REFLECTIONS ON ART AS A WHOLE

 

REFLECTIONS ON ART AS A WHOLE

 

 

Picture: "At the gallery" - Kaj Bernh. Genell, Oil. 2022.

         

                                                     

Enjoying ironic Literature, UNMASING the Dream and ADOPTING Nationality as a Self-satiric masque.

An essay of the future

 

Kaj Bernh. Genell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PART ONE.

ART AS IMMEDIACY AND revealing force …

 

                                                                      I

                                                   AGAINST EXTERNAL MYTHOLOGY

 

Literary fiction often succeeds in putting the individual into situations of existence, into situations of Choice, because of the fruitful duplicity created by the fact that fiction always has a myth that serves as a background. By always having a myth as a background, we might also judge this myth with what we experience in the hero, from what we know and experience from him and we reversely also learn with the help of the overall myth about the hero.

The contemporary myth is in the majority of cases a false image, painted by the actual power. It is the false history set from the position of power, which the powerful man, the psychopath, is so able to create, and which the powerful man - i.e. the ruling class, the man IN power - is so able to fling out, most successfully feigning the appearance that this myth originates from the depths of the people, from the soul of the people and the inner depths of the man in connection with the … divine. The myth has throughout the ages been given luster implying that MYTH was the Truth of Man when in all societies Myth has in reality only – in all its parts - always just served the power elite.

Myth has never originated out of any depths. The "depth of the people" is itself a myth. Everything about myth is created to fool the servants of the actual ruler. Myth is just as false as the concept of the “people”, “the soul of the people” and “the nation”.

Fiction HOWEVER examines – consciously or unconsciously - what the current myth is.

By far the strongest means fiction has is Irony. Irony – which in many cases also can be unbeknownst to the writer - is the strongest questioning tool fiction has. A society without Ironi is in great danger. A society without Irony has no correlator, no question, no creative Negativity, no Self-Consciousness, and no archeology of Conscious or Unconscious. The irony is the key to knowledge about the Unconscious and to the actual Hallucination and the Hallucination of our Time ( Cf. Boismont, On Hallucinations.) Hallucination is not a myth, but they have similarities.

Now UNMASKING MYTH is – inevitably – a RISKY occupation. In that it is indeed a redefinition of reality, it is open to debate, a debate concerning WHAT IS REAL if we have no myths.

Some people – if not all – will try to use this redefining to THEIR OWN ADVANTAGE.

But if we do not criticize the myths – after we have proved that the myths are instituted by mischievous rulers and bandits, oppressors and usurpers, why should we at all discuss politics? If we are discussing politics while we still have a world defined by OLD MYTHS.

THUS redefining the world, by claiming that the myths about NATIONS and NATIONAL BORDERS, NATION CHARACTERS, FOLKLORE, and such are pure BULLSHIT, is a prerequisite to a world where democracy can prosper as THE ONLY important and just means to achieve peace.

“We are choosing Ithaca, the faithful Earth, the bold, crisp thought, the clear-sighted action, generosity of the person that knows./…../ to conquer what we already own – the meager fresh crops on the fields, the short love on this earth” ( Camus, L´Homme Revolté )

DURING ALL AGES the Conservative Right-Wings always underlined the importance of the Mythical Domain, to enslave people under superficial bonds, to try to make a certain group of people believe that they are BETTER THAN OTHER PEOPLE, when it is beyond any doubt, that WE ARE ALL ALIKE.

This is what the Anti-Myth Work is about!

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                             II

 

                    IMMEDIACY OF ART

 

MY CASE IS SUCH, that I am mostly interested in literature, and most of all novels and short stories. I also read lots of good literature and try to write it as well. Thus one might say that the author of this long essay is a person who- like an awful lot of other people – is IN LITERATURE. But in the process of living such a life of consuming books, trying to write them, and doing so with the intent of maximizing my pleasure and reaching greater knowledge of life as a whole, I am of course often also speculating about our very culture as well as ART AS A WHOLE, about everything from architecture to music, to poetry, movies, painting, sculpture and stage art, etcetera, etcetera. Questions that are closely related concern the evolution of all these art forms, and I usually pose questions about them like: ”What is special about this art form in this society under this certain period in time?” This is mostly referred to as Cultural History or the History of Ideas, Style, and Form.

The kind of art that I look upon as the finest – thus narrowing my scope of the study a little bit – is the kind of art that is created to delight. I am not interested in the kind of art that wants to entertain, nor am I regarding the kind of art that wants to educate, dumb-strike, or provoke as any superior kind of art.

ART immediately brings DELIGHT and I am CONVINCED that the major MEANING of ART is to DELIGHT. And I am referring to PURE DELIGHT. Not the delight of being educated, dumbstruck, or provoked. The delight I am talking about is pure, immediate, and lasting. The art object should keep its capacity to bring delight to me, in aeternum.

WE ALSO have to remember that in the Culture Industry there has evolved an appendix, the Critic Industry that has created a language of extraordinary power and a very peculiar kind. It is often a marvelous piece of verbal architecture and it has organized itself concerning its distance from the object of art, the artist, society and the world as a whole in an absolute INTRIGUING MANNER. The cultural scripteur, the essayist and the writer on the Meaning of Art have ALL OF THEM seen to that they are using a kind of SPECIAL most of the time utterly abstract language that BY THIS PERFECT DISTANCE satisfies the need of the public to FEEL as if they have been given a CLUE, and been given it pleasantly, and a clue, that seems to explain the NEXT step, towards an understanding of the object (  piece of ) art, the melody, the sculpture, the novel, the painting.

When the art critic thus pretends to explain this step, in a manner that always is done with extreme pretentiousness, he usually leans heavily on a tradition of colleagues that does the same thing. Nothing is generally asserted. It is just circular reasoning, where the discourse wanders between the extremes of utter subjectivity to alleged objectivity, and back again.

ALL THE CONCEPTS in art criticism purport to have a meaning that they all lack. But the general impression an art essay most of the time still gives is one of elucidating the general enigma of the position of the human soul versus the trouble and bliss of existence. The CULTURAL INDUSTRY is itself the MAIN obstacle to overcome in trying to understand the culture of our time. We have to understand that their shining pretentiousness is deliberate, a cunning method to exert power over the public domain. They are all thieves, and allies of the financial parasites and crooks, that see ART as a giant hustle.

 

                                                III

 

                MEANING OF ART

 

Nowadays there is not very much reasoning about the meaning of ART.

FEW people nowadays want to risk their public reputation, and their BRAND, by sticking out their noses, hailing some art and denouncing others. Because that is what it is all about. If I TELL YOU that I don´t think that art, that does not primarily DELIGHT, is a lesser form of art, I will inevitably make enemies, and be seen as an unjust judge of many people that express themselves, wanting to provoke, entertain and educate. In having a steadfast conviction about the nature of art as something that mainly lives through PURE DELIGHT and promotion of PURE PLEASURE, I am – all of a sudden – universally controversial. And I will inevitably be looked upon as a tyrant, as non-generous, as a conservative, as narrow-minded, and so on…..

But I cannot see that I could not have my view of art, without being able to have the right to be taken seriously. Because, if nobody could claim that there might be an answer to the question:” What is art?”, that would not be much of a society, nor much of a world. That would not be any debate, nor any view of Man.

Now I will try to explain why I think it would be stupid not to recognize the meaning of ART is to bring delight and not to provoke or something. I am not against provocation or changing the world. It is only, that it has nothing to do with the nature of and the concept of Art.

 

                                  IV

 

                       ARCHITECTURE

I am not – as I already told you – very interested in architecture. I am hooked on literature. But it might be illustrative to start my discussion by bringing up the common views and questions that generally are brought up when people are discussing architecture.

Now, architecture is not an art in the sense I am referring to when I refer to art. Because it has its large practical, functional side. Houses and towns are places to live in, not primarily consumed esthetically, from afar. Still, HOUSES are important as shapes. And they affect us as shapes.

Often architects have an esthetic view as if they thought that forms of architecture should be consumed the way an art object is consumed on a museum. Why this is the case I don´t know. Probably this view is an aberration from the ancient thought of a building as a symbol of power. If a house could be a symbol of power, it could also be a symbol of other things. Yes, it might be a symbol of many a thought or feeling. Thus architects think that they are ALLOWED to project their inner life, on … our houses. Because, most often, the architects are drawing our public buildings.

When people have built their own homes, assigned a builder ti create their own mansion, they most often had an idea of HOME, of a cozy building, that at the same time should be impressive and tell everybody that the inhabitants were solid, often might people. But never the home-owners would display any secret feelings, any metaphysical ideas or philosophies on the outer walls of their houses. A house should mainly be a home.

And this is what seems to be important for the interior feelings of those who live in houses and cities. Houses should be something like a HOME.

Importantly enough is this the way the DREAM looks upon a house. And this is of course to take into account.

If we allow the architect to build houses that look like vases, cigars, doughnuts, washboards, or flowers, then the DREAM does not know how to dream!!!!!

Thus, my point is, when talking about architecture, as well as ART as a whole, we have to start with what the human being as a complex, and not least DREAMING and FEELING creature, first and foremost needs. Humans need a comprehensive and understandable world, - not a mess of messages and expressions from greedy and pompous, and pretentious souls. Thus, architecture is not a place for art at all. Architecture should be concerned with the idea of the home and the solid public hall. Nothing else. They are not supposed to EXPRESS themselves at our expense, and at the expense of our dreams. The dream has to know what a house is, and what is not. Or else it cannot tell us anything.

Architecture is not about individual expression. Nobody wants to live in another person´s artwork. We do not want to live our lives as part of an art exhibition, created by another human being. That is not freedom. Architecture is to serve the idea of the house, and the bridge, and the tunnel. The architect may express him- or herself ( if he or she has to ) in some detail, as in the particular forms of singular door knobs on the garden entrance.

 

                             V.

 

                         MUSIC.

On our way to literature, we have to talk about music. Generally, speaking music cannot be neither talked about nor analyzed in any meaningful way. It is strange that there is a discipline in some academies that is called Musicology, when there never has been any human being – not even Jankélévitch - that has ever been able to in any way EXPLAIN any piece of music. Music stands for itself, in noisy rigor. Some people have even thought that it is the character of the individual phrase or theme that is the MEANING of a certain musical piece. They claim that if a phrase is denoting a cat´s walk or the entrance of a cavalry or the sigh of a lover, that that is the meaning of the musical piece. Nothing v can be further from the truth. The meaning and sense and essence of music is – of course – the enigmatic musical logic, the RELATIONs between phrases. Anyone can come up with a musical phrase, and some do, but the special THING with music is to in a secret, meaningful way connect one intriguing phrase to another. This is the meaning of music, and no more can be said about music. Nothing.

 

MUSIC is one of the strongest and most natural forms of art, and it is one of the most natural and natural strange.

Many people are more moved by music than perhaps by anything else. Most people are more moved by a piece of music than if a bomb struck their town.

Yet, there are of course people who are not moved at all by music. They don’t understand music, are not moved by it and do not care about it. Winston Churchill once said that he thought that music was the most pleasant of noise, but never cared a straw for it. He had no relation to any piece of music, through his entire life.

BUT MOST people are delighted by music, and many are spending several hours a day, listening to it. The desire to perform music is so strong in average man that even those, who have absolutely no musical talent, tend to insist on performing, singing out of tune and with absolutely no rhythm, thus scaring his entire neighborhood and creating a rumor of themselves as people out of touch with not just music, but reality as a whole.

BUT THIS fits a greater somewhat tragic pattern, - something which we will discuss later.

 

 

                                      VI

PAINTINGS AND PICTURES. FIGURATIVE AND NON-FIGURATIVE ART.

Cézanne is an artist. Rembrandt is another. Picasso is a third.

The enjoyment of paintings is immediate. You either rlike a painting, or you don´t. You never know why. Cezanne is not the artist you would call warm, enthusiastic and reasonable. Neither is Picasso warm, enthusiastic and reasonable. But Rembrandt is. Why is that? What has Rembrandt, that the others – although their works are really intense in their capacity of moving our sentiments – has not got?

What art is NOT.

THE WINDOWDRESSER AS ARTIST?

 

                                     VII

ANDY.

“Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there—I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television—you don't feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it's all television.”

CONCEPT ART is no art at all. Concepts are concepts, not art objects. Concept art is built upon one moment ( c:a 10 seconds ) of flabbergasting. After the first shock there is only just the boring fact. After the first shock in front of the so called conept art object, the only thing you are interested is TO WAIT FOR OTHERS 8 your friends ands such ) to HAVE THEIR FLABBERGASTION. This has absolutely nothing to do with art, where art, in the case of true art, it is all about an IMMEDUIATE, but then LASTING JOY. THUS the Campbell soup can is just a pitiful reminder, that Andy Warhol was not so good with his pencil, - that his drawings are poor. He was a good window dresser, had a good EYE. But he was an extremely poor artist. Life is no piece of art. Solanas shooting at Andy is no piece of art either.

 

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LITERATURE.

 

 

With literature it is strange and it is not at all about me. And in literature, it is not even about you. Maybe literature is the only room that is about all of us, and the only room, where it is impossible to talk about OTHERS. In life, there are generally lots of OTHERS. But not in literature. In literature there are US.

Furthermore, one might say that fiction is about the joy in us. The Joy of Man. Nothing is as important to literature as our joy, the joy of us all. Thus, one can say that the essence of literature is a common joy, which excludes no one. Yeah, except for the animals. Literature is the cause of man. No one else's. The only OTHER, we as humans have are the animals: bullocks, sheep, and pigs. Dogs and cats and birds and beetles and midges and plants, bacteria and viruses, and more. The great virtue of literature is generosity. The great sin in literature is pretentiousness.

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IT IS A GLOOMY FACT that the outsider has been assigned to be the interpreter of our world. Perplexed we are in this situation. So very often the major literary works are written by people, men or women, that scarcely participate in ordinary life at all. They are outsiders, people on STAND-BY. And the truth about our civilization still has been seen as THEIR task to interpret.

WHY IS THAT?

TRUE enough that you, in SOME SENSE, have to look at things at some distance to be able to discern the determining features, but the great amount of people, that actually never have been part of society, that has managed to be the depicters of this society is stunning.

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LONELINESS

BEING an author is the loneliest of all occupations. WHY do I say that?

Well it is such a strange privilege, that one might call it the loneliest privilege.

PRIVILIGE.

BUT OF COUSE: being an author is not the same thing for every author. For some it is more of a business, while others looks upon it as their only way to survive from one day to another, without going insane. It is a wide range of reasons that brings a person to indulge in the writing of novels – if we may narrow this discussion to this part of artistic occupation.

Generally one might say, though, that the ones that are writing purely for financial gain tend to form a mass of lesser talents. It SEEMS as if there takes a certain ZEAL not to say DESPAIR to be able to write a novel, that eventually turns into a CLASSIC. The turning into a CLASSIC is the very EPITOME of artistic writing.

IMAGINE THIS!:

You wake up in the morning and you remember that the day before you wrote some farce-like piece of prose. Actually, you did complete an entire weeks job with this farce the day before. And now you are there with these papers in your hand. It is a farce novel, a piece of humoristic prose. But is it good? Is it funny? Will it do?

There is nobody around, that you can consult in this matter. Not even a cat.

The only help you have got are the FIGURES IN THE FARCE YOU ARE WRITING. Thus the problems you are facing, when you are working with the farce eventually becomes the content of the farce.

Thus you might say, that you are writing about nothing at all.

WHO would think anything important would come out of THAT?

            HERE comes the Irony.

 

    

                              VII

 

 

Writing about Nothing at all.

"I would like to write a book, a book about nothing at all, a book with not the slightest bonds to the utter world and that only would hold together by the power of it´s own style." ( Gustave Flaubert. )

“One ought to stop writing, from shame, because it is too easy.” ( F. Kafka )

 

 

Is it even possible to talk or write about "nothing"? Is it something like the old dream of purity, pure art, lárt pour árt of Théofile Gautier, or something like the ideal with the proclaimers of the circular novel, a Raymond Roussell -,

Nothing is the epitome of purity.

The limited circle is pure, like Kafka said. Cf. Z. Smith, in her essay about Kafka.

The thought of writing about nothing ( not "Nothing", the "Naught" ) - and hence everything…? - is now and then present with both Kafka and Kierkegaard. It is originated out of romanticism, even if it perhaps is not romanticism. Here there are also hints about that writing is something else, and it is about the wish not needing to write at all …. There is a usual dilemma of every author in these remarks… there is a despair appearing concerning their own belief, that they are not good enough at anything else but this writing business… There is another despair too, the misology-despair, the mistrust in language, that was to come off age with Modernism… Flaubert - Kafka´s favorite author - is naturally one of the initiators here....

Perhaps Modernism has it root in Flaubert´s marvelous book about St. Antonius.

Flaubert traveled to Africa, in search for inspiration. To the desert.

Rimbaud in Egypt, loaded with bricks of gold in his belt, that bent his back.

Anyway, - there is a long way for any culture before it is confronted with thoughts like these, for a conscience ( a conscience, which according to The Philosopher, i.e. Aristotle is "to know about knowing"... ), before you begin to think of writing about nothing at all.

( Cf. the thesis of H. Maturana, that language does not appear until you start discussing what language is…)

 

Telling about nothing? Isn´t this utter despair? G. Printz-Paulson writes in his Solen och spegeln (1957)( The sun and the mirror.) :" It is possible, that it is required a certain pillar of despair to be able to create important poetry.".- Only a human being with free will is able to play music, Dr. Johnson claimed once: "A human being that is like a machine cannot play, because he or she cannot stop playing, or smashing the violin." ( Johnson to Samuel Boswell in B.s Journey of a tour to the Hebrides, p. 233. ). Johnson was not serious. I don´t know if he ever was. Gogol, who always laughed, was more serious than Johnson.

 

 

    In the Journal Ateneum which was published in Prussia by Aug. and Fridr. Schlegel round 1800, when Imm. Kant was an old man, Fr. Schlegel writes about poetry, and what he claims is astounding.

 Schlegel – belonging to an aesthetic revolutionary movement, inspired by the French Revolution and by the Enlightenment as a whole - claims that poetry in contemporary Prussia does not contain any Mythology, and that Ancient People had Mythology and that Mythology is the one thing that makes poetry important. He is aware that people in Prussia cannot refer in any meaningful way to the ancient gods of Greece, for example. But it is important to have a resounding layer like that to be able to achieve Poetical Meaning.

No poetry without a Myth. ( Later, in the 20th Century L. Kolakowski would say the same thing, thus defending Christianity and Catholic Mythology in Eastern Europe )

Schlegel, however, does not suggest mythology to be built around religion, or around the spirit of the people, like so many tyrants through the ages have managed to do, without being demasked. On the contrary, Schlegel would like poetry to be revived by seeking mythology within ourselves, in the deepest layers of ourselves, much like in the Unconscious.


Kaj Genell 2022 Copyright Kaj Bernh. Genell 2022

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