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The Origin of the Work of Art

The Origin of the Work of Art
The Origin of the Work of Art (German edition).jpg
Cover of the 1960 German edition
Author Martin Heidegger
Original title Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes
Country Germany
Language German
Published 1950
Preceded by The Question Concerning Technology
Followed by What Is Called Thinking?

The Origin of the Work of Art (German: Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes) is an essay by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Heidegger drafted the text between 1935 and 1937, reworking it for publication in 1950 and again in 1960. Heidegger based his essay on a series of lectures he had previously delivered in Zurich and Frankfurt during the 1930s, first on the essence of the work of art and then on the question of the meaning of a "thing," marking the philosopher's first lectures on the notion of art.

In "The Origin of the Work of Art" Heidegger explains the essence of art in terms of the concepts of being and truth. He argues that art is not only a way of expressing the element of truth in a culture, but the means of creating it and providing a springboard from which "that which is" can be revealed. Works of art are not merely representations of the way things are, but actually produce a community's shared understanding. Each time a new artwork is added to any culture, the meaning of what it is to exist is inherently changed.

Heidegger begins his essay with the question of what the source of a work of art is. The artwork and the artist, he explains, exist in a dynamic where each appears to be a provider of the other. "Neither is without the other. Nevertheless, neither is the sole support of the other." Art, a concept separate from both work and creator, thus exists as the source for them both. Rather than control lying with the artist, art becomes a force that uses the creator for art's own purposes. Likewise, the resulting work must be considered in the context of the world in which it exists, not that of its artist. In discovering the essence, however, the problem of the hermeneutic circle arises. In sum, the hermeneutic circle raises the paradox that, in any work, without understanding the whole, you can’t fully comprehend the individual parts, but without understanding the parts, you cannot comprehend the whole. Applied to art and artwork, we find that without knowledge of the essence of art, we cannot grasp the essence of the artwork, but without knowledge of the artwork, we cannot find the essence of art. Heidegger concludes that to take hold of this circle you either have to define the essence of art or of the artwork, and, as the artwork is simpler, we should start there.

Artworks, Heidegger contends, are things, a definition that raises the question of the meaning of a "thing," such that works have a thingly character. This is a broad concept, so Heidegger chooses to focus on three dominant interpretations of things:

The third interpretation is the most dominant (extended to all beings), but is derived from equipment: "This long familiar mode of thought preconceives all immediate experience of beings. The preconception shackles reflection on the Being of any given being." The reason Heidegger selects a pair of peasant shoes painted by Vincent van Gogh is to establish a distinction between artwork and other "things," such as pieces of equipment, as well as to open up experience through phenomenological description. This was actually typical of Heidegger as he often chose to study shoes and shoe maker shops as an example for the analysis of a culture. Heidegger explains the viewer's responsibility to consider the variety of questions about the shoes, asking not only about form and matter—what are the shoes made of?—but bestowing the piece with life by asking of purpose—what are the shoes for? What world do they open up and belong to? In this way we can get beyond correspondence theories of truth which posit truth as the correspondence of representations (form) to reality (matter).


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