In "The Scope of Hermeneutical Reflection," Gadamer writes, "Whenever we say with an instinctive, even if perhaps erroneous, certainty (but a certainty that is initially valid for our consciousness) 'this is classical; it will endure,' what we are speaking of has already preformed our possibility for aesthetic judgment" (8).

Since I've had Modernism on the brain lately, I was thinking about this idea in terms of some of the art/literature that broke with tradition (Picasso or James Joyce, for instance). At the time, their work was criticized because it was something that didn't fit the "preformed" mold. What is interesting about Modernist artists, though, is that so much of their art (which was initially considered bizarre) did endure. Once authority figures (a.k.a. important critics) acknowledged the significance of modernist art forms, then others began to adjust their aesthetic consciousness and accept them as important too.

What I find really odd about all of this is that once art/literature is recognized as something that will endure, practically everything those "endurable" artists create is considered brilliant. For instance, I went to a Picasso exhibit once where they had paintings from his various periods, and among these famous pieces there were sketch books of Picasso's from when he was 6-yrs-old. Most were doodles done in pencil that looked like any other little kid's scribblings, but because of Picassso's status, they were enshrined in glass cases and treated like "high" art.

If Picasso wasn't already known as an authority/Cubist god, the people who hovered around these cases probably wouldn't have said things like, "just amazing!" or "fabulous, simply fabulous" (ugh, I hate museum banter). As Gadamer points out, it all comes down to our own preformed prejudices, which are almost always connected to authority.

- Steph