Is Art Passe In An Age Of Relativism?
- Mike Gunn
- May 25, 2004
- Series: Art
“A world ends when its metaphor has died. An age becomes an age, all else beside, when sensuous poets in their pride invent emblems for the soul’s consent that speak the meanings men will never know, but man-imagined images can show. It perishes when those images, though seen, no longer mean…” - Archibald MacLeish
In no way do I consider myself an art critic. That would assume I actually knew a lot about art. But I do not feel one needs to have a degree in art to comment on its meaning (I’ll leave the aesthetics to those enlightened ones). Last night I went to the Seattle Art Museum to view Morris Graves’ abstract, realism and conscience-bending exhibit. My own tastes draw me to the surreal and the abstract. I love Dali, and have a print of his St. John's of the Cross hanging up in my living room. However, walking around the Graves exhibit, I wasn’t that impressed. Instead I found myself drifting into two permanent displays filled with Renaissance Christianity, Ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian art.
I had to ask myself, why? There were plenty of pieces in Morris’ set that I’d love to have hanging over the couch in my living room, but I wasn’t captured by anything he did. I found myself evaluating his work based on color and composition, and failing to be moved toward anything transcendent. It is kind of analogous to being moved by a beautiful woman, and then realizing that she has no intellectual depth. You may be raptured with her beauty for a while, but it would be difficult to continue creating a meaningful relationship that is not inherently existent. This is how a lot of modern art strikes me, meaningless, and vacuous. It has destroyed the symbols that move us beyond ourselves. Is art supposed to convey meaning and transcendence? Does art reflect culture or define culture? What makes art good? Is art utilitarian in the sense that it conveys meaning for my use only?
Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but shouldn’t the concept of beauty bring our minds toward the reality of beauty. Is there real beauty? Is there something truly good? I feel that the way we answer these questions determines art's place in our culture. If there is no essential, necessary beauty, or good, it seems that art then becomes a slave to our own interpretation, and therefore is crushed under the weight of consumerism. There is no transcendence in our own being, and if I am supposed to “look beyond the objective reality” toward an inner consciousness, is there anything truly there but me?
I think what struck me most about the Egyptian and renaissance art was its connection to the reality of the transcendent, and the fact that it whisked me away into eons of time, and culture. It has stood the test, because it meant something; it brought me outside of myself, and made me look elsewhere. The irony of the situation was that I’d be more comfortable with Morris’ stuff hanging in my living room than Raphael, but only because his colors would match well with the décor, not because it translated me into another world, even the world he painted in.
Then is realism the only art we can attach meaning to? No, not at all! As a matter of fact, if there is no authorial meaning then its medium will not matter. The abstract can communicate meaning, as well or better than a photograph, if meaning is a reality. I believe that meaning can be communicated in diverse ways, with diverse understanding. Is relativism destroying great art and producing pop art sold to the masses, or elite art, only understood by the initiated? If art is no longer a symbol by which we understand culture and reality, has it given way to the “Guerillas of art” (a term Oliver Stone coined in reference to writer/directors), the new evangelists of our times? Is it possible that the fine arts have succumbed to relativistic Gnosticism (or pop madness), paving the way for the artist of the screenplay to direct our cultural symbols through the lens of a camera?
Maybe it was all just bad coffee? After all, Renaissance art doesn’t impress me either. It’s just a bunch of Europeans creating gods in their own dead, white images. I know this is really just the beginning of a discussion without any real answers. Maybe there is no answer to the question of transcendence in art. However, I do believe that there is a standard of beauty that drives us to image it, even when our weak attempts fall short. Art should strive for this transcendence, moving beyond our whole into another dimension. If meaning is created in the mind of the interpreter then the artist is dead, and its meaning is sucked like light into a black hole back into itself, reflecting the glory of its maker, and she is you!
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