Second
thoughts on beauty
In homage to the painter Michelle Hiscock following her recent
exhibition at Australian Galleries.
by Jacques
Delaruelle
In a welter
whose basic substance is a discourse in words and material ceaselessly
echoed back and forth between participants it has become most
difficult to find significant currents of thought. The sheer mass
of phrases written or spoken about "art" and the concomitant
proliferation of meta-art (art about art) preclude critical synthesis
or the possibility of common sense interpretation. An informed
rumour suggests that there is nothing outside language, the indifferent
flow of art's signifiers, the rules of an esoteric game or the
signifying system which permits a scriptor to be read in the name
of "art". Yet far from opening new vistas, this re-definition
of art as language tends to restrict the space where its practitioners
can question their circumstances authentically and actually work...
To the proliferation of secondary discourse about images it is
only possible to object in silence and I am well aware of the
inherent contradiction of these lines... But inasmuch as one persists
in writing one might still venture to point out the parallel between
this linguistic inflation and the expansion of bureaucratic control
in the field. Both echo a similarly manic anxiety concerning the
vitality of contemporary art and being under continuous financial
perfusion and theoretical reassurance, the art of today has for
some time now experienced a most severe identity "krisis".
This last word is best understood in its etymological sense as
the deciding moment of an illness, a point in time after which
one either recovers or dies. Here however the resolution has been
delayed by the stratagem which saw the crisis of art be turned
into an art of the crisis. But this semantic coup may not suffice
to postpone the resolution of the issue indefinitely and soon
one might have to contend with the facts...
Of course
the perspective of such finiteness is unpleasant and rather than
dwelling on this unpalatable reality, let us simply notice that
the aesthetic, as a category of experience, seems to have grown
incompatible with current artistic decorum, and is more likely
to be encountered in ordinary situations than in the spaces where
it is expected. Modernism taught us that the aesthetic realm is
wherever seduction operates and, in its broadest acceptance, is
not so much related to art as it is to every visual or acoustic
pleasure that can be enjoyed for its own sake. Modernist painters
or poets opposed the bourgeois prejudice according to which art's
essential function is to carry one away from the unpleasantness
of everyday life and with Courbet, Baudelaire and Manet taught
their readers about Modern Beauty. But a century later President
Eisenhower would still complain that Abstract Expressionist painting
reminded him of traffic accidents. Perhaps this confusion was
perfectly symptomatic of the ideology which assumes that most
activities pertaining to the material provision of life are ugly
and therefore to be disregarded by art. Most presidents today
would probably know better and avoid this basic lack of etiquette.
They would have learnt to distrust their own pleasure/displeasure
and restrict themselves to sagacious remarks about the artist's
hidden intention or the work's social significance without insisting
on the association of art and beauty. They would expect and fear
the reproach of cultural naiveté, yet would probably fail
to realise that such a fear is precisely the trap... In other
words, they would probably not gather that contemporary art now
tends to address itself primarily to our fear of being duped.
An early objection
to this reduction of the artistic sphere to an ideological conspiracy
was produced by Marcuse in an early essay (1937) where the philosopher
propounded that aesthetic art offers at once far more and far
less than a consolation to general (social) unhappiness. Though
pleasure in the presence of a work of art is comparable to a feeling
of sudden liberation, such a feeling seldom reconciles the beholder
(or listener) with his circumstances. On the contrary, it often
has the opposite effect, and Marcuse goes as far as to argue that
aesthetic art contains not only "the justification of the
established form of existence, but also the pain of its establishment,
not only quiescence about what is, but also remembrance of what
could be"(1). By transforming this specific pain of alienation
into a universal longing, aesthetic art constantly threatens to
shatter the viewer's resignation to the order of everyday life.
Thus artistic enjoyment ought never to be an end in itself, it
is but a moment in the understanding of what works of art demand
from us: to become aware of the truth or the falseness in them.
As we behold a nude by Bonnard, we may realise that by painting
in the colours of this world the beauty of a metaphysical happiness,
the artist did plant "real longing, alongside poor consolation
in the heart of his viewer". For though the pleasure of seeing
is very great indeed, such a pleasure is but a first step in the
realisation of the picture's meaning (i.e. beauty). The virtue
of "aesthetic art" is a capacity to instil longing and
regret rather than promote false hopes or soothing illusions of
individual freedom in a world paralysed by universal greed.
As it ceases
to be a promise of happiness beauty becomes a cause for melancholy:
Plato's philosophical tale of the soul suddenly awaken by a beautiful
semblance, stirred by the nostalgia of a lost Eden and finally
carried beyond the opacity of this world towards a numinous realm
regains some of its original significance. It is as if Mnemosyne
- the muse of memory and collective appropriation - saw her power
restored to integrate the art of the past along with our most
immediate cultural experience. For as the leisure industry tirelessly
comes up with ersatz of great narratives that satisfy nobody and
turn the mind into mush, the void created by the decomposition
of the classical myth becomes a felt absence in our heart and
mind. Distinct from the experience of the pleasant, the experience
of the beautiful makes sense as a bridge between the ideal and
the real, but is rarely found in the realm of contemporary art.
When small, exquisitely composed landscape paintings succeed in
transcending the indifference produced by too much bad art to
celebrate this world, it is urgent to voice thanks.
Notes
1. See Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension, Beacon Press,
Boston, 1978.
back
to top