Enlightenment

The picture--"Primary Chaos" by C.S. Bauman

Labyrinthine associations in the mind . . . Reason? Insanity? Awareness? All? All that breathes, all that walks, all that becomes . . . Making sense . . . Sensing the moment, feeling as if destined to serve, to be . . . To be unique. A complete lack of understanding the systematic arrangement of order itself. Randomness of thoughts . . . Preferring one over the other . . . Actions . . . The next one, and the next one, as if the chain is linked to an unbounded space . . . A host of fortuitous molecules and random elements that form this matter . . . Is it like the haphazardly disposed accumulation of water droplets that form a cloud? No . . . No affinities . . . It is more complex . . . The knot is not being untied . . . Why can’t others see the variations? Perhaps those are not as scientific as the vacillation of a pendulum in a clock, or the billowing of a rock down a versant, or the crushing of surf on a cliff. They are not linear for them to see the horizon of this divide. The expected and the random . . . Anything that can possibly ever take place, will take place next . . . How random then are thoughts? Knowing the probability of any event, depending on what just happened. My mind is determined to possess a tenuous amount of rationality. Yet it won't. It is complete chaos . . .

Daintiness and Antipathy: Burke’s Sublime

All that ensues from one’s sentient relationship to the world, with the fashion reality inflicts the body on its centripetal surfaces—aesthetics is born. As a social phenomenon, this branch of axiology takes significant room in the Enlightenment. “Primary Chaos” by C. S. Bauman represents the beautiful and the sublime, which for Edmund Burke are bases of “pain and pleasure” (460). The constant state of interior change in this “chaotic” painting is uniform and universal. It gives rise to emotions such as pain, pleasure, terror, delight, joy, and grief. One’s social life, as well as imaginary thoughts are portrayed here. Burke is enchanted by what one feels when he sees the daintiness and antipathies for instance in this particular painting.

The aesthetic experience is limited to the few. The intricate ideas of “Primary Chaos” create turmoil in the mind which evokes the sublime in the viewer. It crushes one into venerating compliance, resembling a forceful as opposed to a consensual sovereignty: “The ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleasure” (Burke 459). Why does one feel more disturbed when looking at this painting than delighted? The sublime is correlating with venture, antagonism, and individualism. It is the armor that builds itself when confronted with danger. Nonetheless, the danger that is encountered ornately and vicariously is in the pleasurable realm of human comprehension that no harm will take place.

Work Cited

Burke, Edmund. “From A Philosophical Enquiry into theOrigin of Our Ideas of

the Sublime and Beautiful.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed,

Vincent B. Leitch. 2^nd ed. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New York, 2001. 454-

60. Print.

CRITICISM OF FORMALISM

"Butterflies" by Unknown Author

The Narrative:

Mere butterflies . . . Camouflaged in the man-made, squared and stony walls. A flight towards the artificial, the unnatural. By not simply standing on the wall, the butterflies indicate the non-harmonious relationship between them and the wall. Nature in its tiniest elements is endangered by the dominative blue shades of the wall which try to swallow the butterflies, vanquishing them in its cold pretense. Negative effects of man, his habitat and his attempt to bring the artificial with the organic create environmental catastrophes. Soft lines of the butterflies are in strict contrast with the sharp squares of the walls manifesting the same notion—the impossibility of the clash of their universes. The natural is always superior to the artificial. Is this to suggest that humans are unnatural? No. Human constructs are and so is the synthetic and bare effort of human intelligence to break any natural law.

"Papillon" by Salvador Dali

Just a note . . .

The author of the "Butterflies" painting recreated Dali's "Papillon" in a new light by using cooler colors as opposed to Dali's painting's warm shades. Dali's "Papillon" serves as a "foil" device in this essay, by shaping the interpretations of the "Butterflies" painting in criticizing formalism.

Art as Technique: Eccentric Notions?

Disregarding any instances of author’s life or historical period may seem ignorant, yet it empowers one to confront the work as a self-contained, independent unit. Is formalistic emphasis on the form of the work too imprecise? It is strictly going against empiricism, disregarding any sense experiences. For instance, the authors in this case have thought of butterflies. One may ask, what are the authors’ premises? Looking at the work from a formalist viewpoint, the question will vanish in the vacuum. However, insufficiencies generate for explications of fundamental questions of the work’s and its author’s reality and the reality of their comprehension.

Examining this particular painting, “Butterflies” by an unknown author, formalistically, one may distinguish two butterflies and square-colored walls. It is unknown whether the butterflies are physically standing on the wall or flying towards it. This is just an unlively observation which Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky in his Art as Technique may refer to as “algebraic” (1). Through perception, one sees art as just an untarnished entity of figures. Shklvosky talking about objects, notes that “we do not see them in their entirety but rather recognize them by their main characteristics” (1). The technique or form of this particular painting as a dynamic structuring principle is a fundamental question of artistic creation. Also, the systematic series of transformations are embedded with technical elements. Nonetheless, these technical elements by themselves do not elucidate the character of the artistic process. This operation is carried about by means of the artistic device, but cogitates far more than its prolific processes.

Only objects . . . No feelings, no emotions, and no intertwined thoughts about their histories. Mere butterflies and walls . . . This stupor or “defamiliarization” (2) as Shklovsky calls it, is not the central point in an artistic device; rather the significance lies in object’s complexity. This requires an abstract lens, discrete from the standpoint of the object of inquiry, more specifically, discrete from the self-apprehension of the prolific proceedings in art. One may conclude that there is the need of aesthetic experience. Shklovsky is faltering in his rigorous explanations of art as technique by generalizing his examples. For instance, in his expression “art exists . . . to make the stone stony” (2), Shklovsky neglects the role of emotion by pushing forward the unsteady notion of making the object more inanimate than it already is. The “stoniness” of a stone, used by Shklovsky as a general concept in his dissection of formalism, does not apply to any and every work of art. Does art in Shklovsky’s perception exist to make these butterflies more “butterfly-y” or the walls more “wally?” And does this “butterfly-yiness” or “walliness” consist in butterfly’s shape or wall’s stoniness? Or does the wall particularly act as an endpoint or purpose for the butterfly to fly towards or act as a resting point for it? In order to find answers to such questions in the frames of this painting, one should study the object as a part of a larger context, such as author’s viewpoints, emotions and not only observing the work as an independent creation.

The undisclosed author imitated Salvador Dali’s “Papillon” painting, in order to represent it through his/her perspective. Why did the author choose these particular shades and colorings as opposed to something else? If one is to view both paintings as a formalist, he will see the same butterflies—the same objects. However, these two paintings are very distinct considering the stories of their foundations behind their mere objectification. In examining the “Butterflies” painting, one may ask about the absence of shadows of the butterflies, as opposed to Dali’s butterflies in “Papillon.” Scrutinizing the latter only by its form is an absurd. Formalism, here, fails by completely neglecting Dali’s Freudian viewpoints on the painting and as Ignacio Javier Lopez suggests in his essay “Film, Freud, and Paranoia: Dali and the Representation of Male Desire in ‘An Andalusian Dog’” there are technically four butterflies representing his family, including the shadows (47). Again, formalism fails in the “Butterflies” painting by disregarding the author’s attempt to bring nature and the artificial together—the butterflies representing the former and the man-made lines and walls representing the latter. The absence of shadows from the “Butterflies” painting indicates that the two butterflies are not on the wall, but indeed they are far away from the wall; however, flying towards it. It, as mentioned above, is a mere attempt to bring the organic and the artificial together, but as seen in the painting , is yet to be accomplished; however, impossible at the moment.

Formalism views art as a technique void of emotions, going against all aesthetic notions of art representing something that is present which was not there before. Literally, the word “art” in Latin and Greek means “trade,” “know-how,” and “skillful transformation” (Gortais 1241). According to Shklovsky’s doctrine, a vision is created in viewing the object of the object itself, rather than attempting to find means of knowing the object (6). This is literally contradictory to the definition of art and theoretically seems like an eccentric notion. Formalism fails to note that art, in both paintings, is a mimesis itself in a form of an object or an event of a subjective reality by means of idioms that are perceptible not only to the senses, but to the whole transcendent realm.

Works Cited

Gortais, Bernard. “Abstraction and Art.” Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences

358.1453 (2003): 1241-49. Print.

Lopez, Ignacio Javier. “Film, Freud, and Paranoia: Dali and the Representation of Male

Desire in ‘An Andalusian Dog.’” Diacritics 31.2 (2001): 35-48. Print.

Shklovsky, Victor. “Art as Technique.” 15 July 2010

<http://vahidnab.defam.htm>. Web.