We hold dearly to the aesthetics of the Renaissance, wondering where we lost our creative genius and how to establish a golden age of art once more. We cling to the remnants of great philosophers who spoke of their time, but cannot speak of ours. Longing for what has been and gone blinds our creative judgement, and so our world of art lives in shadow.
Those profound and enlightening thinkers, who expanded the minds of their time, still, after centuries passed, hold the reins of consciousness, dictating our movements through change they are no longer here to witness. The world is altered, the context evolved—the function of creativity must serve its time.
I don’t believe those philosophers to be wrong. Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant, and Georg Hegel are but a few who weighed in on the role of art. Nietzsche saw art as protective, possessing it ‘lest we perish by the truth.’1 While Kant and Hegel settled on aesthetics; beauty is the function of art, to enrapture the soul through elegance and awe.
And I don’t disagree with them. Art can certainly be protective; I’ve found myself wading into the reverie of novels to escape the ugly truth of the world. And there’s no doubt the classic paintings and sculptures are transcendent. But art has a distinct function beyond these notions that, I believe, our time requires. We need a perspective that lifts creativity from its ashes. We need a new role for art.
An Artists Place
I alluded to the role of the artist (artist, not art) in my previous essay, but I brushed over the topic in order to get to the core of my exposition. It does deserve an in-depth exploration, however, since it’s foundational to every artist:
I used the example of society as an enclosed circle—the circle itself is an archetypal image, symbolising wholeness2, the central point of the individual or collective whole—the circle holds the systems that keep society running; healthcare, transport, finance, politics. The essential amenities. But what’s pertinent is the artist’s journey from the centre to the edge.
As we leave the comforts of the centre and move closer to the perimeter, we begin to find the oddities of society. The eccentrics; diviners, spiritualists, and fledgling artists. As we journey further still, the border between order and chaos begins to blur, and the mysterious danger of disorder emerges; the temptation of animal instinct; brothels, backroom gamblers, and tribal ganglands. The delightful danger teetering on the edge of shadow. The expression of the primordial, where unconscious urges beset the conscious mind, taking over. It’s only natural. Dangerous, but natural.
As we reach the circle’s edge, another critical archetype is revealed. The rebel. The rebel stands and fights against unjust systems and topples tyrannical leaders. Rightly or wrongly, they look to the centre seeking to destroy it; to lay waste to an oppressive system and rebuild from the rubble. The rebel clings to the wrongs that have been done to them, looking to return the lashings they received. To them, revenge is a dish best served with red-hot rage.
The rebel is critical because he is the mirror image of the artist. They’re two sides of the same revolutionary coin. The difference is the rebel looks into the centre of society while the artist looks away from it. While the rebel seethes at the injustice of the past, the artist turns their revolutionary tendencies toward the future, using sensitivity as fuel for metamorphosis, transforming feeling, and focusing their will on honest expression. They reach beyond what is known—into chaos—and return with rare insight.
(I realise this may alienate the rebellious among you, but I too have a rebellious streak. Rebellion has its place in times of tyranny, I just hope to inspire minds through compassion instead.)
Take a moment to think on this. What’s a defining attribute of every great artist? Surely originality is one, if not the defining trait. The greats defined their own characteristics; ‘Kafkaesque,’ ‘Shakespearean,’ ‘Dickensian.’ They stood so far apart from what was known that now they stand alone.
Now, at this point you might be questioning my association of the artist with the scoundrels and miscreants of the world. But that isn’t to throw the artists in with them. There’s no doubt artists share common traits with the flounders of society. Many struggled with addiction, depression, madness, and doubt. It’s so common it’s become cliché. An overgeneralisation perhaps, but the correlation between artists and social divergence is clear enough.
The difference, however, between the artist and the scoundrel, is self-awareness and conscious expression. The scoundrel is ruled by unconscious patterns and repressions, a puppet under the hand of shadow, seeking to fulfil destructive fantasies. While the artist recognises their shortcomings; they’re willing to face their ‘demons,’ and seek a constructive outlet for those hauntings. They pursue a controlled curiosity leading to every corner of experience. They don’t succeed all of the time, but they’re always striving.
All of this is to point out that genius and madness aren’t so different. The peripheries of society are synonymous with chaos. All things lose structure and nature runs free, including the nature of man. Without restriction the eccentric go mad, and the mad become genius. I can’t tell you why, the nature of chaos forbids it, but the pattern remains intact.
The artist sits at the very edge, peering out into chaos, away from wholeness. For there is no innovation in wholeness. Innovation requires annihilation, to dissect the ideas—and the self—in order to understand them with greater clarity. Or, if you prefer less convoluted prose, “you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.”
The Art of Meaning
What do you see in the above painting?
A painter might notice its composition; the admission of oils, their application, the muted colours. A novelist might see a narrative begin to unfold; the two subjects come to life, bearing their own motivations and objectives. Or the philosopher, digging into the very meaning of the image, might pull back layers through intense questioning:
“Why are the subject’s hidden by cloth? Was Magritte referring to the notion of ‘the masses,’ faceless and formless? Living in the office by day, sharing an empty kiss by night; repeating the same tedious acts over and over until the veil of capitulation suffocates the voice and dulls the eyes. Or is he simply telling us that love is blind? That we are unable to see the faults of those we hold most dear.”
The painter, its composition. The novelist, its story. The philosopher, its hidden meaning. Ask one hundred enthusiasts for an essay on this painting and you’d receive one hundred different analyses. Sure, some might be similar, but none will be the same.
Magritte demands we ask questions about reality. It’s in all of his paintings. Images that defy our conception of the world. If we want to interact with them in any meaningful way we must step into it, the world of contradiction, the treachery of images. This is surrealism. It forces intellectual expansion and artistic growth. We can’t interact with it without expanding the mind.
But even if we disregard philosophical inquiry all together, we find that feeling holds expansive properties too. The stories, paintings, and architecture that strike awe into our hearts, they stay with us forever.
I recently read Demian by Hermann Hesse. An incredible book. The final act and its climax forced me into deep waters. Not in the writing per se, but in myself. I experienced the frightful change and rapid internal shifts of Sinclair, the protagonist, as if I were him. I couldn’t explain those feelings to you, not without turning this short essay into a book, but the point is, they changed me. They took me on a journey. Waves of emotion wrenching me to and fro before settling down for the stillness that comes after a good book. And now I’m here, telling you about it. Would I have reserved this space for Demian if it never left a lasting impression?
All art holds the potential to heighten our awareness. We all walk on the artist’s beach, collecting pebbles of emergent meaning, curating the essences of all we interact with. Throughout our lives we gather thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of these pebbles, each one adding a new layer of insight, and hopefully, understanding. This influence, the ever-expanding properties art has on the psyche, is unprecedented. Whether philosophical like the surrealists, or oozing with feeling like Hesse. Art is an experience that exists to introduce new meaning, and therefore, instil change.
The Grand Role of Art
The artist pulls the world apart, reconstructing the pieces into vessels of meaning, creating portals into new worlds. The painter takes the chaos of oils, shifting their form into beauty. The writer reorganises the chaos of words into wonderful prose. But what becomes of their art?
Nothing can exist without the necessary context. Humanity lives only through the circumstances that allow life to flourish, without them, we would cease to exist. Art is no different. Every artist is fixed within their context, influenced by those before and around them. We write stories about the mythology that preceded us, paint pictures of the beauty that surrounds us—art begets art.
We admire the masterworks of old, collecting their pebbles, skimming them across the pool of collective consciousness. We’re all doing it, the internet has made sure of that. Throwing our pebbles, their ripples intersecting, sometimes in harmony, other times in discord, but always building on an ever-growing ocean of meaning.
For every pebble thrown, hundreds of eyes watch. They might study your form and technique (or laugh at it). They might throw a rock to displace yours, or a pebble of their own to meet it—there really is no knowing what could happen. But the moment you throw a pebble, it’s seized by the tides of the collective, whether ravaged or cherished yet to be seen. We have no control over how our art is perceived, but all who interact will be influenced by it, collecting their own pebbles of meaning ready to be thrown.
All of these attempts to play in the pool of collective meaning make it indecipherable. The infinite variables and endless complexity will overwhelm the sensitive artist. Without boundaries they will surely lose the thread of who they are. They must ground themselves in their unique individuality.
Art is fundamentally individual. It’s the expression of the soul; an entirely unique entity living in each of us. Art leads us closer to this metaphysical revelation. What resonates with us, what we respond to most, reflects something about our nature.
“Art does not simply reveal God: it is one of the ways in which God reveals, and thus actualizes, himself.”3 — Michael Inwood
What that nature is, only you can define. So read the literary classics or gaze at beautiful landscapes—discover what moves you. Expand your mind with beauty and meaning, then create your own art to expand the minds of others.
Art does many things, but at base of it all, as far as I can tell, lies the subtle push of life. The will to delay entropy a little while longer, and thrust humanity into a more meaningful future.
The Will to Power, Friedrich Nietzsche.
Psychology and Alchemy, Part II, Chapter III, Carl Jung.
Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, Georg Hegel. (Introduction by Michael Inwood)