Apollo was a slayer of monsters. Dionysos was a victim of monsters. Both of those mythical figures are prototypes of the artist and the key to the understanding of the phenomenon of art. Dionysos's body dissolves itself and disintegrates at the gate of mystery while Apollo runs from the visit in the cave of monsters carrying trophies, dressed in the dead monster's skin.
Descending into chaos, risking and losing one's own individuality in the process and then emerging from the cave, gradually better self-collected with discernible features, coherent representations of chaos. Opposite to music starting out with mathematically precise notation, which loses itself in the passions of actual performance in time, the representative art, like painting, collects together the dissolute and uncontrollable flow of circumstances and generates a frozen image. The first gives life to the dead, while the second gives death to the live.
Culture puts those mutually contradicting forces into a glass jar. Culture uses the artifacts of their transfiguring struggle. Culture hangs skins of killed monsters around the house to domesticate mystery and horror. As a matter of fact culture is the social process of making the horrifying aspects of the mystery of existence suitable for common consumption. Culture is the collection of ideas and artifacts that make people feel at home in the world.
Artists are among the creators of culture, but really do not care about that honor. They are like hunters returning from the hunt, bringing home bodies of monsters they have killed. They don't decide how the trophies will be made and used. They get the glory while the monster's skin gets encased in a cultural artifact.
The reception of art can occur on the level of art or culture.
In the first case the recipient tends to approach the sensitivity
of the artist or poetically speaking take part in the monster hunt,
while the cultural recipient is interested so to speak in the
trafficking in the monsters trophies. Of course the second mode
dominates on the social scale where acculturated art help warm the
house built over the abyss.
The artist is seeking an assistant hunter in the art critic.
Someone who will be there staking out the beast's grounds,
observing its whereabouts and helping plan and design the action.
That assistant would also be a companion and friend, reaffirming
the hunter's interests and goals - a mirror of his soul. Ultimately
such a critic will be able to confront the beast at the side of the
artist sharing the experience of danger, terror, chaos and triumph.
A critic such a this comes very close to being the artist himself -
yet the artist will distinguish himself by having the supremely
intimate relationship with the beast, being the one whom the
monster beast picks as its enemy and in consequence its slayer or
victim. When the artist and his critic friend return back to the
human village they are met by the people led by the cultural
critic, who ascertain the spiritual utility of the hunt's trophy
for the warming of the human abode to reassure man that the battle
with the divine chaos is not yet decided, is ongoing and can be
won.
Surreal Tee © 2011