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.
===========
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
