Meditations on Art

[Planetary Eulogy]

I'm always interested in how people encounter and interact with ideas an ideals. On this forum and others, I see people struggling and wrestling with the idea of art.

I've certainly spent my fair share of time throwing my hat in the debate and trying to articulate a value system with art at its center. I've come to see art not as something to be possessed or necessarily even defined (which in many ways is an attempt to claim ownership). The beauty of art, I think, lies in its ability, unique among human endeavours, to occupy that space between our dreams and our nightmares, and, in doing so, bring the unconscious and the abstract into a concrete world of consciousness.

I find myself drawn to art whose greatest power is its ambiguity, art that draws beauty from destruction, a new order from chaos. It's easy to get lost within great art, to marvel at its power to create new worlds and old visions through its own, self-referrential language.

But the more time I spend lost within art, the less certain I find myself of my ability to possess or define it from without. Art must be approached on its own terms, in its own language, and this, I suspect, is the reason it is so difficult for discussions of art to find any common ground on most forums.

Your thoughts would be most welcome.

 

[Astral Poetry]

Well put; Art that shows order from chaos is akin to the builders of civilization constructing upon the ashes of a former society past. It's defining melodic statement is hidden under layers which it then slowly allows the listener to discover, just as esoteric messages hide within our reality. The greatest art is able to seemlessly mirror that which makes life great, from our most heroic endeavors to the subtleties which often breed evolution. In this sense, art is that which is divine and eternal among tradition.

 

[no country for old wainds]

Thoughts:

The greatest art is entirely paradoxical, mimicking the world's reliance at its core upon conflicting yet balanced oppositional forces. It's the greatest by my interpretation because the only context I can objectively put it in is to my understanding of how the whole functions, and my belief that the function of the whole transcends everything else.

In terms of analysing its effect on the mind, I agree that it provides somewhat of a bridge between the conscious and unconscious, or, in a sense, brings our dreams into the reality of consciousness. It allows us to consciously explore unconsciousness - that which is limitless - perhaps.

I'm finding your statement about occupying a space between dreams and nightmares rather difficult to comprehend. I've not fully got my head round the stuff I said either, it's a muddled collection of thoughts, any critique of them which doesn't involve the words 'pretentious twat' will be appreciated.

 

[anonymousnick2001]

I've not fully got my head round the stuff I said either, it's a muddled collection of thoughts, any critique of them which doesn't involve the words 'pretentious twat' will be appreciated.

'kay. I'll try.

I'm the major proponent for pure subjectivity on this forum, I'd like to think, and thus feel that all forms of human expression must remain within the confines of human evaluation upon humane principles and methods, i.e. people's opinions, and as the greatest sufferer of arguments based on opinion, I feel art has lasted and been found to be a hardy and rather transcendental form of human expression in that it manages to be something which we as people strive to define and bottle up and analyze from within and without every day of our lives, but remains paradoxical because it cannot be defined and is assaulted with redefinition and reevaluation as well as denial and criticism which attempts to be objective but simply falls short due to the nature of the medium which is being defined and not any inherent flaw in the concept of objectivity.

With all that aside, I also feel that the great appeal I find within art is its ability to be simultaneously concrete and abstract in the way that a painting is something which one can touch, see, feel, like anything else which is tangible, and yet can possess an infinitely extended cornucopia of depth and emotion which is triggered in the viewer through those concrete mediums and senses, and yet escapes the bounds of definition and description when upon contact with the human capacity to witness beauty. Call it a soul (as I would) or human nature, or choose to leave it within the realm of abstraction, but the timelessness of some art is truly amazing in its ability to stimulate the senses and yet leave you wondering exactly how or why. It simply is, and is nothing more, if that makes any sense, and perhaps that is where PE's reference to a world between dreams and nightmares comes to light. Can you define that world? No. It is much like art in itself. An excellent metaphor for whatever ethereal quality or spark it is that transforms oddly shaped pieces of stone, stretched canvas doused in chemical color, and arranged/rhythmic noise into private shares of eternity unique to each individual who cares so much as to behold them all.

Perhaps the deeply personal and individual ways we deal with such indefinable pieces of existence (read: subjectivity ) are the crux to the arguments which almost always ensue when people come together to define art. Perhaps the conflicting views and opinions and perceptions reharding the definition of such an abstraction are the perfectly caustic reactions which give art life and has caused its survival throughout the ages of mankind's presence in this universe.

 

[Cythraul]

I think the abstract qualities of art are the main reasons why humans appreciate art so much. Art points to something almost more than human, in a sense. We have such a hard time grasping it's essence or truly defining it with a catch-all definition. In this way art transcends all other products of human creation which are, more often than not, valued for their utilitarian qualities. Perhaps art shows us a certain human longing for what is eternal or ultimately real. Some might say that with art we come into closer contact with the human spirit, or that we transcend our belief in material illusions, or that it is simply one of the highest, most imaginitive and all-encompassing forms of human expression. Either way, artistic creation is surely the human mind's realization of it's existential predicament.

 

[Freanan]

But the more time I spend lost within art, the less certain I find myself of my ability to possess or define it from without. Art must be approached on its own terms, in its own language, and this, I suspect, is the reason it is so difficult for discussions of art to find any common ground on most forums.

I think this is the actual problem of discussing about or defining art on an objective level - Major parts of what makes a piece of art great or a piece of art at all, can only be discovered on an emotional and subconscious level.
But on this level, again it is often impossible to discuss objectively.
Art is not like mathematics - if i cannot feel anything while listening to Graveland, no learned discussion on musical theory can change this.
That makes many discussions on this forum rather obsolete - why making 100 threads about why noone likes band x...?

 

[Planetary Eulogy]

Thoughts:


I'm finding your statement about occupying a space between dreams and nightmares rather difficult to comprehend.

This reply originated on another forum where essentially the same question was asked. Whether it answers your question, only you can say:

Art expresses the primal, the innate, that which we sense only at the edge of our awareness in a way that nothing else can. It gives flesh to our hopes and lays bare our fears. Still there remains a certain fundamental tension, because art makes known that which we do not truly know and expresses that which we cannot truly articulate. For this reason, there will always be a certain push and pull, an eternal struggle within, between art as a vehicle for ultimate reality and art as an ephemeral phantom of belief (an ideal, if you will). It is both these things, and neither. And so, art defies easy definition or possession, at least in any externalized sense. All we can really do is enter into an encounter with art and sit at the feet of the master, so to speak.

 

[Planetary Eulogy]

Incidentally, this is not an appeal to subjectivism, just perhaps an exploration of the boundaries of the objective.

 

[anonymousnick2001]

I see. Well, don't worry...I'm certain those boundaries are far more extensive than my post would have one believe.