasize historical relativism about “beauty”; I support the proposition of “natural beauty in its entirety,” and “nature” should be the eternal standard for measuring beauty. But what exactly counts as “nature”? Understandings of this remain plural and historical. Although the impact of those marvelous works of art seems to transcend eras, the standards by which people judge them are not absolute. For example, the art of ancient Greece was not appreciated by philosophers like Plato. Perhaps those works of art can bring sensory shock to people of any era, but Plato and the like did not regard sensory shock as a good thing. Agreeing to use sensory impact as the measure of a work of art is only one school of thought, after all
- LinHang
2006-11-07 20:23:46
The view is right on target.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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