Narrative and the Structure of Art | by Illuminati Ganga Agent 86 | luminasticity

We are used to thinking of writing as having a narrative.

But it is true of all the arts that narrative is a potential factor of the artwork. It is just that in some arts when narrative is present it is an explicit part placed into the work by the creator (the internal presence of narrative) and in others the narrative must be surmised by those who interact with the art (the external imposition of narrative) . In the graphic arts the narrative if present will be derived by its audience, in the literary arts it is internal to the art itself.

As an example “The Rape of The Sabine Women” will be given a narrative by a human viewer, even if they do not hear the title, or know the story (excepting viewers with some neurodivergent difficulties that might make the finding of narrative difficult). This obviously does not have to be a correct narrative, but the narrative will be drawn from the viewer without difficulty.

This internal and external imposition of narrative is a force that is in constant tension in arguments as to which is the ‘greatest’ of the arts.

The argument for the literary arts in this battle is that they are on top because they allow for the more complex narratives to be created.

The argument for the non-literary arts is that they have a more direct primal connection to the human mind and as such are more foundational.

The Destruction of Narrative

One prominent strain in 20th Century art is the destruction of narrative, most often seen in various graphic art movements

the purpose of which was to free their arts from representational forms.

Since in the graphic arts narrative is often enabled via representation (perhaps I should say always here but there may be outliers I have forgotten), the pursuit of freeing the graphic arts from representation also freed them, as a side-effect, from narrative.

At the same time movements such as DADA which had a literary component, or individual writers such as James Joyce with Finnegan’s Wake, were attempting to break down literature and remove from it the reliable narrative component.

This same battle was waged in all the media for which time was a component by its avant-garde practitioners (cinema, music, literature), with I would say, very little real success — if we consider the success of art to be related to the 4 critical precepts outlined in

that is to say it is necessary for a critic to consider if art is

1. important in relation to their creator

2. Unimportant in relation to their creator

3. Important in relation to other works

4. Unimportant in relation to other works

as I would argue that now, with the benefit of hindsight on all these valiant narrative destroying experiments, we can see that they did not really have any lasting influence — at least not in the same way as the great projects to remove representation and narrative from the graphic arts.

Nowadays fine graphic arts are predominantly removed of any narrative, the only real narrative found in graphics are in design and advertising, which feedbacks to leading fine artists to distrust narrative as it implies commercial considerations (note the use of predominantly, there can still be fine graphic arts that possess narrative)

But narrative still remains undisturbed in music and literature, indeed it could be argued that were music is concerned the avant garde movements to erase narrative and other bits of experimentation backfired and led to the artistic centers for music finding themselves for the last 60 years in popular forms.

The Authoritative Imposition Of Narrative

We have already discussed internal and external narrative, there is a third option that has become important in the graphical arts, the authoritative or interpretive imposition of Narrative, wherein the artist or a prominent critic imposes a narrative on the work that has had the narrative removed.

I personally detest this form of narrative and cannot consider it with impartiality. It seems ridiculous that after removing narrative from the art that the artist then tries to impose narrative by telling you what the art represents and means, either the art can stand on its own as a purely visual experience or it cannot.

This authoritative imposition of narrative attempts not just to establish a narrative, but to lock down the interpretation of that narrative. As such it is related to the needs of the censor when speaking about art, discussed in this article

where it says

The Censor in discussing the works that they remove from public access may often use words similar to the Moralist in discussing them, but this will be added to with references to regulations and laws, because the Censor is a Moralist second but a Bureaucrat first.

In discussing why they have censored an art the censor often imposes both narrative and interpretation on the art, these then become part of the social knowledge of that art, the narrative and meaning of an artwork known to the public that has never actually experienced the artwork.

There are other examples of show the imposition of narrative can be deleterious to the actual experience of the artwork discussed in the same article.

Intersections of Internal, External, and Authoritative Narrative

The less strong of an internal narrative is found in a work the more it lends itself to an external one being created by those who experience the art second hand (the ‘consumers’ of the art), this can be seen in a good deal of pop music, for example, where the lyrics abstractly detail emotions related to a situation where the situation is not completely detailed it invites the consumer of the music to fill in the blanks.

The same can be found in lyric poetry, which may have a highly developed narrative or an abstracted one open to external imposition of the narrative.

The same intersection applies for Authoritative Narrative, which after all is just an External Narrative with a pedigree.

Of course as the Authoritative Narrative can exist for reasons of benefit to the Authority it follows Authoritative Narrative can also be imposed even when the internal narrative is highly developed, still if this is the case the more the Internal Narrative is developed the more work must be exerted to impose an Authoritative Narrative that contradicts the Internal Narrative.

Time and The Experience of Narrative

The main difference between the graphic/plastic arts and the literary arts is the component of time, by having a large component of time (in which the devotion of time to consumption of the art is necessary to be said to have experienced it) the art allows for this complex narrative to be developed as already described.

Again, this depends on required time, if someone asks you have you read Infinite Jest then to answer yes truthfully you had to devote the amount of time it took you to read it. If someone asks you if you have seen the Mona Lisa to answer truthfully you just need to have gone to the Louvre and looked at it. It’s true that people may devote as long to looking at the Mona Lisa as they do to reading and re-reading Infinite Jest, but this is non-required time.

This component of time also exists in music, and thus in the argument for music’s primacy you often have a composite of the foundational argument and the complicated narrative argument.

This long development of the internal narrative is the primary divider between the arts.

It is time, and the experience of narrative in time by the intellectual sense, that has been the main successful source of experimentation in the literary, musical and cinematic arts throughout the last century.

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