Eva Trizuljaková - Art as a Metaphysical Activity of Life

“It is their spirit which causes that works of art, becoming a revelation, are more than they are.(-) What in works of art appears, cannot be separated from the revelation, but it is not identical with it either: what is non-actual on their actuality is spirit.(-) Spirit in works exceeds the material side as a sense phenomenon. Spirit of works of art is objective regardless of the philosophy of objective or subjective spirit, it is their own contents and determines them; it is a spirit of the thing itself and expresses itself through revelation.” (T.W. Adormo, Esthetical Theory, 1970)

Art takes part in forming human memory. At the same time it is, too, an urgent issue of the contemporary culture. To the end of the 20th century however the spiritual ideas which until recently have been a credo of many artists’ generations and a vanguard of flowering art, face a hard objections. Representatives of modernism goad a resistance towards the habitual practices and criteria. Every means is used and everything is made that the importance of art disappeared from our world. In this way even the value of a work of art is dishonored. The key and most frequent word of this struggle is non-traditional. Of course the problems are ground off simultaneously in all art branches.

The beginnings of modernism were influenced by rationalism which proclaimed death to spirituality as a program in spite of bearing ideas of humanism on its escutcheon. Its material visions, ideas of wealth joined the varied mixture of ideologies, the logical continuation of which is the present rejecting of all old and results in the negation of God. Postmodernism as the top stage of this evolution lost its living contents (and got into the spheres of speculations). Blasphemy and the profaned Word now prevent man from seeing and from comprehension of what is the purpose of art; what is its function. The loss of criteria, the contradictory expressions of art, the new anti-culture which corresponds to this phenomenon, in fact are the crown of the long process of withdrawing and abandoning spiritual claims.  An art theoretician assesses this process with a certain amount of skepticism: “Only esthetics could determine if and how art will survive after a collapse of metaphysics to which it is obliged for its existence and contents. Metaphysics of art has become an instance of its continuation. – And the other way round: Absence of a theologian sense, be it modified in any way, has become acute in art as a crisis of its own justification.” (T.W. Adorno, Esthetical Theory)

The gift of art is associated with a human being ability not only to get through thinking over the one-sidedness of a purely pragmatic view, but to arch over the limits of the visible world as well. Art provides space for spiritual orientation: for human thought and the expression of his self, his desires and ideals. The philosopher Nietzsche affirms that art is the highest task and metaphysical activity of life. It at the same time is the confirmation of intellect, creativity, skill and professional efficiency of Homo sapiens sapiens. This creature can even through art convey his thoughts to a wider society and leave them as a document to posterity. Thus culture is created: to the image of God and man.

We got to a deadlock Declarations about brotherly relation of art and philosophy fall flat. Dynamic projects and thought paradigms which try to influence creative act, moved into the vocabulary of professional thinkers. The answers and the ways to atonement seem to be far away. Thanks to the cultural inertia it is still called for better communication, in practice however every normal human voice is drowned by medial monster-shows, laser parades, noise and amplifiers of pop music. This all is referred of by social sections and press service of every cultural scene.

But it seems as if the owners of new verities do not understand the authentic, visionary mentality of artist and his metaphysical interest. Uncritically they highlight naturist’s primitivism and any impotent reflection. In this atmosphere the philosophers do not even know what to do with the conceptions of inspiration, intuition – but also of mission, testimony, vision or revelation. It is spoken of a culture breakdown, of a spiritual crisis. But there is not willingness to solve the amassed problems. How shall we come to an agreement and about what?

Modern Culture and Homo Religiosus

“For all pre-modern societies’ people sacredness means the same as power and after all as reality par excellence. Sacredness is fed by being. Sacred power at the same time means reality, permanence and activity. The antinomy between sacred – profane often expresses the antinomy between real and unreal or pseudoreal.” (Mircea Eliade, Sacred and Profane)

It is nearly impossible to explain the position of Christian culture and the present situation of art and at the same time to forget secularism (disregard for religious belief) as one of the key causes of the modern spiritual crisis. With secularism is, too, associated the antinomy of sacred and profane. The problem is, that  although it is often spoken and written of the benefit of people due to secularism, nearly never is reflected the deficiency of this process. For in spite of great effort to stage culture – without metaphysics and mysteries – and arrange for an unprejudiced life, homo religiosus, a naturally religiously disposed man has not passed yet and he has equal claims.

Religiousness is deeply rooted in man and makes a basic structure of his consciousness. And even an extinction of individual religions does not mean its end, this only supports the universal variability of human values. Thus the profane is only an altered manifestation of the very constitutional structure of man, which once used to express itself with sacred expressions. In reality the antinomy between sacred and profane is not so dramatic. For men, too, are not crystallized one-sidedly. A profane man is a descendant of a religious man and after all he cannot get rid of his history completely. His existence is pulsating with movement which rises out of the depths of his being. It is a matter of the area which is by the current psychology called the unconscious.

The unconscious, it is true, at present enjoys great honor and still greater publicity. In the profane world it is veiled with kind of aura which has not disappeared even from modernism. Postmodernism likes to borrow it as a decoration. Just so, as a show. It burlesques, paraphrases, copies everything possible. It acts with a minimal investment of spirit only to get rid of pains and inventing. It marks out any  inferior art and through this it gives its performances not only a semblance of spiritual but of a mystery as well.

When subconscious is held as a heritage of countless existential situations, it necessarily bears features of religious presentations of various kinds of provenance. Lately ever more people from the culture area have been trying to find exit from the permanent crisis in quasi-religions solutions. They hope to get rid of chaos and disorder in that way, they lean upon something constant and unchangeable and believe they can discover the key to values which are neither individual nor casual. The hope, that after all man once gets over his personal situation and takes up the way into the world of spirit, is rooted in the depths of human subconscious. According to modern psychology there are rather evident correlation between the contents and structures of human subconscious on the one side and the values of religion on the other side. That is why even secularized culture cannot manage without ceremonies, without invitation of sacral acts. Not very much, but anyway there is a proof that the religion and culture continuity has never been interrupted completely.

Most postmodern unbelievers show off with all kinds of mythology, program atheists indulge in a nonsense ritual and fearlessly appear with terminology and rituals of religious provenance. Private mythologies of the modern man however do not reach ontological level of religion understanding. They are not lived through as a whole. They do not alter the situation of the individual man towards the exemplary situation, they do not join in a unified view of the world and do not form a base for a certain obligatory type of behavior.

So far it appears that the incorrect interpretation of sacredness defilement means impoverishment not only for a religious man, but for social life as well. The radically secularized human existence without God probably cannot become a starting point for some rational or any other form of a social system. The problem is with establishing a rule which would bear a generally moral binding nature, a sufficiently great authority and consensual contents – something which could regulate, inspire people; it would put them together and stimulate them to a right, unselfish, altruistic activeness.

The Hour of Clairvoyance

In certain moments every one of us can be seized by a feeling that the world is established in a way which may raise feelings of despair.(-) It is not necessary however to answer that these are only moments of dejection and disgust; they often appear as an hour of inexorable Clairvoyance. It seems to me in the mentioned moments that we suddenly broke the veil of encouraging illusions through.(-) it is an hour of tragic pessimism. It may result in philosophy of heroism; it may however lead to suicide or abdication of the creature which declines facing the disgraceful world.(-) It is important to precise what the authentic form of despair is and put the question what it is in the world that leads to despair.(-) If there is any unshakable certainty in me, then it is , that only the world left by love may be subjected to death, but also that where love lasts, where it triumphs over all which tends to degrade it, even there death cannot be defeated definitely.(-) This hope implies a prophesy certainty which makes a real inner reinforcement and which prevents the creature from breaking up, above all he should not to inwardly decompose, but he is not to give up as well. Would not be possible to say that although a believer has got further on the way towards understanding and love than an unbeliever, the latter can have the advantage in the order of pure will and the courage to risk? (P. Bendlová, Gabriel Marcel).

In fact the problem consists in Christian hope, in exposing courage and in personal bravery. In spite of a general culture skepticism and a difficult situation in every way we must believe, that the Christians always have had and always will have good examples for life at their disposal. Christendom brings a hope for reconciliation, for restoration of the lost balance. It shows the ways to understanding, indicates the way how to struggle against the postmodern chaos, how to withstand destructive tendencies, the confusing disjoining, how to fill spiritual vacuum. I am sure that it is the very culture which gives chance for a creative consensus.

A Christian simply cannot expect passively what the others will do. It is God who does side with us. Activity is the basic manifestation, sign of the existence of Spirit. In this unification nobody is alone and hope is always present. The Spirit as an all embracing love permanently watches and does not stop, extends and towers, but also struggles and wins over every human being and over a rightful anger and the world’s hatred.

The Vatican congregation prefect for belief purity understands it in the following way: “Who cannot see that the Creator shines in the evil world, too, that one in fact cannot exist, he becomes cynical, or must part with life at all. Both is linked together: unswerving before history abyss and human existence and also the view which is given by faith to us, that the good is present even if we are not always able to link both. Indeed, if we want to oppose the evil, it is important not to be subject to saturnine morale which enjoys nothing any more, but to see the beauty all around!” (Joseph cardinal Ratzinger in the book by P. Seewald, “Christianity at the Turn of the Centuries”). It is the matter of theology of hope which gives us certainty. To serve as a noble receptacle of such a message – in that, too, the secret of artistic mission is concealed.

I hope that human beings – Christians and non-Christians - will stop believing that the problem will be solved by something or someone else: perhaps a trendy show, a banal idea – or maybe a postmodernism by itself. – It is necessary to understand and accept the idea of returning to religious sources of culture and humanity. A hope is among others the historical art model, too, the heritage of great patterns which imply a realistic, realizable culture conception with a clear starting point: Artist can contribute to restoration of world if he testifies in the spirit of gospel, if he brings back a sacredness experience to mankind and with his own creation serves to reintegration of religious consciousness.