Human history, that is, the physical events which form the intellectual monument of man’s progress on this Earth, has largely been a series of growth spurts. The first men, naked and alone in a world filled with monstrous brutality, came together in a union called civilization to assuage their fears of the world around them and preserve their lives. This process was initiated with the conceptualization of the family, and rapidly grew to encompass villages, towns, cities, and finally nations.
Man is, by his very genetic makeup, a social creature. This has been forced upon him by nature; he has no choice in the matter. His entire psychology has been framed around the issue of the Other - other objects existing in the same world as him which, try as he might to fool himself into believing otherwise, exist entirely independent of his conscious thought. To this end, he has carefully constructed lies designed to facilitate his co-existence with these Others. All values, all morality, all good and all bad (and, as a spiritualized extension of this, all that is “holy†and “profaneâ€) can be said to rest on the recognition of other extant things in relation to their immediate importance.
It is for this reason that language and, later, morality and God were invented. A social creature man may be, but only because it benefits him to be so. Left to his own devices, he would quickly find his selfish nature preferable to his social nature and the fabric of society would rapidly unravel. Thus, something else was needed, a sort of adhesive capable of binding together the fragile threads of civilization while preserving an illusion of autonomy on the part of the individual - men do not like to be controlled by force, but are rather ambiguous about being ruled via deception (one need only ask Ben Stein for his opinion on this subject). From this point of view, God is hardly more than an illusory alpha male, an idea designed by the self to reign over the self in service of the self.
The yearning for a God is, at heart, little more than a projected idealism made necessary out of fear of the Other, which in turn can be seen as a form of intellectualized solipsism. Being incapable of accepting the existence of forces beyond his control - namely death and those things which bring death - man endeavored to create a world entirely within his control. It is quite likely that the first attempts to do this were forms of primitive solipsism, wherein man envisioned himself as the creator of all things and thus could define and control these fearsome Others. Unfortunately, this did little to solve the problem: men continued to die and have their desires thwarted by the natural order of things. So a new solution was needed, a vent, an outward projection of the self, a form of solipsism-that-isn’t - in short, a God.
It can be said with some certainty that no gods exist. The very fabric of the universe rejects a notion of a truly extant Deity - relativity itself repudiates the idea of a privileged position, both free from and capable of acting upon space-time. However, it is not the validity (or lack thereof) of the concept of God that matters most to the believer, but the thought of His existence. The stubbornness of the Creationists in light of overwhelming evidence contrary to their position can be explained through an understanding of the mental necessity of faith. The entire worldview of the faithful hinges on continued belief in the particular deity of his or her religion; indeed, it has been bred into the believer to depend upon the holy writ of his particular religion for value and justification. Without it, he would be as lost as a drug fiend without the needle. This certainly helps one to comprehend the peculiar Greek notion of Khaos - prior to the creation of the gods, all was dark and shadowy upon the face of the Earth.
Yet we will come to the deicide later, and the above revelations should hardly strike the philosopher as anything new - it has been known, in some form, since the early nineteenth-century. What I seek to do is consider, for the first time, the effect this has not on the thinker, strong enough to think his way through the psychological implications, but for the common man, whose very existence is founded upon the notion of the individual subject, the soul. For now, let it suffice to say that all acts of creation, both ideological and physical, are born of a peculiar vitality natural to man: he exists, and therefore he wishes to expand, to impose his basic needs and desires - in short, man is driven to not only exist, but to procure for himself that which is optimal to the continued expansion and well-being of himself. Likewise, it is impossible for any meaningful creation to take place in an atmosphere of externally-enforced rigidity: one need merely look at the wonderful “entarte kunst†of the Weimar Republik and compare it with the crass, vulgar, and ultimately boring works produced in Nazi Germany for an affirmation of this truth. The most bountiful periods in the history of art have always been periods of social upheaval, but not absolute social decay. An opposing will, a delicate balance between social and personal forces, is required to create the friction necessary for powerful artistic statements. And, historically, the walls against which the feelings of the artist have been crushed to produce the internal atmosphere contributive to the creation of art have been the cultural norms of the society which shaped him. The entire Weimar style is a prime example of the clash between the self’s inmost, shadowy desires and wills - lustmord, liebstod, lolita, transvestitism, madness - and those cultural norms which oppose these ‘repulsive’ instincts. The Weimar genre was the first genuine attempt to understand the psychological condition of the artist through his work; only later was the concept borrowed (poorly) by the Surrealists.
This is one of the questions I intend to pose in this book, and I direct it towards both those postmodernists who assume that human experience is either entirely subjective, with no common threads to be found, or that thought is dictated solely by inter-personal relations, and the existentialists who profess absolute belief in the concept of ‘essence‘ as a spiritualized notion:
Any decent artist is simultaneously a creator and a destroyer, an affirmer of his cultural identity and a rejecter of the same, a patriot and a rebel: his efforts to shape his own unique identity out of the clay of his passions come into conflict with the external cultural identity which surrounds him, and the resulting angst seep through into his works. The blank canvas best serves as a sponge, soaking up the residual conflict within the creator. A God the artist may be, but He is a troubled one. This duality of what Nietzsche recognized as the Apollonian and Dionysian aspects of man (and here we must have clarity: the Apollonian is the drive to individual uniqueness and intellectual advancement; the Dionysian, the desire for unity and group-ecstasy), or rather the conflict of these forces, are essential to the development and advancement of the artist, from mere artisan to authentic creator of values. For what does it profit an artist to simply create for others, to remain an artisan, to fashion “beautiful thingsâ€, to continue to affirm his cultural prejudices? It earns him nothing. The artist who would remain an artisan is unworthy of even the slightest consideration, for he neither contributes in any meaningful way to his culture nor does he benefit himself; his behavior is criminal and self-depreciating.
It is also necessary to recognize the role the artist plays in relation to the cultural climate from which he stems if one is to grasp the meaning of this book. The artist behaves as a prism, reflecting and refracting cultural mores until they become unrecognizable. It is this which gives him his power; before his eyes, the emotions of the masses become incarnate, take shape, and welcome his hands to do their work. To quote Stalin, the artist truly is the “engineer of the human soul†in relation to his culture; however, it is left to his hands to change the soul of his culture, to himself become an engine of progress, and not to merely and irresponsibly allow it to stagnate by producing nothing more than pieces which simply reaffirm his cultural prejudices and worldview. And, after all, what are his hands guided by in this task if not his passions? And - in the creative artist - what is his passion for if not himself and his escape from suffering? It is not his suffering which is admirable, but his efforts to overcome it through the art of art. Without the labyrinth to make it necessary, why should Daedalus have invented his wings at all? If one requires a more poetic metaphor, how could the phoenix ever become something beautiful without first having combusted into ash?
The artist has not always been an artist, of course. For the better part of history, the artist served primarily or exclusively in the capacity of artisan, crafting those things essential to the continued comfort and expansion of his culture. The genealogy of the artist in the modern sense can be traced as far back as the Black Death in the fourteenth century, when recognition of the catastrophe around him took precedence over the creation of pretty decorative objects and useless baubles. The object d’art became the perception of truth, and painters across disease-ridden Europe turned their brushes to the task of creating a record of the horrid conditions which they found themselves in. This is the birth of expressionism, and a rebirth of the long-lost art of telling the truth as far as one can see it, which had been extinct since the decline of Greece. As men turned away from theological institutions and the then-prominent witch doctors to provide them with answers, they inevitably turned towards the artist who, though incapable of offering a reason why, could at least understand and suffer with them and, perhaps most importantly of all, offer them a way through the turmoil through an embrace of the absurd world and an ascension above it through the utilization of emotion.
There is a particular piece from this time period which has fascinated me since I first saw it while rummaging through several web-sites online - the Danse Macabre by Hans Holbein. Depicted within this aesthetically unappealing work are several skeletons, the very embodiment of death, dancing atop the graves of those felled by disease. Obviously, the image first strikes the viewer as morose; following this, one gets an impression of the futility of life in an arbitrary, absurd world. However, is there not also a peculiar sense of triumph associated with the picture as well? True, it is of the ultimate victory of death over the living; however, that there can be jubilation at all in the midst of such horror is itself awe-inspiring and entirely admirable. Of course, I doubt Herr Holbein felt the same, but the distance of centuries and epochs between us tends to obscure things such as that.
Perhaps a more relevant example of my feelings might be the Dadaists and their successor movement, Surrealism, and in particular Tristran Tzara (or is it Tzarathustra? my mind slips me). Born into a poor household in Romania, this young firebrand went on to revolutionize modern art through his invention of Dada, the horse-artistry which was nihilistic in intent, like post-modernism, but one which somehow became entangled with psychoanalysis, thus giving birth to Surrealism - in one fell swoop, the art world was revolutionized: the world of the interior was now vulnerable not only to the fat fingers of psychologists, but to the more trained, more intuitive brush of the artist - surely a change for the better! for what men are more suited for the task than those whose primary existence is in the shadow realm of substance and perception, that is, the artist?
As an aside, I do not have a great deal of use for Freudian psychoanalysis. Though it is true that it is an improvement over two millennia of priests playing the part of psychologists - in the only way they know how, of course, through superstitious exorcism rites which serve a greater psychological purpose for them than for the “possessed†- the entire practice stinks of a projection on the part of Freud. He, like the priest, came to fear the inner world as something dark, monstrous, evil; he, like the priest, devoted his life to exorcizing this inner labyrinth of the spooks which haunt it. This is the greatest advantage artists have over psychologists, as well as philosophers: that they do not fear that which they fail to comprehend, for they themselves are not comprehended at all.
I do not believe a movement like Dada would ever have been contemplated, much less put into action, in a different cultural climate. The interbellum years were Dionysian to the core, particularly in Germany. Without a strong central alpha male to guide them, the people came into conflict; and, of course, this atmosphere lent itself perfectly to arts which further strove to challenge the status quo. This is one tragedy of World War II which is too frequently overlooked: that by stabilizing Germany, the great buffoon-tyrant whose name I needn’t even mention did more irreparable damage to the mass German psyche and zeitgeist than any other single individual in history. The flicker of hope offered by the interbellum art movements was snuffed out as soon as it had came into being through the forces of reaction.
When a people become too happy, when they become too rigid and too set in their ways, it is impossible for them to create in a fashion which challenges their own ideology. A society which has reached the pinnacle of its existence must inevitably start to decline, for there is no conceivable way for it to grow any further. This is as true in the arena of politics as in the world of art, and just as true in a personal sense. As soon as one has mastered himself and his abilities, he finds them slipping away from him. For this reason an artist should not only enjoy suffering as the element which is sublimated through his art, he should actively seek it out. Suffering is the one thing we have in this life which does not flee from us when everything else does.
It is, of course, understandable that this has gone unrecognized for so long in modern America. Americans are utterly incapable of suffering, at least, of the sublime suffering which spurs men on to create something higher than themselves. Men suffered because of the Other, and so created God. Men suffered because of God, and thus invented art. Americans suffer from nothing, and so create nothing at all - there are no “starry nights†for them.
Art and history are inexorably linked; the two are as one. The attentive observer will be capable of measuring the psychological perspective of a given culture through their art and religion - for those are one, as well.