searching for meaning
having a very interesting conversation last night about art has prompted some thinking today . . . i think stemming from that age old dilemma about art and the artist - wherein immoral, corrupt human beings create objects of beauty. i remember confronting the dilemma myself in my teens when i realised that picasso was a womanising misogynist - but that guernica was one of the most profound and distrubing comments on war in the 20th century. perhaps its easier as a christian to understand this, since we know all himans to be broken people, who, in their brokeness, still attempt imago dei in creative acts.
the dilemma is further heightened for me by the reaslisation, a few years later, that art is not a force that necessarily improves or ameliorates the morality of the audience. this realisation came about in descriptions of concentration camp guards who would go home, kiss their children and listen to beethoven . . . encapsulated in the popular culture by the character amon goeth in spielburg's Schidler's List - a sensuous man who responded to beauty but whose morality was totally corrupt. it is these two aspects of the dilemma of art - it is not necessarily produced by moral beings or enjoyed by moral beings- that leads, i think to adorno: "After Auschwitz, to write a poem is barbaric." adorno, especially, was thinking of german culture, where the same society that produced Beethoven, Brecht and Mann could produce Hitler et al.
this dilemma is explored in a number of postmodern works - i think in particular of literary works - but the rise of abstraction into its purest forms since the holocaust is not insignificant either. what many decry as postmodernism's relativity and playfulness - think The Name of the Rose, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, Underworld, etc etc - is in fact an attempt to find a poetry (art) that is not barbaric, after Auschwitz.
as we move away from that pure postmodernism into a broader sweep of the novel's styles, my hit pick for the week, a book, that while not at all inventive, playful, ludic etc in its style, is, like those classics of postmodernism, attempting to find a language that can write pain without diminishing it - Mister Pip by new zealand writer Lloyd Jones. His lyricism never overrides the power of the book's heart, which is a quiet contemplation on the meaning of art.
bringing me back to where i started: which is this - while art is not always a force for the good, it can be. there are moments when 2 hearts/souls/minds can join in the liminal space between the work and the audience, when a person can feel less alone, more human, just because, someone, somewhere, has once felt like them. great art can pierce the soul in just the right place, break the ice inside us, save us from the life we know. when we read (or in any other way interact with art) the people we meet are familiar to us, because as Twain said - we've met them on the river. its the river that art is for - that place of undisclosed and unfulfilled longing within us - which artists (be they moral or immoral) try in a broken, human way - to expose, reveal, connect.
only connect.
the dilemma is further heightened for me by the reaslisation, a few years later, that art is not a force that necessarily improves or ameliorates the morality of the audience. this realisation came about in descriptions of concentration camp guards who would go home, kiss their children and listen to beethoven . . . encapsulated in the popular culture by the character amon goeth in spielburg's Schidler's List - a sensuous man who responded to beauty but whose morality was totally corrupt. it is these two aspects of the dilemma of art - it is not necessarily produced by moral beings or enjoyed by moral beings- that leads, i think to adorno: "After Auschwitz, to write a poem is barbaric." adorno, especially, was thinking of german culture, where the same society that produced Beethoven, Brecht and Mann could produce Hitler et al.
this dilemma is explored in a number of postmodern works - i think in particular of literary works - but the rise of abstraction into its purest forms since the holocaust is not insignificant either. what many decry as postmodernism's relativity and playfulness - think The Name of the Rose, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, Underworld, etc etc - is in fact an attempt to find a poetry (art) that is not barbaric, after Auschwitz.
as we move away from that pure postmodernism into a broader sweep of the novel's styles, my hit pick for the week, a book, that while not at all inventive, playful, ludic etc in its style, is, like those classics of postmodernism, attempting to find a language that can write pain without diminishing it - Mister Pip by new zealand writer Lloyd Jones. His lyricism never overrides the power of the book's heart, which is a quiet contemplation on the meaning of art.
bringing me back to where i started: which is this - while art is not always a force for the good, it can be. there are moments when 2 hearts/souls/minds can join in the liminal space between the work and the audience, when a person can feel less alone, more human, just because, someone, somewhere, has once felt like them. great art can pierce the soul in just the right place, break the ice inside us, save us from the life we know. when we read (or in any other way interact with art) the people we meet are familiar to us, because as Twain said - we've met them on the river. its the river that art is for - that place of undisclosed and unfulfilled longing within us - which artists (be they moral or immoral) try in a broken, human way - to expose, reveal, connect.
only connect.
posted by kate at 4:07 PM
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