let them eat cake
Jan. 25th, 2003 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdonark"Many are called, but few are chosen"--Matthew 22:14
"Blessed are the solitary and elect, for you shall find the Kingdom; because you come from it, and you shall go there again"--
Gospel of Thomas, saying 49
Today I've been reading some art books whichnacowafer kindly recommended to me. I have really enjoyed this, as the material has keyed into things I knew from other resources, while getting me thinking along new lines. I invite you to follow me as I initially wander, though I am less certain of my footing than intrigued by the path.
I find enormously interesting the way in which ideas from one tradition bleed into another tradition. Sometimes these same ideas then transmigrate into the culture as a whole, making a scarlet where before only a white sheet was visible.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was one of the most fascinating women of the late 19th Century. Madame Blavatsky, as she was called, had a considerable gift for invention and re-invention. She apparently had been born to Russian parents, and had had a varied life. According to her description, she had done a world of things, from voo doo in New Orleans to spirituality in Africa and Serbia. It appears likely that she did visit many countries, and do many things. But it is hard to tell just what her past truly was (she is apparently a biographer's dream), because she had little compunction about fabricating any details she wished to provide at any given time.
It is beyond question, however, that Madame Blavatsky was deeply interested in mediums and spiritual events. This was not an uncommon pursuit in the late 19th Century, as spiritualism (the belief that communication can be had with the dead) was all the rage, and a world of new faiths and old ideas were percolating in the ether of a rapidly changing culture.
In 1875, however, while attending a Vermont home where spiritual events were said to occur, Ms. Blavatsky met a Colonel Olcott, who shared her interest in spiritual phenomena. Together, they founded the Theosophical Society, one of the most influential groups to arise in its era.
Theosophism as presented by Madame Blavatsky had many components.
It drew liberally on 19th Century understandings of Hinduism and Buddhism. It had a strong affinity for the mystical side of Christianity, and for the western mysticisms such as Rosicrucianism. The faith drew heavily on spiritualist and new thought ideas, as well as notions of karma and reincarnation. In addition, Madame Blavatsky drew on a mix of western occult tradition and her own sheer invention to create an entirely new faith. The faith had two rather different "circles", or components. The outer faith preached religious tolerance, a search for religious truth, and a search for the mysteries in life. The faith had an esoteric component, however. A true believer would be introduced to occult mysteries, and learn inner secrets of reality. This "inner circle" pursued a more occult-oriented course.
Madame Blavatsky herself claimed to be in personal communication with a number of "Masters", beings who had transcended the plane of human existence, but now apparently sent her letters with their words of wisdom to read. In at least one instance, a strong proof was made that the "letters" so transmitted were fraudulent, and much in her life suggests that she was in many ways a charlatan and a sham. Nonetheless, the influence of her ideas ran in a strong cross-current throughout the 20th Century, and arguably casts a shadow even today.
Madame Blavatsky's initial work, Isis Unveiled, a number of successive works, and her "magnum opus", the Secret Doctrine, both suggested, in rather abstruse language, that the "masses" could only grasp the most basic doctrines of equality and tolerance, while the mystical and metaphysical notions of the order could only be perceived by a very few. This was not a new concept with theosophy, of course, as mystery religions, as well as branches of each of the major world religions, had preached variants of this doctrine for years. In theosophy, however, the notion that some initiates were in essence a more enlightened group of beings was carried to a precise pinnacle.
Theosophy bloomed during Ms. Blavatsky's life, and continued on past her death. It peaked in the 1920s in popularity, although theosophists and theosophical fellow-travellers are still much in evidence today. Indeed, a wonderful book of theosophical readings can be found at this website . Although its membership was never a substantial part of any population, it influenced many works of literature, music, art and fiction in ways we still see much in evidence today. Francis Hodgson Burnett's "The Secret Garden" is one of the best known children's books with a lot of theosophical ideas, but it is less well known that L. Frank Baum, the writer of the "Wizard of Oz" books, was a devotee of many theosophical ideas, and at one time a card-carrying theosophist. Among artists, Wasily Kandinsky's notions of a secret "higher knowledge" of art, mystically being discovered from the dross of then-modern culture, owed in its ideas a good bit to Madame Blavatsky's own notions of a mystical path which rejected much of then-modern western culture, as well as to the writings of prominent theosophist Annie Besant. Indeed,Madame Blavatsky herself had suggested that art was dead or dying, victimized by the change of the natural landscape by industrialization. Kandinsky wrote "Concerning the Spiritual in Art", an explicit endorsement of the artist as spiritual guide, bestowed with a higher state of being, more qualified to lead the masses from what was dross to what is real. He also suggested that one could "hear" color and "see" sound, which was derived from an analogous theosophical idea. Kandinsky was not alone in his influence by theosophy.
Piet Mondrian's neoplasticism was derived as a direct outgrowth of his interest in theosophical ideas. Mondrian spoke in a 1937 essay of the "great hidden laws of nature which art establishes in is own fashion". Mondrian's movement from a naturalistic painter of Dutch landscapes to a highly abstract artist was to be understood not as a rejection of nature so much as a rejection of the plastic representation of life. Mondrian in effect believed in a higher truth of art. The visual artists were not alone in this belief--Arnold Schoenberg, whose atonality in musical composition revolutionized music altogether, suggested that the "capacity for pure vision is very rare and only to be found in highly cultured people". In essence, his atonal compositions, by implication were by design inaccessible to the great mass of people--they were themselves an esoteric "secret knowledge". The artist's connection with the audience would be different from that in the past--the artist or musician would be communicating an idea directly to the audience, rather than merely representing a story or a "text" from another genre.
I do not want to belabor my little backdrop much longer, however, as I do not propose to show the ways in which theosophy splintered, the rise of Steiner's anthroposophy, the fascinating Krishnamurti story, nor the way that turn of the 20th Century art and music experienced in the succeeding decades dada, surrealism, constructivism or futurism, although each of these stories add to my point.
I instead am struck tonight by the concept of the Elect. We have all been exposed to the notion of predestination, to the idea that some are saved at birth, and some are damned. These issues of theology, along with many others, have played central roles in many aspects of western theology, including the reformation which created protestantism (and, by the strength of its opposition, revitalized a bloated and moribund Roman Catholic church). In the Bhavagad Gita, destiny requires Arjuna to slay even his relatives in war, because it is a matter of karma and destiny. The New Testament suggests that a grand sorting of the sheep from the goats will be a first order of business when the world ends. In some very pertinent ways, protestantism arose because of the notion that each person confronts God directly, rather than through the intercession of a priest or saint. Indeed, it can be argued that existentialism (if one accepts that 20th Century existentialism depends on a heritage from Kierkegaard and not merely extension of Cartesian principles to a materialistic world view) also arose from the idea of one's individual confrontation with the ultimate realities.
By the late 19th Century, traditional Christianity was losing its hold on much of the European intellectual community (intriguingly, during this same era, continuing through the 1920s, protestant revivalism was cementing Christianity's place among the American middle and lower classes). New movements, of which theosophy was but one, were rising to try to compete with traditional Christian spirituality. In contrast to Marxist/Leninist theory which was more avowedly materialistic, these movements in general promised a spiritual solution to the evils of capitalism and industrialization.
What intrigues me, though, is that as art, music, and literature evolved a new spirituality which purported to supplant the mainstream culture, they in fact borrowed the spiritual elitism that had been so objectionable in the culture they despised. Kandinsky does not speak of a gospel of the common person, but of a gospel for the intelligentsia to absorb. All the traditional forms, other than arguably the naive forms, are, by implication, sham and fraud, outmoded forms. As Franz Marc expressed it, "the inheritance is used up, and substitutes are making the world base". The new artists, musicians and writers proposed to save the world through a new spiritual vision, in which all their art was "true" and the crisis of "modern culture" was resolved. They had not abandoned the inheritance of a select salvation they received from the culture they rejected.
One is repeatedly struck if one reads Ms. Blavatsky, her acolyte Ms. Besant, Mr. Kandinsky, or, indeed, even the theosophical children's story "The Little Princess", by what a sense of personal importance these pioneers of new ideas ascribed to themselves. They were spiritual masters, leading the masses from a ditch onto a new road. Although it is my usual impression that anyone who tells me he or she is important is inevitably unimportant, it is impossible to underestimate what an impact these ideas had upon twentieth century culture. Yet art, music and literature all changed tremendously. The alteration from Ruskin's theory of art to that of the 20th Century writers is breathtaking. The controversy over the "legitimacy" of abstract art, seemingly resolved or resolvable by 1930 or so, actually rages on to this day, as conservative social critics in this country today still fight the battles over artistic expression when it comes to arts funding. On a darker note, Hitler himself denounced these works of modernity as "degenerate", and used them to justify his barbarous theories of ethnic hatred and rage. Although during its initial days the USSR seemed open to the new currents in art, Stalinist communists ultimately persecuted its practitioners, arguing for a pallid form of "social realism" instead. Ironically, the western bourgeoius culture which the theosophists and the early 20th Century artists sought to pillory have been the only place in which a reasonably tolerant reception for these works has been given. Even in this modern time, though, the notion of the purveyor of creativity as a higher order of being remains a mainstay in our intellectual culture, even as our material capitalist society denies any such claim.
I've tossed around a lot of names and references here, and I don't really mean to put together a unified field theory as to how all these snippets of carefully chosen citations (incomplete by design, as I do not mean to write a history here) somehow support a single thesis or notion.
But I can say that I am always as troubled by any current of ideas in which many are called, but few are chosen, regardless of whether they are religious, theoretical, spiritual or philosophical. I look for a world of ideas in which we do not consider those who disagree with us to be imbeciles or cretins. I do not see 1909 as the apex of our western spiritual crisis. The Jehovah's Witnesses have a concept that only 144,000 people will be saved. I am dismayed by a world view that suggests to me that the 144,000 is the right number, but that it shall be comprised of atonalists and abstract painters.
I wonder about the hubris that goes with theologians, with mystics, and with creativity in general. It seems a hubris that is inescapable--a sense that one is doing something that changes the face of reality, while other pursuits are lesser, or indeed damned. But isn't it possible to pursue the good and the true without personally feeling above one's neighbor?
I remember the woman I dated in college who routinely was assured that her atheism would land her in Hell by the "concerned" Christians she encountered. But I must admit that while mystical talk and mystical notions hold me spell-bound, I am attracted to the notions such as that of St. Anthony the Great, one of the desert fathers. He said: "I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, "What can get through from such snares?" Then I heard a voice saying to me, "Humility."
I am just scratching the surface in my reading, and I have much more to learn. But tonight I wonder if Heaven might not save me from the Elect, the Ascended Masters, the artistic geniuses, and perhaps from those who are certain they are Saved.
"Blessed are the solitary and elect, for you shall find the Kingdom; because you come from it, and you shall go there again"--
Gospel of Thomas, saying 49
Today I've been reading some art books which
nacowafer kindly recommended to me. I have really enjoyed this, as the material has keyed into things I knew from other resources, while getting me thinking along new lines. I invite you to follow me as I initially wander, though I am less certain of my footing than intrigued by the path.I find enormously interesting the way in which ideas from one tradition bleed into another tradition. Sometimes these same ideas then transmigrate into the culture as a whole, making a scarlet where before only a white sheet was visible.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was one of the most fascinating women of the late 19th Century. Madame Blavatsky, as she was called, had a considerable gift for invention and re-invention. She apparently had been born to Russian parents, and had had a varied life. According to her description, she had done a world of things, from voo doo in New Orleans to spirituality in Africa and Serbia. It appears likely that she did visit many countries, and do many things. But it is hard to tell just what her past truly was (she is apparently a biographer's dream), because she had little compunction about fabricating any details she wished to provide at any given time.
It is beyond question, however, that Madame Blavatsky was deeply interested in mediums and spiritual events. This was not an uncommon pursuit in the late 19th Century, as spiritualism (the belief that communication can be had with the dead) was all the rage, and a world of new faiths and old ideas were percolating in the ether of a rapidly changing culture.
In 1875, however, while attending a Vermont home where spiritual events were said to occur, Ms. Blavatsky met a Colonel Olcott, who shared her interest in spiritual phenomena. Together, they founded the Theosophical Society, one of the most influential groups to arise in its era.
Theosophism as presented by Madame Blavatsky had many components.
It drew liberally on 19th Century understandings of Hinduism and Buddhism. It had a strong affinity for the mystical side of Christianity, and for the western mysticisms such as Rosicrucianism. The faith drew heavily on spiritualist and new thought ideas, as well as notions of karma and reincarnation. In addition, Madame Blavatsky drew on a mix of western occult tradition and her own sheer invention to create an entirely new faith. The faith had two rather different "circles", or components. The outer faith preached religious tolerance, a search for religious truth, and a search for the mysteries in life. The faith had an esoteric component, however. A true believer would be introduced to occult mysteries, and learn inner secrets of reality. This "inner circle" pursued a more occult-oriented course.
Madame Blavatsky herself claimed to be in personal communication with a number of "Masters", beings who had transcended the plane of human existence, but now apparently sent her letters with their words of wisdom to read. In at least one instance, a strong proof was made that the "letters" so transmitted were fraudulent, and much in her life suggests that she was in many ways a charlatan and a sham. Nonetheless, the influence of her ideas ran in a strong cross-current throughout the 20th Century, and arguably casts a shadow even today.
Madame Blavatsky's initial work, Isis Unveiled, a number of successive works, and her "magnum opus", the Secret Doctrine, both suggested, in rather abstruse language, that the "masses" could only grasp the most basic doctrines of equality and tolerance, while the mystical and metaphysical notions of the order could only be perceived by a very few. This was not a new concept with theosophy, of course, as mystery religions, as well as branches of each of the major world religions, had preached variants of this doctrine for years. In theosophy, however, the notion that some initiates were in essence a more enlightened group of beings was carried to a precise pinnacle.
Theosophy bloomed during Ms. Blavatsky's life, and continued on past her death. It peaked in the 1920s in popularity, although theosophists and theosophical fellow-travellers are still much in evidence today. Indeed, a wonderful book of theosophical readings can be found at this website . Although its membership was never a substantial part of any population, it influenced many works of literature, music, art and fiction in ways we still see much in evidence today. Francis Hodgson Burnett's "The Secret Garden" is one of the best known children's books with a lot of theosophical ideas, but it is less well known that L. Frank Baum, the writer of the "Wizard of Oz" books, was a devotee of many theosophical ideas, and at one time a card-carrying theosophist. Among artists, Wasily Kandinsky's notions of a secret "higher knowledge" of art, mystically being discovered from the dross of then-modern culture, owed in its ideas a good bit to Madame Blavatsky's own notions of a mystical path which rejected much of then-modern western culture, as well as to the writings of prominent theosophist Annie Besant. Indeed,Madame Blavatsky herself had suggested that art was dead or dying, victimized by the change of the natural landscape by industrialization. Kandinsky wrote "Concerning the Spiritual in Art", an explicit endorsement of the artist as spiritual guide, bestowed with a higher state of being, more qualified to lead the masses from what was dross to what is real. He also suggested that one could "hear" color and "see" sound, which was derived from an analogous theosophical idea. Kandinsky was not alone in his influence by theosophy.
Piet Mondrian's neoplasticism was derived as a direct outgrowth of his interest in theosophical ideas. Mondrian spoke in a 1937 essay of the "great hidden laws of nature which art establishes in is own fashion". Mondrian's movement from a naturalistic painter of Dutch landscapes to a highly abstract artist was to be understood not as a rejection of nature so much as a rejection of the plastic representation of life. Mondrian in effect believed in a higher truth of art. The visual artists were not alone in this belief--Arnold Schoenberg, whose atonality in musical composition revolutionized music altogether, suggested that the "capacity for pure vision is very rare and only to be found in highly cultured people". In essence, his atonal compositions, by implication were by design inaccessible to the great mass of people--they were themselves an esoteric "secret knowledge". The artist's connection with the audience would be different from that in the past--the artist or musician would be communicating an idea directly to the audience, rather than merely representing a story or a "text" from another genre.
I do not want to belabor my little backdrop much longer, however, as I do not propose to show the ways in which theosophy splintered, the rise of Steiner's anthroposophy, the fascinating Krishnamurti story, nor the way that turn of the 20th Century art and music experienced in the succeeding decades dada, surrealism, constructivism or futurism, although each of these stories add to my point.
I instead am struck tonight by the concept of the Elect. We have all been exposed to the notion of predestination, to the idea that some are saved at birth, and some are damned. These issues of theology, along with many others, have played central roles in many aspects of western theology, including the reformation which created protestantism (and, by the strength of its opposition, revitalized a bloated and moribund Roman Catholic church). In the Bhavagad Gita, destiny requires Arjuna to slay even his relatives in war, because it is a matter of karma and destiny. The New Testament suggests that a grand sorting of the sheep from the goats will be a first order of business when the world ends. In some very pertinent ways, protestantism arose because of the notion that each person confronts God directly, rather than through the intercession of a priest or saint. Indeed, it can be argued that existentialism (if one accepts that 20th Century existentialism depends on a heritage from Kierkegaard and not merely extension of Cartesian principles to a materialistic world view) also arose from the idea of one's individual confrontation with the ultimate realities.
By the late 19th Century, traditional Christianity was losing its hold on much of the European intellectual community (intriguingly, during this same era, continuing through the 1920s, protestant revivalism was cementing Christianity's place among the American middle and lower classes). New movements, of which theosophy was but one, were rising to try to compete with traditional Christian spirituality. In contrast to Marxist/Leninist theory which was more avowedly materialistic, these movements in general promised a spiritual solution to the evils of capitalism and industrialization.
What intrigues me, though, is that as art, music, and literature evolved a new spirituality which purported to supplant the mainstream culture, they in fact borrowed the spiritual elitism that had been so objectionable in the culture they despised. Kandinsky does not speak of a gospel of the common person, but of a gospel for the intelligentsia to absorb. All the traditional forms, other than arguably the naive forms, are, by implication, sham and fraud, outmoded forms. As Franz Marc expressed it, "the inheritance is used up, and substitutes are making the world base". The new artists, musicians and writers proposed to save the world through a new spiritual vision, in which all their art was "true" and the crisis of "modern culture" was resolved. They had not abandoned the inheritance of a select salvation they received from the culture they rejected.
One is repeatedly struck if one reads Ms. Blavatsky, her acolyte Ms. Besant, Mr. Kandinsky, or, indeed, even the theosophical children's story "The Little Princess", by what a sense of personal importance these pioneers of new ideas ascribed to themselves. They were spiritual masters, leading the masses from a ditch onto a new road. Although it is my usual impression that anyone who tells me he or she is important is inevitably unimportant, it is impossible to underestimate what an impact these ideas had upon twentieth century culture. Yet art, music and literature all changed tremendously. The alteration from Ruskin's theory of art to that of the 20th Century writers is breathtaking. The controversy over the "legitimacy" of abstract art, seemingly resolved or resolvable by 1930 or so, actually rages on to this day, as conservative social critics in this country today still fight the battles over artistic expression when it comes to arts funding. On a darker note, Hitler himself denounced these works of modernity as "degenerate", and used them to justify his barbarous theories of ethnic hatred and rage. Although during its initial days the USSR seemed open to the new currents in art, Stalinist communists ultimately persecuted its practitioners, arguing for a pallid form of "social realism" instead. Ironically, the western bourgeoius culture which the theosophists and the early 20th Century artists sought to pillory have been the only place in which a reasonably tolerant reception for these works has been given. Even in this modern time, though, the notion of the purveyor of creativity as a higher order of being remains a mainstay in our intellectual culture, even as our material capitalist society denies any such claim.
I've tossed around a lot of names and references here, and I don't really mean to put together a unified field theory as to how all these snippets of carefully chosen citations (incomplete by design, as I do not mean to write a history here) somehow support a single thesis or notion.
But I can say that I am always as troubled by any current of ideas in which many are called, but few are chosen, regardless of whether they are religious, theoretical, spiritual or philosophical. I look for a world of ideas in which we do not consider those who disagree with us to be imbeciles or cretins. I do not see 1909 as the apex of our western spiritual crisis. The Jehovah's Witnesses have a concept that only 144,000 people will be saved. I am dismayed by a world view that suggests to me that the 144,000 is the right number, but that it shall be comprised of atonalists and abstract painters.
I wonder about the hubris that goes with theologians, with mystics, and with creativity in general. It seems a hubris that is inescapable--a sense that one is doing something that changes the face of reality, while other pursuits are lesser, or indeed damned. But isn't it possible to pursue the good and the true without personally feeling above one's neighbor?
I remember the woman I dated in college who routinely was assured that her atheism would land her in Hell by the "concerned" Christians she encountered. But I must admit that while mystical talk and mystical notions hold me spell-bound, I am attracted to the notions such as that of St. Anthony the Great, one of the desert fathers. He said: "I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, "What can get through from such snares?" Then I heard a voice saying to me, "Humility."
I am just scratching the surface in my reading, and I have much more to learn. But tonight I wonder if Heaven might not save me from the Elect, the Ascended Masters, the artistic geniuses, and perhaps from those who are certain they are Saved.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-01-25 06:37 pm (UTC)I also don't see anything inherently wrong with the notion of quality and that some things are inherently better than others. Maybe I just don't understand.
hmmmm...
no subject
Date: 2003-01-25 07:45 pm (UTC)"Whenever the leader of the crowds turn right, we turn left; when they point to a goal, we turn our backs; whatever they warn us against, we hurry toward".
I did like the thing that Kandinsky said to the effect that "one should never trust a theoretician (art historian, critic, etc.) who asserts that he has discovered some objective mistake in a work".
I believe that some art is good, and some art is sham and derivative. I do not believe all art is equivalent. But I do not believe that the art which the early 20th Century artists supplanted was by definition sham, that the early 20th Century artists solved a spiritual crisis, or that the aesthetics that resulted are the only "true" aesthetics of art.
My point here, though, is not really to put those folks early 20th C. folks down, because they did amazing work and truly changed culture. Who could imagine music without Schoenberg? The point is to explore the concept of the "chosen", even when it deals with the self-chosen.
I guess it is odd how differently we see things, because although I've thoroughly enjoyed the many insights in the Blau Reiter Almanac, its hubris and elitism seems to me patent. Maybe it is my Arkansas town boy coming through--we didn't "hold with" folks who were "stuck up". But here, of course is the puzzle--what if they were "right"? Would that make a difference?
But then I am reminded of a similar argument someone made to a comment I made about a flaw facing those who wish to literally interpret the Bible once. What if it were literally true? It was very hard to respond. I am not a Biblical literalist, but I realized one cannot really argue with one who is very effectively.
I see some analogy there. Who are the arbiters? Is there a court of Correct Art? I don't think so. But of course, there is good music and good literature and good all sorts of things--but that doesn't mean we must disdain ordinary people.
I am so grateful to you for getting me started reading. I have so much more to learn. I am relieved that I knew a bit before I began, but I do want to fill in many more of the gaps in my knowledge.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-26 05:08 am (UTC)Sorry to hear you're feeling poorly. Here's hoping for a speedy recovery!
no subject
Date: 2003-01-26 06:39 am (UTC)I am much more inclined to believe in absolutes than your reply suggests. I believe that some things are good/valuable/worthy, and some things are not. I believe in critical appreciation of the arts, and in the sorting of what is gold from what is dross.
I don't think that all art is "on the same plane". On a broader front, which is really my topic, I'm not troubled to think that Grace is available to all, not a select few. Is the meaning life really the worship of the gifted alone? Such a life would be very hollow to me.
I agree that manifestos are written to break with the past. A lot of times, they are also written without the intention to be taken entirely literally. Nobody really believes it when the Dada manifesto calls for forced conversion of the clergy to Dada, or supervision of all sexual relations by the Berlin Dada committee. I think that the magical language of manifestos is the break with the past, and that this language is not literal.
But as we absorb what manifestos we read, we must take into account that the disdain these young artists felt for other artists who also did good and true work was palpable and real.
When one reads an attack upon the post-impressionists, or Kandinsky's comment that it was only at the turn of the 20th Century that art "came into its own", the pursuit of what is honest and true requires us to say that these attacks are unjustified. Although the avant garde of the first decades of the 20th Century made sweeping and pleasing changes in art, they did not take an art that was 'bad' and replace it with a new art that was in all things 'good'. Instead, we must discount the extreme nature of their disdain for people who chose other paths.
That's not to say that a Holiday Inn post-impressionist nature painter is a Kandinsky--of course not. It's to say that the critical lens applied by these artists was entirely too naroww, and, as my post suggests, not original to them, but derivative from other ideas floating in their culture.
We do not exist on an even playing field. Some are brilliant, most of us are not. Some art is wonderful, most is dross. A lot of the dross is awful and uncommercial, which explains why so many artists don't sell. Some is brilliant but uncommercial, which is sad. But the critical standards applied need not be so narrow and school-driven. The back-biting and needless disharmony which afflicted so many 20th C. great artists may be inevitable and healthy in a microcosm (everyone needs to believe he or she is bringing the Revealed Word), but in the macrocosm of how we assess art, we learn to discount many of the ways members of competing movements in art viewed one another. We all accept that we disregard the aged post-impressionists' disdain for Picasso, but it is just as true that we must disregard the disdain of later artists for the post-impressionists.
I see art as an evolution, with many paths, and many side roads.
I believe that some side roads do not lead to "advancement" forward of the way artists think, while other side roads do.
Yet I see value in talented people pursuing what they think is the main road, even if they prove mistaken. If we accept that it was a mistake to say that "anything is art", we nonetheless applaud the way in which dada changed the way we looked at things. If we accept that Mondrian taught us that the goals of art move beyond representation, then we must also accept that Mondrian's pronouncement of the deat of representational painting was premature.
But this is not, as you suggest, a suggestion that everything is equivalent. Instead, I believe that too often the impact of art in our culture has been diffused by the notion that one narrow school of art is "right", and that it is unimportant that the ignorant masses "get it". I believe instead that art is a broad and vastly important field, with many gifted practitioners, and much to teach us all. I believe that bridging the needless chasm created between artists and the "masses" is essential if we are to learn what art teaches us. Cutting through that dross--that's what is needed. Worshipping the manifestos is what is not needed.
The manifestos were often wrong in so many ways.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-26 08:02 am (UTC)Perhaps we will just have to agree to disagree, here.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-26 11:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-26 01:15 pm (UTC)Best to you.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-26 01:21 pm (UTC)I would never want to offend you, because I am nattering on in my usual "must discuss something to death to get any of it" way.
The nice thing about having a cold, by the way, is that one is far too focused on being sick to spend any energy on worry, but if I am supposed to worry about having irritated you, I will quickly apologize. It's not a sin, but my way of doing things requires me to read, absorb, discuss and adjust. I'm one of those odd people who does change his mind on things, but it's not a "light bulb going on" process.
Anyway, as ever, best to you, and thanks for your patience.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-25 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-25 07:31 pm (UTC)The two books with which I've begun are Herschel B. Chip's Theories of Modern Art, a wonderful compendium of writing by artists,and Kandinsky and Marc's The Blau Reiter Almanac, which has essays by not only those artists, but also Schoenberg and Roger Allard, among others.
This was great "Saturday at home sick" reading.
no subject
no subject
Date: 2003-01-25 07:32 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-01-25 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-25 07:51 pm (UTC)The only jealousy she inspired had more to do with whom she preferred to date, than with her modes of creative expression.
But it is an interesting point. I don't at all consider myself a creative person in the way that you are, but I don't long for the perils that life imposes. I do recall that tag of Delacroix that "most writing on art is by people who are not artists; thus the misconceptions". Perhaps one must be an artist to truly write about it, by this standard. Obviously, I do not agree with Delacroix.
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Date: 2003-01-25 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-25 10:09 pm (UTC)But it is interesting the way the arts paradigm shifted so quickly in so few decades from 1880 to 1930. I wonder if any earlier period had as radical a shift, or if indusrialization made the difference?
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Date: 2003-01-26 06:18 am (UTC)also art, like everything else, has continually speeded up its pace since industrialization.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-26 06:48 am (UTC)I never understand why brilliant artists attack each other so vehemently. The net effect of the endless definitions of narrow aesthetics, all of which entirely conflict, is to guaranty the marginalization of true artists in society, and to guaranty the success of marketers and lightweights. Yet I read constant sniping attacks, as if there were One Revealed Work. Perhaps Cezanne had it right--it is not the words about art from artists that matter, but what they paint.
This post was to illustrate how much cultural currents of the 1880-1920 era require some of these pronouncements to be understood in their context, because the sentiments are not exclusive or original to the artists involved. But I'm also making the point that while we may admire genius, if we come to view the world as only worthwhile if one is a genius, that's a narrow paradigm, and, more importatly, a paradigm created by sometimes great artists who were poseurs at art criticism.
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Date: 2003-01-26 08:33 am (UTC)has anyone actually tried to make that claim? I hope that one of the true gifts Art gives to mankind is the challenge of examination and re-examination, interpretation and re-interpretation, inspiration and re-inspiration. To me, that's the real purpose of all Art. Art that doesn't do this, for anyone, at any point in time, is a failure. Art that does this consistently, over long periods of time is successful. The more it does this, the more successful it is. I think art critics are the spokespeople for the world of NON-artists. They attempt to examine, interpret, and reveal the inspiration that maybe the average person wouldn't immediately *get*---sometimes the value of what the art critic does is dubious. But I suppose there's always room for vocal examination, interpretation, revelation. Sometimes the art critics, in their deep love of art, and in their articulation and revelation seem to value themselves as equal to the creators themselves. Thinking maybe that the artist has made a perfect piano and composed the perfect score and that they are the genius that brings those things to life.
I disagree. For the same reasons you pointed out--times change, opinions change, art shifts with the present context. Even art doesn't remain constant. Nothing does.
I'm rambling here.... anywaySSS
no subject
Date: 2003-01-26 11:53 am (UTC)the 'elect' and the 'left behind'
Date: 2003-01-31 10:53 pm (UTC)well,that is my ideal.paradoxically in every day life i am constantly dismayed at the barbaric behavior of so many human beings. i have become a reluctant misanthropist.and even though it's not my ideal,and i know it that hubris is a flaw,i still feel that i'm better than most humans,because i'm in most cases considerate of others. i try to remind myself that perhaps i was just lucky to have the parents that i did,but i haven't been able to convince myself. so i'm rather disappointed in myself for my lack of tolerance and my view of feeling like i'm better than others.
but back to my actual ideals...i absolutely loathe the 'left behind' series of books...
Re: the 'elect' and the 'left behind'
Date: 2003-02-01 03:55 am (UTC)In terms of literal final destinations, I tend to believe in an afterlife, but to accept it may be just a notion. I have to think that the experiences we have impact us, but I cannot think that our fear/flight responses in this little life send us to final reposes of pleasure or pain.
As for Heaven and Hell, we all know far too many people on this earth who are in one place or other other. The concepts have at least metaphoric strength. But the notion of the "left behind" or "piercing the darkness" books really puts me off. Even among authors I respect, the idea that the good guys fight "orcs" and not people, or similar notions, trouble me. We saw part of the old movie Gunga Din last night--the ethnic stereotyping was so offensive we had to turn it off. Was it really necessary to make the antagonist ethnicity "lesser"?
So I guess I think everyone is redeemable and worthwhile, and that grace is not a shortly rationed commodity. I'm troubled by any view, sacred or secular, to the contrary. But I still know just what you mean about people. Yes.
Thanks for commenting.