On The Classification of Art
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Commenting on the reading from Michael Foucault, Preface to The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. 1970. New York: Vintage, 1994.
Foucault states that he was prompted to write this book by a passage in a work of Jorge Luis Borges (an Argentinian writer of short stories), suggesting that a passage quoting a "certain Chinese encyclopedia" disrupts our more usual thinking around how things can be classified.
It's not difficult to see why he should say this as the passage describes the Chinese division of animals into classifications that range from almost minutely specific - an animal 'having just broken the water pitcher' - to the breadth of 'innumerable' or 'that from a long way off look like flies'. But these classifications extend farther than 'specific' versus 'broad'. There is the apparent randomness of 'drawn with a very fine camel hair brush' - both specific as it conjures up an image in the minds eye of a delicate painting but also random and extensive in terms of just how many and how diverse those animals depicted could be.
Foucault explores this by distinguishing between those categories that are "very real" and those "that reside solely in the realm of imagination". However he also states that there is a limit to how far that imagination can go as any "dangerous mixtures" are excluded and any inventions of fable are given their own classification of 'fabulous'. So the descriptors don't conjure up thoughts of dragons, mermaids or demons!
There is something both disturbing and intriguing about these classifications being listed in the way they are. Foucault talks about the separations between each descriptor, the narrowness of that distance, when the juxtaposition of some might suggest that a 'softening' of those boundaries would be more comfortable.
If we were to explore a 'list' of similarly diverse categories now, we might well use a mind map and forego enumeration or an order altogether. The order of these animal classifications may be entirely immaterial and I think the Eusthenes reference is suggesting this; it describes a collection of things that are all different from each other but do all begin with the letter A, are all creatures and can all be eaten (by Eusthenes anyway!).
Foucault talks about how or whether some classifications can be, in effect, formalised on a table or grid, using the example of comparing a cat and a dog, or a greyhound ..... and a greyhound. Do they resemble each other less or more if other elements of classification are introduced? For example, we could say they all have fur, but also that they each have a different owner. Can we classify with complete certainty when so many potential elements of similarity and difference exist?
It is not surprising therefore that when approaching the classification or categorising of art, one is faced with the same quandary, trying to make sense of randomness, specifics, differences, similarities - colour, shape, medium, technique, era, nationality, movement, 2D, 3D, film etc etc. Foucault describes the nature of this quandary as 'the proliferation of qualities and forms'. He suggests, for example, that prior experience and evidence of similarities will encourage the application of previous criteria and known elements. However, he also - rather usefully I feel - talks about a threshold; one which enables differences and similarities to be divided, above and below it. This begins to establish an order, albeit an order that introduces a level of randomness by including 'differences' and therefore scope for classifying the huge diversity found in art.
My relationship with art
The art I make can be described easily by generic conventions in terms of how I create it. I paint, I draw and make prints. It is also medium-specific in that I use oil paint, charcoal and pastel, working in monochrome and colour. Equally, what I produce visually is two dimensional and, to date on this course, has represented elements of architecture and the built environment. I understand it as art because the works are intended to represent those elements and to be viewed by others who are invited to focus on aspects of geometric shape and reflections.
Two dimensional work tends to interest me the most and give the most pleasure. Particularly I’m drawn to painting from the late 19th Century to the latter half of the 20th, so Post Impressionism, Expressionism as it applies to that era, and particularly the Abstract Expressionism that emerged from it. Examples would include Ben Nicholson (English, 1894 to 1992) and Ivon Hitchens (English, 1893 to 1979), both of whom work with colour and form in ways I find fascinating.
Ben Nicholson, 1945 (Still Life)
Ivon Hitchens, Red Centre, 1972
However, in broadening my experience of art over the last two years of this course, some installations and video-based work have been intriguing, often nudging my views on art and its interpretation in a what feels like a good way. Two examples below.
'The Weather Garden’ - Exhibition at Towner Eastbourne (2019).
Carey Young’s video installation Palais de Justice (2017)