THE POSTMODERN SUBLIME

INTRODUCTION:

The triangulation of the sublime, postmodernism and the visual arts

What is “postmodernism”? Firstly, postmodern philosophers themselves cannot agree on a definition of postmodernism and secondly, much of the theory highlights the limitations and deception of language, so even if a definition could be found, language would fail to express it accurately. Instead, the discussion of postmodernism is a layered heap of language and ideas that make little sense to anyone save individual postmodern philosophers. What benefit can an obscure theory provide for contemporary society? Well, when sifted through and washed off, the dark sediment of postmodern theory reveals the occasional diamond. This paper will uncover these moments of clarity and provide you with an understandable and cohesive concept that may be applied to the analysis of visual arts going forward.

Background

For context, T.J. Clark defines Modernity in his modern art history textbook, Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism –

‘Modernity’ means contingency. It points to a social order which has turned from the worship of ancestors and past authorities to the pursuit of a projected future – of goods, pleasures, freedoms, forms of control over nature, or infinites of information.[1]

As a historic period, Modernity is the post-feudal era that marks the cultural shift away from the social survival mechanisms of medieval Europe and toward human perfectionism. Modernity is defined by capitalism, industrialization, urbanization, technological progress, secularization and many more rational human endeavors that result from a greater expectation of human capabilities than the simple submission to our survival instinct. Contemporary philosopher Jürgen Habermas describes Modernity as the project to “develop the spheres of science, morality, and art ‘according to their inner logic.’”[2]

“Postmodernity” can be interpreted as either the death of modernity or the re-writing of modernity, depending on which postmodern philosopher you ask. It can be considered a historical moment in time, a style within the canon of art history or a philosophie passé with little contemporary relevance. Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998), a postmodern philosopher with a high esteem for the philosophy of aesthetics and the visual arts, considered postmodernism the rewriting of Modernity, a cerebral exercise in reinterpreting the experience of the modern age after the perceived dissolution of Enlightenment ideals and social assumptions of human beings’ continued progress through history. Postmodernism is the negation of the ‘inner logic’ of science, human nature, and art Habermas associated with Modernity in favor of an apocalyptic and unsystematic interpretation of the modern social condition.[3] “In Lyotard’s case,” Stuart Sim writes, “the postmodern begins with an act of loss of faith in an entire cultural tradition and its considerable array of assumptions: a loss of faith extreme enough for one of his defenders to claim that, after 1968, Lyotard ‘is not a theorist’ in that he comes to regard theory ‘as part of the problem, not as a potential solution.’”[4]

Prior to the historical period of postmodernity (the late 19th century), theory and belief systems of Modernity – philosophical, linguistic, aesthetic, religious or otherwise – provided a narrative with distinct resolve. That is not to say each philosopher agreed on the nature of the overarching conclusion of a given theory, only that some conclusion always existed to mark a greater universal truth that provided the theory with social and critical relevance. Postmodernity declares a sharp halt in these globalizing belief systems. To a postmodern theorist, the modern social condition of the late 19th century was too complex, layered and inconsistent to allow any theory with a tidy resolve to apply honestly or to contain us all. To quote postmodern academician Hal Foster, “[postmodern philosophers] hold this belief in common: that the project of modernity is now deeply problematic.” (ix)[5]

Despite rejecting all other preceding theories, postmodern philosophy – particularly Fredric Jameson and Jean-François Lyotard’s interpretation – revisits the aesthetic theory of the sublime that captivated philosophers and artists throughout history.[6] While postmodernists reject totalizing systems (generally referred to as “grand narratives”), postmodern philosophers do accept smaller, isolated truths (generally referred to as “meta narratives”) that reflect the complicated and kaleidoscopic reality. An interpretation of the sublime is one such metanarrative that can provide critical academic value when understood in isolation and then applied to the analysis of visual arts.

This thesis will define the postmodern sublime as a theory that belongs to neither a specific period in history nor a specific artist or philosopher. Spanning decades before, during and after postmodernism itself, the concept of the postmodern sublime is more timelessly relevant to our interpretation of art than the short-lived postmodern condition.

The paper interprets the postmodern sublime by dividing the concept into three chapters, each exploring a separate nuance of the term. Each chapter introduces artists spanning art history from 19th century sublime landscape paintings to contemporary artists’ sublime media installations to elucidate the postmodern sublime as experienced through: (1) Our Intuition, (2) Nature, and (3) Mysticism. Each work of art acts as a case study, deconstructing conventional interpretations of time and space to evoke the very uncertainty that is characteristic of both the sublime and the postmodern social condition.

Of course, the sublime may be experienced in many more ways beyond the categories listed here. The discussion of the sublime is inherently individual and subjective. The personal nature of the sublime feeling is one aspect that allows the concept to be so easily applied to the malleable and multifaceted postmodern condition. I hope to use these three categories to organize the concept of the postmodern sublime into nuances of meaning that are condensed enough to provide a truth compatible with the postmodern rejection of totalizing narratives and large enough to exist as a category for the analysis of future visual art.

The Sublime

While postmodernity begins with a loss of faith, the sublime began with a leap of faith. Early discussions of the sublime, circa the late 1600s from writers and philosophers like Blaise Pascal and Joseph Addison, were classic examples of Modernist arguments for the aesthetics of the infinite. For example, Pascal wrote: “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.”[7] Addison described the sublime sensation similarly: “such wide and undetermined prospects are as pleasing to the fancy as the speculations of eternity or infinitude are to the understanding.”[8] In this context, the sublime as an aesthetic of eternity approximated implications of God.[9]

Deeper philosophical inquiry into the nature and appearance of the sublime became a popular subject at the height of Romanticism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the West. From Addison’s departure, Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant defined the sublime aesthetic as it is understood within in the canon of art history. Burke defined the sublime in contrast with the beautiful, relating sensations of the sublime, using words such as, terror, obscurity, difficulty, power, vastness, and infinity, to impressions of the beautiful, words like smallness, smoothness, delicacy, and color.[10] For Burke, the sublime is experienced in nature as a source of astonishment with a degree of awe and horror. On the other hand, the Kantian sublime does not exist inherently in any object in nature; instead, the sublime is a faculty of the mind.[11] Still, in both the Burkian and Kantian interpretations, the sublime occupies the paradoxical sentiments of pleasure and pain and excites reflections on the eternity of time and infinity of space that relate the sublime to Godliness.

In many ways, the Burkian and Kantian interpretations of the sublime contradict postmodernity as they create an example of the very grand narrative or cohesive argument that postmodernism opposes. However, the Burkian and Kantian notions of the sublime recognize a void that is consistent with the postmodern conception of obscurity and enigma. The notion of the sublime that reconciles both the Romantic and the postmodern perspectives is the conception of a space beyond human understanding, a paradox that is at once visualized and experienced yet unseen and unimaginable.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is inherently resistant to theorization and categorization making the subject matter very difficult to adapt in a formal academic paper. However, taken in isolation, the writings of Jean-François Lyotard elucidate one possible interpretation of the postmodern sublime. According to Lyotard, the sublime articulates “the incommensurability of the reality concept.”[12] The sublime surrenders human understanding to the acceptance of a void that is pervasive of our high-tech, highly sensory, and bewildering reality. The disequilibrium experienced in the presence of a sublime phenomena matches Lyotard’s postmodern idea that we experience a “dissolution of the boundaries between our bodies and the things we encounter.”[13] Lyotard explores the nature of this disequilibrium in his 1985 exhibit Les Immatériaux (the Non-Material). The exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France confirmed only the pervasiveness of uncertainty in modern reality. The entire fifth floor of this modern art museum was organized into a maze of new technologies or the so-called “non-materials” – a term Lyotard uses to address the ambiguity of the term “material” and our relationship to these objects.[14] Like the sublime, the postmodern exhibition played with human beings’ relationships to their surroundings and left the viewer stimulated but powerless. The Non-Materials – like the sublime - “presents the unpresentable.”[15]

The Visual Arts

Postmodern theory is critical of language. Engaging with semiotics to define (in part) the postmodern condition, postmodernists are hyper aware of the incompetence of a signifier to address a specific signified, or, in simpler terms, the multitude of meanings that result at the utterance of a single word. The idea of “language games” first raised by Ludwig Wittgenstein in the mid 20th century is revisited in postmodern theory by theorists like Jean-François Lyotard to imply the multiplicity of the communities of meaning, the void between a word and its isolated, truth.[16] Without the rules and structure of language on which to rely for meaning, how can we understand our social condition? Lyotard admires art as just such a tool, a tool to replace the narrowness of language with the diversity of art.

Throughout his career interpreting postmodernism, Lyotard visits and revisits artists (mostly within the modern and avant-garde styles) to help explain his conception of the postmodern social condition. In 1985, the Non-Materials was Lyotard’s attempt to stimulate the public’s impression of the postmodern social condition through art. In the context of his exhibit, Tara McDowell writes, “Instead of enlightenment, [Jean-François Lyotard] aimed at ‘intensifying the interrogation and aggravating the sense of uncertainty.’”[17]

In the following chapters, I hope to illustrate how this intensification of interrogation and uncertainty is pervasive in sublime visual artworks from across time periods rather than a unique description applied to the avant-garde art Lyotard favored.

The sublime begins with a leap of faith, the postmodern with the loss of faith. Art intervenes to express both the sublime and the postmodern – a paradox that language alone could never capture.

Chapter 1 – Our Intuition

1985. Jean-Francois Lyotard exhibits postmodern theory.

Since the late 17th century, art judged as the highest cultural value in the West came predominately out of Parisian institutions called academies displayed in formal exhibitions known as Salons.[18] The academies determined which works and styles of art were considered ‘beautiful’ or valuable both monetarily and culturally. These Salons can be considered the artistic representation of the anti-postmodern ‘grand narratives’ or totalizing systems of social, political and philosophical thought championed throughout Modernity (16th century onwards) since the Enlightenment. Salons exemplify the systematic valuation of art that pervaded culture through the modern era both in the type of art chosen for display and the format in which it was hung. Artists have come a long way in shattering social expectations of what is considered artistically valuable with Modern Art movements (20th century) like the Avant-Garde and Surrealism. However, despite these major challenges to the structure of Modernity, art galleries and exhibitions today remain related to their earlier Salon counterparts insofar as they provide the visitor with something of value, whether that is challenging your ideas of beauty or teaching you something new.

In 1985 at the Centre Pompidou, Paris’s national modern art museum, philosopher Jean-François Lyotard organized his ideas regarding the postmodern condition into a multidisciplinary and interactive exhibition entitled, Les Immatériaux (The Non-Materials). The exhibition sought to challenge expectations of aesthetics entrenched in social and philosophical norms throughout Modernity by providing the viewer with an ambiguous and personal alternative to the museum experience.[19]

* * *

“Les Immatériaux was a major event in French cultural life.”[20] – Tara McDowell, Professor of Art History, The University of Chicago.

“[Les Immatériaux] dealt with how new information technologies shape the human condition, but what interested me was that, rather than writing a book, Lyotard made his philosophical ideas into a labyrinth in the exhibition. It’s difficult to describe because he was producing the idea rather than illustrating it, but it influenced me…”[21] – Hans Ulrich Obrist, Art Curator and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery, London.

“Hans [Ulrich Obrist], Daniel Birnbaum [director of the museum of modern art in Stockholm] and I are working on a project: the sequel Lyotard planned to Les Immatériaux, which never took place. Ours is called Resistances. Humans want to simplify events in the world in order to understand them. For example, it’s easier to say that the force of gravity is stable but actually it’s not. It oscillates. Lyotard believed that art was about that, about resistance forces that make things not totally how we think they are.”[22] – Philippe Parreno, Contemporary French Artist.

“I want to suggest that Les Immatériaux provides an answer… [Les Immatériaux] was much more than yet another stage on which to think through the notion of the [artistic] archive; it would become a virtual space in which to imagine the future of the archive and memory in the age of the technosciences.”[23] – Heidi Bickis, Professor of Art History of the University of Alberta, Canada

“If Les Immatériaux proposed a new sensibility of material being, and if this sensibility demanded a new response from art, science and theory, we want to ask 30 years after that milestone of the postmodern, what kind of sensibility and response is appropriate towards our current material condition?”[24] – Dr. Yuk Hui, Author and Visiting Researcher at the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

* * *

Art curators, artists and authors alike – from 1985 to today – reflect on the lasting influence of Lyotard’s exhibition. As the quotes imply, the exhibit was an experimentation with space, a reimagining of our relationship not only to objects within the exhibition, but also to the modern world that awaited each visitor at the museum’s exit. However, a deeper investigation into the exhibition suggests that, while Lyotard’s overarching ideology is provocative and influential, the individual works of art are not always a good reflection of his theory.

Les Immatériaux occupied the entire fifth floor of the Centre Georges-Pompidou. From the entrance, the space was divided into “five zones of inquiry and physical arrangement,” each questioning different philosophical implications of a “message” in the new technological age.[25] (Fig. 1) Overall, each of these five zones was unified by the principal question: « Les technologies nouvelles remettant-elles en question un certain nombre des idées admises qui caractérisent la modernité? »[26] (Do new technologies call into question a certain number of accepted ideas that characterize Modernity?) From the opening pages of the exhibition’s catalogue, Lyotard challenges the visitor to question whether, since the Age of Enlightenment, « Le projet modern d’émancipation de l’humanité, d’affranchissement par le développement des connaissance, [et] par la maîtrise des arts et des métiers, » (the project of Modernity of the liberation of humanity, the emancipation through the development of knowledge, [and] by the mastery of arts and crafts,) is still a relevant endeavor with the introduction of new technologies in the postmodern age.[27] By asking the question, Lyotard is implying that the systems of thought prevalent in Modernity (prior to the challenges introduced by postmodern theory) no longer sustain a true reflection of the contemporary social condition. How messages are received and interpreted is changed and our ability to definitively “master” our understanding of the world around us is futile.

The five questions corresponding to the five zones of the exhibition included: (1) Where do messages come from? (2) What do the messages refer to? (3) According to what code are the messages decipherable? (4) Where are the messages written? (5) How are the messages transmitted from the sender to the receiver? Within these five zones, the objects to explore visually, audibly, or physically were exhibited through artistic representations like painting, photography, architecture, and music as well as scientific disciplines like biology, astrophysics and technology.[28]

As a philosopher rather than an artist or curator, Lyotard considered first the elements of art institutions that have defined the museum experience throughout the modern age. He considered how art museums typically organize the visitor in space and time and attempted to challenge their straightforward organization and presentation of art he considered stale. In the exhibition catalogue, Lyotard wrote: “dans l’exposition de peinture, l’expérience du sujet ne se forme que par un sens, la vue.” [29] (In the exposition of painting, the subject is only experienced through one sense, sight.) In an effort to deconstruct the traditional museum experience, Lyotard conceives Les Immatériaux with a postmodern exploration of space-time rather than the modern alternative still derivative of the Salon hanging system. To begin with, Lyotard tried to create an exhibit whose experience was interpreted through more than just visual means. With musical elements and physically interactive stations, the museum visitor interacted with the postmodern condition (as far as it was replicated in the exhibit) through audio and tactile means. Rather than strolling through high-ceilinged galleries at arms length from oil painted chef-d’œuvres, visitors of Les Immatériaux would interact with the installations directly by typing on a keyboard or listening to headphones. This direct interaction with the space was original for the time. From a contemporary perspective, deliberate experimentation in a museum environment exists commonly in science museums rather than art museums; however, Lyotard would likely welcome this correlation, as the act of questioning your surroundings and experimenting with new ideas is such a critical component of the art exhibited in Les Immatériaux.

To illustrate his philosophy, Lyotard redesigned the organization of a traditional art exhibition by creating a space without a set path through works of art but multiple to be chosen according to the freewill of each visitor. As the plan de L’exposition illustrates, the free-flowing organization of the exhibit is as much an illustration of Lyotard’s interpretation of the postmodern social condition as the works of art themselves (fig. 2). The long, rectangular floor appears to be divided at random between different manifestations of Lyotard’s interpretation of postmodern messaging. Although the exhibit is meticulously well planned, the shapes of the displays and the formulations of the hallways and the paths between different works are erratic (Fig. 3). In a traditional museum exhibition, the curator guides the viewer (typically, through straight halls) to specific groupings of artworks that relate and interact with one another. In Les Immatériaux, the pieces are deliberately selected, but Lyotard does not control the order in which the viewer interacts with the objects (Fig. 4). Forging his or her own path through the exhibit, the visitor fumbles independently through the ideas presented in the exhibit, relating works to one another in a pattern unique to his or her experience.

Before taking a closer look at some of the objects exhibited in Les Immatériaux, one should consider why Lyotard selected “messaging” as his exhibit’s central theme. In his philosophy, Lyotard rejects the continued cultural relevance of ‘grand narratives,’ stories or systems of communication with unambiguous meaning. Instead, the postmodern age marks the insurmountable increase of interactions constantly interplaying and restricting the possibility for a singular overarching analysis previously implied by these grand narratives. The postmodern reaction against the modern assumption of the effective communication of meaning leads to Lyotard’s analysis of the sublime within the context of the postmodern condition. The sublime – for Lyotard – is a human experience in which the mind is in some way restricted from complete understanding, a restriction that mirrors the enigmatic nature of postmodern communication. The concept of the sublime also fascinated Lyotard in much the same way as great art. For Lyotard, the sublime, like great art, is resistant to the integration of clear ideas into specific categories but instead speaks to a plethora of possible thoughts and emotions.[30] Messaging is also integrated into Lyotard’s analysis of the postmodern age as we attempt to communicate with one another under these impossibly confusing, overwhelming and sublime conditions. ‘Messaging’ is interpreted in the exhibition as any form of communication: linguistic, visual, auditory, olfactory, social, mental, biological and even financial. In each case, Lyotard attempts to illustrate how quickly meaning and truth are lost in the message’s presentation, exchange and interpretation.

The visitor is challenged by the exhibition, by the question: Am I the master of my own mind and my surroundings? However, the objects in the exhibit fall short of Lyotard’s own definition of ‘great art.’ L’Ange (the angel), for example, is an enlarged black and white snapshot of two works by Annegret Soltau superimposed onto one another, both reflecting images of hermaphrodites (Fig. 5). Two segmented images, as if cut from a strip of film, comprise the image. In each shot, a man looks into a mirror at the face of a woman. Lyotard’s description explains the relationship between a “choice” of identity, and the ambiguity of sex – a phenomenon traditionally considered black or white. Though the phenomenon of the hermaphrodite goes back to classical times, L’ange is too literal to serve as an insightful example of Lyotard’s sublime postmodern condition. Faced with this image, one does not apply the example of a hermaphrodite to any greater uncertainties of human identity in the postmodern age. The question: What is human identity? is a valid and provocative question. However, Lyotard’s example is an unenlightening display of the postmodern uncertainty of character.

Similarly, deuxième peau (second skin) arranged by Lyotard is a narrow interpretation of the limits of the material world (fig. 6). Under plastic, different types of skin – pig, collagen, synthetic, biosynthetic – are placed on display. Separated from the body from which they came or the context in which they are traditionally used, they don’t even look like ‘skin.’ In the description, Lyotard refers to these extracts of skin that look like leftover, discolored pieces of latex as our “premier vêtement” [31] (first clothing). Lyotard uses the impressions of skin to ask the question: “Où commence le dehors?”[32] (Where does the outside begin?) The question of where the limit of the exterior world begins is provocative. However, presenting glabrous slices of skin in an unnamed medical solution does not have the same ideological reach as the question itself. Within the same section, Lyotard presents a series of portraits by Irving Penn of men dressed for different careers including a waiter, a driller, a policeman and a fireman (fig. 7). The photographs highlight the different functionality of certain clothing and the corresponding differences in identity of each of the models. Again, I am unconvinced of the resonance of this example beyond the literal analysis of the photographs and the models’ professions.

The entire exhibit was a labyrinth of mixed-matched works, holograms, musical recordings, graphs, architectural models, photographs, and props. Within the catalogue, descriptions of the pieces were wordy as Lyotard tries to explain how the object relates to his postmodern inquiries – ironically, using language – the very messaging tool whose efficacy he condemns. But the words in his catalogue are crucial because without them, the pieces would have no comprehensible connection to an idea. In the beginning of his exhibition album, Lyotard writes,“il ne s’agit pas d’expliquer mais de render sensible au public cette problématique par les forms sous lesquelles elle apparaît dans les arts…et les modes de vie.” (It is not about explaining but making the public sensitive to this [postmodern] issue using forms that appear in arts and in ways of life.)[33] Therefore, despite any individual shortcomings of works within the exhibit, Les Immatériaux was a success ideologically as it encouraged the visitors to face their reality with a new, postmodern skepticism.

Lyotard’s conception of ‘great art’ is in a sense sublime because it is not entirely understood, but still moves the viewer between emotions and thoughts without necessarily completing any one. This sublime art existed in Lyotard’s exhibition in the form of his idea, not in the form of a physical work of art. Rather than tangible, the art presented in Les

Immatériaux was (fittingly) conceived conceptually through the emotional experience and intellectual questioning of each exploring visitor. Arguably, sublime art existed in no particular location in the exhibit, but rather anywhere the visitor discovered his own intellectual resonance. Clips from his unconventionally hand-scribbled catalogue would suggest Lyotard did not intend to create an exhibit that would be interpreted the way he designed it with any degree of precision whatsoever (fig. 8). Instead, Lyotard expected the public to interpret the work on their own, an independent cerebral process that completes the work and his postmodern interpretation of ambiguous messaging. In an interview with museum director Bernard Blistène after the exhibition’s opening, Lyotard observed:The idea of artistic creation is a notion that comes from the aesthetics of Romanticism, the aesthetics of the idea of genius. And I’m sure you’ll agree that the idea of the artist as ‘creator’ is, to say the least, of strictly limited utility in our world today. That’s no longer where we really are. We’re no longer concerned with the philosophy of subjective genius and all the ‘aura’ that goes along with it. […] We already find ourselves in an area that has an aspect of bricolage…[34]

Les Immatériaux was a “bricolage” of different works of art, ideas, time-periods and lifestyles rather than an unoriginal and purely visual Salon-like presentation of culturally accepted ‘Great Art.’

2003. Olafur Eliasson illuminates the postmodern sublime.

To conceive of the postmodern sublime through a literal work of art rather than an ideology, I turn to Olafur Eliasson. Ironically, Eliasson does not call himself an artist any more than Jean-François Lyotard called himself an artist. However, in Eliasson’s case, he certainly merits the title. The Nordic installation artist reshapes our expectations of space with a unique skill that may be reminiscent of artists such as Michael Asher and James Turrell, but is profound enough in its own right to avoid an accusation of ‘postmodern bricolage.’ Twenty years after Lyotard’s exhibition, Olafur Eliasson inadvertently tackles Lyotard’s ideology with more effectiveness, serving as an example not only of great art with sublime effects, but also of Lyotard’s ambiguous and postmodern orientation of space, a concept Lyotard himself had a difficult time addressing.

In 2003, the Tate Modern museum in London commissioned Eliasson to take over the Turbine Hall – a lofty five-story space that exhibits specially commissioned art from the most renowned, iconic, and provocative contemporary artists in the world.[35] For the space, Eliasson designed The Weather Project (fig. 9). Eliasson himself participated in the execution of the project, not only in the installation’s design and construction but also in its marketing, integration with the rest of the museum and analysis of visitors’ reception.[36] For example, instead of images of the exhibit space itself, Eliasson selected basic statistics about the weather printed on taxis and in London subways to intrigue the public and lure visitors to the Tate.

[37]

Before even approaching the space itself, Eliasson encouraged the public to reconsider conventional conversations around the ordinary, redundant topic, and subject of the exhibition: weather. The space is conceived with the expectation of visitor interaction, a characteristic of the exhibition captured by the term “project” in the exhibition’s title. The installation is unassuming, inconclusive and – like Les Immatériaux – evocative of the free-flowing interplay of the literal space and the visitor’s mental impression of the work.

Eliasson is similar to Lyotard in that his work is highly cerebral. Like Lyotard, he likes to question the process of museumgoing indoctrinated in the experience since the Renaissance. Namely, he designs works of art with ambiguity rather than creating a definitive model of how we should see the world. Eliasson said, “The museum is not there to hang something and declare that this is how you should see it, this is good taste, and this is how you should value it and this is what you should leave the museum thinking about it.” Instead, Eliasson considers, “How do you present something and go about presenting the critique of what you are presenting as part of the thing you are presenting?”[38] Assuming art should be received in a particular way, a typical museum limits not only the artistic process, but also the reception process. Like Lyotard, Eliasson uses the museum space to disturb our conventional (and Eliasson would argue ‘social’) interpretations of our experiences in a particular surrounding. In an effort to avoid the customary standardization of the museum process, Eliasson welcomes the creative reception of his works of art, neither accepting nor rejecting any analysis or interpretation of his work as the ‘right’ impression.

An eerie glow of orange light radiating from a semi-orb of 100 bright light bulbs fills the imposing Turbine Hall. The mono-frequency light bulbs emit light at a narrow frequency that limits the visible spectrum of color to yellow and black, causing the entire space, including your own form and the form of other visitors, to appear either yellow or black.[39] Artificially created mist fills the room throughout the day, forming cloudy haze that fills the space inconspicuously as if the Turbine Hall were connected to the naturally damp London air just outside. The slight mist in the air also contributes to the refraction of light and adds to the installation’s sublime effect. As the visitors’ eyes struggle to find the limits of the space amid the glow and the mist, a glance upwards only further inhibits their sense of place. A mirror replaces the ceiling, reflecting the scene below. An eerie, lit, limitless sphere, The Weather Project has tactile, physical elements like mist that create an entire experience far-removed from the purely visual impressions of classical art. The effect of the lighting and the slightly arced mirror eliminates all visual impressions of boundaries so our eyes can no longer sense any depth and the enormous space appears at once as flat as a picture and as expansive as a horizon.

First impressions of the installation such as wonderment, awe, and uncertainty prompt analogies to the artistic styles of Romanticism and 19th century interpretations of Sublime nature. However, Eliasson is steadfast in maintaining that his intentions were neither Romantic nor Sublime. According to an interview he conducted with the Tate Modern, Eliasson claims that, unlike Romantic artists, he wants his work to be deconstructed. He is against assuming the “hierarchy of experiences.” The Romantic Movement in art outlines qualities that are beautiful and meaningful and Eliasson disagrees with this aesthetic establishment. “Romanticism,” he said, “suggests there is only one moment when you are having a truthful experience. I don’t think we can make rules about what is inherently beautiful.”[40] In his interview, Olafur Eliasson is clear that he hopes the viewer will deconstruct the work, ask questions, look around, and both connect and disconnect from the outside world while exploring the space. However, in keeping with his commitment to a democratic interpretation of the museum experience, he does not criticize those viewers who choose to take a Romantic outlook on his installation, he only clarifies that that was not his intention. He is careful to qualify his opinion as his own, unrelated to his viewer’s and yet on equal footing; neither his review of the exhibit nor that of a randomly selected visitor is more or less valid.

Despite the awesome impression of his artworks, Eliasson attempts to keep his projects close to daily life so that his work may have a greater and more relevant personal impact. “I’m not interested in the art work so to speak,” Eliasson said, “I’m so much more interested in the relationship to it.” In the case of The Weather Project, Eliasson encourages self-awareness to the real, to our spatial awareness, and to our impression of the weather - a paradoxical topic that is both frivolously over-discussed and yet rarely meditated upon with any real pause or reflection. By artificially recreating sunlight and natural weather conditions in a museum environment, Eliasson encourages the visitor to recreate his interaction with this ordinary phenomenon. Eliasson philosophizes, “[in life] there are no value systems given upfront, there are only cultural assumptions and they are all to be met and negotiated. Things we take for granted – things we see – the way we walk though a city, we might not consider that a cultural construction, but I think it is.” [41] Weather is unpredictable and yet we negotiate weather in daily conversation as if we have a say in its outcome. Reimagining even the most commonplace of daily activities and replacing that which is culturally assumed with the sublimely uncertain is a direct reflection of Lyotard’s postmodern sublime. When it rains, we will all agree it is raining, but someone might enjoy the rain while another may not, someone may find the rain sublime while another may not. It is within this context that the weather and our cultural assumptions of its activity suddenly become much less ordinary.

The construction of the installation itself is paradoxical in nature. “I’m not interested in nature in a nature sort of way,” said Eliasson. To clarify, in an article in the University of the Arts London’s associated journal, editor Andreas Spiegl wrote:

[Eliasson’s works] are deconstructivist to the extent that they always lay bare the principles behind the construction of their ‘appearance.’ They are not only theatrical in their effects, but also in their awareness of the fact that these are only effects. What appears to be nature – be it a rainbow, a waterfall, a sunrise, or whatever – is always clearly marked as a natural ‘effect.’ […] By laying bare the mechanisms behind their appearance, [Eliasson’s] works almost protest too much that they are part of a set of circumstances which they seem at first sight to be opposing.[42]

In The Weather Project, the visitor can approach the source of the eerie orange light to see behind the sun-like orb and understand how it works, to see how the components are attached and the lights are hung. By leaving these spaces behind the lights and between the wall and the ceiling mirror, Eliasson both accentuates the theatricality of the installation and encourages the deconstruction of the works’ illusory effects (fig. 10). Eliasson is directly showing the viewer how he is deceiving them (which in turn implies the work is blatantly honest rather than deceptive.) He creates an optical illusion that is as awe-inspiring as a magic trick and then shares the secret to its engineering. To the unassuming visitor, the blinding orange light and large, almost unlimited, ambiguous space is magic. However, the installation isn’t magic at all. It features a phenomenon that our senses are unaccustomed to and is thereby challenging to engage with, but it is not ‘magical.’[43]

In yet another example of the project’s paradoxical construction, the experience provided by the installation seems extraordinarily high-tech, however, in reality, The Weather Project is remarkably low tech and reductive. The components: the light-bulbs, mirror, haze machines, and scaffolding all remain as minimal as possible while providing the desired scientific effect. There are no extraneous gadgets or unnecessary structures. In his own words, “The mirror [covering the ceiling] itself is thin. The construction is not very sophisticatedly done, just hanging there.”[44] Rather than amplifying his installation with impressive embellishments such as state of the art scaffolding and controlled lighting and humidity timers, Eliasson’s intentions are straightforward. The artist uses the most basic, low-technology equipment to conceive of a space that challenges the viewer to question how he sees his surroundings, both within the exhibit and in daily life. While Eliasson covered many existing windows in the Turbine Hall to prevent exterior light sources, (because, ironically, the presence of natural sunlight dimmed his artificial sun and minimized the color effects of his installation) he intentionally left other windows bare. For example, from The Weather Project, you can actually look into the museum’s bookshop and ticket windows to see other realities in the midst of daily function.[45]

While The Weather Project is minimal, people’s reaction to the installation is far from simplistic. Firstly, Eliasson’s postmodern conception of space and time is complex. To address this relationship, Eliasson describes his conception of our environments with an allegory of a space with a chair:

When there are no people in the space, there is also no chair; and if there are two people in the space with one chair, then there are two chairs. Then, if there is one person and no chair the interesting question arises: is the person in the space?[46]

With this reasoning, Eliasson accentuates the importance of a person’s mental conception of objects, like a chair in his space. The space only exists insofar as a person intellectually absorbs and interprets his surroundings. This imagined space is also separate from another’s conception of the space. We create our own surroundings. This very idea is present in the design of The Weather Project as the room itself is curved, the mirror is shaped into a slight arc, and our eyes – capturing the curve of the space - have their own curve. [47] Each observer independently intercepts all of these features of the installation, along with tactile impressions of mist and the presence of other museum-goers, to interpret and therefore to create the space. The cerebral engagement of the viewer and the multisensory, atypical museum experience Olafur Eliasson designs clarifies Jean-François Lyotard’s postmodern orientation of space. In an article published by the Museum of Modern Art on Olafur Eliasson’s techniques, co-authors Roxana Marcoci and Claudia Schmuckli wrote, “Marking a break with the Cartesian model of visuality that prevailed in Western culture from the Renaissance through the early twentieth century, Eliasson presents perception not as universal and autonomous but as it is lived in the world.”[48] The Cartesian model of visuality is the same mode of perception from Modernity that Lyotard critiques. Eliasson, like Lyotard, suggests an alternative impression of our surroundings that relies on the combined experience not only of multiple senses but also of the combined physical and intellectual intuition of space. Space only exists insofar as we relate to it. As our relationship to the space changes, so too does the space itself and visa-versa. The individual-space relationship is in constant flux, neither space nor our relation to it is predetermined. Marcoci and Schmuckli add, “Just as perception does not exist in and of itself, our surroundings cease to be present without the viewing subject.”[49]

Secondly, interpretations of the The Weather Project become increasingly complex as the installation takes on a life of its own, independent of Eliasson’s ideas for the space. How people occupy the installation is as much a part of the art as the structure itself. Common reactions of visitors included lying down on the floor and staring up at the mirrored ceiling at distorted, shadowed images of their reflections that appeared to hang mystically above them. Others flung their arms and legs and watched how the light and dampened air altered their impressions of their own bodies, experimenting with how their own bodies filled the museum space. Most memorably, a group of visitors lay down with their bodies arranged such that they spelled out: “Bush go home” (fig. 11). From a higher story, other visitors could look down at the black letters created by bodies and their impressions of the installation took on a very different meaning. When asked about this temporary politicization of his installation, Eliasson explained that it excited him. “I don’t think it’s a formula,” he said,” [The point is] to have an experience but to also evaluate that experience as part of the experience – not before or after. Not first I’m thinking and then I’m moving but you think as you move and the thinking is also kind of a way of thinking and thinking is somehow also movement in a way.”[50] The different ways in which the visitors interacted with the space (and one another) in The Weather Project were all valid experiences that completed the impression of the work of art. Thinking, feeling, and seeing were simultaneously tools to absorb the installation and actual components of the work itself. The sublimity of the work lies in this diverse and uncategorical interpretation of space conceived, in part, by the mental intuition of each individual observer.

By propelling his viewer into a lawless maze or by encouraging his visitors to interact with his installation according to their own instincts, both ‘artists’ surrender complete artistic control to afford the viewer his own agency. In both cases, the viewer’s subjective intuition of the works of art is crucial to the piece’s design and, most importantly, the characteristic that defines the works as sublimely postmodern.

Fig. 1

Jean-François Lyotard

Les Immatériaux, 1985

Photo scan: Exhibition Album; “Les Immatériaux: Epreuves d’écriture/Album et inventaire” Les Immatériaux, Paris, Centre Georges-Pompidou, Grande galerie, Paris, 1985. Centre de Création Industrielle.

Fig. 2

Plan de l’exposition

Jean-François Lyotard

Les Immatériaux, 1985

Fig. 3

Jean-François Lyotard

Les Immatériaux, 1985

Photo scan: Exhibition Album; “Les Immatériaux: Epreuves d’écriture/Album et inventaire” Les Immatériaux, Paris, Centre Georges-Pompidou, Grande galerie, Paris, 1985. Centre de Création Industrielle.

Fig. 4

Jean-François Lyotard

Les Immatériaux, 1985

Fig. 5

L’ange

Jean-François Lyotard

Les Immatériaux, 1985

Fig. 6

Deuxieme peau

Jean-François Lyotard

Les Immatériaux, 1985

Fig. 7

Irving Penn series

Jean-François Lyotard

Les Immatériaux, 1985

Fig. 8

Jean-François Lyotard

Les Immatériaux, 1985

Fig. 9

Olafur Eliasson

The Weather Project, 2003

The Tate Modern, London

Photo: Andrew Dunkley & Marcus Leith, “The Weather Project, 2003.” Olafur Eliasson Archives. Web acessed Mar. 30, 2015. <http://olafureliasson.net/archive/artwork/WEK101003/the-weather-project>.

Fig. 10

Olafur Eliasson

The Weather Project, 2003

The Tate Modern, London

Fig. 11 “Bush Go Home”

Olafur Eliasson

The Weather Project, 2003

The Tate Modern, London

Photo: Andrew Dunkley & Marcus Leith

“The Weather Project, 2003.” Olafur Eliasson Archives. Web acessed Mar. 30, 2015. <http://olafureliasson.net/archive/artwork/WEK101003/the-weather-project>.

Chapter 2 – Nature

Analysis of the Sublime.

Before proceeding from mental intuitions of the postmodern sublime to a discussion of the postmodern sublime as experienced through depictions of nature, I must pause to clarify my approach to the term ‘sublime,’ independent from the postmodern. The sublime is burdened by conflicting colloquial and academic interpretations. (The difference between such ‘low’ and ‘high’ cultural interpretations of the sublime serves, perhaps, as evidence in support of Jean-François Lyotard’s criticism of postmodern linguistic limitations to collective comprehension). From a contemporary, colloquial perspective, the sublime connotes positively with characterizations such as: ‘awesome,’ ‘incredible,’ and ‘wonderful.’ By contrast, the academic definition of the term is much more nuanced and highly debated.

In an academic, philosophical context, the category of the sublime dates back to antiquity. In the 1st century AD, Longinus studied “human admiration for that which is astounding.”[51] He wrote:

Our imaginations often pass beyond the bounds of space, and if we survey our life on every side and see how much more it everywhere abounds in what is striking, and great, and beautiful, we shall soon discern the purpose of our birth. This is why, by a sort of natural impulse, we admire not the small streams, useful and pellucid though they may be, but the Nile, the Danube or the Rhine, and still more the ocean…[52]

Here, Longinus broadens a human being’s appreciation of the phenomenal, emphasizing the importance of nature steeped in majesty rather than the smaller occurrences he considers necessary or commonplace. In this way, Longinus’s study serves as the preliminary division of nature into hierarchical categories defined by the sublime, an inquiry that resumed in the 18th century by the philosophers Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant. These philosophers were certainly not the last writers to share their interpretation of the sublime; however, Burke and Kant are responsible for crafting the framework within which artists, art historians, writers and theorists still shape the concept of the sublime today. In the previous quotation, Longinus differentiates between specific categories of events, the “small streams, useful and pellucid” and the greater natural occurrences such as the ‘Nile’ or the ‘ocean.’ Burke, too, explicitly differentiates between categories of sublime in relation to those smaller and less awe-inspiring which he characterizes as ‘beautiful.’ Because of his explicit categorization of the sublime against the beautiful, Burke played a crucial role in the formation of the Romantic Movement in Western art and literature. For Burke, like Longinus, the sublime is a noble “elevation of the mind,” our imaginations passing “beyond the bounds of space.”[53] However, Burke’s sublime was more overtly unsettling. Where Longinus seemed to appreciate the sublime as a broadening of scope and a deeper appreciation of great natural phenomena, Burke’s sublime initiates powerful visceral emotions like genuine fear associated with our self-preservation instinct. In Edmund Burke’s treaties on the subject, he wrote:

If the pain and terror are so modified as not to be actually noxious; if the pain is not carried to violence, and the terror is not conversant about the present destruction of the person, […] they are capable of producing delight; not pleasure, but a sort of delightful horror, a sort of tranquility tinged with terror; which as it belongs to self-preservation is one of the strongest of all the emotions. Its object is the sublime.[54]

Burke draws attention to the paradoxical nature of the feeling of the sublime. The “delightful horror” of the sublime is a result of experiencing fear from a safe distance. For example, standing stably on the edge of a cliff, watching a waterfall crash down would be a sublime experience because you are not in danger per se but you are confronting a potentially life-threatening scene without constraint. Assuming survival instincts are the most powerful of human emotions, Burke links the sublime to the profound intrinsic reaction of fear, a glimpse of death’s potential before its time. A final important note concerning the Burkian sublime is the “object” of the sublime that differentiates Burke’s theory from that of his contemporary counterpart, Immanuel Kant. For Burke, the sublime exists in nature. Encountering incredible natural occurrences like stormy seas, earthquakes or the Alps with physical characteristics such as loudness, suddenness, and immensity produces the “tranquility tinged with terror” that defines Burke’s sublime.[55] Interestingly, for Kant, the sublime is a function of mental cognition rather than a physical occurrence.

Immanuel Kant’s ideas relate to Edmund Burke’s paradoxical descriptions of the sublime as he, too, addresses the concept with similar vocabulary. For example, Kant offers his impressions of the sublime: “clouds piled up in the sky, moving with lightning lashes and thunder peals; volcanoes in all their violence of destruction… the boundless ocean in a state of tumult, the lofty waterfall of a mighty river, and such like – these exhibit our faculty of resistance as insignificantly small in comparison with their might. But the sight of them is the more attractive, the more fearful it is, provided only that we are in security.”[56] Without a citation, those lines could have sprung directly from Burke’s treaties on the Sublime and the Beautiful; however, unlike Burke, Kant does not find the sublime in the phenomenal world but rather in the individual’s supersensible cognition. According to Kant, “Sublimity does not reside in anything of nature, but only in our mind, insofar as we can become conscious that we are superior to nature within and therefore also to nature without us.”[57] This seemingly subtle differentiation between Kant and Burke is actually crucial to the categorization of the sublime. Does the sublime form in nature or within us? Is the sublime a performance of nature to which we are mere spectators, or is the sublime a dynamic of our own individual cognition? The question can be debated endlessly; however, from the postmodern perspective, 20th century philosophers like Jean-François Lyotard are more interested in the Kantian perspective.[58]

The study of postmodernism contains a heavy dose of mistrust for such sublime categorizations within and without the aesthetic context. So heavily entrenched in significance, analysis and prior categorization, the sublime as an academic construct – to a postmodernist like Lyotard – allies with the ‘grand narratives’ of Modernity which, according to Lyotard, pose a great threat to the postmodern interpretation of reality. For Burke, the sublime is linked to our self-preservation instinct; there are explicit ontological examples of the sublime in reality like mountain ranges and oceans. For Lyotard, the sublime is a rare reflection of truth in postmodern ontological analysis because – like reality and the deconstruction of postmodern aesthetics – it is a paradox. There are no original ideas or stable constructions. Ideas and phenomena are productions of subcategories and previous assumptions.

In addition to the paradoxical nature of the sublime, Kant’s description correlates with the postmodern interpretations of the sublime insofar as the Kantian sublime involves mental movement. “Given the suggestion that in our experience of the sublime the mind is alternately attracted and repelled, one can understand why the sublime involves mental movement.”[59] But, then again, what human activities don’t involve mental movement? Subconscious activity like breathing and blinking may not involve conscious thought, but human action that involves perception or analysis involves some degree of mental cognition, a complex fact that postmodernists, such as Olafur Eliasson, as well as Joseph Turner and James Turrell, deconstruct in further detail.

1842. Joseph Turner paints the energy of nature.

Human beings orient themselves in space and time. Despite our shared tools of spatial orientation, we cannot be sure we share either our perceptions of the phenomenal world or our cognitive interpretations of these phenomena. While there is a subjective element to Kant’s interpretation of the ‘mental movement’ of the sublime, he is very clear how these thoughts are objectively characterized. So, while maybe not every event will cause every person to have a sublime reaction, the sublime reaction in and of itself is explicitly defined.

To explore the sublime in nature and in artistic depictions of nature, there is some contradiction between the Burkian and Kantian notions of the sublime. However, adopting the 20th century interpretation of the sublime, the ‘postmodern sublime,’ permits me to proceed without declaring one Romantic interpretation true and the other false. The postmodern sublime – though understandably vaguer than its Romantic predecessors due to its deliberate evasion of clear categorization – does not adopt one view of the sublime over another, but rather embraces the sublime’s inherent paradox and potential for ‘mental movement’ to alter any disingenuous preconceived notions of our reality. Burkian or Kantian, the sublime is the intangible, the je ne sais quoi of a phenomenon that eludes common human experience and language. Our inability to describe or even to fully imagine the sublime produces within us a “frisson” (shiver) or a “ravissement” (ravishment), a harsh reminder of our “frail mortality” confronting the “almightiness of nature.”[60] And yet, the experience attracts us like a sort of morbid curiosity, a desire excited by passion and burdened with fear. In the experience of the sublime, postmodernists like Lyotard discover the ultimate paradox, the ultimate expression of the inexpressible.[61] It is precisely this elusive nature of the sublime that coincides with the postmodern mindset. The art of Joseph M.W. Turner (1775-1851), the renowned English romantic landscape painter and lover of nature’s sublime, and James Turrell (b. 1943), American contemporary installation artist and lover of light, both recreate a postmodern sublime experience through the manipulation of nature, disorienting their viewer’s perceptions and liberating him of the monotony of everyday reality.

In Snowstorm, Steamboat Off a Harbour’s Mouth (1842), Joseph Turner unconsciously provides the viewer with a perspective of the postmodern sublime (fig. 1). His oil painting of the storm is a torrid whip of textured paint conceived with dark tones and ominous currents. The scene is not a reality; it would be impossible to paint such an event from the artist’s vantage point. Instead, Turner’s painting exemplifies Kant’s mental movement as Turner uses his imagination to create a vision of the sublime. Nonetheless, the viewer is drawn into the imaginary scene with visceral force. At the composition’s center, a white, hazy fluff hangs around the thin mast of the boat. The rapid and thick painterly strokes that are characteristic of Turner’s style veil the storm in sublime ambiguity. Is the white stroke a sail? A sheet of snow? Lagging wisps of friendlier clouds? Whatever the whiteness represents, it serves to mark the unfortunate target of the storm’s fury. In the midst of the whiteness, the boat’s mast emerges in utter fragility. It is just a moment before the torrent of water and obscurity flip the boat into demise. “With Turner, the shadows are as colorful as the lights.” [62] Even the dark points of the mounting waves are brownish and greyed, nuanced with a variety of shades and cold color tones. A similarly colored beam of sky bolts like an aimed arrow through the center of the composition and onto the boat. The tonal and dynamic similarities between sea and sky make the viewer unable to mark their separation, severing the viewer’s rational relationship to space, and therefore compromising his ability to establish a logical perspective. Additionally, Turner does not visualize a distinct horizon. Instead, Turner depicts a dark tunnel of sea and sky that builds around the boat, drawing in the viewer and leaving him stranded and disoriented, like the boat itself, without stable ground to stand on.

Snowstorm, Steamboat Off a Harbour’s Mouth is an example of Turner’s later works, illustrating his honed proclivity for painting light and sublimity with rougher strokes and a reductive composition. Human presence is absent from the painting. In fact, Turner eliminates all objects save a shadowed mass of ocean and sky and the naked outline of a boat blackened by the glow of light shining from behind. With as few physical elements as possible to distract from his emphasis on light and paint, Turner does not undermine the viewer’s capacity to empathize with the imagined boatsmen’s terror in the eye of the storm. Such was the painter’s mastery of his medium that he vividly painted light in order to heighten the emotions of the sublime, catalyzing the human imagination to complete the scene mentally, and intensifying the intimate, visceral reactions of his viewer to the sublime.

The painting is not logical and yet – despite being a natural occurrence – a storm is not logical either. The snowstorm depicted in Turner’s painting is a model example of the Romantic Sublime as it reflects a natural, uncontrollable phenomenon connecting our boundless imagination with a harsh, mortal, and powerless reality. Scholar of the Romantic movement of the Sublime and the Beautiful, Steven Levine observed, “The sublime is simply the heightened consciousness of beholding oneself beholding the world.”[63] While some may experience a sense of ‘heightened consciousness’ when faced with Turner’s fantastic sea storms, this ‘simple’ definition of the sublime is imperfect. Is Snowstorm Steamboat Off a Harbour’s Mouth a vision of the world? The painting is too artistic and painterly to reflect a mimetic impression of the world. This raises the question: Does a heightened sense of consciousness arise from a distorted perspective of reality? The element of je ne sais quoi, the disparity between the real and the imaginary is the crucial element of the sublime missing from Levine’s definition.

The strength of postmodern theory revels in the je ne sais quoi, the margin of uncertainty between the perceivable world and our mental impressions. While Turner is a quintessential Romantic Sublime painter, he is perhaps a more astute postmodern sublime painter avant la lettre. Turner manipulates the canvas to recreate terrific sensations of the postmodern sublime, embracing the margin of ambiguity. Interestingly, scholar Norman Bryson relates Turner to a graffiti artist who uses minimal strokes for maximal readability. Bryson writes, “Turner is an artist for whom the reduced presentation of objects is of central importance.”[64] To Bryson, a Turner painting just crosses the threshold of recognition, particularly as his career advanced and his work became less descriptive and increasingly emotive. Discussing Turner’s “readability” recalls Jean-François Lyotard’s criticism of language. Words, like the elements of a picture, provide some level of universal comprehension (between those who speak that particular language). However, as Lyotard emphasizes in his writings, words are wholly inadequate for delivering a singular meaning. More truthfully, language is taken in a multitude of different directions and meaning is inevitably ambiguous. The same process occurs in the face of Snowstorm Steamboat Off a Harbour’s Mouth. Turner shapes a scene with recognizable elements, a boat, a sea, and a sky, but he leaves out more defining characteristics like horizon lines or realistic color schemes. “When we recognize a Turner ship, we do not receive at the same time information concerning its exact location in a space continuous with other objects or measurable by a common grid. The schema of the ship is stranded, surrounded by an informal space to which the concept of a uniform grid or matrix seems alien.”[65] Rather than certainty, Turner revels in the obscurity. What the painter does not paint, the mind fills in. Turner “drives the colours about till he has expressed the idea in his mind. […] the image comes into being out of the medium itself.”[66] The uncertainty, the sublimity allows our eyes and our imaginations to wander, establishing the margin of je ne sais quoi that characterizes the postmodern sublime. “The mind seeks legible form but cannot find it; each area of the image adds to the panic.”[67] The painting captures the immensity of nature precisely because it is so reductive and yet so compelling that the viewer is drawn into the scene and forced to use his imagination to contemplate and to complete the formidable scene.

The terror and delight both Burke and Kant use to describe the sublime are conceived predominately in the context of nature (although not exclusively, see for example, cities and architecture that can also be considered in this 18th century sublime category). For Turner too, nature is his dominant locus of the sublime. “As Turner’s career advanced, all signs of the human figure fade or are absorbed into the swirling energies of nature. […] Gigantic human machines blend perfectly into the mass of larger inhuman forces, but where no human person is in sight.”[68] These “swirling energies of nature” – hardly describable with greater linguistic clarity –have sublime potential for much the same reason that weather interested Eliasson. Nature surrounds the human species and eludes it. For as many phenomenal experiences as human’s are capable of studying and understanding, nature’s activity continues to remain a mystery. The vast unknown coupled with the immense majesty of natural circumstances serve as Burke’s and Kant’s interpretations of the sublime.

2013. James Turrell captures light.

“Each day is a different length of time and that gives a different length to the cusp between light and darkness or darkness and light.”[69] - James Turrell

One-hundred and seventy years after Joseph Turner’s Snowstorm, Steamboat Off a Harbour’s Mouth, and even further beyond classical history and romantic theories of the sublime, contemporary artist, James Turrell continues to explore the fascination with light. The installation artist and quasi-mathematician recreates perceptive fields using a combination of natural and artificial light that are visually divergent and yet conceptually reminiscent of Turner’s work, conceived in an entirely different medium. In an interview with Mr. Turrell, Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Michael Govan’s first question read, “Everyone has trouble describing your work in words, because it’s a wordless work. Often it’s been spoken about—and you’ve spoken about it—as making light palpable. But the more time I spend with the work, the more I really do feel that it’s about seeing.”[70] Visual art, as Jean-François Lyotard suggests, is the preferred medium for the communication of the postmodern sublime (and the truthful depiction of reality in general) precisely because words are so limiting. When attempting to deconstruct ‘light,’ linguistic descriptions shortchange James Turrell’s installations; however, for the sake of this thesis, I will attempt to find the words to describe James Turrell’s contributions to the discussion of the postmodern sublime.

“I’ve always felt that night doesn’t fall. Night rises,” said James Turrell.[71] His first task in “making light palpable” involves renegotiating our assumptions. Turrell recasts light from the conventional experience we thought we knew intimately into an exceptional occurrence to be isolated and contemplated. Aten Reign, temporarily installed in the Guggenheim Museum in New York City in 2013 was – at the time – James Turrell’s largest project (fig. 2).[72] The installation designed specifically for the Guggenheim’s rotunda derives natural sunlight through the ocular skylight supplemented with artificial, computerized lights to generate a slow moving and pervasive light show. Hanging from the oculus, a glorified five-tiered fabric lampshade shielding LED light fixtures captures the light shining through the window and illuminates the entire room. From the tiered lampshade, five rings of color on the ceiling mirror the five steps in rotunda’s ramp.[73] Over sixty minutes, Aten Reign changes color, shifting once through the entire color spectrum.[74] The rotunda, originally designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, contains no objects. In fact, much of the museum was emptied of art and objects to accommodate the unhindered meditation of light and space in Turrell’s five installations (Aten Reign and four additional skyspace rooms) in the museum in the summer of 2013.[75] Without other objects to provide depth or distraction, the light becomes the object of the viewer’s attention with such singularity that it is almost blinding. Aten Reign exhibits the remarkable self-referential quality of James Turrell’s light-based art. In his own words, “I look at light as a material. It is physical. It is photons. Yes, it exhibits wave behavior, but it is a thing. And I’ve always wanted to accord to light its thingness.”[76]

Light provides for our awareness of space and objects as well as our general orientation within the phenomenal world; however, light also takes this awareness away. “If you think of how we look at night and day, when daylight’s the atmosphere,” said Turrell, “we can’t see through it to see the stars that are there. So generally, we use light to illuminate or to reveal, but light also obscures.”[77] Light creates shadow, light deceives and light even obscures. A self-proclaimed Turner enthusiast, Turrell developed his awareness of the artistry of this paradox of light through his study of perceptive fields as well as his lifelong admiration of Turner, who also respected light’s range of color.[78] Magnifying the properties of light, we see how we see and consequently, we see the world differently. In his interview with Michael Govan, James Turrell said:

I feel that I want to use light as this wonderful and magic elixir that we drink as Vitamin D through the skin—and I mean, we are literally light-eaters—to then affect the way that we see. We live within this reality we create, and we’re quite unaware of how we create the reality. So the work is often a general koan into how we go about forming this world in which we live, in particular with seeing.[79]

A “koan,” a term used predominately in Zen Buddhism, means a paradox without a solution or the awareness of the limitations of logic and reason to conjure enlightenment.[80] In Turrell’s context, the term is absolutely fitting, a poetic reminder of the disjuncture between logic and emotion provoked by sublime experience.

James Turrell successfully creates a sublime space. Unlike Olafur Eliasson who reveals the tricks of his hand in The Weather Project, Turrell conceals the computerized mechanics and the natural light source so that the viewer is forced to experience only the appearance of his own perception. Upon entering the rotunda, the unimpeded glow of light is so disorienting that it produces the ganzfeld effect. Ganzfeld, German for ‘homogeneous field,’ is a phenomenon that occurs when the entire retina is stimulated by uniform light such that it cannot define your surroundings.[81] The effect produced by many of Turrell’s works is so disorienting that visitors have fallen down. Some even sued the artist, blaming him and the museum for physical harm experienced as a result of the disequilibrium of the ganzfeld effect. The impression of the ganzfeld effect conjured by pieces like Aten Reign is impossible to describe or even to imagine without first hand experience. Even when pictures of Turrell’s work are published, they frequently feature an individual in the installation in order to give the viewer of the picture a sense of the scale and depth of the room and the apparent flatness of the pervasive field of light.

“One of the things I’ve always been interested in is the theta state,” says Turrell. “That’s thinking, but not in words.”[82] The effect of the light dissolving the stability of our orientation, eliminating depth, silencing linguistic expression and even warping space and time constitutes a true experience of the postmodern sublime. Emphasizing the essentialness of light, Turrell adds, “Light connects the immaterial and the material.”[83] Illuminating or obscuring the very world around us and coloring our impressions, the study of light is the exploration of our humanness.[84] It reminds us of our smallness, our limitations in an otherwise limitless universe in the same way Longinus, Burke, Kant and others describe the experience of the sublime to be. Despite the terrifying frisson of mortal fragility we experience when faced with the universe’s immensity, the sublime also carries a second, transcendent power, the same power described in Zen Buddhism with the term koan, or, the potential for enlightenment outside of the threshold of logical human experience. To quote Terrence Des Pres, “[The sublime] transforms the beholder into a participant through a psychic process of identification that, in turn, allows the beholder-participant to transcend terror by partaking of its power.”[85] Turrell transports visitors into an empty space where his over-exaggeration of the materiality of light reminds us of the immateriality of our reality. Exposed to the ganzfeld effect through the natural and artificial stimulus of our perceptive field, the viewer is suddenly conscious of the limitation of our biological systems to truly see all the phenomena at play in the world around us. At the risk of jumbling definitions of the sublime even further, another German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, approached the theoretical discussion of the sublime in The World as Will and Representation (1818) where he wrote, “Acceding to the sublime constitutes a courageous rejection of the lurid blandishments of life.”[86] In this powerful quotation, Schopenhauer enunciates the differences in the divide between the world of the sublime and the world of the everyday. So distinct from one another, the sublime is closer to the supernatural and to Enlightenment than to human behavior. Additionally, Schopenhauer suggests that the appreciation of the sublime is an active and courageous choice. By accessing the sublime, we are forced to reconceive and reimagine entirely how we see the world around us. Our days that can seem so ordinary and monotonous take on new artistry under Turrell’s dictation. “Turrell’s work does what the best art so often does: it makes us pay attention to a sight that would otherwise slip past, familiar and ignored.”[87] In the installation’s title, Aten Reign, Turrell captures the essence of his project’s goal, the reframing of the phenomenon of light such that it transforms from a blasé occurrence of which we are practically unaware (much like breathing or blinking) into a sublime experience. The reference to Aten, the Egyptian sun god, prompts the viewer to regard the expression of sunlight with religious reverence rather than ordinary ambivalence. In keeping with the postmodern interpretation of our shifting, elusive reality, Turrell orchestrates a performance of light that entirely redefines our perception of the world in favor of disorienting awe.

Figure 1.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)

Snowstorm, Steamboat off a Harbour’s Mouth, 1842

Oil on canvas

Tate London

Image Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-snow-storm-steam-boat-off-a-harbours-mouth-n00530

Figure 2.

James Turrell (b. 1943)

Aten Reign, 2013

LED light and fabric scrim

Guggenheim Musem, New York

Image Source: http://web.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/turrell/

Chapter 3 – Mysticism

“The Greeks were different. They had passion for order and symmetry, much like the Romans, but they knew how foolish it was to deny the unseen world, the old gods. Motion, darkness, barbarism.”

He looked at the ceiling for a moment, his face almost troubled.

“Do you remember what we were speaking of earlier, of how bloody, terrible things are sometimes the most beautiful?” he said.

“It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? […] If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”

- The Secret History by Donna Tartt[88]

According to Jean-François Lyotard, the challenge of the sublime is attempting to present the ineffable. To consider the sublime is to arrive in a deep musing of some physical, emotional or intellectual phenomenon without logical roots, in other words, a discussion with mystical resonance. In the above quotation from Donna Tartt’s novel The Secret History, Julian Morrow, the novel’s fictional Classics Professor, describes a Dionysian experience to his students. The Greek God who incarnates irrationality, spontaneity and chaos, stimulates sublime experiences. As Julian indicates, embracing Dionysius implies the release of logic and control, allowing the god to consume you, emerging reincarnated in a kind of savage state with all of the raw instincts and natural beauty of a man freed from the confines of reason. Depending upon your belief system, the Judeo-Christian God may not be present in sublime moments of inexplicable irrationality; but the tendency to relate these moments to a supernatural entity is common and cannot be ignored in the discussion of the aesthetics of the postmodern sublime.

1810. Caspar David Friedrich meditates on sublimity.

Like J.M.W. Turner and James Turrell, Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) reflects on the sublime in nature; however, instead of interpreting natural phenomena predominately as a means of deconstructing spatial orientation, Friedrich focuses on his depiction of nature from a religious and meditative perspective. His choice of subject matter reflected the common artistic trend in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as society grew increasingly disheartened by materialism, amplified as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Returning to nature in literature and the arts allowed society to compensate for a loss of natural and spiritual influences in everyday life. Unlike the work of some of his most famous contemporaries, natural landscape artists like Joseph Turner and John Constable, and romantic writers like Mary Shelley and Sir Walter Scott, Caspar David Friedrich’s treatment of natural phenomena is less explicitly relatable to Edmund Burke’s and Immanuel Kant’s concepts of the sublime. Considering Friedrich’s historic context and choice of subject matter, comparisons to Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful are automatic. However, it is a comparison Friedrich himself rejected.[89] Scholar William Vaughan argues that, “For Friedrich, art was not about aesthetics. It was about life – and in particular, the religious or spiritual experience of life. Aesthetic categorization, like scientific categorization, removed the individual from this moment of direct experience.”[90] Less indicative of the Romantic sublime, work by Friedrich, one might argue, bears a greater resemblance to the inclusive and unchained postmodern sublime.

In his chef d’oeuvre Monk by the Sea (1808), Friedrich presents a simple landscape charged with religious, philosophical and emotional implications (fig. 1). Unconventional for visual art of the time period that often featured formal characteristics like framing devices as a means of clearly organizing and focusing the composition, Monk by the Sea represents a frameless expanse of sky. Eighty percent of the composition depicts this shadowy atmosphere, grey clouds that gather and dissipate, floating seamlessly between a friendly blue and a harshly (grimly?) bruised sky. The black and blue stained sky meets an ominously ink-colored sea at a low horizon line. To the left, a man in a black robe stares out onto the landscape and a few small, white scratches of paint indicate a collection of seagulls flying off above him. The small figure is the only human presence in the scene. Like the robed monk, the viewer is mesmerized by the immensity of the vista, impacted by the sheer breadth of sea and sky with little to distract or temper the image of the bruised and barren universe. When the painting was first displayed at the Berlin Academy Exhibition in 1810, the poet Heinrich von Kleist wrote his response in the Berliner Abendblätter: “No situation in the world could be more sad and eerie than this—as the only spark of life in the wide realm of death, a lonely center in a lonely circle…since in its monotony and boundlessness it has no foreground except the frame, when viewing it, it is as if one’s eyelids had been cut away.”[91] Without a single framing device to counterbalance the scope of nature and settle the mind, this isolated, dark scene elicits a profound existential unease that, while beautiful, feels rather hopeless. At the time, the painting was met with shock. For some, the shock reflected disapproval of the simple starkness of the scene, an unusual and controversial artistic choice for the time. However, for others, like the painting’s patron, Prussian King Wilhelm III, the shock reflected admiration both for Friedrich’s artistry and for the sublimity of nature he represents.[92]

Monk by the Sea is not a reflection of a Burkean aesthetic category of the sublime or the beautiful, but is instead a powerful, spiritual and subjective experience. Friedrich rarely commented on his own works, or even gave his works descriptive titles; however, he did comment on the art of painting: “The painter should not just paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees inside himself…”[93] In Monk by the Sea, the absence of action and detail depicted in the scene only enhances the emotional, enigmatic and introspective qualities of the work that evoke the Dionysian experience. The painting is an example of Stimmungslandschaft or, ‘mood landscape,’ conceived through direct studies of nature, an artistic enterprise that prefigured European Impressionism.[94] For Caspar David Friedrich, Monk by the Sea is a study of the seascapes of Rügen, an island outside of Friedrich’s home in Dresden. The landscape with which Friedrich was familiar is endowed nonetheless with an unknowable existential wonder reflected by the illogical relationship between nature and religion. According to Friedrich, “the artist must act as the intermediary between man and nature…for mankind cannot comprehend its meaning.”[95] The monk in the painting resembles a portrait of the artist himself, acting as a guide linking nature, religion and art. Interestingly, the viewer is not only experiencing the seascape like the monk, captivated by the natural and mystical landscape, but also observing the monk’s meditative experience. The interaction of art, nature and religion was a common theme in the German Romantic movement of which Caspar David Friedrich is a prominent figure. For example, Friedrich’s friend Schelling wrote two theses, Natur-philosophie (1799) and System des transzendentalen Idealismus (1800) devoted to his theories of the oneness of nature and God and to the artistic responsibility to portray this reality.[96] And yet, how exactly does Monk by the Sea evoke religion?

Friedrich’s seascape does not contain any overt religious symbolism. Unlike some of Friedrich’s other paintings that feature crosses or crucifixions within a supernatural landscape, Monk by the Sea is devoid of references to a particular denominational relationship to God. Perhaps the painting, like Schelling, is pantheistic, considering nature and God identical entities.[97] However, even a pantheistic relationship would not explain the mystical ambiguity of the view. Art critic and curator Robert Rosenblum described the 18th century sublime as “a flexible semantic container for the murky new Romantic experiences of awe, terror, boundlessness, and divinity…”[98] The contemporary critic with 300 years of recul can describe the sublime as a mere “semantic container” because he can contextualize the movement within the greater purview of the history of art. However, at the time, I would imagine the Romantic implications of the sublime felt greater and more valid than a mere aesthetic category. Still, Monk by the Sea fits neatly into this container. Compositional elements such as: the dark obscurity of the ocean that is ominous in color and scope though calm in disposition, the sky that sweeps between light and dark, and the uncanny quietude of the lone figure juxtaposed to the latent fervor of nature, each contribute to the painting’s sublime impression.

Beyond belonging to the Romantic aesthetic category, Monk by the Sea captures the ineffable postmodern sublime that leaves room for endless subjective and transcendental experiences. Religion is often associated with sublime experiences (of any kind or category) as its depiction – whether in nature, philosophy, art or even technology – often inspires a feeling of smallness and insignificance in the face of grand phenomena beyond human contemplation. German Romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin, believed, “Man must forget himself completely to be at one with the world.”[99] In Monk by the Sea, we are shown from the point of view of the monk, a glimpse of this oblivion and the overwhelming totality of the universe. Yet the viewer gains an additional insight beyond that of the monk’s. Faced with the canvas, we see the overwhelming totality of the universe, and then we observe as the monk shares a similarly sublime moment, realizing neither the monk nor we will ever understand the universe in which we are a tiny fraction. The presence of this figure allows the viewer to watch himself watching a transcendental experience in a truly postmodern sublime manner. In this way, Friedrich takes us even further into the sublime than did Hölderlin, closer to the frightening precipice of physical and mental oblivion as Friedrich reminds us not only of our powerlessness, but also of our inability to grasp this totality of which we constitute a minor part. Friedrich takes us to the very edge of the infinite universe, at the threshold of logic and metaphysics where we can reason only that we know little and that the rest of our experience is felt. “Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”[100]

1996. Bill Viola and the trick of nature.

In the catalogue for one of Bill Viola’s contemporary video installations entitled Going Forth by Day, the artist composes the following hand written notes:

The sea, the swirling waters. Purple Black Darkness churning, violent, seething, uncontrollable, threatening—sublime—viewing something harmful close up. All walls, all surfaces are unstable and threatening. From far, far away a voice is being heard. A tiny figure is seen in the waves, being tossed about like a paper doll. He appears and disappears, part of the landscape, never quite sure if he is coming back or gone forever. The viewer is helpless to act… the roaring sound is deafening. A total physical experience….”[101]

The sublime – Romantic, postmodern or otherwise – is a visceral experience. With Monk by the Sea, the visceral quality was a deep, desolate, existential emotion. In the case of contemporary artist Bill Viola, however, the visceral experience is active, invigorating and sensational. Born in 1951 in New York City, Bill Viola was raised with a “spiritual sense of the world,” finding his artistic inspiration in a mystical and philosophical exploration of human perception. “How we see, how we hear, and how we come to know the world [are] my palette, as an artist.”[102] Viola’s interest in a constant engagement with the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of human existence lends well to his choice of medium, namely, multi-media film. Film allows Viola to create a work of art that influences more of our senses than could painting or sculpture. Film relates more directly to the dynamism of real life experience. Viola said, “When I held a video camera and microphone in my hands, I was holding a philosophical system, not just some image and sound gathering tool.”[103]

Viola’s sensitivity to the transcendental potential of art not only draws a similarity between his work and the work of Caspar David Friedrich, but also emphasizes the importance of the viewer’s subjective interpretation of the video, to which the formal aspects of the images are secondary. In his conceptual and visual installation entitled The Crossing (1996), Bill Viola demonstrates the efforts of his philosophical approach to art (or his artistic approach to philosophy, both intellectual activities engage Viola equally) (fig. 2). In a room so dark the presence of walls or the depth of the space is unknown, two screens depict a man walking out of darkness towards you, slowly, deliberately and silently. Once the figure has reached the foreground of the shot, water begins to splash down onto his head, reverberating off his skull at a perpendicular angle. The illuminated blue water shines silver and purple as it bounces off of the man’s body, making sounds like rain. The falling water amplifies both in sound and quantity, drenching the actor in a thundering sheet of water and splashing off of his body at different angles. He lifts his arms up slowly as if ascending. As the water surges faster and more violently, the viewer may even hold his breath in an empathetic instinct, watching in slow motion as water drowns the motionless man. After a few more seconds of the booming cascades of water, the rush of water begins to subside, revealing that the man has disappeared. The viewer watches as water falls brightly from a black background. As the torrent thins into rain, the water also diminishes into puddles. After a few seconds of silent blackness, the one minute and twelve second video plays on loop. Simultaneously, the neighboring screen depicts a synchronized film, the same man approaching slowly out of the darkness to the foreground of the visual plane. In this film, instead of drops of water, a small flame ignites at the man’s feet, slowly growing and spreading, engulfing his entire body. The flames ignite with a deafening rumble. Eventually the fire diminishes and the man is gone. All that remains is crackles of flames and then darkness until the video recommences. To appreciate both overwhelming audiovisual recordings, the viewer must walk around the obscured space, experiencing the surge of opposing light and sound.

This work of art is truly synesthetic in that it combines both musical crescendo and visual art to complete the transcendental experience. Two curators at the Whitney Museum of American Art, David Ross and Peter Sellars, describe the effect of the film writing, “the two traditional natural elements of fire and water appear here not only in their destructive aspects, but manifest their cathartic, purifying, transformative, and regenerative capacities as well.”[104] With the sheer volume of sound and light, in addition to the crippling absence of depth perception in the dark room, the viewer is overloaded with more sensory signals than he could possibly interpret all at once. At first impression, the spectacle elicits only instinctive reactions to the sublime such as shock, awe and fear. However, perhaps, after resting with the film for longer or replaying the video in your head after some recul, your mind may begin to conceptualize the symbolism of the scene in a similar way to David Ross’ and Peter Sellars’ interpretation. In the video display, fire and water are manipulated within the boundaries of their natural behavior, the water dragged down by gravity, trailing in short and long streams depending on the volume of the drops, the fire raging upwards, catching and leaping in a reddish orange blaze and eventually dissipating into dark smoke. Still, the natural characteristics of the two elements, the behavior that makes water water and fire fire are highlighted unnaturally because Viola slows the rate of time. Ironically, to be truly in the midst of a raging fire or a torrent of water, we would be unable to experience fire and water this analytically. We only experience the reality of nature when we can slow down and isolate the phenomenon on its own. Again, as Ross and Sellars described, the fire and water appear violent at first. It is only after a moment’s thought, after the primary, instinctual reaction, that the curators suggest the elements are endowed with a symbolic power. However, the nature of this symbolic power would likely vary depending upon the viewer. Some may adopt the same impression as Ross and Sellars, perceiving the purifying and liberating power of the elements. Others may interpret the film with biblical connotations. Passages from the Bible such as “Our God is a consuming fire,” (Hebrews 12:29) or, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, […] He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire,” (Matthew 3:11) or, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you” (Isaiah 43:2) associate water and fire with supernatural expressions of God’s power. And yet, to others, Viola’s installation may represent a harsh existential hopelessness, the isolation of man in the face of nature’s domination, or worse, a vision of mortality like the opening lines of a Robert Frost poem, “Some say the world will end in fire/ Some in ice.”[105] The power of the films lies in its unlimited reach and potential to move each viewer regardless of his religious or emotional perspective.

Viola himself does not subscribe to a particular religion. Raised in an Episcopalian household, he quickly shed the denominational categories of his religion, maintaining only a strong sense of spirituality.[106] As a young adult, Viola described his first encounter with Eastern religions as a “shock of recognition.”[107] In Eastern religion he recognized Truth. He said, “I couldn’t believe that somebody had actually worked out a system for dealing with what we call subjective experience, and sometimes in a very complex and technically precise way, as in Tibetan Buddhism. It was new and different but somehow deeply familiar, and it verified certain feelings I had as a kid that used to make me think that I was different and disconnected from the world described by my own culture.”[108] The moment of familiarity, the verification of his subjective experience in Eastern religious scripture provided Bill Viola with his own subjective truth, felt with as much certitude as an objective truth. Socially constructed connotations of “truth” privilege objective truth over subjective truth in an academic context, as if objective truth is inherently more valid. However, as postmodern theory would insist, this recalls the limitations of language to reflect reality accurately. Without encouraging one particular response to his video installation, Viola creates a postmodern sublime experience; an experience without a singular truth or precise interpretation, but transcendental and subjectively truthful nonetheless.

Caspar David Friedrich’s painting may express a more existential religious experience when compared to Bill Viola’s more mystical video installation; however, both works of art share the sublime effects caused by slowing time. The sublime is inherently “uncommentable,”[109] however, the closing scene of the 1999 film American Beauty approximates the experience:

Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once and its too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst. And then I remember to relax and stop trying to hold onto it. And then it flows through me like rain. And I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. You have no idea what I’m talking about I’m sure. But don’t worry you will someday.[110]

From the viewer’s perspective, a sublime experience is often characterized by the first overwhelming moment, a rush of emotion and awe caused by an image so incredible and shocking, it is paralyzing. In that moment, we are elated and empowered by our observation of this incredible, natural phenomenon, feeling a heightened sense of liveliness as we observe the infinity of the universe. In this mesmeric moment, we are motionless, as if our faculties of logic are so literally subordinated to the sublime phenomenon that they cease to function. After this rush, with a breath, we return to self-awareness, reminded suddenly of how utterly small and insignificant we are in the greater universe. This ‘rush,’ the emotion the Greeks described in myths of Apollo and Dionysius, Nietzsche identified as the “highest form of art,” Freud called the “oceanic experience,” and Kant and Burke attributed to aesthetic categories, is not a new concept.[111] Instead, this sublime moment is reimagined within the postmodern mindset, freed of categories or preconceived analysis but evermore disconcerting without the comfort of logical reasoning. One instant in time captured by a painting, or around 1,850 frames captured by a minute and twelve seconds of video footage, create a rupture between the experience of the visual field and the experience of the viewer. In an interview, Bill Viola described the effect of time in art, particularly painting: “If you want to understand sight, blindfold yourself. If you want to understand time, stop moving. You have only one glimpse. The eye will open one time, and the whole world—everything that the moment has to convey—has to be contained in that one blink.”[112] The concept of the sublime relies on these lived paradoxes, for example, a glimpse of infinity that inspires the awareness of our bewildering smallness. To ease the overwhelming experience of life, we strive to control and to manage our position through the development of advanced technologies and the rational organization of time with calendars and clocks. However, The Crossing disrupts this logic, reminding us that – unlike the units on a clock – our lived experience of time is not actually evenly spaced or universally felt. In the same interview, Viola quotes Japanese Buddhist master, Dogen Zenji who said, “See yourself and all things, as a moment in time.”[113] The exercise in slowing time to a single moment or a brief series of frames is the artistic interpretation of the Buddhist practice Zenji described. In the artistic context, slowing or stopping time is the artificial manipulation of a perspective that provides the effect of an altered consciousness frequently promoted in Eastern religions to provide for a deeper understanding of our obscure universe. In the face of a sublime experience, one suddenly becomes self-aware of the bewildering effects of reality that we attempt to mitigate with grand narratives and logical reasoning systems. Through art that reflects the postmodern sublime such as Monk by the Sea and The Crossing, we approximate subjective truth that is more reflective of an uncontrollable and ineffable reality.

Figure 1.

Caspar David Friedrich

Monk by the Sea, 1808-1810

Oil paint. 3’ 7” x 5’ 8”

Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Figure 2.

Bill Viola

The Crossing, 1996

Video installation, 1 min. 12 sec.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California.

Conclusion

“We thought we knew how to see, works of art teach us that we were blind”

– Jean-François Lyotard [114]

In Les Immatériaux and through his numerous treaties on postmodern theory, Lyotard presents us with a reflection of our own ignorance. Specifically, the postmodern sublime disrupts our comfortable and unassuming reality by introducing obscurity. Although the natural instinct as rational beings is to mitigate this uncertainly by applying systems of logic and control to the overwhelming infinity, Lyotard refuses to capitulate to these methods, preferring instead to savor the ineffability of the sublime as a more genuine reflection of our existence.

In order to use the postmodern sublime as a lens through which we may analyze art, this thesis divides the concept into three expressions: 1) the sublime conceived conceptually, 2) the sublime experienced in nature and 3) the sublime reflected in mysticism. Through these subdivisions, we encounter the enigmatic disorientation of our position in space and time. The postmodern sublime artists discussed herein including: Lyotard, Eliasson, Turner, Turrell, Friedrich and Viola, disrupt our ordinary experiences with moments of awe by, for example, evoking light to morph our perception of space or interrupting the expected continuity of time through framing devices and time-lapse video.

In Les Immatériaux, “Lyotard intended that we feel the dissolution of the boundaries between our bodies and the things we encounter.”[115] His abstract idea is the same concept Eliasson approximates in his allegory of the space and the chair described in chapter one. The reciprocal relationship between the observer and the observed, or our impressions of the entity and the entity itself are an example of an ordinary interaction we encounter countless times a day that can take on sublime associations when approached from an artistic and critical mindset. The reframing of these ordinary experiences into an artistic context (ironically) incorporates the sublime into our everyday experience. These small uncertainties are evermore pervasive in the contemporary, technological age than in 1985, when Lyotard organized his exhibition.

Before concluding, it is worth noting the role of technology in the postmodern sublime. Advancing at an exceptional rate, technology incites noticeable social changes (in our linguistic systems and cultural norms, etcetera) that now occur numerous times in a single lifetime rather than over generations. As technology grows and knowledge accumulates, each individual maintains a smaller percent of the overall accumulation of ‘knowability.’ Contemporary conditions imply that we are inundated with uncertainty and yet we are desensitized by the extent of what we do not understand. To quote Heidegger in the 20th century, “Humans living under the social condition known as Modernity are suffering from a separation or distancing, either from religious sources of meaning, from their own human nature, from the Dionysian sources of vitality, from valuable traditions, or from an encounter with Being.”[116] This “distancing” is evermore apparent in contemporary reality. We are accustomed to operating exclusively on the surface of things without comprehending the true nuance or depth of their meaning. So called ‘Smart Phones,’ for example, are highly complex pieces of technology with over two billion users, the overwhelming majority of whom do not know how the device is made or the extent of its capabilities, and yet the tool is an essential and permanent fixture in their daily lives. The smart phone features endless applications available for download, personalization capabilities and a fragile surface susceptible to cracks and scratches. Because of the personal yet obscure relationship between a smart phone and its user, and the device’s reflection of a moment in time captured by a scratch or a crack, the iPhone is like a work of art and a reflection of the postmodern sublime. The smart phone appropriates the relevance of postmodern sublime art from Modernity into the contemporary discussion.

In an interview discussing the ineffability of postmodernism, Jean-François Lyotard said: “This is a discussion [of postmodernism] that’s only just beginning. It’s the way it was for the Age of Enlightenment: the discussion will be abandoned before it ever reaches a conclusion.”[117] In an effort to remain faithful to the objective of postmodern theory, it is tempting to conclude a paper on the subject without an overarching conclusion, without a grand narrative or last word. After all, the goal of Les Immatériaux – the exhibition responsible for inspiring this thesis and the original curatorial representation of the postmodern sublime – was intentionally inconclusive. Lyotard did not declare a singular vision or universal application of his concept but rather sought multiple methods of artistic representation to inspire the overall awareness of the contemporary social condition. Leaving the topic without conclusion, however, abandons the concept of the postmodern sublime in the same realm of “superficial” understanding that postmodernists considered endemic of the postmodern social condition. Instead, I propose that the concept of the postmodern sublime in visual arts reflects a cyclical pattern. The contrived unreality of a work of art that reflects the postmodern sublime in turn allows us to perceive actual reality with a greater acuteness than we could prior to arts’ intervention. Art captures the paradoxes between the real and the nonreal, the known and the unknown in a way that other media and language alone cannot. To quote Jean-François Lyotard, “[Art] always has a value as an expression of its time, but there’s also a way in which it can always be perceived as lying outside of the time that produced it. There’s always something that turns art into a transhistorical truth, and that’s the part of the art that I think of as ‘philosophical.’”[118] The unreality of art, particularly postmodern sublime art, reflects reality with more nuance and veracity than our ordinary engagement with reality ever could. Therein lies the transhistorical significance of the postmodern sublime.

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[1] T.J. Clark, "Introduction." Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism. New Haven: Yale UP, 1999. 1-13. Print.

[2] Hal Foster, "Introduction." The Anti-aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Ed. Hal Foster. New York: New, 1998. ix-xvii. Print.

[3] Hal Foster, “Introduction.”

[4] Stuart Sim, "Preface." Jean-François Lyotard. London: Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1996. xiii-xv. Print.

[5] Hal Foster, "Introduction." The Anti-aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Ed. Hal Foster. New York: New, 1998. ix-xvii. Print.

[6] Marc W. Redfield, “Pynchon’s Postmodern Sublime.” Modern Language Association. PMLA, Vol. 104, No. 2 (March, 1989). 152-162. Web. 21 Feb. 2015. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/462501.>

[7] Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1670) published posthumously quoted by Philip P. Wiener, "Sublime in External Nature." Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Vol. IV. New York, 1973. 3-12. Print.

[8] Philip P. Wiener, "Sublime in External Nature." Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Vol. IV. New York, 1973. 3-12. Print.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Immanuel Kant, “Second Book Analytic of the Sublime.” Critique of Judgement, trans. J. H. Bernard (London: Macmillan, 1914). 1790. 7-12. Print.

[12] Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 1979. 79. Print.

[13] Tara McDowell, "Les Immatériaux: A Conversation with Jean-François Lyotard and Bernard Blistène." Flash Art, Mar. 1985: 32-39. Print.

[14] Tara McDowell, "Les Immatériaux: A Conversation with Jean-François Lyotard and Bernard Blistène."

[15] John Rajchman, "Les Immatériaux or How to Construct the History Of Exhibitions." Tate. Tate Papers, 1 Oct. 2009. Web. 13 Jan. 2015. <http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/les-immateriaux-or-how-construct-history-exhibitions>.

[16] Stuart Sim, Jean-François Lyotard. (London: Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1996.) 205-208. Print.

[17] Tara McDowell, “Les Immatériaux: A Conversation with Jean-François Lyotard and Bernard Blistène."

[18] Jean-François Lyotard, “La Manifestation,” Les Immatériaux Press Pack. CNAC Georges Pompidou Service des Archives. Centre de Création Industrielle, Paris, 1985.

[19] “Les Immatériaux: Epreuves d’écriture/Album et inventaire)” Les Immatériaux, Paris, Centre Georges-Pompidou, Grande galerie, Paris, 1985. Centre de Création Industrielle.

[20] Tara McDowell, “Les Immatériaux: A Conversation with Jean-François Lyotard and Bernard Blistène.” Flash Art, Mar. 1985: 32-39. Print.

[21] Stuart Jeffries and Nancy Groves, “Hans Ulrich Obrist: the art of curation.” The Guardian Newspaper. Mar. 23, 2014. Web. Mar. 22, 2015.

[22] Stuart Jeffries and Nancy Groves, “Hans Ulrich Obrist: the art of curation.”

[23] Heidi Bickis, “Chapter 1 New and Late Encounters: An Introduction.” Rereading Jean-François Lyotard Essays on His Later Works. Surrey: Ashgat Publishing Ltd. eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost), Web accessed Mar. 22, 2015.

[24] Dr. Yuk Hui, “30 Years After Les Immatériaux, Art, Science & Theory Symposium.” Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana Universität, Lüneburg, 21-22 May, 2014. Digital event advertisement. Web, accessed 22 Mar. 2015. <http://digitalmilieu.net/?page_id=607.>

[25] Jean-François Lyotard, “Les Immatériaux.” In Thinking About Exhibtions. Ed. Greenberg, Ferguson, and Nairne. London: Routledge, 1996. Annotation by Lesley Martin (Theories of Media, Winter 2003).

[26] Jean François Lyotard, Thierry Chaput, “Les Immatériaux Grande Galerie – 5e Étage Centre Georges Pompidou – Conférence de presse Mardi 8 Janvier 1985, Une Manifestation pas commes les autres Les Immatériaux, qu’est-ce que c’est?” Afficher en ligne en PDF (1). Centre Pompidou. Web Accessed 23 March 2015. <http://www.centrepompidou.fr>.

[27] Jean François Lyotard, Theirry Chaput, “Les Immatériaux Grand Galerie” (1).

[28] Ibid.

[29] “Les Immatériaux: Epreuves d’écriture/Album et inventaire),” 6.

[30] Jorg Heiser, “Sight Reading, Do philosophers understand contemporary art?” Frieze Magazine. Issue 125, Sept. 2009. Web (accessed 22 Mar. 2015). <http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/sight_reading/.>

[31] “Les Immatériaux: Epreuves d’écriture/Album et inventaire)”

[32] “Les Immatériaux: Epreuves d’écriture/Album et inventaire)”

[33] Jean-François Lyotard, “Conférence de Presse Mardi 8 Janvier 1985.” Press release, Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris: 1985. 1. Web accessed Feb. 14, 2015. < http://monoskop.org/images/a/a1/Les_Immateriaux_press_release_conference.pdf>.

[34] Jean-François Lyotard by Bernard Blistène, “A conversation with Jean-François Lyotard and Bernard Blistène.” Flash Art, no. 121 (March, 1985), 32-39. Web accessed (Jan. 21, 2015). <http://www.art-agenda.com/reviews/les-immateriaux-a-conversation-with-jean-francois-lyotard-and-bernard-blistene/>.

[35] “Turbine Hall,” Tate. The Tate Modern Museum, London. Web accessed Mar. 31, 2015. < http://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern/turbine-hall>.

[36] Olafur Eliasson, “Artist Talk: Olafur Eliasson in conversation with Dominic Willsdon.” Tate. The Tate Modern, London, England Dec. 18, 20014. Web accessed Feb. 01, 2015. <http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/artist-talk-olafur-eliasson>.

[37] “The Weather Project, 2003.” Olafur Eliasson Archives. Web accessed Mar. 29, 2015. <olafureliasson.net/archive/artwork/WEK101003/the-weather-project.>

[38] Olafur Eliasson, “Artist Talk: Olafur Eliasson in conversation with Dominic Willsdon.”

[39] “The Unilever Series: Olafur Eliasson, The Weather Project. About the installation.” Tate. The Tate Modern, London, England. Web accessed Feb. 01, 2015. < http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/exhibition/unilever-series-olafur-eliasson-weather-project/olafur-eliasson-weather-project>.

[40] Olafur Eliasson, “Artist Talk: Olafur Eliasson in conversation with Dominic Willsdon.”

[41] Olafur Eliasson, “Artist Talk: Olafur Eliasson in conversation with Dominic Willsdon.”

[42] Andreas Spiegl, “Olafur Eliasson Non-Trueness as the Nature of Theatre.” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry, Is. 2 (2000): 97-105. Web accessed Feb. 21, 2015. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/20711408.>

[43] Olafur Eliasson, “Artist Talk: Olafur Eliasson in conversation with Dominic Willsdon.”

[44] Olafur Eliasson, “Artist Talk: Olafur Eliasson in conversation with Dominic Willsdon.”

[45] Ibid.

[46] Roxana Marcoci and Claudia Schmuckli, “Olafur Eliasson: Seeing Yourself Sensing.” MoMA, Vol. 4, No. 7 (Sep., 2001), 10-11. The Museum of Modern Art. Web, accessed Feb. 21, 2015. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4420615>.

[47] Olafur Eliasson, “Artist Talk: Olafur Eliasson in conversation with Dominic Willsdon.”

[48] Roxana Marcoci and Claudia Schmuckli, 10.

[49] Ibid.

[50] Olafur Eliasson, “Artist Talk: Olafur Eliasson in conversation with Dominic Willsdon.”

[51] Longinus, On the Sublime, in Critical Theory since Plato, ed. Hazard Adams (New York, 1971). 97. Cited by Steven Z. Levine, “Seascapes of the Sublime: Vernet, Monet, and the Oceanic Feeling.” New Literary History, Vol. 16, No. 2, The Sublime and the Beautiful: Reconsiderations (Winter, 1985), 377-400. The Johns Hopkins University press. Web, accessed Mar. 4, 2015. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/468752>.

[52] Longinus, On the Sublime.

[53] Terrence Des Pres, “Terror and the Sublime” – Human Rights Quarterly (136) quoting Longinus, Longinus, “On the Sublime,” in Criticism: The Major Texts, ed. Walter Jackson Bate (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), 59-75.

[54] Edmund Burke, “Section VII. Exercise Necessary For the Finger Organs,” A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful in, The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. Vol, 1. (London, 1757). Ebook, 2005. Web accessed, Apr. 1, 2015. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15043/15043-h/15043-h.htm>.

[55] Edmund Burke, “Section VII,” A Philosophical Inquiry.

[56] Immanuel Kant, trans. J.H. Bernard. “Of the Dynamically Sublime in Nature: Of Nature regarded as Might,” Critique of Judgement. (1790). 2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1914. 83.

[57] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J. H. Bernard, in Hazard Adams, Critical theory since Plato, (New York: Harcourt Brace Janovich, 1971), 396.

[58] Stuart Sim, “Chapter 8 – Art and Artists” Jean-François Lyotard. (Hertfordshire: Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1996), 107.

[59] Paul Crowther, The Kantian Sublime, From Morality to Art. “The Mathematical Sublime.” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 85.

[60] Steven Z. Levine, “Seascapes of the Sublime: Vernet, Monet, and the Oceanic Feeling.” New Literary History, Vol. 16, No. 2, The Sublime and the Beautiful: Reconsiderations (Winter, 1985), 383, 387. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Web, accessed Mar. 4, 2015. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/468752>.

[61] Jean-François Lyotard, “Preface.”Ecrits sur l’art contemporain et les artistes, Textes disperses I: Esthéthique et théorie de l’art. (Paris: Leuven University Press, 2012), 22.

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[63] Steven Z. Levine, “Seascapes of the Sublime,” 392.

[64] Norman Bryson, “Enhancement and Displacement in Turner.” Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 1, Narrative Art Issue (Winter, 1986). 47-65. Web accessed, Mar. 4, 2015. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3817191>.

[65] Norman Bryson, “Enhancement,” 50.

[66] Ibid, 63.

[67] Ibdid, 60.

[68] Terrence Des Pres, “Terror and the Sublime.” Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2 (May, 1983), 135-146. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Web accessed, Mar. 4, 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/762250>.

[69] Anna Madeleine, “Artist James Turrell: I can make the sky any colour you choose.” The Guardian, Dec. 15, 2014. Web accessed, Apr. 1, 2015. <http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/16/artist-james-turrell-retrospective-interview>.

[70] Michael Govan, “James Turrell.” Interview Magazine, 2013. Web, accessed Apr. 2, 2015. <http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/james-turrell/>.

[71] Michael Govan, “James Turrell.”

[72] Roberta Smith, “New Light Fixture for a Famous Rotunda.” The New York Times, June 20, 2013. Web accessed, Apr. 2, 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/arts/design/james-turrell-plays-with-color-at-the-guggenheim.html>.

[73] “James Turrell June 21-September 25, 2013.” The Guggenheim Museum, New York. Guggenheim.org, Web accessed, Apr. 1, 2015. <http://web.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/turrell/>.

[74] Roberta Smith, “New Light Fixture for a Famous Rotunda.”

[75] “James Turrell June 21-September 25, 2013.”

[76] Michael Govan, “James Turrell.”

[77] Ibid.

[78] Anna Madeleine, “Artist James Turrell.”

[79] Michael Govan, “James Turrell.”

[80] “Koan Zen Buddhism.” Encyclopædia Britannica. July 27, 2014. Web accessed, Apr. 3, 2015. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/320734/koan>.

[81] Martin Gayford, “Enlightened Spaces, Review.” MIT Technology Review, (May/June, 2014). Web accessed, Apr. 1, 2015. <http://www.technologyreview.com/review/526566/enlightened-spaces/>.

[82] Anna Madeleine, “Artist James Turrell.”

[83] Ibid.

[84] Michael Govan, “James Turrell.”

[85] Terrence Des Pres, “Terror and the Sublime,” 146.

[86] Steven Z. Levine, “Seascapes of the Sublime,” 392.

[87] Martin Gayford, “Enlightened Spaces, Review.”

[88] Donna Tartt, The Secret History. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York: 1992. Print, 40.

[89] William Vaughan, Friedrich. New York, London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2004. Print. 256-257.

[90] William Vaughan, Friedrich. 258.

[91] Heinrich von Kleist as quoted in The Paintings that Revolutionized Art. Munich: Prestel, 2013. Print. 163.

[92] Heinrich von Kleist, 163.

[93] Caspar David Friedrich as quoted by Linda Siegel in Caspar David Friedrich and the Age of German Romanticism. Branden Press, Inc., 1978. Print. 11.

[94] William Vaughan. “Childhood and Student Years,” 19.

[95] Caspar David Friedrich as quoted by Linda Siegel in “Synaesthesia and the Paintings of Caspar David Friedrich.” Art Journal, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Spring, 1974), 200. College Art Association, 1974. Web accessed Apr. 14, 2015. <www.jstor.org/stable/775782>.

[96] Linda Siegel, “Synaesthesia,” 200.

[97] Ibid.

[98] Robert Rosenblum, 1969 quoted by Wessel Stoker in “The Rothko Chapel Paintings and the ‘Urgency of the Transcendent Experience.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Oct., 2008) 89-102. Springer, 2008. Web accessed, Apr. 14, 2015. <www.jstor.org/stable/40270217>.

[99] Linda Siegel, “Synaesthesia,” 199.

[100] Linda Siegel, “Synaesthesia,” 199.

[101] Bill Viola, Bill Viola: Going Forth By Day. New York, Guggenheim Museum, 2003. Print.

[102] Bill Viola, “Going Forth By Day, Interview with John G. Hanhardt.” Bill Viola: Going Forth By Day. New York, Guggenheim Museum, 2003. Print. 90.

[103] Bill Viola, “Going Forth By Day, Interview with John G. Hanhardt.”

[104] David A. Ross and Peter Sellars, “The Crossing – video/sound installation (1996).” Bill Viola Curated by David A. Ross and Peter Sellars. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York: 1997. Print. 127.

[105] Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice.” Harper’s Magazine, Dec. 1920. Web accessed, Apr. 20, 2015. <http://www.bartleby.com/155/2.html>.

[106] Bill Viola, “Conversation, Lewis Hyde and Bill Viola March 5, 1997.” Bill Viola Curated by David A. Ross and Peter Sellars. New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1997. Print. 143.

[107] Ibid.

[108] Ibid.

[109] Stuart Sim, Jean-François Lyotard. 108.

[110] Alan Ball, American Beauty. DreamWorks Pictures, 1999.

[111] Linda Siegel, 15.

[112] Bill Viola, “Going Forth By Day,” 97.

[113] Dogen Zenji as quoted by Bill Viola in Bill Viola: Going Forth By Day. New York, Guggenheim Museum, 2003. Print. 97.

[114] Jean-François Lyotard as quoted by Marcus A. Doel in Poststructuralist Geographies: The Diabolical Art of Spatial Science. Rowman & Littlefield, New York: 1999. Print. 75.

[115] Tara McDowell, Les Immatériaux.

[116] Anthony Lack, “Martin Heidegger on Technology, Ecology, and the Arts.” New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Print. 4.

[117] Tara McDowell, Les Immatériaux.

[118] Tara McDowell, Les Immatériaux.