Dialectical Dialogues

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.

Ok, now that we were able to discuss this morning on the train our previous conversation about the connection between aesthetics and science, I wanted to turn to the function of art itself. As I was saying earlier, there is only one real important function of modern art: to be critical of what we see and experience around us, and that means this exhausted, superficial, bourgeois existence that surrounds us. It is really as simple as that. Science has liberatory aspects, without doubt, but the real issue is that science and technology are becoming more and more the tools of capital and, in this respect, the tools of the oppressive aspects of life that we both seem to despise.

Working in this terrible office environment among others and their quotidian, mundane and mediocre concerns and aspirations, is their any wonder why my frustration with the incapacity of modern art is so intense? I said before that literature--because it deals with the world conceptually--is the only real way out of this morass; but even their and in film, the critical perspective is lost.

From Drew: (not Michael)

i ironed a bit last night (one of my calming/domestic pleasures and excuses to watch a movie) and saw most of Before Night Falls about the struggle of poets/the arts in Cuba at the time of the revolution. it had some interesting comments on art and regimes....very much in line with Goethe....or maybe the opposite...that art is the window...and it is the power of escapism that power has to destroy. getting back to our back-burner art/sci conversation...i think science provides this same sense of escapism...i guess the difference is that the proof of art is immediate but science requires logic....the escapism is a theory that you strive to prove to create a new world....but for the duration of theory it is fantasy. i have not read Sci. Amer. for years but looked at it for a second last night. there was a bit about the structure of the universe that was very interesting. it spoke about mass and energy being merely a byproduct of information. it is this kind of thinking that artists react to.

is the (hackenyed) example of DaVinci being the perfect union of art and sci only possible because at that time the concept of aesthetics was isolated to the arts?

Got your message yesterday. Thanks for the lunch and of course I would be interested in doing this on a more consistent basis. I think next week sometime I will give a call and we can perhaps meet once again. I hope the train ride in has been more relaxing--since you are, it is assumed, more well-rested--and quicker. However, we are still being taken into the same daily hell, day in and out. I suppose that art is perhaps the one way out of this pathetic morass. I mean, our lives--I mean, the lives of those around us and those that we interact with at all levels--have become so quotidian, so mundane. The modern world is thoroughly disenchanted.

Do you know what Goethe said about poetry: Dichter sind gemalte Fensterscheiben! (poems are painted windows) and I think this applies to all the arts.

Whatever, more on all of this depressing stuff later.