Doubt

Thinking about the text in my last blog, I realised today that I had made the fundamental error of using the term 'held true'. I fully appreciate the absurdity of using the word 'true' in reference to art. It is possible to consider that a scientific theory holds true for the time being, i.e. until proved otherwise, if it successfully resolves an enquiry based on available information and experimentation. But can the same term be used for artifacts of the kind that we call an art object? I am not even sure what I meant by the expression.

I certainly did not mean that the created object is itself an embodiment of something held to be true, though I suppose religious works may be considered as such by believers. Perhaps it is something to do with the nature of the urge to create - a synthesis within the object of the creator's intent and the means by which this intent is being carried out. I would have said creator's quest, because this seems relevant when considering Manet, Cezanne and Van Gogh as in the previous blog, but the associations suggested by quest are modern, and limiting. What about artifacts created by artists for whose quest there might be little sympathy - a political or social issue, for example, or even a matter of taste? Does that prohibit their work from 'holding true', and if so, then it is more to do with the viewer's than the maker's judgement. How about artifacts that might now be called art objects which were created within a cultural context other than our own? The intent might be contrary to our contemporary value system - thinking about cult objects for sacrifical ceremony, for example - yet be so integral to the object that it cannot be evaded. Where such objects appear to a modern viewer to 'hold true', is that to do with the response of the viewer or something inherent in the object?

Some artifacts do have a quality of completeness in themselves which preserves them across time, place and context and perhaps it is that integrity which I meant by 'holding true'. That and more, for I suppose an object that achieves integrity, or has a convincing existence complete within itself, or a vitality that almost breathes life, can invoke or reflect the inevitability of its context, for better or worse. Perhaps we treasure great artifacts from different and often seemingly alien societies across time and place because they affirm the human spirit which is able to regenerate value or structure (and the necessary belief in the same) again and again, collapse after collapse.

I quite like this idea of 'holding true' because it does not discriminate between what we now call fine art and other types of making, but it does discriminate between an artifact that communicates intensity or visual articulation in the making process and one that displays a lack of such attentiveness (or skill). The principal would apply whatever the intent, and when it as dense as Manet's or Cezanne's, it is all the more remarkable, I think, to see it achieved.