Art - a mirror to life?
Jun. 22nd, 2005 02:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeanvieveIts late, and I can't sleep. Lacking anyone I can call at this hour to help ease through these moments, I shall dump here.
If every bit of art, music, entertainment, diversion is taken from a part of life, then.. no, that's more a statement than a question. While it makes one pity the abstract and modern art, one must examine why there is pity. One could, if one wished, stare for hours at the spiral of dripping red on white canvas, searching for a frame of mind in which one can imagine being inspired to paint such a thing. By this we somehow feel we might be reaching out into the mind, the life, the soul of the artist, and by touching him in our ephemeral belief of understanding, we become art. We become the artist. We find ourselves believing that the artist can draw for us the connection between our jaded, everyday selves that are concerned about not overdrawing our bank account or what to cook for dinner into that luminous being within that we call our soul. That divine spark that moves our bodies, that turns a brain into a mind and a personality that cannot be precisely measured or understood by nature or nurture. We feel that the spiral can represent something in all of us, that the dripping symbol we gaze upon can become a universal truth which unites us in a fleeting moment of brotherhood with all the others who have gazed upon it. Who have let themselves become lost in the symbol, to find its true meaning within themselves. And then we walk away to the next splatter, eager to find more ways to participate in the communion of humanity, with the artist as our faithful priest offering up wine and cheese.
Which I think is really quite crap. If a dripping red spiral is art, then so is every video game on the market. Perhaps they are. Perhaps the SIMS represent our last attempt to bridge the gap of love and understanding with our neighbors that we have forgotten into a more generic, untested love for the small creatures whose lives we manipulate. In the beginning, it was only towns. We only built civilizations and tried to balance them into success with streets, buildings, parks. Driving around in the more real world, we compared our SIM universe to the one outside and felt superior whenever we passed a decrepit and declining strip mall in a bad neighborhood. Should have built a park there, we think, added trees.
But what did that first game appeal to in us? Is it the direct translation of fixing the facade of the world around us, succeeding better in a controlled environment than we feel our fellow man has externally? Or is it a more visceral satisfaction, of using the illusory pieces of bits and pieces to represent more than they are to us in real life. Is every lie, every deception or even every bit of sadness or doubt a brick? Is truth or joy a door or window? Are we building cities in our heads and lives made up of the combination of truths and falsehoods we tell ourselves? And are some then merry wanderers to leave the constructs behind scattering the landscape of our pasts? And others in turn dwelling there within those cities and telling ourselves that they are real, that thus is life in a constant exchange of solidity for ideas and sometimes watered down philosophies and double speak?
And now the SIMS are selling us on sex and infidelity. We have found a way in this neo modernism to make art represent an exactitude of life that has always in the past been left unexplored. By purchasing the game and making it happen, are we then granting a tacit acceptance that the sacred is no longer sacred, that the profane is no longer profane? That if art is telling us on every TV show and movie and computer screen that there is no sin, no gravity of wrong doing in causing harm to others in deed or heart, that everything is allowed? That it is okay to build windowless buildings in our lives and hearts, because we can abandon them to go build a new city in a greener pasture? In truth, that in the end there is no moral responsibility.
Philosophy and religion differ only on one point that I have been able to put my finger on for solidity. They both give you rules of behavior, outline the way to live life and to seek after one form of divinity or another. The difference comes in rules breaking, on the matter of crime and punishment. There are no real crimes in philosophy, and thus there is no punishment. No consequences for the living outside the established rules of a philosophical body. It is not indifference but hypocrisy which is the death of religion, when the rules of punishment are not seen to have consequences that can be measured, though there is ostracization for some at least still. But shunning, one imagines, is very rare indeed.
And so, like the loss of religion and rise of spiritualism in the later half of the 19th century, I fear we are drifting once more into the world of the modern artist. Art, shunned and ignored in a temporary worship at the altar of money and beauty, is finding a come back in this new decade. But is it doing its function? Are we feeling exalted to look upon it? Are we humbled, finding ourselves flawed and yet beautiful in reflection? We're certainly aroused by some of it, stirred to passions if only on the pages of a centerfold. Is there a function of art? A madman can murder people decoratively and call it art. A smear of blood on the pavement inside a taped outline on a sidewalk can be called art, when represented on a wall.
And because I can't help myself, I must move it to television and the movies. A man was beaten to death on the air on a major news network - a piece of snuff film that was once illegal. Later in another segment, a puppy was found dead. Hundreds called the TV station to protest the dead puppy images, saying that their children were crying, upset, the subject matter inappropriate. Yet nothing was said about a human being ending his life in violence. To that, we are indifferent. Tarantino teaches us to laugh at what we should morally find appalling. To be shocked and amused instead of saddened and filled with regret and determination to make the world a better place. And it is called art, this perversion of our sensibilities until we are manipulated into feeling the wrong emotion for the stimulus offered.
And so I will grant that by one definition of art, Tarantino excels. If that definition is to create certain feelings in the witness, to construct ideas and images and a value system in the audience as it stirs. In imagery and comedic writing, I offer respect, as well as cinematographic skills. And yet I will never see another of his films, for that very reason. Because I can still censor what I see, what I do. Because I can take responsibility for feeling horrified at the death of another member of the brotherhood of man, and still feel sad when that life is snuffed out or taken away without care or concern of an increasingly sociopathic society.
I think it is our only hope, when art is lost in advertising and the abstract. To make decisions based upon our own gut feelings, the ones that still live in our bellies if we have not forgotten how to listen. To accept that we are beings capable of passing judgment even on art, not on its creation or display because that freedom must be preserved. But to vote with our feet and make the choices that we individually feel are right for us. To grab with both hands onto our rapidly dissolving sense of what makes us better as humanity and worse, and to put our strength into that grip so that it does not slide away.
And so each person I meet now I will offer this challenge. Decide what, for you, art is for. Decide what you want from it - do you want to be shown your soul, or merely diverted for a time from contemplation of life? Is any stirring of any emotion good, one can ask, realizing that mobs have been stirred to pick up pitchforks and torches, or don white sheets and burn crosses? Art, music, these are the most powerful weapons we have as human beings. The messages we send will be how we are remembered in the echoing vaults of history. How we will be judged, and not in the context of our lives today, but in centuries to come after change. A conquered people are often forbidden their music, as being one of those items which define our sense of self. There are no right or wrong answers, but I would like to think that each person from now on might be suddenly and for no reason inspired to examine what it is they are enjoying about the art around them. Whether that art makes them feel good or safe at the expense of another. Whether they feel angrier for humanity or at it. Whether hate is the pathway they want to take to find out what's lurking in the bottom of their soul.
Because we all live in bricks of deception and negative emotions. For ourselves and for others alike. But we can decide for ourselves as architects of our fates and souls whether we want a lot of doors and windows as well.
My apologies for using We so fast and loose. Can't help myself tonight.
If every bit of art, music, entertainment, diversion is taken from a part of life, then.. no, that's more a statement than a question. While it makes one pity the abstract and modern art, one must examine why there is pity. One could, if one wished, stare for hours at the spiral of dripping red on white canvas, searching for a frame of mind in which one can imagine being inspired to paint such a thing. By this we somehow feel we might be reaching out into the mind, the life, the soul of the artist, and by touching him in our ephemeral belief of understanding, we become art. We become the artist. We find ourselves believing that the artist can draw for us the connection between our jaded, everyday selves that are concerned about not overdrawing our bank account or what to cook for dinner into that luminous being within that we call our soul. That divine spark that moves our bodies, that turns a brain into a mind and a personality that cannot be precisely measured or understood by nature or nurture. We feel that the spiral can represent something in all of us, that the dripping symbol we gaze upon can become a universal truth which unites us in a fleeting moment of brotherhood with all the others who have gazed upon it. Who have let themselves become lost in the symbol, to find its true meaning within themselves. And then we walk away to the next splatter, eager to find more ways to participate in the communion of humanity, with the artist as our faithful priest offering up wine and cheese.
Which I think is really quite crap. If a dripping red spiral is art, then so is every video game on the market. Perhaps they are. Perhaps the SIMS represent our last attempt to bridge the gap of love and understanding with our neighbors that we have forgotten into a more generic, untested love for the small creatures whose lives we manipulate. In the beginning, it was only towns. We only built civilizations and tried to balance them into success with streets, buildings, parks. Driving around in the more real world, we compared our SIM universe to the one outside and felt superior whenever we passed a decrepit and declining strip mall in a bad neighborhood. Should have built a park there, we think, added trees.
But what did that first game appeal to in us? Is it the direct translation of fixing the facade of the world around us, succeeding better in a controlled environment than we feel our fellow man has externally? Or is it a more visceral satisfaction, of using the illusory pieces of bits and pieces to represent more than they are to us in real life. Is every lie, every deception or even every bit of sadness or doubt a brick? Is truth or joy a door or window? Are we building cities in our heads and lives made up of the combination of truths and falsehoods we tell ourselves? And are some then merry wanderers to leave the constructs behind scattering the landscape of our pasts? And others in turn dwelling there within those cities and telling ourselves that they are real, that thus is life in a constant exchange of solidity for ideas and sometimes watered down philosophies and double speak?
And now the SIMS are selling us on sex and infidelity. We have found a way in this neo modernism to make art represent an exactitude of life that has always in the past been left unexplored. By purchasing the game and making it happen, are we then granting a tacit acceptance that the sacred is no longer sacred, that the profane is no longer profane? That if art is telling us on every TV show and movie and computer screen that there is no sin, no gravity of wrong doing in causing harm to others in deed or heart, that everything is allowed? That it is okay to build windowless buildings in our lives and hearts, because we can abandon them to go build a new city in a greener pasture? In truth, that in the end there is no moral responsibility.
Philosophy and religion differ only on one point that I have been able to put my finger on for solidity. They both give you rules of behavior, outline the way to live life and to seek after one form of divinity or another. The difference comes in rules breaking, on the matter of crime and punishment. There are no real crimes in philosophy, and thus there is no punishment. No consequences for the living outside the established rules of a philosophical body. It is not indifference but hypocrisy which is the death of religion, when the rules of punishment are not seen to have consequences that can be measured, though there is ostracization for some at least still. But shunning, one imagines, is very rare indeed.
And so, like the loss of religion and rise of spiritualism in the later half of the 19th century, I fear we are drifting once more into the world of the modern artist. Art, shunned and ignored in a temporary worship at the altar of money and beauty, is finding a come back in this new decade. But is it doing its function? Are we feeling exalted to look upon it? Are we humbled, finding ourselves flawed and yet beautiful in reflection? We're certainly aroused by some of it, stirred to passions if only on the pages of a centerfold. Is there a function of art? A madman can murder people decoratively and call it art. A smear of blood on the pavement inside a taped outline on a sidewalk can be called art, when represented on a wall.
And because I can't help myself, I must move it to television and the movies. A man was beaten to death on the air on a major news network - a piece of snuff film that was once illegal. Later in another segment, a puppy was found dead. Hundreds called the TV station to protest the dead puppy images, saying that their children were crying, upset, the subject matter inappropriate. Yet nothing was said about a human being ending his life in violence. To that, we are indifferent. Tarantino teaches us to laugh at what we should morally find appalling. To be shocked and amused instead of saddened and filled with regret and determination to make the world a better place. And it is called art, this perversion of our sensibilities until we are manipulated into feeling the wrong emotion for the stimulus offered.
And so I will grant that by one definition of art, Tarantino excels. If that definition is to create certain feelings in the witness, to construct ideas and images and a value system in the audience as it stirs. In imagery and comedic writing, I offer respect, as well as cinematographic skills. And yet I will never see another of his films, for that very reason. Because I can still censor what I see, what I do. Because I can take responsibility for feeling horrified at the death of another member of the brotherhood of man, and still feel sad when that life is snuffed out or taken away without care or concern of an increasingly sociopathic society.
I think it is our only hope, when art is lost in advertising and the abstract. To make decisions based upon our own gut feelings, the ones that still live in our bellies if we have not forgotten how to listen. To accept that we are beings capable of passing judgment even on art, not on its creation or display because that freedom must be preserved. But to vote with our feet and make the choices that we individually feel are right for us. To grab with both hands onto our rapidly dissolving sense of what makes us better as humanity and worse, and to put our strength into that grip so that it does not slide away.
And so each person I meet now I will offer this challenge. Decide what, for you, art is for. Decide what you want from it - do you want to be shown your soul, or merely diverted for a time from contemplation of life? Is any stirring of any emotion good, one can ask, realizing that mobs have been stirred to pick up pitchforks and torches, or don white sheets and burn crosses? Art, music, these are the most powerful weapons we have as human beings. The messages we send will be how we are remembered in the echoing vaults of history. How we will be judged, and not in the context of our lives today, but in centuries to come after change. A conquered people are often forbidden their music, as being one of those items which define our sense of self. There are no right or wrong answers, but I would like to think that each person from now on might be suddenly and for no reason inspired to examine what it is they are enjoying about the art around them. Whether that art makes them feel good or safe at the expense of another. Whether they feel angrier for humanity or at it. Whether hate is the pathway they want to take to find out what's lurking in the bottom of their soul.
Because we all live in bricks of deception and negative emotions. For ourselves and for others alike. But we can decide for ourselves as architects of our fates and souls whether we want a lot of doors and windows as well.
My apologies for using We so fast and loose. Can't help myself tonight.
