Celebrating The Animal Mass
Art begins with the animal,
at least with the animal that carves out a territory
and constructs a house
(both are correlative,
or even one and the same,
in what is called a habitat).
The territory-house system
transforms a number of organic functions—
sexuality, procreation, aggression, feeding.
But this transformation does not explain
the appearance of the territory and the house;
rather it is the other way around:
the territory implies the emergence
of pure sensory qualities, of sensibilia
that cease to be merely functional
and become expressive features,
making possible a transformation of functions.
No doubt this expressiveness
is already diffused in life,
and the simple field of lilies
might be said to celebrate the glory of the skies.
But with the territory and the house
it becomes constructive and erects
ritual monuments of an animal mass
that celebrates qualities
before extracting new causalities and finalities from them.
This emergence of pure sensory qualities is already art,
not only in the treatment of external materials
but in the body’s postures and colors,
in the songs and cries that mark out the territory.
–excerpt from What Is Philosophy
by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari p. 184
and speaking of the lilies of the field…….
“Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.
–excerpt Luke 12:27 Jesus
Why art? I thought this quote from Deleuze and Guattari is a direct answer. The human is the animal that celebrates. How often in a day do you pause to give attention to a shape, or to a shade of color, or to a pleasant tune? That happens more often than we realize. Such celebrations, such considered pauses are the mass of an animal who is offering up a thanksgiving for sensibilia, that are part and parcel of being alive. Art!
