Art and creation: at the origins of the living world!

Art cannot be reduced to a purely decorative or aesthetic function. As a means of expressing the inexpressible, of connecting with the unknown and the mysteries of the world, art and the creative act are undoubtedly at the origin of the living world.

Immersed in an era where the search for meaning becomes an absolute necessity, the world of art, and more specifically contemporary art , could well become an essential element in the survival of our humanity.

 

Art, a universal value!

Looking at a starry sky, the evidence is striking. How could one imagine a more beautiful harmony? What is this creative force that organizes the universe, and how does it act through me so that I can feel its infinite beauty?

If we accept that the function of art is to make reality visible , then the question arises as to the nature of what is made visible to us. This question is profound and still far from being fully addressed by science or philosophy.

What we find beautiful and what moves us does not define art, but rather an aesthetic sense of our perceptions. This is undoubtedly the basis for creating a language, composed of fundamental concepts, which the artist seeks to organize through their creative will.

In this sense, it is not unreasonable to imagine that humanity was formed through a certain aesthetic pursuit.

 

Is art an imitation of nature?

Some believe that art is an imitation of nature. This idea seems weak, because why bother imitating what is already perfect and right before our eyes?

For Friedrich Nietzsche , art is certainly not an imitation, but a metaphysical necessity that makes possible the transcendence of nature itself.

The creation of art would therefore be a fundamental human activity, at the origin of the emancipation of thought. It would be the supreme way to live in harmony with the natural elements.

It is not entirely irrational to think that, in its own way, all living things also strive for the same harmony. Art would then be the representation of a primordial life force.

Nietzsche wrote , “The world is a work of art that gives birth to itself.”

The beauty we see in nature is the perfect model of the harmonious relationship between beings. Life on Earth has simply followed the paths laid out by universal principles.

The astonishing spectacle of the cosmos proves that what we call art is undoubtedly a natural law with which we have always been imbued.

For reasons unknown, natural evolution most often progresses from simple to complex. There are mysteries, such as the extremely sophisticated song of certain birds, or the "decorations" displayed by certain animals, that cannot be explained by a purely utilitarian approach.

Certainly, natural evolution undoubtedly created these signals for a specific purpose, notably to ensure the reproduction of the species. But one cannot help but think that once its goal was achieved, creative nature had "indulged itself" in the luxury of creating a work of art. Scientific experiments using decoys have demonstrated that cruder and exaggerated signals work just as well, if not much better, than the original.

The question that immediately comes to mind is: why did nature go to all this trouble to achieve a result that, while magnificently harmonious, is of dubious usefulness?

For George Bataille,  "art is the tangible sign of our presence in the universe."

Shouldn't we reverse this egocentric logic, to suggest that art is the sign of the presence of the universe within ourselves? And pushing the reasoning further, we can say that every being possesses its essence, which is only realized with an imperative necessity.

The artist would thus have a vital need, brought about by a presence in the world more heightened than most of us.

It would thus seem established that a work of art is much more than a simple object and that it carries, beyond its nature, a universal function.

 

The perception of the real world

We apprehend reality through our "perceptual apparatus", composed of our central nervous system and our sensory organs.

It has long been claimed that this device gives us a subjective image of reality, with no relation to "what is" really.

But this claim cannot hold up. Of course, we know that our perception of the world is "limited".

For example, we can only see a small part of the color spectrum. What lies below and beyond our vision remained invisible to us until two scientists respectively discovered the existence of infrared and ultraviolet (Wilhelm Herschel - 1800 and Johann Wilhelm Ritter - 1801).

Each animal species has its own perceptual apparatus, with its own particularities. What a cat, a bee, or an eagle sees is significantly different.

However, one species' image of reality never contradicts another, but rather complements it. It's as if each species possesses a truncated perception of reality. A piece of the great puzzle.

Each person grasps a part of reality, that which is sufficient for them to ensure their subsistence.

From the naturalist's point of view, our organs and our apparatus of perception were created by the pressure of natural selection, in order to better adapt us to reality.

Our brain and our higher intelligence are part of this apparatus and are not exempt from this rule. They were created by the world, to give us an image, admittedly incomplete, but very real, of this world.

We perceive art through our five senses. The emotions generated by the "capture" of a work of art are undoubtedly closely linked to our culture and education.

Cultural relativism uses this obvious fact to try to prove that sensitivity to art is "nothing more than" cultural.

Nevertheless, we can hypothesize that certain concepts of harmony and balance are part of a universal genetic heritage.

In his Critique of Judgment, Emmanuel Kant offers us a formula that breaks with the traditional opposition between nature and culture, or between objective and subjective: "the beautiful is that which pleases universally and without concept."

The rules of harmony in music are based on mathematical relationships between sounds.

The perfect symmetry of a face is one of the criteria of beauty, in all civilizations and in all known eras.

However, harmony and symmetry are integral parts of the vast majority of living organisms.

It is therefore not completely far-fetched to think that what we call "art" and "beauty" also obey universal rules.

 

Art is life

Creation is not unique to humankind. The study of the cosmos, nature, and animals demonstrates that the universe is infinitely creative.

Whether we call it God, natural evolution, or chance, the mystery remains unsolved.

Art contains the very essence of this creative process. Art guides us to the edge of the great mystery of life and the universe.

Art is life!


Pierre Desenfant / Marc Erlich – Art4You

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