(May 21, 2022 at 9:44 pm)Macoleco Wrote: Completely agree with the part about the recognition of a social issue everyone knows about. It seems nowadays for a movie to be considered “artistic” and be displayed on the Cannes Festival it needs to be about a social issue. It feels shoehorned.
It occurs to me that social issue art may be the only way for an artist to be accepted in the official art world while aiming at -- or groping for -- the kind of transcendence which has nearly always been the point of great works.
Traditionally art has been about the ideal, or the real envisioned in a way which makes it timeless and non-contingent. This is obvious in Christian or Buddhist art. But any artist or movie maker who was openly sincere in his religion would be confined to a niche market these days. The Guardian wouldn't take him seriously. Yale wouldn't give him a degree.
Non-religious (or not obviously religious) artists like Chardin also achieve transcendence, by seeing the perishable world in a timeless way. Most people don't know that Van Gogh became an artist because he wanted to be a Christian pastor like his father, but the parishioners found him too intense. His art, it seems to me, is alive with a (Spinozist?) spirituality. But a Chardin or a Van Gogh wouldn't get an NEA grant these days -- they would be dismissed as old-fashioned and superficial.
To appear as serious and more than decorative, your heart has to be on your sleeve. While traditionally transcendence was achieved in other ways.
