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Art does not Exist

 
Image result for art gallery



 c.                                                 Art Doesn’t Exist

              Short story by Peter Cheevers published by Ether books 2016

I arrive at Victoria station and leg it down Platform 5 and there is Martin standing there, all 6 foot 3 of him, in his studiedly casual attire and that shoulder bag; the ever present badge of bien pensant media types replete no doubt with Martin’s ideological baggage..  

“Get a tube or walk?” I say to Martin.
“What pay a fiver for one stop, on an overcrowded third world Tube, no sirree.”
 “Did you hear him?” enquires Martin, our beloved Mayor boning on about what our fear of immigrants is? It is our fear of the ‘other’ he claims.”
“So what do you make of that?”
“He has been reading too much bloody Edward Said if you ask me, sounding off like a besotted undergrad’ clutching his first book on French theory.”
“Right, right.”  This is going to be a good day, I think, as I do a skip and a hop to keep up with the giant striding Martin. Now I quicken my step to a half run as Martin fairly goose steps past the beggars outside McDonalds. There they are sitting on the pavements huddling under filthy blankets, some of them accompanied by trembling mongrels. I stop when one of them calls out as he sees me hurrying alongside Martin.
 “Go on my son.” An indigenous beggar!
“Just a moment, Martin.” I stop for a breather and to give the old boy some change.
 “Told him to get something hot.”                                                                                                 “Yes, I heard and in your best droit de seigneur voice too.”
“Amazing that Orwell lived like that as a tramp,” I offer trying to slow him down.
“Yes in Paris and in London, I don’t get it, he obviously believed in that artistically obdurate way that there was something emancipatory about extreme experience.”
“Well wasn’t there...I mean his books, Down and Out in Paris and...?”
“But that is what killed him...so if you believe death to be emancipatory then...”
I am silenced by Martins’s erudition as I hurry after him trying to keep in his jet stream and take a backward glance at the beggars by McDonalds alongside the very imposing Westminster Cathedral which induces me to think of that mystery of mysteries, God.
“Who was it who talked of God as a mystery?”
The mobile library ahead of me calls back “That was Bunuel ‘Why should we accept a mystery as the explanation of a mystery.’”
 Daddy Long Legs like he strides on.
“Talking of mysteries... this project of yours...?”  I call to the rear of giant frame.
“Best if we talk about it after the Lecture.”

We reach Trafalgar Square rejuvenated by the walk make our way into the Lecture Theatre. It is well populated with I presume freelance types like me up from the shires with a special interest in the consolations of art. I note how some homeless looking people have bagged the seats nearest the radiators. After a while an elderly man enters and starts talking.                  
“Good morning to you all and thank you for attending. As you all probably know this is going to be a talk on Rubens and Poussin. It goes without saying that in matters of taste, there is always room for disagreement. So if you feel like speaking just raise your hand. Now I will begin by saying that artists have argued about art since the earliest times; prehistoric painters most probably debated the advisability of including human figures amongst the animals on the walls of their caves.”
The Lecturer continues with expansive hand movements. “However, the longest and most divisive art controversies took place in France during the mid-1800s. The two camps were called the Poussinistes and the Rubenistes after their titular idols, Nicholas Poussin and Peter Paul Rubens.” 
“I’m going to enjoy this,” Martin whispers in a threatening way.
“Now don’t start.”
I raise my eyes to look up at the splendid ceiling then look along the aisle to see one of the destitute looking types wrap his arms around a radiator as if he intends to prise it off the wall, then try to attend to the Lecturer words,
“...and this disagreement is no more evident than in the ‘Poussenist’ versus the ‘Rubenists’.”
 “And the real disagreement is whether art actually exists!”
Martin, pitches in to me,

I think of Orwell living with those types as another attendant appears along the aisle and begins remonstrating with a down and out who appears to be handcuffed to the radiator. It is not going well for now both attendants are endeavouring to prise the homeless looking man’s hands off the radiator. I feel sympathy for this poor Lecturer as all audience attention is diverted to the narrative in the aisle. The homeless type reluctantly relents and let’s go of the radiator.
“The Poussinistes proclaimed the primacy of drawing and draughtsmanship in painting while the Rubenistes argued that colour should rule the day. The Poussinistes followed the well-worn path of classical art from Greek and Roman antiquities up through the Renaissance. The Rubenistes adored the vibrant colours and aggressive brushstrokes of the more recent Baroque artists.”
God, I feel wiped out, trying to keep up with Martin, has done me in.
“Actually, Poussin and Rubens themselves had little or nothing to do with the controversy. The real protagonists were Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Eugène Delacroix, pronounced Dela-qua.” 
Dela aquaah...my head is lolling forward, I jerk it upright.
“Ingres had been a student of the outstanding classical master-painter Jacques-Louis David, pronounced Da-veed...”
My head lolls forward again. |I am asleep, pronounced a sle ep and dreaming of the city of Rouen pronounced  'Roo  on'... “What, where am I....?”
“You dozed off”, Martin reprimands loftily assures me. I sit bolt upright as if tasered.
“The fact is neither side was entirely right or entirely wrong. Given the state of art, and painting in particular, in the 1800s, both sides needed each other...”

I reach for my bottle of water and look for that continuing narrative in the aisle. I see that the down and outer’s hands have been prised from the radiator and he now sits with his back resting against it with his legs defiantly stretched out across the aisle.
“The theories of hemispheric domination were, of course, unknown at the time, but the matter essentially came down to a left-brain/right-brain approach to painting...”
“Oh no, not that old chestnut left brain, right brain,” I hear Martin groan beside me.
“Shsh Martin.”
In the aisle a person leaving trips over the outstretched legs of the homeless one. Giggles are heard as the man goes arse over tip onto the carpet.
“Now are there any questions...comments? Raise your hand.”
I knew this would happen, the person beside me, you guessed, Martin, is giving the Lecturer his two penny worth.
“If I can just say...”
“Go ahead.” Yes, go on, Martin.
“Apart from the Poussenists and the Rubens adherents a more divisive controversy about art is between art aficionados and those who just don’t believe that art actually exists?”
“And what school are you of, sir?”
“I am of the school that questions arts’ existence.”
“Oh, you do,”
“Yes,  I believe we have naïvely realistic assumptions about works of art.”
“Yes, well, could you expand on that?”
“I mean that we fall into a kind of transcendental realism when we look at words of art. For looking at art works is a subjective experience like taste.”
 For God’s sake Martin, getting a little bit embarrassing this.
“So Art is a conspiracy, we are being hoodwinked when we look at a Rembrandt?”
“I didn’t say that, but now that you mention it.”
“Thank you sir, if I might continue. The left side of the brain being the analytical side, demanded careful drawing, adherence to scientific rules, even in matters of aesthetics and colour theory and the right side of the brain... being the visual and emotional hemisphere, tended toward an instinctive approach both in drawing, and especially in colour use.”
More people are leaving. I feel sorry for the Lecturer, but have sympathy for those who have the bottle to leg it.
“...today, not all that much has changed of course. The only difference is the names - the Rockwellians and the Pollockers perhaps.  Yes, that gentleman in the third row has his hand raised, again.
 “As I was saying, I would argue that art works are works of fiction.”
“And how can that be, sir?”
“Because they are dependent upon the perception and imagination of the observer.” 
“Not sure I, or the rest of the people here, quite understand that. Do we?” he appeals to audience. There is a swell of a ‘no’ from the audience that smack of an angry lynch mob.
“Well, I will explain if I may?”
“Please,” and the Lecturer proffers an inviting hand. I inwardly groan.
 “Although artists, critics, and you art lovers are likely to think such a claim is absurd we have to attribute so called existence of art to other modes of being. Because they are observer
relative.”
Martin leans forward, he has got hold of the polemical bone so revered by auto-didacts. I note the destitute  types spotted around the aisles, seem to be paying attention to what is beginning to sound like an argy bargy, for there is the odd one or two put a sock in it type murmurs coming from the audience.
“No, let the gentleman continue, let’s hear what he has to say,” the Lecturer chides magnanimously. “You were saying about art having to be another mode of existence, were you?”
“Well thank you for allowing me to continue. Yes, well, as you look at a piece of art it is a contemplative and for some aesthetic experience neither of which constitute existence. Works of art are the product of the imagination; the existence or reality of a completed work of art continues to depend on the make-believe or imaginative activity of the artist or some other subject, such as the observer or reader who conjectures the work as a work of art.”
“But where does this lead, isn’t this all a bit higgledy-piggledy?”
There are hoots of defensive laughter from the audience to this repost, after all Martin, is a challenge to their belief systems, I mean, if you didn’t have art, what then?
“You say higgledy-piggledy,” more laughter, “...and you may very well be discombobulated by all this, but may I explain?”
Oh for God’s sake, big words.
“Please do. Please,” and the Lecturer raises a hand to quiet the audience.
  “What we undergo as we look at art works is a kind of ‘conscious self-deception’ and this conscious self-deception is necessary to both the creation and appreciation of art. So our commerce with art is a kind of lucid illusion.”
“And so what thne your view on the beauty of art.”
“Beauty comes about through it irreducability. It is not a thing that exists.”
I notice a few restless movements in the seats; no wonder, for this man is trying to deny us our monthly day out to the Royal Academy, or wherever, to have lunch and see that exhibition. But there is no stopping Martin.
 “If we applied more self-reflexive awareness we would realise that something is being imagined when looking at art works, as opposed to believed. When we look at a Ruben’s or a Poussin they may have the capacity to contribute to a subjective appearance of beauty but this does not constitute existence.”
“No, so what does it constitute?” Comes back a very peeved looking lecturer.
“It constitutes subjective idealism. The painting, the wood frame, the paper, the paint, obviously figures amongst the real entities of the world, but if you then extract from these material things, the work of art, and see it as a bearer or locus of beauty and other aesthetic properties, then clearly work of art cannot be the material object in itself so we have to questions its existence.  Take this building it is a material entity of bricks etc. But if we then deem the building to be majestic or grandiose or see this ceiling here as beautiful, or the dome of St Pauls as a work of art then you are engaging in the imaginative apprehension of fictional qualities.”
“So how should we view art, sir? That is, if it exists?” More laughter.
“Well, not as existing but in a relativist or contextualist way, but certainly not as existing.”
“But you say art works don’t exist. But let us say if you discover or come upon some object of any kind then you have to accept that it must exist?”
“That is highly debatable...”
“But  let us let us say you visit this sculptor in his studio he sits in front of a large piece of marble and he begins to chip away as you watch something begins to emerge in the marble it looks like a human figure, later it is clearly a human figure.”
“So what’s your point?”
“My point is you can only discover something if it already exists. So the work of art exists.”
There is a confused applause from the audience and the tramps along the aisles show blackened teeth and gummy smiles in seeming appreciation that something is happening.
“Thank you for attending”, says the Lecturer and walks off triumphantly as if about to be wreathed in victory

Martin and I sit in the cafeteria. “Enjoy the argy bargy?” I ask him. “                                                                                          “Great fun, it was nice to let him have the last word.”
“But he made a good point.”
“I restrained myself from giving him the old Nietzsche one two.”
“What’s that?”
“Nietzsche claimed we embrace art, lest we ask the question, why?
“So that was the one, what was the two.”
The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience. “
“Well that sorts that out, doesn’t it?  The project what’s it about.”
“Art”
“Are you joking?”
“No, listen, it is a project about you and me making a film about art not existing, and that debate in the Lecture Hall is the first scene. He looks enthused, “...we will call it. Why we have art?”
“So how do you propose to convey that?”
“Well in the first scene we have someone in this interminable corridor, and this Kafkaesque figure knocks on the first door, and asks where can I find art. And the person at the door first you have to find yourself. And then he goes along this corridor knocking on these interminable doors trying to find his self as he needs a self to view art...so. The end message is that artists have a Platonic mind set, they want their work to be timeless.”

Later as I leave I pass the opened doors of the Lecture Hall and see that the destitute looking types, are back at the radiators and appear to have no intention of leaving. In the foyer I notice the Lecture timetable; there is another Lecture in half an hour, ah well, we live in the late capitalism culture of 2 for 1. I inspect the notice what is it about: Hmm...‘The Road to Calvary’ .  which makes me think of Martin,  he has always been difficult.



I arrive at Victoria station and leg it down Platform 5 and there is Martin standing there, all 6 foot 3 of him, in his studiedly casual attire and that shoulder bag, the ever present badge of bien pensant media types replete no doubt with Martin’s ideological baggage. I shudder; thought London would be warmer all those millions of people huddled together in such a confined space, but it is even colder than that Leningrad Cemetery I remember so well.  

“Get a tube or walk?” I say to Martin.
“What pay a fiver for one stop, on an overcrowded third world Tube, no sirree.”
We stride out. I tell him about the washing of feet.
“Did you hear him?” enquires Martin, our beloved Mayor boning on about what our fear of immigrants is? It is our fear of the ‘other’ he claims.”
“So what do you make of that?”
“He has been reading too much bloody Edward Said if you ask me, sounding off like a besotted undergrad’ clutching his first book on French theory.”
“Right, right.”  This is going to be a good day, I think, as I do a skip and a hop to keep up with the giant striding Martin. Now I quicken my step to a half run as Martin fairly goose steps past the beggars outside McDonalds. There they are sitting on the pavements huddling under filthy blankets, some of them accompanied by trembling mongrels. Then I stop when one of them calls out as he sees me hurrying alongside Martin.
 “Go on my son.” An indigenous beggar!
“Just a moment, Martin.” I stop and give the old boy some change and advised him to get something hot, “Told him to get something hot.”                                                                                                 “Yes, I heard and in your best droit de seigneur voice too.”
“Amazing that Orwell lived like that as a tramp.
“in Paris and in London, i don’t get it as if there was something emancipatory about extreme experience.
Now I hurry after Martin trying to keep in his jet stream and take a backward glance at the beggars by McDonalds alongside the very imposing Westminster Cathedral which induces me to think of that mystery of mysteries, God.

“Who was it who talked of God as a mystery?”
The mobile library ahead of me calls back “That was Bunuel ‘Why should we accept a mystery as the explanation of a mystery.’
“Martin could you slow down a bit. This project?”
“Right.”
“Can we talk about it?”
“Sure.”

We reach Trafalgar Square rejuvenated by the walk and Martin elucidating all the way about his ‘project’.  In an MI5 way, he swears me to secrecy. We make our way into the Lecture Theatre. It is well populated with freelance types like me up from the shires with a special interest in the consolations of art. I note how some homeless looking people have bagged the seats nearest the radiators. After a while an elderly man enters and starts talking.                  
“Good morning to you all and thank you for attending. As you all probably know this is going to be a talk on Rubens and Poussin. It goes without saying that in matters of taste, there is always room for disagreement. So if you feel like speaking just raise your hand. Now I will begin by saying that artists have argued about art since the earliest times; prehistoric painters debated the advisability of including human figures amongst the animals on the walls of their caves.”
I think, but how would he know that.
“The longest, most divisive, art controversies took place in France during the mid-1800s. The two camps were called the Poussinistes and the Rubenistes after their titular idols, Nicholas Poussin and Peter Paul Rubens.” 
“A history of events is no more than a selective point of view.” Martin whispers across to me.
I raise my eyes to look up at the splendid ceiling then look along the aisle to see one of the homeless looking type wrap his arms around a radiator as if he intends to prise it off the wall.
I think - what is the price of property in Bella Russe, or Vilnius?

“...and this disagreement is no more evident than in the ‘Poussenist’ versus the ‘Rubenists’.”
 “And the current disagreement is about whether art actually exists.”
Martin, sotto voce, pitches in to me,
“Such.”
Another attendant appears along the aisle and begins remonstrating with the homeless looking one who appear to be handcuffed to the radiator. It is not going well for now both attendants are endeavouring to prise the homeless looking man’s hands off the radiator. I feel sympathy for this poor Lecturer as all audience attention is diverted to the battle in the aisle. The homeless type reluctantly relents and goes back to his seat.
“The Poussinistes proclaimed the primacy of drawing and draughtsmanship in painting while the Rubenistes argued that colour should rule the day. The Poussinistes followed the well-worn path of classical art from Greek and Roman antiquities up through the Renaissance. The Rubenistes adored the vibrant colours and aggressive brushstrokes of the more recent Baroque artists.”

God, I feel wiped out, the ‘Chechnya shuttle’ and trying to keep up with Martin, has done me in.

“Actually, Poussin and Rubens themselves had little or nothing to do with the controversy. The real protagonists were Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Eugène Delacroix, pronounced Dela-qua.” 
Dela aquaah...my head is lolling forward, I jerk it upright.
“Ingres had been a student of the outstanding classical master-painter Jacques-Louis David, pronounced Da-veed, and was 18 years older than his rival. The competition between the two split the French Royal Academy of Painting and...”
My head lolls forward again.
“Of course by that time, the young Turks of Impressionism were deciding the whole matter was something of a moot point anyway. And while they might tend toward The Rubenistes colour theories and painting techniques, they hated the academic arguments and classical subject matter of...”
|I am asleep, pronounced a sle ep and dreaming of the city of Rouen pronounced  'Roo  on'... “What, where am I....’
“You dozed off”, Martin reprimands me like some head teacher. I sit bolt upright as if tasered.
‘The fact is neither side was entirely right or entirely wrong. Given the state of art, and painting in particular, in the 1800s, both sides needed each other. Drawing offered form, and paint provided colour. Without both there would have been no painting at all.”

I reach for my bottle of water and look for that continuing narrative in the aisle. I see that the homeless ones hands have been prised from the radiator and he now sits with his back resting against it with his legs defiantly stretched out across the aisle.
“The theories of hemispheric domination were, of course, unknown at the time, but the matter essentially came down to a left-brain/right-brain approach to painting...”
“Oh no, not that old chestnut left brain, right brain,” I hear Martin groan beside me.
“Shsh Martin.”
In the aisle a person leaving trips over the outstretched legs of the homeless one. Giggles are heard as the man goes arse over tip onto the carpet.
“Now are there any questions...comments? Raise your hand.”
I knew this would happen, the person beside me, you guessed, Martin, is giving the Lecturer his two penny worth.
“If I can just say...”
“Go ahead.” Yes, go on, Martin.
“Apart from the Poussenists and the Rubens adherents a more divisive controversy about art is between art aficionados and those who just don’t believe that art actually exists?”
“And what school are you of, sir?”
“I am of the school that questions arts’ existence.”
“Oh, you do,”
“Yes, for I believe we have naïvely realistic assumptions about works of art.”
“Yes, well, could you expand on that?”
“I mean that we fall into a kind of transcendental realism when we look at words of art. For looking at art works is a subjective experience like taste. I mean a lump of sugar might taste sweeter to me than to you.”
 What! For God’s sake Martin, getting a little bit embarrassing this.
“Thank you sir, if I might continue.”
“The left side of the brain being the analytical side, demanded careful drawing, adherence to scientific rules, even in matters of aesthetics and colour theory and the right side of the brain... being the visual and emotional hemisphere, tended toward an instinctive approach both in drawing, and especially in colour use.”
More people are leaving. I feel sorry for the Lecturer, but have sympathy for those who have the bottle to leg it.
“...today, not all that much has changed of course. The only difference is the names - the Rockwellians and the Pollockers perhaps. Now are there any questions? Yes, that gentleman in the third row, again.
 “As I was saying, I would argue that art works are works of fiction.”
“And how can that be, sir?”
“Because they are dependent upon the perception and imagination of the observer.” 
“Not sure I, or the rest of the people here, quite understand that.”
“Well, I will explain if I may?”
“Please,” and the Lecturer proffers an inviting hand.
                                  
“Although artists, critics, and art lovers are likely to think such a claim is absurd we have to attribute so called existence of art to other modes of being. Because they are observer relative.
“Martin, Martin, pack it in, the poor man....” I hiss.                                                                        But Martin has got hold of the polemical bone so revered by auto-didacts. I note the homeless types spotted around the aisles, seem to be paying attention as they have stopped hugging the radiators.
“Another mode of existence you say.”
“Yes, as you look at a piece of art it is a contemplative and for some aesthetic experience neither of which constitute existence. Works of art are the product of the imagination;
The existence or reality of a completed work of art continues to depend on the make-believe or imaginative activity of the artist or some other subject, such as the observer or reader who appreciates the work as a work of art.”
“But where does this lead, isn’t this all a bit higgledy-piggledy?”
There are hoots of defensive laughter from the audience to this repost, after all Martin, this bearer of the ‘project’ is a challenge to their belief systems, I mean, if you didn’t have art, what then?
“You say higgledy-piggledy,” more laughter, “...and you may very well be discombobulated by all this, but may I explain?”
Oh for God’s sake, big words.
“Please do. Please,” and the Lecturer raises a hand to quiet the audience.
  “What we undergo as we look at art works is a kind of ‘conscious self-deception’ and this conscious self-deception is necessary to both the creation and appreciation of art. So our commerce with art is a kind of lucid illusion.”
I notice a few restless movements in the seats; no wonder, for this man is trying to deny us our monthly day out visit the Royal Academy, or wherever, to see that exhibition. But there is no stopping Martin.
 “If we applied more self-reflexive awareness we would realise that something is being imagined when looking at art works, as opposed to believed. When we look at a Ruben’s or a Poussin they may have the capacity to contribute to a subjective appearance of beauty but this does not constitute existence.”
“No, so what does it constitute?” Comes back a very peeved lecturer.
“It constitutes subjective idealism. The painting, the wood frame, the paper, the paint, obviously figures amongst the real entities of the world, but if you then extract from these material things, the work of art, and see it as a bearer or locus of beauty and other aesthetic properties, then clearly work of art cannot be the material object in itself so we have to questions its existence.  Take this building it is a material entity of bricks etc. But if we then deem the building to be majestic or grandiose or see this ceiling here as beautiful, or the dome of St Pauls as a work of art then you are engaging in the imaginative apprehension of fictional qualities.”
“So how should we view art, sir? That is, if it exists?” More laughter.
“Well, not as existing but in a relativist or contextualist way, but certainly not as existing.”
“But you say art works don’t exist. But let us say if you discover or come upon some object of any kind then you have to accept that it must exist?”
“Of course.”
“So let us let us say you visit this sculptor in his studio he sits in front of a large piece of marble and he begins to chip away as you watch something begins to emerge in the marble it looks like a human figure, later it is clearly a human figure.”
“So what’s your point?”
“My point is you can only discover something if it already exists. So the work of art exists.”
There is a confused applause from the audience and the tramps along the aisles show blackened teeth and gummy smiles in seeming appreciation.
“Thank you for attending”, says the Lecturer and walks off triumphantly as if about to be wreathed in victory.

Martin and I sit in the cafeteria. “Enjoy the argy bargy?” I ask him. “                                                                                          “Great fun, it was nice to let him have the last word.”
“But he made a good point.”
“I restrained myself from giving him the old Nietzsche one two.”
“What’s that?”
“We embrace art, lest we ask the question, why? and objcts are companesiains,
“Well that sorts that out, doesn’t it?”
“Look. Got to fly and remember not a word about the project.”
“Well, I was thinking of writing something...can’t I...just mention it...to my readers?”
“No, certainly not” he states adamantly in his MI5ish way, “I have told you in absolute confidence believing you will respect that.”       
 As I stand to leave I pass the opened doors of the Lecture Hall and see that the homeless looking types, are back at the radiators as if glued and appear to have no intention of leaving. In the foyer I notice the Lecture timetable; there is another Lecture in half an hour, ah well, we live in the late capitalism culture of 2 for 1. I inspect the notice what is it about: Hmm...‘The Road to Calvary’ . Speaking of which; if I hurry across Green Park I will be in time to catch the 16.32 ‘Chechnya Shuttle’. Already I am preparing how I can tell the children that art doesn’t exist, well, not really.








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