THE PURPOSE OF ARTS' STUDY

Thread: my initial reflections on the "purpose" and "value" of arts' / humanities study, review, critique and all associated endeavours.

I'll start with value of the arts (will put references up soon, working from memory at this stage so hard)

Many may wonder: what is the value of studying the arts'? How would a literature review/critique for example be at all useful?? Good questions.

Many of us intuitively sense that experiencing with art and culture provides a transcendental experience.. 1/

momentarily one takes flight from one’s life, the boring, routine and mundane, the inevitable organic demise and enters into a s space of contemplation, beauty or truth…Time often seems to stand still. 2/

Art also provides the space for release or catharsis: experiences not deemed socially appropriate are indulged, emotions stirred and released etc 3/

Art also provides a common shared experience, the stuff of social bonding: thus enjoyable. 4/

However.. too many transcendence is not good.. and can be reifying..one needs to also be grounded and attend to one’s life, growth, and eventual organic demise: eat, sleep, sex, strive, survive, fix/repair, and then die. 5/

NB: this take draws on lacanian theory:

What of arts' critique.. why is its breaking apart, analysis distance, sometimes negativity… beneficial.? (I would also put analysis, critique and comedy in the same category and as performing similar functions. ) 6/

I think we one find some ideas in Lacan and yes, poststructuralism and psychoanalysis to a certain extent. 7/

Lacan posits that language organizes + mediates “reality”. Certainly he goes too far in stating the power of language to construct “reality” and dismisses essential biological and organic imperatives and drives. 8/

However, no doubt, and as can be superficially observed from the differences between cultures, the changes in attitudes throughout history and recently woke culture (!) language certainly shapes people’s experiences of “reality” in not insignificant ways. 9/

His major thesis is that language in forming “reality” and in assigning meaning to things.. necessarily leaves out an aspect of “reality”. (“Reality” is a tricky concept because Lacan does not think it can be defined really. Anyway forget that for a moment.) 10/

To elaborate further, words change meanings depending on context. Take the cliché example of the word “snow”. For most Indo-Europeans “snow” or linguistic variants is a rather superficial semantic category for white, frozen and crystallized water particles. 11/

However context also changes meaning. "Snow" may conjure up different associations and connotations in people’s mindset: snow might make people think of Christmas and/or other romantic imagery, skiing or the harsh realities of weather extremes etc. 12/

Then take the well-cited case of Innuit languages in which there is not one word for “snow” but many for the variations of snow and their effects.

So the point is that one “word” cannot capture the totality of a phenomena/"reality" 13/

“Snow” captures one part because it is used purposely to capture one part depending on the aims/needs driving the particular articulation.
Dictionaries try to pin words down, but again they cannot capture everything because language is made fluid through context and change. 14/

So the act of making meaning through language is always an act of inclusion of something into the semantic field and exclusion of something else. Therefore, language cannot capture nor contain the totality of “reality”. 15/

On a moral plane, we see this in the case of words relating to moral ideas which pose a certain ambiguity. Something is always left out. Take the word “temperance”. “Temperance” is most certainly a virtue and a positive attribute. 16/

In many contexts it is adaptive and beneficial to show temperance, when dealing with a customer, boss, working through a problem etc.. 17/

However is “temperance” always “good”? If one’s life were in danger or if one had to fight emphatically and think quickly in a high stakes situation, “temperance” would clearly NOT be the adaptive strategy.
It is most certainly context dependent. 18/

Again words and their assigned meanings include and exclude, cannot capture totality and are used like tools and adapted to particular contexts. 19/

Now a similar dynamics apply to the arts and their objects. We could almost see arts as another form of “language”. Arts are another form of language because they usually convey either a narrative, message or object for our contemplation. 20/

The problem is, like language, the arts cannot capture the totality of “reality” and all its complexity. Like language the arts construct an object, an idea, a generalization or a particularity, but they exclude other parts, that might be confounding or contradictory. 21/

To give an example. Take the painting Botticelli’s Venus. The content is that of beauty. We delight in this image, the form and symmetry..

However, we also register what is left out..22/

She is beautiful, graceful but not particularly sensual or sexy. The beauty is more formal, aesthetic. Does this capture the totality of beauty? It captures an important part.. but it privileges one component and leaves something out..23/

Now take Cabanel’s The Birth of Venus. Here we have more sensuality, sexiness in our model of beauty. But again something is left out: we know longer have the purity, formal gracefulness of our Botticelli, we have something more earthly and profane perhaps. 24/

Our models of beauty embodied and represented in "Venus".. include and exclude. They cannot capture the totality of experience, or what we are happy and content to settle on as “beauty”. Something is relinquished or left out. 25/

This is where arts' critique, review and analysis comes in: it provides that space to fill the gap, experience and process the ‘loss’ and the failures of the object of our contemplation in capturing the totality of “reality”. /26

Ok.. arts' review is also there to celebrate, rejoice in arts'.. but I'm not addressing that here /27

Critique is there to register and acknowledge that the totality of experience always escapes us. It reassures us that we are not trapped in our words, objects but there is freedom in knowing that the contradiction exists, "reality" is beyond us /29

Like the law, rules, language, the arts and its objects codify existence. It is liberating to have those shackles questioned, undermined, loosened or temporarily removed through analysis, critique and review. There is joy in registering that existence is not reified. 30/

Language, the arts etc are a form of action: they commit you to a position in relation to "reality". This commitment involves a certain relinquishment of other possibilities.

With banal cases like "table" or "cup".. you would think frankly who gives a ------ 31/

The problem with postmodernists is that their analysis has often been often frivolous, silly and unimportant.

Or more recently actually destructive and pernicious in the case of woke activism.. /32

I hope we can find a balanced approach to some of these postmodern ideas: use the best of their insights, use deconstruction judiciously to expose manipulation and conceit, be curious about different perspectives, rejoice in the complexity and untamable nature of "reality" /33

Marcello Rubini :

You are everything... everything! You are the first woman on the first day of creation. You are mother, sister, lover, friend, angel, devil, earth, home.

La Dolce Vita - Fellini

Re the power of language to define” reality” I disagree with Lacan. I think language privileges certain choices regarding how we experience and position selves to “reality”.

In addition, there are a number different possibilities but not all of them are successful or viable 34/

..as with difference between a society organised around individualism and freedom vs community and clan. There are usually trade offs involved. 35/

If one hits too hard against nature, biology, and is swept up by an endeavour to transcend the trauma of nature through narcissism and identity obsession, and this being enabled by language and indoctrination, (as I believe is the case with transgender epidemic)..36/

Then one will not arrive at a happy ending. Language, words, ideas, ideation, fantasy cannot transcend nature, biological needs etc 37/