Olivier Mathieu

ABSTRACT:In this paper I mobilize the Heideggerian concept of poetic saying [Dichtung] to describe features that pertain to the accomplishment of an artwork in the institutional setting of an artworld. Following Binkley and Davies, I first describe performances generative of artworks as ‘piece-specification’. I argue that a condition of ‘artistic creativity’ bears upon piece-specification that is insufficiently accounted for by these authors and that Heidegger's concept of poetic saying can help flesh it out. To that end, I show that it is at least coherent with some of Heidegger's phenomenological insights to argue that (1) poetic sayings are not necessarily tied to the advent of ‘great artworks’ and that (2) poetic sayings thus lend themselves to an analysis that views them as the intentional accomplishment of a meaning-event [Sinnereignis]. I then use the intentional structure of poetic sayings to describe how one can intend to achieve piece-specification in a creative yet recognizable manner.

Frequently quoted in the context of contemporary philosophical reflections on ‘artistic creativity’, Edward Young’s Conjectures on Original Composition are generally read as articulating an anti‐traditionalist account of genius. Against this reading, I argue that Young does not reject the value of traditional models and conventions, but rather means to insist on the artist’s capacity to determine such values through her natural capacity for autonomous critical thinking. I support this claim by showing how he draws from Neo‐Platonism and the experimental philosophy of Francis Bacon in order to develop what has all the appearances of a method of original composition. In the last lines of the paper, I suggest that this method may have heuristic value for the understanding of artworks as ‘artistic creations’ in the context of contemporary institutional theories of art.