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“I write only to free myself from my pain.”
--- Vittoria Colonna (Soulmate of Michelangelo)
--- Vittoria Colonna (Soulmate of Michelangelo)
Pain is indispensable in creating the art, more than that of quest of pleasure. This statement may be contested successfully. But just take a look at the lives of great artists adored for centuries. They were more felicitated because of simplicity, elegance and class of their art and also for their legendary sufferings which carved out the path for enlightened attainment of the virtue of heritage which has always remained contemporary, though historical still leaping for the restoration of the future sensitivity.
Hugo Boss said, “Art and fashion have always gone hand in hand. Sometimes radical and shocking, sometimes traditional and conservative, both are judged according to subjective standards of taste. Each represents in its own way the moods and spirit of the times. They stimulate the senses and create objects of desire as fetishes of an affluent society and legacies of culture.” Why we should care to study art history? Do we not have any urgent tasks ahead of updating social networks and skimming through page 3 novels? Why should we visit museums? Are we so free out of our schedule to visit periodically to malls and multiplexes? What is takes to create a ordinary looking painting which in a sense extraordinary because it can change perceptions of the elite class to interpret the world in a manner like never before? So, this ordinary of tomorrow becomes classic heritage of tomorrow. This radical point of view of aesthetics becomes the majoritarian perspective of beauty in the coming days. “If the economic expression of neoliberalism is sharper inequality, and its political expression deregulation and privatization, then its cultural expression is surely unrestrained consumerism.” And we all in today`s world only see art as an object to be worthy about discussions of galleries and auctions; nothing beyond that.
“Contemporary art still defines itself against mass culture, and necessarily so because of its shunning of mass production, which has a further effect on its subject-matter. Marx argued that production and consumption are bound together to the point of unity. Not only does one depend upon and complete the other, but production always involves consumption (for instance, of raw materials), and consumption production (for instance, eating sustains the labouring body). Both making and selling are unusually controlled in the art market. Dealers often sign exclusive contracts with artists who are then encouraged or instructed to produce particular kinds, sizes, and numbers of work. How often has one seen in commercial galleries decorative and wall-bound spin-offs of some apparently recalcitrant anti-commercial installation? For obvious reasons, these urgings usually remain secret. Buyers are vetted for their commitment to collecting, since it can be dangerous to an artist’s reputation or even to the market as a whole to have a sudden and unexpected sale of work. There is less regulation in the so-called ‘secondary market’ of the auction houses, but even there the market is hardly free. Aside from scandals about systematic price-fixing, reserve prices are set below which works will not sell, and bidding is manipulated by collectors and dealers.”
“The situation is most starkly illustrated with art made in reproducible media; artists can cheaply produce photographs, CDs, or videos in large numbers, and try to achieve wide ownership of their work. Yet the great majority of them produce tiny editions, each piece being accompanied by a certificate of authentication, for very high prices. Ownership of such a piece grants status to the collector, and reciprocally the price paid grants status to the work. This is the defining characteristic of art as against other areas of high culture: drama, the concert or opera achieve exclusivity through requiring that an audience be present at a live performance (and of course high art can do this, too); other forms – novels, poetry, music, and film – produce objects that are industrially fabricated in large numbers and are widely owned. Only in high art is the core business the production of rare or unique objects that can only be owned by the very wealthy, whether they are states, businesses, or individuals.” [1]
“Bottom-line: Art is borderless. Thinking causes over-seriousness and the deflation of fun and beauty, which are equated with aesthetic pleasure. To think means to think too much, and is in conflict with experiencing (which is thought of in binary terms and is thus associated with feeling, i.e., feeling/experiencing vs. thinking).” “Today`s situation is marked, however, by distinct tensions and contradictions. We have seen that art’s uselessness – its main use – is being sullied by the particular needs of government and business. In a linked development, art’s elitism is challenged by the attempt to widen its appeal: business values art for its exclusivity, while states are generally interested in the opposite, and wish to widen its ambit. Finally art’s means of production, increasingly technological, have come into conflict with its archaic relations of production. The question of art’s use takes us back, naturally, to art’s freedom. That the very concerns of art – creativity, enlightenment, criticality, self-criticism – are as instrumentally grounded as what they serve to conceal – business, state triage, and war – is the consideration that must be concealed. And it can be, because the local liberation offered in the production of art, and its enjoyment, are genuine. Bourdieu cites a letter by Flaubert on art’s freedom: That is why I love Art. There, at least, everything is freedom, in this world of fictions. There one is satisfied, does everything, is both a king and his subjects, active and passive, victim and priest. No limits; humanity is for you a puppet with bells you make ring at the end of his sentence like a buffoon with a kick.”
The Psychology and method of inquiry about history of art and biography are discussed in depth by Liebert who throws light on life of Michelangelo.[2] Liebert explores the events in his life so as to build the logic about the connections of psychological instability, mental uncertainty and dynamic developments in life generating repeated cycle of pain responsible for his art, known today worldwide. He claims that there is pattern in work of great artist`s lives which make the creation of classic art an inevitable event. He has envisaged study of this pattern in the frames as: a) Repetition of same inner conflicts in successive works by artists. b) The basis for artist`s choice of a specific work from antiquity as inspiration for formal structure of particular creation. & c) Interpretation of artist`s unconscious motives that contribute to distinctive creative solution. So, let it be. We are going to look further deeper how this happens/happened.
“Creative art, neurotic symptoms and dreams all draw upon repressed more primitive thoughts. It is after all, artist alone, who is able to make constructive contact with this conflicted material being overwhelmed by it. Placing emphasis on ego strengths of artist, it can be said that, artist is distinguished not by specific nature or depth of his/her inner conflicts, nor by trauma in his early history. Rather he/she is distinguished by their capacity to sublimate unacceptable drives by expressing them creatively in images. He/she is also pressed by a need to communicate with and be responded to by others through symbolic medium. Liebert says that Michelangelo has always been very abstemious in his way of life, taking food more out of necessity than for pleasure. He used to say, “However rich I may have, I have always lived like a poor man.”
If an unconscious conflict is sufficiently strong to be a major determinant of distinctive aspects of any particular work of art, it will reappear as a discernible influence in other works by artist. Unconscious conflicts gives great art but is rarely resolved by successful artist`s sublimation forever. During the time around his father`s death he wrote:
“I live in my own death; If I see right
My life with an unhappy lot is happy;
If ignorant how to live on death and worry
Enter this fire, where I am destroyed and burnt.”
In a letter to friend Niccolo Martell in 1541, Michelangelo writes: “I am a poor fellow, and of little worth, plodding along in that art which god has assigned to me, in order to prolong my life as long as I can.” In another letter to friend Luca Martini he says: “I am an old man and death has robbed me of dreams of youths---may those who do not know what age old means bear it with what patience they may when they reach it, because it cannot be imagined beforehand.
My age is now detached,
From desire, blind and deaf;
I make my peace with death,
Since I am tired and near the end of speech.”
To conclude by paying tribute to Michelangelo, let’s have a feel of a sonnet written by him in 1533-34, which I consider is the essence of his painful life giving all of us the gift of “Forever Creative Heritage.”
“I with your beautiful eyes see gentle light,
While mine are so blind I never can,
With your feet, on my back bear a burden.
While mine are crippled, and have no such habit.
Having no feathers, on your wings my flight,
By your keen wits, forever drawn toward heaven,
As you decide it I am flushed and wan,
Cold in the Sun, at the cold solstice hot.
My wishes are within your will alone,
Within your heart are my ideas shaped,
When you have taken breath, then I can speak.
It seems that I am the lonely moon,
Which our eyes fail to see heaven,
Except the fraction of it that the sun may strike.”
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[1] Stallabrass, Julian, and Julian Stallabrass. Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction. Very short introductions, 146. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Print.
[2] Liebert, Robert S. Michelangelo, a Psychoanalytic Study of His Life and Images. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Print.
[3] Michelangelo, Buonarroti, Creighton Gilbert, and Robert N. Linscott. Complete Poems and Selected Letters of Michelangelo. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1980. Print. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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