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The Theory Of Arts And Aesthetics, A Reality To Contemporary Society: Katian Approach
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 5]
Page 2 of 5
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In numerous respects, development shows up as withdrawal. The depths of
the in earlier times inconceivable, on which around 1910 revolutionary
art movements set out, did not bestow the promised happiness of
adventure. As an alternative, the process that was unchecked consumed
the categories in the name of that for which it were undertaken. More
was relentlessly hauled into the maelstrom of the newly taboo;
everywhere artists rejoiced less over the newly won realm of freedom
than that they immediately sought once again after ostensible yet
scarcely adequate order.
For unconditional freedom in art, constantly
limited to a particular, comes into illogicality with the perennial
unfree-dom of the whole. Alternatively art became uncertain and
therefore the independence it achieved after having freed itself from
cultic function and its images was nourished by the idea of humanity.
Thus, as society became ever less a human one, this autonomy was
shattered. Therefore as drawn from the ideal of humanity, art’s
constituent elements withered by art’s own law of movement, yet art’s
independence remains irrevocable and all efforts to restore art by
giving it a social function of which art is itself uncertain and by
which it expresses its own uncertainty are doomed.
Actually, art’s
independence shows signs of blindness. Blindness was ever an aspect of
art; in the age of art’s emancipation; however, this blindness has begun
to pre-dominate in spite of, if not because of, art’s lost
ingenuousness, which, as Hegel already perceived, art cannot undo. This
binds art to a naiveté of a second order: the ambiguity over what
purpose it serves.
On the turn over page, it is uncertain whether art
is still possible; whether, with its complete emancipation, it did not
sever its own preconditions. This question is kindled by art’s own past.
However, artworks detach themselves from the empirical world and bring
forth another world, one opposed to the empirical world as if this other
world too were an autonomous entity. Therefore, though tragic they
appear, artworks tend a priori toward affirmation.
Theoretically, the
concept of art is situated in a historically changing group of
elements; it refuses definition. Its essence cannot be deduced from its
origin as if the first work were a foundation on which everything that
followed were constructed and would collapse if shaken. The belief that
the first artworks are the highest and purest is warmed-over
romanticism; with no less justification it could be claimed that the
earliest artistic works are dull and impure in that they are not yet
separated from magic, historical documentation, and such pragmatic aims
as communicating over great distances by means of calls or horn sounds;
the classical conception of art gladly made use of such arguments. In
bluntly historical terms, the facts blur.2
Therefore the effort to
incorporate the historical genesis of art ontologically under an
ultimate motif would necessarily flounder in such disparate material
that the theory would emerge empty-handed except for the obviously
relevant insight that the arts will not fit into any gapless concept of
art.
Moreover in those studies dedicated to the aesthetic,
positivistic sampling of material and such speculation as is other-wise
disdained by the sciences flourish wildly alongside each other; Bachofen
is the best example of this. If, all the same, one wanted in the usual
philosophical fashion categorically to distinguish the so-called
question of origin as that of art’s essence from the question of art’s
historical origin, that would amount only to turning the concept of
origin arbitrarily against the usual sense of the word. The order, and
therefore it is not substantial in art either. That explains the
inconsistency of aesthetic construction. Construction is equally able to
codify the resignation of the weakened subject and to make absolute
alienation the sole concern of art which once wanted the opposite as it
is able to anticipate a reconciled condition that would itself be
situated beyond static and dynamic.
Furthermore, the numerous
interrelations with technocracy give reason to suspect that the
principle of construction remains aesthetically obedient to the
administered world; but it may terminate in a yet un-known aesthetic
form, whose rational organization might point to the abolition of all
categories of administration along with their reflexes in art.
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 5]
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