Why does visual Art provoke me? I am not alone. Today I received this text message from WTP. He was writing from his cabin that over looks Lower White Fish Lake. Foolish me, I thought he was there to fish.
“Is art, as Freud believed, a kind of socially acceptable wish fulfillment for a social infantile desires? A way of finding in imagination what we have lost in life? A sublimation of serial energy? A way of transmitting our hidden wishes or shameful secrets, our failures and losses and humiliations, into beautiful objects that win us wealth and admiration and all the serial fulfillment that we put off in order to do the work in the first place?”
I suspect that message was in response to my quote in a previous conversation.
“The role of art, for Immanuel Kant, is to embody the most important ethical ideas. Art is a natural extension of philosophy. Kant held that we need to have art continually before us, so as to benefit from vivid illustrations and memorable symbols of good behavior and thereby keep the perverse parts of ourselves in check. He wanted to understand how the better, more reasonable parts of our natures could be strengthened so as to reliably win out over our inbuilt weaknesses and selfishness. Art helps us to be good.”
Yes. “Art helps us to be Good.” That stuck with me. Art represents an Ideal. Going to the Met was always inspiring. Once, while wandering I was stopped by an 8th century BCE vase. An anonymous Assyrian artist had the sense of beauty and skill that demanded my attention. His talent had crafted it and, ten thousand years later, it gave me a sense of awe. (Yo, that is so awesome, dude.)
Thank you WTP. Now I am going to contemplate Freud …and my navel. (What the hell is ‘serial imagination’?)