Art itself is not dead. Personal expression in art is dead. Nobody cares about your feelings and how you express them in a song, painting, poem, some piece of shit Photoshop job, whatever. I write poetry from time to time, but its typically very personal in content, and so I keep them to myself. I've only ever shared a few of my poems to a few friends, and it was embarrassing and ill-received. As such I don't share my personal poems. They're mine. They're for me, and no one else, just as they should be. I have drawings and paintings that are personal that I've never shared with anyone, and I don't plan on it. When I suspect I'm getting close to dying I plan on burning all of them. Why? Because they're not for the world. Once they enter into the world they are no long your own, and then they die.
They die? Yes. To explain I will give an illustration from an acquaintance of mine, Dave, and his son. Dave's son was about 10 or 11 years old when this happened, and he was in trouble at school for not sharing his thoughts and feelings about things with his classmates. His teachers and counselors were concerned and asked Dave to intervene. Dave asked his son why he refused to share himself with his classmates, and this beautiful boy said one of the most profound things I've heard a boy say; he said, "I don't want to share my thoughts, because when I do they die." Concise, poignant, beautiful, and absolutely true.
Such is the nature of self-expression in art: once given to the world it dies; it no longer belongs to the artist, poet, or composer. The world takes it and morphs it to fit its own collective and/or personal agenda. Take for instance memes: Richard Dawkins coined the term meme to describe an idea or behavior that is propagated through a culture or subculture. Like biological genes, memes endure mutation and evolution over the years. Dawkins gave this idea of meme to the world, then the internet took it and transformed it pictures with words, and sometimes just the latest iconographic trend. We hardly recognize meme in the way Dawkins described it. Dawkins' meme idea died when he introduced it to the world, and was transmuted into something else entirely. (It's sort of meta what happened to the idea of meme). The same goes for personal expression: once expressed and given to the world your expression dies and the world does with it whatever it pleases.
If it's already dead once expressed, then it served its purpose, build a pyre and burn it. Don't express it ever again. Move on. That said, I am in no way (nor do I think Artaud was either) against personal expression. It is our natural right, and its a natural urge, a libido to express oneself. We should express ourselves through whatever means we wish: make a video, write a song, compose a poem, render a painting, carve a sculpture, whatever. Do it. Go for it. Express yourself, then move on, because there is no need to express the same thing over and over, especially after its dead.
And it is also entirely natural to express oneself through the various mediums of art, because art is at heart pure expression. Art is always expressing something. But personal expression in art is not true art. Personal art is a means to an end. Once the expression of the self is expressed the piece has achieved its purpose and serves no further purpose. But true art expresses the sentiments of a given culture - religiously, socially, politically - which is the means in which true art can heal a culture, remind us of our values, repulse us of our errors, guide us in a particular doctrine (politically or religiously), et cetera. That is the ethical function of art. To achieve that ethical and social function true art must express the culture's totems and taboos. True art's expressions are constantly regenerated so long as that culture exists and is perpetuated, because cultural expression in true art has no means to an end, only means, so long as the culture can constantly reinforce and regenerate its values through art. The more extravagant and Baroque the Star Spangled Banner gets at every football game is a means to constantly regenerate American ideals. Every time the Lord's Prayer is given before eating constantly regenerates Christian ideals, which serves the same function the Sistine Ceiling or Caravaggio's Call of Saint Matthew does. But these regenerations of ideas (e.g. cultural healing) in art can only function so long as that culture survives. Michelangelo's David is stagnant, because it no longer invokes the young boy (Florence) in giant form taking on a colossal oppression (i.e. Papal Rome, the Middle Ages, cultural tyranny, et cetera). While the David is still a wonderful sight, it's function was served, Florence fell out of the spotlight around the end of the Italian Renaissance, and the David is now dead. Since the Italian Renaissance ended most people (except for Florentines) don't understand why Michelangelo carved the David, and is now only remembered as a well-crafted, huge sculpture, and is famous for some reason, but not many people know why. The regenerating, healing aspect of a piece of art now ineffective and its purpose and expression forgotten (or at least has to be explained to comprehend), the piece of art is effectively dead. It might as well be destroyed.
"But wait," one might say, "I thought you loved Michelangelo!" And I do. I'm demonstrating an extreme position to illustrate a point. I would never actually advocate the destruction of Michelangelo's giant, and I would be appalled if it was destroyed. I still get upset that Michelangelo's bronze statue of Pope Julius II was destroyed and turned into a cannon (called the Julia), because it was his only bronze piece, and is a gem of history no one will have the luxury of gazing upon and wandering why it was made. But I must admit, Michelangelo's bronze Julius served its purpose so long as Pope Julius II held Bologna under the rule of the Papal States, and after Bologna succeeded the bronze Julius was no longer necessary, and so it was appropriately smelted down and turned into a cannon, which was necessary to fight papal rule. As sad as I find this scenario, it fully demonstrates my point and my sentiments: I find it to be a tragedy, but if the work of art no longer serves it purpose, then it is appropriate to destroy it because it is dead. Build a pyre and burn the dead.
Again, I do not advocate the destruction of culturally significant art, such as the David, because enough cultural art and wonders have been lost to the destructive nature of humanity. On the other hand there is personal art, which I say if the artist wishes to preserve it for their own sentiments, then that is welcomed. But don't shove your shitty paintings, songs, and poems down everyone else's throats. It's for you, and unto you it belongs, and unto no one else. If you must give it to the world, do so once and never again, because once expressed your work is dead. No one cares about your breakup expressed in a poorly written song that uses three guitar chords, or your half-witted attempt to toss oil-based pigments onto a canvas to express your depression, or a shoddy expression of your acid trip with primary color markers in lines and dots. All these things are yours, not the world's. Unless your sadness is the world's sadness (more than likely it is not), like Michelangelo's Vatican Pieta, in which Mary's grief is our grief, then keep it to yourself. Unless your acid trip is the world's acid trip, like the Native American shaman's dream is the tribe's dream, then keep your poorly rendered rendition of your drug-induced experience to yourself.
I had mentioned in Part 1 the need to mythologize the expression of a work of art, but "mythologization" is a fairly loose term in my lexicon, so I will elaborate for clarity. One may use actual and ancient mythological figures, places, icons, and other elements to express an idea. For instant in Ivan Akimov's Saturn Clipping Cupid's Wings it is being expressed that time (Saturn/Chronos) cuts down all things (i.e. with his scythe), even love (Cupid). Of course this scene never actually occurs in Greek or Roman mythology, but using the symbols and icons of ancient myths Akimov is expressing that even love - something we think is immortal and eternal - can be destroyed by time. But then there is the case in which myths can be quasi-invented, "new" symbols used for a more personal, remote, isolated mythologization. Such is the case for William Blake, whose poetry and prose is filled with what is commonly called "Blake's complex mythology" (historians are not very clever at naming things). There is Adam (aka Albion, an old name for Britain, and is the original human) and Satan, a contrary pair, from whose union creates Tharmas (the instinct), Urizen (tradition), the Christ-like Luvah (love), and Los (imagination and inspiration). There is also their many manifestations and usages by Blake with a higher complex of virtues and traits that interact in a plethora of brilliant and beautiful, not to mention utterly confusing, ways. Blake expressed the French Revolution, America, the origins of England, the transcendence of good and evil, the Holy City of Jerusalem, et cetera using these mythologized elements. Salvador Dali is another fantastic example of personal mythologization, like Blake.
The mythologization of the content expressed in art is what gives it its longevity, allows it to live beyond the decadence of personal expression, and renders the framework through which a culture may heal. Without myth-ish elements cultural art suffers temporality, fatality, and cannot live beyond the first public expression of the work. Myth gives art its timelessness, its perceived immortality.
Understanding the difference between personal art and cultural art - the former being a form of self-healing through personal expression, the latter being a form of social and cultural healing and regeneration through mythological and culturally symbolical expression - is the means to creating true art once again, and to put aside the caprice and hubris of awful art.
This is only a an extreme suggestion, just as Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra was an extreme suggestion, to illustrate a point. Just like Nietzsche, I would be appalled if anything I have here espoused would be literally and tyrannically enacted, even by unanimous cultural consent, and the artists themselves adopt it. I fear such a program of annihilating personal expression in art for the whole world to see. Are Michelangelo's love poems not beautiful? Emily Dickinson' poetry of love and death not poignant and captivating? Or Johnny Cashes songs? Expressionistic painting? Lost in Translation? And so forth and so forth. I fear what would be lost, and at what cost is it worth for such a sacrifice. Perhaps it's worth it, perhaps not, perhaps the problem is too wicked to untangle.
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