The Aesthetics of Collaboration

Abstract

Modernist aesthetics is certainly predicated upon the concept of an individualized vision or oeuvre, but it also subsumes under the Western canon modes of collective production in ancient and medieval cultures, as well as from tribal cultures and contemporary Western consumer culture. In the later stages of modernism—Surrealism, Dada, and Pop art for example—and in postmodern practices, this individualized concept has been under attack from many quarters. With the rise of community arts practices in the U.S. and the U.K., the re-articulations of women artists and artists of color, public art, and the increasing use of new technology, group practices and collaborations have increased dramatically. Sometimes these have been driven by ideology, sometimes by sheer necessity. In certain practices the process of collaboration has been paramount, the growth or enabling of individuals or groups being the goal.1 However, in situations where there are ideas to be communicated more widely, aesthetic power becomes especially important—it is central to the work's ability to speak beyond the confines of any single group. The “beauty” of such images derives from the imaginative interpretation of meanings embodied in the ideas, in the distillation of the desires of a constituency in a form that expresses those ideas effectively.