“Is Art Truth?”
“Paradise”
__________
“Is Art Truth?“, a friend asks after speaking of
its benefits, “Art accepts and tells the truth-Is
that it ?“, she inquires, wonders
art, like truth itself and beauty, is in the eye
of the beholder, I submit, and therefore my
definition is, once again, entirely personal,
though I’ve rigorously plumbed it
it requires background
art died for a thousand years, it was
essentially unrecorded, dormant from
the fall of Rome to the Renaissance, nor
promoted but for Catholic purposes,
hence the majestic cathedrals and the
magisterial altarpieces, works produced
by, however, communities until eventually
certain artisans were recognized as more
inspired than others, and given autonomy
enter Duccio, for instance
in time these new, necessarily idiosyncratic
perspectives – see Hieronymus Bosch, Dante
Alighieri – dominated, veering in their search
for truth in their art and beauty – selling points,
incidentally – towards less strictly orthodox
utterances
see above
art, and its contemporary science, were
chipping away at ecclesiastical dogma
till God died, and artists continued their
prescient march forward, shaping our
zeitgeist, our spirit of the times, with
their pronouncements for lack of any
other guides
but the voices grew personal, see Mozart,
often profound and prophetic, see
Beethoven, till the confluence of disparate
realities gave us secularism, each soul for
itself as a tenet, a credo, a belief, a truth
what did they have in common
I believe it was their quest for beauty
through truth, their quest for truth
through beauty, with a nod here to
the salient Keats
art is prayer, a search for, as well as a
manifestation of, one’s personal
identification with the sacred
it is not truth, it is not beauty, it is the
fervent intention itself, linked with a
correspondent workmanship, craft,
which inspires
see for instance van Gogh for this, who,
remember, nevertheless shot himself,
artists are mortal, merely, messengers,
ever, therefore, fallible, unsure, fearful
even, often, of their, perhaps
Promethean, fire
for consolation, or even maybe
transcendence, see again,
pertinently here, Beethoven
Richard
psst: thanks, Joan
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