> contents / About the beauty in art / Henning
Mittendorf /
The opposing strives to unification, out of the different comes into
being the most beautiful harmony, and the conflict makes all happen this
way. … The men don't see that all what contradicts each other thus
comes in harmony with each other. … The hidden harmony is mightier
than the evident one.
Heraklit
If I might give you an advice, it will be more advantageous to you,
to search where beauty is, than to ask anxiously what it is. Once and
for all it is inexplicable.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe to Hetzler the younger
Art is not the practical application of a beauty's canon, but that
what instinct and brain can grasp beyond every canon.
Pablo Picasso
Beauty is not enough.
Advertising slogan from Alfa Romeo
(Man in the following means woman too.)
1 Etymological
The beautiful from the etymological point of view is the successful
shiny phenomenon, the graceful, good-looking, well-shaped, orderly
apparition that one handles carefully and gently, because it makes
oneself blissful.
2 Historical
During long periods of history the men have made out beauty as world
reality's concept of order. While doing so it is defined in another way
again and again. In prehistoric times it corresponds to the magic of
mythology. During the Ancient World and the Middle Ages it converts into
the sense of the autonomous perfect complementary objective cosmos or
rather divine world order. Its qualities of clarity, order, symmetry as
well as complementarity are divine and as such absolutely true, good and
beautiful. The man is able to perceive and to depict this totality and
its qualities. Originally aisthesis means perception as such, but in the
course of time the notion aesthetics increasingly narrows to the theory
of beauty only; aesthetics and ethics match each other. Since 1500 the
implementation grows of the sense of all-embracing subjectivity. So till
the Modern Age the divine absolute world order more and more is deprived
of its mystique by the subjective rational thinking, i.e. it is
relativized by the Enlightenment. The aesthetics is divided from the
ethics and put above it. And now since the beginning of the new paradigm
shift of the Post-modern Age the one-sided rational thinking loses its
magic. It is enlightened about itself as part of the self, i.e. the
human soul as a whole, wherein all functions, inclusive the irrational,
are working together on the perception of all the soul's experiences,
i.e. the cognitions. Besides the thinking is informed about the
reciprocal participation of the own self in all cognitions of the
fellow-men by most different forms of interconnection. The aesthetics
becomes again the theory of all event-orientated rating sensory
perceptions, irritating and causing cognitions, among that the beautiful
plays a special role. The connections of aesthetics and ethics are
thought over anew.
3 Real
Many things point to the fact that the laws and legalities of world
reality are neither behind the phenomena, nor within them, but that they
rather are within the spirit of the men, i.e. within the network of
their reciprocally participating in each other selfs and their
cognitions they are steadily constructing again. With that the whole
dynamics reverses. The men create by more or less conscious acts of self
organisation of their self's structure of order, i.e. of their structure
of perception and participation, themselves and all the other phenomena
of the inner and of the outer reality, including the relations between
them. They generate in respect to the current developing necessities
through at the same time distinction and assignment of meaning diverse
cognitions that they coordinate through participation with their
fellow-men, namely coming to an agreement by verbal communication or
non-verbal interaction. Out of the wickerwork of the self-determined
single relations comes into existence the all dominating prevailing
global system reacting on the individuals as well as on their relations
limiting their freedom from the holistic point of view. All phenomena of
the world's reality, inclusive the beauty, insofar in the end are merely
unstable pragmatic vague constructs of interconnected dynamic structures
of order of the individuals as places of creation of all reality, value
and sense. And as to the constructs is not important "what"
they are, but rather "how" they are used and work.
The self and its structure of order insofar are only organs of the
individual for survival, but not ones for understanding and knowledge.
4 Orderly
All the time the man's structure of order is searching with the whole
continuum from the subconscious to consciousness for stronger aesthetic
experiences, more irritating cognitions, i.e. for always better clearer
stimuli as well as more intensive more possible experiences of reality,
and wants to become stimulated insofar, to construct a life-serving
modell of reality and to guarantee his survival. If in the single case
something viable has been found, then there appears as reward a feeling
of satisfaction, of well-being as a touch of an aesthetic sensation. Its
roots reach to the animal kingdom.
The figure's quality of the human structure of order is decisive for the
perception of figures, i.e. man's capability, to be able to perceive,
identify, actively the whole figure by single formal and meaningful
qualities. Before the consciousness becomes active, at first above all
inherent subconscious laws and mechanisms of shaping play their
important roles, including preferences of perception, categorizations
and in particular schematisings. The basis of the latter is formed by
the archetypes, inherent keys of order, preshaped schemes of stimuli and
reactions, and their worlds of symbols interpreting reality. The keys of
order enable man to grasp forms and colours as well as other qualities -
if necessary by replenishment - as event of global shape and at the same
time to understand as well as to increase the qualities' detailed and
global value of expression. The archetypes belong to a sphere of their
own, as Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Gustav Jung speculate. And both think
that they answer, if they are impressed by the key's stimuli of a
transphenomenal event, through symbols of the common phenomenal world,
at the same time having an effect into two directions, namely on the
inside and outside, without belonging to one of both spheres. They are
emotional mediators between the phenomenal and the transphenomenal
world, with that expression of joined perceptions concerning the
belonging to it "other side of reality", of the whole, the
intact, the magic holy, of incomprehensible complete reality.
The painting vision of these inner images according to Wolfgang Pauli is
the preliminary stage of thinking. Here for the rest only that person is
talented for valuing symbolic shapes who understands the power of their
symbolic signs, for whom their lines, colours, expanses, figures etc.
have symbolic power; for the discovery, recognising and understanding of
the sensuous shape comes into existence only just, if the perceiving man
being provided with the fitting inner state and playing experimentally
with the materials meets the suitable symbols.
The archetype of symmetry and the one of complementarity have special
importance for the perception of figures. The human structure of order
reacts caused by the genes easily to symmetrical and regular figures,
yes it prefers them passionately, as they are nearly always living
things that can be food, prey, fellow species, mating partner, enemy or
of similar importance. The archetype of complementarity helps to
understand tensions and contradictions of world reality to belong to its
nature; it is of existential importance for the modern view of world's
unity. If one bases on the considerations of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl
Gustav Jung concerning the nature of the archetype, then one can say
that both are the basis of the principle of beauty being known to all
men. At the same time they stir up outer physical symmetry, beauty,
perfection, as well as inner mental symmetry, harmony, bliss, if they
are addressed. Further archetypes are decisive for leading ahead
detailed categorizations, like such for the recognition of men as child,
as woman, as man, of animals, plants, of enemies, friends etc. When
dealing with archetypes and symbols it can happen that one
"looks" through the prototypes to the dark side of reality and
recognizes that it is not rational deduction that produces the result,
but an event of the symbolic processing of the unconscious, so that one
is shocked. This is the spirit, the magic, the wonder of the network of
the soul's functions, i.e. of the surplus, that individually dreams,
constructs, primordially and always anew reality and sense on the mental
level almost out of nothing, i.e. within life experienced as
incomprehensibility and absurdity. At the same time, but secondary, the
structure of order considers and checks the perceived, if necessary or
wanted, on the basis of orders of knowledge and of thinking as well as
on the rules of the art of thinking; for the schemes of order are not
infallible, they create only models of the first impression. Thinking in
principle is necessary, but within the integrated system of all soul's
functions; man stands out because of it.
It is true that modern research confirms that always the unconscious
part of the structure of order decides that and what the individual is
doing, i.e. that all conscious imaginations, ideas, already are arranged
in a certain way, before they become conscious and one has the conscious
"illusion of the free will". But just this illusion possibly
is the decisive evolutive human achievement, from that one cannot go
backwards, but the future of that is open. For it insofar creates the
overview as well as the steering of the conduct, allows perhaps even its
manipulation in the longer run and contributes to the fact that world
"goes" as to man in a human way, i.e. that he - within the
bounds of possibility - can act freely and be a man in the narrower
sense.
5 Aesthetic
The striving of the structure of order to fulfil its needs to perceive
the good clear shape of reality by aesthetic means, above all through
keys of order, is subject to evolution and can be used except for the
own survival in a direct and one-sided way also - freeing itself from
the only biological - generally for free aesthetic purposes. For it is
true that man as all living beings is orientated to survival, but his
self organisation consisting of self-consciousness, verbal language,
social and theoretical symbolic intelligence as well as imagination,
consciousness of value and of time also changes the aim of his life, his
life's horizon. He asks and goes on transgressing the essential to
survival only, interprets the world as well as himself and creates an
own common sphere of life and reality: the culture - as a new form of
"heredity extending beyond the generations". In this
connection man acquires in addition to his inherent keys of order also
cultural and individual ones as expression of his striving for
uniqueness and definition of his communities or rather his own person.
For this, however, is used the repertoire of the older archetypal layers
of the soul and it is formed anew - furthered by human learning
disposition - in an unmistakable most varied and most inventive manner.
The world's horizon, the circle of possible experiences, is not sealed
because of his symbolic intelligence. Values and aims are coming into
the field of view that one cannot deduce from genetic disposition; they
free from the "struggle for life" and make possible the
orientation to an in individual and social respects ethical, i.e.
"good life". Aesthetic, eye-opening as well as ethical
experiences serve now - extending beyond the survival - the preservation
of the human technical world order, namely its biological and social
systems, inclusive the promotion of the single persons as place of all
creativity, a huge task in respect to the catastrophic situation of the
world. Evolution, however, has provided man bio-genetically with no
ethics or rather morals; for him there remains only the social-political
way, to develop and to impose such a responsibility.
6 Cultural and artistic
If philosophy according to Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel "records
its time by thoughts", then art belonging to culture, above all the
fine arts, makes sensorial, vivid, for instance visible, its time. Art
is that part of the social discourse, wherein the artists take part
directly or indirectly in the reality's construction by their artistic
shapes as visual aesthetical media offers; sometimes it can become in a
certain way philosophy and basic research through aesthetical means.
Here even little events of art can achieve big effects, if the system is
unstable, according to the theory of chaos. Every artistic creation as
process and as product is participation art, namely dynamic
event-orientated perception of shape by creation of shape. Today
artistic work doesn't present itself any more as something finished,
final, that one can only ascribe distinctively to a single author, but a
common plastic process-like artistic conduct, namely one not only of
artists, but of them and of the audience together. Concepts of art are
concepts of life, i.e. pragmatic design for living together. Every
single artistic work is only a phase in the multi-polar endless-open
network of art having an effect in all directions, self organizing
multi-dimensionally, varied, being a realisation of life as art from one
kind to a new one that necessary is different and insofar can become
explained historically.
The nature, the actual artistic, of every artistic shape is in its magic
subjective uniqueness freed from the one-sided biological, i.e. it is in
the way how it fulfils its aesthetic function, task, to express reality
in a sensorial way. Insofar it is a complementary, namely at the same
time an aesthetic-individual and an aesthetic-social construct organized
by the artist. The artistic conduct has an effect on the structure of
order of man, to stimulate all sensory perceptions, forms of irritation,
feelings and other cognitions, pushing themselves forward for experience
and expansion and to set in motion as well as to stage aesthetical
processes, among them in fine arts such of visible kind. The artistic
shape here especially responds to inherent and to acquired keys of order
causing as schemes of interpretation and preferences of perception
automatically in a magic way at the same time the procurement of
content, i.e. form and meaning, and the desire for an emotional increase
of experience. As an individual and an social construct the artistic
work is at the same time subjective and intersubjective, unique and
comparable, headstrong and coordinated, independent and dependent. The
extraordinary artistic shape has by its aesthetic automatically
stimulating uniqueness two effects. On the one hand it questions, yes
shakens, the conventional models of phenomenal reality and reveals the
vagueness of transphenomenal reality lying behind it. And on the other
hand it challenges imagination as well as creativity so long, until new
viable models of phenomenal reality are found helping to overwhelm or
rather endure the vagueness of world better. Some times in this
connection it can happen that the original intention of the artist
during the creation unconsciously or consciously becomes independent as
a truth of art of its own up to indecipherability. Art has the chance to
loosen constraints of thinking, to show shapes and contents in a new
light, to change previous knowledge as well as expectations of the men
and to contribute to an expanded perception - also in the sense of
understanding. First-rate aesthetic-artistic events draw all attention
inevitably to themselves and to their unique qualities, i.e. to
themselves as very special dynamic media offers that have to be
"read" in a new way, so that there is little space for a
direct reference to an outside from themselves lying content.
The particular community can assign to the art besides its
"inherent" above mentioned aesthetic function further
up-to-date functions. The new paradigm shift of the Post-modern Age
insofar gives every artistic work of today as participation art the
task, to take part - through its aesthetics - directly or indirectly in
the realization of life, of the life-serving action's community of
nature and culture as poor in violence self organization, i.e. as
organic peace order - without the emotionalism of necessity. In question
is, to convince people by all conduct, i.e. by all thinking and acting,
to consent to their survival - within the whole. In the light auf
"enlightened rationality" there is at stake, to enlighten
sensorially to the men the disaster of their self-destruction by due to
their own fault self-accelerating physical and mental destruction of all
life and the extinction of the memory of themselves as well as to show
them what danger and what loss is involved with that for them. One has
to bring signals of life-serving peace into the discourse, i.e. -
according to the prevailing context - signs and symbols of freedom and
tension or such of order and balance.
The specific artistic work gains its sense, like all human behaviours,
solely by its actual effects within the more complex self organising
system.
Artistic work all in all is a medium by that man is able to use his
sensuality, emotionality as well as his intellect in an optimal way, to
stimulate as well as to activate them during a "serious play"
and by that he causes a sensorial enlightening experience corresponding
to the notional understanding, i.e. a "pleasure" of aesthetic
nature that equals, yes partly exceeds the notional one.
7 Aesthetic, ethical and beautiful
Since the opinion's implementation of the common construction of the
human technical world order by all single men, the assessment of
artistic creation as participation art has become a problem. Question
is, if it is possible at all, to judge artistic work by general rules
(7.1), what is the relation between the aesthetic and the ethical
(7.2)
as well as what role plays the beautiful in the scope of the aesthetic,
in particular in art (7.3). Here the valuation of the artistic work in
the single case has to include the strained relationship between
intention, imagination and realization, including the structures and
mastery of the materials.
7.1 At all times the possibility is seen as positive, to judge
artistic work by general rules. But there are made, however, different
suggestions of valuation's methods, namely such being based more on
quantitative measurements or more on qualitative appraisals. Today in
the scope of the information's theory new proposals are made for
quantitative valuation. Herbert W. Franke has noticed that offers of
stimuli evoke pleasure and satisfaction, if they have a recognition's
proportion of 16 bit/s, so that they are adapted to the processing
mechanisms of the human brain in an optimal way. According to a proposal
of Helmar Frank, the founder of the information's aesthetics, the
beauty
of an artistic work shows itself as relation of the degree concerning
complexity, order, to information's content, i.e. to the possibilities
of distinction and of selection: B = O : I. The more symmetrical and
complex the order of an artistic creation is with it reaching a higher
information's content, the more beautiful it is. And the theorists of
chaos think that beauty is defined by the number of
"attractors", i.e. of points attracting other points and
making effective a shape.
Klaus Mainzer thinks that there possibly exist new frames of theory
within the mathematical structures' theory in connection with geometry
of the fractal, the mathematical theory of the catastrophes and with the
groups' and set theory, that reveal within the seeming chaotic variety
of non-linear systems from the sub-atomic sphere up to the one of
artificial intelligence surprising self-similar symmetries. They show a
flowing transition between regular and chaotic zones that is relative in
respect to the position of the perceiving person.
Attempts, to define beauty by quantitative measuring, however, prove
themselves a fallacy, like all such efforts since the Ancient World,
because they proceed on the assumption that the human brain functions
like a passive system of decoding news, i.e. that it processes the mass
of informations uniformly without regard to their message and to their
importance. But this is not the case. The sequences of letters
"hrza" and "Haus", i.e. the German word for house,
for instance have the same quantity of informations, but nevertheless
they are distinguished by the perceiving person in the decisive way
according to comprehensibility in the sense of meaning, as Christa
Sütterlin emphasizes. The general evaluation of artistic work on the
basis of universal patterns of meaning is the same as the investigation,
if and how it fulfils the above mentioned tasks which are its
responsibility, i.e. at the same time the aesthetic function as well as
with it any other tasks that the community imposes on the art according
to the zeitgeist. The aesthetic quality of the artistic work cannot
become valued consciously according to universal legalities, for its
uniqueness as automatic event's quality, by that the artist expresses
himself very personally in a direct guessing, emotional and sensitive
way using all kinds of keys of order, has its roots within the
unconscious dealing with the prevailing underlying stimuli activating
transphenomenal event. And both, the transphenomenal event as well as
the unconscious, evade the consciousness. Merely subjective unconscious
experience can help restrictedly in the valuation of this side of the
artistic work. The fulfilment of any other functions of the artistic
work that concerns the more or less conscious handling of the aesthetic
uniqueness, in particular its social integration, its social relations
and evaluations - inclusive that in the scope of orders of thinking - in
contrast can become reviewed to a certain degree. Today's task is - as
mentioned - above all the participation in the realization of life, in
particular of human life, within the action's community of nature and
culture. Thus artistic work primary is a social context-orientated
problem and only secondary an individual one.
7.2 The notion of participation art corresponding to the new
paradigmshift reverses the previous way, to reach ethics coming from the
art, like from the aesthetics of the fine arts: Artistic work has to
become harmonized with life, the good life, and not life with art. It is
neither possible, to reduce all questions of justice to questions of
well-organized striving for happiness, nor the latter can provide a
sufficient analysis for a good life. The men judge from the point of
view of the individual ethics, if values and norms for the single person
are lucrative easily "for the sake of their own", are
convenient. And they deal with them from the perspective of the bound to
rules, i.e. normative, social ethics, if they match a humane society,
i.e. if they are just with regard to all. The aesthetic conduct, i.e.
the striving for subjective pleasant sensation as well as for individual
bliss, however, neither is able, to provide a sufficient analysis of
good life, nor it can solve all questions of justice. The aesthetics
with that never can be an example for, nor a clean part of the ethics.
One rather has to ask for the value of aesthetic practice, of its
effects, within the whole. Aesthetic practice on the one hand is an
intensification of existence that opens possibilities of a presence
steered by the senses and becoming conscious of them as participation in
the reality's construction. This intensification, however, on the other
hand at the same time encloses a - more or less - radical distancing:
Aesthetic practice refrains in different kind, namely from functional
conduct as well as from sense handed down. It goes through a variety of
attitudes towards vivid world reality, namely of participation and of
distance, for the sake of the by this opening leeway. Artistic-aesthetic
autonomy insofar means different point of views in respect to the same
or similar phenomena. The aesthetics becomes as mundane conscious
handling of the perception's keys of order, that doesn't any longer
glorify and transfigure life's reality, but rather penetrates, questions
and shakes it, an internal corrective of the ethics, a constructive part
of a "widely understood ethics". It insofar has to be
perceptible as a differentiating part of an own kind. Otherwise both,
the ethics and the aesthetics, will be destroyed in this compound.
The relationship of the ethics with the aesthetics is complementary,
namely at the same time positive and negative: It is positive, as the
aesthetic has to be ethical in a vague extensive way in the end, namely
a conduct that is good for the man. It is negative, because the
aesthetic under no circumstances is allowed to be ethical in a congruent
way, so that the demand is not valid for it, to be responsible in the
narrow exact sense of the conventions. The ethical good of the aesthetic
is not the ethical in the narrow sense ethical, i.e. the conventional
responsible. It doesn't aim at giving the traditional ethical values a
new aesthetic shape, but it intends, to procure freedom from the binding
conventional ethical values. The good of the aesthetic only is in this
difference, i.e. in the negative freedom of the aesthetic towards the
merely traditional good.
The critics are right, if they point to the dangers, that threaten the
ethical order of responsibility on account of the unfolding of the
artistic creativity within this freedom. But they are wrong, if they
think that the acceptance or rejection of this aesthetic freedom only
depends on a decision. For there isn't possible a decision between
ethical responsibility and aesthetic "irresponsibility", as in
the scope of the whole only together the ethical attitude of
responsibility and the aesthetical one of distance and play make up
human freedom. Its task doesn't aim finally and functionally to the
ethical responsibility, but it is creative within the frame of the
growing self organisation, i.e. it is borders transgressing and
expanding, with it throwing off conventional chains. Insofar it aims at
a brighter more extensive point of view, not least to give man a
suitable life-serving relation to the ethical responsibility. All
growing happens at borders.
The aesthetics always embodies the true too, because it stems from the
deep broad sensitivity and introspection of the artist, yes, of the man,
from the spectrum of all his soul's functions and soul's experiences, in
particular also of the keys of order, and their mechanisms, forcing him
to creation. It is a special capability of perception as to reality, an
"objectivity of the subjective, a rationality of the irrational,
said more exactly a reason of an emotion, wherein something subjective
shows itself, precisely in its subjectivity, as objective, as insight,
understanding", as Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker expresses
himself. The aesthetic breaks into pieces the appearance of objective
truth as well as the claim to absoluteness that conventional ethics
claims for itself without alternative from the inside of its system.
Only by the aesthetic freedom man gains a perspective on the
ethical
attitude within the scope of life's self organisation, wherein it still
appears to be one perspective among others. The man needs the aesthetic
freedom from the ethical attitude, i.e. the possibility to be able to
stand outside it, namely as leeway, freedom, for the incomprehensible
life, for the spontaneous magic events of the self organizing reality,
inclusive for such ones of artistic and scientific kind, and to hinder
in this way his isolation from creativity. "Finally it therefore is
another conduct in the ethical world that is gained by the
aesthetically
opened other relationship to the ethical world", Christoph Menke
summarizes.
This freedom of the aesthetic towards the ethical restriction is at the
same time risk as well as chance: It is the danger of insensitive
indifference towards the ethical-political responsibility and the
favourable possibility, to transgress and to expand this responsibility
coming from a richer point of view, but with that not to cross the
border to dangerous chaotic freedom, to chaos. Therefore only that
person is able to seize the opportunity of the aesthetic freedom who
neither denies its risk, nor avoids it. Only then reality and life
happen in the scope of the double-strategy of freedom in order. The
actual width of this freedom depends on, how liberal the organisation of
the prevailing community really is.
7.3 The question about the role of the beautiful within
aesthetics,
namely in special within art, is the one about its prevailing effect and
meaning. The archetypes of symmetry and complementarity have - as
already mentioned - an existential importance for the survival of the
men that will lead to responding very strongly to symmetrical and
complementary phenomena. And as the roots of beauty reach in the
collective unconscious, therefore it is an archaic concept being tough
from the temporal point of view as well as generally accessible and with
that in principle well suited to be also the basis of culture and
art,
today expressing in particular in their borders crossing varieties.
Probably such phenomena are valued as beautiful that come as to their
importance and sense nearest to the prototype, ideal, of beauty stored
in the brains, whether they face it within supra-cultural, in cultural
and respective or whether in individual shapings. The aesthetic in the
sense of symmetry and complementarity on the whole develops into
beauty
as Ideal and reflection of a good life and of all-embracing perfect
order - in freedom, as reflection of life-serving self organisation. By
the beauty of an event, above all of an artistic work, is perceived
joined with it as well at the same time, as Carl Friedrich von
Weizsäcker says: "the mysterious reality of the beautiful",
the sense of beauty. And he continues: "Beauty is a joined
perception of the essential to life, but indirectly, without the
emotionalism of necessity". It is among all aesthetic states of
irritation a special experience, namely the experience of the reflection
of the true and good of the aesthetic being the ideal of the prevailing
greater and richer within the creative whole, of the ethical in the
wider sense in respect to the single case.
The artist as well as - by understanding - the recipient using the
aesthetic perceptions causing artistic work steadily search for
experiences being good for the individual from the point of view of the
individual ethics. The unique irritating aesthetic shape is used, to
symbolize the existential relationship between the world and man in an
event-orientated and up-to-date way, i.e. at the same time to encode the
event and - as far as possible - to provide the key for the decoding.
Here always is at stake too the individual sensorial joined perception
of a concept of order concerning world reality, inclusive the own self
each time, to gain an exemplary orientation for the living together of
the creatures, and even also the insight that there doesn't exist anyone
from the beginning. They search for a lasting and reliable sense
assigning to them a firm place within world reality where they can
develop by their living self-confidence, love of life and drive, swing,
power of judgement as well as power of solving problems and can unfold
an optimal life-serving participation in reality, in reality
construction. The sense for beauty is inherent in man and it occurs
always suddenly and unconsciously. The human spirit blows where, when
and how it will, in all areas of life, like for instance in the spheres
of art and of science. If one follows the opinion of Wolfgang Pauli and
Carl Gustav Jung, then incomprehensible transphenomenal events irritate
the archetypes of symmetry and of complementarity that at the same time
produce outer physical symmetry, beauty, perfection, as well as inner
mental symmetry, harmony, bliss. If according to this opinion in the
single case the suitable unique artistic work appears to a perceiving
man with an appropriate mood and stimulates within him the archetypes of
symmetry and complementarity waiting for experience, then within himself
get sorted out subjectively, spontaneously and directly the sensory
impressions of the artistic work being collected by the senses forming a
bright and clear sensory symbolic beauty, namely an outer symmetrical
complementarity and an inner tensional harmony. Then in the given case
exists for the perceiving man a beautiful artistic creation standing as
well for the perception of the essential for life in the wider sense,
regardless of whether the event forming the basis of the artistic work
actually takes into consideration the essential.
If the beautiful art work fulfils its promise, the community judges,
i.e. men value the creation from the point of view of the social ethics.
From its point of view the beauty of an artistic work consists in the
fact, that and so long it succeeds to attract attention by its aesthetic
uniqueness within the common self organising living together as well as
discourse and to have - orientated at an event - an ethical effect,
namely - as said above - in the wider sense. Above all it is about that
the artistic work as aesthetic medium offer and regulation's tool
fulfils also its functions assigned to it by the zeitgeist and produces
- if necessary - life-serving processes in the perceiving person and
within the community. It shall not impose an ideology, attest a not
binding aesthetisation of the world, express senseless curiosities or it
shall not serve the laziness of the perceiving person. Carl Friedrich
von Weizsäcker writes: "It (the beautiful) redeems from the
blindness of the notion, but it is not allowed to play it off against
the reason that learns to see by it. The deep rift between ethics and
aesthetics shall not be reconciled. … Still during the festival we
shall be accompanied by the awareness that the subject is: Bread for the
world. Still when being working on the bread the painful bliss of a
melody shall be with us."
The inner measurement's system of beauty of a person as well as that
of a community changes gradually by the received impressions and through
the made experiences. Also here the way leads from the more simple to
the more complicated. Commitments of the aesthetic, in particular also
of art, to an ideal of beauty according to any systems of rules, like
traditional instructions of symmetry and complementarity, are always
problematic, yes, wrong, as man's structure of order - as already
mentioned above - includes a fullness of sensory perceptions and kinds
of irritations striving to experience and extension that want to become
stimulated, activated and crossed, i.e. intensified and widened - for
life's sake. One rather has as to the aesthetic in principle to start
from the broad spectrum of all unconscious soul's experiences and keys
of order of man that together with the consciousness altogether play
their roles in the growing of life and creation through perception. The
horizon of perception will - granting more freedom - become expanded. As
to the aesthetics, inclusive the beauty of art, is meant the above
mentioned freedom from the binding conventional ethic values. Within its
frame artistic work can reach through all phenomena distorting or
covering up reality. It can contain the information of the breaking into
of unruly natural powers in a very shrill way and up to the denial of
the being, i.e. of powers existing side by side and possibly expressing
themselves in the artistic work by a very own bulky language's character
not being subject to a reconciling design.
The double-strategy of self organisation being valid for the world
reality and for all of its systems has to form as decisive significant
strategy of symmetry and complementarity the basis of today's beauty,
however bizarre it may be in the single case, i.e. the dynamic strategy
of freedom in order, namely that of variety and richness in unity and
balance. This active model serves the perceiving person as pattern of
discerning and of orientation, all soul's functions as means of order
and of understanding, the acting, inclusive the participating, as
principle of usefulness as well as of designing and it serves the whole
as main thread for perfection, be it as expression of absolute power, as
depiction of mental harmony, as a symbol of divine omnipresence and
omnipotence up to the symbol for emptiness with regard to content. The
beauty of art is the reflection of the action's and creation's community
of nature and technical culture as organic peace order by self
organization.
Every "egoistical" process of independence by single
tendencies means an inappropriate behaviour disturbing the mechanisms of
the self organisation, as above all for instance man's striving of
dominance over nature. Every order as end in itself produces stiffness.
Klaus Mainzer insofar writes for example: "The idea that
symmetrical structures are of absolute evenness and of cold regularity
and with that fascinating, but also unnatural and having an effect being
hostile to life, possibly is a very old intuition of men." And:
"The attraction that the beauty of really living women is holding
for us isn't based only on the fact that they are out of flesh and
blood. Also here the little differences and breakings of symmetry
opposite to the idealizing expectations of proportion play a not
considerable role. The boredom coming from the 'ideal' measures of some
modern 'beauty queens' as well as 'pin-up girls' may be a proof of that.
Only breakings of symmetry create individuality and, if one likes so,
'personality'. This attraction of the exceptional, however, is felt
within reality only, because it is related to general proportions."
One-sided egoistic freedom is manipulation, arbitrariness and leads to
chaos, to chaotic immoral "freedom". Insofar should be pointed
out that fascism and communism abused the aesthetic. Artistic freedom
for the rest enable tendencies to reverse, where Hans Sedlmayr points
to: "It is easy, however, for one to overlook that here and there
out of non-art and anti-art comes into being art contrary to their
programmes - perhaps an 'absurd', a 'magical', a 'black' art, but yet
art. This flaring up of art out of its ashes is a fascinating spectacle
…"
Here still has to be made the note that every beautiful shape always
only can become experienced where differences, breakings of the system,
have already occurred. It is itself expression of incomplete symmetry
and complementarity and has in a certain kind an "ugly" side
too. But it can stay combined or rather combine anew with in principle
equal in rank differing partial systems by balancing out and reciprocal
stabilizing. With that it happens that it is subject to the rules of the
essential for life not only as to the own system, but also concerning
the ones of the "higher", i.e. of the more complex, richer,
common System. The principle of beauty and perfection of the world
reality's self organisation subjects all existing conduct, inclusive the
- perceived superficially - ugly one in the interest of the growing
whole to a claim of harmony and causes all to head for the
"successful shape", always anew. And all conduct, the breaking
too, of every selforganisation, inclusive the world, only is
understandable before this background, before the ideal of symmetry and
complementarity, i.e. of beauty.
Today succeeding actual beauty in reality is the self-generating and
self-maintaining self organisation of world reality. Within the beauty
of world reality symmetry, chaos and evolution are related to each other
and form an unity: All is interconnected with all and the chaos is not
absolute, but only relative, just in respect to the position of the
perceiving person. If one takes the viable position, applies the fitting
sight, then there is always dynamic symmetry within the fractal, the
breakings, the chaos, the grey of the future and within the little
things of the ordinary weekday.
And successful artistic beauty is its reflection by that it points to
these connections. Sometimes the post-modern artist succeeds in creating
a shaking expression precisely matching the actual zeitgeist: the
nothingness or all that what man is going to lose through his
irresponsible conduct today. It is artistic beauty as shining, better:
irritating, form and formula borne out of the essential for life -
without the emotionalism of necessity, of the direct handed down
responsibility. Human spirit becoming the fitting form, shape, is
mastering the incomprehensible actual reality and becoming mastered
existence itself - as construct. Artistic work then becomes the joint
perception as well as the ideal of the sensorial worth to be looked at
expression of deep knowledge teaching amazement, admiration, awe, love
and ordering protection and maintenance as to the vulnerable life,
always anew.
8 Enigmatic
This sight of the things is actual in a time in which many men are
sceptical in respect to technical efforts, in particular to the use of
electronic media, in which the faith in the beauty vanishes and the fear
of chaos as well as of stiffness grows. In the end again should be
pointed out that the beautiful artistic work doesn't solve the enigma of
beauty what has no importance. Decisive is rather that the artistic work
opens doors into the world and into life, although without knowing
absolute rules of conduct, inclusive such concerning the making of art.
The artist only can steadily ask new questions, find out new doors and
point to them (HeMi13.08.03/4E).
Reproduction of this text - complete or in parts - is allowed
provided that the text is not changed, source is mentioned and a copy of
the writing, publication etc., where the text or the extraction of it is
included in, is sent to:
HeMi / Postfach 500365 / D-60393 Frankfurt am
Main / Germany