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Justin Chen Brillo Box vs. Brillo box: Rethinking the Art/Reality Divide In the introduction to his book, Art in the Historical Present, Danto addresses one of the most influential works of modern art—Warhol�s Brillo Box—and poses some of the more immediate questions that might be associated with such a work. He repeatedly questions why Warhol�s boxes �were art and their counterparts merely cheap containers for scouring pads� (Danto, 288), and he eventually asserts that any profound distinction between the two objects must go far beyond their mere composition, �if the differences between reality and art must divide art from reality on a serious philosophical map� (Danto, 5). In this essay, I will argue that this conclusion is justified, and then call upon the art theories of certain influential philosophers in an attempt to clarify just what exactly might divide art from reality and make Warhol�s work truly distinguishable as art. It should not take too much discussion to show that what distinguishes Warhol�s Brillo Box from the scouring pad-cases found in a 1950s-era neighborhood supermarket—that is, what makes it art as opposed to reality—must be based on more than the just the superficial differences in construction or material. After all, Warhol could conceivably have chosen to make his artwork out of corrugated cardboard (like the commercially available box) rather than plywood—and even though he didn�t do so at the time, it certainly would not be difficult for someone else to go ahead and do so now. In other words, it seems faulty to argue that were Warhol�s box utterly indistinguishable from the �real thing,� it would no longer constitute �art�—to begin with, how does the viewer ever really have access to the material composition of the works of art that he or she observes in the museum? In the eyes of the average visitor to Warhol�s exhibit at the time, the boxes on display could very well have been actual Brillo boxes that Warhol had purchased and artfully arranged in a thought-provoking manner rather than ones that were carefully constructed from wood and painted to match the store-bought kind. To put it flippantly, the box�s material seems somehow immaterial. The issue quickly becomes more complex when the notion of a �serious philosophical map� is introduced. As Danto observes, the differences between art and reality are often difficult to describe or quantify, and have �concerned philosophers since ancient times� (Danto, 5)—which is precisely why the question of whether photography can be considered art is not an easy one to answer. Can an exact representation of the �real world� be considered art? Where is the artist�s creative power or even his or her presence evident within a photograph, which is the product of mechanical processes? Even more difficult questions are posed by the �appropriations� done by artists like Sherry Levine. In her famous appropriation of Walker Evans� photography in 1981, which she gave the name Untitled (after Walker Evans), Levine re-photographed a reproduction of a photograph by Evans. Her work demonstrated a fascination with the photographic process and its mechanized ability to represent, while at the same time raising post-structuralist discourses on authorship, originality and history that are central to the discussion at hand. Is art the property of whoever �made it?� Of course, one could assert that what makes Warhol�s Brillo Box �art� and the regular box not is somehow tied to the fact that Warhol�s work was the direct product of the artist�s will—a conscious creation that represents and somehow gives form to his thoughts and ideas. In that sense, Brillo Box is art simply because it was created to be such. In Kantian terms, it has �purposiveness without a purpose� and is therefore art for art�s sake—Kant writes, �It can be nothing else than the subjective purposiveness in the representation of an object without any purpose (either objective or subjective), and thus it is the mere form of purposiveness in the representation by which an object is given to us, so far as we are conscious of it, which constitutes the satisfaction that we without a concept judge to be universally communicable; and, consequently, this is the determining ground of the judgment of taste� (Kant, 295). Brillo Box as an artwork does not attempt to take on any purpose, in that it is not being used to store scouring pads. Yet it appears exactly like what one might find in one�s house for that purpose. Thus, to take a somewhat reductionist line, perhaps the main difference between Warhol�s Brillo Box and an ordinary Brillo box are just the italics and capitalization that distinguish the two names. This particular theory seems to fit with Dickie�s and Danto�s institutional theory of art—the reason Brillo Box is not just another piece of cardboard is because it has been embraced as a serious work of art. Whether power over this decision rests in the hands of the artist, the museum curators, the public�s reception of a particular work, or some combination of the three, is a topic that could certainly provoke a great deal more discussion than would be permitted by the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, the idea that art is determined by institutions leads us to return to that basic question which underlies all these debates and much of art criticism—aside from enjoying the mandate of a particular group of people, what is the essential quality of art (on a �serious philosophical map,� say) that makes it truly art? Some might argue, for instance, that the artist needs to have been physically involved in the creative process for his work to be termed art—a definition that immediately disqualifies all of Duchamp�s works as mere exploitation rather than true innovation. Such critics might argue under this rather rigid framework that the real author of Fountain is actually the Mott Company rather than Duchamp, even though he came up with the idea of displaying a toilet as a fountain and calling it art. Similarly, it could be argued that Warhol cannot be credited for Brillo Box because he did not actually construct any of the boxes. Yet it seems faulty to argue that art must be defined as the tangible product of human effort. When one considers the paintings of the Renaissance, for example, I would argue that the artists who simply repainted scenes from the works of the great masters over and over were not necessarily always creating art, even though each subsequent creation was slightly different in appearance. Warhol and Duchamp, in contrast, have created works that outwardly resemble everyday, readily recognizable objects—but if the art critics are even half right about the subtle inspirations that underlie this facade of reality (on pg. 289, Danto calls Warhol�s Brillo Box a �celebration�of contemporary life, and on pg. 287 he praises Warhol as �the nearest thing to a philosophical genius the history of art has produced), then these creations can more appropriately be termed �art� than works that do not address reality in the slightest yet do not possess a novel inspiration underneath. Thus, the mere fact of a work�s realistic-ness should not disqualify it from being art—nor should the mere distortion of reality in, say, an Impressionist painting, earn it extra artistic �bonus points.� As Danto observes, after the creation of Brillo Box, �Not only could works of art no longer be told apart from real things. They could not be seen as obviously like things that had always been regarded as works of art� (Danto, 7).� In this way, it can be appreciated that there is a definite distinction between art and reality that goes well beyond physical appearance. Just because something �looks like� art does not make it art—and with the case of Brillo Box, the reverse seems to be true as well—something doesn�t have to �look like� art to be art. It can instead look very much like real life. This blurring of distinctions, while theoretically interesting, leaves art with some difficult challenges. For without a clear line between art and reality, what positive claims can we find to separate the two, as Danto puts it, on a �serious philosophical map?� Perhaps a review of philosophical notions of art might help in trying to understand where the division actually lies. Hegel believes that �art invites us to intellectual consideration, and that not for the purpose of creating art again but for knowing philosophically what art is� (Danto, 342). That is, Hegel maintains that art necessarily questions itself and its own definition—and Warhol�s Brillo Box shifts the scrutiny of this automatic trend toward self-revision directly onto the very delicate line between art and reality. In other words, by displaying a familiar image from �real-life� (according to Danto on pg. 289, �chosen for [its] absolute familiarity and semiotic potency�), Warhol invites the viewer to ponder why something used to store scouring pads has been elevated to the status of art. For Hegel, then, a regular Brillo box could not be said to be art unless it causes someone to reconsider their notions of what art is—and Warhol�s Brillo Box on display in a museum can only be art if it satisfies the very same criterion. Both art and reality are held to an identical standard, and the fascination of Warhol�s work is that it for the first time makes the playing field exactly level—art is not �privileged� in any way by an artistic �form.� A popular joke among English professors is the following now-infamous comment made by an unwitting reader: �It is assuredly poetry, for it certainly does not look like prose!� Warhol�s work rejects this notion that something must �look like� art to be art—that the form of a particular work is the primary indication of its authenticity. Put another way, Brillo Box allows the viewer to look at an essentially ordinary �cardboard� box, not as a container for scouring pads, but in an objective manner that seems to hearken back to Kant�s notion of purposiveness without a purpose (we are not interested in the box for its pragmatic function). Again, philosophically speaking, it certainly does not matter what the materials used to construct the box were—what matters is whether the box can be considered objectively—a difficult task when, like the Brillo box or Duchamp�s snow shovel, the items on display all are known principally for their practical use. Schopenhauer offers another interesting theory that bears on this discussion of the distinction between art and reality. He writes in his World as Will and Idea, �Every work of art�really aims at showing us life and things as they are in truth, but cannot be directly discerned by every one through the mist of objective and subjective contingencies. Art takes away this mist� (Schopenhauer, 453). Schopenhauer�s philosophy seems heavily to stress the divide between art and reality, since it seems that reality in a way obscures �life and things as they are in truth�—a very Platonic view of the world—and art is an attempt to reveal the true nature of things. On Schopenhauer�s �philosophical map,� then, art is completely distinct from reality in that it attempts to bring the viewer to some ephemeral will-less state of pure objectivity, whereas reality is necessarily trapped within the plane of subjectivity. It is again interesting to contemplate how Schopenhauer would have reacted to a work like Warhol�s in which the artist attempts to present real life—that is, a subjectively observable object like the Brillo box—as art. One clue is Schopenhauer�s description of �those admirable Dutch artists� and their �pictures of still life, which the aesthetic beholder does not look on without emotion; for they present to him the peaceful, still, frame of mind of the artist, free from will, which was needed to contemplate such insignificant things so objectively� (458). If a painting of objects as they are in real life can inspire this objective state and therefore accomplish the purpose of art, surely the �real thing� would be that much better. In considering all these various philosophies of art, one theme seems constant—the notion that art and reality are distinguished by art�s ability to cause its viewer to ponder the underlying nature of the thing that he observes. On Hegel�s view, which builds upon the work of Kant, true art must give rise to questions within the viewer of what art actually is—it must inform upon itself. Similarly, Schopenhauer argues that art causes its viewers to see things as they really are (Kant�s famous �ding an sich�), which grants them a uniquely objective perspective. Thus, philosophically speaking, art cannot be distinguished from reality only in terms of its material representation, for the nature of true art is evident only beneath the surface, and its success can only be measured in terms of the thoughts that it provokes within the viewer.
i) H.F. Fletcher, ed. John Milton�s Complete Poetical Works in Photographic Facsimile with Critical Apparatus in Four Volumes: Vol. II (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1945). ii) Milton, John. Paradise Lost: Second Edition, Ed. Alastair Fowler (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1998). |