The Challenge of Art

Debatable – The greatness of modern art is in its power to provoke thought and discussion, often in the form of passionate debate.

Modernism, at its core is 'progressive', which is at the very essence of the human condition.  As subject matter, the human condition is a major theme of modernity.  Artists strive to either illustrate it from a purely objective point of view, or affect change within it, by getting people to reexamine their own values.  After all, what is the 'human condition' if not the consequence of contemporary values?

But here, we arrive at the duality of Modernism; it has a human element and a conceptual one.  Surprisingly, more often than not, when these two elements are at odds, it is the human element that is sacrificed to the conceptual, not the other way around.  However, when we adopt the thought that ideas are more valuable than human beings, then this branch is anti-modern, because it is not progress for the human being.

A good example of this is the religious idea.   Examples such as these, lead to anti-modern behavior such as war; the total destruction of human beings.  Traditionalism is another good example.  I think it's rather obvious that tradition is anti-progressive, and consequently, anti-modern.

Coming back to the opening statement; debate provoking art stimulates the mind and presses the human ahead into brave new territory.  Just as new technology reinvents the world by reshaping all the problems and how we approach them, it also changes our values in exactly the same way.  Art is just like this, a new tool, a new technology.  The only difference is that, with art, progression of the human condition is the primary objective.

Art is 'the quick fix'.  As modern technology reinvents the world, solving old problems, but also creating new ones, art identifies those new challenges, points them out to us, and forces us to challenge them next.  

Sometimes, these 'new challenges' are not so new.  Sometimes the only thing new about them is our will to challenge them when before we would not.  In such cases, it's important to begin by examining why it is that we could be aware of such problems for some time, but lack the will to challenge them.  Often times it boils down to some rather anti-modern source, like religion; some antiquated idea, conceived at a time when the world was very different.  The world moved forward, but the ideas stood still, and now we find them holding us back, now we find ourselves back in that place where ideas are more valued than human beings, now we find ourselves at war, now we find ourselves struggling to destroy all humanity for some old idea.

This is the birth of tragedy.  This is the birth of art.  This is where art steps in, for the sake of humanity, and tries to smack some since into us before it goes any further.  It's only natural that art should meet with resistance.  It challenges the status quo.  But the status quo benefits some lucky few at the expense of the masses.  And these fortunate few will do and say anything, to get the masses to believe that they are better off as their slaves than liberated.  So art steps forward to illustrate the hypocrisy of their argument, it asks the essential  question: If slavery is so wonderful, why don't you join the rest of us and come down from your throne?  Art reveals the weakness of their argument.