Modernism: Heidegger's

The Origin of the Work of Art

Michael Lazarin, Ph. D.

Somehow I too must find a way of making things;

not plastic, written things, but realities that arise
from the craft itself. Somehow I too must discover the
smallest constituent element, the cell of my art,
the tangible immaterial means of
expressing everything.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Lou Andreas-Salome, August 10, 1903

Three Schools of Literary/Art Criticism

According to Western critical theory, artistic production is a matter
of (a) artists creating (b) artworks for an (c) audience, Consequently,
there are three main schools of critical theory, each emphasizing one of
the three elements above and tending to understand the other two from
the point of view of the first: Classicism, Romanticism and Modernism.
Based on the Poetics of Aristotle, Classicism, and later Neoclassicism,
appears to emphasize the form of the work of art since so much attention
is given to orderly, harmonious, logical plots, characters and figures of
speech. However, these are merely matters of technique. The excellent
work of art is judged by what kind of effect it has on the audience because
in such matters the final cause always has preeminence. The three
goals of the poetic arts are: (a) entertainment, (b) moral education
and most important (c) catharsis. Concerning entertainment, the main
effect should be a relaxation of strife so as to produce a more convivial

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social order. It is also useful for luring youth to study ever more difficult
works. The aim of moral education in effecting a positive social order
is obvious. Virtuous and vicious character types are presented so as to
educate the public about the consequences of certain kinds of actions.
According to Aristotle, in the best literary works, everything is to be
arranged-even if it is necessary to break orderly arrangements of plot
and character development-to produce a catharsis in the audience. Ca-
tharsis is difficult to define, but in general, it means some kind of mental
purification leading to transcendence of ordinary consciousness. Thus,
the purpose of literary or art criticism is to promote or censor artworks
according to whether or not they promote desirable social behavior.
Classicism dominated Western culture for nearly 2200 years until the
late 18 th century. Romanticism rejected the classical ideals of order,
harmony and logic concerning the work of art, but it retained the goals
of catharsis, purification and transcendence. A new aesthetic vocabulary
was developed to distinguish the feelings of pleasure produced by the
classibal ideals (beauty) and the discomfort, sometimes horror, produced
by the goal of transcendence (sublime). For Romantics, the artist is an
original genius, which derives from Latin genius, a household guardian
deity. Later genius came to mean a divinely inspired person, and finally
(1649) a person with transcendent creative talents. Early Romantics, e. g.
Wordsworth and Coleridge in the preface to Lyrical Ballads, argue
the goal of the artist is to communicate an experience of the sublime
softened by the pleasurable accessories of the beautiful. For later Roman-
tics, e. g. Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, the goal was not so much
to communicate an experience of the sublime through artworks, but rather
to inspire the audience to become themselves artists. Rather than passive
recipients, the audience should become active artists.
Modern art questions the model of production upon which both
Classicism and Romanticism are based. According to the Classical (and
Romantic) definition, art is an imitation (mimesis) of nature, but Moder-
nism believes that artworks must be realities, not imitations. As Gertrude
Stein (10) writes in her portrait of Pablo Picasso, "In the nineteenth
century painters discovered lhe need of always having a model in front
of them, in the twentieth century they discovered that they must never
look at a model." Rather than a re-presentation of reality, the artwork
itself must be a reality in its own right. Therefore, the artwork itself
gains a central role. It is not so much an essence (what is conveyed by
artists to audiences) but rather the exisience (how artworks allow us to
live in the world poetically) of art that is important.
In striving to create realities rather than imitations of reality, artists
began to present their creations in different ways. Stein (14) writes,

... the framing of life, the need that a picture exist m its frame,
remain in it's frame was over. A picture remaining in its frame was
a thing that always had existed and now pictures commenced to want
to leave their frames ...

Here, "frame" means not only the literal picture frame but also the
conceptual framework in which the artwork was regarded by society.
Modernism rejects the productive model of artist-artwork-audience. Such
a model is essentially a way of technological thinking. As such, it is
mainly a way of "framing" things, of keeping things under control. In
order for art to be an experience of transcendence, the "frameworks" of
art must be broken.

The Hermeneutic Circle

Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation. Traditionally, her me-
neuitcs established orthodox interpretations of the Bible in order to settle
disputes between the various schools of the early church. An important
feature of protestant Christianity is that individuals should develop their
own, personal interpretations of the Bible. This, of course, led to an
explosion of interpretations that challenged the very notion of orthodoxy
and shook the foundations of interpretation theory.
In the 19 th century, scholars of hermeneutics such as Friedrich
Schleiermacher (1768-1834) and Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) argued that

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all interpretation is circular. 5chleiermacher argued that in order to
understand any part of a text, the whole text must be understood; but
in order to understand the whole, the parts must be understood. This
paradox was applied to other fields, including linguistics, history and
literary criticism For example, in order to define a word, other words
must be used; however, in order to define these other words, the original
word will be used. In history, to understand a particular document, e. g.,
the Declaration of Independence, the historical period must be studied;
however, the historical period is known only from documents of the period.
A similar case can be made when we try to understand a work of literature
or art.
From the late 19 th century to the 196Cs, Formalism (Clive Bell, Clement
Green) and New Criticism (I. A. Richards, John Crowe Ransom, Allen
Tate, R.P.Blackmur, Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, T.S.Eliot,
and William Empson) dominated Anglo-American art and literary criticism
respectively. To avoid the hermeneutic circle, both argued that artworks
should be interpreted only by internal formal elements; external elements
such as the intention of the painter or author, the impression on the
audience and the historical context should be disregarded.
In the 1980s and 90s, New Historicism (Steven Greenblatt, Michel
Foucault) reacted against extreme formalism and attempted to consider
external elements but only if they are seen as textual. That is, external
elements such as historical context or the life of the author help us
understand a work of literature, but-following the insights of Formalism
and New Criticism-the external elements are to be understood as the
same form as the literary texts_ In other words, knowing something
about the career of Faulkner helps us understand a novel, but we never
have Faulkner the man. We must understand that we only have texts
written by or about Faulkner.
The main proponents of German hermeneutics, following Schleier-
macher and Dilthey, are Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Hans-Georg
Gadamer (1900-2002). Both accept that hermeneutics is circular, but they
deny that the circle is vicious_ One approaches experiences with expec-
tations that are constantly modified by the experience. If one can get
into the hermeneutic circle in the right way, expectations will become
more accurate and interpretations can be validated.
In The Origin of the Work of Art (1935), Heidegger ventures to
enter the hermeneutic circle of literary and art criticism by posing a
thought experiment that runs roughly as follows: What is an artwork?
Something made by artists. What are artists? People who make artworks.
Thus, a circle. And, it should be remarked that this series of questions
is mainly posed by the audience lest we think Heidegger has ignored the
third term of the traditional framework of art production.
In order to escape the circle, we have to know what art is. This will
allow us to decide who is an artist, what is an artwork and who ex-
periences such things. But the essence of art derives from artists, artworks
and audiences: Art is something that happens when artists, artworks and
audiences come together. Thus an even wider and more difficult circle
with art on the one side and the elements of art on the other.
Heidegger argues that, in fact, everyone does have a general idea of
what art, artworks and artists are, but it is difficult to define precisely.
It is easier to say what they are not. They are not the stones, fields and
trees of the natural landscape. Neither are they the ordinary things made
by humans such as shoes and desks, that is, what may be generally called
equipment. From this ordinary understanding, Heidegger argues that the
difference does not distinguish three regions of being but rather defines
a hierarchy, where equipment plays a central role. The things of nature
are on the bottom rung as a storehouse of materials waiting to perfected
as equipment. Artworks occupy the highest rung as equipment with some
special added value.
The whole range of beings from stones to statues are really con-
ceptualized as elements of a technological framework. Furthermore, this
framework does not aim simply, or even mainly, at efficiency: coherent
structures of connectedness of "in-order-to" structures. Instead, the real
measure employed by technological thinking is "reliability." Shoes work
best when they don't pinch; indeed, when we do not notice them at lall.

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This flies in the face of our normal experience of artworks: surprise and
awe. He realizes this by examining a painting of peasant shoes by Vincent
van Gogh.
The painting reveals that the essential worth of the peasant shoes is
reliability. The painting also reveals the world of the peasant and makes
us aware of how different this world is from our own or that of a
ballerina. In short, the painting reveals reliability in, a way that we do
not usually come upon reliability. Finally, the painting reveals that
efficiency and reliability cannot be the last word about the fields these
shoes trod, the shoes themselves and van Gogh's artistic expression of
this world.

Heideggerian Poetics
For Heidegger, poetics is not merely a matter of literary studies. He
traces the word back to its Greek root (poiesis) which means making in
general: production. In Heidegger's worldview, production is the essential
way of Being-in-the-world of Weste.In man. In a golden age, this was
realized as a flowering of the arts; in the modern age, production has
become mechanical reproduction of equipment that lacks authentic value.
It is a theme that can be found as early as Being and Time but which
he focused on explicitly in the post-war years as a "critique of technology."
During this period, he wonders whether the nihilistic tendencies of
the present age are rooted in the beginning of science (Greek geometry)
or the industrial revolution. In either event, thought itself cannot think
its way out of the modern predicament. Only through a dialogue with
artists can Western culture liberate itself from the frameworks within
which it has imprisoned itself.
When Heidegger looks at Van Gogh's painting of a peasant woman's
old shoes, the painting shows him the world of the peasant woman. Not
only the shoes, but the working in the fields, the evening rest after the
shoes are removed, etc. He says that he does not know this world before
looking at the painting. The artwork is not a representation of images
I already have; it is the production of new images. The artwork shows
the truth of something in the context of its world. The artwork:

sets to work the truth of the thing

brings the thing into the light of Being
lets the Being of the thing shine steadily (Origin, 36)

Art sets truth to work; it is not mainly about beauty or the sublime.
Heidegger asks if this association of art and truth is a revival of the
classical definition of art as an imitation of nature, where imitation means
aedequatio, homoiosis (correspondence of idea and thing). However, he
denies that art is an imitation, representation or reproduction of anything
already existing.

The artwork opens up in its own way the Being of beings. This
opening up, i. e., deconcealing, the truth of beings happens in the
work .... Art is truth setting itself to work .... What is this setting-
itself-to-work?" (Origin, 39)

The way to what is at work in the artwork can be found neither in

the artist nor in the audience. In great art, the artist releases the artwork
to exist by itself. In terms of the audience, the typical experience of art
today is no experience at all. To place artworks in museums or libraries.
destroys them. Even if left in their original setting, they cannot be
experienced due to the nihilism of the present day. For Heidegger, in
the age of nihilism, there is no art at all. The search for the "origin of
the work of art" is also a search to recover art, to re-establish art, to
restore the original power of art.
The Van Gogh painting of shoes was chosen to deconstruct the
classical definition: art is an imitation of nature. Heidegger showed that
the painting is not a picture of shoes but rather a revelation of the world
of the peasant woman.: the fields and sky, sun and rain, labor and rest,
etc. Next, Heidegger chooses a non-representational work from a world
that is completely forgotten: the temple at Paestum.

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 Artworks are typically "set-up" in museums in order to display them
to a public. In the history of Western museum curation, two purposes of
display have been proposed. One purpose is the preservation of national
symbols. For this purpose, museums collect and commission portraits or
statues of leaders, paintings of victory, the beauty of the national lands-
cape, the magnitude of national architecture, etc. The second purpose is
conservation of works so that they may be available as models for future
artists and the education of the public. In short, artworks are set up in
museums in order to save the past. On the other hand, when an artwork
is originally "set-up," for example the temple at Paestum, the purpose
is to initiate, to open up a new world. Heidegger describes three aspects
of initiation:

consecration-the holy is opened up and the god invoked

measure-the artwork defines practices
force-the artwork gives power to a world created by the artwork
(Origin, 44)

Because the temple has been built, humans may gather at this place
under the protection of the god. Market places and dwellings will also
be constructed to provide for this gathering. Out of this will come a vital
community with the power to sustain itself.
The WQrld is neither the totality of things nor the structure of things.
Heidegger says, "the world worlds." The world is an activity of decisions
and involvements, setting the pace of time and the horizon of space. The
world is the "Open," a free place in which events can happel'l. The
world is possibility and power. "The work as work sets up a world." The
work also "sets forth the earth."
In the production of equipment, a form is imposed on matter. If
the production process is successful, the matter disappears into the use-
fulness of the equipment_ On the other hand, in the artwork, the matter
is "set-forth" as something special to be seen. In a technical manual,
language is neutralized and disappears; in a novel, language (diction and
syntax) stands out. In the temple, the stone is carefully selected and
arranged to provide an impressive and delightful image. But, at the same
time, the luminous surface of the stone makes us attentive to the shining
sun; the massiveness of the stone makes us aware of the strength of the
ground to bear such a weight. The great artwork not only draws our
attention to it but also arouses our sensitivity to the material environment.
This making matter important is allowing matter to enter the "Open"
as "Earth."

The setting up of a world and the setting forth of earth are two
essential features in the work-being of the work. They belong
together, however, in the unity of work-being. This is the unity we
seek when we ponder the self-subsistence of the work and try to
express in words this closed, unitary repose of self-support. (Origin,
48)

However, this unity is not the repose of balanced elements of the

classical ideal. The relation of World and Earth is Striving (Streit) as
constant Agitation (Bewegtheit) in the artwork because World is the
self-opening and Earth is the self-secluding. The story is always struggling
with language; the figure with the stone, the dance with the body.
Though Heidegger does not say this openly, it is possible to see his
concept of the work (ergan) as the kind of conflict (agan) that occurs
in a drama. Heidegger's discussion of the work contains many of the
elements of dramatic action. The work "instigates" the striving conflict
between World and Earth like the "exciting force" sets the action of the
plot in motion. In the great work of art, the striving comes to an
extremity of complication, a "climax" of the striving, where each side
(World and Earth) grasp the other in ultimate battle. There is a kind of
"discovery" in which World reveals mere matter as Earth, and Earth
allows the elements of the work to appear as a World. There is also a
moment of "peripety" in which the World is brought back to its foun-
dations and not allowed to escape into a self· defined, self-sufficient fantasy

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world. Also, the Earth is forced to show itself in its power. In average,
everyday life, language secludes and hides itself in "idle talk," but in a
poem or novel the power is forced out into the open by the world of the
artwork.
The difference between the typical drama and the struggle of World
and Earth in the work of art is that neither decisively triumphs over the
other in a great work of art. The "denouement" of the striving of World
and Earth in the work appear is mutual support in their opposition to
one another. The support for this opposition derives from the activity
of artists and the audience. Recall that the Anglo-American school of
modernism attempts to avoid the problems posed by the hermeneutical
circle by excluding the role of the artist and audience. On the other hand,
Heidegger accepts the circularity as a necessary condition for thinking
seriously about artworks. He has entered the circle by bracketing the
question of the role of the artist and audience, that is, by focusing on the
artwork. But this is not to deny that the artist and andience have nothing
to do with the process of truth coming to be in the artwork.
In the concluding section of The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger
considers the role of the artist and audience, but he rejects the traditional
understanding of these two which is based on a technological framing of
the world. From this point of view, poetics in the broadest sense is
primarily a matter of making: using natural resources to make equipment
or artworks. Certainly, the mastery of materials has some importance in
this matter, but since the artwork is essentially concerned with the
happening of truth, it is not making but rather knowing which is primary.
This results in a reversal of the usual order of dependency in the relation
of artists, artwork and audience.
The artist "brings forth" the artwork by maintaining the harmonic
opposition of World and Earth. If we watch a film of a modern artist,
for example Pablo Picasso or Jackson Pollack, it is clear that they do
not have some fixed Image toward which they are working. Each artistic
gesture resolves some tension between line, color field and empty canvas,
and at the same time, poses a new tension. Paul Klee described his artistic
activity as "taking a line for a walk." Even in the case of Renaissance
masters, where the final product seems to be a matter of transferring a
design to canvas, wood or plaster, the variety of sketches that precede
such works show that playful interaction between artist and work is im-
portant. The activity of the artist brings forth a Riss (rift), which may
be expressed by the English word "cleave," which means both to cut and
to join. These contradictory meanings can also be found in the Japanese
word "en" (~), which means both edge and connection, and interestingly
fate or destiny, denoting some special connection between two elements
while maintaining their distinctness.

The conflict is not a rift (Riss) as a mere cleft is ripped open; rather
it is the intimacy with which opponents belong to each other. This
rift carries the opponents into the sour~e of their unity by virtue of
their common ground .... it brings the opposition of measure and
boundary into their common outline. (Origin, 63)

In "Poetically Man Dwells" (1951), Heidegger argues that poetic

activity is taking a measure of the fundamental poles of human experience,
the Fourfold (earth, sky, divinity and mortality). Poetic measuring does
not capture the interval between two points; such a determination is the
goal of technological thinking: measure as framework (Gestell). Rather,
poetic activity stretches out the differences and blurs the boundaries.
The argument of "Poetically Man Dwells" is based on some lines
from a late poem by Friederich H5lderlin (1770-1843), In LovelY Blueness.
Early in his career, at the time he was struggling to write the never
completed drama, "The Death of Empedocles," H5lderlin rejects the
possibility of synthesis between nature and art, mortals and divinities, the
finite and infinite. In "Procedures of the Poetic Spirit," he writes,

Place yourself, by free choice, in harmonic opposition with an extreme

sphere, so as you are in yourself, by nature, in harmonic opposition
(harmonischer Entgegensetzung), though in an unknowable way

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 (unerkennbarewiese), so you remain in yourself." (H5Iderlin, 671)

As perceptive, noetic beings, humans span toward and come near the
measure, but human logos, explanation, logic fails to grasp the measure
because the measure is fleeting, never fixed. The measure is an harmonic
opposition which lasts for a moment, then vanishes. Poets have the power
to intensify the harmony and thereby retain its mystery in poetic language.
Imagination is the human faculty that combines the heterogeneous.
In this case, the imagination combines the familiar and the alien, the
knowable (measuring as noein) and the unknowable (the measure as
legein). Poetic imagination is a matter of making decisions about the
harmonic balance of World and Earth such that it can unfold as a basis
of cultural life while remaining itself baseless. "Every decision, however,
bases itself on something not mastered, something concealed, confusing,
else it would never be a decision". (Origin, 55)
The artist is forever playing with possible harmonies of World and
Earth, pushing the opposition of World and Earth to ever greater extremes.
For a work of art to find repose depends on the audience preserving the
work of art. This repose does not mean a final resting place in museums
and tourist sites. To be so archived is the death of the artwork. To be
framed as Exhibit 63A, comprehended by a three minute "walking guide"
explanation, is to shift the work from imagination to memory, from
noetic perception to logo centric memorandum.

Just as a work ... is essentially in need of creators, so what is created

cannot itself come into being without those who preserve it.
Preserving the work, as knowing, is a sober standing within the ex-
traordinary awesomeness of the truth that is happening in the
work. . .. Yet knowing does not consist in mere information and
notions about something. He who truly knows what is, knows what
he wills to do in the midst of what is. (Origin, 66-68)

Art is one way of setting truth to work. It is a way of truth that

sets up a world and sets forth the earth; it decides upon a gestalt and
thrusts it forward into existence, it moves a people to ecstasy and en-
courages them to preserve the truth of the artwork.
By preserving the work of art in its truth, the audience founds the
possibility of the truth of the culture. When artworks becomes emblems
of state power, educational excursions for school students, resources for
practicing artists, the culture begins to lose its foundations and so ceases
to be a culture.
Heidegger argues that the founding function of preservation has three
modes: (a) bestowing, (b) grounding and (c) beginning. As bestowing-
preserving genuine art is not a development or progress based on the past.
It is always "unfamiliar" and "extraordinary." As grounding-preserving
genuine art never happens for no reason and with no purpose. It already
calls to a people to gather in its openness. Art demands that the people
preserve it. As beginning-preserving genuine art already contains its end
in its beginning. The beginning is the first of a series which leads in
an unknown direction from the point of view of the beginning. The
beginning as origin is at the same time the first as the leader, the judge.
Art not only opens up and grounds, it also provides a measure to judge
and resolve the strife of truth in the artworks.
In this essay, Heidegger reverses the usual order of dependency in
the artist, artwork, audience structure. The artist depends on the truth
happening in the artwork to enliven his/her imagination. That works
remain vital depends on the way the audience preserves them. In "Poeti-
cally Man Dwells," the reverse seems to be the case. In order for there
to be a culture that genuinely appreciates art, there must first be artists
that challenge the public. Of course, as a modernist, the artwork itself
always retains a primary role for Heidegger. Nevertheless, Heidegger's
inability to fully comprehend his own modernism and dispense with the
technological framework of artists making artworks for audiences may be
a result of his failure to fully consider the artworks of his own time.
Though he praises the modern work of the Basque sculptor Eduardo
Chillida (1924-2002), who illustrated Heidegger's Art and Space (1969),

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for the most part his examples come from 19~b century poetry and pain-
ting.

Modernism and Anti-Art

At the end of the 19 tb century, the highest achievements of Western

culture: the representational painting, the symphony and the novel were
challenged by technological inventions: the camera, the phonograph and
the movie, respectively. Such challenges motivated artists, musicians and
writers to search for new foundations of their works since the new in-
struments of mechanical reproduction seemed insuperable in accomplishing
the goal of imitating nature. There followed a fundamental questioning
of the "equipment-character" of works of art and the role of artworks
as elite expressions of "so-called" high culture.
One important development in this search for a new reality for art-
works was the discovery of works already existing in modern culture.
Marcel Duchamp (French/American, 1887-1968) introduced the idea of
"ready made" art (like ready-made clothes) by selecting mass-produced
objects and sending them to art galleries or museums (c£. Illustrations
i-vi.). In 1913, he affixed a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool. Two years
later, he bought a snow shovel upon which he wrote "in advance of a
broken arm." He explained the development of this idea in the lecture
"Apropos of 'Readymades'," at the Museum of Modern Art in October,
1961:

A point which I want very much to establish is that the choice of

these "readymades" was never dictated by esthetic delectation. This
choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with at the same
time a total absence of good or bad taste ... in fact a complete ane-
sthesia. (Salt Seller, 141-142)

In order to create a work of art for the modern age, it was first
necessary to demolish the elite status of archival art. This was most
notoriously accomplished when Duchamp signed an ordinary urinal with
the name R.Mutt and submitted it to a trendy gallery as "Fountain" in
New York. Even the avant garde was outraged by this gesture. According
to Walter Benjamin, the aim of the readymades and other similar acti-
vities of the Dadaists "was a relentless destruction of the aura of their
creations," (Benjamin 237-238) that is, to destroy the elite status of the
work of art and the position of the artist in society.
However, the readymades were not simply a nihilistic rejection of
art. Duchamp intended to produce artworks, but ones which were more a
"bringing-forth" of potential conflicts of World and Earth than a "making"
of refined equipment. He also wanted the works to appeal to the ima-
gination more than the eye. Many of the readmades include a verbal
expression. Thus, they are not completely readymade. There is still
a role for the artist beside "bringing-forth" the artwork for the public
view. There is also poetic "measuring" in the sense of expanding the
possible meanings of an ordinary object or assemblage of objects.

One important characteristic was the short sentence which I occa-

sionally inscribed on the "readymade". That sentence instead of
describing the object like a title was meant to carry the mind of the
spectator towards other regions more verbal. (Salt Seller, 141-142)

The added expressions were not so much "titles", that is, frameworks
by which the artwork can be identified as "a picture of x, y or z," but
a way to open up a thoughtful dialogue. Most visitors to a museum cruise
past the works as if they were sitting an exam to enter art school. They
look at the works in order as the curator has arranged them, appraising
them only long enough to make an identification, then checking to see
if there judgment was correct or not by glancing at the nameplate next
to the work.
In an interview with the art critic Pierre Cabanne, Duchamp says,
"Before Courbet, painting had other functions: it could be religious,
philosophical, moraL .. (but] our whole century is competlely retinal".
(Dialogues, 43). In Duchamp's view, since Gustave Courbet (1819-1877),

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art has been too interested in images for the eye and not enough in images
for the mind. Of course for Duchamp, art as provoking thought is always
based on some "thing," even if it is randomly chosen at a department
store. Nevertheless, his emphasis on art for the mind rather than the eye
set off several important movements in the 20 th century.
For example, John Cage (American composer, 1912-1992) wants us
to be able to find art in almost nothing at all. Cage's most notorious
work is 4'33" (first performed by David Tudor in 1953 at Woodstock,
NY), in which the pianist sits at the piano, lifts and closes the keyboard
lid twice, then leaves the stage. During the three intervals (while the
lid is closed), Tudor turned the pages of the score and measured the
intervals with a stopwatch (movement I: 30"; movement II: 2'23"; move-
ment III: 1'40"). Similar to the reception of Duchamp's "Fountain," ,the
audience was outraged by this performance, even though they were ex-
pecting an experimental composition.
One interpretation is that the total number of seconds is 273, and
minus 273 Celsius is Absolute Zero. While Absolute Zero in music would
be silence, Cage insists, "There is no such thing as silence. !::omething
is always happening that makes a sound." Cage wants the audience to
pay attention to the chance sounds in the auditorium and regard these
as music. For him, the work of art is essentially "attentive experience;"
there is no need for a prepared object or event, nor for someone to prepare
it. The truly modern artist finds art anywhere; it is available to the
audience everywhere. If we find it difficult in our modern mass-produced
age to find something that delights us in any venue at any time, then
maybe we will be more attentive to the lived environment and insist on
something more interesting. At least, this was the hope of the more radical
movements in modern art, music and literature. The signs of progress
are not promising.
For three months (March-May, 2006) iMomus exhibited his ordinary
life as Click Opera-My Life as a Living Sculpture at the Whitney Museum
Biennial in New York. This is perhaps the most avant garde exhibition
at a large venue in the United States, and one would expect the audience
to expect the unusual. On his first two attempts to speak to visitors in
the museum, he was arrested by museum guards. The solution was to
equip him with a security badge and a general annonncement stating,
"There's an artist doing an unreliable tour guide in the galleries; he's
part of the Biennial, it's okay, let him do it!" (iMomus)

Works Cited
Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
(1936), Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, New York: Schocken, 1968.
Cage, John. Silence. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1973.
Duchamp, Marcel. Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, interviewed by Pierre
Cab anne, tr. Ron Padgett, New York: Viking, 1971-
- - . Salt. Seller: The Essential Writings of Marcel Duchamp (Marchand du
Sel), eds. Michel Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson,- London: Thames and Hudson,
1975.
iMomus, Click Opara·My Life as a Life as a Living Sculpture, March 3, 2006.
www.livejournal.com/177166.html
Heidegger, Martin. "The Origin of the Work of Art", in Poety, Language,
Thought, tr. by Albert Hofstadter, New York: Harper Colophon, 1975.
- - . "Poetically man Dwells", in Poetry, Language, Thought, tr. by Albert
New York: Harper Colophon, 1975.
H6lderlin, Friederich. "Uber die Verfahrungsweise des poetischen Geistes" W erke
und Briefe, V. II, Frankfurt: Klosterman, 1988.
Rilke, Rainer Maria. "Letters on Cezanne," tr. Joel Agee, New York, North-
point Press, 2002.
Stein, Gertrude. Picasso (1938), New York: Dover Publications, 1984.

*-? - t: Literary Criticism, Art Criticism, Heidegger, Modernism

_ 62 - Modernism: Heidegger's The Origin of the Work of Art (Lazarin)

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