Human Elevation

by phil on Thursday Apr 10, 2003 1:20 AM
art theory

Why must man seek to elevate himself. Poetry does this all the time, painting fantasms and ghosts about the great human condition. Sure, humanity is pretty great and wonderful, but reading about it does the opposite of elevation.

They tend to be along the lines of:
In the willowing wisps of silence
We discovered a terrifyingly powerful force
A binding nature of the highest kind
We found a unity of souls

BS alert, BS alert. Everytime I read stuff like this, I glaze over it quickly and instead dive into the subtext. All I feel is someone wishing that such and such experience were indeed magical. I tend to find poetry like this as a plug for the emotional void of avarice.

Now, if art were to bring man down to earth and expose him for the animal that he really is, wouldn't that truly have the effect of elevation? Or is being in a postion of lust and unrequited love the desirable postition--or is this just the common position of artists?

Now, when I talk about reducing man to size, I'm not talking painting some guy hunched over in a dark shadow, brooding over a kill. No, that too glorifies man. Man must be declared simply, as he is, without the froof, exactly as he is encountered by us everyday, normal, banal, and fun.