Autonomy of art and the limits of aesthetics: Sreten Petrović’s contribution to Marxist aesthetics

Introduction

The explanation and affirmation of free, autonomous and creative activity as the species-essence of man was the main philosophical and also practical goal of the Marxist humanist Praxis School (see Petrović, 1964a, 1964b; Bošnjak, 1964; Grlić, 1965; Marković, 1979). ¹ Members of the Praxis School were interested in Marx and his ‘early’ writings, in which he focused on the question of the autonomy and creativity of human beings: ‘[p]roductive life is the life of the species. It is life-engendering life. The whole character of a species, its species character, is contained in the character of its life-activity; and free, conscious activity is man’s species character’ (Marx, 1988: 76). ²

Still, the work and intellectual endeavours of the philosophers of the Praxis School were not simply limited to explaining and re-interpreting Marx. One field in which the Yugoslav Marxist philosophers contributed important new insights and conceptions was the question of art, the role and nature of aesthetics and art, and the relationship between art and aesthetics (see Grlić, 1978, 1979, 1984; Supek, 1952, 1958; Petrović, 1972a, 1972b, 1975, 1979, 1982, 1983). Their focus on art and aesthetics is similar to that of many different philosophers within the broader framework of ‘Western Marxism’, where topics like art and culture are featured in explanations of the reproduction of capitalism and the absence of revolution in the West (see Anderson, 1976; Horkheimer and Adorno, 2002; Marcuse, 2006). The overriding approach in Yugoslav Marxist humanism was developed by members of the Praxis School, whereby art was conceptualised in a very specific way, as praxis. Hence, they connected their theory of the subject as a creative and autonomous species-being with art. Art was understood as a free, autonomous, creative and self-fulfilling activity of the species-being (see Fu, 2020). ³ This also meant the relationship between art and aesthetics had to be re-evaluated and re-explored.

Within the framework of these debates on the role of art in reproducing capitalism within the broader humanist socialist project in Yugoslavia, Sreten Petrović, who was not a ‘member’ of the Praxis School but strongly influenced by the Marxist humanist philosophy of praxis, developed a unique understanding of the relationship between art and aesthetics. Petrović agreed with the primary explanation of the Praxis School that art is a specific type of praxis, but also went further to develop his ‘critique of the aesthetic mind’ (Petrović, 1979). Petrović claimed that due to the need of the commodity form in the capitalist mode of production, various aesthetics play an instrumental role in valorising works of art, in turn preventing the autonomy of the creative act. Moreover, according to him, we must assume as ontological premises that aesthetics can never fully and truly comprehend the essence of art as a special type of creative and autonomous activity. He therefore argued for the self-limitation of aesthetics in the form of meta-aesthetics (Petrović, 1979).

This paper has two aims. First, we argue that Petrović built his philosophy of art on the conception of art as praxis, as a creative and autonomous activity of the subject. He thereby clearly positions himself within the Yugoslav Praxis School framework and its socialist-humanist philosophical project. Second, we argue he also made a very important contribution to Marxist aesthetics – he ontologically limited aesthetic theory to meta-aesthetics because, as he noted, the ‘truth’ and the essence of art are beyond both our mind and our cognitive abilities while our attempts to logically and rationally explain art limits both the creative process and the act of creativity. We believe that by limiting aesthetics to the ‘critique of the aesthetic mind’, he is consistent with the young Wittgenstein and his philosophy presented in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, where Wittgenstein argued that philosophy cannot say anything that is truthful about the world because it lacks the proper methodology for this. The only correct thing is ‘to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science – i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy’ (Wittgenstein, 2001: 89). After that, Wittgenstein wrote: ‘Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen / Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’ (Wittgenstein, 2001: 89). As we will explain, this can also be found in Petrović’s argumentation, albeit in a modified version, and should be seen as his major contribution to Marxist aesthetics.

In order to explain the specific understanding of art as practice, the autonomy of art and the limits of aesthetics in Sreten Petrović’s philosophy, after the introduction below we proceed by outlining the understanding of art as praxis in Petrović’s writings within the Praxis School framework. The third section explores and explains his critique of the three types of Marxist aesthetics: aesthetics of mimesis, aesthetics of poiesis and aesthetics of the sensual. The fourth section focuses on Petrović’s conception of aesthetics as meta-aesthetics and as the ‘critique of the aesthetic mind’. In the concluding section, we compare and contrast Petrović’s understanding of aesthetics as meta-aesthetics with Grlić’s conception of the ‘sublation of aesthetics in art’ and reflect on the importance of Petrović’s philosophy in the 21st century. ⁴

Art as praxis: from Grlić to Petrović

The concept of art as praxis in Petrović’s writings is related to the specific theory of the subject developed within the Yugoslav Praxis School framework and also with the particular understanding of art as praxis, most notably elaborated on by Danko Grlić (see Grlić, 1978, 1979).

As mentioned in the introduction, the Yugoslav Praxis School based its theory of the subject as a free, creative and autonomous being on Marx’s early writings about the subject as a revolutionary, self-emancipatory, creative and autonomous being (see Marx, 1978a, 1978b, 1988). The Praxis School concentrated on the ‘thorough study of the classical works of Marxism in a new perspective, especially of Marx’s early manuscripts’, which led members of the Praxis School ‘to the rediscovery of a profound and sophisticated humanist philosophy which, for a long time, was either ignored or dismissed by a great many Marxist philosophers as being Hegelian’ (Marković, 1979: xvii). ⁵

The crucial question they were trying to answer was ‘what man can be in order to be and become man at all’ (Kangrga, 1979: 53). Within this framework, the Praxis School developed its understanding of praxis as a ‘revolutionary and practical-critical activity’ (Bošnjak, 1964: 18). Praxis was the essence of existence and of Being. Praxis meant the radical transformation of the objective living conditions and of the social, economic and political structures that are preventing the processes of self-emancipation and self-realisation beyond capitalist class relations (Bošnjak, 1964; Vranicki, 1964; Petrović, 1979). Praxis was seen as a creative, revolutionary and self-emancipatory action aimed at abolishing class relations, most importantly capitalist class relations and capitalism: ‘As a being of praxis man is a free and creative being, and as such he is a being of revolution’ (Petrović, 1979: 160). Thus, praxis was understood as the ‘human species-essence’ (Hočevar, 2020: 99).

This served as the basis for Danko Grlić, who elaborated the specific philosophy of art in the framework of the Marxist humanist project of self-liberation and self-emancipation. Since the subject was defined as a subject of practice, Grlić claimed the human being ‘liberates himself in art and becomes a vision of an unrestrained game of the most humane and free powers’ (Grlić, 1978: 115). Art was understood by Grlić as revolutionary because it represented ‘a radical negation of the existing as existing’ (Grlić, 1973: 717). For Grlić, art is ‘a revolutionary aspect of human existence, a tool as well as the essence – the form and content – of the processes of changing the world’ (Hočevar, 2020: 101).

Within this framework, Sreten Petrović also developed his understanding of art as a specific emanation of praxis. For a Marxist theory of creation, according to Petrović, the cornerstone is the ‘creative act’ (Petrović, 1982: 257). He views art as a particular emanation of praxis because it ‘affirms the idea of the spontaneity of practice itself and its specific, if not autonomous, creation’ (Petrović, 1979: 62). Art as praxis affirms the ‘liberty of the creative act’ (Petrović, 1982: 266) and the ‘true spontaneity of the creative process’ (Petrović, 1979: 63). Art is never limited to the ‘mere reproduction of the world’ but is actually connected to ‘original creation’ and to the ‘production of a new world, which is the result of the creative meeting of man and nature’ (Petrović, 1981: 69). Hence, art should be considered as ‘an untypical historical form of spirit’ (Petrović, 1972a: 104) which is never only the reflection of the Weltgeist. Art is thus connected to the ‘principle of its free creation’ (Petrović, 1979: 61), where ‘existence in principle precedes the essence, and is, at the same time, a challenge to any metaphysical construction of the concept of art’ (Petrović, 2010: 77). Art is an activity by which ‘man expresses the essential need for the creation and appropriation of the world’ (Petrović, 1981: 72–3) and is a specific manifestation of ‘humanism and naturalism, […] mind and imagination, necessity and game’ (Petrović, 1989a: 101). However, Petrović argued that art embodied in a work of art is not the ‘highest form of authentic labour’ but it is the ‘creative process’ itself which is the crucial and highest form through which one can express the humane, creative and emancipatory praxis (Petrović, 1982: 251).

Such a conception of art stands in opposition to capitalist commodity production. Bourgeois society needs commodities to be sold. This also means that the creative process itself is not the crucial part of capitalism – it is the reception, valorisation and commodification of an artwork. Capitalism thus negates the autonomy and self-emancipatory potential of art. Petrović believes the valorisation of a work of art has nothing to do with the ‘authenticity of the creative act itself nor does it have an influence (ontologically) on the “authentic value” of work’ (Petrović, 1982: 260). Petrović hence claimed that art is not in the ‘function of capital’ (Petrović, 1982: 263).

This allows us to conclude that Petrović’s conception of art is very similar to Grlić’s and that Sreten Petrović also viewed art as ‘praxis, which is the species-essence of every species-being’ (Hočevar, 2020: 101). This conception of art also led Petrović to analyse and criticise different Marxist aesthetics, focusing on the question of the autonomy of art and the prescriptive role of aesthetics relative to the creative process.

Petrović’s critique of Marxist aesthetics

In several books, Petrović analyses many different (Marxist) aesthetic systems. ⁶ He broadly distinguishes between three types of Marxist aesthetic systems: aesthetics of mimesis, poiesis and aesthesis. ⁷ His analysis and critique of these three types of aesthetics was developed in his crucial work Marxist Aesthetics: The Critique of the Aesthetic Mind and is closely linked to his understanding of art as praxis. ⁸

Petrović argued that the aesthetics of mimesis defines the subject as a ‘secondary, non-essential, instance’. The role of the subject within the aesthetics of mimesis is only ‘“to find” out the essence (Sein) as a realised reality’ (Petrović, 1979: 29). This leads to a situation where the ‘past becomes the only dimension of reality, because in the present nothing more important happens’ (Petrović, 1979: 29). The role of art is simply to ‘reflect the essence’ (Petrović, 1979: 29). Therefore, according to Petrović, the basis of the aesthetics of mimesis is the theory of reflection. Petrović’s critique of the aesthetics of mimesis is hence based on the fact that the aesthetics of mimesis negates the ‘peculiarity of the aesthetical’ (Petrović, 1979: 34) and is ontologically based on the primacy of ‘realism – as content (objective consciousness) is primary in relation to idealism – as form (subjective consciousness)’ (Petrović, 1979: 32). Thus, for Petrović the aesthetics of mimesis is a specific ‘idealised materialistic’ aesthetics (Petrović, 1979: 29), which does not acknowledge the artistic as something autonomous (Petrović, 1979: 39). ⁹

The aesthetics of poiesis defines the essence as not yet realised while the utopian prospects of the future are somehow always present in this aesthetics. Ontologically speaking, this type of Marxist aesthetics is very similar to existentialism (Petrović, 1979: 36). Crucially, the aesthetics of poiesis ‘recognises the idea of an active subject, which inevitably appreciates the value of civilizational, human subjectivity, and therefore sensory moments and intuitive creations’ (Petrović, 1979: 36). Yet, the aesthetics of poiesis leaves aside the problem of the distinction between art and philosophy and the question of the autonomy of art in relation to ontological and epistemological systems (Petrović, 1979: 38). The problem with this type of aesthetics is, although it still represents a specific system of aesthetics, it does not ‘logically outline that differentia specifica between art and philosophy’ and thus cannot explain ‘that peculiarity of art, which this one has in relation to philosophy’ (Petrović, 1979: 44–5). It is crucial, but in a different manner, that the aesthetics of poiesis ‘abolished, again, the ‘peculiarity of the aesthetical’ (Petrović, 1979: 39).

The aesthetics of aesthesis has affirmed the role of art and put it in the highest place: ‘Therefore, this aesthetics, if it can be called a system at all, speaks here as a kind of positive aesthetics in which the aesthetic category of the accidental is postulated’ (Petrović, 1979: 41). On the ontological level, this type of aesthetics ‘does not respect the existence of any being before and after the liberated aesthetic production’ (Petrović, 1979: 42). Therefore, in the aesthetics of aesthesis, every type of human activity, which is ‘aimed at providing pleasure and satisfaction’, is not different from a specific artistic creative activity (Petrović, 1979: 45), while the ‘horizon of individual freedom is overrated’ (Petrović, 1989a: 94). Hence, the aesthetics of aesthesis, although expressing the sensory foundations of artistic creation, did not manage to ‘successfully answer the important question about the meaning of the peculiarity of the aesthetical’ (Petrović, 1979: 44–5).

The problem with the aesthetics of mimesis is that it ‘abolishes the peculiarity of the aesthetical’ because it understands art as a specific form of scientific cognition and as a reflection of the essence; the aesthetics of poiesis does away with the autonomy of art because it ‘postulates its philosophical objectives’ disregarding the difference between art and philosophy, while the aesthetics of aesthesis conceptualises and affirms every aspect of free and also non-artistic creation, and thereby abolishes the autonomy of art (Petrović, 1979: 46). Therefore, none of these three broad types of Marxist aesthetics explains the peculiarity of artistic creation because they do not ontologically posit that the artistic creative act is something specific, unique and autonomous and because they believe the creative act itself is fully intelligible to our mind. They are negating the autonomy of art and are unsatisfactory for Petrović.

Aesthetics as meta-aesthetics and the liberation of art

To overcome the shortcomings of the three broad types of Marxist aesthetics explained above regarding their conception of art, Petrović claimed that one must answer the following question: ‘is an aesthetic theory of an aesthetic phenomenon possible at all today?’ Given the most general philosophical level of reflection, the question is again posed in a theoretical form: ‘how can one, if one can, think of an aesthetic phenomenon today?’ (Petrović, 1979: 53). ¹⁰ He argued we need to reinterpret Marx’s Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach in the context of aesthetics and art. According to him, Marx’s Eleventh Thesis should not be interpreted as if Marx had argued that ‘aestheticians have so far only interpreted the world of art differently, and it is supposedly necessary to change it’. On the contrary, Petrović claimed it is more accurate to assume that Marx’s Eleventh Thesis does not mean that a change in the world of art is necessary, but that it means we should ‘change […] aesthetic theories as speculative theories’ because they are ‘distorted-ideological images’ of art and ‘call into question the very existence of art (Petrović, 1972a: 11). ¹¹

In his conception of art, Petrović states there is something mystical, unexplainable, even illogical in art which escapes the mind. This is precisely what makes art so unique. This unexplainable, illogical aspect is precisely what gives art its creative, spontaneous and autonomous dimension. From the ontological perspective, it is always the creative act that is the primary, while ‘criticism, reward, rebuke, is second and ontic. The act is important and not what is done; creation (process, movement) is important, and not the realised (state, inactivity)’ (Petrović, 1982: 267). The impotence of aesthetic theory in relation to ‘artistic power’ has for Petrović been ‘a fact, although it may be a dangerous illusion of the author himself’ (Petrović, 1972a: 10). Namely, there is a danger of positing the ‘metaphysical, philosophical dimension of art’ as a universal nature of art and of presuming that there ‘really is some art in general, of an intelligible character, per se’ (Petrović, 1972a: 90). However, Petrović argued that the essence and existence of art ‘is not exhausted in philosophical thinking’ (Petrović, 1972a: 90).

Any aesthetics that prescribes or inscribes certain elements of different ideologies, worldviews or theories is limiting the creative and autonomous expression of art and limiting praxis. The ‘critical awareness of the relativity of all knowledge, even aesthetic (social determination of thinking)’, should always be emphasised and the ‘ideological factor’ ought to be limited in aesthetics (Petrovic, 1972a: 92). Petrović believed that aesthetics must be based on the assumption and ‘the view that everything created and real is not completely intelligible and rational, finally, that an aesthetic object is of both intelligent and irrational nature’ (Petrović, 1979: 58). Thus, for him it is vital to ‘defend the autonomy of art’ and to ‘protect art’ from aesthetics and hence to ‘liberate the aesthetic praxis from the direct and directive’ nature of the ‘aesthetic mind’ (Petrović, 1982: 9). Petrović, therefore, argued that only ‘aesthetics which stops before the miracle of art before it starts talking about it – even if it is not strictly systematically and logically derived – can be “beautiful” and “true”’ (Petrović, 1972a: 8).

Hence, Petrović believed there are no problems with art or the very essence of art; the problem lies instead in the spirit of the time and the utilitarian and instrumental reason reflected in various aesthetic systems. Therefore, Petrović felt the ‘need to protect the aesthetic being from aesthetics itself on a meta-theoretical, meta-aesthetic level’ (Petrović, 1979: 63).

Critical of the dogmatism of special sciences that examine the phenomenon of art, while trying to prevent a certain, relative and historical aspect of art from being proclaimed as the essence of art, aesthetics must overcome its own dogmatism, the ever-present danger of the philosophical notion of art being ontologised and then determined in the historical dimension as real, the only possible. (Petrović, 1972a: 90)

Thus, the role and task of aesthetics can only be self-reflection and self-inspection. The object of aesthetics are not the ‘particular aspects of art’ (Petrović, 1975: 11). The analysis of specific art works is reserved for specific disciplines: sociology of art, history of art, psychology of art, etc. (Petrović, 1975, 1979, 1982). Aesthetics should not limit the artistic activity of creation while ‘leaving special-scientific methods the opportunity to positively examine this peculiar, the special aspects but also (special) values of works and types of art’ (Petrović, 1972a: 89). On the other hand, it is crucial that aesthetics pose some limits on special scientific disciplines and prevent them from declaring ‘the results of examining one aspect of art as the essence of art itself, and the value of art of one epoch, style or direction, as the value, the criterion of art in general’ (Petrović, 1972a: 89–90).

We may observe that Petrović combines a Wittgensteinian explication – limitation of philosophical cognition – with the specific Marxist humanist approach of the Praxis School. Petrović’s argument to limit aesthetics to meta-aesthetics or to the ‘critique of the aesthetic mind’ is based on two assumptions. First, he claims that philosophy of art is today reduced to various ideological purposes and has a prescriptive role of deciding what can become an artistic commodity or serve any purpose in the class struggle against capitalism – in either case, aesthetics is limiting the creative potential of art as praxis – in the first case, it fetishises the commodity form and the process of valorisation while, in the second, it is an instrument for class struggle. This is the Marxist humanist line of his philosophy, where he is concerned with the creative, autonomous and self-emancipating practice of art. Second, according to Petrović, the essence and beauty of art is unintelligible to the human mind and philosophy therefore cannot address the true essence of art. This is a modality of Wittgenstein’s (2001) seventh proposition. Aesthetics should refrain from exploring the essence of art because it can only limit the creative potential of art, which is beyond our cognition. In Wittgenstein’s dualism of philosophy-natural sciences, Petrović substitutes philosophy with philosophy of art and natural sciences with other disciplines: sociology of art, psychology of art etc. Aesthetics should be limited to self-inspection because that is the best possible way to avoid limiting the self-emancipation and creativity entailed in art. ¹³ Both streams of his argument have the same conclusion – one comes from a Marxist-humanist perspective and the second from a Wittgensteinian-mystical perspective. This combination of Marxism with Wittgenstein’s explication is his crucial contribution to Marxist aesthetics. ¹⁴

Conclusion

Petrović’s contribution to Yugoslav Marxist aesthetics is valuable and involves an, albeit a somewhat similar yet still different, explication from the philosophy of art which we can find in the works of Danko Grlić. In this specific self-limitation of aesthetics to meta-aesthetics, Petrović stands apart from Danko Grlić, who fostered the sublation of aesthetics into art and understood the sublation of aesthetics as part of the artistic affirmation of praxis and of human existence. Grlić claimed that ‘Marxism as a philosophy of liberation that strives above all towards freedom – has to be beyond any kind of fettering […] of the artistic, that is, beyond any kind of aesthetics’ (Grlić, 1978: 125). In this, they both agree that the crucial thing is to liberate art from the various limits created by different theories concerned with what is art and what ought to be art. However, there is a key difference. Grlić wrote that only the abolition of certain ‘frameworks and coordinates of the aesthetical enables a freer, more complete, if you will, more vital flourishing of the artistic in its unpredictable, its monstrous life […] The death of the aesthetical enables the life of the artistic’ (Grlić, 1988: 405). In reinterpreting Marx’s Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach, Grlić argued that ‘the only true aesthetics would be its sublation in art as the essence of life itself’ (Grlić, 1978: 114). For Grlić, only the sublation of aesthetics in art enables the artistic practice of the species-being.

If we compare this argument with Petrović’s theory, we see that Petrović is not fostering the sublation of aesthetics into praxis of art nor calling for the ‘death of the aesthetical’ but is advocating in favour of a meta-aesthetic position, which he believes is the only true Marxist position. Moreover, his modality of Wittgenstein’s argument makes Petrović’s theory different from Grlić’s, who does not query the intelligibility of the essence of art. On the other hand, they both share a common cause – they both want to liberate the free, autonomous and creative activity of art from oppressive ideological and instrumental conceptions of art.

Petrović’s concept of art as praxis, as we have demonstrated, was not novel. It is the concept of the self-limitation of aesthetics that makes his philosophy intriguing and peculiar in the Marxist humanist tradition. Namely, while Grlić argued for the sublation of aesthetics, Petrović reconceptualised this in the form of the self-limitation of aesthetics in the form of meta-aesthetics where, as we have tried to explain, Petrović was following the young Wittgenstein. This conception also leads him to some form of mysticism and some sort of utopian vision (see Kreft, 2016).

Accordingly, Petrović’s work should be seen as an attempt to reaffirm the autonomy of the creative act of art in the context of capitalist market imperatives, commodity production, and the instrumental role given to aesthetics also in various Marxist approaches. Besides the problem of the theory of reflection, the avant-garde role ascribed to art in some strands of Marxist aesthetics is also dangerous. The idea that art itself and the revolution within art can have an important influence on class relations is for Petrović essentially a non-Marxist conception, because it presupposes that an enlightened artistic elite could play the crucial role in the process of class struggle, disregarding the specific class relations and the class subject in the historical process (Petrović, 1989a: 99).

Petrović’s explanation and his ontological presuppositions remain very important today in the context of further extending the commodity form to all spheres of life. The project of self-emancipation through art beyond capitalist imperatives and beyond the idea that art is always a creative or not so creative act, so long as it can be placed in the form of a commodity and sold in the market, is the basis of humanisation of the world. In this process, the creative act holds primacy over philosophy and any prescriptive idea of what art is or what art should be, because it is impossible for a theory which is ‘conditioned by the “limited”, “alienated” spirit of time’ to understand ‘that essentially humane, “unlimited” that is produced by art and which makes it considerably ahead of our limited time and the spirit of its theory’ (Petrović, 1979: 66).