Recently I have revisited one of my MA papers, Does art still require ‘the shudder of the new’ (Adorno)?
While reflecting upon this paper, it has dawned on me, that every serious painter’s duty is to create art works beyond the safety of their creator’s comfort zone; creating such art works would inevitably push ‘Art’s’ boundaries to a new levels of Shudder. One only has to think of the ‘Great’ Modern masters’ who achieved this higher state of awareness within their work: Bacon, Picasso, and Newman, et.al. My new challenge is to search for the shudder within Jane.
So what in essence is Shudder?
Shudder as a claim to truth, enables artworks to transcendences beyond the epistemological to metaphysical; or as a depiction or appearance of the unreal which Reijen (1992:130) asserts; assumes ‘the official separation of pure philosophy and scientific facts’.
For the purpose of my forays into shudder, I am exploring Adorno’s interpretation, as a separation between ‘truth of art’ from ‘truth of content’. In this respect, Adorno’s concept of shudder ‘negates the literal reality of [art’s] thematic content’, thereby, enabling the nexus of an artwork’s appearance to become transcendental – going ‘beyond the appearance that they are’. Adorno’s (1992:104) transcendence provides the ‘spiritual’ within art, which is an ‘essential criterion of new art’. Although, this thought is subjective; he does concede new art betrays this concept if contrived, merely reproducing an effect, such as: back-ground music within shops or paintings with meaningless geometrical patterns.
With this implied ‘new’, Adorno’s shudder is not the ‘shock of the new’, but a Benjaminist ‘aura’ – a term for artworks which possess uniqueness and accessibility as produced prior to the age of photography and mass reproduction, producing an overwhelming sense of awe that establishes arts’ shudder.
For Adorno (AT:106), important artworks possess these key ‘moments’, evoking contemplation, thus enabling a measurable standard to depict or encapsulate the meaning of shudder. Adorno (AT:106) believes important artworks achieve this status through means of ‘an afterimage of the primordial’ when artworks move the spectator.
With this thought I embark upon the painting of Jane. To go where no painter has gone before; quite a Startreckian concept! As always, the difficulty is, how does the painter achieve this? I believe Shakespeare’s Hamlet III.iv., provides a good example:
Hamlet: Do you see nothing there?
The Queen: Nothing at all: yet all that is I see.
Shakespeare has eloquently expressed classical art college training – to ‘look’, and ‘look’ again. It is with this thought I commence working beyond my comfort zone in search of Jane’s Shudder.
In ‘looking’ I seek Jane’s Shudder I have reworked her skin colouration, and incorporated her veins. This is the first painting where I have attempted to render these elements of the individual.
While reflecting upon this paper, it has dawned on me, that every serious painter’s duty is to create art works beyond the safety of their creator’s comfort zone; creating such art works would inevitably push ‘Art’s’ boundaries to a new levels of Shudder. One only has to think of the ‘Great’ Modern masters’ who achieved this higher state of awareness within their work: Bacon, Picasso, and Newman, et.al. My new challenge is to search for the shudder within Jane.
So what in essence is Shudder?
Shudder as a claim to truth, enables artworks to transcendences beyond the epistemological to metaphysical; or as a depiction or appearance of the unreal which Reijen (1992:130) asserts; assumes ‘the official separation of pure philosophy and scientific facts’.
For the purpose of my forays into shudder, I am exploring Adorno’s interpretation, as a separation between ‘truth of art’ from ‘truth of content’. In this respect, Adorno’s concept of shudder ‘negates the literal reality of [art’s] thematic content’, thereby, enabling the nexus of an artwork’s appearance to become transcendental – going ‘beyond the appearance that they are’. Adorno’s (1992:104) transcendence provides the ‘spiritual’ within art, which is an ‘essential criterion of new art’. Although, this thought is subjective; he does concede new art betrays this concept if contrived, merely reproducing an effect, such as: back-ground music within shops or paintings with meaningless geometrical patterns.
With this implied ‘new’, Adorno’s shudder is not the ‘shock of the new’, but a Benjaminist ‘aura’ – a term for artworks which possess uniqueness and accessibility as produced prior to the age of photography and mass reproduction, producing an overwhelming sense of awe that establishes arts’ shudder.
For Adorno (AT:106), important artworks possess these key ‘moments’, evoking contemplation, thus enabling a measurable standard to depict or encapsulate the meaning of shudder. Adorno (AT:106) believes important artworks achieve this status through means of ‘an afterimage of the primordial’ when artworks move the spectator.
With this thought I embark upon the painting of Jane. To go where no painter has gone before; quite a Startreckian concept! As always, the difficulty is, how does the painter achieve this? I believe Shakespeare’s Hamlet III.iv., provides a good example:
Hamlet: Do you see nothing there?
The Queen: Nothing at all: yet all that is I see.
Shakespeare has eloquently expressed classical art college training – to ‘look’, and ‘look’ again. It is with this thought I commence working beyond my comfort zone in search of Jane’s Shudder.
In ‘looking’ I seek Jane’s Shudder I have reworked her skin colouration, and incorporated her veins. This is the first painting where I have attempted to render these elements of the individual.
References
Adorno, T., [Trans. Hullot-Kentor, R.] (AT) (2004) Aesthetic Theory, Continuum: London and New York.
Reijen, W.V., [Trans. Engelbrecht, D.,] (1992:33) Adorno: An Introduction, Pennbridge Books, Philadelphia.
