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
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.
