I’ve been reading Sartre’s The Aftermath of War and in the essay “What is a Collaborator?” he makes the following statement.
“They do not know where they are going, but since they are changing they must be getting better. The latest historical phenomenon is the best simply because it is the latest … They are seized by a kind of pithiatism, abandon themselves passively to the emerging currents and float towards an unknown destination; they experience the delights of not thinking, of not looking ahead and of accepting the obscure transformations that necessarily turn us into new and unpredictable human beings.”
As an artist, my first reaction was to apply this passage to the creation of new works. It is easy to accuse some of “not knowing where they are going” and blindly following trends without thinking, although I do have these thoughts at times. It is, of course, very difficult to judge what these “toxic trends” are objectively. I think this is a typical reaction when one doesn’t like someone else’s art: “oh, this is very in vogue now…” (the opposite being “this is very cliched” which seems most often to mean “I like it but I’m embarrassed”). My second reaction was, “I hope my own art doesn’t do this.” For the aforementioned reasons, this is also difficult to judge, but I’d like to vouch for my thinking.
Perhaps out of this whole passage it seems that the largest problem is the perception of progress towards some high point[1]. This could be an alternative: Things aren’t supposed to get better and at the same time they never got worse. It is easy to see myriad changes in the production, subject matter, and function of art in society, but it might be the valuing of these adjustments is more the problem than the changes themselves. With this model, the attitude and intentions, the “must be getting better,” becomes the problem.
[1]Sartre later accuses these collaborators of judging their present thought from the future. I.e., jumping ahead two centuries (of course making assumptions about what happens in them) and looking back on their current choice in light of the fabricated history they have laid out before them; and a bit later of assuming that history is, ultimately, teleological.
This entry was posted on Friday, May 22nd, 2009 at 10:49 am and is filed under commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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sartre and art
I’ve been reading Sartre’s The Aftermath of War and in the essay “What is a Collaborator?” he makes the following statement.
As an artist, my first reaction was to apply this passage to the creation of new works. It is easy to accuse some of “not knowing where they are going” and blindly following trends without thinking, although I do have these thoughts at times. It is, of course, very difficult to judge what these “toxic trends” are objectively. I think this is a typical reaction when one doesn’t like someone else’s art: “oh, this is very in vogue now…” (the opposite being “this is very cliched” which seems most often to mean “I like it but I’m embarrassed”). My second reaction was, “I hope my own art doesn’t do this.” For the aforementioned reasons, this is also difficult to judge, but I’d like to vouch for my thinking.
Perhaps out of this whole passage it seems that the largest problem is the perception of progress towards some high point[1]. This could be an alternative: Things aren’t supposed to get better and at the same time they never got worse. It is easy to see myriad changes in the production, subject matter, and function of art in society, but it might be the valuing of these adjustments is more the problem than the changes themselves. With this model, the attitude and intentions, the “must be getting better,” becomes the problem.
[1]Sartre later accuses these collaborators of judging their present thought from the future. I.e., jumping ahead two centuries (of course making assumptions about what happens in them) and looking back on their current choice in light of the fabricated history they have laid out before them; and a bit later of assuming that history is, ultimately, teleological.
This entry was posted on Friday, May 22nd, 2009 at 10:49 am and is filed under commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.