Art as the justification of everything
To write about
art philosophically is to me, to match two seemingly different worlds that
treat seemingly different things. But they are not so different; both art and
philosophy exist to fulfil the same desire, the human desire for meaning. Art
has been a major part of human history and development, art has been our way of
saying ‘we existed’. Thus art has walked hand in hand with humans throughout
our millennia of experience. No one can tell you more than a philosopher that
truth doesn’t come naked, it comes in disguise. Humans have since forever tried
to undress it and the only way to make sense or explain the unexplainable is
art. The history of art is the history of symbols and the history of symbols is
the history of human life itself.
For a while I
thought that Western rationalisation of thought had killed philosophy as such.
Western reductionism limits that scope in which we can speculate about human
life, as if nothing could be a possibility unless it logically made sense and
fitted under a microscope. Logic to an extent cuts the wings of human inquiry.
At a public level, this seems fitting and very rational, but at a personal
level, we believe in profound realities and that’s were art and other numinous
aspects come in. Art fills in the infinite pain that we have, because of our
lack of understanding, because of our helplessness in the universe. Art heals
our burns like cool water, we look, hear and feel symbols that reach deep into
our collective human conscious and unconscious and whatever experience. Art
that touches your pain is incomparable. Art reminds us that we do understand,
only that we understand with different eyes.
The reason why I
think art is so important is because it keeps its status of enigmatic, even in
our times dominated by science and technology. Artist are treated different, as
carriers of the truth but not important enough to be fed. The job of art is to
transform our experiences, sensations, feelings and thoughts into symbols, into
music and into something that can last in the memory of humans. In Richard
Dawkins words, we don’t just leave behind genetic material, but we also leave
MEMEs, little bits of our creative self, in the shape of art, like things you
don’t think are art, like the way you like to fold your tissue. Art goes beyond
the objective, beyond the times, as if its symbols gave us a little more access
to eternity. It is not a coincidence that Religions are charged with art, art
is symbolic and symbols are signs and expressions of our millennia of
accumulated human experience, the pain is no new, the doubt is not new, art is
not new.
Feelings and
sensitivity are given to us just by being born, same as reason. Artists use
them and transmute these into symbols, colours, sounds, words. The job of an
artist is continuous, like experience. We are constantly receiving something
from the external world and that has to be transmitted. Everyone should do art,
constantly, any type of art. It’s better than psychotherapy, it’s the coat of
varnish that will truly help you visualise the mess that you have been turning
your head into. Expressive, representative, free of worries, creative,
personal, impossible, based on reality, that doesn’t need to make sense but
ends up making more sense, neutral, angry, happy, passionate make art.
By Eliza Veretilo
