Taking Flights Of Logical Fancy

Sometimes I feel like lifting off, taking flight, beating weary wings toward some distant, anonymous, perhaps even forsaken place. Recently I felt this acute rush of longing while standing before several pieces of art displayed at a New Hampshire gallery. I felt like fleeing not because of the art per se, which was patently awful. I felt like fleeing because of pretensions at intellectual grandeur, particularly the pretensions of philosophical grandeur printed in one featured artist's statement elegantly displayed near his work (which was also dreadful).

I have long speculated on why it is that the art world tends to be filled with liberals, Democrats, socialists, even progressive nihilists. Is it because art is all about "pushing the envelope" and "breaking with convention" and "inventing new rules that are also made to be broken"? Is it about "shattering presuppositions" in search of the "numinous" or the "meaningful"? Or is it that artists as a class need government subsidies, are even dependent on them; and not mere handouts of cash, but subsidies of equality, where grants and honors and exhibitions are awarded solely to acknowledge the equal effort inherent in every artist's work? You know, in an "all-artists-are-trying" sort of way? After all, was this not the very point behind another recent exhibit I attended, "Art as Process", wherein was displayed the "rough drafts" of several artists' work? Surely the subtitle to that exhibit could have easily been, "Artists: Look How They Try."

But perhaps the reason art and liberalism go hand and hand is about philosophy. I've often thought that conservative thinkers were often chided or disregarded because of their dependence on logic, evidence, you know, the components of reason. Conservatives are often berated for lacking compassion, and I believe they are berated thus solely because reason seems so absolute and confining, so limiting in its expectations and demands. Liberals, on the other hand, have always struck me as being more about passion than cogitation; more affective or emotional than hard-headed logicians. Of course, there are exceptions, but by-and-large I believe this to be so. How else to explain a revolutionary's zeal than to appeal to Jean Jacques Rousseau's "passion trumps reason" (what is felt is more important than what is known or thought); or to understand why George W. Bush campaigned as a "compassionate conservative"? Conservatives tend to think toward an answer to a problem, and this, at times, looks like an uncaring luxury in the slow, calculated manner problem-solving demands. In contrast, liberals tend to feel through a problem; they are compelled to act immediately to solve an alleged injustice: Feeling, fervor, motive, intent – these are the benchmarks of liberal activism. These are the signs over their exhibit: We Are Trying. We Mean Well. We Get Things Done. We Are Urgent.

AN ARTIST'S STATEMENT

I stood in silent disbelief as I read the young artist's statement describing his vision and his muse. It did me no good that I was standing, a glass of cabernet sauvignon in hand, in the midst of a whirling, blustering audience so enamored of the whole, well, "process." And it did me no good to see that several pieces, some fetching fairly good sums for a first showing, had already been purchased, red stickers indicating that pieces had quickly found a home.

Here's what the statement said, which began with a quote by "process theologian" Alfred North Whitehead culled from Marshall McLuhan's "The Medium is the Massage."[sic] The quote first:

"In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions."

I beg your pardon for being so academic here. But this is not about being didactic. It is about laughing one's head off, right off one's shoulders. For the quote above is a genuine howler. Don't you see why? It's simple, really. Mr. Whitehead has insisted on using "hard-headed clarity" to show the futility of "hard-headed clarity." Thus, by his own clear argument against clarity, it must be concluded that his observation "issues from sentimental feeling." He himself must be superstitious. And thus, he wallows in a contradiction.

But Whitehead's argument couches something more important, and it is subtle. What Whitehead has done is to give permission to thinkers everywhere to embrace a sort of anti-rationalism, a sort of "reading between the lines" of logic, reason, and argument. In short, he's given them permission to blow off the hard work which the pursuit of logically viable truth and clarity demands.

Now, I know that Whitehead is in part responding to the logical positivists in his milieu, but most readers do not know that, nor is it relevant here. What is relevant is how our young artist understood Whitehead. See if you can make sense of it all:

"I use unrefined materials in imagemaking to depict images and themes in life that range from the common and local to complicated and global. In this manner, I am attempting to metaphorically bridge an unspannable gap between what exists on human scale and that which is distinctly not human, i.e. things which necessarily exist within a global context. A gap in which, as suggested by the quote above from A.N. Whitehead, chance, instinct, intuition and creativity are far more responsive than 'hard-headed clarity' to the 'perplexities of fact' – a commodity too often misinterpreted, misused and corrupted. The interest here is to open up and complicate meaning in a way that does not compromise integrity and does not shy away from presumptions of authority."

Besides it being hard to understand how there is a bridge over an "unspannable gap" between humanity and that which is not humanity, "i.e. things which necessarily exist within a global context" (Lord knows humans don't exist within a global context – Yikes!); one wonders how this statement helps us understand anything other than the artist's flight from reason. To this artist, intuition and feeling and chance are the real forces of creativity. Reason constrains, limits; it is for the hardheaded, and not the softhearted.

This, to me, is a perfect example of the difference between myself, a conservative, and my liberal peers. No doubt my liberal chums would press me to be less intensely logical in reading the artist's statement; that I should see that he is "trying", that his "heart is in the right place", and that he "means well." No doubt they'd also tell me that what was important was not what he wrote, but what he meant, what he intended between the lines.

But there is also this statement by the artist adjacent to the one quoted above:

"My art is a venue [Yikes! again] for a realm of discussion that does not easily find a place in our everyday lives. As people, I think that we need a certain amount of..."

I am sorry, did you say, "As people"? Could we be anything else? Oh, yes, of course. We are that indefinable other thing that lives outside "a global context". Oiks! Help! (This latter artist's piece entitled "Two Birds Talking" sold for $700. It was a pen and ink cartoonish piece, wherein a bird, gripping a branch, speaks to a juvenile bird [apparently]. There are dialogue bubbles. In the final bubble, the senior bird says, and I quote: "You might think we are lying and we may not wholy believe that we are not." Now, for $700, don't you think you might want to have "wholly" spelled correctly? Talk about a venue for discussions! Who needs clarity anyway?!)

WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT?

This whole exercise for me is about the difference between philosophies of feeling and those of thinking. For me, the quotes above, and the work associated with them, smack not of creativity, but of laziness and even self-centeredness. The laziness part is revealed in the flight from reason, for reason is hard to master. To the lazy philosopher/artist, impulse, intuition, chance, randomness–these are what constitute creativity. Not planning, not practicing certain skills repeatedly. No, just the easy, hasty and quick burst of creative passion: This is art! This merits appraisal and approval! This trumps using one's head: The use of the Heart!

And it is self-centeredness because it seeks approval for being outside, unique, even insouciant. Instead of the tedium of logical constructions, which are all rules and traditions and practices, artists too often flaunt their improvisational skills without once proving they can do the rather rote skills possessed by the masters. Imagine if Michelangelo's David or the Sistine Chapel were mere whims of intuition! mere impulse! mere improv!

How, then does all this play out politically? Perhaps a quote from Socrates as found in Plato's Apology will suffice. Socrates, you might recall, was on trial for corrupting Athenian youth and allegedly denouncing the gods of the state. In his defense, or apology, Socrates described how he had begun his pursuit of wisdom as a result of divine inspiration: an oracle had spoken to him. And in his pursuit of wisdom, he inquired of wise men – politicians and poets and artisans – in an effort to discern what is real wisdom:

"I went to the poets ... I am ashamed to confess that there is not a person ... who would not have talked better about their poetry than the poets did themselves. So I learnt that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of ... inspiration. ... At last I went to the artisans ... I was sure that they knew many fine things; and I was not mistaken, ... But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; – because they were good workmen, they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom." [emphasis added]

The political implications of Socrates' statements are important.

No wonder he was executed.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes

PS. For you photo enthusiasts out there: the picture of the Blue Heron (above) was taken with a Canon F1, 80-200/2.8 lens (focal length 200mm). Settings were 1/1000th at f8 on Ilford HP5 Plus film. Click on it for a larger view.