Indeed, there are no more masterpieces. A work of art can only be dubbed a "masterpiece" if and only if it can heal a culture. This was and very much still is the function of mythology: an analog, metaphor for a much larger human concern. The Renaissance artists didn't subject their works to humanist agendas via contemporary imagery, rather with a timeless emblem that was handed down to them through the ancients. A common emblem for cultural and social inspiration amongst the humanists was not some contemporary emblem, say an image of the city of Florence, but rather a Greco-mythic one, namely Mount Helicon, where the muses live. Thomas Mann retells the contemporary state of German with the rise the Nazis in his Joseph and His Brothers, merely retelling the account of Joseph in Genesis. Joyce based his modern epic on The Odyssey. Nerval told his tale and journeying through to the east alongside retellings of ancient tales (i.e. Queen of Sheba, King Solomon, et cetera).
But then God had to go and die on us, and therefore without some sort of common archetype to base human experiences and cultural phenomena off of, we are left to our own devices as individuals; that is we move toward personal expression. There is nothing for the masses; no archetype for the culture, any culture as a whole. Now someone injects primary color paints up his ass and shits them out on a canvas, and we call it art. The art resides in the shitting of paint onto a canvas, not in the finished work itself. It is not a masterpiece - for who among us would call that a masterpiece? Someone draws squiggly lines on a piece of parchment and says, "It's a feeling... I'm expressing myself." Who the fuck cares about your feelings! It's not art for the culture. It's art for you. It is not a masterpiece. At best someone might sympathize with the emotion being expressed and purchase it, but it lacks any coherent mythology for everyone to sympathize with. God died, then myth died, then art died. With the life of art now gone, there is no healing in any art. Without an art for healing, there is no life in art, and therefore art is dead.
How does art heal? Like any healing, something must first be lacking (i.e. inspiration, knowledge, coherency of the flesh and bone, a pulse), and through treatment that which is lacking is restored. This can be achieved in a number of methods, especially in actual medicine. But for art healing can be a simple reminder, such as an image of the Brazen Serpent, or a colossal statue, or a prominent public building, or anything that reminds the culture that this thing this work represents is lacking in due cause within us, and this thing then reinstates it in us. I myself am often overcome by the romantic image of Columbia, South Carolina's State House building being at the top of the great hill, sitting very prominently looking over the city down to the river and beyond - I pass by it almost everyday, and I often go out of my way to pass by it, because it is worth viewing. I feel much the same way when I look at the abstract beauty of Mary's face in Michelangelo's Pieta of the Vatican, and her subtle expression of sadness grasps me like a serpent snatching its prey. Her sadness is our sadness, and she, with her outstretched arms, invites us to partake in her sadness that also belongs to us. This is the healing power of art for a culture.
But does art not also heal the creator of the work? Certainly, but it does not render it a masterpiece. If the work only heals the creator, then it should be shown or demonstrated once (painting or sculpture viewed once, music played once, a poem or writing read once) and then immediately destroyed. There is no further need for it. Express yourself and move on. No one needs to hear your shitty experimental music again, or to look at your awful painting or picture of your food, or see you do the same break dance again. The personal art died the moment it was born - a still born, if you will. It no longer serves a purpose, so throw it out with the rest of the trash.
There are those who would say that art has no function, and to these I say you are myopic fools. There are also those who would say that art should have no constraints, and to these I was say you are worse than the former. Art's constraint is that of a social and ethical constraint, which is also inherently its function. If it cannot serve an ethical and social purpose then it is personal art, which is materialism, and therefore is ultimately worthless.
So how might art once again be a masterpiece? How might art regain its life and heal once more? This seems tough to the simple minded, but Artaud (if one cannot tell, Artaud is a huge inspiration for this post) posited one of the greatest proposals to reinvigorate art - though for him is was theater, but the same can be said of all art - to terrify and shock.
Antonin Artaud called it the Theater of Cruelty, but not in any necessarily violent sense, at least not without just cause. Rather that life itself is cruel. It is cruel to propagate ourselves and our species in an inherently meaningless existence, further into a reality that is not as it should be for us, and that we persist in it nonetheless. The cruelty that life must kill and eat life in order to propagate life further. Everything is without rational or just cause, and we persist in enduring in it is cruelty. And with the death of God, myth, and art (and inherently the death of purpose or meaning) materialism is the cloth mother we run to in the face of fear. We seek comfort in shopping, eating expensive meals, getting breast implants, trying to fuck the cutest blonde in the bar, boast how many TV shows we've seen, collect coins and stamps and rocks (minerals), do drugs, murder, play videogames, read books, try and find the most obscure local band, start a religion and so forth and so forth.
The art that will ultimately heal us is the art that will shock us out of our materialistic squandering. The true art for us in our present modern condition is one that will materially shock us, frighten and terrify us. To see Marcellus Wallace get butt raped is materially shocking, because it is without meaning, and is worth watching innumerable times. To watch the collapse of the World Trade Centers and hear the screams of the entire city of New York is applicable as art (at least to the truest extent of found footage). To gaze upon the photograph called Piss Christ and be revolted by its materialistic senselessness is worth it every time we look. Viewing Picasso's Guernica, Goya's Shooting on May Third 1808, Lynch's Eraserhead or Blue Velvet, Ron Fricke's Baraka, Eddie Adam's photograph Execution of a Vietnamese spy, et cetera is to materialistically terrify us.
The materialistic shock is of course meaningless unto itself, and that is precisely the point: materialism is inherently meaningless. So why not use materialistic means to shock us, awaken us from our materialistic slumber; to reinstate those things that are lacking in us. (What is lacking in us is a cultural matter and debate, but I only wish to address art's function in healing culture, not what is needing to be healed, but I can briefly say that what is lacking are myths, humanistic sentiments, social coherency, political balance, and psychic health in cooperation with natural laws and the cruelty of life).
Now, one final thing: too many people misinterpret Artaud's Theater of Cruelty, as is quite evident if one simply types "theater of cruelty" into a YouTube search. Materially it is meant to frighten, like Harlow's diabolical object, but Artaud was emphatic that this materialistic shock must not upset the balance of the psyche. It should terrify for the moment, awaken something in us permanently so that upon awakening we can not go back to sleep or turn our heads from it. But it cannot and should not permanently scar us. This is rightly appropriate.
Too often do we forget to ask ourselves what is appropriate; should we do something just because we can? How often have I seen a two hour long film and realized that its creators were too stupid to realize that it would be more appropriate as a short film? Just because you can shit on a canvas doesn't mean you should, much less sell the work. But equally so, we must remember that what is appropriate is sometimes (and I will emphasize sometimes) also what is necessary (timing is also a factor in necessity), though it may not be what we want. To create an art that denounces personal expression in favor of materialistic shock, to repulse the psyche into awakening, may not be what we want, but it is certainly was we need, at least so far as art is concerned. If we don't need art to heal us, then let art be dead, and we can bury it, plant a memorial so that we can finally forget about it (a monument is for forgetting). But if we do need to reinvigorate ourselves through the revitalization of art, then our only recourse is through material shock.
Think of it like the Native American shaman who has a dream. It is not his dream, it is the tribe's dream. And when the shaman reveals his dream to the tribe, then the tribe is healed. Mary's sadness in the pieta is our sadness. Goya's political victim's fright is our fright. Patrick Bateman's inhuman and senseless violence with overwhelming materialism is our inhumanity and materialism. Marcellus Wallace's rape is our rape.
If this is not our concern, then let art be dead and stop making music, film, poetry, paintings, sculptures, novels, et cetera, or at least stop preserving them. But if it is out concern, then we drastically need to revise our perceptions of art, not as a materialistic and personal thing, but as something that heals a society.
