The Aesthetics of Silence

The Aesthetics of Silence / Susan Sontag

Art was considered as an expression of human consciousness, a consciousness seeking to know itself. Later this changed into a more ‘’anti-art’’ movement where the subject (in this case: the object / image) became eliminated and chance was substituted for intention and with this the pursuit for silence started.

In this earlier linear version of art that was related to consciousness a struggle existed between creative impulses seen as ‘’spiritual’’ and the ‘’real’’ material daily life. This materiality interferes with this search to authenticity and maybe even divinity.

In this newer version rests a conflict: The spirit seeks a dialogue with art but its consciousness gets disturbed by the material character in art itself. Art can become the biggest enemy of the artist with its second hand perceptions, treachery of words and its historicity denies the artist the realisation and transcendence that is so desired.

The craving of silence becomes interfered with the need to measure oneself against other artists. The need to possess and expose this genius becomes an expression of authority. It suggests that the artist possesses the intelligence to ask more questions than other people and therefore acquires excellency.

A silence that is genuine and pure is not possible. The artist that wants to create ‘’silence’’ has to present this to different viewpoints. Because of this the creation of silence becomes a full void, enriching emptiness, a resonating or eloquent silence. As silence is an aspect of dialogue and a form of speech.

In the current environment art yearns to be a ‘’total experience’’ demanding the full attention of the onlooker. Compare this with the difference between looking and staring. A look is in a way voluntary while a stare is compulsive and fixed. Traditional art invites a look while modern art ignites a stare. A stare is perhaps, as close to eternity, as contemporary art can get.

Not part of the synopsis but maybe interesting piece for the Eye:

Art that is "silent" constitutes one approach to this visionary, ahistorical condition.

Consider the difference between "looking" and "staring." A look is (at least, in part) voluntary; it is also mobile, rising and falling in intensity as its foci of interest are taken up and then exhausted. A stare has, essentially, the character of a compulsion; it is steady, unmodulated, "fixed."

Traditional art invites a look. Art that's silent engenders a stare. In silent art, there is (at least in principle) no release from attention, because there has never, in principle, been any soliciting of it. A stare is perhaps as far from history, as close to eternity, as contemporary art can get.

Silence is a metaphor for a cleansed, noninterfering vision, in which one might envisage the making of art-works that are unresponsive before being seen, unviolable in their essential integrity by human scrutiny. The spectator would approach art as he does a landscape. A landscape doesn't demand from the spectator his "understanding," his imputations of significance, his anxieties and sympathies; it demands, rather, his absence, that he not add anything to it. Contemplation, strictly speaking, entails self-forgetfulness on the part of the spectator: an object worthy of contemplation is one which, in effect, annihilates the perceiving subject.