Out of the Shadow of God
by David Hamilton (January 2012)
These works are produced in the shadow of god. That is to say, with the eclipse of the sacred we are left with negativity, nihilism and the destruction of things of value by contemporary artistic production.
The artistic elites no longer seem to know what art is and so there is a need for distinctions and classifications to bring some order out of the chaos. First, the qualities that make something art are intrinsic, not external. It is in the artifice, the organising of elements, perspective, choice of colour and so on that makes it art because the result is obtained by transforming reality and thus nature, through human imagination and is realised by skill and technique.
An example of the difference between nature and art is when I point my camera and record natural phenomena. If I take a sunset, for example, I am recording a natural scene which is not art but nature. But if I then use the zoom function, it has the effect of condensing the distance and thereby magnifying the gold or red which is moving from nature to art by introducing technique.
Again, by looking at beautiful natural phenomena like flowers, waterfalls, forests, mountains, landscapes and some city skylines with the naked eye, we can automatically appreciate their beauty. These belong to the numinous aspect of life which ranges from a mystic experiencing God to one enjoying the view or a fine building. Aesthetic experience is a species of that. It is what Freya Stark in Perseus in the wind, when looking at the night sky, described it as a glimpse of God.
What brought us to this pass?
Rationalism
Picasso was a natural genius whose outstanding early achievements degenerated into self indulgent experiments. From painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and an immense fortune. He is regarded along with Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp as one of the three artists who defined the revolutionary developments in the arts in the early 20th century. They brought about significant changes in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.
The problem of Abstraction
Early intimations of a new art were in James McNeill Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold: The falling rocket (1872). It also began the blurring of divisions as nocturne, which is from the French and means nocturnal from Latin nocturnus, was a musical composition inspired by, or evocative of, the night. Nocturne is an old term given a new meaning and applied to night Offices and, since the Middle Ages, to divisions in the canonical hour of Matins.
This changed the emphasis from the depiction of objects to visual sensation, in contrast to, for example, John Constable. The slow disappearance of the subject in painting can be traced to J.W. Turner and from thus to the Impressionists who continued the en plein air (the open air) painting of the Barbizon school. Cezanne began as an Impressionist and his aim was to make a logical construction of reality based on a view from a single point with modulated colour in flat areas. This became the basis of a new visual art. This was later developed into Cubism by George Braque and Picasso.
Expressionist painters developed a striking use of paint surface, drawing distortions and exaggerations, and intense colour. They produced emotional paintings that both reacted to, and were perceptions of, experience. They were also reactions to Impressionism and more conservative works of late 19th century painting. The Expressionists changed subject matter to portraying psychological states. Artists like Edvard Munch and James Ensor were influenced by the Post-Impressionists and led to abstraction in the 20th century.
A comparison of two of London's principle galleries tells the story. A walk around the National Gallery in London amongst the figurative and representational art of our traditions gives feelings of warmth, awe and humility; the Saatchi Gallery in Kensington creates negative feelings from irritation to disgust. On my last visit I remarked to the lady showing me around the works that the only artistic thing was the window that opens on to the beautiful Cheltenham Crescent. She replied that many visitors had made similar comments. This was an admission that few people like contemporary art.
The origin of this self-aggrandisement of people with little talent and no genius was Duchamps Fountain, a urinal which he signed R. Mutt. We are bound to like individual works or favour certain artists but the movement as a whole was negative.
Contemporary artists can only make an impression is by provoking negative emotions like disgust, shock or just contempt for the corrupt establishment that finances such un-artistic works.
There was Equivalent VIII, a stack of firebricks. These comparatively inoffensive installations give an insight into the dearth of contemporary artistic talent. Another production of the time was a submarine shape made from thousands of used tyres. Called Polaris it was by David Mach and burnt down when installed outside the Hayward Gallery, London, during the exhibition British Sculpture 83. He is a member of The Royal Academy.
The use of paedophilia as art.
Grayson Perry produces Grecian vases but not to delight as in the deep, poetic insights expressed by Keats but to harm others by promoting the abuse of children.
Perry’s “Golden Ghosts” were described by the Satchi Gallery:” Unhappy expressions on the little girls’ faces in Golden Ghosts contrast sharply with the idyllic country cottages stencilled in the background.
To Keats:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal – yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
To Perry, it is implicit scenes of child abuse and misery which is spreading evil rather than nobly keeping his problems to himself. He is thoroughly New Establishment and was an arts correspondent for The Times. In 2011 he was curator of the Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman at The British Museum and is often on The BBC, in Question Time, Hard Talk, Desert Island Discs and Have I Got News for You. He has been the subject of a South Bank Show in 2006 and was the subject of an Imagine documentary broadcast on 1 November 2011.
Individuals and organisations can apply to the Arts Council for funding from its own budget or from the Lottery. Arts Council England is the national development agency for encouraging this attack on our civilisation. The selection of those awarded grants is based on prejudice against our traditional standards and values. Public money from the Government and the National Lottery is given to the arts organisations who share their ideology. It is institutionally approved, state art which is meant to destroy not build up. We have had 50 years of this.
There is something disturbed, evil, about the modern artistic imagination which is not formed by higher, spiritual sources.
Some like critic John Berger used to argue that Art had been corrupted by capitalism but even in great periods of art like 16th century Venice or 17th century Holland, a form of capitalism existed.
They have no aesthetic qualities nor do they provoke an aesthetic experience but aim to call forth negative emotions. They are mass-produced students from art colleges. The conformity to the taught orthodoxy is evident in conversation with young art students. They all like mainly what they have been taught to like. There is a depressing lack of individual vision.
Traditional art develops within traditional forms and also develops the forms. Real Art grows out of tradition and provides sustenance, spiritual or worldly, for people rather than negative emotions like shock or offence.
Neither context nor a list of reasons make a work art. Art is defined by its intrinsic qualities and the artifice used. That last is: development from nature through human imagination and technical ability. The technical ability must be with the imagination or it is only skill.
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I walked round the famous home of this street art movement in Stokes Croft. It is certainly exciting and creates a sense of a culture of resistance to outside interference. The area gained international fame in 2011 when mass protests or riots greeted the opening of yet another Tesco Express. The argument is that local people want local shops and local produce.
What I would suggest is that the street art is derivative of the legendary cartoonist of hippy and spaced-out characters, Robert Crum. It seems that they have the task of finding a style and content appropriate for our time.
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Nelson Street in Bristol has been brightened up by street art.
Out of the Shadow of God Back into the Light
What then can we do?
We are dominated by ideological thinking which grows from rationalism and everything is tested against theory. However, an art for our time must be developed through practice within a tradition. If the traditions have been destroyed then re-link to the appropriate ones. There must be no more conformity to the specialist the ethos created by journalists and art school tutors but take an independent not to say rebellious approach and eschew the anti-art movement for renewing our deeper artistic traditions.
The idea is to renew or re-link to the important traditions. This is not setting down ineluctable principles to obey but making helpful suggestions.
We can look at the Western course of art as an arc that has decayed into ruinous negativity. That suggests a new starting point, a return to holy and sacred productions. For those who think our civilisation is nearly spent I suggest looking back at the art of its beginnings in the middle-ages. We need to recapture those early feelings of awe in the face of God and life but frame them in a different form for a new age. What the poet Wordsworth described as looking at things with the wonder of a child.
Study of our artistic origins in the middle-ages, not to borrow forms, but to cast those early feelings of religious awe and sense of growth into forms appropriate to a new era. Art must allude to a higher reality.
The evil of pornography as art is that it breaks down the barriers to child abuse and that it drives out positive aspects of our lives like the sacred and awe-inspiring.
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(1) http://arts.guardian.co.uk/pictures/image/0,8543,-11604774275,00.html
(2) http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/grayson_perry.htm
(3) http://www.jakeanddinoschapman.com/
(4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/pictures/image/0,8543,-10505256016,00.html
Of interest:
Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky
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