A Reflection on the Contemporary Philosophical Discussions on Meaninglessness in Art

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Assistant Professor of the Philosophy of Art, Faculty of Theology and Philosophy, Islamic Azad University Science and Research, Branch Tehran

Abstract

Artworks are different in terms of creation, application, function, interpretation and finally meaning. Sometimes, we don’t know the meaning of a picture or a literal text. Human perceptual media and cognitive faculties are confused. The understanding of artworks is difficult. The ready-mades have disrupted the rules of the aesthetic judgment. The recognition of art from non-art is not the work of common people and needs to a strong taste. Common sense that philosophers have emphasized on it could not recognize beauty and art. Absurdity influenced the space of the artistic genres for example literal texts. Nowadays, it is difficult access to their meaning or concept just like human mental states. The inaccessible intentions manifold the importance of the study of meaning in art. The difference is overflowing in everything including in art and the interpretation of art. Audiences don’t hear a single voice from commentators. These cases have complicated our work in the perception of art. When persons see something odd ask “is it an art?” In these circumstances they are dealing with several meaning or absence of meaning. But, is this absence could be meaninglessness? Of course, the modern art is ambiguous its relation with reality in some of cases but this is not evidence on the lack of communication with reality. Human accepts that the art world is a fictional world, but this world is built based on a reality in the life, imagination or mind. Audience attributes to the artwork a meaning or concept in interpretation. Onetime, the meaning of artworks was been searched in the represented things, for example in the landscape of mountain and sea or in human face, but in the non-representational contemporary art, meaning is a secret that the existence of art is based on it. Some people consider meaninglessness as a great privilege and praise it. In this article, this article wants to look for that whether art without meaning would be interpreted? It wants to reflect on the meaning of meaninglessness. While it seems, it is impossible meaninglessness in some of new theories. For example, in system theory with relying on the social nature of art, meaninglessness is not same negation of meaningfulness. This world is the realm of meaning and all its beings have meaning. Then how can we experience meaninglessness? Meaninglessness belong to nonbeing. Now, art is a form of social existence, how is it possible that art be meaningless? This research is looking for a reply for these questions. It wants to search roots of meaninglessness in the contemporary philosophy, of course by studying continental philosophy and in its best-known theories. This study encounters with systemic conception of meaning and three dimensions of meaning. These dimensions are difference between this and that work, or old and new production, or art and non-art. It seems persons have to be more careful in attributing meaninglessness to the artworks.

Keywords


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