Art: Suicidal Speaker of Aletheia

There is an old Greek belief that there is no external impetus for knowledge. What one knows is what one has always known, and the discovery of knowledge is merely a remembering, a reawakening of the innate, an unpeeling of the layers of falsity to the fundamental reality. Empirically this concept is unprovable. Nevertheless it holds a certain existential weight: those who have felt this attest to it; those who haven’t, don’t, and never can. It is on these terms that art acts out its purpose.

To the emotionally debased art is merely a metaphorical aesthetic feeling resulting from the manipulation of symbols. Such people are intrinsically resilient towards the transcendental aspects of art and are thus disconnected from the phenomenon described above. They will attempt to balkanize it at every turn. To the majority art is novelty, commodity, propaganda, accessory, and nothing more.

Verily it is the same for most artists, whose goal in practice is to make something “cool” to sell. These works are easily sniffed out because they smack of brevity in metaphorical depth of both style and content. There is no “hidden something” beyond the obvious. Cheapened forms of communication suit perfectly for a cheap interpretation, these artists speak directly to their audience.

The higher artist understands reality fundamentally. Art is an abstraction of reality into symbolized forms. Art is, essentially, a lie, or at least a shadow. It is a kind of satire which the higher artists tries to communicate: “Know, my audience, those of you who can know, the overcoming of art; step over these symbols and claim that which lies on the other side: or rather reclaim, for what lies beyond is what is fundamental in you, o my people!”

Thus the purpose of higher art is the creation of an objectified aesthetic language, a kind of tool wherein clarity of reality can be drawn like water from a well. Its target is ilk, kin—those who are at the same innate level of potential remembrance of nature, of an acceptance and also a rejection of abstraction for its own sake; those beings of transcendence.

As Nietzsche aphorized, Art is a defense of Truth. Thus use art éclatically, suicidally, for the sake of doing away with art to reveal the Truth, the aletheia, which lies under the skin of abstraction and alienation. And see art, also, with these eyes.

Shayne