Art and Ontography

Simon Weir

doi:10.1515/opphil-2020-0116

Abstract

AbstractGraham Harman describes the allure of art as the tension and fusion of a real object to sensual qualities so that it makes it seem that the inwardness of reality is opened to us. Yet real objects are withdrawn; how are we aware of their fusion? Since Harman’s ontology mandates that contact between real objects occurs only through sensual objects, this essay explores the idea that art’s allure must be a tension between sensual objects that draw the experiencer to believe, or alieve, they are in contact with the withdrawn real. By looking at the examples in representational painting and sleight of hand magic, we see that ontographic art objects use at least four, carefully separated sensual objects to produce their aesthetic effect. The conclusion summarises allure as a sensual object process, speculates on art’s dialetheic confusion of sensual and real objects giving an enduring allure to idealism, and notes potential motifs of an infra-realist resistance.

Highlights

Graham Harman’s ontological theory of art is grounded in Josè Ortega y Gasset’s 1914 “Essay in Esthetics by Way of a Preface,” wherein Ortega explains, “a work of art affords the peculiar pleasure we call esthetic by making it seem that the inwardness of things, their executant reality, is opened to us.”[1]
Graham Harman describes the allure of art as the tension and fusion of a real object to sensual qualities so that it makes it seem that the inwardness of reality is opened to us
Real objects are withdrawn; how are we aware of their fusion? Since Harman’s ontology mandates that contact between real objects occurs only through sensual objects, this essay explores the idea that art’s allure must be a tension between sensual objects that draw the experiencer to believe, or alieve, they are in contact with the withdrawn real

Summary

Introduction

Graham Harman’s ontological theory of art is grounded in Josè Ortega y Gasset’s 1914 “Essay in Esthetics by Way of a Preface,” wherein Ortega explains, “a work of art affords the peculiar pleasure we call esthetic by making it seem that the inwardness of things, their executant reality, is opened to us.”[1]. Taking Harman’s fourfold one step towards an OOO psychology, the inevitable avalanche of post-sensual real objects must undergo an active ordering and validation process, seeking a real beyond perception, monitoring for independence This mechanism, in the psychology of surrealism, is a primal urge of subconscious origin, like hunger, like the erotic, like Gestalt perceptual mechanics, or unending paranoiac association. The only way to bring real objects into the sensual sphere is to reconfigure sensual objects in such a way that they no longer merely fuse into a new one, as parts into a whole, but rather become animated by allusion to a deeper power lying beyond: a real object.[18] Given this change of orientation, and Harman’s revised ontography of the fourfold, we might recognise that the separation of sensual qualities from a sensual object is called confrontation.[19] Allure is reserved for the fusion of real object and sensual qualities. Before proceeding on to the examples of impossibility, we shall quickly review the term, ontography, in the context of OOO

Ontographic objects

Non-relational colouring of objects

Double objects

Four sensual objects