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| From the cover of "Get a Life", Donald Brook, 2014. |
When invited to give a lecture to accompany a group exhibition in 2015, Donald didn’t attempt to massage any egos or to ingratiate himself by means of praise and adulation for the work presented. Instead he made an important observation about the difference between art on the one hand and works of art on the other; between the discovery of repeatable acts of ingenuity and a particular class of items, only very few of which are the result of such acts. I suspect that this was a great disappointment to his audience. After all, not even the most incorrigible art enthusiast is likely to welcome the suggestion that their favourite works of art are almost certainly bereft of art.
Donald was obviously well aware of “the awful truth about what art is”—of the logical impossibility of our ever deliberately making art. Works of art, on the other hand, are easily contrived, but the discovery of new forms of ingenuity—art in this stricter sense—is not a contrivable circumstance. Donald’s slogan “Art is the driver of cultural evolution” was never about works of art, it was always about innovations that change the face of culture.
He never stated it explicitly, but Donald’s theory of art is a theory of illumination, insight, discovery and revelation. It is a revelation about revelation itself. However, if art has almost nothing to do with works of art and even less to do with the machinations of the artworld, then it follows that art theory is not what we usually take it to be. More to the point—and I’m sure Donald recognised this with more than a pinch of irony—it follows that as an art theorist he really was one of a kind! Had he lost his marbles? Was he playing with words? Or worse still, was he Theorising with a capital T? No. None of these. He was merely following the logic of the most important philosopher of his lifetime: Ludwig Wittgenstein.
For Wittgenstein, as for Donald—indeed for all of us—representational communication is a sociocultural enterprise. It necessarily emerges at the level of communities, not at the level of individuals or their subsystems. In recent years, Donald took this insight a stage further by linking art, cultural evolution, nonverbal representation and purposeful action in what might be regarded as a unified theory of revelation. I realise this may appear grandiose. But put simply, Donald’s work enables us to see that the discovery of new forms of action is only possible in virtue of skills that we first gain as members of a community and moreover as users of representations.
Wittgenstein once famously invoked Goethe by declaring “In the beginning was the deed.” He was referring to the origins of language. Donald long knew, and very frequently argued, that this must necessarily have been a nonverbal deed. But we are now in a position to see that this first deed was in fact art: the first ever discovery of a repeatable act of ingenuity. In the beginning was art! This is a momentous realisation with profound implications.
It wasn’t only Newton who stood on the shoulders of giants. We all do. But Donald stood taller than most, and by standing on his shoulders we have an opportunity to appreciate the intimate relations between art and representation. As the privileged inheritors of everything that comes with our elevated position we owe it not just to Donald’s memory but to one another, in the broadest sense, not to squander his insights or the clarity that comes from his vantage point. We owe it to humankind—to art in fact—to revisit his work, to share it, to discuss it, to make use of his insights and thereby, and most especially, to ensure that his discoveries do not languish in obscurity. Culture flourishes in virtue of the things we repeat, not in virtue of the coruscating flotsam that we leave in our wake. Donald lives on not merely or even mainly in the vividness or vagueness of our memories but in the public sharing of his outstanding contributions to culture.
I miss him dearly, but I never cease to be astounded by the light that Donald’s work continues to shed.
Farewell Donald
Your friend Jim
Glasgow, February, 2019.
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