Let us take a look at Art……
take the Mona Lisa… probably the most famous painting in the world…
I saw it when I was in Paris a couple of years ago… It is a small painting…
that surprised me…Many millions of words have been used to describe
the Mona Lisa…… Many theories have been put forward about it…
I can see it in my mind’s eye… quite clearly as you most likely can see
it in your mind’s eye…
The Mona Lisa cannot be understood scientifically or mathematically
or philosophically… it cannot be weighed or measured or understood
by any known scientific or philosophic method…….
It is…… simple as that… and as we cannot purchase it, it cannot be used
to buy or sell, so in essence, from a modern standpoint, the Mona Lisa is
worthless…… it has no value in our modern society because it cannot
be understood scientifically or philosophically or be sold…so how else
would one begin to understand the Mona Lisa?
As a work of art, but what does that mean? I would even question the notion
that the Mona Lisa is a “beautiful” painting… so what is the “value” of the
Mona Lisa?
One might answer, we moderns don’t bother with such primitive ideas like
art and what art means………… It is beneath us…so why the fascination
with such artwork like the Mona Lisa?
Art is all around us… we hear music all the time, in fact I am listening to
Mozart right now… and we hear music all the time, on the radio and on TV
and in movies and yet do we consider that music that we hear all the time,
to be Art?
We see plays and TV shows and movies all the time and they are ART,
plays and TV shows and movies… one might even consider ads as
just another aspect of Art…Let us take a popular TV show, one I
have never seen, NCIS… very popular and has been on TV for what seems
like forever… and yet, it by its very definition is ART…….NCIS is ART…
And what does that mean? It is Art just the same way we consider the
plays of Sophocles to be Art… and if not, what exactly is the difference
between NCIS and the play of Sophocles? We know that a problem,
perhaps the greatest problem of modernity is the fragmentation of
man and we still feel those effects to this very day… so what does our
understanding of art mean to the greatest problem of our modern times?
the fragmentation of human beings…….and how can art become the possible
solution to that fragmentation? We are broken… mentally, physically, emotionally…
and we are also fragmented in body and soul…… how do we repair the damage
to our bodies and our souls? We can use ART to begin, to begin the unification
of body and mind. We can use Art to reunite and fix our broken bodies, broken
souls and our broken emotional states.
How? How can ART begin to heal our bodies, our soul, our emotions?
How does one begin to solve any problem? First by knowing thyself…
an understanding of who we are… then second, by overcoming…
then third, by becoming who we are…………Art is the means by which
we can begin to understand who we are… it can create the means by which
we begin to see who we really are… then and only then can we begin to
long process of overcoming and then we can become who we are…….
For me personally, I am terrible at Art… even my mother says I was born
without a gene for Art… and yet, I create, I create every single day
when I sit down at the kitchen table and open up my computer and I begin
to type……. My name is Kropotkin… and I am creating…
and by this process of speaking my voice, I am creating and I am healing my soul
at the same time… Recall the process of psychoanalysis whereby
we heal ourselves by confessing our sins… philosophy is nothing more then
confessing ones sins………and Art too is the act of confessing ones sins,
among the other functions of ART………and the Mona Lisa? what is
Da Vinci confessing there? Art as with any aspect of human existence,
is partly mystery… and what mystery does ART present us with?
and mystery itself cannot be weighed or measure or understood
scientifically or philosophically…… so we might be able to
classify Art and mystery as being the same thing?
So does Art answer the question or, or is ART the question/mystery?
So how does art answer the eternal questions of human existence?
The Kantian/Kropotkin questions of life… what can we know?
what can I hope for? What should we do? What values should we hold?
what can we affirm, not negate? And that is the point of Art…
It affirms… it is not nihilistic like our modern world…Art
doens’t negate human beings and their values… Art affirms
human beings and their values…And that is why we attempt
to minimize ART… because it flys in the face of our modern age
which is to negate… to be nihilistic whereas ART affirms and
that is the answer to the question… how are we to escape our
nihilistic age? By ART…
Kropotkin