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Noted Reflections on Art

• The modern artist does not represent nature or god,  but presents himself as fiction divorced from "reality", presents himself as alienated or homeless.
• Naturalism is a technical illusion. Nature is re-presented.
• The "reality" of modern art is in expressiveness. Its forms are connotative - no natural or supernatural object is denoted. Alas that forms are necessary for expression.
• The division between natural and supernatural is specious. Man is the god of modern art. Man-god formally juxtaposes himself to nature. He proclaims god's death yet his godly quest is nevertheless spiritual.
• The cleft between natural and supernatural arises from the individualization of man, from atomization, the breakdown of tradition. Thus each man ex-ists (stands apart) in virtual anarchy.
• Whereas Roman and Christian artists merely followed the model given, Greek artists used it to excel.
• Religious art may be an affirmation of faith or merely the telling of a tale.
• Art is an escape, an effort to virtually control destiny, to create meaning in the face of cosmic indifference, to be one's own power, to be god.
• Religious art expresses "transcendent" values because it affirms "god" as the supreme authority transcending all conventional authority. It affirms god as a real object standing alone or behind nature's screen. The passive expression corresponds to the personal statement, "I transcend nature. I am god the subject, and this world is my object."  The holy aesthetic spirit or "will" relates subject and object in trinity.. Realizing the personal statement underlying art, an iconoclastic religion, which is ultimately atheistic since its "god" does not exist by definition,  works to subjugate "pride"and "vanity" by prohibiting graven images. What iconoclasm resents is personal identity, and would smash expressions of same until all persons are levelled and united in equality under the jealous "loving" eye of the supreme censor. Thus the iconoclastic religion would civilize man the creative artist by means of self-hate under the guise of the love of god.
• When the artist loses sight of his end, the art object, and works for glory and money, his work becomes second-rate.
• The museum sets the world aside in brackets, taking art out of is various contexts and placing it in the humanist context of man as rebel, man as creator, man as god.
• We can represent a permanent thing or express a moving emotion. Modern art has its metaphysic in the expression of eternal recurrence, in the process of creation - all its forms are merely relative.
• Values are expressed and are stylistic. Things are represented and are material (subject matter).
• Simone de Beauvoir: "The creator leans upon anterior creations in order to create the posssiblity of new creations. His present project embraces the past and places confidence in the freedom to come, a confidence which is never disappointed." Of course the universal Creator is absolutely free, hence necessary, an uncaused Cause depending or leaning on no anterior creations or causes, is self-created and self-moved, and is entirely incomprehensible.
• For Albert Camus, who had good cause to reflect on revolution, the only true revolt is the creative revolt of art realized in the work of art. Political revolutions are a musical chair's game betraying the total human revolt against the absurdity of the universe - Camus was an atheist. The revolt against the Absurd obtains social Solidarity in mutual recognition of the Absurd. Solidarity is unmotivated and spontaneous; it is not a "freedom" obtained by organized violence.