In the short post The Left Hemisphere World we identified three areas of body, soul/spirit, and art, that are potential escapes from the left hemisphere thinking. The sort of thinking that has led us into a type of mass psychosis in the current totalitarian environs of the world today. We touched on the body and on the spirit, and we have mentioned an aspect of art here as well.
I will not labor over this point about art as I feel it is self evident. But I will say that much modern art1 has been highly intellectualised and devoid of beauty. The goal it seems is to shock, or send a “powerful message”, or “challenge” us along some socio-political line (it has to have utility). Giftedness in relaying beauty seems not to be an important characteristic of contemporary artists (obviously there are gifted artists who create very beautiful art/music/writing who are not doing it purely for activism or other motivations, but I am talking about the 20th Century Gestalt in the art world). Intellectualised, democratised objects of art, with utility to drive home a point (often in an overly simplistic manner), seems to have taken the place of the transcendent, beautiful, awe inspiring works of masters2.
metaphor and myth have been replaced by the symbolic, or worse, by a concept. We have an art of ideas, theories, and statements - or of resounding emptiness, that we are invited to fill with our own meanings. (McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary)
Art seems now to be anything, anywhere, ‘created’ by anybody. The thing that matters is not the ‘art’ itself but the interpretation, the message, the analysis, the concept. Where is the beautiful, the transcendent, created by the gifted and invoking a reverberant epiphany between ourselves and the art? Where is the love3 we have for works of beauty? And here’s the point - if I may be so brief - it is a sense of love for something beautiful, something transcendent, that is the escape from the left hemisphere4. In fact the body, the spirit and art are all vehicles of love which the right hemisphere knows, experiences, and comprehends, whereas the left hemisphere sees such love as an impediment to its authority and altogether inexplicable.
So what of it? How does this information help us right now? I believe it’s a matter of exercising a view of the world that swings the pendulum back from the more left hemisphere centric view to a more balanced view5. It is awareness more than anything else. This may require seeking out art that is truly beautiful and contemplating the effect of that beauty. Not gullibly falling for a piece of garbage (sometimes quite literally) as something brilliant or insightful, but calling it out for what it is. You may be accused of being ‘unsophisticated’ or devoid of any discernment of what is great art - but you are not. Who has had to sit through a concerto of angular, tangled, atonal assaults on your ears, because you were told it’s great art with a “powerful message”, but in the end is just noise6? Stop enabling the left hemisphere’s take on the world at the expense of the intuitive right hemisphere and start emphasising engagement over alienation, incarnation over abstraction, the unique over the categorical, the particular over the general, the whole over the parts.
There is no formula - that is what the left hemisphere is looking for - but there is a state of being that is observant and appreciative of things that only the right hemisphere understands. I hope in these series of posts I’ve given you some inkling of what those things are. For if we continue to lean more into the left-hemispheric way of being in the world, we are far more likely to be trapped in the spell of mass psychosis and the illusions the totalitarian overlords would have us believe.
"One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: "Beauty will save the world". What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes - but whom has it saved?
There is, however, a certain peculiarity in the essence of beauty, a peculiarity in the status of art: namely, the convincingness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable and it forces even an opposing heart to surrender. It is possible to compose an outwardly smooth and elegant political speech, a headstrong article, a social program, or a philosophical system on the basis of both a mistake and a lie. What is hidden, what distorted, will not immediately become obvious.
Then a contradictory speech, article, program, a differently constructed philosophy rallies in opposition - and all just as elegant and smooth, and once again it works. Which is why such things are both trusted and mistrusted.
In vain to reiterate what does not reach the heart.
But a work of art bears within itself its own verification: conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being portrayed in images, they all come crashing down, appear sickly and pale, convince no one. But those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force - they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.
So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through - then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar to that very same place, and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three?
In that case Dostoevsky's remark, "Beauty will save the world", was not a careless phrase but a prophecy? After all he was granted to see much, a man of fantastic illumination.
And in that case art, literature might really be able to help the world today?"
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Nobel Lecture)
Visual art, music, and literature.
The very fact that it takes an inspired master to produce such works is undemocratic, an offence to the left hemisphere - democratised ‘art’ that anyone can reproduce, is much more in favour of the left hemisphere’s way of thinking - it’s more tangible.
The selfless love for beauty as opposed to lust or other desire that seeks to acquire something.
And what I mean is an escape from the bias, the leading of the left.
I’m probably ‘preaching to the choir’ here as many of you would have a more open and holistic perspective on things - else I’d be getting emails and comments alerting me to the fact that you do not.
Trust me, in early days, having a masters in composition, I’ve seen behind the curtain and can call out the bluff of so called artists. Many are just technicians posing as inspired artists.
Why look at art when we can look at beautiful nature? How can a painting of something compare to its real subject?