Contemporary Art in Context - Multiplicity & Pluralism in Culture & Art

In the first year of my degree study, we studied the development of art in tandem with philosophical and cultural thinking, - particularly in the post era of Immanuel Kant, during the period of enlightenment from the 1750s through to the 1890s. The research was based on the Kantian philosophy and study for the search of truth, for example Kant's book the judgement of pure reason being an example of how truth can be perceived, and how representation can be thought of as a concept of truth and perception.

In today's lecture, we looked at the development of artistic and cultural perception during the early 20th-century, and the introduction of terms such as multiplicity and pluralism. Whilst these two notions were already being discussed and used in the 1900s, they are in fact, very contemporary sources of discussion, and are in today's parliance, used to describe slightly different notions than those originally put forward in the 1900s.

 Multiplicity is a term used to describe something that is complex in the sense that it has many variations, or layers or components, but exists at once, all perhaps of the same theme. Each variation is unique in itself, however each variation is connected to another to form a whole.
 An example given by the lecturer today was that of an image of a crystal forming, but I like also my analogy of our concept of 'snow' too....

  In the simplest of explanations, Snow is made up of a 'multiplicity' of snowflakes, each one being formed slightly different, but still when put together, forming a whole, or if you like, the concept we know as 'snow'. 

To continue this theme, to articulate my understanding of "pluralism" is also perhaps, in its simplest form, easily explained as "snow can happen in different places at the same time" - like in Birmingham and Moscow, or where-ever...  - The concept of pluralism is that pockets of the same 'stuff' can be happening at the same time.  (NOTE; Time is also an important factor in this discussion, which will be discussed later).

So, how do we apply the concept of Multiplicity and Pluralism to Art?

This is where today's lecture really began.    Multiplicity and Pluralism can be applied to our culture, our social hierarchy or motivations or many many other social concepts.   The basic issue that surrounds multiplicity and pluralism when discussed in Art is quite complex.  Here is an attempt to do so....
The many layers of our human culture is steeped with both conflict and competition. The types of layers of difference, and pockets of identity, the partial layers of "knowing" and the community based concepts of truth are all notions which where considered in some of the philosophical works produced in the 1900s.  This philosophical work went together with the progress of Modernism, as a cultural movement, at the same time.   Experimentation in the early 20th century provided growing evidence for the original concept of "self evident" definitions of truth, (that being a beauty and 'the good', could no longer provide a secure meaningful orientation of our existence in the world. (Much of this is based on the work by Daniel Borus).

The new philosophical enquiry of the early 20th century was seen as a breath of fresh air by many, particularly the more radical and free-spirited people of the time, permitting a full enquiry and experiment. As a result of this new enquiry and thought, a change begun to flourish in the arts particularly in experimental aspects of Modernism.  It was around this stage that Gertrude Stein began to publish in 1909 too. Whilst this new experimentation was welcomed by many, for others it stood as a 'vertiginous un-mooring' of existence.  (This was written extensively about by Henry Adams in his autobiography of 1909).

An example of this complex multiplicity is exemplified through the huge dissipation of energy that the nation and its people could muster to face a challenging reality which at the time was the onset of World War I...  
At one level 'politics' is about control and order. However the true political thoughts at the grass-roots level, i.e. in the minds of the troops who were at war and actually fighting in the trenches, was completely different to the politics of the individuals that were in government at that time. Henry Adams therefore termed this "disconnected condition of temporary, complex, contingent or provisional understandings", in other words a piecemeal situation of views, he termed as Multiplicity.

Gertrude Stein the author, and William James, (who published the book "Pragmatism in 1907), started to re-evaluate the notion as a "stream of consciousness".

It could be said therefore that consciousness then, does not appear to itself, as being chopped up into bits. It is nothing joined as such, but it is a flow. "A river" or "a stream" are the metaphors by which it was most naturally described. In talking of it here after, let's call it the stream of thought...  (Henry Adams).

Consider how a crystal grows in a solution.  Crystal growth is a product of both complex non-linear dynamics and other specific constraints. Complexity of multiplicity in culture is a bit like thinking of a neighbourhood, with lots of people with knowledge, all slightly different and with no unified detail of "truth". This concept of uncertainty, Multiplicity and Pluralism, overflows into cultural and most public thought, where,  the cultural elite have previously only had contact with this concept, it is now more generally available as a term to describe the situation of contemporary culture as a whole.

The pragmatism, or pragmatic response to problems of existence, was an idea spawned out of multiplicity.  John Dewey investigated this in detail. His central concept, around our personal existences, describes experience as a negotiation in the face of changing or provisional reality.   At odds with the earlier Kantian philosophy, he stressed that intelligence over reason was the competent component of understanding truth.

Dewey shares much in common with the more contemporary philosophy of Giles Deleuze, but his position is much more moderate, and there is much more emphasis on communication.

Giles Deleuze however liked a much more radical, progressive and unstructured approach and 'upped the anti' on conflict.  However all of the later concepts of multiplicity was very much founded on Dewey's original works.  I recently borrowed the book, "Art as Experience" 1934, (by John Dewey), Berkley Publishing, Penguin Group, USA, and whilst it is rather heavy reading, it is still a highly charged  source of concepts to be applied in Contemporary Art philosophy.

In the early 20th-century political force was shifting. Whilst there was conflict in society generally to some degree, there was also present at the same time a concept of both singularity and unity.

A contemporary version of 'pluralism' is sometimes termed as agonistic.

To put this concept into practice, adversarial design is now commonplace as a progressive project-based method of dealing with social problems. It is within this thought context, but forms the foreground of multiplicity, complexity and conflict but using it in order to create something new.