How Should We Then Live Part 8: The Age of Fragmentation (II)

I think it safe to say that Europeans developed a deeper concept of life and thus art – and they felt a deeper and more reflective pain regarding the changes that had overtaken the West.

An Anglo-American wrote about The Wasteland but I think the Europeans felt it more poignantly. Likewise Romanticism came to America but (in my estimation) it never took hold as it did in Europe. Primitivism, the frontier, individualistic anti-Puritanism and the grand spectrum of nature played a part in American Romanticism but it was not deeply retrospective and if anything progressive and therefore of a very different (though at times still pleasing) character.

Many European artists and intellectuals had been (since the Enlightenment and Industrialisation) in a state of dissolution and dismay and found solace in retreating to the past, in trying to capture a meaning, an essence, ideas that would ground thought or in spiritual terms to express ideas that are in an empirical sense largely inexpressible. We see this in the Pre-Raphaelites and in a very different vein in Symbolism.

For others, existentialism took over and art communicated philosophy and politics – issues that came ever more to the forefront in light of modern man's industrial and urban plight.

Some functioned as new cynics, sometimes making statements about the medium itself. Are their works aesthetically pleasing? Sometime yes and sometimes no but of course they would say that's not the point. There are different concepts of art and aesthetics in play and if truth is a component of a right aesthetic – then what does that say about something that communicates an intangible reality – or resorts to a shocking juxtaposition in order to make a point? Is that always invalid?

In his criticism of John Cage, Schaeffer pulls out the airplane (and this time mushroom) analogy again, a point brought up in his piece on The Scientific Age. Again, unless he's trying to argue for a purely empirical even positivist epistemology this oft-employed and frankly tiresome analogy as a counter to relativism simply fails – and demonstrates that Schaeffer has not really thought as deeply about these questions as he would have us believe. It is a simple if painful case of non-sequitir due to false analogy – apples and oranges.

Again as he dances between rationalism and empiricism I am once again reminded of Aristotle and the Thomistic approach he so despises. Is art reduced to what is empirical? Is the real only that which is empirically experienced? Is there no room for ideas? Does not art transcend and bind together these concepts – often in symbols – sometimes in what is imagined or inferred? Are all forms and questions of multi-perspectivity to be reckoned invalid? One wonders if Schaeffer's obsession with unity over particulars leads him to reject any kind of mosaic or complexity in the realm of thought and art? There's a kind of monism in his thinking, an overemphasis on simplicity and uniformity. It plays out in his theology, in his conceptualisation of the Kingdom and I would be willing to say – even in his doctrine of God.

I'm sorry to have to say it but Schaffer almost comes across as something of a philistine in this episode. That would certainly be the assessment of many art critics and European intellectuals. It's ironic as he spent decades in Europe and yet seemingly never grasped some of the basic elements and influences which shaped it in the modern period.

If Schaeffer doesn't see how his bourgeois-safe Establishment-safe art is also communicating a wider philosophy and political theory then he's no art critic.

When considering Europe in the post-war context we must understand the poignancy of the fragmentation and why for many artists - reality had indeed become an illusion. Industrialisation had already destroyed the village, the family and much of the older culture. And then came the wars. Society and relationships you thought were real, institutions you thought had meaning and stability seemingly evaporated.

The people you counted as friends and neighbours, fellows in the grand project of civilisation turned into monsters and base killers. People betrayed one another and Europe fell into a bloodbath, a veritable orgy of self destruction.

This is profound but largely ignored by Schaeffer. But he is not alone as many Americans have failed to understand this grim reality. In 1945, America was smiling and by their own account and reckoning had 'won the war' in Europe and in Asia. While 400,000 American soldiers were dead their society was intact and reinvigorated. It was forward looking, robust and postured for expansion. Was this moral or more a case of the contextual and circumstantial?

Europe, one of the great civilisations of history was shattered and destroyed. Tens of millions were dead. Things that had been believed in had turned evil. Culture and refinement had turned to barbarism. The world had been turned upside down and inside out. What was left? Americans were smiling while Europeans were stunned – covered in blood, living in rubble, starving, raped and wondering what was left to live for? The grand old buildings and fine arts that all used to mean something – what did they mean anymore? What did civilisation mean when the high culture of Mitteleuropa produced Auschwitz as its culminating magnum opus? When men could do things like that to one another – and in the name of grand ideas and mythic histories – what was left to believe in? The foundation hadn't just been cracked. It had been pulverised.

It is in this context that one must understand the Bergman's and Fellini's of the period. I can only say I'm stunned by Schaeffer's seeming blindness to this – his inability to understand the context of the ideas and art he wishes to criticise. It's literally as if some small town mid-western American boy has wandered into post-war Europe and judges it by the standards of 1950's Americana. It's laughable if it wasn't so sad. When one considers that these videos functioned as Sunday School material – then it becomes tragic and harmful.

Schaeffer concludes by attempting to construct a philosophy of music and art – a kind of aesthetic theology as it were. In the process he mentions that as Christians we know Christ is coming back.

This struck me hard as I would say Schaeffer is one who lived like he didn't believe it. If he really had an apocalyptic view it would shape his worldview and as such it necessarily generates a degree of cynicism with regard to the course of the world and what the institutions of this world can accomplish. It views this age as fading and passing. At best it possesses a kind of failed beauty – the best that can be hoped for in a fallen and dying age. Art has a value in that it can combine ideas with reality pushing us into the transcendent and maybe even into the sublime. It's different for Christians. We'll see such art with very different eyes than the unbeliever – finding and discovering things the artists did not mean to portray and interpreting the art in a manner sometimes at odds with what the artist might have hoped to communicate. On one level beauty is in the eye of the beholder – one may be able to see beauty in ways that others cannot. This does not deny objectivity but rather acknowledges that apart from what is revealed those categories (in terms of a comprehensible absolute or unified theory) necessarily elude us.

Art appreciation and aesthetic value is certainly more than merely appreciating the talent one has with the brush to replicate what is seen with the eye. I fail to see how that is little more than paint-by-numbers on a grandiose scale. Don't misunderstand me, I don't mean to make light of it or downplay it. I can certainly appreciate realist art- the Dutch Masters (and even some of the painters of the Biedermeier period) are in fact some of my favourite artists but I don't view them as the ideal (let alone the Christian ideal). It's good art and their work produces a kind of reflection but if I'm looking for transcendence and the sublime I look elsewhere.

Schaeffer also speaks of art that is anti-art – an interesting turn of phrase that reminds one of concepts like the Counter-Enlightenment or my own (by some accounts Nominalist) apologetical views that embrace the destructive critique and scepticism as a means of leaving man with no option apart from nihilism – no option but revelation that is. And thus in that capacity while I don't appreciate some of the modernist art that is meant to dismantle and criticise norms and standards – on another level I can grant it a type of value and functionality. It is art – not the kind that I want to hang on my wall – but it, even with its inverted and contrary aesthetic serves a purpose in the same way Hume or even Nietzsche served a purpose in pushing their schools and peers to the extreme – to the point of collapse. There's an apologetical and polemical value in that – in seeing this world talis qualis (as it stands) – it necessarily drives one to the transcendent in order to retain sanity. There's a value in that – or at least a potential for one. Sometimes the message is that all is vanity – and on one level we can understand that as an honest expression of man in this world without Christ. That's not something to celebrate but it's candid, something we can use.

Apocalyptic worldview teaches us that all in this life is vanity. Our hope isn't here. Though this world is vain, passing and groaning in pain we don't despair as there is hope in Christ and in the Eschatological Kingdom He inaugurated when He, the Risen Vanquisher of Death and Hades ascended to the Right-hand of the Throne of God.

As has been the case throughout this whole series, Schaeffer's errors are replete but they are always combined with some value and insight. This episode was glaring in its failures – a case of art commentary brought to you by the Ugly American.

Continue reading Part 9