The Subversion Of Art

The problem with modern artists is that they have selfish reasons for practice art, they are more interested in showing their ego, instead of portraying something eternal. Without wishing to be too systematic, it can be said that most traditional artists, it is the element “object” that determines the work; with the majority of modern artists on the contrary, it is the element “subject,” in the sense that the moderns – individualistic as they are – intend to “create” the work and in creating it, wish to express their altogether profane little personality; whence ambition and the pursuit of originality. To be sure, the non-modern artist also, and by nature of things, inevitably expresses his personality; but he does so through the object and by his quest of the object. Conversely, the modern artist – we mean “modernistic” – is necessarily preoccupied with the object, but within the framework and in the interest of his subjectivism; the apprentice artist no longer has to learn to draw, he has to learn to “create”; it is the world turned upside down.1

I can accept that the world is being portrayed as the degenerated, violent and soulless world that it truly has become, lost on its way towards its own exstinction – since this is a sign of the times, a truly dark era – if I am provided with an alternative, a vision of the opposite, something that will show me the way upwards. Humankind is aware of the fact that something is terribly wrong, but together with “showing how it is” it is crucial that we are being provided with an alternative, an vision of another world i.e. for a better understanding of where and why it all went so terribly wrong and to point the way to a brighter future. This is as far as I am willing to go, because now I am really arguing from inside Modernism and this is not the position from where I perceive things.

Modernism cannot solve its problems from within modernism. It will never happen. Only from a traditional point of view – or rather from above – can we get in contact with the truth and realize the true nature of this world. Only then can things possibly be turned around. If we understand that we play a major part in shaping this world, things would look different. What we need is art that inspires us, touch our souls2, make us experience the Divine beyond the phenomenon world, makes us contemplate and gives us the tools to rise above ourselves.

If I want to see what the world really looks like, why go to the concert hall, the gallery or the theater? I only need to look outside my door or to turn over the pages of a newspaper. We do not need gifted and talented artists for this. That is not how it originally went….

Art has the function that is both magical and spiritual: magical, it renders present principles, powers and also things that it attracts by virtue of a “sympathetic magic”; spiritual, it exteriorizes truths and beauties in a view of our interiorization, of our return to the “kingdom of god” that is within you.3

1. Frithjof Schuon, The Transfiguration Of Man, World Wisdombooks, inc, 1995. [↩]
2. The term soul is used here to signify the real Self, but according to various traditions, the soul cannot reach beyond the physical phenomenon world, but the intellect, which is not to be confused with Reason or Logic. The intellect is connected to what is called “the eye of the heart,” which is the eternal essence in us. The eye of the heart is what enables us to see, reach and comprehend the metaphysical realm, which belongs to the next world. [↩]
3. ibid. [↩]