Probability as print version (PDF with illus. 8.639 KB)

Probability. On Rhetoric in Art

in: Daidalos 64, June 1997 (Special Issue “Rhetoric”), p. 80-89.

Chapter VI

Advertising is structured in such a way that, through the mere inclusion of verbal language, res and argumentum are articulated in contradistinction to one another. In an advertisement, it is possible to distinguish between the thing denotated and the thing connotated, i.e. between the subject of the advertisement (a car, a brand of beer), and the idea meant to be associated with it (freedom, coolness). What advertising employs is precisely not that convergence of fictive and real which allows the experience of art to remain autonomous and which Kant described as “disinterested pleasure.” Advertising is concerned with making the statement: “if X (this car), then Y (freedom),” in order to influence a decision in favor of X. In terms of both the means and the end, advertising is clearly closer to rhetoric than is art. Thus it is not surprising that attempts to develop a rhetoric of the image (e.g. by Roland Barthes) are based above all on advertising and not on art.

The fact that rhetoric has merely to do with probability and not with truth was seen, in an anti-rhetorical turn, as evidence of human impoverishment. Unable to recognize truth, humanity musters up rhetoric to compensate for this inability. A look at art, however, provides occasion to reverse the argument. As a single pearl-like strand of ‘possible worlds,’ it bears witness to humanity’s wealth, its ability to creatively take up residence in the world. The ability to make art not only enables us to interpret the world, but also opens the possibility that everything could be different.

	Chapter I
	Chapter II
	Chapter III
	Chapter IV
	Chapter V
	Chapter VI
	Probability as print version (PDF with illus. 8.639 KB)

Probability as print version (PDF with illus. 8.639 KB)

Probability. On Rhetoric in Art

in: Daidalos 64, June 1997 (Special Issue “Rhetoric”), p. 80-89.

Chapter V

There are however limits to the analogy between the rhetorical and artistic production of probability, limits which allow us to define more precisely the specifically pictorial character of art. The difference can be summed up in the conceptual pair ’simultaneity’ and ’succession.’ In classical rhetorical theory, the oration is developed successivelv in different stages. First. a subject is defined and the corresponding facts are narrated (exordium and narration). This is followed by the argumentation and demonstration, in which opposing arguments are refuted and one’s own position supported (argumentation). Finally, there is the conclusion of the speech (conclusion). This structure has validity even today, as attested by the majority of political speeches or even scholarly lectures. The sequence allows the listener to distinguish between the subject of the speech (res) and the argument presented by the speaker (argumentum), while the art of rhetoric consists in establishing a convincing connection between them over the course of the speech. The work of art is not subject to this successive process. In the work of art, the thing (e.g. ‘nature’) is preexistent in a particular form, appearing only in the way in which it is shown in the artwork. Earlier we saw this principle illustrated in the four pictorial representations of nature; it holds true to the same degree for sculpture as well. Michelangelo’s Victor, Bernini’s St. Theresa, Rodin’s Striding Man, or Giacometti’s Bust of Elie Lotar do not show a thing (’human being’) that is first perceived and only later, like a jointed doll, given a particular form, in the same way the orator gradually develops his perspective on the subject at hand. The abstract entity ‘human being’ and the individual form of the sculpture coincide and enter into an indissoluble union. To ’see’ a picture or a sculpture is to see. in one and the same moment, the thing and its specific form, the ‘res’ and the ‘argumentum.’ This convergence, in which something shows itself as something, is what is meant when we speak of the ‘presence’ and ‘immediacy’ of art. This is probably where we come closest to the specific rhetoric of art, as its own peculiar power of persuasion: where at the moment of its reception, art successfully transcends every separation and shows us the ‘world’ created in the way the work of art formulates it. This reversal is the triumph of art. in which the fictive prevails over the real.

	Chapter I
	Chapter II
	Chapter III
	Chapter IV
	Chapter V
	Chapter VI
	Probability as print version (PDF with illus. 8.639 KB)

Probability as print version (PDF with illus. 8.639 KB)

Probability. On Rhetoric in Art

in: Daidalos 64, June 1997 (Special Issue “Rhetoric”), p. 80-89.

Chapter IV

But what does ‘consistency’ or ‘inner coherence’ mean for a work of art? Cézanne’s painting Montagne Ste.-Victoire consists of individual, ambiguous flecks of color. On the one hand, they vaguely suggest recognizable objects (mountain, sky, trees); on the other, they are that which was referred to above as ‘functions of the whole.’ They are daubs of color that enter into an exchange with the other daubs of color in the picture and thus constitute a ‘texture’ of composition and color. This ‘texture’ is not defined objectively (as the real spatial relation of tree, houses, and mountain), but is subject to a purely painterly logic. Cézanne carefully balances the two functions of the color flecks. Their recognizability is reduced to such a degree that their concrete ‘meaning’ often remains obscured, and through this they gain the autonomy that allows them to produce the painterly ‘texture.’ Only in the interplay between the two functions of the flecks-the depicting and the pictorial-structural function-does something finally emerge that is recognizable as a ‘landscape.’ Cézanne’s picture is thus ‘consistent,’ not by reason of its status as record (a faithful rendering of a real, existing landscape) but rather in the mode of its construction in the complex interplay of individual elements. Before a picture can show something, in this case a landscape, it must first ’show’ itself. It is this process, in which the individual parts converge into an ‘image,’ that allows us to speak of ‘consistency’ and ‘inner lack of contradiction.’ The same can be seen in other landscape representations. Paul Klee’s watercolors use similar structural means to those of Cézanne. Yet by juxtaposing more abstract and more objective elements (ship or plants), not only the individual elements but the picture as a whole begins to oscillate between abstraction and objectivity. Moreover, the exposed white of the paper plays a central role, flooding the picture with light and indeed allowing light to become the actual medium of expression. In Claude Lorrain’s Arcadian scene, on the other hand, the determining factor is balance and, among other things, the proportioning of the individual pictorial weights (e.g. tree or castle hill) on the basis of the golden section. Equally important for the pictorial order is the gentle backlight that carefully articulates the sequence of spaces through the silhouetting of tree, hill, etc. The whole is thus characterized by expansive surveyability which lends Lorrain’s images of nature an ideally constructed appearance. Proceeding once more in the opposite historical direction, we see in Jackson Pollock’s Lavender Mist an energetically charged field generated by layer upon layer of color traces, which Pollock, in a violent act of painting, sprayed onto a canvas lying on the ground before him. The depths and limits of this “lavender mist” are unfathomable. We find ourselves confronted with a static restlessness, in which we lose ourselves but which nonetheless bears us up in the evenness of its density. These four different pictures are all images of nature. But when we describe their ‘consistency’ as a process in which the bare juxtaposition of colors and forms becomes a whole, we gain a more precise notion of the character of their mimetic qualities. What is decisive is not the illustrative relation as such, but the analogy of ‘appearance.’ To the extent that these pictures by Lorrain, Cézanne, Klee, or Pollock construct themselves as pictorial complexes, they present an ‘image’ of how the space-time structure of nature is to be understood and experienced. If art succedes in being ‘probable,’ then it can provide orientation for the interpretation of reality. For this reason, art is also a perpetual school of seeing, in both a literal and figurative sense. It reveals an intersubjective meaning which in rhetoric was described as the sensus communis, as ‘common sense.’

	Chapter I
	Chapter II
	Chapter III
	Chapter IV
	Chapter V
	Chapter VI
	Probability as print version (PDF with illus. 8.639 KB)

Probability as print version (PDF with illus. 8.639 KB)

Probability. On Rhetoric in Art

in: Daidalos 64, June 1997 (Special Issue “Rhetoric”), p. 80-89.

Chapter III

In light of these points, it seems to me that the most promising way to define the relationship between art and rhetoric is to adopt a minimalistic approach, in contrast to the maximalistic conception of rhetoric. The insights also come into focus more clearly when we hold to the old idea of rhetoric. whose thematic delimitation contrasts advantageously with the frayed modern conception of rhetoric. As a specific theory of expression and effect, traditional rhetoric formulates insights that have not lost their validity and which can also be helpful in understanding art. To be sure, the theory of the rhetorical figure’s or the different levels of style is of less interest, unless, as already mentioned, one is investigating an area such as the use of allegory in the Baroque. For art in general, the usefulness of rhetoric is limited to searching through its arsenal for those considerations and concepts that can help explain the specific expressive quality of art.

From its earliest beginnings, one of the insights of rhetoric has been that it has to do, not with truth itself, but only with probability. The latter, together with clarity and brevity, constitute the three virtues of oratory. Only those who adhere to these virtues will persuade. Thus for rhetoric, probability is by no means a weakness, exclusively deficient with respect to the truth, but also contains a moral, consensus-oriented dimension. The probable is at the same time the reasonable and the appropriate, which can be approved in good conscience. This central rhetorical concept provides a bridge to the realm of art. “For this reason, aesthetic truth in its essential meaning is probability,” wrote A. G. Baumgarten in his Aesthetica of 1750, the first ever work of philosophical aesthetics. Baumgarten analogizes the rhetorical and aesthetic-artistic power of persuasion in the concept of probability as credibility. Ancient rhetoric distinguished between truth and probability as follows: probability is not attained through the complete rendering of all that exists; that would be the positivistic ideal of truth. Rather, it is achieved by a condensing and accentuating configuration that also incorporates the other two virtues, brevity and clarity. A speech is credible when its elements are obligated not only to the representation of facts, but at the same time constitute functions of the speech as a whole. In his Institutionis oratoriae (VII, Preface), Quintilian illustrates this principle using the metaphor of sculpture. The elements of a speech, he says, must be arranged like the members of a body in such a way that they result in a well-proportioned statue. Baumgarten adopts this idea in his “aesthetics” and generalizes it into a definition of art as inner truth without internal contradiction. Thus the reason it appears as true is less because it depicts the world the way it is, but because its inner organization is consistent with itself. The work of art persuades through the form of its fabrication, through the coherence of its structure. Formulated openly in this way, the old rhetorical concern for probability has validity for modern, indeed even for abstract works, though their ‘consistency’ can no longer be conceived in terms of Quintilian’s metaphor of the well-proportioned human figure.

	Chapter I
	Chapter II
	Chapter III
	Chapter IV
	Chapter V
	Chapter VI
	Probability as print version (PDF with illus. 8.639 KB)

Probability as print version (PDF with illus. 8.639 KB)

Probability. On Rhetoric in Art

in: Daidalos 64, June 1997 (Special Issue “Rhetoric”), p. 80-89.

Chapter II

But it remains uncertain whether this expanded notion of rhetoric can in fact contribute to a better understanding of art. What is to be gained by pointing out that all speech, whether in everyday communication or scholarly discourse, is rhetorical? Applied to the visual realm, this would correspond to the observation that all images are aesthetic, whether intended as ambitious works of art or random snapshots. In the end, these observations tend toward the tautological assertion that language can never directly reproduce reality, but always remains simply language, subject to its own laws. The insistence on this point is a part of the ‘enlightened,’ anti-ideological intention behind this concept of rhetoric, which, as such, may be justified. But the symptomatic leveling of all genre distinctions that accompanies this conception is still insufficient. Thus the persistent question remains as to whether differences do exist in the rhetorical structure of different forms of language. Similarly, within the visual realm, it should be possible to differentiate between art and press photos, vacation snapshots, advertising, etc.

Furthermore, applying the concept of rhetoric to art also introduces the fundamental problem that art is not linguistically structured. To designate art as ’speech’ is itself a metaphor, and thus a rhetorical act. Language operates with arbitrary signs. Essentially, there is no reason why we couldn’t use the word ‘table’ to designate what we think of as a tree. Yet on the basis of linguistic convention, the sign ‘table’ is unequivocallv associated with the object ‘table.’ On the other hand. color and form, as the signifying elements of art, function in a fundamentally different way. First, they are not arbitrary, but analogous, e.g. yellow for the sun, or a vertical for a house wall. Second, they are not unambiguously associated with one particular thing. Yellow can stand for anything that is yellow, e.g. the sun, wheat fields, narcissus, etc. Likewise, a vertical can also represent a spinal column or a post. It is from this openness of the pictorial elements that art derives its peculiar ability to articulate, including the ability to use even abstract images to ‘mean’ something. The mere placing of a blue strip over a green one can suggest ‘landscape,’ though neither of these elements possess unambiguous referents. The relationship of a pictorial element to its ’signified’ is thus regulated not by convention, but in the broadest sense by similarity. But if art is not based on the ordering of signs, then rhetoric, which always operates semiotically (as well) and is therefore constructed upon the foundation of signs, is in fact hardly applicable to art.

	Chapter I
	Chapter II
	Chapter III
	Chapter IV
	Chapter V
	Chapter VI
	Probability as print version (PDF with illus. 8.639 KB)

Probability as print version (PDF with illus. 8.639 KB)

Probability. On Rhetoric in Art

in: Daidalos 64, June 1997 (Special Issue “Rhetoric”), p. 80-89.

Chapter I

Rhetoric has been unexpectedly revived from its dormant ‘Sleeping Beauty’ period, as Walter Jens still referred to it in the 60s. Since then, it has been drawn into the center of attention from the most diverse fields. Hermeneutics, deconstruction, philosophy after the linguistic turn, structuralist semiotics and modern text linguistics, even the social theories of Habermas or Luhmann revolving around the concept of communication - all these differing, and in part seemingly contradictory theories share the basic premise of the impossibility of objective, purely denotative language, and conceive of ‘truth’ as the result of an open process of communication. ‘Truth’ is a revocable social agreement that arises through rhetorical means, i.e. through language oriented to persuasion. If all knowledge of what is ‘true’ is the result of communication. then ‘reality’ becomes a single ‘text.’ Rhetoric, understood as the theory of the communicative production of reality, becomes the arbiter of ‘legible’ for the text. This holds true not only for the ’supertext’ of the ‘world,’ but also for the individual ’subtexts’ of cultural objectification, i.e. not only for language, but also for music, film, the media, politics - and art.

This maximalistic conception of rhetoric has little to do with rhetoric in the traditional sense. The latter was an inventory of rules for the practice of oratory which was codified in Greek and Roman antiquity and exerted its influence far into the modern era. As the ‘art of speaking well,’ rhetoric is still a ‘Sleeping Beauty’ who will probably never awaken. Yet a source for the understanding of linguistic articulation, i.e. as a means of interpretation, it is indispensable. Thus in addition to the above-mentioned theories, which approach rhetoric from a systematic perspective, there is the historical approach, which traces the history and influence of rhetoric throughout the different epochs and fields. For art, as well, such an approach is possible and necessary. In particular, the period between 1400 and 1800 is characterized by a flourishing of rhetoric in art. When the Renaissance undertook a reformulation of poetics, i.e. the theory of artistic production, it drew on antique rhetoric as the sole system of rules offering a systematic theory of expression and effect. These included the goals of the oration (to instruct, to move, and to delight), its elements (invention, disposition, and elocution), the different levels of style (modest, middle, and elevated), the notion of appropriateness and taste as the balancing of nature and art, etcetera. All these distinctions and instructions were incorporated into the poetics of art where they enjoyed an immense influence, for example in the hierarchy of genres or the notion of decorum and the theories of propriety and measure. In L. B. Alberti’s influential treatise On Painting (1436), these elements can be traced down to the individual formulations. Later the Baroque, with its great interest in emblems and allegory (both intermediate forms between language and imagery) and its striving for emotional effect (movere), took the rhetoricization of art to new heights, as manifested in works such as Rubens’ Cycle for Maria de Medici (1622/25). Such works cannot be properly understood without knowledge of classical rhetorical theory. In this field, iconology has achieved significant advances. Around 1800, however, as philosophical aesthetics supercede the rules of poetics and the new artistic categories of genius and originality become dominant, the effective power of rhetoric begins to pale. The art of modernism, striving for autonomy, not only seeks to throw off all external regulation, but also intensifies the opposition between image and word, thus heralding the end of allegorizing art. The modern era proves itself a downright anti-rhetorical epoch. It is no coincidence then that the revival of rhetoric from this oblivion in the 60s occurred contemporaneous to the beginnings of the postmodern critique of modernism. And so if the discussion of rhetoric in art claims validity not only for the period before 1800, but also for the art of modernism, then it seems we are forced to abandon the traditional concept of rhetoric and to adopt the new, maximalistic definition, in which the explicit grounding of an artwork in specific rules of rhetoric is no longer necessary for it to be considered rhetorical.

	Chapter I
	Chapter II
	Chapter III
	Chapter IV
	Chapter V
	Chapter VI
	Probability as print version (PDF with illus. 8.639 KB)