Thoughts on Hegel and the end of art

Thoughts on reading Hegel
As a philosopher Hegel could be seen as the last of the great teleological believers, (the supposition that there is a purpose or directive principle in the works and processes of nature) and the first of the philosophers of time and change.
He presents an intriguing paradox. On the one hand he believes or argues for a type of universal truth; an ideal towards which mankind should strive and have aspirations towards as individuals and as a society as a whole. On the other hand he is a rationalist and seeks to ground his philosophical system in logical thought which acknowledges the historical nature of change and the importance of the particular time period that a thinker finds themselves born into.
The concept of art, like other aspects of Hegel’s thinking, is therefore deeply conflicted. It is however this duality that makes his philosophy interesting and of continuing relevance to contemporary practice.
It could be argued that the root of Hegel’s position lies in Christianity’s moment of separation between the spirit and the material world. The dualistic reality of Christ the man and the spiritual acceptance of Christ the God being at the centre of Christian belief.
One reading of Hegel is that a realistic, logical individual relies on perceptions of the everyday world on which to develop a logical belief system. This individual has a moral duty to all other people and this duty is the duty of communicating to others how they can progress from this worldly understanding towards a greater holistic awareness of what Hegel would call the spirit.
The family unit is where this ‘duty’ is fostered and it is the family that guides each of us on entry into what it is to be part of the human family.
However this is not enough. There is another type of duty, the duty to strive towards higher levels of ‘spiritual awareness’. Art could therefore be seen, like religion, as a stage to progress through on the way towards full enlightenment. It is because of this idea that art may be simply a stage we go through in order to get somewhere else, that talk of the ‘end of art’ begins. This is perfectly understandable and it is easily arguable that culturally humans would have no need for art if everyone was fully enlightened. The reality is though that as a society we will never get anywhere near full enlightenment and as individuals only the rare, remarkable individual has ever attained a position of complete spiritual awareness. Therefore if we are to take something more tangible from Hegel it is perhaps his concept of thesis/anti-thesis. This pairing of opposites allows for the reader to use a historical materialist argument in conjunction with Universalist arguments and establish a rich complex position on the interrelationship between reality and idealism.
Hegel allows us to revisit certain ways of thinking about art practice in relation to more contemporary thinking. For instance, his argument in relation to inherent weaknesses in pre-Classical art is that it separates the signifier from the signified. Certain 20th century thinkers have proposed that at the core of the way we should understand art is to think of it as a specific type of language. The tools of semiotics can therefore be used to come to an understanding of how art works as a sign system. However for Hegel the need to create a symbol separates what is constructed (a symbol such as human with a dogs head) from what is signified. This separation demonstrates a lack of ‘wholeness’ or ‘completeness’, and it is this totality towards which we should be aspiring. This is interesting as it points towards the weakness of interpretive approaches, (an anti hermeneutic stance) and could be re-read in conjunction with Susan Sontag’s essay ‘Against Interpretation’. My own reading of this and personal convictions as an artist point towards a more phenomenological or embodied approach to an understanding of art.
Hegel believes that Classical Greek Art achieves a synthesis of the signifier and what is signified. (Form and content). But this fusion is in some ways too static and the resolution itself could therefore be seen to become ‘timeless’ or ‘fixed’ as a canon. Another paradox now develops. In this case if Greek Classical Art has achieved some sort of Universal truth, it blocks the historical time bound duty of humankind to progress further. Hegel suggests that this type of art lacks an inner vitality or emotional struggle to move an awareness of the spirit on further. It therefore fails to achieve a higher synthesis with the life spirit. This argument points towards another aspect of what is often seen as ‘the end of art’. The fact that for Hegel, Classical Greek Art has it all, a perfect synthesis between form and content, and yet it still fails to deliver in terms of higher spiritual understandings, means that perhaps art has failed or outlived its value and that further enlightenment can only be achieved via philosophical investigation, art thus being supplanted by philosophy, which Hegel sees as a more worthy vehicle.
For the artist however this dilemma of Hegel’s can be read in a different way. The need to have fully resolved work is often a problem for an artist when thinking about audience reaction. Hegel’s critique of the perfection of Greek Art opens out the possibility of leaving un-resolved work to operate as a catalyst between the artist and audience, the historical process of time could therefore provide the necessary friction and edge to give the work value. Open as opposed to closed solutions being predicated by this position.
The thesis-anti-thesis position is one that is useful as it levers change into being. By always having to struggle with history/time/change and how to reconcile universal fixed meanings, the artist can have a constantly unfolding set of meanings that are discovered as part of the process of making, rather than worked towards as a determined goal.
Hegel’s thesis on the end of art is of course only understandable in conjunction with its anti-thesis, the thesis that points towards the continuing relevance of art.
The Dadaist cries of “Bollocks” to art, which emerge every few years, are only understandable in the context of art’s traditional values. The ‘end of art’ it could be argued, is therefore an old and often repeated refrain that is very easy to make but that doesn’t really have much value outside of very closely argued hermeneutic inward looking contemporary art practices.
An alternative approach is to examine Hegel’s arguments from a more formalistic point of view. If we think of Hegel as the last theoretician of the beautiful, we can revisit art via Plato, Kant, metaphysics and the concept of universals. Art can be read as a universal form of the self-unfolding idea of beauty. The actualisation of this is what we see as art. The concept of self-unfolding means that art is not driven by outside means, it comes to a self-actualisation by being attuned at a deep level to the spirit. This tuning or empathy should run deep within the material structure of any particular art form, the specificity of medium, dictating what is achievable. (Hegel goes to great length to point out what poetry can carry as an art form as opposed to painting or music). At one point Hegel explains that art is built by the self-comprehending spirit of beauty and it could therefore take thousands of years for a full realisation of integration with the spirit to be achieved. This could be understood as a call for the continuation of art. The fact that artists have a long tradition going back to cave paintings, suggesting that the artist is involved in a constant process of attempting to ‘realise’ the image, each generation of artists passing on the moral duty to strive towards an almost impossible actualisation.