Burke: "There
is the critical function, there is an artistic function.
We may treat them as distinct––yet what of an
artist who revises his work? What is he doing? Is he not
criticizing himself? . . . "
Duchamp: "You forget
that the work of the artist is based in emotion and that
the work of the critic is based on an intellectual translation."
Burke: " . . . I
was trying to show that the distinction between the two
processes isn't as sharp as it sometimes appears to be when
seen through differences of profession. The important thing
is to recognize that a critical function is an integral
part of the creative act. . . "
" . . . take Mead's notion
of the 'generalized order.' When you criticize yourself,
you are 'taking the attitude of the other.' You are making
allowance for what Freud might call the 'super-ego.' You
are thus taking into account a social character. It is not
merely yourself. You are answering somebody.
"There is also an internal process: the artist's interaction
with his own work is the course of creating it. The drawing
of one line becomes the partial determinate for the next
line . . . Now, that is not a purely self-critical process,
but it is related to the correcting of the work, and there
is a likeness between the two processes . . . "
Duchamp: "It's not criticism then."
Burke: "I
would go back to the Socratic idea of the internal dialogue.
Once a complex world has been built up, no one is just talking
to himself. Each individual contains several roles of personalities
which have been built out of his situation. And he learns
how to develop a thought by a process that could be reduced
to alternating statements and rejoinders . . . Mead . .
. illustrates his point by such examples as this: if you
are going to pick up a glass, you anticipate its weight,
its resistance in your hand, etc. Thus, there is a kind
of criticism implicit in your very act of grasping the glass.
The object's 'attitude' will be one of resistance to your
way of seizing it. Hence, you grip in accordance with the
attitude you anticipate.
"Now, if we apply such a dialectical explanation to
account for the producing of a work of art, we find that
an artist is not merely expressing himself; he is considering
the 'attitude of the other,' he is anticipating objections.
There is thus a critical function interwoven with the creative
function . . .
"Such a perspective would help bring these two processes
together––though I admit that, like everything
else in our modern world, they become separated into compartments,
through professional specialization . . . "
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