WHAT IS BEAUTY? Part 2 Of 2

THE THIRD COMPONENT: CONTERMPORARY RELEVANT TRUTH

I have already described the need for formal elegance, one that for whatever reasons of the rules of harmony, have an appeal to our senses. I also noted the biblical inclusion of the nature of the soul and how it can be described as possessing beauty. The third and deciding element for me is that for beauty to exist it must embody contemporary relevant truths.

The commercial photograph on the left may be handsome, but the emotional content of the photograph on the right, has a greater chance of making an emotional demand upon the viewer and is closer to representing truths that matter to us as fellow humans.

This is the crux of beauty; perhaps its very heart. If artists persistently explore life, if they continue to be curious, continue to taunt themselves with dreams and nightmares and are persistent in shouting ‘no’ to the powers that be, their explorations may grasp the great depth of the human soul and at the same time discover forms that can present that depth with all the subtlety with which truth needs to be revealed.

The reasons that we continue to appreciate Bach and Da Vinci after 400 to 500 years is that the formal elegance(appeal, satisfaction)of their work combined with their being able to truthfully address the big questions: why are we here, who are we, what is the meaning of human life, what is the nature of love, has kept their work alive for us.

A horseman works with his horse to drag felled trees from the forest without destroying the environment using heavy machinery, from THIS GOOD EARTH, my recently released film.

A LITTLE HISTORY

When we think of beauty, a confusion arises because much of what is called beauty in the Neoliberal culture, is either the delight we get from simple entertainment, often relying upon old formulas in the visual or performing arts which are uncritical, self-consumed expressions of the artist’s ability to craft objects and staged pieces that support the assumptions of the status quo.

At best these pieces rise to some inconsequential level of entertainment, and at worse they are relics of a dead culture, celebrated because they can be turned into commodities.

Today the world of art is suffering a malaise from being largely concerned with formal questions, thus disregarding content, which is seen by the status quo to be worrying to them; or it is preoccupied with the self-centred art-for-art-sake as if this were a precious condition manifested by lone geniuses; or it is preoccupied with providing objects for sale to the rich.

In the Middle Ages artists were owned and controlled by the trans-European church. Having pictures painted was the only medium the church had of spreading its supernatural message which was “You will be damned unless you follow the orders of the landlords, being subservient to their needs for labour and for armed struggle.” Thus the church needed to control the content that was produced and how it appeared – its form.

CONSISTENCY OF CLASS

This hampered creativity, imagination and the intellectual rights of artists to their own work. Sound familiar? It is not unlike how the Neoliberal establishment controls the production of art today, but with its message supporting their desire for people to identify with material consumption, fame and fortune, rather than anything remotely concerned with empathy, care and concern, freedom, justice and equality.

The Neoliberals control artistic production in two distinct ways. The first is, as the church, through controlling production via commissioning what benefits and supports their ideology. The second is to exclude from the museums, galleries, publishers, and the electronic media that which is produced outside of their commissioning practices which asks difficult questions.

This is why beauty is the enemy of the status quo. It brings consciousness and memory to people, reminding them of their humanity and their need for empathy. These things stir people to act, to oppose and to expose. Beauty is inextricably united to a shout for freedom from oppression. 

There is nothing held in common between the social relevance of beauty and its financial value. Somewhere between these two poles is propaganda: art as a conscious manifestation of the dominant ideological political line. But because we live in a society where a combination of restricting manners and political/financial control over employees, there are few critics within the system who will shout that “the emperor has no clothes”.

Another image is again from THIS GOOD EARTH. This, with the many other images tell a series of moving stories about the mendacious destruction of our earth via corporate farming.

BEAUTY CREATES DREAMS, DREAMS CREATE ASPIRATIONS, ASPIRATIONS DEMAND CHANGE

Beauty worth its name provides a critique, a way of looking at the world and discovering contemporary relevant truth, of picturing our alienation, of helping us to grasp what are the social arrangements that dominate us. Beauty provides a way of creating and sometimes focusing our dreams; beauty gives shape to what we are trying to grasp and often gives others a voice and always makes the invisible become visible. Beauty forces us to sigh or cry or hold our breaths or to expel expletives; it grasps our hearts and forces us to run our hands across our hearts or to embrace a loved one.

Bringing together satisfying form, the needs of the human psyche and the convergence of contemporary and relevant truth, is why I could not accept that images I made for commercial purposes could accommodate the meaning of beauty. How can an image meant to promote a branded game pie have any relevance to the questions we need to ask ourselves about existence?

But yes, my documentaries and some of my photojournalist, portraiture and still-life photographs could ask those questions.