More than once I’ve described my day to non-art people and from the glazed look they adopt it leaves me in no doubt that they consider me to be eccentric, driven and absurd. As the work piles up, the only question on their minds is ‘what are you going to do with it all’ in the assumption that in a utilitarian world sense is arrived at through purpose. I know someone who collects beer cans and another who renovates old cars but drives only one of them – the question as to what purpose it all serves doesn’t arise – but art?
Albert Camus the author philosopher was not the only one to consider that not only is life meaningless but that art is humanity’s ceaseless attempt to impose order to counter the alienation experienced in confronting a chaotic world. My beer-can collecting acquaintance no doubt sees his obsession as just that – order out of chaos. Camus described making art as absurd creation and a mechanism to cope with the brutality of becoming conscious of the absurdity of existence. What he would have said about beer can collecting is anyone’s guess. Would he have seen it as a creative act? He labelled creative acts as “rebellions against reality” wherein the mind detaches from the self and the creators can play God, fabricating universes and inventing closed-off worlds where they can control whatever it is that defines their society. The processes of creation in Absurdism are seen as transformative actions where the creator chooses desirable elements and integrates idealistic features unattainable in real life. Artistic expression is seen as a way of redirecting feelings of hopelessness but according to Camus there is no escaping absurdity since creation is considered an absurd undertaking in the first place. Designing new worlds may distract from the truth all around us but creating art can only transport the mind for so long. He states that “creating or not creating changes nothing.” It may bring temporary solace to the artist but it can’t alter the absurdity of existence.
Interestingly I saw a series of photographs recently of dehumanised urban spaces. They were best described as liminal spaces. Liminal space means ‘a state or place characterized by being transitional or intermediate in some way and any location that is unsettling, uncanny, or dreamlike’. They were of rooms, corridors, corners and in one case a staircase leading nowhere and all were rectilinear. Whatever purpose they originally served was bound to creative human existence and now they waited for a human catalyst to bring them back to life or at least activate them and yet even in their absurdity as organised spaces, being devoid of human activity engendered a sense of ironic beauty. Being detached from their creators and nature, where rectilinearity is a rarity, to being contained by the rectangle of a photograph merely emphasised their absurdity. They reminded me of film stills and cinema where the facsimile of impossibility rests on a belief that overarching, narrative-driven events leading to satisfactory conclusions is normal. A film still, 1/25th of a second depending upon the frame rate of the camera, replaces chaotic reality with invented time markers where time is an invention of humankind to alleviate the sense not only of chaos but of chance.
A painting in no different. To accept art as an extension of oneself or an expression of the subsconcious through a codified language assumes on the one hand that the subconscious exists and on the other that concrete expression of the subconscious is even possible. Equating the activities of the subconscious with dreams is equally absurd. Dreams from what I understand are attempts by the brain to create order from the chaos of the day by realigning reality in film-like fashion to bring about a desired conclusion. Nightmares occur when the process of realignment produces more chaotic results than the reality on which they are based. To turn dreams or realigned reality into art within the defined boundaries of a rectangular canvas seems not just improbable in its audacity but essentially a meaningless activity in that one static image to be hung on a wall can never even approximate the reinvention of the world that the subconscious seemingly undertakes.
According to the absurdist, the creator must accept that what results has no meaning and no value thereby separating the artist from their work. Art can only be seen as valuable if prospective consumers can understand this implied function and implement absurdism into their own philosophy or reasons for buying art in the first place. Art holds no intrinsic value and that simply by virtue of existing has no inherent value. Further to this point of view, value is stripped away if the artist even attempts an explanation of their work in hopes of conveying a message or a desired interpretation. Having an absurd viewpoint means that striving to comprehend anything in such a chaotic world is a pointless endeavour. The more we struggle to create order from chaos through acts of imagination, the more we strengthen the view of the chaotic world in which we live.
Creative expression does no more than shed light on the absurdity of life but has no effect on the reality in which we live unless we count the liminal reminders of what was and respond not to the creative forces that brought them into being but the unsettling, uncanny, or dreamlike reminders of organised existence. Perhaps it is here that rows of beer cans fits into a constructed reality.
As I venture forth to erect three painted wooden forms aligned to Sirius in a field, to hang a dozen large canvases in a distant gallery where no one knows me and to publish yet another essay on art, absurd barely describes any of it. That 15,000 artists are currently doing the same thing all over South Australia seems equally bizarre. And yet – we all keep going through the motions even if no one pays any attention or understands the intention. Absurd indeed.