Wednesday, August 06, 2003
The possibility of art to liberate us from this mundane existence cannot be given up on with such quickness, my dear friend. If anything, the it provides us with what the German philosopher Ernst Bloch called "anticipatory illumination." The idea here is that art can provide us with that utopian moment through which we can judge the present and seek to transcend it.
Now, for me, I think this is one of the two ways that art can operate. The first is through direct confrontation with the world. Schoenberg's dissonance, Beckett's deconstruction of theater, dialogue and character, or Celan's twisted syntax, to the point of breaking, all point to that attempt to show the effects of modernity on the listener or observer. Think of Beckmann's canvases or Lang's moving images, let alone Welles' imagery something like "The Trial." The other is escape through this utopian function: Titian, Bach, Ovid, Milton, Dante, so many others. All are conceptualizing through their art an ideal, a beauty mixed with pain and sometimes sordidness that reflects the heightened experience of human sensitivity. It is almost as if our senses had been "turned up" and the possibility of being full and complete is dangling in front of in their various and beautiful representations of perfection. What else is the concept of god, after all, but that ideal of unity and perfection? Of course, in the god concept--it is better to look at the Stoic conception of god rather than the truly crude and rather imperfect Hebrew god for this purpose--this is mixed with science, nature and ethics. Art is less ambitous, but all the more efficient in its functioning.
Anyway, I would argue that these are the two alternatives in front of us. I can see no other way that art can have any real use to us and our predicament.
Now, for me, I think this is one of the two ways that art can operate. The first is through direct confrontation with the world. Schoenberg's dissonance, Beckett's deconstruction of theater, dialogue and character, or Celan's twisted syntax, to the point of breaking, all point to that attempt to show the effects of modernity on the listener or observer. Think of Beckmann's canvases or Lang's moving images, let alone Welles' imagery something like "The Trial." The other is escape through this utopian function: Titian, Bach, Ovid, Milton, Dante, so many others. All are conceptualizing through their art an ideal, a beauty mixed with pain and sometimes sordidness that reflects the heightened experience of human sensitivity. It is almost as if our senses had been "turned up" and the possibility of being full and complete is dangling in front of in their various and beautiful representations of perfection. What else is the concept of god, after all, but that ideal of unity and perfection? Of course, in the god concept--it is better to look at the Stoic conception of god rather than the truly crude and rather imperfect Hebrew god for this purpose--this is mixed with science, nature and ethics. Art is less ambitous, but all the more efficient in its functioning.
Anyway, I would argue that these are the two alternatives in front of us. I can see no other way that art can have any real use to us and our predicament.
