I'm firmly convinced that the premise of a healthy thinking resides in the recognition that the societal and the individual are the two polarities of humanity. They are interdependent. They need each other. But at the same time their interactions are fraught with conflict and that conflict acts in a similar fashion as the collisions between the polarities of electricity. The result is a burst of energy that powers the movement forward of their constitutive unity. That means that change in human affairs is powered by the collisions between the societal and the individual.
Both the societal and the individual have their inner necessities to satisfy and it is in the nature of life to trick through pleasure all that is necessary for life to thrive into acting to satisfy the inner necessities of those polarities:
- the pleasure procured by food in the mouth guarantees the individual will survive and thrive
- the pleasure procured by sex guarantees that the species will survive and thrive
- the pleasure procured by beauty to the mind guarantees that the individuals will unconsciously internalise the meaning expressed in what is beautiful and thus secure the necessary societal cohesion for societies to survive and reproduce.
From this I conclude:
1. that pleasure is the functional motivator that ensures the reproduction of all the entities necessary to the survival of the principle of life.
2. that the collisions between polarities is what is powering the development, or the push forward, of all the entities necessary to the survival of the principle of life.
The meaning behind this sketch I just shared with you allows to grasp the nature of the principle of life and its emergence and development. For sure the real story is a little more complex than the sketch. But the substance is there nevertheless accessible for meditation.
The meaning consciously generated by my thinking about "what reality is all about" unconsciously gives direction to my visual rendering in painting. For me in this age of imbalance characterised by extreme individualism, poor collages of past and old ideas and utter confusion about what comes our way, painting is an unconscious process of working myself out of chaos in the hope of finding islands of order and harmony that hopefully shed light on our present and the shaping of our future.
Beauty is found in the patterns of the near infinite chain of successful biological mutations that led to us being here today and the memory of that near infinite chain of successful biological mutations is stored in the biological memory of humanity hidden from the consciousness of its individual particles.
Beauty is thus absolutely not in the eyes of the beholder as is so often being repeated in late modernity. Beauty is something objective that our minds are addicted to in exactly the same fashion as sex. Beauty is a trick in the nature of societal life that induces pleasure in the mind of every individual without him being conscientious about the fact and this trick is being used in the arts to attract the minds of viewers or listeners in order to glue them all around a common understanding of "what reality is all about". The gluing of the individuals around a common worldview is a societal strategy set in motion in order to enhance societal cohesion. Societal cohesion is the necessary ingredient guaranteeing the reproduction of societies. Societal cohesion is thus like the food of societies.
The societal intake of a shared worldview by all citizens is a direct consequence of their visual encounter with the beauty surging from the artist's rendering of the signs depicting the worldview of the men of knowledge of the day. That beauty generates pleasure in the minds of each individual and along the viewing process the meaning of the rendered signs passes to the brain.
Artists feel compelled to reproduce the beauty found in those patterns of the near infinite chain of successful biological mutations that led to us being here today in their works. The difference between artists and everybody else is their superior level of sensitivity to beauty. Is this a genetically acquired or a culturally groomed trait? Nobody knows the true answer to that question but we should note that cultural grooming is positively increasing the sensitivity to beauty...
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- beauty procures pleasure. The resulting good feeling in our minds tricks us in being receptive to what art is all about: meaning about "what reality is all about".
- art is about visual signs that give meaning about "what reality is all about" for all to share and historically, from the down of time till somewhere around 1900, that meaning was contained in the worldview of the men of knowledge of the day.
- Past 1900 art and meaning have been diverging and the result has unleashed a lot of confusion and much much crap has been imposed on us as art.
Visual signs have been around since 100,000 years or more. From the down of time till sometime around 1900 visual signs were giving meaning for all to share and that meaning was contained in the worldview of the men of knowledge of the day. Going back in time we can trace 3 periods:
- animism: the men of knowledge being the shaman and the visual signs illustrated the elements of his worldview.
- religion: the men of knowledge are the priests and their worldview is the creed that image makers illustrate for all to share.
- early modernity: the men of knowledge are the new rich merchants who became rich following the reason of capital in the execution of long distance trade. That flow of new money, over the centuries, instilled new values: individualism and private property. Along the next 4-500 years 3 visual signs impose themselves: portraits of those living in the mansions, landscapes around the mansions and stills of what lays on the tables in the mansions.
Things started to change in the second half of Western Europe's nineteenth century. Because they became convinced that there is a more profound visual truth to reality than the signs of early modernity and of Christianity the members of the avant-garde threw the first degree image that projects on the retina to the dustbin of history. But the adventure failed finding any valid truth and ended thus in total confusion.
What went wrong?
1. the painters of the avant-garde were not supplied any longer with a worldview to illustrate. The men of knowledge of their day had vanished on the level playing field of the market for ideas from where they had to compete with all kind of charlatans for the eyeballs of the public.
2. the large majority of the members of the avant-garde had not been given an education in any way related to the production of knowledge about "what is reality all about" and they were thus left erring...
Today in Late-Modernity we slowly come to realize:
* that the project of the avant-garde was a failure (no new meaning)
* that the financialization of art results in "whatever" being presented as art; mostly crap.
* that our societies are fragmenting, losing their cohesion, and on the path to collapse.
* that the individuals feel at a loss and are flocking back to churches or a myriad of new cults if not worse.
* that rationalism did not succeed to displace the irrational because it failed to offer a compelling worldview that all could have followed.
In other words in Late-Modernity we slowly come to realise that we are like street kids who long for the warmth of sharing a common understanding of reality with our fellow citizens.
So today visual signs can not "give meaning" any longer. They can at best "try to find meaning" through the beauty of the visual rendering of whatever emerges from the hands of the artist. In finale this means that if artists had a solid knowledge base their works could possibly combine beauty of rendering and sensible meaning which are the hallmarks of great art.
In conclusion, going forward into the future, artists can no longer be content to master a technique they also have to make the effort to acquire the contemporary knowledge about "what is reality all about".
Environmentalism is an idealist vision of the end game of modernity: modernity for all, democracy, interchangeable individual specialised roles... and this idea of a clean-up of the grains of sand falling from the dirty clothes of unconscientious individuals in the gears of this perfect system. Shaming unconscientious individuals for their dirty clothes is now the politically correct talk in town. But it is nevertheless a short-sighted answer.
I would suggest that such an idealist vision has no future. Societal reality in Late-Modernity is being overtaken by its sheer complexity and collapsing under our unbelieving eyes. For sure it's easier to refuse this idea that modernity is collapsing than to integrate complexity in our responses.
The fact is that our Late-modern societies are collapsing under the combined impact of:
- societal fragmentation and the resulting dilution of societal cohesion that renders ever more problematic the reproduction of our societies. Observe how, at the dismay of the rationalists, the individual atoms are scrambling ever more frantically for the sharing of a common worldview to soothe their unease of the unknown.
- the combination of multiple self-reinforcing side-effects of modernity: pollution, climate change, loss of biodiversity, and the peaking of all our resources is slowly but incontrovertibly grinding the world economic machinery to a halt.
It is not possible to forecast how humanity will come out of this maelstrom but one thing is certain. The societies that will emerge out of it will privilege the strengthening of their societal cohesion over anything else and more particularly over the individual illusion that they can go forward on their own. That's when the arts will be brought back to the rescue, for by magic, humanity will rediscover the immemorial purpose of art: the strengthening of societal cohesion.
What is it that attracts people to art? Some say it is "the soul of the artist" in his art that moves them.
But what's the soul?
Whatever one likes to call that mysteriously deep gut feeling of the artist for what is beautiful I firmly believe that it relates to something that we are not conscientious of but that nevertheless resides in ourselves.
I mean to say that our biological code (DNA) contains the memory of the near infinite chain of evolutionary steps that led to us Homo Sapients. The principle of life stores in its DNA (its program) the entirety of its evolutionary road and passes this information down to the next generations. In opposition to the ugliness that casts the rejected possibilities of change the successfully retained ones appear fantastically beautiful for no other reason that they appear to be the direct causes of our being here today. We are here today as the result of a chain of cascading successes in evolutionary changes that started sometime 4000 million years ago. Over the long haul those successes formed patterns of beautiful lines, colors, forms, sounds, smells and so on. See the following It's official: art makes you happy - video, Brain scans reveal the power of art, Scientists ponder beauty and the eye of the beholder, Brain Response to Classical and Renaissance Sculptures, Beauty is in the brain of the beholder, Denis Dutton: A Darwinian theory of beauty
* for whatever reason the artist feels compelled to reproduce in his works the beauty found in those patterns that each of us inherited genetically but are unconscious of.
* for whatever reason each individual the world over is unconsciously drawn to whatever reflects the beauty found in those patterns that each of us inherited genetically but are unconscious of.
As a definition of what art is all about I posit that "from the down of time till sometime around 1900 visual signs were giving meaning for all to share and that meaning was contained in the worldview of the men of knowledge of the day". But what is ultimately the most important is the level of success of this sharing. Is it not?
It is in the nature of life to trick its individual particles to do what is functionally necessary for preserving and developing life through the procurement of pleasure.
- Sex is searched for the pleasure that it procures but in the end sex serves the reproduction of the specie
- food is searched for the pleasure procured by its intake but in the end food serves the reproduction of the individual.
- beauty is searched for the pleasure procured to the mind but in the end beauty serves to glue the societal atoms behind a common worldview in order to enhance societal cohesion which is indispensable to ensure the reproduction of societies.
The mechanism that I describe here is universal. We find it at work over the long haul history in all cultures on earth.
When this mechanism fails as today in Late-Modernity it means the canary has died in the societal mine... sensitive to that signal sages reach for the mountain tops!
