THE TRIUMPH OF THE WHIM
or
Dandyism and the
Aesthetic
Process
A Thesis
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Honors Program Requirements
Angus Francisco McFarland
TABLE of CONTENTS
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………..3
Preface: Reasons and Questions………………………………………………………….4
I: The Aesthetic Process………………………………………………………………….7
Fig. 1: The Aesthetic Process…………………………………………………….10
Fig. 2: The Post-Modern Aesthetic Process……………………………………...11
A Brief History of Dandyism…………………………………………………….11
Specifics………………………………………………………………………….14
II: The Post-Modern Aesthetic Situation………………………………………………...18
The Aestheticization of the World……………………………………………….19
The End of Nature………………………………………………………………..24
Spectacular Aesthetics…………………………………………………………...25
III: The Triumph of the Whim…………………………………………………………...26
The Dandiacal Vision……………………………………………………………29
Self-Fashioning,
or, The
The Whim………………………………………………………………………..33
Dandyism and Artistic Endeavor………………………………………………...34
Dandyism and Gender……………………………………………………………35
ABSTRACT
The
central problem of this thesis is to describe the essential and specific characteristics
of the aesthetic philosophy of Dandyism and its relations with the aesthetic situation
of post-modernity. To this end it
includes the formulation of a model of the aesthetic process, contrasting the
process of previous eras with that of post-modernity, and a definition of “aesthetics”
and other relevant terms. It continues
to give a brief history of Dandyism and to outline the specific aesthetic
characteristics involved therewith. Following
this the reader will find a discussion of the aesthetic environment of
post-modernity, arguing that in this period Nature has ceased to exist as a
vital force, all things are replaced by their images, and that commerce
controls the production and transmission of images, giving rise to Guy Debord’s
conception of the spectacle. It is then
necessary to discuss Dandyism’s response to these troubling phenomena. This portion of the thesis formulates the
essential philosophy of Dandyism as a twofold process of self-fashioning and
the dandiacal vision, both of which are based in the faculty of the whim. This philosophy allows the practitioner to
deal with the problems of post-modernity in a relevant and resistant manner and,
indeed, it is a philosophy uniquely suited to do so. The concluding section relates Dandyism variously
to gender and to artistic endeavor. It
is shown here that while the persona of the dandy is an outwardly masculine
persona the practice of Dandyism is open to all genders, as Dandyism
understands gender as a type of performance and as such open to manipulation by
the whim. Dandyism is further contrasted
with other artistic formulae and it is argued that as a guiding principle for
artistic practice it has a unique satisfaction and liberating effect. The work concludes with an account of the
practice of Dandyism, from which the presentation aspect of this thesis
proceeds.
“And what you have called world, that shall be created only by you:
your reason, your image, your will, your love shall thus be realized.
And verily, for your own bliss…”
--Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke
Zarathustra[1]
PREFACE: REASONS AND QUESTIONS
I was first introduced to Dandyism as a concept by the professor of my Honors 202 class and my present Thesis Committee chairman Dusan Bjelic. I must thank him profusely for this introduction, for I have found this idea incredibly fascinating since that time. This is in part because as a way of living in the world it seemed marvelously pleasurable, and also because it also seemed quite well-suited to my own temperament and aesthetic inclinations. These are the reasons for which I began to study Dandyism, but I have continued and made a thesis of it because of the enormous potential I have felt contained therein. Firstly it must be said that Dandyism seems to be experiencing a resurgence in contemporary culture. There is evidence of this in many spheres, such as the world of fashion design, which is increasingly drawing on Dandyism for its influence, hip-hop fashion, which seems to be moving beyond the ostentatious display of wealth in ornament and into an ostentatious display of culture, and in the world of art and art criticism, where everyone seems to be vying to claim the dandy as their own. Secondly I feel that Dandyism has great possibilities within contemporary culture as an aesthetic philosophy and practice, and that it is a uniquely appropriate way to understand a world that is increasingly artificial. I beg the indulgence of being allowed to posit the dandy not as a mere historical curiosity but as the prototype of a post-natural persona, one that has the power to deal with an aestheticized world because he speaks the language of aesthetics, indeed, the perfect dandy should speak no other.
Dandyism as a philosophy demands complete aesthetic freedom: a freedom from moralizing, from commercial interests, from reason, and from ideology. It is nothing less than a liberation of the aesthetic process from all constraints. The means of this liberation are the dandiacal vision, associated with aesthetic consumption, and self-fashioning, associated with aesthetic production. Behind both of these tools lies the whim, that faculty of caprice which is sacred to the dandy. Armed with these tools, the dandy stands in a position to liberate himself from commercial aesthetics, and to create a personality which he owns.
Dandyism as a cultural tradition has a number of specific characteristics which I will discuss later. It is best understood as a philosophy and as a cultural tradition, thus it has both general principles and specific characteristics. I am most concerned with the philosophical aspect here, though it is impossible to completely divorce the two. Perhaps it is best to think of the philosophical aspect of dandyism as the motivating and internal force, while the cultural aspect is the plastic and external manifestation.
My method of research has been to read as much of the literature of Dandyism as I could—both fictional works and essays—drawn from the period beginning with the golden age of Dandyism in the 19th Century and continuing to the present. I have also read works on aesthetics and on the post-modern condition. I am indebted to the members of my Thesis Committee for their many fine recommendations for reading materials, without which my research would have been hopelessly difficult, and to Kaitlin Briggs, who was instrumental in teaching me how to go about this research.
I have also kept a journal, on the advice of Professor Briggs, in which I recorded my thoughts on this subject and my reactions to my reading. Much of the material recorded there appears in this thesis.
The main business of this work is to formulate a theory of dandyism and apply this theory to what I know, and what has been written, about post-modernity. I wanted to go further, however, than a theory. To this end I have included an artistic work with which I hope to show the results of the study and practice of Dandyism in my own aesthetic life. This work is not intended to be an explanation of the ideas contained in this text, as I hope that my prose is sufficient to its task, but as a demonstration of practical Dandyism as I have conceived it. An academic text such as this is necessary to a full understanding of Dandyism, but it must also live and breathe, and theory must give way to practice. It is important to understand that Dandyism is not only a theory, but also a way of living—an ethical practice. Thus I believe that the inclusion of the artwork component in this thesis is not only justified but a necessity. Do not expect, however, the artwork to be an extension of the theory, but only an exploration of its possible results.
Any
research must begin with questions. I
began with the obvious “what is Dandyism?” but proceeded to ask what Dandyism
could be; how it might interact with the phenomena encountered in our
contemporary world and how it might work as an aesthetic theory and practice. I also needed to ask what is meant by
“aesthetics” and what precisely are the characteristics of our aesthetic
environment. Furthermore the overwhelming
question was why Dandyism is important; why it was looming large both in my own
mind and in certain spheres of the culture around me. It is toward answering these questions that
this thesis is aimed, and it is my hope that the reader finds that it has hit
the mark.
I.
THE AESTHETIC PROCESS
What Dandyism shares with the post-modern age in which we find ourselves is aesthetics. It is the forum common to both, and is where the two ideas interact. Aesthetics may well be the most important branch of philosophy at work in the world today. We live, as our post-modernists have adequately shown, in the age of representation, in which all things have been replaced by their images, and in which life imitates art completely. The environment in which we live is thus an aesthetic environment, and in order to understand this environment we must understand aesthetics. As a first step towards this understanding I would like to offer a definition of the term aesthetics, and a discussion of my understanding of its implications. This term is usually associated with the study of beauty, as in Webster’s New World Collegiate Dictionary: “the study or theory of beauty and of the psychological responses to it; specif., the branch of philosophy dealing with art, its creative sources, its forms, and its effects.” This conception of aesthetics, however, is incomplete and difficult to work with, relying as it does on the terms beauty, which is famously subjective, and art, which has become famously impossible to define.
My understanding of beauty is that it is a pleasant response to some quality or set of qualities beheld by an observer. The problem with this is that it limits aesthetics to a concern only with qualities which produce this pleasant response of beauty and ignores all of the other ways in which our senses may be affected by art or our surroundings. Thus my definition, the one on which this paper relies, is more general: Aesthetics is, succinctly, the appreciation and articulation of qualities of forms. That is to say that aesthetics is not concerned with functions, the how and the why of things, but with qualities as understood by the senses, whether those qualities be pleasant, as in the case of beauty, or otherwise[2].
For the purposes of this definition we shall assume that a form is a distinction, more or less arbitrary, that is made within the human mind to break the universe up into intelligible parts. In the physical realm this often refers to geometric shape. We draw imaginary lines around some object to distinguish it from its surroundings, and these lines constitute that object’s form. We also think about color, texture, &c. insofar as these serve us to identify the object. In music we say that the form of a piece is made up of what happens in the piece and in what order; the parts make the form, and each part is recognized by its qualities. Forms are identified by qualities, and the appreciation and articulation of these qualities is the business of aesthetics.
By this definition
aesthetics must be particularly concerned with images, because an image of a
thing generally reproduces its qualities without its functions. An image of a tree does not produce oxygen,
nor engage in any of the processes of photosynthesis, nor can we find rest
beneath its boughs, as we can with an actual tree. These are the functions of trees. An image, however, can share with a tree the
qualities of dignity, loneliness, greenness, &c. The connection between a thing and an image
of a thing is an aesthetic connection, not a functional one; therefore we must
employ aesthetics to understand images. Indeed,
aesthetics may be alternately defined as the science of images. To extend my operative definition; aestheticization is a process by which a
form, either naturally occurring or a product of artifice, is viewed as or as
though it was an image, that is, perceived as though it was intended (as it may
or may not be) for the viewer’s aesthetic contemplation. The functionality of the form is thereby
removed from or subservient to its image.
I later refer to this process as the replacement
of something by its image.
I do not mean to say that an image is not functional. Images, regardless of whether they are modeled on some existing object or vista, have their own functions. These functions are the functions of images, however, and not of the things which they represent. Some images advertise, inform, propagandize, illustrate, &c. All images share a common function, which is the aesthetic function. They may be appreciated and articulated according to their qualities. Not only images, however, but all things have an aesthetic function, inasmuch as all things have qualities about which we may form opinions. Images, however, have much more weight placed upon their aesthetic functions than do forms which we will call naturally occurring. This is because images are artificial, and are created specifically so that we may regard them aesthetically. Naturally occurring forms exist for some other purpose, or for no purpose at all, but at any rate they are not created by human hands and do not speak the aesthetic language. Thus we can see that aesthetics is especially concerned with images, though all forms have an aesthetic function.
Here as elsewhere the term “image” is used in the broadest possible sense to include not only pictures but also pieces of music, film, sculpture, &c. Furthermore an image can exist within the mind as well as outside it, i.e. a mental image as well as a concrete one. Thus an image of a tree may be a photograph, a painting, or a mental image of the qualities of a tree. It is assumed that all images are to some degree referential to some form external to the image, even if this form exists only in the mind of the creator of the image.
Since images may be both created and perceived we must distinguish between aesthetic production and aesthetic consumption. The former occurs when some set of qualities is imagined or perceived and subsequently synthesized to form an image. The latter occurs when a set of qualities is perceived, either as an image which is the result of aesthetic production or as a natural phenomenon, and further when an opinion of these qualities is formulated and subsequently articulated, as in, for example, criticism. These two ideas form the whole of the aesthetic process, and overlap and feed into one another.
Fig.
1: The Aesthetic Process
In the present era the aesthetic process has become a completely circular and self-contained system; the only source of material for aesthetic consumption, in the absence of natural phenomena, being the results of aesthetic production, and aesthetic consumption being the necessary precursor to aesthetic production.
Fig.
2: The Post-Modern Aesthetic Process
There will be more on the removal of natural phenomena from this diagram later, as the post-modern aesthetic situation will be discussed at some length. Suffice it to say that this is the model of the aesthetic process that we will use.
A Brief History of Dandyism
Dandyism first appeared in the 18th century as a revolution in manners and dress. The English socialite George Bryan “Beau” Brummel is often thought of as its inventor and the first dandy, though there are certainly many predecessors to be found in the “bucks” and “macaronis” of earlier times[3]. Brummel’s chief contribution to Dandyism was the adoption of a new kind of masculine dress, which eschewed the ostentatious decoration that prevailed in baroque society in favor of simplicity of form and elegant tailoring. Whereas masculine clothing before him had been about the display of wealth or prestige, after him it became a display of taste and aesthetic discernment. This paradigm went far beyond costume, however, and extended to the realms of manners, habits, education—into every sphere of the display of who and what one was. The type of the dandy was an artificial persona carefully chosen by the individual practitioner and divorced from the constraints of the actual social standing of that individual. The dandy was an artificial man, a magnificent fake. In this early British practice dandyism was largely a way of augmenting the social status of the dandy, his fitness for polite society being determined by his aesthetic cultivation, as was the case with Brummel, who rose to be associated with the highest echelon of British society on taste and wit alone.
Dandyism
was taken up by the French in the 19th Century, in whose hands it
came into full flower. It was in
His review of the Salon of 1846 drew on Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly’s study of quintessential dandy Beau Brummel to popularize dandies as the aloof new heroes of 1840s Paris. Later, in 1863, in Le Figaro, Baudelaire introduced his readers to the newspaper artist and illustrator Constantine Guys and gave them an artist-dandy, almost an alter ego, to contemplate. Like Baudelaire a dandy who actually worked at a profession and cultivated only the appearance of dandiacal leisure, Guys, Baudelaire proclaimed, was an utterly original personality. More than an artist, he was a man of the world gripped by a passion for contemporanaeity…[4]
As a result of the writings of Baudelaire et al. dandyism became a particular kind of aesthetic philosophy in which the dandy did something in addition to simply being something. Its project was to be one of total aestheticization, that is, the eclipse or replacement of things by their images (images again being taken to mean both concrete and mental images.) Also at this time arose the dandiacal persona of the flâneur, the fashionable stroller and observer of modern life. Thus began the inward workings of Dandyism: where Brummel and the English dandies had aestheticized the presentation of the self to the world, Baudelaire and company began to aestheticize the perception of the world within the self. This had a huge effect on Western material culture, contributing to such aesthetic phenomena as Impressionism, Aestheticism, and even modern journalism (the flâneur was largely a journalist, writing down his impressions of his surroundings and publishing them in newspapers.[5]) This was the golden age of Dandyism, and the period in which it took its basic form.
Towards the end of that century and the beginning of the next Dandyism underwent some changes, mostly at the hands of Oscar Wilde. In his day he was Dandyism’s best-known practitioner, thus his conception of it became more or less definitive. Because of his trials for sodomy being a dandy became linked with being a homosexual (a category of sexuality which Wilde helped to define[6].) Of course Dandyism had always had effeminate overtones, but after Wilde it became downright subversive of sexuality. This had the effect not only of lending Dandyism the air of homosexuality, but of ensuring that an atmosphere of Dandyism surrounded homosexuality. This phenomenon exists to this day, where we find the common conception that gay men are better dressers than, and generally have superior aesthetic sensibilities to, their straight counterparts.
In the 20th Century Dandyism cropped up time and time again. From the American blacks of the Harlem Renaissance to the Glam movement of the 70’s it was a constant influence and referent in modern culture. It has, of course, survived up to the present day, where its influence can be felt in those spheres mentioned above, i.e. hip-hop fashion, fashion design, and art criticism. There have also recently been a number of new websites devoted to Dandyism, such as Dandyism.net[7] and the site of Lord Whimsy[8], the self-described Mammal of Paradise. It seems clear that Dandyism is alive and well in the present and that the archetype of the dandy continues to be recognized. Dandyism is a philosophy with a historical tradition and as such it has a number of specific and superficial (though in Dandyism surface is everything) characteristics that it has collected throughout its long history. Presented here are some of the most visible of these.
Specifics
It is difficult to pin down exactly the specific aesthetics of Dandyism, but so long as we do not get too specific we may have some success. It is important to understand that Dandyism, being based in the whim, which is itself intrinsically based in the individual, is essentially non-dogmatic. The practitioner of this philosophy is not a “Dandyist,” he is a dandy. Dandyism, if it is to be of any value whatsoever, must never be thought of as an ideology. It is always up to—indeed depends on—individual interpretation and re-imagining. The true dandy is first and foremost an original, and the perfection of dandyism depends on each dandy being the first of his kind. Thus these characteristics are a matter of tradition, not dogma.
The first characteristic is hauteur; an affected superiority in matters of taste. Dandyism arose coincidentally with the waning of the power of the aristocracy in European cultures, and it is possible to see it as an attempt at the replacement of this power. As Baudelaire writes in The Painter of Modern Life, Dandyism was “…a new kind of aristocracy, all the more difficult to break down because established on the most precious, the most indestructible faculties, on the divine gifts that neither work nor money can give…”[9] Up until this time the aristocracy was the only group that engaged in active aesthetic consumption; they made taste. It was thought that their superior breeding gave them an inherent authority in such matters. With the destruction of their system, however, an aesthetic power vacuum must have opened up. Into this place stepped the dandies, who spoke like and conceived of themselves as aristocrats, but without titles or lands. Their authority came from education and cultivation, not from high birth. Dandyism may be thought of as an affected aristocracy, but also as a new kind of aristocracy.
Another characteristic is masculinity. This is a matter of tradition; Dandyism appearing as it did in a time when gender roles were much more rigidly defined. The dandy has always been a “masculine” persona, but he has an effeminate masculinity. His complete absorption in matters aesthetic is a quality that has been traditionally associated with women, not to mention his penchant for fancy dress. He is never overtly feminine, however, and always retains some appearance of masculinity. Many of the qualities of Dandyism are so similar to the qualities traditionally ascribed to women that a dandy in a feminine costume would probably be considered, according to the old gender models, quite simply a woman. That being said it is important to note that Dandyism is really a hermaphroditic blend of masculinity and femininity; the dandy is not constrained by either model. In the 20th Century we find a number of women practicing a sort of Dandyism, such as Georgia O’Keefe[10] and Coco Chanel.[11]
A third characteristic is the sense of play within convention. The dandy takes on new images, but these images must always be referential to some recognized and appropriate form to retain their power. The method of the dandy is not to disregard convention but to subvert it through exaggeration, re-interpretation, and re-ordering. Through this subversion the dandy takes ownership of convention and personalizes it. He also retains some appearance of normality, through which his hauteur comes forth. The dandy always poses as an improvement on convention, and thereby validates his subversion.
There is also a marked flavor of nostalgia about Dandyism. There is a constant looking back to the past for influence, coupled with a concern, at least in the Baudelairean dandy, for modernity. This is, I believe, because of the process of aestheticization. The past, when considered from an aesthetic point of view, can be an immense source of invigoration in the present. Considered this way it is not important that the court of Louis XV was corrupt, or oppressive, or morally bankrupt, but that they wore wonderful satin bows on their shoes. This nostalgia is always current, always rooted in the present. There is no need to recreate the past when any of its elements may be brought forward and used. The concern for modernity stems from the same process: an aestheticized past joins an aestheticized present. We must note, furthermore, that our history since the invention of lithography (in the early 19th Century[12]) has been recorded as a series of images. Walter Benjamin, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, writes:
With lithography the technique of reproduction reached an essentially new stage. This much more direct process was distinguished by the tracing of the design on a stone rather than its incision on a block of wood or its etching on a copperplate and permitted graphic art for the first time to put its products on the market, not only in large numbers as hitherto, but also in daily changing forms. Lithography enabled graphic art to illustrate everyday life, and it began to keep pace with printing. But only a few decades after is invention, lithography was surpassed by photography. For the first time in the process of pictorial reproduction, photography freed the hand of the most important artistic functions which henceforth devolved only upon the eye looking into a lens. Since the eye perceives more swiftly than the hand can draw, the process of pictorial reproduction was accelerated so enormously that it could keep pace with speech.[13]
The further result of all of this pictorial reproduction was that highly accurate images would exist long after their referents had passed away. The modern and post-modern ages are the first time in history that this has been true, and it is only now, in post-modernity, that we are truly beginning to perceive the impact of such an accumulation of imagery from the past. Thus we are beginning to reach a stage wherein the images of the past take place directly beside the images of the present. The nostalgia of dandyism (itself a modern and post-modern phenomenon) could not have existed before the age of mechanical reproduction, as Benjamin calls it. This nostalgia, furthermore, is an aesthetic nostalgia, in that it does not attempt to recreate the functional conditions of the past, but to appreciate and articulate its imagery. Stated more simply, it is not a longing for the mores and institutions of the “good old days,” but a delight in their aesthetics.
II.
THE POST-MODERN AESTHETIC SITUATION
In
order to see how the tradition of Dandyism has evolved and what effect it may
have on the world in which we find ourselves it is necessary to discuss the
present situation. I base my discussion
of this situation primarily on Guy Debord’s Society
of the Spectacle, Jean Baudrillard’s
The Aestheticization of the World
“Mankind, which in Homer’s time was an object of contemplation for the
Olympian gods, now is one for itself.”
Walter Benjamin,
The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction[15]
The first
revolution in the history of ideas was the invention of language. The second was the historical revolution
wherein history was invented and with it institutions such as aristocracy,
religions, &c. (This revolution is
described in The Society of the Spectacle,
whence comes the model I have used to describe the others which I perceived as
occurring.) The third revolution was
written language, by which history could be preserved outside of human time,
that is, outside of the oral tradition (which requires face-to-face human
contact.) History could be disseminated
to a larger group of people and over greater spans of time than oral language
could manage. The fourth revolution was
the printing press, which coincided with the beginnings of Europe’s reaching
out into the world, which led to Colonialism, Imperialism, and allowed still greater
dissemination of history and ideas into new markets and audiences, but began
the bourgeois revolution by putting control of the wide distribution of ideas
in the hands of those who could afford it.
(With the beginning of
The fifth revolution was that of photography, in which history and ideas began to resemble individual experience much more closely. This revolution coincided with new technologies of transmission, such as the telegraph, telephone, television, &c. Commerce continued to control the dissemination of ideas and history, but on a much larger scale. Individual sensory experience now had a doppelganger, as, admittedly, it had always had since the invention of language back in the first revolution. Images had existed for a long time, indeed since before the second revolution, but now they were both more real, that is, more believable and closer to individual sensory experience, and they were also more easily disseminated and directly produced. Since it required much less training to take a picture or shoot a movie than to paint a painting, and because such images were far easier to mass produce, commerce had more images to choose from, and was thus less dependent on individual aesthetic producers. In this way commerce refined its ideas and history at the same time as it distributed them more widely (at this point the astute reader will notice that commerce owns its ideas and history, which must be the case, because since the disappearance of the aristocracy it is the only owner of anything. These ideas and history which commerce owns also begin to co-opt and push out all other ideas and histories during this time, as commerce is the only force that can afford [i.e. has control of enough resources] to distribute.)
During the early stage of this period, however, before Commerce had refined its vision or squeezed out other ideas, there was a time of political revolutions made possible by photography and transmission technologies. These were Fascism and Communism, mostly. Both movements were essentially aesthetic, in that they were image-based. Walter Benjamin, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, writes this on the subject:
“Fiat ars—pereat mundus,” says Fascism, and, as Marinetti admits, expects war to supply the artistic gratification of a sense perception that has been changed by technology…[Mankind’s] self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics that Fascism is rendering aesthetic.[16]
Fascism began with an image (Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini’s aesthetic visions) which was skillfully presented enough to captivate a support base large enough to take control of a nation, and proceeded to mold that nation to that image. Fascism then began to impose this image on other nations, that is, other political groups which had leaders with their own images, and ultimately failed because its image wasn’t strong enough to replace those other images on their home turf. The Soviet Communist image, on the other hand, proceeded from a movement of the people (albeit one strongly influenced by images disseminated by revolutionary groups.) This movement was essentially a survival mechanism which reacted to the hardships of an imperfect commercial technology: there was no bread, so things must change. Commerce was not providing the commodities that the society needed to survive. (This is the great weakness of commerce; it must never fail to provide for the needs of the bodies of its labor force. It has learned this lesson, which is why obesity is a problem in the place where starvation once was.) Lenin, among others, quickly replaced this movement with the image of itself, and in this way the popular movement ended, to be replaced by modern state power, that is, the power of the image. Benjamin continues after the quote cited above to state that “Communism responds by politicizing art.”[17] By either the Communist or the Fascist method the end result is largely the same. Whether politics are aestheticized or art is politicized the fruit is a politics inextricably mixed with images, and one that is controlled by the control of images. Whether the political situation proceeds from aesthetics, as Benjamin suggests in the case of Fascism, or the aesthetic situation from politics, is in some ways immaterial.
Starvation and hardship, by and large, continued in post-revolutionary nations, but because the mechanism to right this problem (revolution) was replaced by its image, there was no way to change things. Fascism was able to get away with murdering large portions of its populations because that population was replaced by an image of itself: Fascism. Commerce, of course, was never really worried about any of these upheavals, because it ultimately controlled the spread of images and because it stood to profit from most of their possible outcomes. World War II and the Cold War may be viewed as having been won by the superiority of commerce’s control of images.
The sixth
revolution, coming after the period of squabbling aesthetic visions, is the one
in which we find ourselves now. It is
the period of consolidation of commercial imagery, when the
In the second
case, that of sub- and counter-cultures, the victory of commerce is very
nearly, if not very actually, complete. The
process by which this has been done is similar to the process used by the
Communist Party in the
The original project of Dandyism, then, is complete, in a manner of speaking. The world has been aestheticized. Everything which was formerly authentic has been replaced by its image. We are justified in calling this process “aestheticization” if we remember that an image reproduces the qualities of a form without reproducing its functions. This is the process whereby things are aestheticized. There is space within this process for manipulation: some qualities may be reproduced and not others, or some may be emphasized over others, or in some such way the representation may be altered to serve a particular purpose. This is the business of both art and advertising.
The End of Nature
Another characteristic of the post-modern era is its relationship to nature, one of negation. If nature is defined negatively as the opposite of artifice we can see that it has ceased to exist as our environment has become artificial. When I speak of nature here it is in this sense. There are various definitions of nature, including a sense in which everything, including the produce of human hands, is “natural.” In order to define “nature” we will exclude this sense and assume that by nature we mean those forces and events that occur independently of human interference; as in the distinction between “natural” and “artificial” flavors and colors.
The project of the conquest of nature has had the effect of negating it as an independent force, so that all that we may observe in our environment is either made or altered by humanity or allowed to continue its existence so long as it serves human needs. In previous eras nature was an oppressive force which limited the scope of human activity. One need only look around at today’s world to see that this is no longer the case. We have molded the world according to a human image, inhabiting and building on every available piece of it. There is no place to which we may not travel with relative ease, no mineral or plant for which we do not have some use—even the weather may be predicted and avoided. Those places which we think of as “natural,” such as national parks and nature preserves, are in fact artificial because they are preserved and allowed to exist by human fiat. Even evolution has been subverted by human technologies—selective breeding was only the beginning. Cloning and genetics are even now having immense impacts on populations. If anyone doubts human domination of nature he or she need only be reminded that we are capable of utterly destroying the Earth with nuclear weapons, and any doubts must surely be silenced.
Spectacular Aesthetics
These general characteristics of post-modernity aside, it is time to look at the specific aesthetics of our age. Our aesthetic environment is overwhelmingly commercial. That is to say that the commercial and propagandistic functions of imagery are more prominent than, and are the telos of, its aesthetic function. All imagery is designed to sell some product or ideology. In keeping, however, with the replacement of things with their images, what is truly being sold is an image of a product or ideology which is posed as an image of the self of the consumer. We are constantly encouraged to adopt an “image-package” for ourselves. This is the key to advertising: never sell a product, sell an image. Consequently we see millions and millions of people dressed as athletes: Basketball shoes, baseball hats, jogging suits—to look around an American city and judge by clothing one might assume that we were a nation of dedicated athletes. If, however, one were to judge by waistlines the impression would be rather different: we would be thought of as exactly what we are—a nation of consumers.
There are many such image-packages for sale, and we see them constantly. The Playboy man (or bunny,) the Marlboro man, and the Sex in the City woman are all examples, and there are many more. This is brand loyalty spun out of control, turned into brand-identity. The end result is control of the consumer through the control of choices offered. Here arises the problem of freedom of choice. The freedom to choose is important, but is subverted when our choices are limited by what is offered to us by some outside force. Commerce furthermore normalizes only the choices it offers, ostracizing or even criminalizing others. In this context aesthetics becomes oppressive and limiting to human freedom, and for no greater good than the profit motivation of commerce or the political motivations of politicians (which are fast becoming exactly the same thing.)
In order to free ourselves from commercial aesthetics we must speak its language. We must be critical of images, and this requires aesthetic thinking. On the subject of aesthetic contemplation Walter Benjamin writes this:
Distraction and concentration form polar opposites which may be stated as follows: A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it. He enters into this work of art the way legend tells of the Chinese painter when he viewed his finished painting. In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art.[18]
Spectacular aesthetics are the aesthetics of a distracted mass. We are meant to absorb what is presented to us by film, television, and all media that are subject to censorship or the pressure of commercial sponsorship. To view any media in a way that allows us to understand what messages it conveys, and thereby criticize these messages, we must view it individually, we must be absorbed by it, and we must concentrate. In this country we are rarely encouraged to engage in aesthetics in this way. If we do not wish our identities to be determined by commerce, however, we must learn to do so constantly.
III.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE WHIM
Thesis 12 of The Society of the Spectacle says: “The attitude that [the spectacle] demands in principle is the same passive acceptance that it has already secured by means of its seeming incontrovertibility, and indeed by its monopolization of the realm of appearances[19].” Thus it is in aesthetics (appearances and images are taken to be synonymous) that the spectacle manifests itself, indeed, the spectacle is pure aesthetics. The spectacle monopolizes appearances and makes it seem as though it is the only source of our aesthetic experience, which it is in fact rapidly becoming. From this statement we can decide two things: the first is that if we are to resist the spectacle in any way we must do so, in the absence of a sweeping proletarian revolution, on the plane of aesthetics. The second is that, inasmuch as the spectacle is the only source of aesthetic experience, the raw materials of such a resistance will obviously be found within the spectacle. The way to resist anything is to deny its demands, and what we have seen here is that the spectacle demands “passive acceptance” of its aesthetics. There are two aspects to aesthetic experience: that which is perceived by the individual from some external source and that which the individual gets from an internal source and puts out into the world, or aesthetic consumption and production. The spectacle demands not only that its aesthetics be passively accepted but that they be internalized and regurgitated whole and unaltered, and that we all become images of the spectacle.
Dandyism, on the other hand, demands that each bit of aesthetic data be scrutinized and criticized, be judged according to some individual criteria before it is internalized, and furthermore that the greatest care is taken to ensure that the individual is in complete control of the aesthetics that govern what image is portrayed from the internal to the world. It demands, in other words, that we be aesthetes, and there can never be anything passive about aesthetics for a dandy. Thesis 4 states that “The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.[20]” The dandy does participate in the spectacle; indeed, the Dandyism of the past was the progenitor of this paradigm, that social relationships are aestheticized or mediated by images. This is what makes Dandyism uniquely suited to resist the spectacle. It speaks the spectacular language, yet places the ownership of images, and thus some degree of control over social relationships, in the hands of the individual.
Thesis 153 talks about the consumption of time. All leisure time within the capitalist system is spent in passive consumption of the spectacle. As Debord puts it poignantly: “…as we know, modern society’s obsession with saving time, whether by means of faster transport or by means of powdered soup, has the positive result that the average American spends three to six hours daily watching television.[21]” If all time is now spent either in production or in consumption (leisure time being by definition that time not spent at work) how are we to claim that any of this time is our own? Dandyism recommends that as much time as possible be spent in production of the self and creative consumption. Of course, it is impossible to completely escape production or consumption, if only because the needs of the body demand satisfaction and because we must in some way participate in our society. Capitalism inserts itself into all social interactions, therefore unless we want to live in the forests like beasts, or until some alternative presents itself, we must produce and consume the spectacle. Any time spent producing greater and more original versions of ourselves, or in an active, critical, aesthetic consumption, is time that belongs to us because we define the criteria for its use.
The Dandiacal Vision
The Dandiacal Vision is a critical tool which liberates the dandy from spectacular aesthetics. All aesthetic data is minutely criticized and re-organized. The functionality of spectacular images is subverted as their commercial or propagandistic functions are eclipsed by their aesthetic functions. The image-replacement process occurs yet one more time, but this time it is the dandy who is replacing a spectacular image with his own.
The eyes of the dandy are frames in which every view is a composition. Of course in post-modernity this is already true; everything is artificial, man-made or –chosen, thus every vista is a composition, designed or manipulated by some person or group of people. The importance of Dandiacal vision is that it allows him to re-frame, and thus criticize, his environment. Without this vision all of our vistas are chosen for us by commercial interests and we become passive receivers of the spectacle. Dandyism re-organizes and re-interprets according to its aesthetic whim, and is only passionate about this re-organization and re-interpretation, not about the spectacle itself. In such a place there is no such concept as authenticity, thus the idea of observing the world as it is becomes problematic. One must employ Dandiacal vision in order to not be a slave. In A Rebours Joris-Karl Huysmans writes, in the voice of his dandiacal hero Des Essaints:
Since, nowadays, nothing genuine exists, since the wine one drinks and the liberty one boldly proclaims are laughable and a sham, since it really needs a healthy dose of good will to believe that the governing classes are respectable and that the lower classes are worthy of being assisted or pitied, it seems to me,” concluded Des Essaints, “to be neither ridiculous nor senseless, to ask of my fellow men a quantity of illusion barely equivalent to what they spend daily in idiotic ends, so as to be able to convince themselves that the town of Pantin is an artificial Nice or a Menton[22].
He is talking about using perfumes, cloth flowers, and the like to create a pleasant environment in bad weather. In his day it was nature that he was attempting to be free of. His struggle was one against nature to control his aesthetic environment. Now we have no such problems. In fact, we are all living like Des Essaints, with air fresheners and agri-business flowers; we can escape into the Internet and completely isolate ourselves from any sort of chance occurrence. The difference between the average American and Des Essaints is that he manufactured his own environment, while we are mostly content to purchase McMansions. His aesthetics were self-created and the product of his whim, while ours are mediated by commerce.
Self-Fashioning
or
The
Debord’s Thesis 117 states:
Once embodied in the power of the workers council—a power destined to supplant all other powers worldwide—the proletarian movement becomes its own product; this product is the producer himself, and in his own eyes the producer has himself as his goal. Only in this context can the spectacle’s negation of life be negated in its turn[23].
This “producer” sounds very familiar. What if we replace “proletarian movement” with “Dandyism” and “producer” with “dandy?” We might read, “…Dandyism becomes its own product; this product is the dandy himself, and in his own eyes the dandy has himself as his goal.” The only contradiction that I can find between the two versions of this statement is that Debord is referring to the self as an extra-spectacular event; one that comes into being after the spectacle is replaced, while the self of the second statement refers to the self as the image of the self, and is thus related to the spectacle. Dandyism is not a revolutionary movement. It does not physically seize the means of production, nor does it destroy the spectacle. What Dandyism does is liberate the image of the self within the spectacle by seizing the means of production of that image, that is, by seizing aesthetics. Debord views the proletarian revolution as inevitable, and states that any true revolutionary movement must “bide its time.[24]” The question becomes what to do until such time—how to resist a system that will be imposed on the totality of experience until such time as it is swept away. The answer may be to bring the image of the post-revolutionary world into the present, so as to relieve some of the unremitting pressure of spectacular aesthetics. If the original revolutionary movements came into being through a desire to bring the mythical utopia promised by religion into this life, the same logic can surely be applied here.
That logic runs
something like this: at some point a group of people became unsure that there
was any
Ian Hunter, in his essay entitled Aesthetics and Cultural Studies, conceives of self-fashioning as a literary process. He writes about practical criticism of literature as an analogy for aesthetic ethical work. He states:
…the process continues as an intellectual gymnastic in which individuals achieve aesthetic virtuosity—shaping a distinctively aesthetic self through the successive intensification and neutralization of capacities for feeling and thought. In this manner true virtuosi conduct their aesthetic lives by incorporating literature in a practice of self-formation. The reciprocating mortifications of the dual self mean that, unlike the rhetorical ethos, this practice is one that suspends conclusions and conclusiveness. Hence it is always able to compel its practitioners to begin again. The ethical intensity and minuteness of practical criticism testify to the remorseless character of this practice of reading, which is in fact a technique of writing deployed as a practice of the self.[25]
Hunter seems to be particularly concerned with literature here, but the same may be said of other arts as well. The process of aesthetic consumption is linked to the aesthetic production of the self.
Imaginative children
engage in this process all of the time. They see or read about a character that
fires their imaginations and play dress-up, pretending to be that
character. Their play is modeled on the
images that they perceive. The
self-fashioning of Dandyism is really only a more sophisticated version of
this. The dandy invents a persona using
the images which he perceives: the persona of his understanding of the dandy. He
then writes himself into the world as this persona. He is not merely playing a character, however,
but becoming an artwork. This is because
the materials he has criticized and found fit for use are much broader than the
superheroes and the like that are presented to children by film and
literature. The persona of the dandy is
polyglot and unique to himself because of his use of the critical dandiacal
vision in its creation. This is the
difference between the dandy and the (large) portions of the population who
base their personas on specific images found on television. Among these the process of practical
criticism has not taken place, thus the results are not ultimately liberating,
satisfying, or subject to modification.
This kind of self-fashioning is uncritical, resulting in a persona that
can be a slavish and shabby imitation of some commercial message transmitted
through the spectacle.
The Whim
The guiding principle behind these weapons of dandyism is the whim. Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines will as “the power of making a reasoned choice or decision or of controlling one’s own actions.” It defines whim, on the other hand, as “a sudden fancy; idle or passing notion; capricious idea or desire.” Thus the will may be constrained by reason and by ideology. It may consider itself righteous, or proper, or good, or evil. The whim, however, is feather-light and free of the need to justify itself. The dandy organizes his aesthetic consumption and production around this principle. It is when our actions are frivolous that they are free and we may move as we please. Dandyism, accordingly, takes frivolity extremely seriously.
The basis that the dandy finds for aestheticization in the whim is what differentiates his process from that of commerce. Commerce bases its aestheticizing process on a will-to-profit; all image-producing and consuming activity has economy as its telos. The dandy, in fact, is at considerable risk in this regard, as maintaining a varied and astonishing self-presentation concurrently with the appearance of extreme leisure does not often lead to economic security. The aesthetics of dandyism might even be thought of as somewhat self-destructive to both purse and reputation, but to think of the matter in this way would be to miss the point. In order for the dandy to have an unfettered aesthetic, and thus resist spectacular domination, he must base it in the whim, which cannot abide any such considerations.
Dandyism and Artistic
Endeavor
Every school of art has its own theories as to where art comes from. Expressionism says that it must come from the scouring of the subconscious and from instinct; Impressionism takes its inspiration from the surrounding world as filtered through the eyes of the artist. Both of these systems are fine as far as their own purposes go, but neither is really in line with the principles of Dandyism. Expressionism presupposes an authentic self and demands that that self be found and displayed on a canvas, manuscript, score, &c. Dandyism is not about finding the self but rather about inventing it. Thus this deep digging into the well of the soul makes no sense in the philosophy of Dandyism. It is also problematic in post-modernity, which does not admit the existence of any such authentic self. In post-modernity all selves are created, either by the spectacle alone or, in some instances, by the individual in relationship to the spectacle. Both Dandyism and post-modernity negate Expressionism as an artistic paradigm.
Impressionism is a little closer to Dandyism, but still falls short. It does re-frame the external world, but it also presupposes some authenticity on the part of that world, which as we have seen is neither true in post-modernity nor desirable in Dandyism. Impressionism seeks to tell truths about the world by portraying some of its essence, while Dandyism and post-modernity understand that there are no objective truths to be told, only images of truth. Impressionism is also negated.
What might a
Dandiacal art be like? It would take as its source the artificial persona and
the critical vision. In the total
aesthetic environment of post-modernity inspiration is replaced by influence. No natural or authentic source of artistic
ideas is possible, thus all ideas come from the influence of the aesthetic
environment and from the self-hood of the dandy. Such an art might be satirical or didactic
(Oscar Wilde or Joris-Karl Huysmans, respectively) but it must always be based
in the interplay between the public and the individual. This interplay is the world in which dandyism
exists. One might summarize dandyism
(rather summarily, of course) in five words: to see and be seen.
Dandyism and Gender
I have used the masculine pronoun in referring to the dandy throughout this text. By this I have not meant at all to exclude female persons from Dandyism. It is true that the historical Dandyism was a male movement, but there is no reason, in today’s atmosphere of fluid gender, which Dandyism helped to create, why a woman should not become a dandy. The specific aesthetics of Dandyism do demand a “masculine” persona, but it is a masculinity combined with traditionally “feminine” characteristics. Thus the dandy is not at all strictly masculine, but exists somewhere between maleness and femaleness. Either category is entirely too restrictive to be adopted wholesale, so while Dandyism requires a sort of outward masculinity, it is a deeply subverted masculinity.
Existing as it does in a space between masculinity and femininity, Dandyism proves the arbitrariness of both categories, and the aesthetic dissatisfaction that the uncritical adoption of either one creates. Dandyism furthermore understands all dress and social performance as drag. When the signifiers of gender are made subject to the critical faculties and whim of the dandy, they become artificial, regardless of the genital configuration of the individual practitioner. It is through artifice that the dandy makes himself free of all categories save that of Dandy. Dandyism is by nature subversive to gender.
From
Baudrillard’s
The liberated man is not the one who is freed in his ideal reality, his inner truth, or his transparency; he is the man who changes spaces, who circulates, who changes sex, clothes, and habits according to fashion, rather than morality, and who changes opinions not as his conscience dictates but in response to opinion polls.[26]
This sounds like Dandyism up until the part about the influence of fashion and opinion polls. Perhaps the difference here is that the dandy creates opinion, creates fashion, and is thus further liberated even from these things. The dandy is always fashionable because he is the master of fashion. He changes sex, clothes, and habits according to his whim. The point of Baudrillard’s quote, however, is mobility. This is the gift of artificiality. Authenticity must remain static if it is to retain its identity, but artificiality is always free to be mobile and to change itself. The dandy is a border-crosser—free to roam as his whim dictates between masculinity and femininity, respectability and criminality.
There is no such thing as the perfect dandy, or if there is I have never met him. The dandy is an ideal, the ideal of Dandyism, and as such it is difficult to achieve perfection. Since I began the study of Dandyism I have also attempted to practice it, inasmuch as that has been possible. I have discovered several things. The first was that some elements are easier to put into practice than others. I feel that I have always been a self-fashioner to one degree or another, thus this aspect came easily. I was raised in an environment which fostered creativity and this led me to have the sense that I could create who I was. The dandiacal vision is more difficult to achieve. One must constantly be on guard against aesthetic laxity. Opinions must be formed, as much as possible, about everything. As an exercise in this kind of critical sense-perception I have employed the following method: stop every so often and look or listen in one direction. Then try to figure out how you feel, aesthetically, about what is presented to you there. What qualities are in that particular vista and what associations do these qualities have? I think that this practical criticism can lead to a greater understanding of aesthetics and is the key to true Dandyism.
Another thing I have learned is that the practice of Dandyism is incredibly pleasurable. There is something exhilarating about going out into the world and presenting yourself as you want to be, understanding that this is a performance. One feels liberated from the stupid “dress-for-success” mantra so often repeated, yet the play-within-conventions aspect of Dandyism makes the images it produces deeply resonant. For someone of my temperament to be always in costume carries a unique satisfaction. Giving free reign to ones aesthetic sensibilities, with no great regard for the functionality of things, is also pleasurable.
In my artistic work, that of musical composition, my understanding of this philosophy has had what I hope is a beneficial effect. It has allowed me to draw influence from a wider range of sources, and also to think more deeply about the materials at my disposal. In an art informed by Dandyism one tries on idioms as one tries on hats, and always with the closest attention to effect. This has lead, in my work, to a sort of eclecticism that is ideally unified by the persona and taste of the artist. I have often thought that music would be benefited by a closer sympathy with the world of fashion design, producing a sort of haute musique analogous with haute couture. This sympathy might even, as a wild speculation, create some much needed re-invigoration of what we call, for lack of a better term, “serious” music, in both audiences and composers. With this in mind I have written a set of four “Pastiches” for solo piano to accompany this thesis. The title of this set refers not only to pastiche as an imitation of a style but also to a hodge-podge of various styles. The individual pieces draw influence from the Baroque/Classical era, French Impressionism, modern serial technique, and a free tonality in which I allowed for something which I hope is originality of style. This type of pastiche writing seems to me to be a step towards the creation of an analogy between the art of the dandy, whose primary medium is the self, and the art of composition.
Dandyism is an idea that seems very much to be growing in the popular imagination. We have yet, I think, to see the full flower of what it will be, nor what myriad forms it will take. As an art considered among other arts it is young, and yet it has remained a part of Western culture throughout the upheavals of modernity and post-modernity. It is my view that it will become increasingly relevant as time passes, and as the aestheticizing forces at work in our world continue.
I hope that I have managed elucidate some of the interplay between the philosophy of dandyism and the era in which we now live, and thereby to show the relevance of the former to the latter. The Dandy, armed with the tools of self-fashioning and the dandiacal vision and motivated by the whim, is prepared both to understand and to exist as a self within the aesthetic environment of post-modernity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY