My Death in Life

Hey, I wrote this little blurb for an addition I had to put in a paper of mine. The paper is discussing an article by C.S. Lewis titled "The Poison of Subjectivism". Lewis is discusses what subjectivism is and where it comes from in our societies and why it is such a danger to society. We had to then take what Lewis wrote and come up with our own conclusion from the implementations that Lewis talks about in his article. Mine, was on a subject I am passionate about- Art.

With Lewis’ thought on subjectivity I can see where it’s corroding in the sphere of art. If you were to take an art history or art appreciation class you would learn about the different aspects of what makes paintings, music, movies, or any other medium of art generally “good”. You would learn about the use of things such as balance, perspective, symbolism, and different general principles that are common and consistent to what we would normally label “art”.

Today, with subjectivism leaking into our thinking, we have seemed to have lost our idea of “art”. The current trend is post-modern art. In this form of art there is very little structure. There seems to be no respect to the principles that have been the guidelines for art. The art is whatever the artist thinks it is. It represents what the artist wants it to represent, even in the most vague senses. A lot of post-modern art is a lot of randomness. Whether it is a single random brush stroke in the middle of a canvas, it is supposed to be held in the same regard as Picasso’s The Kiss or Rodin’s The Thinker or George Lucas’ Star Wars.

The artist is probably the hardest one to argue with because they’ll say that’s the point. The point of post-modern art is to free from the guidelines and to find meaning for it yourself in the work. But in doing that, the artist seems to have missed that they’ve lost the universality of any meaning that the artist was striving for in that work of art. It becomes victim to any ideal that can be cast upon it because it is so vague and so “free” that it doesn’t really mean anything anymore.