Art, Mirrors and the Divine
Оригинал первой публикации эссе Art, Mirrors and the Divine можно найти на сайте литературного онлайн издания Maple Tree Literary Supplement. Если возникнет желание официально сослаться на источник, ссылка может выглядеть так:
Isagulov, Mykyta Art, Mirrors and the Divine/ Maple Tree Literary Supplement, Issue 19 (May-August 2015) ISSN 1916-341X - http://www.mtls.ca/issue19/writings/essay/mykyta-isagulov/
Ниже привожу текст самого эссе.
Art, Mirrors and the Divine
The prominent writer, teacher and religion philosopher
Neville Goddard (1905-72) started his 1969 essay, “The Artist is God” with the
following phrase: “God is the great artist, and there is no artistry so lovely
as that which perfects itself in the making of its image.” The postmodernism of
the twenty-first century champions that idea extensively - every artist is a
bit of a god. This sentiment is promoted amongst artists, while every art
connoisseur seem to think the same. Who else but a god's messenger can bring
into our world so many works of art, simple and complex at the same time,
intriguing, provocative and fascinating, terrible and terrific. Artists depict
whatever they wish - good or bad, evil or kind - and in the limitless variety
of the possible topics to choose from, they become true gods and druids of the divine
in art.
Generally conceived, the world of the arts is far more
complex than we imagine. This is because the aesthetic permeates the most or,
seemingly, least artistic of our daily activities and is an inseparable part of
the human experience. This is what motivates as apparently disparate as a
million dollar masterpiece purchase or everyday events like cooking,
socialising, loving, living. Moreover, art
is a mirror that reflects our world and in which our word is reflected. That
mirror has various forms or shapes - musical sounds, paints, words, dance
movements, and so on.
Following the words of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) that “it's
the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors,” one may conclude that
life or lived experience is given its quality by the kinds of people -
spectators – in the world. It also means that an artist who creates artworks
– music, painting or a novel – that is
attuned to the inner worlds of the spectator, becomes a true god. Every brush
stroke, every sentence, every sound enabling people to think, feel, analyse and
reflect through the whole work of a given artist equals the human essence which
shapes consciousness and, our world. Consequently, the artist becomes a mirror,
in which everyone finds their own interpretation and reflexion of the universe as
re-presented through the subjective prism of the artist's self-reflexion. The
outcome is that every art spectator’s thought and perception is refined twice
and is born two times – through the work of the artist-creator and through the spectator's own subjective and
artistic reflective prism as shaped by their worldviews, educational
background, or personal philosophy.
Based on the spectator’s twice-mediated reflections they
might be able to re-create their own divine story of da Vinci's Mona Lisa (1503-17) or invent personal artistic
technique. Other spectators might not be
moved to create or innovate. For this set of people that painting might simply
remain a masterpiece of the Renaissance just because other people believe it to
be so. While the divine quality of art seems to be very personal and linked to
the genius of the individual artists, it still directly depends on the
spectator. Due to that fact almost all successful artists ironically devote greater attention to the aesthetic
expectations of potential spectators than to the works they create. Convincing
one crowd means convincing everyone. True gods need fertile ground for their
artistic seeds; and it is the art world,
which gives value to any kind of art. Not so many will dare to contradict the
official viewpoints of the art world. And this is why Michelangelo's David (1501-4) is the greatest statue
ever and da Vinci's Mona Lisa is the
most mysterious painting ever, even if some might be extremely fond of Antonio
Canova or Bertel Thorvaldsen's sculptural compositions and William-Adolphe
Bouguereau's realistic depictions.
In his 1889 essay, “The Decay of Lying,” Oscar
Wilde proposes the idea of anti-mimesis. By that he means that, what we observe
in the objective world or in the beauty of nature, is not real. Rather the objective
world is made of all the things that musicians, writers, poets and painters
taught us to see and, it goes without saying, to admire. Divine art provides
spectators with important interpretations of the world and life instructions,
which they follow. Angels are believed to be plump little kids with white wings;
storms and the shipwreck should arouse greater emotions than the ordinary
sunset on the beach. “Life imitates Art far more, than Art imitates Life,” says
Wilde in the essay and he is right. Artists have the divine power to unveil the
things no one else would ever conceive or see in a different way. An example is
Charles Baudelaire's poem dedicated to a dead animal “Une Charogne” – “The Carcase" (1857). That work is
not an imitation of life but the vision of a poet, who explores new ideas and
creates new poetic worlds. Since the new world is presented to the spectator or
reader, the vision is likely to be changed to some extent, modified by the
spectator’s subjectivity. Some will develop admiration for dead animals, while others
will never see the horse's dead body in the same way they did before. Thus,
ordinary life undergoes artistic influence and starts imitating the author's
message or vision and serves as an artistic mirror.