Art in real life

What we experience is but

a shadow of the Forms,

always lacking, always inferior

I felt privileged to have been able to attend a rather intellectually simulating seminar on Nude Art. Spearheading the seminar professor Eli Barta, PHD in Philosophy and a pair of collective art practitioners. Interestingly, my main personal takeaway from this seminar had nothing to do with nudes or with sex. It had got to do with universal values.

The professor radically disagreed with Vertical Submarine (the pair of artists) regarding their stance in doing art collectively. Vertical Submarine argues that by doing art collectively, anonymously, they can transcend concepts like gender, class, sexuality, etc,etc, to focus on higher, universal qualities like equality, truth, freedom, love (in all its forms). But Barta challenged them arguing that they are not transcending but hiding or sweeping under these categories. She argued beautifully saying that there are no “human beings” walking the streets, there are men, women, students, workers, but no human beings. The idea of human being is rather useless to us due to an absence of other intelligent life. We merely adopt an identity out of our repertoire according to our social setting; only one identity is germane at any one time. If you are single on Valentine’s Day, that’s your identity for that day. Universal ideas per se are also not useful as they are by and large out of reach of mankind. An ideal to strive for, but essentially does not exist on earth.

I am not so naïve as to believe that we can sustain perfect ideals on earth. But, does it mean that we should all give up and lie, cheat and steal? Is altruism madness? Is compassion for non-kin silly? I disagree.

We can never attain and sustain the perfect form as Plato puts it, we live in a world that it merely a reflection of the Forms. But when we try and strive towards it, we sometimes catch a glimpse of it. I argue that when it comes to “universal qualities”, the focus or the loci should be on the process, the experience and triumphs. Be reminded that the ideal, the concept per se is but an ideological construct, its one thing to be called generous but another thing to skip a meal and donate that amount to charity.

Courage is a good example. Courage is born of fear. Courage is not the absence of fear. The absence of fear is fearlessness, or stupidity, depending on the outcome of the conflict. You are courageous only if you find the strength within to overcome some fear, the process of overcoming. The same can be said for love, hope, compassion, etc. These higher ideas in my opinion are what make us human. As physical beings we are tabula rasa, blank slates, blank canvas. These proximate ideas are the paint, the moments are the brush strokes, the wider the spectrum of colors, the greater number of brush strokes makes for a deeper and richer painting, a closer to perfect person. It is true that there are no perfect people, just like there are no perfect paintings, but we can improve and how we improve is by striving towards these impossible ideals. Do we want to die a blank canvas?

Every time I am lucky enough to catch a passing shadow of some higher quality, it excites and encourages me. Reminds me that there are things worth fighting for, and sometimes worth dying for.