The Aesthetics of Atmospheres

Gernot Böhme, Jean-Paul Thibaud, Jean-Paul Thibaud

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134967988
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze fisiche
• Subtopic: Geografia

Interest in sensory atmospheres and architectural and urban ambiances has been growing for over 30 years. A key figure in this field is acclaimed German philosopher Gernot Böhme whose influential conception of what atmospheres are and how they function has been only partially available to the English-speaking public. This translation of key essays along with an original introduction charts the development of Gernot Böhme's philosophy of atmospheres and how it can be applied in various contexts such as scenography, commodity aesthetics, advertising, architecture, design, and art.

The phenomenological analysis of atmospheres has proved very fruitful and its most important, and successful, application has been within aesthetics. The material background of this success may be seen in the ubiquitous aestheticization of our lifeworld, or from another perspective, of the staging of everything, every event and performance. The theory of atmospheres becoming an aesthetic theory thus reveals the theatrical, not to say manipulative, character of politics, commerce, of the event-society. But, taken as a positive theory of certain phenomena, it offers new perspectives on architecture, design, and art. It made the spatial and the experience of space and places a central subject and hence rehabilitated the ephemeral in the arts. Taking its numerous impacts in many fields together, it initiated a new humanism: the individual as a living person and his or her perspective are taken seriously, and this fosters the ongoing democratization of culture, in particular the possibility for everybody to participate in art and its works.

Part I

Theory: aesthetics and aesthetical economy

1 Atmosphere as a fundamental concept of a new aesthetics¹

Atmosphere

The expression “atmosphere” is not foreign to aesthetic discourse. On the contrary, it occurs frequently, almost of necessity in speeches at the opening of exhibitions, in art catalogues, and in eulogies in the form of references to the powerful atmosphere of a work, to atmospheric effect, or a rather atmospheric mode of presentation. One has the impression that “atmosphere” is meant to indicate something indeterminate, difficult to express, even if it is only in order to hide the speaker’s own speechlessness. It is almost like Adorno’s “more,” which also points in evocative fashion to something beyond rational explanation and with an emphasis which suggests that only there is the essential, the aesthetically relevant to be found.

This use of the word “atmosphere” in aesthetic texts, oscillating between embarrassment and emphasis, corresponds to its use in political discourse. Here too everything apparently depends on the atmosphere in which something occurs and where the improvement of the political atmosphere is the most important thing. On the other hand, the report that negotiations took place “in a good atmosphere” or led to an improvement in the atmosphere is only the euphemistic version of the fact that nothing resulted from a meeting. This vague use of the expression atmosphere in aesthetic and political discourse derives from a use in everyday speech which is in many respects much more exact. Here the expression “atmospheric” is applied to persons, spaces, and to nature. Thus one speaks of the serene atmosphere of a spring morning or the homely atmosphere of a garden. On entering a room one can feel oneself enveloped by a friendly atmosphere or caught up in a tense atmosphere. We can say of a person that s/he radiates an atmosphere which implies respect, of a man or a woman that an erotic atmosphere surrounds them. Here too atmosphere indicates something that is in a certain sense indeterminate, diffuse but precisely not indeterminate in relation to its character. On the contrary, we have at our disposal a rich vocabulary with which to characterize atmospheres, that is, serene, melancholic, oppressive, uplifting, commanding, inviting, erotic, etc. Atmospheres are indeterminate, above all as regards their ontological status. We are not sure whether we should attribute them to the objects or environments from which they proceed or to the subjects who experience them. We are also unsure where they are. They seem to fill the space with a certain tone of feeling like a haze.

The frequent, rather embarrassed use of the expression atmosphere in aesthetic discourse leads one to conclude that it refers to something which is aesthetically relevant but whose elaboration and articulation remains to be worked out. As my introductory remarks suggest, the introduction of “atmosphere” as a concept into aesthetics should link up with the everyday distinctions between atmospheres of different character. Atmosphere can only become a concept, however, if we succeed in accounting for the peculiar intermediary status of atmospheres between subject and object.

A new aesthetics

I first made the call for a new aesthetics² in my book Für eine ökologische Naturästhetik (1989). This call has been misunderstood as fundamental ecology³ or as organicism.⁴ It is true that one aim of my book was the introduction of aesthetic viewpoints into ecology. It is true that in this book what we perceive is also called a form of nourishment, and that aesthetic nature remains our goal.⁵ The call, however, goes much further. I quoted Goethe in order to recall that “it makes a great difference from which side one approaches a body of knowledge, a science, through which gate one gains access.” Aesthetics opens up as a completely different field if it is approached from ecology, something completely different from its tradition of presentation from Kant up to Adorno and Lyotard. The quest for an aesthetics of nature as an aesthetic theory of nature requires that we reformulate the theme of aesthetics as such. The new resulting aesthetics is concerned with the relation between environmental qualities and human states. This “and,” this in-between, by means of which environmental qualities and states are related, is atmosphere. What is new in this new aesthetics can be formulated in threefold form.

1 The old aesthetics is essentially a judgmental aesthetics, that is, it is concerned not so much with experience, especially sensuous experience – as the expression “aesthetics” in its derivation from the Greek would suggest – as with judgments, discussion, conversation. It may have been the case that the question of taste and individual affective participation (under the title Faculty of approval) in a work of art or in nature provided the original motive for aesthetics. With Kant at the latest, however, it became a question of judgment, that is, the question of the justification for a positive or negative response to something. Since then the social function of aesthetic theory has been to facilitate conversation about works of art. It supplies the vocabulary for art history and art criticism, for the speeches at exhibitions and prize-givings and for essays in catalogues. Sensuousness and nature have in this fashion disappeared from aesthetics.

2 The central place of judgment in aesthetics and in its orientation to communication led to a dominance of language and to the present dominance of semiotics in aesthetic theory. This situation gives literature precedence over the other kinds of art, which are also interpreted by means of the schema of language and communication. Aesthetics can be presented under the general heading “languages of art.”⁶ It is not, however, self-evident that an artist intends to communicate something to a possible recipient or observer. Neither is it self-evident that a work of art is a sign, insofar as a sign always refers to something other than itself, that is, its meaning. Not every work of art has a meaning. On the contrary, it is necessary to remember that a work of art is first of all itself something, which possesses its own reality. This can be seen in the contortions that semiotics engages in with the concept of the “iconic sign” in order to be able to subsume paintings under the sign. Iconic signs do not reproduce the object but “some conditions of the perception of the object.”⁷ Through this use a painting of Mr. Smith is to be understood as a sign for Mr. Smith, even though it is in a certain way Mr. Smith: “That is Mr. Smith” is the answer to the question “Who is that?” Thus, for example, Eco declares Mona Lisa to be an iconic sign for Mona Lisa. Apart from the fact that the relation of the picture Mona Lisa to a person Mona Lisa is highly questionable, as Gombrich has shown in his essay on the portrait,⁸ nobody understands by “Mona Lisa” the person Mona Lisa but the painting and it is this which is experienced. The painting does not refer to its meaning as a sign (a meaning which could only be thought); the painting is in a certain sense what it itself represents, that is, the represented is present in and through the painting. Of course, we can also read and interpret such a painting but this means cutting out or even denying the experience of the presence of the represented, namely the atmosphere of the painting.⁹

3 After its original orientation, aesthetics very quickly became a theory of the arts and of the work of art. This, together with the social function of aesthetics as background knowledge for art criticism, led to a strongly normative orientation: it was not a question of art but of real, true, high art, of the authentic work of art, the work of art of distinction. Although aestheticians were fully aware that aesthetic work is a much broader phenomenon, it was registered at best only marginally and disdainfully, namely as mere beautification, as craftsmanship, as kitsch, as useful or applied art. All aesthetic production was seen from the perspective of art and its measure. Walter Benjamin introduced a change of perspective with his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproduction.¹⁰ On the one hand the possibility of Pop Art was envisaged before it actually existed, while on the other the aestheticization of the life world was thematized as a serious phenomenon under the formula of the “aestheticization of politics.” The primary task of aesthetics is no longer to determine what art is and to provide means for art criticism. Rather the theme of aesthetics is now the full range of aesthetic work, which is defined generally as the production of atmospheres and thus extends from cosmetics, advertising, interior decoration, stage sets to art in the narrower sense. Autonomous art is understood in this context as only a special form of aesthetic work, which also has its social function, namely the mediation of the encounter and response to atmospheres in situations (museums, exhibitions) set apart from action contexts.

The new aesthetics is thus as regards the producers a general theory of aesthetic work, understood as the production of atmospheres. As regards reception it is a theory of perception in the full sense of the term, in which perception is understood as the experience of the presence of persons, objects, and environments.

Benjamin’s aura

“Atmosphere” is an expression which occurs frequently in aesthetic discourse but is not up to now a concept of aesthetic theory. Nevertheless, there is a concept which is, so to speak, its substitute representative in theory – the concept of aura, introduced by Benjamin in his essay The Work of Art. Benjamin sought through the concept of aura to determine that atmosphere of distance and respect surrounding original works of art. He hoped thereby to be able to indicate the difference between an original and its reproductions and thought that he could define a general development of art through the loss of aura, which was brought about by the introduction of technical means of reproduction into art production. In fact, the artistic avant-garde sought to expel the aura of art through the reunion of art and life. Duchamp’s ready-mades, Brecht’s disillusioning of the theatre, and the opening up of art to Pop Art are examples. They failed or their outcome is at least paradoxical. The very fact that Duchamp declared a ready-made to be a work of art lent it aura and now his ready-mades display in museums as much distance and command the same respect as a sculpture by Veit Stoss. The avant-garde did not succeed in discarding aura like a coat, leaving behind them the sacred halls of art for life. What they did succeed in doing was to thematize the aura of artworks, their halo, their atmosphere, their nimbus. And this made it clear that what makes a work an artwork cannot be grasped solely through its concrete qualities. But what exceeds them, this “more,” the aura, remained completely undetermined. “Aura” signifies as it were atmosphere as such, the empty characterless envelope of its presence.

Nevertheless, it is worth holding on to what is already implied in Benjamin’s concept of aura for the development of the concept of atmosphere as a fundamental concept of aesthetics. The genesis of aura is paradoxical; Benjamin introduced it to characterize works of art as such. He derives it, however, from a concept of nature. I quote the whole passage on account of the special significance of this genesis:

What is aura actually? A strange tissue of space and time: unique appearance of distance, however near it may be. Resting on a summer evening and following a mountain chain on the horizon or a branch, which throws its shadow on the person at rest – that is to breathe the aura of these mountains or this branch. With this definition it is easy to comprehend the particular social determination of the present decay of aura.¹¹

When Walter Benjamin speaks of the “appearance” of distance, he does not mean that distance appears; rather, he is speaking of the phenomenon of distance which can also be discerned in things which are close. This is the unattainability and distance which is discernible in works of art. He has already introduced the “unique” and commits a petitio principii, since it is precisely through aura that the uniqueness of artworks is to manifest itself. The aura itself is not unique, it is repeatable. Let us now consider the experience from which the concept of aura derives. The examples show that Benjamin posits for the experience of aura first a certain natural impression or mood as background and second a certain receptivity in the observer. Aura appears in the situation of ease, that is, observation, in a physically relaxed and work-free situation. Following Hermann Schmitz, we could say that “summer afternoon” and “resting” – Benjamin’s example suggests that he observes mountain chain and branch lying on his back – imply a bodily tendency to privatize experience. The aura can now appear in relation to a distant mountain chain, the horizon, or a branch. It appears in natural objects. Aura proceeds from them, if the observer lets them and himself be, that is, refrains from an active intervention in the world. And aura is clearly something which flows forth spatially, almost something like a breath or a haze – precisely an atmosphere. Benjamin says that one “breathes” the aura. This breathing means that it is absorbed bodily, that it enters the bodily economy of tension and expansion, that one allows this atmosphere to permeate the self. Precisely this dimension of naturalness and corporeality in the experience of aura disappears in Benjamin’s further use of the expression, although in this first version his exemplary presentation of the experience of aura serves as its definition.

We retain the following: something like aura according to Benjamin is perceptible not only in art’s proudest or original works. To perceive aura is to absorb it into one’s own bodily state of being. What is perceived is an indeterminate spatially extended quality of feeling. These considerations serve to prepare us for the elaboration of the concept of atmosphere in the framework of Hermann Schmitz’s philosophy of the body.

The concept of atmosphere in the philosophy of Hermann Schmitz

When we stated above that “atmosphere” is used as an expression for something vague, this does not necessarily mean that the meaning of this expression is itself vague. Admittedly, it is difficult, owing to the peculiar intermediary position of the phenomenon between subject and object, to determine the status of atmospheres and thereby transform the everyday use of atmospheres into a legitimate concept. In raising the claim that atmosphere constitutes the fundamental concept of a new aesthetics, it is not necessary to establish the legitimacy of this concept, since Hermann Schmitz’s philosophy of the body already provides an elaboration of the concept of atmospheres. Schmitz’s concept of atmospheres has a precursor in Ludwig Klages’s idea of the “reality of images.” In his early work Vom kosmogonischen Eros Klages set out to show that appearances (images) possess in relation to their sources a relatively independent reality and power of influence. This thesis of the relative independence of images derives in part from the disappointing experience that the physiognomy of a person can hold a promise which is not fulfilled.¹² Klages...