Author: Berthold Reiß, 2012.
The original text (in German) appears in the collected writings of Berthold Reiß – Antinomia. Gesammelte Schriften 1989-2019. Published by Monika Bayer-Wermuth and Daniela Stöppel (Kunstraum München, 2020).
Speech for the birthday of Ulrich Luhmann, 2012.
The title Antinomia recalls Kant's definition of "antinomy" as a contradiction (or mutual incompatibility) of two laws as much as possibly a record label or a disease. Giving a talk about art is, arguably, in equal parts necessary and impossible. It seems necessary to communicate an understanding of art to the general public. And it is precisely this generality that seems to be the background against which art as a construction appears as special at all. Likewise, however, both the foreground and its contrast speak against the speech as such. They present themselves as a perpetuating failure. The more often one turns and twists them, all the more that this foreground and this form become mere signs of impossibility. The talk of center knows what it wants to introduce: art as center, for example, in such a way that we can speak about it because we see it together, or in such a way that it can be both a presentation as well as an intuition [Vorstellung und Anschauung]. Likewise, the talk of form seems superfluous because of what it is about. The artist makes something new only when he makes something at all.
Ladies and gentlemen! I have now told you that I have nothing to say. However, I have been asked to speak by the man honored today. In order to comply with this request as with what has already been said, it seems to me best to follow the double condition of necessity and impossibility by presenting you with a speech which you may find inspiring and daunting in equal parts.
The task of conveying art to the general public and at the same time pointing out to the general public what art is in particular, seems to be most nearly accomplished, if not fulfilled, or at least grasped in outline, through the talk of the expressive or of expressionism. In the talk of expressionism this outline is not only described as a periphery, but rather, much more dynamically as the expansion of the center. From a distance, a contraction that leads back to the center now seems to be experienced as a reverse dynamic. Physics began to do justice to the structure of the world when it recognized expansion and contraction, repulsion and attraction as the forces that both generate and stabilize the solar system.
I have now, however, nothing to say of expressionistic art. After what was stated at the beginning, it is not in my power or every word forbids itself, which goes beyond speech. Rather, the talk about the expressive is necessary and impossible only if it is expressive itself.
Wilhelm Worringer completed his book Formprobleme der Gotik (Form Problems of the Gothic), as he writes in the preface, "in the field, February 1918." The second chapter is entitled: "Kunstwissenschaft als Menschheitspsychologie" (Art Study as Human Psychology*). In it, Worringer states that the "study of the artistic activity of man ... has not yet gone through that radical transformation and broadening that the study of the mental activity of man owes to Kant’s critique of knowledge. His important shifting of emphasis from the study of the objects known, to the study of the knowing itself, would correspond in the field of art study to a method which regards all artistic facts merely as the working out of definite a priori categories of artistic, or, more exactly, of general psychic sensibility, and to a method for which these psychical categories that determine style are the real problem of investigation." (Wilhelm Worringer, Formprobleme der Gotik, Munich 1920, p. 25) Worringer would certainly agree with the remark that Kant would consider "psychical categories that determine style"** to be messy and, if at all, analogous to it, would speak of schemata.
More important than this sketch is the picture that Worringer presents. For this picture is as necessary as it is impossible. Towards the end of the book are the following sentences: "For the Teutons,*** as we saw, are the conditio sine qua non of the Gothic. They introduced among self-confident peoples the germs of doubt of sense and of distraction of soul, out of which the transcendental pathos of the Gothic then shot up so mightily." (p. 147). In the Critique of Pure Reason, understanding and sensuality are so related to one another that transcendental logic does not break out of the binds of transcendental aesthetics. Every cognition is only possible in space and time. The more precise it is, the more it gives us nothing but appearance, that is: "doubt of sense." This doubt also applies to ourselves. Kant states that, "the form of this intuition lies at the basis beforehand in the mind; and this form determines, in the presentation of time, the way in which the manifold is [placed] together in the mind. And thus this power does not intuit itself as it would if it presented itself directly and self-actively; rather, it intuits itself according to the way in which it is affected from within, and hence intuits itself as it appears to itself, not as it is." (Kant, Werke, vol. 3, p. 93). It is therefore only an assertion: the conditio sine qua non or the subject of the Gothic are the Germanic people. This assertion is impossible as knowledge. Worringer also touches on what Kant calls the transcendental dialectic. Is there a world? Is there a soul? Is there freedom? Is there God? Reason can only answer yes and no to these questions. That is, if you will, a "distraction of soul." The "the germs of doubt of sense and of distraction of soul," that Worringer ascribes to the Germanic people is also attributed to Kantian critique of knowledge in his own text.
The topic of Kant and the Gothic (see in this volume p. 74ff.) this is admittedly not: folk ideology and enlightenment can also be confused at some point. Far more often, the opposites present themselves in this way as forms of expression whose necessity and impossibility seem to be interdependent.
I would like to conclude with a passage from the chapter "Die geheime Gotik der frühen nordischen Ornamentik" (The Latent Gothic of Early Nordern Ornament):
"We see that the northern ornament, despite its abstract linear character, sets free impressions of life, which our feeling of vitality, bound as it is to empathy, would impute immediately only to the organic world. So it would seem that this ornament [PI. VIII] unites the abstract character of primitive geometric ornament [PI. II] and the living character of Classical organically tinged ornament [PI. V, A]. Such is, however, not the case. It can by no means raise the claim of presenting a synthesis, a union, of these fundamental antitheses. It deserves, rather, only the name of a hybrid phenomenon. It is not a question here of a harmonious commingling of two opposing tendencies, but of an unclear and, to a certain degree, uncanny amalgamation of them, of drawing upon our power of empathy, which is bound to organic rhythm, for an abstract world foreign to it. Our organically tempered sense of vitality shrinks back before this senseless violence of expression as before a debauchery. But when finally, yielding to compulsion, it lets its energies flow into these lines, dead in themselves, it feels itself torn away in an unheard-of manner and raised to a frenzy of movement which far outstrips all possibilities of organic movement. The pathos of movement inherent in this vitalized geometry, a prelude to the vitalized mathematics of Gothic architecture forces our sensibility to an unnatural feat of strength. Once the natural bounds of organic motion are broken through, there is no stopping; again and again the line is broken, again and again checked in the natural direction of its movement, again and again violently prevented from running out quietly, again and again diverted to new complications of expression, so that, intensified through all these restraints, it yields its utmost of expressive power, until finally, robbed of all possibilities of natural satisfaction, it comes to an end in intricate contortions, or disconsolately breaks off in vacancy, or senselessly runs back into itself." (Form Problems of the Gothic, 47-8)
Worringer deals with "form problems'' of the Gothic. In the passage we read, these form problems emerge from the connection between abstraction and liveliness. This opposition corresponds to the opposition of Kant's Critique of Judgment: the opposition between the mechanical and the organic. The Critique of Pure Reason also speaks dialectically of freedom and conditionality. If the expressive gesture is borne like no other by the "thesis" that the world leaves room for "absolute spontaneity" (Kant, Werke, vol. 4, p. 428), then it challenges the "antithesis" that this beginning, like every beginning, is conditioned.
In contrast to Worringer's talk of an "unclear and, to a certain degree, uncanny amalgamation," Kant found our position in the midst of opposites downright delightful the moment he discovered it: "I tried quite seriously to prove propositions and their opposite, not in order to demonstrate a theory of doubt, but because I suspected an illusion of the understanding and wished to find out where it resided. The year [17]'69 brought me great light." (Karl Jaspers, Kant. Leben, Werk, Wirkung, München, 1975, p. 22)
Published and translated with the permission of the author. This text is part of an ongoing series on the writings of Berthold Reiß which porcile.org wishes to make accessible to a non-German speaking audience. The text is translated by porcile.org in exchange with Berthold Reiß, who is an artist that lives and works in Munich, Germany.
For the English equivalent of the quotes from Worringer’s book this translation refers to the authorized English translation of the third edition by Shapley-Rusk - Form Problems of the Gothic (G.E. Stechert & Co., New York, 1918).
For the English equivalent of the quotes of Kant this translation refers to Werner S. Pluhar’s translation of Critique of Pure Reason (Unified Edition) (Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis, 1996).
For the English equivalent for the Kant quote in Karl Jaspers book this translation refers to Ralf Manheim’s translation of Karl Jasper’s Kant (Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., New York, 1962) that is based on Kant: Drei Gründer des Philosophierens (Piper, München, 1957), where the quote also appears.
*While in the authorized translation the title of the chapter translates as Art Study of Human Psychology, in a contemporary and rather literal sense it would translate as Art History as Psychology of Humankind
**formbildende Kategorien der Seele would rather translate in contemporary language to form-constructing categories of the soul
***Worringer writes Germanen, which would translate in contemporary language to Germanic people
