"Conflict between the viewer and contemporary art"
INTRODUCTION
I explore CONFLICT and its role in shaping modern ETHICS and AESTHETICS. In other words, why does a person first cry from the film “Schindler’s List”, become enlightened by the beauty of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”, and then passionately scream that he will kill his neighbours? I suspect that there is a cognitive dissonance between natural human norms and principles - the main ones of which are human life and happiness - and the reality formed by mass propaganda.
The basic hypothesis I wish to state is if modern art were widespread and its goal was to engage in dialogue with the viewer or at least not to lose the connection with him, we could get an audience adapted to critical thinking - citizens that would not support war and aggression. People who would be able to distinguish propaganda from their own principles, endowed with empathy and respect for all living things.
I assume that an irresistible gap has arisen between people who feel nauseous about modern art, people who are stuck in the norms and values of a hundred years ago and people open to progress, able to think independently and make judgments.
The task of my research is to search for something aesthetic and progressive that can establish a connection with those who completely renounced modern art or did not even approach it and found themselves in cognitive dissonance while supporting the war.
ETHICS
I explore CONFLICT and its role in shaping modern ETHICS and AESTHETICS. In other words, why does a person first cry from the film “Schindler’s List”, become enlightened by the beauty of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”, and then passionately scream that he will kill his neighbours? I suspect that there is a cognitive dissonance between natural human norms and principles - the main ones of which are human life and happiness - and the reality formed by mass propaganda.
Jean-Paul Martinon - Curating As Ethics (2020) puts forward a thesis where he takes death as the basis for the beginning of ethics.
“… I put forward the Introduction premise of an ethics whereby death, this phenomenon that veers out of the living present, invisibly structures human moral encounters.” (Martinon, 202 p. xi)
This seems true to me, since physical non-existence directs our thoughts into the realm of existence.
Also, Viktor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor, boils down his theory to the fact that in the most difficult moments of despair, a person can be reborn into an angel and find the strength to continue life.
Littell, Jonathan in the book The Kindly Ones, forms a fine line between at what point we can begin to sympathize with the killer, and therefore distort our principle about the value of human life.
So, if the maintenance of human life is the basis of ethics, then what happens to the substitution of these concepts? This means why a person for whom human life and happiness is a value goes to war or supports it.
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
Leon Festinger calls such a contradiction of accepted principles in a person's cognitive dissonance.
«I am proposing that dissonance, that is, the existence of nonfitting relations among cognitions, is a motivating factor in its own right. By the term cognition, here and in the remainder of the book, I mean any knowledge, opinion, or belief about the environment, about oneself, or about one's behavior.» (Festinger, 1985 p. 3) Festinger also argues that cognitive dissonance is not comfortable for a person, so he will strive to reduce it or ignore it.
This is where I see potential for artists to work. If we draw attention to the problem of two worlds - life and war, and indicate the impossibility of the existence of two conflicting concepts of life and death, then I want to believe that people will realize this dissonance and move to the field of goodness and peace.
PROPAGANDA
The issue should be considered separately defence and attack. But I want to do this through the prism of propaganda.
“The repertoire of methods that an experienced propagandist uses can be seen as an artist's palette from which he selects this or that colour in order to paint his picture of the world. … In order to maintain mental independence, the first step is to be aware of the various possibilities for manipulation, and the second step is to check the truth of any information, for example by taking different perspectives and questioning the sources.” (Translated from German Menath, 2022 p. 10, 11) Menath, in his book 80 Methods of Influencing Opinion, describes in detail all the features and types of opinion formation.
Therefore, if we consider the issue of defence and attack from the position of the Russians, better to clarify because not all Russians support this opinion, from the official position of the Russian authorities, they "attacked Ukraine to protect Russia. If they had not attacked, Ukraine and America would have attacked Russia."
The other two authors, David Welch, Jo Fox, in their book Justifying War, devote special attention to mass media. “War has always sold newspapers, especially when presented as a thrilling account of battle and bravery with no danger of the reader identifying with anyone except the intrepid war correspondent bringing the news.” (Welch, Fox 2012 p. 377) They point out the need for citizens to support the actions of politicians in war and this is done through all available media.
Thus, we get interconnected events, if someone decides to start a war, then even an attack can be translated into the category of necessity and called it a defence of the country through propaganda methods. In such a situation, it is difficult not to go crazy and not lose your mind.
In February 2022, the entire Russian population was placed in a living conflict. The conflict is not only between countries but also an ethical conflict. Each person was forced to decide and evaluate for himself what was happening where was good and evil, and where were the undertones which one can accept of refuse. This conflict penetrated the entire essence of society and touched everyone from the inside in the same way that Dostoevsky describes the essence of human nature. In human nature good and evil seem to get along together, but during a period of aggravation of the conflict of concepts and norms, something comes out that even the characters themselves do not imagine. (Here comes an example from Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground)
For example, Donald Meltzer especially pointed out the importance of the family’s influence on the formation of the child, and therefore the subsequent member of society. Therefore, Meltzer associated the formation of a future citizen of the state with a sense of ethics and aesthetics with the perception of the beauty of the mother.
«This meant that the psychoanalytic model needed to change its view of the fundamental developmental struggle: instead of life and death instincts, the individual is torn ‘between aesthetic sensibilities and the forces of philistinism, puritanism, cynicism and perversity’» (Williams, 2021 p. 47)
(here will come more examples and points of views on contemporary aesthetics)
THE GAP BETWEEN THE VIEWER AND CONTEMPORARY ART
The basic hypothesis I wish to state is if modern art were widespread and its goal was to engage in dialogue with the viewer or at least not to lose the connection with him, we could get an audience adapted to critical thinking - citizens that would not support war and aggression.
I assume that an irresistible gap has arisen between people who feel nauseous about modern art, people who are stuck in the norms and values of a hundred years ago and people open to progress, able to think independently and make judgments.
Contemporary art has lost touch with the viewer. More and more people are commenting - this is rubbish piled up in the museum, I won’t go there again. For whom is the artist creating this modern art now? It's ugly and not aesthetically pleasing. This relationship between the viewer and the artist or art community can be seen as a conflict.
Conflict - If beliefs, needs, or facts, etc. conflict, they are very different and cannot easily exist together or both be true Cambridge Dictionary [online] At: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/conflict (Accessed 12.12.2023)
On the one side, It turns out that the viewer, as if on a whim or out of habit, goes to a museum or to an artist’s studio, and tries to understand what he sees there using outdated tools and principles. But a certain gap has appeared in the viewer’s experience, which without replenishment will not help one come closer to understanding the latest art. This is a conflict between old and new, history and progress, past and future.
Clement Greenberg was one of the first to draw attention to this, pointing to a Russian peasant who would look for on canvas the same thing that he sees all day in the field.
Critics and art theorists are trying to restore this gap by creating different methods and approaches to interpretation in art.
Terry Barrett, for example, proposes multiple criteria for the evaluation of art, although he also considers the values of one criterion.
…
There will be examples and analyses of artists working with issues of aesthetics. Consideration of the influence of art will be through catharsis, as living through the bad and cleansing, and as an alternative to this, catharsis via the good and beautiful.
Bibliography and references
1. Barrett, Terry Why Is That Art? Aesthetics and Criticism of Contemporary Art. Third Edition. Oxford University Press (2017)
2. Jean-Paul Martinon - Curating As Ethics (2020) the University of Minnesota Press
3. After Rwanda_ In Search of a New Ethics, Jean-Paul Martinon (2013) Studies in Intercultural Philosophy, BRILL
4. Viktor E. Frankl - Man's Search For Meaning-Pocket Books (1988)
5. Littell, Jonathan - The Kindly Ones-Harper Collins e-Books (2014)
6. Leon Festinger - A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance-Stanford University Press (1985)
7. Johannes Menath, Moderne Propaganda; 80 Methoden der Meinungslenkung-zeitgeist (2022) Verlag Zeitgeist Print & Online, Höhr-Grenzhausen (in german)
8. David Welch, Jo Fox (eds.) Justifying War, Propaganda, Politics and the Modern Age. 2012 Palgrave Macmillan
9. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky - Notes from Underground (Everyman's Library)-Everyman's Library (2004)
10. Clement Greenberg. Avant-Garde and Kitsch. In: Art and Culture. Critical Essays Beacon Press Boston: First published by Beacon Press in 1961.
11. The Apprehension Of Beauty, The Role of Aesthetic Conflict in Development, Art, and Violence; Donald Meltzerand Meg Harris Williams (2008) Karnac Books Ltd.
12. Meg Harris Williams. Donald Meltzer, A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Introductions to Contemporary Psychoanalysis) Routledge (2021)
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