Following are existential perspectives regarding art, as it relates to the human condition, from selected artists/writers, philosophers and educators, situated in specific geographic, social and political locations and corresponding to particular historical eras. The common thread for all is a concern with the human capability and need to find meaning in existence within an infinitely uncertain and contingent world. From the existentialist view, the exercise of freedom, choice and responsibility is uniquely available to the human being, as opposed to any other living creature in the world. An existential framework for living implies individual agency, along with the responsibility for engaging in the world with others. While some early existentialists focused on the absurd and nihilistic (life as lacking in meaning and value) aspects of mortal existence, paradoxically, I see the search for meaning as a universal passion among human beings, fundamental to their efforts to transcend notions of absurdity and submission to pessimism and oppression. Making meaning, especially through creative processes, is an act based in both hope and challenge. How each individual goes about searching for, actually creating, meaning is expressed in the choices she/he makes and the actions she/he takes to make a life. This is the hope, the challenge, the task and the responsibility of existential freedom.
To live life artfully, then, is to live with intentionality, mindfulness and integrity. To me, this connotes taking a philosophical approach to living that has to do with ongoing processes of self-creation, engagement with others and opening the imagination to new ideas and experiences: all for the purpose of making meaning of human existence, first as an individual and, ultimately, as a member of the local and global communities.
Art and aesthetics represent pathways to human expression, inter-communication and meaning making. Art can be expressed from a variety of inspirational spaces: personal and spiritual, as a medium for advocacy and social justice and as a chronicler or history. Certainly, art can represent the purest conceptions of beauty as perceived by the artist, as well as by the viewer. Whatever the inspirations and purposes behind the making and viewing of art, from an existential perspective, the creation of meaning, for self and in relation to others, is the elemental ingredient of our common humanity. While mortal life is finite, the process of meaning making is infinite, not only in a lifetime, but across cultures and history. Art can and does transcend mortal lives and the histories they create, linking generations of human beings in the universal human condition.
- William Shakespeare, on art as essential to the human condition:
From the very beginnings of art, when man, in the recesses of his dark cave first dipped a finger in the fire-soot and by the flickering light of a burning brand traced the outline of some beast of prey upon the wall and looked over his shoulder for the appreciation of his fellow troglodytes - art assumed its place, as the mirror reflecting our mutually shared human condition and acting in a manner that Hamlet (speaking to Polonius of his players) described as the abstracts and brief chronicles of the times. [1] (Shakespeare. 1855. p. 355.)
[1] Shakespeare. W. Hamlet. Complete Illustrated Shakespeare. 1851. Routledge, London
Art is the proper task of life.
Reference: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_art3.html, Retrieved Dec. 4, 2011
- Jean-Paul Sartre, on poetry as art and human history:
Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.
Reference: http://www.mindpleasures.com/Quotes/Philosophy/Sartre/Sartre2.shtml, Retrieved Dec. 4, 2011
- Jean-Paul Sartre (1949), on the moral imperative inherent to the aesthetic imperative as seen through literature [and applicable to all the arts, I submit]:
And if I am given this world with its injustices, it is not so that I might contemplate them coldly, but that I might animate them with my indignation, that I might disclose them and create them with their nature as injustices, that is, as abuses to be suppressed. Thus, the writer’s universe will only reveal itself in all its depth to the examination, the admiration, and the indignation of the reader; and the generous love is a promise to change, and the admiration is a promise to imitate; although literature is one thing and morality quite a different one, at the heart of the aesthetic imperative we discern the moral imperative. (Sartre, pp. 62-63)
Reference: Sartre, J. (1949). Literature & existentialism. New York: Citadel Press.
- Maxine Greene (2001), educator and philosopher, on the meaning of aesthetics and the experiential nature and meaning of art:
It is important to understand that "aesthetics" is the term used to single out a particular field in philosophy, one concerned about perception, sensation, imagination, and how they relate to knowing, understanding, and feeling about the world. For some, "aesthetics" has primarily to do with the kinds of experiences associated with reflective and conscious encounters with the arts. Or it may focus on the way in which a work of art can become an object of experience and the effect it then has in altering perspectives on nature, human beings, and moment-to-moment existence. "Aesthetic," of course, is an adjective used to describe or single out the mode of experience brought into being by encounters with works of art. (Greene, p. 5)
Reference: Greene, M. (2001). Variations on a blue guitar: the Lincoln Center Institute lectures on aesthetic education. New York: Teachers College Press.
- Maxine Greene (1995), educator and philosopher, on human imagination:
Every one of us inhabits a humanly fabricated world, is mortal and can acknowledge that mortality, and can tell the story of what happens to him or her as he or she lives. Aware, then, on some level of the integrity and the coherence of what may seem to us to be a totally alien world in the person of another, we are called upon to use our imaginations to enter into that world, to discover how it looks and feels from the vantage point of the person whose world it is. That does not mean we approve it or even necessarily appreciate it. It does mean that we extend our experience sufficiently to grasp it as a human possibility. (Greene, p. 4)Reference: Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education, the Arts, and Social Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
- Adrian Piper, artist and philosopher, critiquing Formalism in art / advocating Conceptualism as engagement of art with the world, embracing intellectual and political content. To me, this indicates an existential outlook that celebrates individual identity and the responsibility of art making to address social inequities and advocate for social justice:
… Piper cites LeWitt’s call to set the artistic idea against the art object that results from it, calling this "the end of formalism, the end of art for art’s sake as an autonomous realm independent of the world, because to mine this intellectual content we needed to draw on all those fields and areas that previously had been considered off limits: the social sciences, natural sciences, humanities, even the other arts." (Adrian Piper, as quoted in Bowles, 2011, p. 35)
Reference: Bowles, J. P. (2011). Adrian Piper: race, gender, and embodiment. Durham [N.C.: Duke University Press.
- Jazz musician Herbie Hancock on art and aesthetics. Excerpt from an interview with SGI Quarterly:
SGI Quarterly: Can you talk about what it means to live a creative life?
Herbie Hancock: At this point in my life, my primary focus is not on the art form that my career has been built around to date. What I focus on primarily is the real source--or the purpose--that my art form, music, is about. That is, life itself.
At the foundation of artistic expression is the very core of life. So what I'm finding is that the more I attempt to expand and develop my life, the greater the impact is on my music. Music becomes a tool for that expression. My focus is to practice this particular art form with the hope that ultimately it will be a catalyst in the listeners' appreciation of their own lives. My hope is not particularly that the audience will be inspired by my music and put me on a pedestal. That's not what it's about. I hope that somehow it triggers something within themselves where they feel that their life has more meaning, substance and inspiration. That they become more aware of something that is already in them.
Reference: Gandhi, A. (n.d.). SGI Quarterly | The Art of Life. SGI Quarterly | Human Rights Education Today. Retrieved December 4, 2011, from http://www.sgiquarterly.org/feature2001Apr-1.html
