Alan Asnen's Blog - Posts Tagged "art-empathy"
Art and Empathy
A vague light remains in the sky that illuminates so very little. I look out at the landscape right now, this landscape barely visible, this landscape that is vaguely lit, I see shadows, I see something obvious, however, among the honeycombs of gray. A cat. A cat obvious because it is black and motionless, although on occasion it slinks and rests. Slinks and rests. Slinks and rests. The cat perhaps can hunt. She has specialized eyes. She can see what I cannot. What she is designed to see. She can see me though I can barely see her. I cannot know what she is doing. I can barely make out where she is. At the moment I believe her to be near a cluster of greenery but for me this vision is merely a cluster of grayness most of the time. A confusion of sky, shrubbery and ground, a numbness of scenery that becomes a moment of nothing definable except in my imagination, grays against grays that speak of nothing.
A vague light remains in the sky that illuminates so very little and this is a mirror to the problem with art today. It is merely a vague light that brings us a vision of so very little, filled with cynicism and hopelessness, the artists speaking with each other, if that, and no one else. Serving no useful purpose for humanity. And when art serves no purpose except to speak to itself it might as well not exist. Precisely what art has become today. Grays against grays that speak of nothing in a twilight while a “something” moves hunting through it. But that “something” moving through is so very important. Some amorphous thing, one shade of gray against another that the auditor cannot discern. There is no clarity to it nor any desire to have it become clear, nor any manner to have it become clear. There is no available light anywhere. No light is going to be shed here on these tones of gray. That “something” goes unrevealed.
Why is this? Because each work is a complaint, not on behalf of “people” or that important “something” but on behalf of some unknown “self.” A complaint about “I.” Here is what “I” want, what “I” need, what “I” feel. Here’s what “I” don’t like.
It is putrid and demeaning.
This is not what art was meant to represent. It does not reveal anything about humanity or life. It negates the past and future and any sense there might be a future. It negates hope and provides a platform for decadence and the end of life. Argument for argument’s sake. A conversation of endless futility. Turning back to a beginning when we were all brutes.
A time before empathy.
A vague light remains in the sky that illuminates so very little and this is a mirror to the problem with art today. It is merely a vague light that brings us a vision of so very little, filled with cynicism and hopelessness, the artists speaking with each other, if that, and no one else. Serving no useful purpose for humanity. And when art serves no purpose except to speak to itself it might as well not exist. Precisely what art has become today. Grays against grays that speak of nothing in a twilight while a “something” moves hunting through it. But that “something” moving through is so very important. Some amorphous thing, one shade of gray against another that the auditor cannot discern. There is no clarity to it nor any desire to have it become clear, nor any manner to have it become clear. There is no available light anywhere. No light is going to be shed here on these tones of gray. That “something” goes unrevealed.
Why is this? Because each work is a complaint, not on behalf of “people” or that important “something” but on behalf of some unknown “self.” A complaint about “I.” Here is what “I” want, what “I” need, what “I” feel. Here’s what “I” don’t like.
It is putrid and demeaning.
This is not what art was meant to represent. It does not reveal anything about humanity or life. It negates the past and future and any sense there might be a future. It negates hope and provides a platform for decadence and the end of life. Argument for argument’s sake. A conversation of endless futility. Turning back to a beginning when we were all brutes.
A time before empathy.
