Andy Warhol, “Brillo
Box” (1964)
Synthetic
polymer paint and silkscreen ink on wood, 17 1/8 x 17 x 14" (43.3 x 43.2 x
36.5 cm)
MOMA, New York
City
The
dissolution of art is fundamentally related to concept of dialectical
sublation, which is “one of the most important notions in all of Hegel”[1]
for art has, in fact, been sublated. It
is specifically with the irony of the Romantic period that art is supposed to
have “come to an end” (in the sense indicated by Danto, for example); it has
been cancelled and at the same time preserved, acting as the catalyst in the
resolution of contradictory elements (reason and sensuality), and dissolving in
the progress of that reaction. Hence the
connection between Auflösung is aufheben. Hegel takes full advantage of the equivocal
term Auflösung: literally, it means “to raise up something; however, as a
philosophical notion it can mean ‘cancel’, ‘dissolve’, or ‘preserve’, or all
three at once!” (Carter, 1980:94). Inwood says that the word “has three main
senses: (1) ‘to raise, to hold, lift up” (2) ‘to annul, abolish, destroy,
cancel, suspend’ (3) ‘to keep, save, preserve’…Hegel regularly uses all three
senses at once.”[2] Similarly, Etter comments on “the difficulty
of the German term aufheben, which
may mean ‘to raise’, ‘to preserve’, or ‘to annul’-a profoundly plural ambiguity
that Hegel exploits as the central explanatory term of his dialectical sense of
history.”[3] It’s worth quoting
Hegel’s Logic at length to get a
sense of exactly what he intends by the term, and to understand its central
importance:
To sublate, and the sublated (that which exists ideally as
a moment), constitute one of the most important notions in philosophy. It is a fundamental determination which
repeatedly occurs throughout the whole of philosophy, the meaning of which is
to be clearly grasped and especially distinguished from nothing. What is sublated is
not thereby reduced to nothing. Nothing
is immediate; what is sublated, on
the other hand, is the result of mediation;
it is a non-being which has its origin in a being. It still has, therefore, in itself the determinateness
from which it originates. “To sublate” has a twofold meaning in the
[German] language: on the one hand it means to preserve, to maintain, and
equally it also means to cause to cease, to put an end to. Even “to preserve” includes a negative
element, namely, that something is removed from its immediacy and so from an
existence which is open to external influences, in order to preserve it. Thus what is sublated is at the same time
preserved; it has only lost its immediacy but is not on that account annihilated.[4]
[1]. Curtis L. Carter, “A Re-Examination of the ‘End of art”
Interpretation of Hegel’s Aesthetics” in Art
and Logic in Hegel’s Philosophy Warren E. Steinkraus; Kenneth L. Schmitz Humanities
Press, 1980 p. 94
[2]. Michael Inwood A
Hegel Dictionary (Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1999) p. 283
[3]. Brian K. Etter Between Transcendence and Historicism: The
Ethical Nature of the Arts in Hegelian Aesthetics (Buffalo: SUNY, 2006) p.
69
[4]. G. W. F. Hegel Science of Logic A.V. Miller, trans.
(London and New York: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. And Humanities Press, 1969)
pp. 106-7
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