It is important to stress the importance of aesthetics in our lives, in particular in today’s aesthetically and spiritually disoriented society. Aesthetics can show the basic principles of how art can be a bridge between us and knowledge.

To achieve this two important factors have to be established: 1) that it is possible to determine objective values in a work of art; 2) that these objective values are then, as a result, a manifestation of Spirit.

Thus I will introduce the need for a new art movement, or rather, a philosophical outlook on visual art, Neomodernism. Co-founded by the author and Andre Durand in 2000 at Kingston University, Neomodernism precedes and yet supersedes the present art movement, Post-modernism. It is a theory that dialectically annuls itself in order to create a more intimate relationship between the viewer and the visual work of art. This allows for the viewer to communicate with a painting intuitively, thus inducing something for which no word can be a match, allowing the picture to ‘say a thousand words’.

AESTHETICS AND MATERIAL CONDITIONS

In today’s society we are increasingly alienated both from ourselves and from one another. Having given up on life’s fundamental questions and age-old wisdoms, we have found it easier to conceal them. As a result, it is a society impervious, if not derisive of high art as well as spiritual values. Therefore it is imperative to stress the importance of Aesthetics in today’s world and preserve it as a tool for transcending our deep spiritual disorientation.

As art is at one and the same time the reflection and cognition of life, many avenues of inquiry appear for the chosen subject within the philosophical /art historical sphere, such as: what is the relationship of art to philosophy and spirituality; is there such a thing as linear progress in art, or indeed, progress in society? My position is that aesthetic and spiritual contemplation is perhaps the forgotten solution for our life in material existence. Contemplative knowledge may be perceived as real knowledge in the sense that it is ontological by its nature and concerned with a reality that we know instinctively, the Absolute Spirit.

Aesthetics can illuminate our life, enabling us to understand what is meant in terms of our own existence. At the same time, aesthetics can make us aware of both, our mortality and that oneness to which we all belong. Art can then reflect, transform and change life. It can show what cannot be said, thus transcending all sciences and enveloping the realm of the spiritual. By art man can conduct various outlooks to perfection, thereby materialising his own human nature.

What is the role of art in society today? Is art neutral, even when it is a modernist art for art's sake work, which has been produced in a particular social environment and for particular reasons? We need to seek for a view that brings back the traditional and objective values of art and at the same time contemplates the essence and potential of the present.

If, then, some art is impregnated with eternal qualities that transcend the circumstances in which it was created and is thus usable as an instrument for our spiritual salvation, why has this not happened already? On the contrary, it seems that we have forgotten the need for a well-rounded human being to replace the dehumanised, fragmented creature of today’s society. It follows that we have to conduct an investigation of the material conditions in which the selected works of art have been created, whilst situating them within the appropriate philosophical context, which in turn will allow for philosophical and aesthetic ideas to be analysed in the context of our environment.

For thousands of years man's creative will has been linked to his spiritual consciousness. We had to wait until the 19th Century for art to start discarding its links with the past and advocate no other purpose than its own existence - art for art's sake. And in the 20th Century, Post-modernism has worked hard to put into question the validity of traditional aesthetic values. In the 1970’s, the purist tendencies from Post - Painterly Abstraction to Minimalism came to be seen as the last stage of Modernism. The art object gave way to the concept of the ‘art work’. Modernism was opposed for favouring purity, the artist as original, the artwork as unique and for being historicist and elitist. Conceptualism dominated this non-movement. It attacked the existing ontology and epistemology of art: what was considered as art and art’s relation to knowledge. In the 1990’s we witnessed a continuation of this, except that now, the barriers between ‘high’ art and populist, pop culture were gravely weakened. A Post-modern ‘work of art’ celebrates the death of meaning, reflecting the economic self-seeking mentality of a consumer culture. The ‘real’, found object of the everyday is more valid than the traditionally aestheticised. But our purpose here is not to rebut Post-modernism and Conceptualism. Instead, I merely want to acknowledge them as a necessary part of the dialectical cycle of art. Acknowledging the significance of ready-made objects as ‘art’ rests not in any aesthetic qualities that may or may not be discovered in them, but crucially, in the aesthetic questions they force one to contemplate.

OBJECTIVE VALUES IN VISUAL ART

Emanuel Kant felt that we need to ask whether a priori knowledge is possible. One can look at an object and remove anything that belongs to it empirically. What one cannot remove, according to Kant, is the object’s pure substance. Pure Reason is beyond our experience. But, how is one to reason whilst leaving the world of experience? Kant posits a condition of possibility (a priori knowledge) as a valid concept to reach pure reason. Of course, the sceptical Humeian would say that it is not possible to have pure reason, beyond experience, for how can one think about the unthinkable? Kant offers the concept of intuition as a solution, intuition as a priori knowledge. Of course, Kant cannot deny that this intuition is not autonomous from experience but he points out that the condition of the possibility of experience is the a priori, the intuition.

This is the line of thinking that leads us to conceding that there can be some objective, universal values in art. These values are well preserved in a true work of art, through planned craftsmanship that ultimately gives way to the Idea - a concept we will come back to later - by way of intuition.

Different artists from different times would have concurred in seeing art as an incarnation of the most sublime spiritual principles and interpretations of the universe and man’s existence. I believe that today artists should come back in line with the classical philosophical belief that the reality we live in is but a mirror of a deeper one that can only be reached through intuition. Some works of art have the ability to transcend the circumstances of the material conditions in which they are created by subjectively expressing their objective potential. If this is not so then how is it that the Pantheon frieze, for example, can still be aesthetically enjoyed and seen as ‘perfect’ today - in material conditions and ‘tastes’ very different from the ones in which it was created? Architects and sculptors in ancient Greece worked together to build a temple or carve a statue. There was certainly an Idea that was to be followed and a goal to be achieved. People were brought in from various provinces for parts of their body to be modelled and combined into one sculpture, which was created as an embodiment of the Ideal of human form. The artists were careful to achieve mathematical perfections, for example, making sure that the dimensions between the nipples and the navel of the body formed a perfect triangle. Thus the embodiment of the Idea is achieved and the craftsman’s artefact ultimately reaches a level of perfection that could grant it a status of Neomodern. As the German idealist philosopher Hegel says of the Ideal form in Greek sculpture, ‘it treads into sensuality but remains self-contained’.

A work of art with objective aesthetic values will not merely manifest the objective universal values inherent in each individual. On the contrary, since this expression is individualized, it follows that the absolute substance is known by the individual (artist) as their essence and their own work (of art). So, the objective spirit is expressed through the subjective potential of the individual (artist), whose essence lies in the objective absolute anyway. Hegel suggests that for the individual to reach this realm of free self will, he has to redraw into himself, i.e. into his restricted self in material existence - and recognize that the Absolute Spirit is, in fact, dissolved into and within the material existence, i.e. in the different forms of custom, law, rights, duties, etc.,-or, as Hegel puts it - in the “organically ordered world”. This way the absolute spirit becomes ‘perfectly sure of itself’, attaining its own fulfilment and joy with itself. In other words, the artist has to achieve a perfection in his/her subjective creative potential in order to reach an objective quality in the work of art.
We cannot continue our analysis of objective values without considering the propagators of relativism, according to which no aesthetic judgments are really better than others. We are all aware of statements such as “There is no right and wrong about judgements of taste”. We will argue against these kind of relativist statements. As we will see, beauty does contain objective values, such as the ones identified in the Neomodernist Manifesto.

RELATIVISM AND OBJECTIVE VALUES

Of course, the first difficulty in establishing objective values in art is that an aesthetic value seems to be linked to experience, and experience is by its nature subjective.
Evolving parallel to Postmodernism, Poststructuralist theory has challenged western metaphysics and the accepted premise that historical interpretation has something to do with truth. Poststructuralsm questioned the validity of language and the meaning of meaning. Saussure's theory of the sign is the cornerstone of Poststructuralism. For Saussure language is a chain of signs that consists of signifiers (words) and the signified (meaning). The word's and the meaning's position within the sign is variable and there may be no real connection between a word and its meaning.
If Structuralism demonstrates that we are able to see a truth beyond the text or image, Poststructuralsm goes further by pointing out that meaning is not fixed or static but active and moving. The interaction of text and reader is a meaning in itself that necessarily accentuates our awareness of the fact that language invests historical narratives with present values. Effectively, this is a rebuttal of the grand narrative as an absolute truth and solution to the human question.

But, a medieval or Renaissance artist or spectator would have thought that just as the sacred scriptures are made up of words and meanings so are pictures made up of colours and meanings. If we take words as they are and not understand their meaning it would be useless to read them. Likewise, if we just look at the colours of a painting and ignore the meaning which could be expressed in the colours and forms we would not benefit.

If we accept that a text, even a sacred text like a work of art must have more than one interpretation, its truth is ambivalent. This means that one plausible interpretation offers us part of a truth; a second plausible interpretation another part of a truth and a third plausible interpretation...and so on ad infinitum. If this multitude of interpretations becomes dogmatic or if these poststructuralist interpretations oppose one another diametrically, the meaning depends on language and its structure and eloquence. Likewise, if the sum of all the possible interpretations is linked to the time and place in which it is produced, we must ask who and what determines which interpretation as most valid. Hence, contrary to Poststructuralist theoreticians who argue that objective values owe more to language than has been traditionally accepted, I believe that objectivity is fixed and attainable, and that interpretation depends for the most part on empirical evidence.

The answer can be found in the relationship between the spectator and the object examined. Logocentricism does not discredit the historical narrative. After all “Every narrative, including deconstructionist one, is invested with transcendental values whose claims exceed the signifying power of language” . Post-structuralism is just another grand narrative, critical of grand – narratives.

Fredric Jameson in Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism [Verso, London 1991] believes that postmodernism is an age that has forgotten how to think historically. Post-modernism for him is not a style in art but a cultural dominant; a conception that allows for the presence and coexistence of a range of very different, yet subordinate, features. Jameson asks us to accept capitalism and Postmodernism as a passing stage, as simultaneously the best and the worst thing that has happened to humanity. A. Callinicos, another Marxist art critic, in Against Postmodernism sees Postmodernism as primarily a response to the failure of the socialist upheaval of 1968 intellectuals to fulfill the revolutionary hopes it had raised. The grand narratives did not redeem humanity and were therefore replaced by the subjective and relativist values of Poststructuralism.
Relativism has tried to devaluate the grand narrative, but has itself become a grand narrative; in trying to devaluate high art, its visual cousin, postmodernism has indeed become a high art in the most prestigious, elitist galleries.
NEOMODERNISM

All attempts to completely abolish past art for the creation of something new are doomed. Freedom in expression comes out of a historical process. However, this does not mean that social conditions completely determine the character and the effect of a work of art; it merely shows that they determine it indirectly.

Suzi Gablik in her ‘Has Modernism Failed?’ reminds us of Edgar Allan Poe's sailor who sinks ‘into the maelstrom to understand the nature of the vortex’ and is then carried up ‘by the same spiral that sucked him down'. So what comes next? What can we observe in today’s post-modern vortex that will enable us to pave art’s 'way up the spiral'?

Neomodernism, a new philosophical outlook on visual art, affords us a way of looking and creating a new relationship with works of visual art. Neomodernism cuts through the media hype surrounding old master and modernist works of art, labels that have blinded the viewer - not to say made it hostile - to these works' Neomodern message. Neomodernism contains some of Clive Bell’s formal values in art but certainly those values are not the only premise of the Neomodern criteria.

There is a certain reservation, if not aversion, towards anything substantial and imbued with a grand narrative thinking, in today’s world of postmodernism and moreover, post-structuralism. The validity of value and truth has been questioned and negated. Therefore, we have to take courage and have an evaluative approach when searching for the objective values in a work of art.

Each art movement, once fully developed, has given way to a new one. This is one of the most important Neomodern criteria. If one has a thought that will affect one’s material surroundings, the change in those surroundings will eventually give rise to a new idea, and therefore, a new work of art.

No less important is the criterion that a Neomodern work of art will manifest the Idea, in the Hegelian sense, i.e. the spiritual essence of a work of art. Hegel said that the Idea can only be aware of itself through the object of its perception, which, in turn, cannot be autonomous from the Idea. A work of art can thus represent the Idea contemplating itself. What determines the content of the work of art is the individual’s subjectivity aware of itself, which expresses the objective potential of a work of art.

Now, what postmodernism has done is to decapitate the work of art from the idea, which only invalidates this whole cycle. With Duchamp’s cubical or Hirst’s sheep in formaldehyde, as with all conceptual art, we are left only with the concept of the work of art at the expense of almost all aesthetic qualities. In other words, we are trying to cut without a sword.

Let us therefore turn to the actual process by which the spiritual in a visual work of art surfaces. ‘A technician is made but an artist is born’, said the philosopher Collingwood, a Hegelian follower. We can develop this idea by pointing out that an artist has to be a master technician in order to fulfil his innate gift. A certain element of craft has to exist in order to allow birth to the Idea in a work of art, that is to say, a Neomodern work of art. Both the craft and the Idea aspects are necessary for the creation of a Neomodern work of art. As a result, the viewer (Hume’s ideal judge) has a pure and intimate relationship with this kind of art work, one that sees through the latter’s ‘style’ or ‘ism’ and enjoys its pure beauty. There are numerous factors that may validate such a work, for example the fact that every element in an image can be justified in terms of the whole composition. If a picture is of religious subject matter, being Neomodern, it will be detached and philosophical, never a mere affirmation of faith. Likewise, a political or historical subject matter is detached and philosophical, never propaganda. A Neomodern artist will have sound drawing abilities and a command of the other traditional academic disciplines, such as perspective. Furthermore, this kind of work will have Albertian depth, space and light, never stressing the flatness of the canvas surface, like we see in Modernist works of art, but exploring its limitless depths.

In a Neomodern image form is self-contained, it is no longer ‘important’, so to speak; it annuls itself, and in this way unveils the Idea. Take the Mona Lisa (Louvre). After a while, we don’t think about how it was painted, which is the only thing we think about when we look at a Monet. We forget about the material aspects of the Mona Lisa. We are not thinking how or why but what. All we see is Mona Lisa, the truth of her eyes, smile; the truth of her being, the truth of the objective idea.

Hence, it is the perfection of form, through the use of Neomodern principles that manifests the Idea in the work of art. Additional Neomodernist criteria are as follows:

• A Neomodernist picture has links to the works of art that preceded it and / or antiquity.
• The nude or the symbol/essence of the nude is the basis of a Neomodernist picture.
• Every element in a Neomodernist picture is justified in terms of the whole composition.
• A Neomodernist treatment of political or historical subject matter is detached and philosophical, never propaganda.
• A Neomodernist picture presents scientific principles aesthetically (La Flagellazione, Piero Della Francesca).
• A Neomodernist work of art hightens the sense of newness, regardless of when it was made.
• A Neomodernist work of art is tactile.
• Simplicity of form is Neomodernist.
• A Neomodernist work of art has movement and stillness simultaneously.
• Both figurative and abstract Neomodernist pictures pronounce "painterly" values.

Spirit and its manifestation are but a constant movement, a process objectively aware of itself (the Absolute Spirit). But can art, for Hegel, substantiate that process? At first it seems so, but later Hegel posits limitations on art’s capacity. Hegel taught that religion moved from worship of nature through a series of stages to Christianity, where Christ represents the union of God and humanity, of spirit and matter. Philosophy, for Hegel, goes beyond religion as it enables humankind to comprehend the entire historical unfolding of the absolute. But whilst much of his writings on Romantic art allude to Renaissance art, which, according to Hegel, has gone further into being the manifestation of Absolute Spirit than the sensual art of the Ancient Greeks, Hegel nevertheless sees romantic art as one where the harmony of form and content again grows defective, because the object of Christian art - the infinite spirit - is a theme too high even for Romantic art.

CONCLUSION

A work of art can embody the thoughts of individuals, their basic categories and general representations, their notions of individuality and its relation to the universal.

Without aesthetics an artist could not generalise, identify the archetypal in the particular fact, conceive and analyse his subject-matter, preserve form, the most vital element in aesthetic imagination, or comprehend the contradictions of life in such a way as to give them full expression. Like philosophy, art also has a profoundly communicative function. Through it people communicate to one another their feelings, their most intimate and infinitely varied and poignant thoughts. A common feature of art and philosophy is the wealth they both contain of cognitive and social as well as metaphysical substance. This is not to say that art is created to merely transmit emotion, or as Tolstoy has it, to ‘infect’ the viewer.

A Neomodern visual work of art does not merely convey beauty but expresses it. As such art ultimately materialises the Idea. Art is at one and the same time the reflection and cognition of life, which shows it as an expression of life, a flow of contradictions that come into being, develop, and are negated in order to generate new contradictions and ideas.

It is only through this dialectical process that all creative ways lead to the universal manifestation of the Spirit. However, remembering Hegel’s ideas about the capacity of art, and subsequently the end of art, we can observe today’s art as being the furthest away from manifesting the Spirit. Postmodernism has even rebutted the validity of Spirit’s existence, as we can so clearly see not only in our everyday life but also in the modern galleries devoid of oils on canvas, of true works of art proper, but instead littered with ‘works of art’ that ask “what is art”. But, is this the end of art as Hegel predicted? Or is it merely another stage in art’s and life’s dialectical cycle, where art is reflecting the material conditions in which is created only to give rise to new ideas and new art that will again adopt the traditional aesthetic values?

This brings me to a perhaps controversial statement for conclusion. The effect of art is far greater than Tolstoy would grant it - merely ‘infecting’ - because it brings intuition into play. In this sense, art can be seen as higher than philosophy, in that a picture can, as the famous saying goes, ‘say a thousand words’.

So, it is not only that we have to protect the role of aesthetics as a branch of philosophy. Aesthetics should be developed – something that can only be achieved as a dialectical cycle between Idea and expression – as an equally important science, parallel to philosophy.

Copyright @ London, 2004

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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