Kitsch deprives feeling of its cost, and therefore of its reality; desecration augments the cost of feeling, and so frightens us away from it. The remedy for both states of mind is suggested by the thing that they each deny, which is sacrifice. .... Sacrifice is the core of virtue, the origin of meaning and the true theme of high art.
Sacrifice can be avoided, and kitsch is the great lie that we can both avoid it and retain its comforts. Sacrifice can also be made meaningless by desecration. But, when sacrifice is present and respected, life redeems itself; it becomes an object of contemplation, something that "bears looking at", and which attracts our admiration and our love.
Sacrifice can be avoided, and kitsch is the great lie that we can both avoid it and retain its comforts. Sacrifice can also be made meaningless by desecration. But, when sacrifice is present and respected, life redeems itself; it becomes an object of contemplation, something that "bears looking at", and which attracts our admiration and our love. This connection between sacrifice and love is presented in the rituals and stories of religion. It is also the recurring theme of art.
from Beauty and its Corruptions, and another HT to Running River Latin School.
In somewhat the same line, Cavarnos in Fine Arts and Therapy:
"To properly understand Plato's teaching on fine art as a means of therapy one must be aware of one further element in his philosophy: his sharp distinction between true art and pseudo art. True art is governed by the principles of idealism, rationality, simplicity, clarity, organic unit, appropriateness, measure, proportion, harmony, rhythm. It is guided by wisdom, that is, by knowledge of man's true nature and ultimate aim in life, by knowledge of Divine and man's proper relation to it, and by a clear apprehension of the true hierarchy of values that should be the object of man's aspiration. Such art seeks to convey this wisdom....
Pseudo art, on the other hand, is not guided by wisdom, but is directed by personal or public opinion, by conjecture or imagination, and gives expression to wrong forms of character and action. Pseudo art presents what is ugly as though it were beautiful, disease as if it were health, and it praises evil under the guise of good. Thus it has the effect of suggesting, and hence inclining people to do, what is ugly instead of what is beautiful. And it results in their developing various forms of ugliness or disorder of the soul and thereby of the body. Pseudo art addresses itself not to the highest part of the psyche, but to the lower parts. It strengthens these, weakens the intellectual power, and thus leads to the disruption of the hierarchical structure of the psyche.
No comments:
Post a Comment