WATER IN THE DESERT
- PHILOSOPHY OF CONTEMPORARY ART

- Summary -

The title is borrowed from a book on theater aesthetics by Peter Brook, who said that during World war II, theater performances in England were welcomed by the public, like water in the desert. This was recently (in 1999) confirmed again, during NATO bombing raids of Belgrade, and other Yugoslav cities, when theaters were performing in front of the full audience, and welcomed as ever.
The author believes that art has this importance (even in times of peace), even though philosophy of art and artists themselves are more skeptical about this.
Chapter Art and Society - Nature and Technics is a full encounter with the basic Western meta-narratives. It starts with the Christian idea of redemption through repentance, confession and faith, and ends with the New Age hope in cosmic consciousness. Various philosophies of art, and art production, were involved with all these projects - from the high tide of Christianity, through the Renaissance and Baroque times, down to modernism and postmodernism. An independent artistic project of redemption was developed in Romanticism, and later on in Modernism, New Left, and New Age. The importance of art was also recognized in totalitarian societies, like Nazi Germany, and communist Russia, but in such conditions art expression and development was under state repression and supervision. The "aesthetic project" is considered in the context of other culture projects - based on hopes of social, political, technological, ecological, and consciousness development. In a separate section the influence of "speeding up" (in film, TV-spots, etc.) on perception, is found to be detrimental for the overall perception of the environment, and prevailing life-style (with people progressively becoming "crazy").
Chapter Art and Rapture is related to Nietzsche's art philosophy. He diagnosed the "spiritual claustrophobia" of modern individual, and searched for the solution through "revaluation of all values." He considered nihilism the outcome of the wrong course in European culture, that followed in philosophy and Christian (and Buddhist) ethics. Both were against life, against the world, and transient, while Nietzsche affirms joy, rapture, overabundance of strength, and will for power. Art defended life, earth, and transient values of the senses, while philosophy (or, rather metaphysics), and religion, belittled life, and transient beauty of the earth creatures. Instead they glorified the One, Perfect (total, plenum) and Eternal. Nietzsche tried to explain art and creativity through Apollonian-Dionysian dynamics. He related art to play and rapture. He considered art (its highest achievements) without goal, impulsive, beyond good and evil, as pure outflow of will and power, affirming life and earth. Therefore it helps individual to withstand the terrible truth, and reality of life, justifying life and world through the aesthetic. However, he developed criticism toward contemporary art, as in Will for Power (par. 824-829). - Modern counterfeiting in the arts: regarded as necessary, namely as corresponding to the most characteristic needs of the modern soul... First: one seeks for oneself a less artistic public... the superstitious belief in the "genius." Second: one harangues the obscure instincts of the dissatisfied, ambitious, self-disguised spirits in a democratic age: importance of poses. Third: one transfers the procedures of one art to the other arts, confounds the objectives of art with those of knowledge or the church or racial interests (nationalism), or philosophy... Fourth: one flatters women, sufferers, the indignant... False "intensification"... There actually exists a cult of orgies of feeling... all signs that show for whom one is working today: for the overworked, and absent-minded, or enfeebled. One has to tyrannize in order to produce any effect at all. Modern art as an art of tyrannizing. Within the delineation a wild multiplicity, an overwhelming mass, before which the senses become confused.- These remarks show that Nietzsche could be considered as promoter of deconstruction and postmodern spirit, but also as its critic.
Chapter The Joy of Flight is related to the art and ideas of Constantin Brankusi, one of the foremost modernist sculptors. He marked the history of sculpture in the first half of our century. He introduced some archetypal contents (flying, conception, union of polarities), and art forms (defining the ambiance by sculpture) in the context of radical modernism. Chapter The Voice of Silence is an exposition of art philosophy of Andre Malraux. Malraux developed his ideas on the psychology and philosophy of art in the period after World War II, when he wrote several voluminous books on these subjects. He developed his approach in line with humanist universalism. He praised the capability of modern individual to apprehend the art of the past, and of non-European cultures, as legitimate and valuable part of universal human heritage. He developed this idea through the metaphor "imaginary museum." He considered art a display of universal creativity of individual. Through art work man was, and is, opposing and transcending limitations of his physique, his personal, and social (historical) destiny. For this reason Malraux refuted to explain art works in relation to the biography of their creators, and was against this method in explaining motives and contents of art.
Chapter Form or Exorcism is dedicated to Picasso, and his beautiful paintings of women and children (1904 to 1954), that seem to be neglected, because of his other works, that were more interesting for the media, and the general public. This chapter shows another Picasso (rather different from the one usually presented in books, exhibitions etc.). Also there is a scandalous thesis that Picasso started postmodern art with his series of portraits of Sylvette David.
Chapter The Painting and the Icon explains motives, dilemmas, and perspectives of the new religious art, and its revival in various countries (Christian, and Buddhist, East and West). Revival of religious art follows the contemporary revival of religion in many countries. In most cases it develops outside the contemporary modernist-postmodernist paradigm, sharing its own dilemmas: how to relate art and aesthetic feelings to religious experience, and how to define ways of presentation, toward the basic premises inherited from the particular tradition (Christian, or Buddhist). To develop the full spectrum of these issues, works of some modern artists (religious art of Chagal, and Matisse, made some fifty years ago) are also considered.
Chapter The Tragic Sense of Modernism explains how modernity developed its own tragic sense, and how literary characters share dilemmas and life situations of their creators. Ideas and lives of some modern artists (Van Gogh, Cesare Pavese, Branko Miljkovic, Albert Camus, Ivo Andri}, and Milos Crnjanski) have been analyzed, in particular their stand toward loneliness, and suicide, either meditated, or committed. An unknown author of the Papyrus Berlin 3024 ("The Man who was Tired of Life"), with his consideration of suicide is introduced as their peer from ancient times.
Chapter Art and ecology discusses issues of general stand toward ambiance, nature and its creatures, and main fields and developments of ecological art.
Chapter Emancipation and Aquarian Hopes opens up three subjects: relationship of art and politics in Yugoslavia during last 50 years, and liberating and enlightening expectations related to art by the New Left, and New Age writers in the West.
Chapter Water in the Desert starts with Wordsworth and his "glow in the grass" transferring the metaphor into "glow in the soul." Aesthetic contemplation, and "landscape mysticism" are explained with examples from aesthetic practices as one can find in Chinese art and aesthetics, or European romanticism, in particular in a poem by Njego{ (A Night Worth More Then a Lifetime).
Chapter Image Symbolism starts with ideas developed by C. G. Jung and his followers (like Aniela Jaffe), who developed a general method to explain image symbolism, including art symbolism. The author follows this course, somewhat modifying the general optimism of analytical psychology, and its belief that it is possible to offer a symbolic interpretation with universal pretense.
Chapter Postmodern Art tackles the general issues of postmodernism, and the social and culture position of contemporary artists, who take part in the marketing game, governed by art dealers, gallerists, and publisher, who have to run the business of "Kulturindustrie". Also, part of the postmodern art production (Young British Artists, postmodern novel by Milorad Pavic) is analyzed, in order to mark the spectrum of issues and topics present in postmodern art.
Chapter The End of History or Clash of Civilizations takes into consideration two options offered by Fukuyama and Huntington - the end of history in liberal democracy, or the clash of (different) cultures (or civilizations), East and West. The dilemma is refuted as too simple, and the identity crisis present in the West and East, as well, is considered from the point of universalism and fundamentalism.
The text is followed by respective footnotes, and illustrations, which support the main theses.