A ZIGZAGGING PROGRESSION

No less than politics, art has a way of evolving from a barbarous to a civilized phase within any given cultural tradition, whether contemporary American or European, and it does so within the compass of the creative integrity of any given class. Take the early petty-bourgeoisie, those stemming from a bourgeois stage of creative endeavour who yet rebelled against bourgeois precedent to create an anti-art, if by 'art' we mean bourgeois representational painting. They are divisible, as in any relative civilization, into materialistic and spiritualistic camps, those on the one side producing Expressionism, those on the other side ... Impressionism, the first fundamentally Austro-German, the second ... Franco-American. In both cases, one might describe the art produced as non-representational, either applying to a distortion or a mere impression of the representational, whether natural or artificial, though particularly the former. Non-representational art is not abstract; it is the negative, barbarous forerunner of the abstract.

Which brings us to the higher, or civilized, phase in the creative evolution of the early petty-bourgeoisie, with particular reference to Abstract Expressionism on the one hand and to Abstract Impressionism or (as it is more usually called in America) Post-Painterly Abstraction on the other hand, the one materialistic or, rather, pseudo-spiritualistic, the other spiritualistic. By now, both Austria and France have been left behind, their petty-bourgeois successors having blossomed into a civilized phase of creative evolution, America most especially so, thanks to its wealth, power, and geographical isolation from Nazi persecution. Certainly such art as we are now discussing can be described as abstract, since there is not even a negative connection with the representational but, rather, a positive intimation of higher abstract possibilities or trends - what one might term a pro-light art status, to distinguish it from the anti-art (bourgeois representational framed-painting) status of its 'barbarous' forerunner.

So much for the evolution of modern art in its mainstream petty-bourgeois manifestations, as applicable, in the main, to Germany and America. I have spoken of a progression from a negative to a positive phase of painterly evolution within the compass of the creative integrity of the early petty-bourgeoisie, a useful logical pivot though by no means the only possible one, since one could alternatively speak of Abstract Expressionism/Abstract Impressionism as symptomatic of a lower type of late petty-bourgeois art, one more inherently spiritual. However, as this line of thinking could lead to too many complications, I shall continue to work within the logical framework already established, since it does more justice to the distinction between the barbarous and the civilized phases of any given art form's evolution.

Which brings us to the distinction between the barbarous and the civilized phases of light art, the former phase paralleling the civilized phase of avant-garde painting, the latter phase overhauling and surpassing it; the first phase symptomatic of a lower type of late petty-bourgeois art, the second phase symptomatic of a higher type - a positive as opposed to a negative type. And just as the non-representational painting of the anti-artists, whether materialistic or spiritualistic, was a revolt against civilized bourgeois painting, so we may contend that the sculptural light art of the anti-modernists (as we may alternatively call the lower type of late petty-bourgeoisie) was in large measure a revolt against civilized petty-bourgeois painting, an expression of the reaction of a new art form against formal precedent, one leading, in due course, to the development of civilized light art, as symptomatic of a higher type of late petty-bourgeois/early proletarian creativity, and suggestive, at least on the spiritualistic side, of a pro-holographic status, since intimating of a purer abstraction than abstract painting - one completely free of material surrounds. Such an art form as abstract light art can only point the way towards the ultimate art, which would be virtually formless.

No such formlessness can accrue, however, to petty-bourgeois art, not even in its highest phase, since petty-bourgeois criteria are forever relative. Just as with avant-garde painting, so with light art (both in its barbarous and civilized manifestations), a distinction exists between the materialistic and the spiritualistic, the abstract expressionist and the abstract impressionist, and we may believe that if the spiritualistic side intimates, in its highest manifestation, of abstract holographic possibilities ahead, then the materialistic side indirectly intimates of a representational holography consonant with its expressive bias, a holography that is indeed furthered within the confines of bourgeois/proletarian civilization, and which may be equated with the barbarous phase of a proletarian class integrity ... co-existing with civilized light art and indicating, in its revolt against that art form's abstraction, an anti-light art status commensurate with a higher spiritual embodiment of representational form. The coming of abstract holography will of course eclipse the barbarous with the civilized, but it may have to wait the dawn of a transcendental civilization to gain in universal momentum.

If, then, the progress of art follows a kind of zigzagging course in the revolt of a lower phase of a superior art form against the higher phase of an inferior art form and does so, moreover, on both materialistic and spiritualistic terms, we need not doubt that this process mirrors distinct class stages within any given relative civilization, the ultimate development being a sort of proletarian revolt within bourgeois/proletarian civilization against civilized late petty-bourgeois art that takes the form of representational holography, an art form which will co-exist with abstract-impressionist light art until such time as bourgeois/proletarian civilization is democratically overthrown and/or reformed.

However, unlike the relative arts, abstract holography, the ultimate and therefore truly civilized proletarian art form, would not co-exist with a barbarous art form or intimate of a superior abstraction to come or be divided into a materialistic and a spiritualistic camp, the one contracting the material while the other seemingly expands the spiritual. Abstract holography would be absolute in every sense, the sole civilized art of a transcendental civilization, complete in itself and yet intimating, more convincingly than any previous art form, of transcendent spirit, of the Divine Omega which lies beyond man as the goal of evolutionary striving.

Whereas relative art, whether avant-garde painting or abstract light art, could be said to intimate of both a higher abstract possibility in the development of art and the Divine Omega on terms relative to its particular class stage of aesthetic evolution, absolute art, being complete in itself as the ultimate manifestation of aesthetic development, would intimate, on the most pure terms, only of the Divine Omega, the ultimate impression of spiritual transcendence. Art, as we have traditionally understood it, would attain to a spiritual climax here, though the process of revolt against a contemporary civilized art would continue, taking the form, with the onset of a post-Human Millennium, of recourse to synthetic hallucinogens like LSD, which would constitute the next, or barbarous, phase in the zigzagging evolution of art and life towards the goal of evolution in ultimate divinity, what one might describe as an anti-hologram 'representational' phase.

Strictly speaking, LSD trips could not be described as an art but, rather, as the successor to art, an antithesis to dreams, which, however, preceded the inception of art in the sculptural monuments of the ancients. Just as dreams are beneath art, a pseudo-phenomenon of the old brain which the subconscious is obliged to witness during sleep, so trips would be above it, a quasi-noumenon of the new brain which the superconscious can contemplate in the interests of expanded consciousness.

This barbarous phase of the post-Human Millennium will be superseded, in due course, by its ultra-civilized phase, a phase during which the new-brain collectivizations of the Superbeings will experience hypermeditation and thus directly cultivate their superconscious rather than, as with the brain collectivizations of the Supermen in the preceding phase, indirectly do so ... through the medium of LSD visions. This direct cultivation of pure spirit will constitute the ultimate spiritual abstraction, an ultra-positive successor to the quasi-positive 'representational' phase of millennial evolution, and such a procedure will inexorably culminate in transcendence, or the attainment of pure spirit to space, in which setting it will converge towards and expand into other such transcendences en route, as it were, to the ultimate spiritual oneness of the Omega Point, the culmination, in de Chardinesque terminology, of all heavenly evolution.

Such a culmination is what the abstract holography of the next civilization will intimate of, but it is not something that the highest art will achieve; for that must be left to what transcends art through the most pure contemplation of the Superbeings in the highest phase of the post-Human Millennium. Even the contemplation of LSD-induced visions will be relative and, therefore, impure in relation to that, a quasi-barbarism leading to the more than civilized - namely the supercivilized self-contemplation of the ultimate life form, pro-transcendental rather than anti-holographic.