Beauty Taste and the Sublime - Essay Example

In his famous apostrophe to the "Grecian Urn", the immortal poet, John Keats, wrote: Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend toman, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"-that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.1 This very famous statement on Beauty and Truth and their interchangeability poses a very important question in the postmodern era. Art and its convention of the 'Beauty'/'Beautiful' has imperceptibly changed over the decades, from something that should reflect the Ideal (and in reality, twice removed from it, as per Plato, 360 B.C)2, or in essence complete and offering pleasure to the senses to something, that expresses the unique consciousness/angst of the creator. Art has thus rediscovered its definition for beauty. If beauty is truth, then it may dare to be grotesque too, for truth may be harsh or horrific. Beauty does not suggest something beautiful in the actual sense of the term, but that, which comes closer to the true expressions of the self and the vision of a generation's psyche, that is fragmented, kitsch-like, complex and beyond the metanarratives (narratives or discourses/ideologies that deal with conforming to a fixed universal way of looking and judging things) of a suffocating conformity. Beauty has evolved into a freedom for expression. Contemporary art, especially questions the paradigms (fixed standards and canonical/classical examples) for judging aesthetic values (art that has a "moral" and ethical message and that is pleasing to the senses), with artists like Chapman Brothers or Justin Novak producing artwork that are clearly meant to provoke reactions and challenge notions of beauty, that had it's roots in Kant's "Critique of Judgment" (1790). It contemplated on the "pure" aesthetic experience of art consisting of a "disinterested" observer, pleasing for its own sake and beyond any utility or morality. Now, the very word 'pleasing' may have different boundaries and contemporary art is trying to escalate their claims. If Marcel Duchamp made a fountain out of a urinal in 1917, that hurtled the Dadaist movement and that later amplified into a surrealist tendency (where artistic expressions concentrated on revealing the amoral (un) consciousness of man/woman) thereby looking into primitive art for such unconventional (or grotesque) subconscious inspiration, to help reveal the complex mental process, then the essential motivation behind the whole thing was subversion or countering basic notions of the human mind, and experiences. It became imperative for artists to reveal truth in a very graphic and straightforward fashion, and that was to become the fractured beauty of later avant-garde arts. If primitivism was motivating a new dimension by which beauty of the mind was revealed, then Picasso completely subjectified art and personal experience into a fourth dimension and created a cubist movement to claim a break down of a canon that no longer held on to techniques, symbols and least of all - universal criteria for judging the value or end of art. There are many socio-ideological forces behind the same and the destructive World Wars had many reasons to question the notions behind the traditional idea of Beauty, and it addressed the subjective, transcendental and alienated psyche of modern man and art became a pursuit of revealing the mysteries of the mind that was not always beautiful. Metaphysical hopelessness (with questions about the existence of God, and the pain of the war) gave way from beauty to absurdity, while the meaninglessness of man/woman's 'Being', made beauty dissolve into grotesqueness, either by derision or by the light of their tragic truth. Beauty vanished from the expressions of art, at least the classical expressions of it, but was re-born with a new makeover: grotesque beauty. What makes the question more intriguing is that, whether contemporary art has found a better form of beauty (constructed to please and create a certain discursive paradigm) in the grotesque, since it frees us from any moral and political/ideological constraints Can it be linked to greater dimensions of teleological magnitude, or should it be treated as an alternative method of understanding true aesthetic, if not the complete aspect of aesthetic itself Is grotesque possible without the knowledge of Beauty itself I shall attempt to answer the following questions that I raised, with a few examples. One must first understand the idea behind perception and the dialogical force (by that I mean the never ending exchange of possibilities and reaching after no solution) that surrounds it. Perception may be infinite, and each person's perception is unique and how he/she sees things is a matter of the mind's cognition or way of seeing. If the world is raised as an illusion in one's mind then the mind has been symbolically trained to read it as a language (i.e. man/woman is always deceived about the true nature of reality and is doomed to illusion, be it about himself/herself or about the world). This matrix of complex spontaneity or man's reaction to his/her vision is 'paradigmatically' and 'syntagmatically' (Roman Jakobson, 1987)3 being challenged, when Grotesque plays the part of Beauty. Hence, what he sees (the grotesque) conflicts within his mind (which has been trained to understand conventional beauty only) and therefore produces horror or shock. The Dystopia (disillusionment) arises out of a shattered archetype (conventional chain of symbolic association, like good, evil, etc) that must restructure itself to include elements of the grotesque within the beauty, and reach towards the same aesthetic experience: the sublime, that which art produces in the mind of the observer. With classical art a feeling of awe produced this sublime. But interestingly what produces sublime in avant-garde art, is shock. This too comes from a feeling of overwhelming awe, which is quite equivalent to one saying "I can't believe this disgusting thing being presented in the name of art!), whereas in the earlier times one used to say: "Wow! My god this is so awe-inspiringly beautiful!). So in both the cases, either by way of wonder or disgust/shock this awe gives way to a feeling of the sublime and postmodern art uses shock to not only challenge notions of sublime, but also social truths, conditions and taste. But one must not confuse this postmodern sublime (as received through shock or horror and disgust) with the cathartic experience associated with 'Tragic' pity and terror, but something quite opposite to an ideal communicative situation that all such classical art produces. Thus this element of practicing mimesis (imitation) and/or representation of the ideal (Plato4 says that art must confine itself to trying to represent god's image which is perfect/ideal) as Plato discussed in his "Republic", have given way (in the postmodern practice of art), to an "infinite [struggle for representing] subjectivity" (Hegel, Lectures on Fine Art, given in the 1820s), or the abyss of the human mind and condition. And this work is not that easy, since modern psychology since Freud, has always stressed on the fractured 'self' or that human beings have a sense of the self that is hidden from them and there is a gap between this conscious and unconscious self. Noted Marxist theorist Althusser (1989)5 estimated the impossibility of a single position from where one can judge art, since the human mind is preconditioned with a lot of biased upbringing that is socio-historically or culturally molded to think and understand and not beyond that culture6. And once modern man came to terms with the basic problem that arises with setting universal standards for art, which has been created under the subjective/personal influence of an artist, who is also a human being, conditioned or raised up with his/her own cultural biases (think of a Chinese artist or a French woman or even a Africa-American homosexual man). Then, by judging their art on universal or canonical standards would only reduce the observer's independence. Finer details of that art would be lost by gross analysis. And thus, there is a complete inquiry into contemporary art through the artists' personality or self (or selves), which helps in understanding the qualities of beauty and grotesque that they play with, much more. Justin Novak's "disfigurine" often conforming to the bourgeoisie values, distort them to such an ironic extent that one cannot miss the counter realism that it offers. Often it serves to offer no alternative reality, but just launches one amidst a grotesque re-examination of old values and with its attendant disillusionment. Once the silent barrier between class and gender is dismantled, the escape is into nothingness - the sublime height of vast unending problems, and this underscores the definite presence and the horrors of undying conformism. If truth is beauty, then Novak's artworks reveal the finer sides of it by shattering the comfortable and compartmentalized thought processes with which one can objectify art from a safe distance. The grotesque closeness of these truths, give beauty to the mind by releasing it from the shackles of confinement and overpowering illusions. Truth is not universal, but a power to accept the inextricable complexity of human behaviour, mind and his/her interrelationship with their social, cultural and historical environment. With Novak's work one is left to ponder these very questions. Is Grotesque a rebellion Or is it an inextricable element of beauty "Disfigurines" 2006, by Justin Novak Grayson Perry's ceramic works portray this polemic, further, by making them superficially beautiful (as beauty has been notoriously claimed to have been) and underneath it remains the darker motives of an artist who tries to wrest with disturbing truths (or shall one call them home truths, with a larger social back drop to them) that question issues of public/private dialectic. His works that deserve mention here are, "Coming Out Dress 2000", "We've Found the Body of your Child 2000"or the "Boring Cool People 1999" (reminds one of Eliot's famous lines from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock "In the room the women come and go, Talking of Michaelangelo"). Not only does he deal with issues like cross-dressing, child abuse and social sterility (about spiritually hollow "cool" fashionistas or the demanding violence of the utilitarian age), but also, he plays with this abnormal interrelation between beauty and grotesque. He raises questions about taste and the sublime. In short he subverts the notion of beauty with beauty that is skin deep! Grotesque thus becomes Beauty that is kin deep in this works! Reality is a diabolical faade and Perry questions whether hegemony denotes or connotes the medium of taste in art. Thus equating expression with grotesque beauty beyond the limited categories of high or low taste, his avant-garde expressionism becomes a solitary modicum of aesthetic experience, which is new and which is whole (if whole comprises of an aesthetic stance that offers no definite and certain understanding of art's end but generates a range of teasing/shocking possibilities of that, which is an illusion in itself: Bourgeois ideology). Figure 1: Coming Out Dress, 2000. He poses as Claire, his feminine alter ego. All his works deal with these two sides to his sexuality quite deeply, especially in 'Transvestite Brides of Christ 2000' and 'Contained Anger1999', respectively, that questions the significance of male-role models. But what is interesting is that Perry is experimenting with representation, rather then pottery, and that is why his artwork combines issues of an innocent observer or rather tries to destroy the comfortable distance with which an observer may guard their subjective spaces. Figure 2: We've found the Body of Your Child, 2000.Courtesy Saatchi Gallery, UK. Figure 3: Grayson Perry Boring Cool People 1999, Courtesy Victoria Miro Gallery, London Transvestite to transgression, the Chapman Brothers question the inevitability or orthodox value of canonical (classical) artworks. This travesty or mockery of canonical lofty seriousness is reflected in their works, through devises of defaced and tortured figures, which for them amount to the complete picture of Beauty (of an era that is grotesque, in it's realization of a past, present and future that cannot bear to sift through the beastly side of socio-cultural conditions, anymore or unlike the others). This becomes a subject behind their sculptures that bursts with mockery, tragedy exploding with grotesque farce. They usher in a new experiment with taste, bad taste and the notions of good taste. Art moves into the realms of public or mass 'low' category, which becomes an essential democratic medium for evoking or carrying forward a provocation to rouse the sense of that horrifying answerless void. With the Chapman brothers there is a sadist tone attached to their insult or reiteration of Goya's influence especially in their recreation of his "Disasters of War", which inflict bold horror. But the grandeur of that horror is reduced to a trivial and yet a sardonic sensation taste comes off them. They twist the sensation of violence into an aesthetic ground and arouse a variety of physical and mental demands for perceiving Beauty amidst such a squandering grotesqueness. Beauty here lies in the release from holding back appreciation, awe and complete shock. Violence does not stand-alone and nor does any other human emotion. "Sex, 2003" is thus desire, decay, diabolical, deliberate, freedom or defeat. Purity is not that far from its pornographic mockery of it and they are interrelated in their apparent verisimilitude. Figure 1: (Details of "Sex") Jake and Dinos Chapman's "Sex", 2003. Courtesy Jay Jopling/White Cube (London). A true representation of kitsch art, their works like Fuckface and Zygotic Acceleration, roused shock as they attempted to portray the sexualisation of children due to the media and increased gender awareness. These treatments nevertheless push questions about morality that grotesque beauty actually challenges. Thus morality and beauty in its aesthetic straight forwardedness seem to flatten out newer boundaries of experiences, which the Chapman brothers challenge through their craftsmanship. Fuckface, 1994 along with "Zygotic acceleration, Biogenetic de-sublimated libidinal model, 1995" and DNA Zygotic, 1995 respectively. Courtesy of The Saatchi Gallery, London. Traditional Sculpture, especially in the hands of the Chapman Brothers and Justin Novak or Grayson Perry are objects of anti-canonical parody, grotesque imitations or thought-provoking reverse-discourses. All these postmodern artists are challenging aesthetic experience. All these artworks succumb to one the power of the grotesque that sublimates beauty with its truth, and they make us realize that truth is not about a fixed standard, but accepting the actual absence of it. What makes contemporary art more beastly in its beauty is the power to derive happiness (or sado-masochist satisfaction) out of this grotesqueness. The grotesque shocks but this is a pleasure in itself, because it is the very representation of the consciousness. Theatre and artwork met with experimentalism in the stage by Artaud (1968)7, who made audience a spectator to cruelty that is harsh, exceptionally brutal and yet beautiful. By shattering estrangement and by creating something that allows no 'objectivity' (in the likes of Kant or Brecht, 1964)8 Artaud demands a complete involvement of the senses. Moreover, this is where art threatens to change the soul of the perceiver by its dominating beauty, which horrifies the perceiver with its verity and unique angst (or disillusionment with 'normal' life). Wittgenstein's concept of "seeing-as,"9 allows contemporary art to shun master narratives completely and stand out on their own purely as visual sensations. From British Avant-Garde art that confuses common and the uncommon (like use of mannequin by Chapman Brothers or genitals replaced by the faces in their remake of Goya's Disasters of Wars series). Grotesquerie is about questioning the status quo, about what is 'normal' (can we pretend that homosexuality does not exist anymore, unlike 19th century England, where sodomy was a criminal offence then), about unflinching self-criticism and about embracing outsiders (anyone beyond one's own cultural boundary). From Simon Carroll deconstructing the chronology of ceramic vases with his pastiches like "Thrown Square Pot2005", engages the observers mind with complex questions that he poses through the irregular construction of his surfaces (it is all about exploring possibilities or more simply: not going by the rules and thus a form of rebel!). "Thrown Square Pot2005", Simon Carroll. The artists seem to dwell on the apparent hyperreality of contemporary situation, where art has become a vastly reproduced object - fractured beyond identity (think of the virtual reality/internet, where actual paintings are being reproduced over and over again and distributed). Formlessness and rebellion against rules becomes actual representation of beauty and deliberate cruelty - an aesthetic grotesqueness, because it dares to bare it all! Thus the gap between what is apparent (propriety, normality) and what may actually exist (the horror inside our own twisted fantasy, schizophrenia, eccentric habits or underlying grotesqueness of something beautiful etc) gives contemporary artists' ample space to experiment, question and bridge this 'defined' categories with crushing forces of shocking expressions that though grotesque to the shocked senses, is ultimately beautiful by virtue of its truth and freedom of expression and not to forget: defiance! Works Cited 1. Althusser, L. (1989). 'Ideology and ideological state apparatuses' in Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays. London: New Left Books pp 170-86 2. Brecht, Berolt. "The Street Scene: A Basic Model for an Epic Theatre," Brecht on Theatre: The Develpment of an Aesthetic, ed. and trans., John Willett (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964), p. 121. 3. Derrida. "Of Grammatology" translated and introduced by Gayatri C. Spivak, 1976 4. Eliot, T. S "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". Eliot, Thomas Stearns. Prufrock and Other Observations. London: The Egoist, Ltd, 1917; Bartleby.com, 1996. www.bartleby.com/198/. [30.01.2007]. ON-LINE ED.: Published May 1996 by Bartleby.com; Copyright Bartleby.com, Inc. (Terms of Use). 5. Goldfarb, Warren. "Wittgenstein on Understanding". Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XVII. 1992. pp. 110. 6. Hegel, Lectures on Fine Art, (edited by Hotho) "Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art," Vol. 1.translated by T. M. Knox, 1973. < http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/contents.htm > 30.01.2007. 7. Jakobson, Roman. "Language in Literature". Ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1987 8. Kant, Immanuel: The Critique of Judgement (1790), translated by Meredith, J. Adelaide: ebooks, 2004 9. Keats, John. Poetical Works. London: Macmillan, 1884; Bartleby.com, 1999http://www.bartleby.com/126/41.html. [29.01.2007]; Online-Ed: First published February 1993; published July 1999 by Bartleby.com; Copyright Bartleby.com, Inc. 10. Lacan J. (1949). The mirror stage. in Identity: a reader, Paul du Gay, Jessica Evans and Peter 11. Plato. Translator Jowett, Benjamin. "The Republic". EText-No. 1497 Release Date 1998-10-01. < http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1497 > Read More