Art as Standpoint Method

In this chapter, I discuss the revelatory experience of art and “wonder.” Heidegger argues that the work of art opens a world to its audience in a way that allows the audience to contemplate it. There is always an opacity to art works—a medium that both attracts its audience and keeps them at a remove, which inspires a mood of wonder that allows the consideration of the structure of the world of human experience itself. In this way, art can reveal conditions for human experience through a distanced captivation that allows for phenomenological inquiry. I argue, further, that art which grows out of specific social situations and identities can offer insight into shared background conditions of human experience—these art works are revelatory because of not in spite of a socially specific starting point. Feminist art provides one example. I also use the work of Eva Hesse to make this point—exploring the way her understanding and depiction of existential absurdity was shaped by her experiences as a Jewish woman and also her chronic and terminal illness.