Do artworks communicate truth?
On this subject,
there is no question that artworks do not communicate truth in the sense of
communicating facts. Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Heidegger all agree with Plato
that what is presented in a work of art is not factually true. However, as
Heidegger notes, this is a very limited (and perhaps even almost trivial)
notion of what truth is. To this extent then, before we can try and determine
whether or not artworks communicate truth, we have to ascertain a definition of
truth robust enough to try and accommodate what is shown in artworks.
Under
the Aristotelian account of artworks (or at least of tragedy), artworks do
communicate truth, and they do so in a way that is much more palatable for
humanity than history. History only lists events of the past; tragedy allows
the viewer to witness the events in their entirety. Aristotle grants that the
actions performed on the stage are not true, both because the characters are
not historically real and because they are not really there on the stage, only
actors are. However, in the presentation of the tragedy, these factical
concerns are not important. Aristotle stresses that the best tragedies are
plausible; within the framework of the tragedy, the characters act in a manner
that make sense, and the plot proceeds according to circumstances which are
internally coherent, even if they are only fantasy in reality. Behind the
effect of plausibility, Aristotle sees a profound teaching tool in tragedy. In
present plausible persons performing plausible actions with plausible
consequences, tragedy provides us with lessons concerning morality. The truth
of the tragedy is not what is represented, but the notion of causality and the
moral repercussions of actions which underpin these representations.
Heidegger,
through his analysis of the varying degrees of thing-being, comes to a similar
though more general notion of what artistic truth is. For Heidegger, the truth
in artwork is ἀλήθεια, an “unconcealedness” of being. In interacting with an
artwork, we become aware of the being of things in a new and profound way which
is unavailable by other means. For example, in using a basket, we are unaware
of what it is that makes it a basket, for this is only unconsciously supplied
since we are using it. When we look at a basket, we cease to see it as a basket
and approach it as a brute thing which holds physical properties, but nothing
which denotes “basket-ness”. However, in looking at a painting of a basket,
we become aware of the nature of the basket and what it means for that thing to
be a basket. In the work of art, the construct of the world is held together
with the brute matter of earth for both to be examined together at the same
time. This duality of nature, the one transcendent and the other factical, is
the unconcealedness that art reveals.
Nietzsche’s
analysis of art has a similar dichotomy of a constructed, virtual reality and
an unveiled reality, which he places under the headings of the Apollonian and
the Dionysian. The Apollonian, on the one hand, is the joyous expression of
dreams; it creates a world on top of reality. The Dionysian is ecstasy in the
most literal sense, for it allows one to step outside of one’s self and become
part of the world once again. The conjunction of these tendencies are what
constitutes art for Nietzsche, but these are not tendencies towards truth.
Rather, these impulses seek to conceal the brutal fact of humanity’s
homelessness in the world. Through the Apollonian, the individual seeks to
create a pleasant, illusory order in place of the hostile natural one, and
through the Dionysian she seeks to lose herself in the greater unity of the
world. In this sense, Nietzsche’s conception of art is the opposite of
Heidegger’s: rather than revealing the truth of being, it seeks to hide it.
However,
Nietzsche’s notion of the artwork concealing truth seems to be more of a
statement of how the artwork creates a unity in itself. The artwork does
provide an order beyond that of the actual world, but the recognition of the
artwork as an artwork seems to justify Heidegger’s point. The nature of the
artwork, as having some sort of internal structure to itself, presents a
dichotomy between the mere matter that composes the artwork and the constructed
world which the artwork invites the perceiver into. Nietzsche’s distinction of
the artwork as untrue falls more on the side of facts about the world at large,
since he views the artwork as an attempt to insulate humanity from the
meaningless of the world. In as much as truth is ἀλήθεια, however, the artwork
still serves to expose the transcendent world and the factical earth and is
thus still capable of communicating truth. In any case, art has the power to
communicate the nature of the being of the world in a way which is inaccessible
to our day-to-day lives.
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