Analysis of Adrian Piper

Throughout the past week we have analyzed the philosophy of Adrian Piper in which she critiques how we view art and argues for the special status of performance art. She has an interesting background, being the first African American philosopher and on the other hand an accomplished artist which is miraculous. In addition she has received many awards, taught at multiple prestigious universities such as Harvard, Stanford, and Michigan and has traveled all around the world. However not to get off track, Wartenberg states that Piper makes her case with a familiar view of some modern works of art: that they seek to make the uniqueness of objects available to the general public as viewers. In addition she also argues that instead that the contemporary art world values artworks precisely for their uniqueness and that it is the aura that endows artworks with their distinct ontological character. Precisely she does give two major and key reasons why humans are drawn to art. In every art object there is some type of “uniqueness” in which she defines that the spatiotemporal location of the object divides each object from everything else. However are we truly drawn to art because of the uniqueness of the object or the aura? Truly the aura of an object attracts anyone for numerous moments of time but in general it is more of a combination of aura and “uniqueness”. For example “Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh truly is unique but the uniqueness is only a necessary quality that can define the painting and the aura lures viewers, attracting them to analyze the whole object. There is a specific type of “glow” within the aura of art that also distinguishes a piece from another piece of art. The painting “Starry Night” is evidently shadowed by darkness through the bleak tower that seems to dominate the painting but there is also life through the presence of light in the town, the stars in the sky and the lights in the town. Anyone who views this painting should be immediately drawn and moved but the presence of the aura in this painting because this object is just not a painting but a masterpiece. Piper also states that we are regularly blinded to the mystery of objects in daily life because we so often utilize them as tools or instruments for achieving, or for satisfying our needs and desires. Under these conditions, the objects in question are not seen as self-subsident entities to in their own right; rather, they are perceived and conceptualized through the lens of the final ends they are utilized for. Again she is also correct because many viewers within and outside of the art world do lack to properly locate the mystery of art, primarily due to an analysis that is not deep or in depth. Furthermore humans in most situations lack to view the bottom of the iceberg only perceiving the top, thus the mystery of the art object is never located. Therefore it is necessary to look beyond the art physical nature of the art object. Viewers should be questioning the meaning and asking, what truly is the mystery of this object and does it intertwine with the meaning?

Q:When Piper states that every object possesses a “spatiotemporal location” that will differentiate itself from others, is this true or does this statement reflect solely her personal views?