Seeing Serially: Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology Encountering Serial Drawing

ABSTRACTGraham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology prioritises aesthetics as first philosophy, and finds increasing interest from those working across art, architecture and the humanities in general. This article tests the application of Harman’s ideas by applying them to a thorny issue related to the domain of serial art, and serially developed drawing in particular. The issue concerns the productive role of the beholder in constituting the serial artwork as a unified thing, wherein it appears manifestly deeper than the sum of its physical parts. Referring to an artwork produced by contemporary artist Stefana McClure, I build upon prior propositions on serial art put forward by Christy Mag Uidhir and Nicolas de Warren to make the case for seeing serially. This uses Harman’s understanding of aesthetics to claim that imagined iterations constitute an integral element to serial drawing, brought into play when the beholder reflects upon the loose relationship between the array of qualities the artwork palpably presents and its withdrawn reality as a unified object.KEYWORDS: Graham Harmanobject-oriented ontologydrawingserial artaesthetics Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1 Harman, Art and Objects, xi.2 Mag Uidhir, “How to Frame.”3 I am using the term “beholder” to indicate the kind of viewer who takes time to actively engage with a work of serially developed drawing, rather than one who merely superficially views it in passing. The term is borrowed from Harman’s “human beholder” (Citation2020, 45), who in turn imports the idea from the work of Michael Fried.4 Graham, Serial Drawing.5 Harman, Art and Objects, 2.6 de Warren, “Ad Infinitum”, 9.7 Mag Uidhir, “How to Frame”, 261.8 Ibid.9 Ibid.10 Ibid., 262.11 Ibid.12 Ibid.13 Ibid., 263.14 Ibid.15 Ibid, original italics.16 Ibid., 264.17 Ibid.18 Chavez et al, Infinite Possibilities.19 de Warren, “Ad Infinitum”, 9.20 Ibid., 14.21 The purpose of introducing Kant’s concept of the beautiful at this juncture is to outline Harman’s interpretation of the same, following on from de Warren’s invocation of Kant when considering the productive role of the imagination in constituting serial art. The purpose is not to employ Kant’s original understanding of beauty as-is, but rather to employ Harman’s modern reinterpretation of it as a methodology for analysing a serial drawing produced by McClure. This allows for Kantian inspired ideas about beauty to be sensibly applied to contemporary manifestations of minimalist art, which arguably sit outside the classical tradition to which Kant was originally referring.22 Kant, Critique of Judgment, 59.23 Ibid, 45.24 Ibid, 45.25 Ibid, 53.26 Harman, Art and Objects, xi. (italics added)27 Ibid, 35.28 Ibid., xii. Timothy Morton offers a slightly different interpretation of Kantian aesthetics by claiming that the Kantian experience of beauty presents, “an object-like entity that seems to inhere both in oneself and the beautiful object: this is what makes it impersonal, or beyond ego” (Morton, Citation2013, p. 201). Yet precisely because of the nonconceptual dimension which Kant insists upon, whenever I try to share or identify this subjective experience with others, it is gone. For Morton, this means that, “beauty…is irreducible. I can’t dissolve it into smaller components and I can’t dissolve it upwards (overmining) into some holistic vision. Beauty is unique and contingent” (Morton, Citation2013, p. 201).29 Harman, The Quadruple Object, 17130 Kant, Critique of Judgment, 44.31 Harman, Art and Objects, 2.32 Ibid, 36.33 Ibid, 43.34 Ibid, 68.35 Harman, Guerrilla Metaphysics, 142.36 Ibid, 150.37 Harman, “Materialism is Not the Solution”, 107.38 Ibid, 108.39 Ibid, 108.40 Ibid, 108.41 Harman, Art and Objects, 30.42 Harman, The Third Table, 10.43 Harman, Art and Objects, 175.Additional informationNotes on contributorsJoe GrahamDr Joe Graham is currently Assistant Professor in Art and Design at CAAD, American University of Sharjah. After graduating from Chelsea College of Art & Design and The Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, Graham completed his practice-based PhD in Drawing Research at Loughborough University, with a study that questioned the link between consciousness and serially developed drawing in phenomenological terms. His research outputs span a number of collaborative projects and publications, including articles in a range of peer-reviewed journals. Current publications include Serial Drawing: Space, Time and the Art Object, published by Bloomsbury Visual Arts (2021), and The Being of Drawing, published by Marmalade Publishers of Visual Theory, London (2021).