An Ontology of Art’s Ambiguity

Anyone who has ever been captivated by an artwork or a piece of music has asked themselves the following question: what exactly is it about that particular arrangement of sounds or colors that makes the work so arresting? Perhaps it is the mystery surrounding our ability to define art as-such which makes it intriguing to us. The fact that its core is inaccessible, and in some ways represents the eternal unknown, is what makes it valuable. We might say that our kitchen table adorned with a vase of flowers is not art when we pass  it, for example, because we find its entity possessing a completeness when in our presence; we understand the entire function, purpose, and meaning of its presence. However, a painting of that very same setting instantly becomes art, by virtue of the fact that there is something unknown in the recreated scene. Some secret part of it calls upon our intrigue which was not present in its real-life counterpart. How, then, do we explore this unspeakable aspect? How do we understand something which, by its nature, we claim is uncapturable? The answer is to circle around it and get right up to its edge; to find the borders between the entity and everything in its periphery we are capable of investigating. Then, we may be able to find its shape and constituency and deduce its texture without ever crawling inside and purely seeing it itself. 

From this, I posit that art stands on three pillars: context, consciousness, and completion by an audience. 

The value of art, like so much else, exists on a continuum. However, there are two intuitive thresholds to account for: the distinction between “not-art” and “possibly-art,” and the distinction between “possibly-art” and “truly-art.” “Not-art” cannot be presented as art prima facie and would require some radical change to its nature to become so. The contrary is likewise true of “truly-art,” though we may argue about whether there is even such a thing in either case. “Possibly-art” is then everything in the ambiguous middle space; everything in this category could be revealed as either truly-art or not-art given some small change, either in the thing itself or in its surrounding context. “Truly-art” is technically a subset of “possibly-art,” since something being art definitively entails it being at least art possibly, but for the sake of clarity, we can think of possibly-art as a middle category excluding both “truly-art” and “not-art.” 

Regarding the first border, between “not-art” and “possibly-art,” I propose the following hypothesis: for anything to be considered at least “possibly-art,” it must be built such that it could be completed by an audience. What does it mean for a work to be completed by an audience? With this phrase, I refer to a situation where, in the same space within which the object exists, there also exists a subject which explicitly and cognizantly interacts with the object. For example, imagining a work of art always involves imagining a display of art which crucially includes the viewer. Upon the creation of a piece of art, there then exists a specific intended perspective that the audience necessarily takes. Even if one were to imagine viewing a piece of art not yet in a gallery but rather on the floor of a painter’s studio, the viewer takes the place of an intended recipient, a member of an audience, rather than an illegitimate voyeur or witness. Art is intrinsically tied to its being experienced by an audience in the same way that language in principle is tied to its intelligibility outside of that of the originating user. For the same reasons Wittgenstein argued that private language cannot exist, we can conclude that private art is equally an impossibility. 

Regarding the second border, I posit that a work crosses the boundary from “possibly-art” into “truly-art” if and only if the context of the audience that receives the work collectively grants the art a consciousness in itself. What does it mean for a work of art to be in possession of a consciousness? This occurs when a work embeds itself within society in a particular way such that it is completed under society’s gaze. But this implies something additional must occur where the work intersects society. The greatest works of art, regardless of time period or cultural origin, all succeed in actively interacting with the collective social consciousness in such a way that society is changed in some way by their existence. Great works succeed in absorbing unconscious social and cultural developments and then present them in a way that forces society to confront and recognize them. They thus symbolize not only revelatory truths about human nature, but truths that crucially invoke a specific shift in perspective among the audience. Context both creates the requisite force to complete a work and the potential to elevate it to the highest possible status. The consciousness within the work requires a surrounding force to burgeon its awakening. There is, therefore, a massive change in the content of the object via an incredibly subtle and almost invisible change in context. The existence of the substantial influential force of art and its profoundly captivating impact on society as a collective is then evidence of this consciousness.

To push even further, we might say that the consciousness of the subject settles into the object such that the object ‘awakens’ and looks back with its own unique and specific gaze. It places the viewer into an oneiric state, and we feel there is something in the work that actively desires our engagement. In the same way our unconscious feels awakened when we sense a pair of eyes staring at us, so too is our unconscious awakened by an artwork’s look in. For when we encounter art, there is a sense that we are equally as watched by it as it is watched by us. Art comes from the black hole that resides inside humanity; it arises out of the side of subjectivity we cannot reflexively look at. Subjectivity acts as a vector; it has a point of origin, and necessarily extends outwards from that point into the surrounding space. The hidden side is therefore the opposite direction of the vector; the inverse vector which points back to the origin point. Hidden, here, does not imply absence; the future is equally hidden, but we know it exists. 

This completion of art via the sinews of society’s consciousness may help us answer an additional question: how does art connect to morality? In terms of the philosophical categorization of art and morality, both fall under the overarching branch of value theory, or axiology, but approach this branch in different ways. That the thesis of art is incomplete before its encounter with the consciousness of society could indicate that art is a manifestation of the end result of our morality; art absorbs the consciousness of the community indirectly, and thus acts as a watchdog of the sublime areas of morality. Beauty, elegance, and captivation are theoretically always inherent to art; yet they are also inherently normative, and true art challenges our current mode of existence by presenting a new style of thought regarding these ideas’ meaning in a given context. Thus, art of a given time helps guide our actions insofar as it tells us what our moral framework may produce. If morality tells us what actions we should take, art tells us where those actions ought to lead us; it tells us where we ought to go.