----- Original Message ---- From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, May 3, 2010 6:05:34 PM Subject: "You must learn to choose the truth before aesthetic preferences". (Auden)
Does that mean that a work of art should never distort or obscure reality? Oh, here we are again, square ONE. Since you choose to present the question rhetorically, the answer to you is yes. Any artwork must must must be absolutely identical to its model in reality. Because of course, what we see in reality is Truth. Our senses never deceive and they give us a total and accurate image of reality and any copy of it must therefore be identical to it or it is a lie. Any sensible person can see that the best artwork is one that is truthfully identical to what it copies from nature. Thus all you need to do is to point to something in nature and say it's a work of art. That's really your only option too because only the actual thing itself can be a copy of itself, fully, in all its particulars, including the space it occupies, and all of its hidden features. So a big YES. Art should NEVER distort or obscure Realty. And it never does distort reality because it IS reality. Not only in the sense that the copy is also the thing itself imagined as a copy of itself but also anything at all, including any artwork is always itself too and so it is itself imagined as a copy and therefore True. Does a rock distort reality? No. Likewise does a painting distort reality? No. All things or essences are merely what they are, totally meaningless but real and thus truthful as reality. In the language of scientists who study such issues, objects and essences are called Strings. Strings have no meaning but are real always real things. Strings AFFORD meanings but don't have meaning. Auden was saying that one should look to the essence of something before choosing a style to alter it. It's not really possible but it is a useful caution for those who would put the template of style upon experience, as if it would make any difference since in this case Auden speaks to those who cannot benefit from his advice and those who would, already know it. wc
