Armchair Philosophy II – What Is Art?

Every artform is a reflection of another, and all art is a mirror which reflects not only ourselves and our lives but the experiences of all humanity.

To truly appreciate art we must understand its symbolic significance, its past and its present, its history and its future, its connection to ourselves and the world around us. Never does there exist only one layer of meaning. Nothing is what it seems. As Oscar Wilde once said, “All art is at once surface and symbol.” Nothing is by accident, and everything is one. “There are many philosophical systems – such as Taoism and Buddhism – which make no distinction between creator and creature. People no longer try to decipher the mystery of life, but choose instead to be part of it…The Spirit finally merges with the Material, and the two are united and transformed.” (from ‘The Witch of Portobello’ by Paulo Coelho)

In our society we are taught from birth to trust the logic and rationality of our conscious mind. But many of us exist without ever understanding that “completely new thoughts and creative ideas can also present themselves from the unconscious. They grow up from the dark depths of the mind like a lotus and form a most important part of the subliminal psyche.” According to Jung, we can unlock our unconscious through our dreams. “One cannot afford to be naïve in dealing with dreams. They originate in a spirit that is not quite human, but is rather a breath of nature – a spirit of the beautiful and generous as well as of the cruel goddess. If we want to characterize this spirit, we shall certainly get closer to it in the sphere of ancient mythologies, or the fables of the primeval forest, than in the consciousness of modern man. I am not denying that great gains have resulted from the evolution of civilized society. But these gains have been made at the price of enormous losses, whose extent we have scarcely begun to estimate.”

Many of us have lost touch with the ritual, the spiritual, the mystic, the sacred. Many of us have lost touch with emotion, experience, empathy and humanity. It is art which reminds us that we must once again embrace “the edge of certainty beyond which conscious knowledge cannot pass.”It reminds us to feel again, to lose ourselves in something which is both beyond reason and before reason – something both primeval and eternal in the same moment.

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