El arte como significado / Art as meaning

Likewise, the fact that we can share the artistic relativism that states that in principle everything can be art does not necessarily imply that we cannot issue value judgements on the works we see before us. Or, to put it a different way, the fact that we cannot refer to a single criterion to distinguish between what is and what is not art does not imply that we cannot state, with total and open frankness, what we consider artistically "good" or "bad," and that, consequently, we cannot try to convince others of this fact. Anything but. We can also state the fundamental impossibility of definitively proving that our private conception of art is the best one or the correct one, and at the same time believe that that which allows us to "experience the miracle of the world, discover divinity in the cosmos, and in another man" [ 9 ] or that which makes "the world habitable for others as well as for idiots" [ 10 ] is truly art; that and nothing else.

It can be no other way. In the end, those of us who have approached the art world have our motives, our convictions. Each time I walk into an art gallery, I want to experience something like what I felt the first time I say the portrait Giacometti painted of his brother, hanging on the walls of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, or what I feel upon contemplating works by Klee, Mondrian, Magritte, Calder, Hopper, Chema Madoz and so many others (among whom she stands out, she who has taught me everything I know about art -and everything I desire-, she who has brought me up among her works, helping me understand the motivations of he who does not despair searching for something more than what is common). Likewise, every time I read a book, I hope its pages may contain a line, or a single word, that awakens in me something, even remotely, like what my heroes taught me: Camus, Dostoyevsky, Arlt, Girondo, Kundera, Neruda, Kapuscinski, Calvino and, why not, Nietzsche, Feyerabend, Lévinas or Patxi Lanceros (who have taught me how to feel what philosophy is ).

Yet, taking a step further, I would dare to say that the fact that such a condition does not exist, does not mean we cannot create it and establish the necessary measures for it to be effective. In fact, this already occurs in private spaces -i.e. galleries- where nobody enters, relativism in hand, to accuse the managers of exhibiting a certain type of art and not another, since, they are, supposedly, free to do as they please, beyond the fact that currently anything can be considered art.

To that same extent, I think the art critic, in my opinion, does not have to hide his own conception of what art is -or what it should be. Neither should he put it on hold when penning a review, in favour of the chimeric pursuit for a supposed objectivity, taken as a commitment towards the facts (towards the work). Said gesture would entail, on the one hand, a falsification of the (epistemological) nature of the discipline (we must once and for all abandon the supposed horizon of truth) and, on the other, an impairment to the actual work of art being assessed (since the assessment is intended from above ). As Rorty says correctly, "the misguided attempt to be ‘scientific' is a confusion between a pedagogical resource -the resource of summarising the upshot of narrative itself in small dense formulae- and a method to discover the truth."

Yet this rejection on principle to achieve the horizon of truth [ 11 ] -the true meaning incarnate of the work- does not mean that one can say anything about any work. Rorty calls this relativism that, for example, equals the conception a university chemistry professor has about the process of the combustion of petrol and the one a warlock from an African tribe has, "absurd relativism" or "silly relativism" (in our case, the two conceptions could be, for example, an experienced critic and a person who enters a gallery for the first time). The maximum exponent would be philosopher of science Paul K. Feyerabend (although, in truth, I do not think the caustic Feyerabend's criticism of the scientific method can be so easily rejected). According to Rorty, the notion that both confronted conceptions are equal means they are "epistemologically equal," which is a "genuine, yet trivial, statement," in that "time, not epistemology" will say if they are equal or not, since that depends on if we do or do not reach an agreement "about whether a particular group of desiderata has been satisfied or not."

This entails a major revolution, to the extent that, consequently, there would be no difference between the sciences that refer to "hard facts" -natural sciences- and "soft facts" -human sciences. Instead, it establishes the "problem-free sociological distinction between spheres where the unforced agreement is relatively infrequent and spheres where it is relatively frequent" (R. Rorty). Art criticism would be of the former type and, for Rorty, would only differ from other fields of knowledge like physics or palaeontology in that "some institutions will internally seem more diverse, more complex, more controversial as regards the final desiderata than others."

Facing such a conception of the disciplines of human knowledge, we come upon two, main, obstacles. The first, referred to by scientificists, insists on the separation between "hard facts" and "soft facts" ("lumps" and "texts" in Rorty's terminology), arguing that, in any case, there are facts for which there can only be one interpretation. That is to say, "when a chemist says that gold is insoluble in nitric acid, there's nothing more to be done" (R. Rorty). For pragmatists, on the other hand, this distinction creates more problems than it solves (there lies the main argument to reject it), and the sole difference between both types of facts "lies between the rules of one institution (chemistry) and the other (criticism)" (R. Rorty). That is, the difference between both disciplines, chemistry and art criticism, would not lie in the fact that one finds "more resistance to reality" whilst the other contemplates everything, but in that the members of the chemists' "community of inquiry" have reached a greater consensus as regards the rules that govern their game, in opposition to the members of the artistic community.

The second obstacle said conception has to resolve is a consequence of the first, and can be set out simply: unforced agreement between whom? Who compose that "community of inquiry"? How can we endorse the valid interlocutor in these spheres? The North American philosopher has a strong, and ambiguous, opinion on the issue: "Obviously the answer is [an agreement] between ‘us'." Yet that is an empty answer, since Rorty acknowledges it as being openly ethno-centric, but subsequently clarifies it stating that "we can enlarge the scope of ‘us' by regarding other peoples, or cultures, as members of the same community of inquiry as ourselves -considering them part of the group which pursues the unforced agreement." In my opinion, this is the same as not saying anything, since we can consider agreements in the chemistry institution, for example, do not concern everybody. That is to say, the chemists' "community of inquiry" does not consider all the proposals and suggestions of anyone who stands as such. The question is, should they? Should the chemistry community consider suggestions made by anyone who self-appoints his or herself as "one of us"?

I think the natural temptation lies in answering these questions with negative responses and stating that chemists should not have to consider suggestions any given person should happen to make regarding their field of knowledge. Quite the opposite, in order for our suggestions to even be considered, we are required, among other things, to use a specific common language and accept a minimum amount of rules (for example, to not resort continuously to the precepts of pre-determined theories).