Art: “The Clear Eye of the World”

What is Art? Well, trying to answer this question is a bit like trying to define “love” ‒ it’s a messy process and no one should feel too confident doing it. It’s also a bit like trying to catch wind or bottle lighting; it’s a process that seems contrary to the nature of the thing itself. 

Luckily for you (and for me), this is not my plan today. In this entry, I will be exploring what I view as the crucial difference that lies behind the distinction between Classical Art and Modern Art. My hope is that this entry will, at the very least, allow the reader to see art from a different angle. But let us return to the question that I aim to answer in this post. We could phrase the question as: 

What separates Classic from Modern art, and which one, if either, is superior? 

Now, I am not an art critic or historian; and I understand that taking the extensive world of art and mashing it into this binary distinction between “Classic” and “Modern” may strike many as crude and irresponsible, but I want to briefly defend this choice before I lay out the structure of this essay. 

The Classic vs. Modern Dichotomy

The distinction between what I call Classic art and Modern art is underscored by a particular philosophical difference rather than any particular stylistic or historical differences. So, whereas the Cubism of Picasso may differ greatly from the Expressionism of Rothko, I feel comfortable lumping them together in spite of this fact. 

Furthermore, the time period is mostly irrelevant. Classic art is being made today and, I would argue, Modern art could have been made thousands of years ago. The time period is relevant only insofar as it informs the trends and fashions of the day, and so the probability of one art type or another being made. Given this, it is certainly true that Modern art is what rules the modern era and Classical is what ruled the world up to about the turn of the 20th century. 

Lastly, I want to make clear both the structure and the intent of what you are about to read. In this entry, I will be exploring the world of art as divided by these two categories. I will be arguing, via the work of German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, that there is a philosophical difference between these two art forms that I believe gives us a new and interesting way of looking at them both. 

I do hold the view that Modern art is largely mistaken in many of its aims, but here I only aim to focus on one particular philosophical difference. I will maintain, however, that even this single philosophical difference is crucial enough to suggest that Modern Art should not be given the same artistic status as Classic Art. I will also mention many of the other failures of Modern art in order to show this central philosophical fault runs through them. Classic art is, in fewer words, superior art. 

This is not, however, a take-down of Modern art. There is incredible value in a variety of art styles, and I truly appreciate much that Modern art has to offer. My analysis will not be exhaustive nor scholarly; think of it as a meditation on art centered around an interesting idea within Schopenhauer’s aesthetic philosophy. 

I think this has been sufficient preamble, and so I return us to our question: 

What separates Classic from Modern art? 

As a preliminary answer we may say: 

the role of the self

Let’s start with Modern art, and its emphasis on “self-expression”

Modern art can be characterized by an adherence to a philosophical view of the purpose of art, which I have called the self-expression view. 

Self-Expression View:

Art is the supreme method of individual self-expression. Through art, one is able to express themselves, and good art is achieved when the artist expresses himself in a deep and unique way. 

This is the view of art which I believe almost everyone in my generation has unconsciously adopted. Art is about expressing how you feel, and it’s all about subjectivity.  This view of art pops up everywhere, from popular news articles to fancy Oscar Wilde quotes.

But this view also rests behind the Modern art movement as a whole, which takes many forms but unites in this sense among others. In this way, as we will see later, it acts against the traditional, Classical view of art. 

Take, for example, one of the most famous works of Jackson Pollock, Convergence (1952)

This painting is considered one of the greatest works of the “Abstract Expressionist” movement, and it sold for 140 million dollars in 2006. Many regard it as a great work of art because of the way it, like many of Pollock’s paintings, suggests movement and activity through the arrangements of the strokes of the artist. The actions and movements of the artist himself become visible through the work of art. More importantly, many claim that Pollock’s abstract art evokes a variety of profound emotional experiences, and that through these we may also understand what it is that Pollock himself was feeling.

As another example, take Picasso’s famous Cubist painting, Guernica (1937)

This painting, which I’ve had the pleasure to see in person, expresses the dramatic and painful nature of war, particularly the bombing which occurred in Guernica, Spain, Picasso’s home country. It’s full of imagery that is close to Picasso’s heart, such as the Spanish bull in the upper-left corner. This painting is regarded by many, including me, as a deeply moving work of art.

I want us to look at another piece, as it departs noticeably from the abstraction of Pollock and Picasso but still observes the chief value of contemporary art, i.e. self-expression. 

Mad Woman, Chaim Soutine (1919)

I will leave here the description of the work given at its museum exhibit: 

“His violent brushstrokes and contorted lines communicate an almost unnerving tension, but nevertheless do not deny his subject a rich depth of character. Soutine invited viewers to observe the subject closely, to gaze into her eyes, and study her asymmetrical face and form. In many ways, this painting embodies the essence of the Expressionist style; Mad Woman visibly vibrates, contorts, shifts, pushes, and pulls, providing the viewer with Soutine’s vision of the inner torment of his sitter. In part, it redefined the genre of portrait painting. Simply by painting this mysterious (and possibly dangerous) woman up close rather than from a distance, Soutine established himself as an empathetic figure, but also as a daring visionary.”

In this painting, we are given aggressive insight into the mind of the artist. We are seeing someone as felt by the artist. We know this because nobody in our experience looks like this. The “violent brushstrokes” and the “contorted lines” make the artist himself visible to us. He is showing himself just like Pollock, and through his voice, we are made to feel and experience something ourselves.  

After looking at these three very different classics of modern art, I think the idea of self-expression should be clear. With these paintings, the artist is using techniques to make us aware of his presence, his actions, and his mind. The bold voice of the artist shouts the emotions to us and we feel them. 

Now, there are a number of additional elements that unite Modern art, but these will be briefly mentioned later. Furthermore, these pieces I have shown are some of the most revered and famous that exist in the world of modern art; the overwhelming majority of contemporary art observes the “self-expression” value much more crudely, and very often without the technical prowess of these masters. 

For now, however, this is enough. Let us turn to the view of art that would have been held by the classics and what I will call the “objectivist view”. 

Objectivist View

Art is our best method for viewing the world. Through art, one is able to silence the inner voice and merely witness some aspect of the true nature of the world as it is, and good art is that which merely shows the truth. 

To better understand this objectivist view, we will dive into the aesthetic philosophy of Schopenhauer.

In Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation, he develops a theory of art that I think runs directly contrary to that of the moderns.

As we look at and experience the world, our perspective is hopelessly mired with what Schopenhauer calls Will. Without going into too much depth on what the “Will” is, we can understand that Schopenhauer sees our perspective as constantly entangled by bias and illusion. We never see the world as it truly is; we see everything through the various filters of our own desires and aims and limitations. 

For Schopenhauer, who was deeply influenced by the Vedantic Traditions, it is precisely the strange ability to truly experience the most simple things that set geniuses apart from ordinary people.

“The ordinary man does not linger long over the mere perception, does not fix his eye on an object for long, but, in everything that presents itself to him, quickly looks merely for the concept under which it is to be brought, just as the lazy man looks for a chair, which then no longer interests him. Therefore, he is very soon finished with everything, with works of art, with beautiful natural objects, and with that contemplation of life in all its scenes which is really of significance everywhere.”

To clarify what Schopenhauer is saying, think of the following example. A man is walking along the street and sees a round, metal object on the floor. He quickly scans it with his eyes and notices a detachable top and a long spout that extends from its core. Within an instant, he thinks “Ah, teapot”, and moves on. 

This is what Schopenhauer means when he says that the man “quickly looks for the concept under which it is to be brought”. That thing is not merely and truly a “teapot”; “teapot” is merely the general concept that we have created to group and to organize a variety of unique objects with certain characteristics in common. And, what’s important, is that this is a very good and essential thing for human beings to do. It is the source of science ‒ how else could we learn anything about mating patterns of “foxes” or the mineral compositions of “stones”? 

What Schopenhauer wants to tell us is not that it is bad to view the world like in this way and use such concept-operations; he wants to show us that there are a small number of people who can, a small number of times, break out of this habit and view the world in a completely different and profound way. People who, on rare occasions, will simply experience the utter and pure truth of that thing in the street, prior to any concepts of “teapots” or experiences or personal memories or preferences. This he believes is the source of true genius, which is in turn the source of all Art. 

Schopenhauer writes that true genius is to

“discard entirely our own personality for a time, in order to remain pure knowing subject, the clear eye of the world”.

Already I believe we can see the contrast between Schopenhauer’s aesthetic philosophy and the chief value of modern art, i.e. self-expression. For Schopenhauer and other aesthetic objectivists, the “self” must be secondary if not truly absent from the true art — and by its absence, we are given a moment of privileged insight into the true nature of the world. One could be tempted to call this the Beautiful. 

Now, with the theoretical apparatus given to us by Schopenhauer, we can move to discuss in further detail the comparison between Modern and Classic art. To start, I want to show a few of my favorite works of art.

The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, Caravaggio

Pietá, Michelangelo 

Venus and Mars, Botticelli

The Newborn Child, Georges de la Tour

Windmill at Wijk Bij Duurstede, Jacob van Ruisdael

The Superiority of Classical Art

In this section, I will use the theoretical tools we’ve developed above and distill my criticisms against Modern Art. I will also comment on what I value in Modern Art, all the while holding that it is an inferior form of art.

1. 1. Classical Art is Self-less

I’m no scholar of art, and I certainly won’t be analyzing these magnificent works, but I would like to point out just a few things. Firstly, notice how several of them employ different techniques. 

Firstly, The style of Botticelli is more fantastical than the others, and the lighting in de la Tour’s work sets him apart. I mention this to drive home the point that showing truth does not necessarily mean pure and accurate renderings of the world. A photograph could accomplish this. But the artistic choices are tethered to reality by their sensibility — the dreamy quality of Botticelli’s work fits the subject matter, as does the intimate glow of the lighting in the de la Tour painting. The artistic choices are driven by the nature of the art and the world, not explicitly through the desires of the artist. This leads to the second point. 

Notice how absent the artist is. In each of these pieces, the artist aims at beauty, but the artist himself is nowhere to be seen. What can we learn about Michelangelo from the Pieta? What is Caravaggio’s message in the Crucifixion of St. Peter? These are not very important questions, and I would argue they don’t even have answers. In fact, during Michelangelo’s life, so many people assumed someone else had sculpted the Pieta that he eventually lost patience and sculpted his name into it, making it the only work of art he ever created that bore his signature. 

There are certainly other things to say about each of these masterpieces, but that they scream beauty while silencing the self I believe is clear. Where is the man, Georges de la Tour, in his tender painting of the newborn child?  

2. Modern Art is Self-ish 

On the other hand, the Modern Art pieces given earlier do not accomplish the same thing. Selfless truth is not the guiding principle. 

As we have seen, in Modern Art the artist is visible. This is, of course, most clearly obvious with the Expressionists, but also appears with the Surrealists and Cubists and many others that are subsumed under my grand moniker of Modernity. The artist leaves his trail in the painting and allows his individuality to influence the work and the viewer. The art is about the artist sometimes even more than it is about the world, the truth. The Modern artist repudiates the traditions of Classic Art because he sees them as tired and used-up; he believes that expressing himself is something truly new that he can do. 

This mistaken outlook merely shows the laziness and the limitations of the mind of the artist. As Schopenhauer tells us, the average man will simply see the thing and call it a teapot. The genius, the artist, will recognize the infinite universe that lies within each thing. The artist recognizes that no two still-life fruit baskets or scenes of the crying Virgin Mary are the same. Art is bigger than the artist. The true and the beautiful work through the genius of the artist and become stunningly visible. Self-expression merely clouds the view. 

The desire for self-expression emerges out of a lack of genius, a failure to experience the world in its shuddering depth, a failure to see the universe existing in “one bright pearl”, as monk Eihei Dōgen would say. This misguided view of art as self-expression has brought our culture to the point where “Art” is reduced to little more than personal self-help therapy. 

3. Modern Art is easier

Technically speaking, I think most people would agree with this. Given the same materials, could artists from different periods recreate each others’ work? If Michelangelo was given Pollock’s Convergence and Pollock was given Michelangelo’s David, could they both recreate the respective pieces? I think Michelangelo would take some time to understand the method and, for lack of a better word, “gimmick” of Pollock’s work and quickly be able to reproduce his style. Pollock, on the other hand, would most likely spend a lifetime and still come up empty-handed. 

Even more generally, consider whether or not someone without technical skill could even pretend to do Classic art? Could laymen ever even come close to passing himself off as Raphael the way that others have tricked the world of Modern art? Now, the technical difficulty of the art may not be the most important factor in the evaluation of art, but I certainly believe it needs to be mentioned. 

4. Modern Art is Negative

As an additional point, it must be mentioned that the Modern tradition of art is defined by its rejection and repudiation of the aims of classical art. Modern art came to see Realism and Classicism as tired and naive and overly-sentimental. Where Classicists aimed to glorify and exalt and beautify, Modernists often aim to mock, rebel, and shock. Beyond expression, Modern art stands only for something insofar as it stands against the ideas of classical art. 

This shift in artistic focus, which took place around the turn of the 20th century, is no better exemplified than by the treatment given to the French artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau, who was predicted by none other than Claude Monet (himself a Classicist pretending to be a Modernist) to be the most important artist of the end of the 19th century. He was a student of the classics, revered the Renaissance, and his paintings depicted such classic themes with newer and superior techniques as well as, in my opinion, fresh interpretations. 

Here are a few of his works: 

The Madonna of the Lilies, 1899

The Birth of Venus, 1899

These are simply some of the finest oil paintings ever produced. They are beautiful, and his mastery is without question. 

But, as the art world became captivated by the new forms of modern abstract art,  William-Adolphe Bouguereau was all but forgotten by an art world that saw him as hackneyed and unimaginative, as simply reproducing the old ideas of other artists. 

Without taking too much time to defend his work, I would simply reiterate the point that runs through this article; namely, that such criticisms merely show the lack of genius and imagination of those who employ them. 

When I first saw the Madonna of the Lilies, I felt as though I had never seen a single painting before. Certainly not one of Mary. I may as well have forgotten what art itself was. Her downward glance, the stunning shine of her skin, and the warmth of the lily flowers that envelop the picture without distracting from that central, beautiful image, gave me a deep and profound sense of awe.

What a shame that this master has not received more recognition. 

5. Modern Art is interesting 

As one of my last points, I want to make it clear that I do believe Modern art has value. Some more than others, but even the most ridiculed forms of Modern art can be interesting, cool, thoughtful,  moving, even pretty. Consider Duchamp’s famous urinal: 

By taking a standard urinal, signing his name, and exhibiting it as art, Duchamp shocked the art world and made a point. What point? Well, there’s debate. My point is that it doesn’t really matter. I’m willing to accept it was clever, that it was shocking, that it was funny or creative, and that it made an interesting political or theoretical point. But it is not art. This piece is all about Duchamp, his ideas, and the thrill of the shock that he wanted to impart. This artistic statement drips with his personal essence and will. It’s interesting as a historical idea, but it has no lasting power beyond that because it expresses nothing eternal. It is the echo of the voice of one dead man. Many have since intended to copy this sort of stunt, the most famous attempt perhaps being the Piss Christ, wherein the artist placed a crucifix in a jar of urine and took a photo of it. As some have noticed, much of Modern art now seems trapped by its own urge to shock and to surprise — pushing artists into further and further odd activities in order to score the next gasp. 

However, there is a lot of Modern art that is genuinely interesting and intriguing. There are bold works of Modern art that I see and think “huh, that is a cool idea”. But this reaction is of a different sort entirely from the reaction one has upon gazing upward at the vault of the Sistine Chapel of the interior of the Hassan II mosque. In such a situation, something profound and eternal arrests us, and we lose ourselves in wonder. Who created it? What were they thinking? These questions are nothing more than idle curiosities with little importance in the face of the pure and eternal glory of the art. 

Conclusion

As I said at the beginning, this discussion can never be as tidy as one would hope. There will always be blurred edges and exceptions. I only hope that the compassionate reader will see the philosophical distinction that I have made between these two approaches to art and that my point will resonate with his aesthetic receptivity — that he will see the inherent selfishness and myopia that prevent Modern art from reaching the true artistic heights of Classic art. 

With true art, we are shown rather than told. We are given a momentary glimpse into the thing-in-itself rather than something filtered by the concepts and the impressions of the artist. With true art, we never feel the need to be shocked or surprised, as by its very nature it is supremely unique. With true art, we are given the clear eye of the world which only true genius can provide. 

As an end to this entry, I’d like to share two final pieces of art. One is a fairly cheeky photo taken by me of my friend Erick, as we visited a Modern art exhibit together. The title is my own creation. Another is one of my favorite works of Modern art; in fact, I am not exactly sure what to make of it. Perhaps you can help me.

1. Erick pondering the depths of Modern Art, 2019

1. Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening, Salvador Dali

-AW