On Art as a complementary reality

XVII

While Art has been consistently seen as a form of representation of reality its role as a substitute to reality has been given little attention. Kant’s concept of art reveals a way of thinking that has its origins in Plato’s construct that art imitate the world perceptible by our senses, that is to say it imitates the imitations –or shadows- of the real, immutable world of ideas. Heidegger’s concept of art as means of revelation of truth while radically overturns the classical notion of art, it does little to identify it (partly) as a reality made of images that co-exists next to the reality consisting of physical things.

XVIII

A depiction of a naked woman is as real as a bridge connecting two shores of a river. People have always had the opportunity to identify an artwork either as a real thing that stands for a “more” real one or as a real thing that exists per se and has little to do with the reality that surrounds them. In other terms, people chose to see an artwork either as a signifier of something signified (the depiction of the naked woman for the woman herself) or as an object irrelevant to perceptible world.
Interestingly enough, this attitude didn’t have to do with the accuracy of depiction. As a rule, ancient Greek statues of -humanlike- Gods were seen as personifications of Gods themselves, and as such holding magical powers, the older and less delicate they were. John of Damascus (5th century AD) is at pains to explain to his audience that artworks depicting human figures weren’t in all aspects equivalent to the persons depicted, because they lacked movement and, consequently, life, etc.

XIX

The disengagement of almost faithful depictions of living creatures to the creatures depicted is how the blasphemous renaissance and post-renaissance artworks have made their way through the increasingly harsh church censorship. A naked young woman wouldn’t be allowed to go public before a crowd in real world, but many did so, on canvasses decorating reception halls of palaces and mansions. A half-naked Virgin Mary would be unimaginable in some other domain of human activity. The same holds true for the depiction of creatures, whom some of the features are so realistically depicted that could have rendered the creatures themselves as been real: Hieronymus Bosch’s monsters could survive just because they were accepted as belonging to another, apocalyptical, world.

XX

One may wonder how people are enjoying watching almost promiscuous TV shows, while not allowing far more modest (but still “obscene”) behaviors taking place in their vicinity, such as bathing naked: The mediation of the TV assures that the depicted acts and persons are kept at a safe distance, and thus belong to another, remote, world.


Facebook

XXI

The same holds for the Facebook or the SMSs. People choose to contact others by means that allow for a restricted revelation of personal data, such as the mood and the look of the moment. Far from being substitutes to face-to-face contacts they offer people the opportunity of a kind of relation that seems to be increasingly popular.


XXII

Our reality increasingly includes many new territories. Not all can be sheltered in our cities. As people have done repeatedly with art, so we will do with the worlds opened up by technology: instead of integrating them physically in our vicinity we will accept them as remote parts of our universe.