Order: A Critical Definition

318 On the Meaning of Order (III) ORDER: A CRITICAL DEFINITION had strong, mathematically derived underpinnings. Internal and external proportions based on the so-called Golden Section were claimed to have universal validity. There is, however, a dilemma underlying the use of these ideas: The test of satisfactory proportioning lies in the psychological approval of its viewers, that is, the pleasure experienced when the rightness of proportional harmony is perceived But that pleasure is felt on the basis of experience, and its 'proof is one's positive, heightened sense of the 'rightness' of proportional harmony. This is true for visual artists as well as for viewers oftheir works. Mathematical bases for 'right' proportions seem, therefore , to be beside the point, even when such calculated decisions often coincide with intuitively made judgements . Add to the idea of proportions the interaction of colors and the role of signs and symbols, and the task for visual artists is no longer that of simple ordering. They will rely on anything that they can bring to bear upon shaping their works: intellect, emotion, sensation, volition , technical know-how, long-range and immediate intentional direction. Could it be then that 'order' in visual art involves an attempt to deal with various conflicting matters: 2-and 3dimensional properties, meaning and form, signifying and shaping and, finally, order and disorder? In the recent period of the visual fine arts, when both spontaneous and rigorous modes of working coexist, the notion of order, especially as a universally demanded artistic goal, seems to me one-sided, a point of view that, on the surface, favors a rational way of working over spontaneity. But 'good' artworks are taken to be self-consistent worlds, internally whole, even though their 'order' is sometimes not easily perceived. The inadequacy of natural languages to describe what really happens when one makes an artwork is well known. I am at a loss for words when I try to explain compositional virtues of a painting such as order, consistency, wholeness, etc. The final test lies in one's perception of these qualities. Some artists use ordering devices successfully, others do not. There is a danger that Goethe pointed to: System may well cause pleasure, but 'has within it something general-and therefore neutral'. In the vocabulary of 20th-century visual art, the idea of order has played an important role, since compositional 'rightness', one of the implied states of order, has been considered its aim. I suspect this notion is not usefulmore a pious hope than a rigorous use of a critical vocabulary that explains what artists do when they work. Formalist critics and artists alike often use words such as harmony, rhythm and composition without examining their underlying assumptions. It may not be a useful idea for the understanding of artworks or, more generally, for the construction of hypotheses of visual art. Yet, I believe there is general agreement that order is a good thing. The original meaning of order (from the Latin word ordo) implies class, rank and series. These meanings point to system, structure and regularity; these meanings are what visual artists attempt to achieve. But so do many carpenters, investment brokers and scientists, in fact, humans, to survive, walk, breathe, think and live in an ordered, organized manner. Order is sometimes accompanied by the extinction of enthusiasm and striving. Students of visual art history are aware of the conflict between those trying to achieve a stable, well-ordered pictorial world and those to whom the expression of highly charged emotion, anxiety and other kinds of psychological tension are at the center of their work. Classicists vs. romantics, abstract expressionists vs. hardedge minimalists, these are the manifestations, among others, that demonstrate the range of artistic possibilities in which order plays a fairly one-sided role. And yet, the notion of order cannot be easily dismissed as a mere slogan. Somehow, it seems basic to artistic composition, whatever the announced and, perhaps, involuntary intention of a particular artist. There is a way of resolving this ambiguity. Ordering, in its widest sense, is what one does when one puts things together, inevitably 'in a certain order'. Bergson asserted that even disorder is a kind of order...