Another day of self quarantine.

The constraints are practical as well as psychological.  I share with every American the growing sensation of rebellion.

Overarching all — certainty that our leaders are confused, disingenuous, indolent, and most demoralizing, — bereft of good taste.

Good taste.  I refer to the sensibility of judgment wherein one “knows” that a line of poetry is balanced, without excess, every word carrying its weight, in sync with every other word — to deliver the intended quotient of emotion. 

Another way of putting it, — with knowledge borne of practice,  holding the Sony Cybershot camera, the cluster of pink blossoms move in the breeze in my view finder.  I wait for a lull , hoping to be patient enough, to catch one blossom obliquely.  Breath held, the shutter button is gently pushed.  With a bit of of luck the depth of field will be sufficient, time will be frozen, the image will speak Nature’s fecundity.  

Taste, is tolerance of risk, and deftness of action ….

I offer these illustrations of two different but related examples of “good” taste.  In my observation those we have elected to the highest office in the land display no evidence of good taste, exercise of judgment that recognizes proportion, of a working instance of beauty, of a dynamic ‘living’ outcome of policy, and lawmaking effort.  To my observation and judgment, the results have been the exact opposite.  After weeks of quarantine, we have inadequately slowed the progression of covid-19,  our testing capability is still inadequate and unreliable, and there continues to be no clearly defined national policy to guide all of the states on relaxing the quarantine.    This is a harbinger of a confused future, of a country fragmented by a still uncontrolled virus, without effective treatment, or a vaccine, unable to know the truth of where the virus is spreading… 

If an artist of our time could be commissioned to create a painting to represent our country mal-administered by the Trump administration, the artist would have to be Salvator Dali.

These words were written by Albert Camus on the topic of “taste,” the role of artistic sensibility in one’s attitude and action toward the world.

Rebellion and Art Part 4

Art is the activity that exalts and denies simultaneously.
“No artist tolerates reality,” says Nietzsche.
That is true, but no artist can get along without reality.
Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of the world.
But it rejects the world on account of what it lacks
and in the name of what it sometimes is.
Rebellion can be observed here
in its pure state
and in its original complexities.

“I believe more and more,” writes Van Gogh,
“that God must not be judged on this earth. It is one of His sketches that has turned out badly.”

Every artist tries to reconstruct this sketch
and to give it the style it lacks.
The greatest and most ambitious of all the arts,
sculpture, is bent on capturing,
in three dimensions, the fugitive figure of man,
and on restoring the unity of great style
to the general disorder of gestures.
Sculpture does not reject resemblance,
of which, indeed, it has need.
But resemblance is not its first aim.
What it is looking for, in its periods of greatness,
is the gesture, the expression, or the empty stare
which will sum up all the gestures
and all the stares in the world.
Its purpose is not to imitate, but to stylize
And to imprison in one significant expression
the fleeting ecstasy of the body
or the infinite variety of human attitudes.

Excerpt, The Rebel by Albert Camus p. 253 & 254

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I am taken by these words of Camus especially his reference to  sculpture as a quintessential art form.  I marvel at the physical and spiritual struggle necessary to create a great work of sculpture.  I was reminded of a sculpture by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) which I saw at the St. Louis Art Museum.  The sculpture is entitled Despair and was created in 1890.  It was found in Rodin’s studio at his death.  “A man curled in fetal position with toes clinched and fists balled, shields his face with his right arm.  Rodin’s sculpture evokes an emotional state of fear and hopelessness….  The smooth modeling of the body contrasts markedly with the rugged surrounding slab.”

LET US RESIST, MY FRIENDS !