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Avant-Garde Art and the Problem of TheoryAuthor(s): Nol CarrollSource: Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 1-13Published by: University of Illinois PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3333533.

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Avant-GardeArt andthe Problemof TheoryNOEL CARROLL

One of the most influential modes of criticism with respect to contemporaryfine art proceeds as though the avant-garde artwork were itself a piece oftheorizing. Undoubtedly, the crucial precedent for this approach was thepractice of Clement Greenberg.1 In Greenberg's criticism, the artwork ap-pears to function as a critique, in the Kantian sense. Artistic choices are de-ciphered as meditations on the nature of painting or sculpture and upon thevery conditions of possibility thereof. As is well known, Greenberg was anessentialist in these matters. For example, he regarded two-dimensionalityas the defining attribute of painting, and he interpreted the emphasis on thepicture plane in the works of certain Cubists and Abstract Expressionists asat least an acknowledgment, if not a demonstration, of the theoreticalproposition that painting, in reality, is flat.

Succeeding generations of critics have often parted company withGreenberg's essentialism. In the early seventies, avant-garde artworks wereoften not thought to reflect upon the nature of artistic media, construed es-sentially, but, in the manner of the phenomenologist, were thought toreflectupon the spectator'sexperienceof the art object (or performance).Today, of course, phenomenology has given way to semiotics and post-structuralism as the favorite critical idioms. And, as a result, avant-gardeartworks are conceived of as theoretical reflections upon the nature of signsand codes, as those are thought to function culturally and politically, ratherthan as reflections upon either the nature of artistic media or on the cogni-tive or perceptual experience of the spectator. Yet for all these shifts in criti-cal frameworks, one thing remains constant. The avant-garde artwork, inoften rebus-like fashion, is supposed to advance a theoretical contribu-tion-about the nature of an artistic medium, about cognitive and percep-tual processes or experience, or about the operation of signs and codes incontemporary life, and so on. And the task of the critic is to explicate theartwork by illuminating the theoretical insight the artwork putativelyNoelCarrolls Professorof Philosophyat theUniversityof Wisconsin,Madison.He isa past contributor to this journal whose most recent book is ThePhilosophyofHorror.Journalof AestheticEducation,Vol. 29, No. 3, Fall 1995@1995Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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2 Noel Carrollprojects. The artwork, in other words, is a theoretical vehicle, and a criticinterprets the work by isolating the theory the work supposedly advances.

Of course, the view of the avant-garde artwork as a species of theorizingis not the only critical approach at large today; but it is a particularly pow-erful one, often deployed over the last twenty years in such commandingjournals as Artforum and Art in America. However, despite its popularity,this approach to the avant-garde artwork raises a host of problems. Onewonders, for example, if avant-garde artworks are really theoretical (i.e.,contributions to theoretical knowledge), then shouldn't they be evaluated interms of the truth value of the theories they reputedly propound? After all,if these works are theoretical contributions, shouldn't they be assessed inthe way one would assess a theory? And this, needless to say, might havethe untoward consequence that artworks that promote false theories be re-garded as prima acie failures. If truth is beauty, then falsity, it would seem,is at least aesthetically demeaning.Also, perusing the critical literature, one is often struck by the regularitywith which the theory that given avant-garde artworks are said to promotecoincides with the theory-be it aesthetic, phenomenological, poststruc-tural, and so on-that the exegete upholds. This, in turn, sparks the suspi-cion, on occasion at least, that the art critic is using the avant-garde artworkrather in the way that a ventriloquist uses a dummy. That is, the ellipticaland often obscure structure of the avant-garde artwork may provide a pointof departure for the critic to expatiate upon his or her own favorite views ofaesthetics, phenomenology, or poststructuralism. Whether a critic is read-ing into a work in this way, of course, is a matter to be decided at the levelof practical criticism on a case-by-case basis. One would not wish to claimthat all the theories critics have associated with avant-garde artworks areimpositions. However, given the enigmatic structure of the avant-garde art-work and the fetishization of theory in contemporary art criticism, the ac-tual probability of such theoretical impositions is especially high, and extracare needs to be exercised in order to avoid them.

The proponent of the theory model of criticism of the avant-garde art-work may be able to meet the worries briefly sketched in the preceding twoparagraphs. However, there is an even deeper problem with the model, onewhich will preoccupy most of the rest of this article. The style of criticismwith which we are concerned regards the artwork as theoretical.This ap-pears to presuppose that the artist is some kind of theorist and that the art-work is either a theory or some sort of theoretical contribution-a medita-tion upon, a critique, a definition, a semiotic dissection, a deconstruction of,or a demonstration concerning the nature of traditional art or representa-tion or cultural codes and of their social functioning. But there are seriousquestions to be considered with respect to this presupposition: primarily,does it seem plausible to believe that, strictly speaking, avant-garde art, as

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Avant-GardeArt 3we know it,2 has made or will make anything we might be willing to call atheory or even a theoretical point?

One straightforward way in which to understand the notion that avant-garde artworks are theoretical is to think of them as vehicles of active theo-rizing, that is, as proposing general claims, sketching systematic relation-ships, elucidating underlying principles and substantiating said hypotheseswith evidence and argument. And this is how critics speak about muchavant-garde art. Often we are told that this or that artwork makes somegeneral point about all art or about all art of a certain form. A given flatpainting may be said to demonstrate that painting as such, that is, all paint-ing, is flat, or that a Happening shows that an artwork in general cannot bereadily distinguished from its context (pacethe formalist view that artworksare autonomous objects). But there are several questions we want to raiseabout such claims.

First, how do individual artworks manage to generalize their suppos-edly theoretical points? Is it simply an art-world convention that avant-garde artworks refer to larger (more general) classes of objects? But even ifthis is the case, how do we fix the generality of that reference in particularcases? How do we ascertain that this painting is referring to all paintings orto all paintings of a given genre or to all art? The problem here is that avant-garde artworks usually lack the logical devices for specifying their range ofgenerality. And, furthermore, without such explicit devices we may justdoubt that they are coherent generalizations at all.

Apart from the formal problem of the lack of a device in such artworksfor generalizing the reference of their putatively theoretical points, there isalso a substantive problem with the view that avant-garde artworks maketheory. Typically when one advances a theory, one is involved in marshal-ing support for the theory by presenting evidence or mounting arguments;that is, normally theorizing involves defending the general hypotheses thetheory promotes by adducing confirmatory data often in concert with someforms of demonstrative reasoning. However, are either of these sorts of pro-cesses either actually or possibly present in avant-garde artworks as weknow them?

First, let us take up the question of evidence. It might be thought that theartwork itself provides evidence for the theoretical position it purportedlyarticulates. But in that case two puzzles arise. First, one wonders how asingle artwork could supply persuasive evidence for a claim about all paint-ing, or all sculpture, or all art. Moreover, and more importantly, one recallsthat these individual artworks were expressly designed to correlate withspecific aesthetic viewpoints or with a particular partipris in mind. Thus, itdoes not seem that they could ever serve as evidence of a non-question-beg-ging sort. Why should a Morris Louis canvas, created under the influence ofGreenberg's ontology of painting, be taken as a confirmation of the theory

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4 Noel Carrollof flatness that it purportedly presents? Clearly one can make a work thatsomehow fits a theory; but the existence of such a work does not show thatthe theory fits all the works it claims to elucidate. Of course, it may be saidthat the artwork itself is not the relevant evidence for the theory it espouses,but rather that it points outside itself to confirmatory evidence. This, how-ever, runs into one problem we have already noted-the characteristic lackof devices for specifying the reference of such artwork/theories-as well assome problems to be developed below.

Constructing or making a theory clearly involves more than simplypointing to some evidence. That evidence must be structured in argumentsand counterarguments of all sorts-inductive, deductive, abductive, and soon. And this, in turn, would appear to require a conventionally organized,generally coherent mode of presentation. But that is something that theavant-gardist eschews. What is at present called avant-garde art, by defini-tion, is a disjunctive, fragmented, and disorienting mode of communica-tion. Avant-garde works, as a matter of their very nature, are meant to sub-vert expectations in the tradition of epaterla bourgeoisie.But the constructionof a theory or the articulation of a theoretical point requires logical connec-tions, connectives and devices for specifying reference. Yet such things andtheir analogs are just what the avant-gardist deletes in order to accomplishthe arresting effects that make his work avant-garde. The kind of ellip-ticality the avant-gardists employ to shock, to disorient, and to surprise isdysfunctional for proposing and arguing for a theory or a theoretical point.That is, the goals and methods of theory construction and those of avant-garde art making are incompatible, or at least clash in a way that suggeststhat avant-garde artworks will never articulate theories or argue for them,since that process is not possible to sustain at the same time one constantlyseeks to subvert the viewers' expectations via disorienting, elliptical, andintentionally obscure imagery. Avant-garde works deliberately undermineconventional connectives; but theory cannot proceed without them.One might suspect that the preceding objection to the notion that avant-garde artworks make theory is really predicated on the presumption thattheory construction requires language and that avant-garde artworks arenonlinguistic. However, this is not my present objection. For avant-gardeworks of fine art may contain language and, furthermore, there is avant-garde literature; and yet, if our argument is correct, these endeavors are aswell unlikely conduits of theory.3 For the point is that whether or not anavant-garde artwork contains language, it will, given what it is to be avant-garde (in terms of structure), obscure logical connections and reference in away that is antithetical to theory construction. Our skepticism about theprospects of avant-garde artworks generating theories, that is, is based onthe perception that what is, in principle, required structurally of a piece of

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Avant-GardeArt 5theory construction is in conflict with what is, again in principle, requiredof avant-gardeart making.

Perhaps my claim that the avant-garde work of fine art cannot be a ve-hicle for making theory will remind some readers of Arthur Danto's claimsabout the end of art. For Danto maintains that once the reflexive ambitionsof fine art reach the point where people like Warhol and other Pop artistsbegin to trade in works indiscernible from real things, then self-consciousart making putatively reaches the end of art history insofar as furtherprogress in the project of self-consciousness is no longer possible in the me-dia of painting and sculpture. Further progress can be made only throughthe idiom of philosophy.

That is, according to Danto, painters and sculptors, once they have framedthe question about the nature of art in terms of indiscernibles, can pursuethe issue no further by way of making paintings or sculptures. Instead, theywill have to write philosophy. In this sense, the avant-garde artist must giveup making art and start making philosophy if the question of the nature ofart is to be evolved beyond the recognition of the problem of the possibilityof artworks indiscernible from real things. Thus, for Danto, one cannot bean avant-garde artist and propound theory because there is a tensionbetween making art (e.g., painting) and theory. But my argument is differ-ent; it is that there is a tension between something's being avant-gardeartand it's being a theory, since avant-gardism by nature requires disjunctionand ellipticality, whereas theories ideally gravitate toward synthesis andexplicitness.

Consequently, though my argument may sound like Danto's, it is differ-ent inasmuch as Danto apparently believes that avant-garde artists cannotpursue theory and remain artists, whereas I contend that the problem isthat avant-gardeartists cannot remain avant-garde and manage to propoundanything that we would regard to be theory in their artworks. For it is im-probable that the sorts of arguments and presentations of evidence requisitefor theorizing can be accommodated within the conventions of disjunctionand dissociation that are constitutive of avant-gardism.Of course, the proponent of the idea that avant-garde artworks are theo-retical may agree that such works do not propound arguments or presentevidence, and yet still hold that certain avant-garde works are theoretical.Here it might be maintained that the works in question are not to be com-pared to full theories but only to the assertion of general propositions. Torepeat an earlier example, a Happening might be thought to amount to theproposition that artworks cannot be easily distinguished from their con-texts. The Happening is not proffered as evidence for this theoretical gen-eralization but is merely a vehicle for asserting it; likewise the Happeningdoes not argue for the theory with which this assertion might be associated

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6 Noel Carrollbut just introduces a general idea about art. Joseph Kosuth seems to havesomething like this in mind when he writes:

Works of art are analytic propositions. That is, if viewed within theircontext-as art-they provide no information about any matter offact. A work of art is a tautology in that it is a presentation of theartist's intention, that is he is saying that that particular work of art isart, which means-is a definition of art.4Thus, on this model-where the artist is virtually an analytic philosopher-the artist need not argue or mount evidence within his artwork because theartwork, as an analytic proposition, is necessarily true.

Apart from Kosuth's strange conception of analytic propositions-which,inexplicably, contains psychologistic elements-and apart from the generalquestion of whether there are analytic propositions,5 the notion that art-works are vehicles for asserting tautologies concerning the definition of artis highly suspect. Many of the theories that are associated with avant-gardeartworks do not appear to be such that, if true, they would be analyticallytrue. For example, the theoretical claim, often associated with abstract/re-flexive art-that realistic paintings engender illusions of reality in view-ers-seems to make an empirical, psychological claim, not a conceptualone. However, there is an even more profound problem here. Namely,avant-garde artworks do not appear to be analytic propositions for thesimple reason that, in general,these works are not propositions at all.6In order to be a proposition or an assertion, theoretical or otherwise, anavant-garde artwork would have to contain an indexical part, which an-swers the question 'What are you talking about?' and a characterizingpart,which answers the question 'What about it?' Neither of these by itself is suf-ficient. 7 Thus, for a painting to assert the proposition All paintings areflat would require that the painting have an indexical (and, in this case, aquantificational) element that pointed to its subject-all paintings-as wellas a characterizing element corresponding to the predicate ... are flat.Even if we generously extended the notion of predication to the possessionof a property and said that a Morris Louis painting is itself a characterizerbecause of its emphatic flatness,8 we would still require an indexical unit ofit. That most avant-garde artworks lack all the requisite logical machineryof propositions is, I believe, irrefutable. Therefore, except in very specialcases,9 avant-garde artworks are not theoretical propositions, analytic orotherwise.10

So far, we have challenged the notion that the avant-garde artwork istheoretical by interpreting theoretical,n this context, to mean either that theavant-garde artwork constructs a theory or that it projects a theoretical as-sertion or proposition. And we have argued that, strictly speaking, each ofthese alternatives, in turn, is unlikely. However, it is open to a critic whoendorses the artwork/theory model to deny that the possibilities so far

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Avant-GardeArt 7canvassed are exhaustive. That is, there may be some interpretation of thenotion that avant-garde artworks are theoretical hat we have not foreclosed.

A prime candidate here might be the widespread notion that avant-garde artworks elicit theoretical insights from spectators (rather thanmaking theoretical assertions or full-scale theories outright). That is, theavant-garde artwork neither states nor develops a theory but rather, by sub-verting the expectations of audiences, leads them to grasp some theoreticalpoint. The avant-garde artwork is maieutic; it provokes the recognition oftheoretical points by spectators by initially disorienting them through its el-liptical and obscure structure. The avant-garde artwork is didactic, but iteducates by inducing the participation of the spectator. The audience fills inthe fragmented, often juxtapositional work by postulating a theoretical in-sight which not only makes sense of the work at hand, but which has impli-cations for art or representation in general.This maieutic model of the avant-garde artwork is reflected in one of themost frequently employed ways of critically explicating avant-garde art.The critic tells a sort of narrative. First a spectator, sometimes referred to asone, is said to stand before an artifact that challenges his preconceptionseither about art in general or art of a specific type. Perhaps an examplemight be Duchamp's Fountain. The work, then, is said to subvert the spec-tator's expectations concerning sculpture, putting the viewer at sea. How-ever, by disrupting the spectator's nonreflective or complacent attitude, thework puts the spectator in a position to recognize the point behind the uri-nal-that any object can be art if so nominated by the right person in theright context. The subversion of the spectator's expectations, then, is thoughtto lead or to force the viewer to the recognition of a theoretical point.For a full-blooded instance of this form of criticism, consider this extendedanalysis of Jenny Holzer's Truismsby Hal Foster:

This bedlam-effect is strongest in her Truisms (1977), an alphabeticallist of statements which together confound all order and logic. Firstpresented as public-information posters on New York City walls (andsince as T-shirts, electronic signs, plaques, works of art), the Truismsnot only place in contradiction certain ideological structures that areusually kept apart but set them into open conflict. This contestation-by-contradiction is also contextual for the Truismsexpose the false ho-mogeneity of the signs on the street among which they are oftenplaced. An encounter with them, then, is like an encounter with theSphinx: though one is given answers, not asked questions, initiationinto our Theban society is much the same: entanglement in discourse.This entanglement is a continual displacement-to the pointwhere the readerbegins to see, first, that (s)he is not an autonomous in-dividual of free beliefs so much as a subject inserted into languageand, second, that this insertion can be changed. The experience of tru-istic entrapment cedes to a feeling of anarchic release, for the Truismsexpose the coercion that is usually hidden in language, and once

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8 Noel Carrollexposed it appears ridiculous. Essentially, this release comesof the rec-ognition that meaning is a rhetorical construction of will more than aPlatonic apprehension of an idea-that however directed towardtruth, it is finally based on power. This is not a nihilistic insight: it al-lows for resistance based on truth constructed through a contradic-tion. And this indeed is the one genuine truth that the Truisms ex-press: that only through contradiction can one construct a self that isnot entirely subjected.Here Foster pictures a viewer ( the reader ) confronted by an array of

contradictory truisms. This purportedly undercuts our expectations and,upon reflection, we interpret the point behind this gesture-this compila-tion of contradictory cliches-as proposing such things as: the messagesthat surround us in everyday life are likewise contradictory; meaning is aconstruction of the will; the viewer is not an autonomous subject; truth(such as it is) is to be constructed through contradiction. The artwork doesnot establish these claims in the manner of a full-scale theory nor does itassert them. Rather, through its subversive organization, it draws these rec-ognitions from the spectator after the fashion of Socrates in the Meno.This model of explicating avant-garde artworks is quite pervasive in theworld of the fine arts and has analogs in other areas as well, for example,Brecht's alienation effect. It presumes a certain scenario whose complicationand resolution are embodied in an initial crisis-the subversion of expecta-tions-followed by a revelatory insight, for instance, that social codes arecontradictory, which makes sense of the artwork as a rebus-like reflection,of general theoretical import, on some larger class of objects, whose mem-bers like the artwork itself are self-contradictory. The artwork is an objectlesson that enables the participatory viewer to grasp a putative theoreticalverity amidst his or her own experience.There is no reason, in principle, to suppose that this process of subver-sion/recognition could not be operative in the typical interaction of viewerswith avant-garde artworks. The hypothesis of subversion/recognition is abit of armchair psychology, and, as such, its confirmation or disconfir-mation is an empirical matter. However, despite its popularity as a meansfor critically analyzing avant-garde artworks, the maieutically conceivedsubversion/recognition hypothesis would appear to have little basis in fact.There can be little doubt that the avant-garde artwork-born of the urgeto outrage the bourgeosie-succeeds in subverting the general spectator'sexpectations. But the hypothesis goes on to predict that from this initialstage of bewilderment a series of cognitive states will emerge, culminatingin theoretical insight. Once conventional and familiar modes are undercut,the scales fall from our eyes and truth is revealed in a way that recallsHeidegger's broken hammer. However, the movement from one stage ofthis scenario to the next seems too hasty. What guarantees that the typicalspectator will move from the subversion stage to the recognition stage?

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Avant-GardeArt 9How does the critic who uses this model know that once the typicalspectator's expectations have been subverted that spectator won't simplyremain dumbfounded, never ascending from the cave of complacency tothe level of theoretical insight? That is, in the case of the general spectator,interaction with the avant-garde artwork may be likely to halt at the pointof the subversion of expectations, leaving the mass of spectators befuddledand confused.

The defender of the maieutic model may respond by agreeing that thereis no guarantee that every avant-garde artwork will move the viewer fromthe experience of subversion to that of recognition. Instead, we will have tolook to each work-in terms of its internal structure and contextual place-ment-in order to see whether it guides the spectator from incredulity andbemusement to insight. However, even in advance of such exhaustive re-search, I think that we have reason to be skeptical about the widespread ap-plication of this model of exegesis. Isn't the commonly acknowledged hos-tility of the general viewing public to modem art attributable to the fact thatthey don't understand it, which, in part, is a result of their being stalled atthe stage of subverted expectations? Avant-garde works often manage tooutrage their audiences; but that outrage does not appear to be widelycashed in in terms of insight.

The subversion/recognition model presents itself as a causal scenario;however, the recognition it predicts will emerge from the subversion of ex-pectations seems unreliable with respect to the general viewer. Thus, avant-garde artworks are not likely to be theoreticaln the sense that they typicallyproduce theory maieutically. Coupled with our earlier rejections of the no-tions that avant-garde artworks either propound theories or project theo-retical assertions, this implies that avant-garde artworks are not theoreticalin any straightforward sense (i.e., where being theoretical indicates that thework in question either contributes to theoretical knowledge or makessome theoretical point).12But if I am correct and avant-garde artworks are not theoretical, prob-lems still remain about the basis upon which avant-garde artists and criticssuppose such artworks are theoretical, and about what is really going onwhen they make such a supposition. In order to deal with these issues, it isperhaps useful to speculate about the way in which a proponent of the art-work/theory model might respond to our rejection of the subversion/rec-ognition scenario. That rejection rides upon challenging the likelihood thatgeneral viewers will seize insight from the jaws of their confusion, andmaintaining rather that they will probably remain in a cognitive muddle.Here, it might be objected that the case depends upon thinking in terms of atypical viewer. Instead, it might be urged that we think in terms of an in-formed viewer, one who knows about raging art-world debates and thetheories and stylistic options that subtend them.

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10 Noil CarrollConfronted with the elliptical, disjunctive, and obscure articulations ofan avant-garde artwork, informed viewers (i.e., usually critics, art lovers,

art students, artists, gallery workers, museum tour guides, some intellectu-als, some academics, and so on) may respond to the subversive noveltiesbefore them by matching them to some preexisting theory or philosophicaldebate known to be current or to be gaining currency in the art world. Thekind of thinking going on here resembles that of charades, where the task ofthe audience is to associate the discontinuous symbolization of the per-former with an antecedently known title, phrase, or sentence. The avant-garde work is often like a rebus, set in the high (and limiting) context of theart world. The informed viewer uses what he knows of historical and pre-vailing artistic styles, contrasting stylistic options, and their associatedtheories to identify the polemical position to which the artwork is alignedby means of eliminative reasoning, abduction, homology, literalization, andso on.13 Foster, for example, matches Holzer's Truisms to the now popu-lar dicta of poststructuralism, using the associated theory as a kind ofhermeneutical key to the work.I think it is undoubtedly true that some such processes of interpretiveinteraction occur between the informed viewer and the avant-garde art-work. Nevertheless, two important points want to be made here: first, thatthe interaction above is not really accurately described on the maieuticmodel of subversion/recognition; and second, that even if this account ofthe informed viewer's interpretative interaction is apt, it does not show thatthe avant-garde artwork makes a theoretical contribution or demonstrates atheoretical point-at best it shows that said work obliquely alludes to somepreexisting and perhaps preestablished theory.The informed viewer's interpretative interaction does not support themaieutic model for avant-garde art for several reasons. The maieutic modelproposes that the artwork is educative, that it elicits a theoretical insightfrom the viewer. But with the informed viewer, this has got things reversed.He doesn't acquire the theoretical point from the artwork; rather he mustalready know the point in order to understand the artwork. There is nosense in saying that such a viewer learns the theory from the piece beforehim; he already knows it. And since the viewer already knows the theory, itis oxymoronic to say he learns it from the artwork.Moreover, one wonders whether it is proper to say that the informedviewer's expectations are subverted by such a work. The informed viewerof art by now expects structural and stylistic innovation from avant-gardeartworks and, rather than disrupting his train of thought, these noveltiesserve to cue the appropriateness of certain forms of interpretive play, suchas associating this or that theory with the artwork on the basis of variousstylistic and contextual clues.It may be true to say that the informed viewer comes to recognize the

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Avant-GardeArt 11theory that is associated with the artwork, but this process of recognitiondoesn't work in the way that the maieutic model suggests. That is, such aviewer is not brought to a recognition of some theoretical point by comingto see an unexpected commonality between the deviant forms of the givenartwork and a larger class of artworks or representations. Rather the viewermakes a charade-like hypothesis that makes sense out of unconventionalsymbolism. And, again, it makes no sense to think of this process as didac-tic, since the informed viewer learns nothing new in the way of theory. Nordoes such a work persuade the informed viewer of the viability of thetheory. If such a viewer accepts the theory that the artwork mimes, it isbecause the exegete is already a convert.14

Furthermore, it should be obvious that a charade of a theory or of a theo-retical assertion is not itself a piece of theorizing. Avant-garde artworksmay refer or allude to theories,15 but this doesn't make them theoretical nany strong or straightforward sense-that is, in the sense that they can bethought to make, propound, demonstrate, or teach theory. Avant-garde art-works, as we know them, are fully parasitic on independently developedtheories; Surrealism is not a contribution to psychoanalysis, but presup-poses psychoanalysis as a condition of its own intelligibility. Avant-gardeartists in creating their artifacts and performances are not engaged in theo-retical work. At best, they obliquely refer to such work. One might wish tosay that in this they are intertextual. But in saying avant-garde artworksmake intertextual references to theoretical writings and debates, we shouldnot confuse such allusions to theoretical work proper.One would not wish to deny that a great deal of avant-garde art is some-how connected to theory. The writings of critics and artists indicate that itis. But the nature of that relation seems to me to be muddled in art-worlddiscourse. The avant-garde artwork is called theoreticalhonorifically, in anattempt, one suspects, to boost the seriousness with which it is regarded.But the avant-garde artwork is not an example of a theory, a statement of atheory, or an object lesson in a theory. It is rather an allusion to or an em-blem of a theory. It does not work out or through a theory, but operates likeheraldic insignia for some theory which for either philosophical, sociologi-cal, or political reasons is a theory that is antecedently held, newly held, orwhich is an emerging idea in the art world. The theoretical artwork be-comes an occasion for those affiliated with the view to celebrate it commu-nally. The avant-garde artwork in this light is a symbol around which anew viewpoint coalesces and consolidates. The theoretical artwork be-comes a pretext for exegetes-professional and otherwise-to rehearsetheir convictions. Thus, in fact, it might be better to regard such avant-gardeartworks as akin to flags rather than theories-though why the art worldshould be so obsessed with theory and want such flags to which to pledgeallegiance is a topic for another essay.16

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12 Noel CarrollNOTES

1. See Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture(Boston: Beacon Press, 1961).2. The qualification as we know it above is intended to acknowledge that artisticconventions, perhaps as a result of being apprized of the sort of objections madein this article, could be redesigned in a way that would accommodate theoriz-ing. But our subject is rather avant-garde art as we know it. Also, that we arespeaking of avant-garde art here is also significant. For more classically com-posed art, especially literary art such as Tolstoy's War and Peace, may containlegitimate theorizing insofar as, unlike avant-garde art, such work may employlogical connectives and specify their reference.3. As the use of avant-garde literature in this argument should indicate, thoughmy arguments in this article are posed in terms of avant-garde works in the finearts, I believe that arguments of the sort I use in this article can be applied to thepretensions to theory of the avant-garde across all the arts.4. Joseph Kosuth, Art after Philosophy, I and II, in IdeaArt, ed. Gregory Battcock(New York:Dutton, 1973), p. 83.5. See, for example, W. V. Quine, Two Dogmas of Empiricism, in his Froma Logi-cal Point of View (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953).6. The qualification in the sentence above acknowledges that there are some avant-garde artworks, primarily clustered in the area called Concept Art, that arepropositional. See, for example, Adrian Piper, Three Models of Art ProductionSystems, in ConceptualArt, ed. Ursula Meyer (New York: Dutton, 1972), pp.202-3. Such an example indicates that avant-garde artworks can have the kind ofstructural elements discussed earlier. However, the ones that do are so rare that

they should not deter the general thrust of the argument above. That is, theexistence of a work like Piper's cannot be used to recuperate all those cases ofso-called theoretical artworks that lack the requisite logical structure.7. MonroeBeardsley,Aesthetics:roblemsn thePhilosophyfCriticismNew York:Harcourt, Brace and World, 1958), p. 372.8. This, by the way, is more easily said than done. For any given work will possessa wealth of properties. How will we go about determining which of these are tocount as the characterizer(s) in the relevant theoretical proposition? Clearly, itwould be absurd to regard every property the work possesses as connected tocharacterizations the work is thought to project. But what principles enable usto discriminate between those properties that are connected to characterizationsversus those that are not? If we cannot answer this question, then we have fur-ther reason to doubt the viability of the notion that avant-garde artworks areequivalent to theoretical assertions.

9. See note 6.10. Perhaps an artwork could be thought of as being theoretical in a negativesense-it might deliberately counter an existing theory, aesthetic or otherwise.One might think of some of Duchamp's ready-mades in this way-as counter-examples proposed to challenge the idea that sculptors must literally mix theirown labor in their pieces. But even in cases like these it still seems somewhatstrained to say that the artwork is a piece of theory, because it is not the artworkalone that refutes existing ideas but the artwork plus the theoretical debate thataccompanies the introduction of the new work and which, in turn, leads to itscategorization as art, that is, if the counterexample works. For one does not re-fute existing ideas simply by violating received conventions and categories.Those violations themselves will have to be supported by theoretical exercisesexternal to the work. But even though, for the preceding reason, I am not dis-posed to think of such works as clear-cut examples of theorizing, I would agreethat this mode--call it the artwork-as-counterexample-has the strongest cre-dentials for being considered theoretical. Needless to say, however, not allavant-garde artworks can be regarded as even attempted counterexamples.11. Hal Foster, Recodings:Art Spectacle,Cultural Politics (Port Towneshend, Wash.:Bay Press, 1985), pp. 108-9 (emphasis added).

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Avant-GardeArt 1312. Here, of course, it is open to the proponent of the artwork/theory model toshow there is some straightforward onception of making a theoretical contribu-tion that avant-garde artworks can and do characteristically implement which I

have neither noticed nor foreclosed. But, at this point, the burden of proof restswith the defender of the artwork/theory model.13. The type of ratiocination here should not be mistaken for theorizing but israther a process of exegesis. Hypothesizing a theme-even if it is theoretical innature-that makes sense of an artwork is not a species of theory building but isa matter of interpretation.14. We have argued above that the maieutic model of the avant-garde is probablymistaken-that such works do not teach the uninitiated, but rather leave thembemused. This finding will pose a special problem for those-often motivatedpolitically-who endorse the subversion/recognition model for its educative,evangelical potential. For avant-garde works designed in accordance with thisapproach are unlikely to guide uninformed viewers to the realization of some(emancipatory) theory (e.g., we are not autonomous subjects), and will ratherstupefy them. Informed viewers may recognize and applaud the liberatory alle-giance of the avant-garde artwork, but that is because they already know it andperhaps share it. That is, subversion may not be a useful strategy of addresswhen it comes to the typical viewer.15. For a discussion of some of the ways in which so called theoretical avant-garde films refer to theories, see my Avant-garde Film and Film Theory,Millennium FilmJournalnos. 4/5 (1979): 135-43.16. Some speculation in this direction can be found in my Anti-illusionism inModem and Postmodern Art, in Leonardo 1, no. 3 (1988).