An aesthetic judgement on theatre
Apr. 17th, 2006 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
franceslievensThis text is a follow-up from a previous post on the sensuality of contemporary theatre. It explores how those statements can influence aesthetic ideas.
The more one reads about theatre, performance arts, and dance, the more one is confronted with a limited vocabulary. Words that can only be used to comprehend the text, the scenery, the acting, are at a loss when describing contemporary theatre. They are inadequate to grasp the full extent of the theatrical experience as an artistic experience. Theatre moves away from the language fueled story-telling towards something that is much more related to visual art. Classical theatre is becoming performance art.
This will lead to a different approach of what theatre is, how we can talk and write about it, how we experience it. People will call it intellectualistic, high-brow, difficult. Others will use words like "genius", "heartfelt", "sublime". Theatre will – more than ever – have a title to its very own aesthetics. Or better said: will become part of the aesthetic realm where people talk about beauty.
The choice of words wasn't that strange then. "Sublime" points all the way back to Kant and his work on the aesthetic judgement in his Kritik der Urteilskraft1. Kant points backwards still when he talks about the judgements one can make. "Something is beautiful," or "Something is sublime," is said with the desire for others to think the same way, to make the same judgement. We want our judgement to hold for the rest of humanity. This universality seems to point to something better (most beautiful, most sublime) lying outside of this realm of fenomenon. Beauty lets us look at what lies beyond the borders of the realm of the noumenon, that which we cannot grasp, nor can we know anything about it.
Kant is platonic in stating this. Plato already considered everything on earth the hazy reflection of the real thing somewhere in a heaven. The Greek philosopher linked this idea to his notion of knowledge: Man can learn, can gather knowledge, through looking at what surrounds us and seeing through it the real thing in the higher universe. Knowledge is an upwards climb towards viewing the real objects (or ideas2). Kant brushes this whole idea of knowledge under the carpet. What he keeps is the platonic realm of "other things" that can viewed from time to time, that can be reached through the experience of beauty and the sublime.
Apart from Kant's obvious mistakes (I'm not going to explore) he still moves a lot of thinking with his words. He has put the aesthetic experience in the centre of his aesthetic philosophy. Beauty is something that is created with a purpose, but doesn't have any.
More than any other piece of art, theatre gives you an experience. The lights go out, things appear on the stage, and for a little while you live in another realm. Sometimes it's a boring realm and you wonder when the portal back to the ordinary world will open. Sometimes it grabs you by the throat and your fear makes you wonder if Kant's sublime does exist. And sometimes you are moved by the beauty of it all.
1 I am guilty of making lots of vague claims about the aesthetic philosophy of Kant in what follows. I do not claim that I am right in any way.
2 It's actually crazy how Plato considered his ideas as more real, but all the words we derived from them (ideal, idealistic...) all mean something that is worth trying to attain, but is actually unattainable.
The more one reads about theatre, performance arts, and dance, the more one is confronted with a limited vocabulary. Words that can only be used to comprehend the text, the scenery, the acting, are at a loss when describing contemporary theatre. They are inadequate to grasp the full extent of the theatrical experience as an artistic experience. Theatre moves away from the language fueled story-telling towards something that is much more related to visual art. Classical theatre is becoming performance art.
This will lead to a different approach of what theatre is, how we can talk and write about it, how we experience it. People will call it intellectualistic, high-brow, difficult. Others will use words like "genius", "heartfelt", "sublime". Theatre will – more than ever – have a title to its very own aesthetics. Or better said: will become part of the aesthetic realm where people talk about beauty.
The choice of words wasn't that strange then. "Sublime" points all the way back to Kant and his work on the aesthetic judgement in his Kritik der Urteilskraft1. Kant points backwards still when he talks about the judgements one can make. "Something is beautiful," or "Something is sublime," is said with the desire for others to think the same way, to make the same judgement. We want our judgement to hold for the rest of humanity. This universality seems to point to something better (most beautiful, most sublime) lying outside of this realm of fenomenon. Beauty lets us look at what lies beyond the borders of the realm of the noumenon, that which we cannot grasp, nor can we know anything about it.
Kant is platonic in stating this. Plato already considered everything on earth the hazy reflection of the real thing somewhere in a heaven. The Greek philosopher linked this idea to his notion of knowledge: Man can learn, can gather knowledge, through looking at what surrounds us and seeing through it the real thing in the higher universe. Knowledge is an upwards climb towards viewing the real objects (or ideas2). Kant brushes this whole idea of knowledge under the carpet. What he keeps is the platonic realm of "other things" that can viewed from time to time, that can be reached through the experience of beauty and the sublime.
Apart from Kant's obvious mistakes (I'm not going to explore) he still moves a lot of thinking with his words. He has put the aesthetic experience in the centre of his aesthetic philosophy. Beauty is something that is created with a purpose, but doesn't have any.
More than any other piece of art, theatre gives you an experience. The lights go out, things appear on the stage, and for a little while you live in another realm. Sometimes it's a boring realm and you wonder when the portal back to the ordinary world will open. Sometimes it grabs you by the throat and your fear makes you wonder if Kant's sublime does exist. And sometimes you are moved by the beauty of it all.
1 I am guilty of making lots of vague claims about the aesthetic philosophy of Kant in what follows. I do not claim that I am right in any way.
2 It's actually crazy how Plato considered his ideas as more real, but all the words we derived from them (ideal, idealistic...) all mean something that is worth trying to attain, but is actually unattainable.
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-17 03:12 pm (UTC)I think you could turn Kant's aesthetic upon himself and say that his philosophy is sublimely simplistic. There can be no one guiding principle in judging a mankind as diverse as it is.
What would Kant say about a film such as Brokeback Mountain?
no subject
Date: 2006-04-18 04:47 am (UTC)Yes, believe it or not, the philosophy of Kant isn't too difficult once you cut through the strange wording and the fact he writes like an 18th century inhabitant of Prussia. :-p
Note though that sublime has a very specific meaning in Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft. It points to a certain feeling one has and isn't specifically linked to art. Our use of the word is much wider than what Kant intended. It is a judgement you can make, next to a judgement on beauty, the good and the agreeable.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-18 07:31 am (UTC)That's pretty much the meaning I give to sublime in my first post. I want you to think the same way as I would judge Kant! LOL!