reading about dali, and about surrealism, expressionism, dadaism and akin currents in art. these have of course have disregarded the academic rules of artmaking, which would before regulate the pigments, the techniques, the subjects, and all the technical perfection of skill since xviith century. art as a field spilled out of its technical frames then, leading to surprising things being used as art, and rediscovery of the idea of art overall - now less of a skill, but more of a purely creative activity that deals with meanings and messages, and personal expression. thus even something that looks like trash can be a work of art - very interesting. critics have condemned these creators at first, and to this day can sometimes disrgard art that doesn't take specific skills or talent to make, and can be copied easily. the book i'm reading is in fact dealing with 'why a five year old couldn't have done that' in regards of modern art - the map of cultural references and sexual or political subtexts it contains, mostly - pretty enriching.
i would say it is worth noting, though, that dali had great technical skills, and his works utilised them; worth noting that first he had known how to portray realism before he progressed to surrealism, mixing, modifying and remaking what he knew. it is worth noting that most of these artists of early xxth century have, in fact, been educated in the old 'academic' ways, which is what enabled them to knowingly undermine the rules - first having learnt them. the mastery they had achieved which had rarely been reached by later artists was based in knowing what they were dealing with, and having first learnt art as a skill before beyond able to elevate it above and beyond. sometimes, it's arguable if there was an actual progression beyond art as a skill, since the art still utilises technical skills to the best of its ability, just rejects chosen rules as it pleases. revolutionary or not, dali was skillful and talented in the traditional sense; i do ask, what is really 'revolutionary' art or thought if not the traditional skill and predisposition elevated above and beyond itself and brought to its perfection, where it can look down from above and mock even itself? what is it if not the development of the form to the stage where it's capable of turning itself into art, of laughing at itself? a level of mastery which can allow itself distance?
weren't these who wanted to defeat the traditional rules of language almost always also traditionally educated linguists? wasn't marx first a philosopher, a young hegelian, idealist? how many times in history has mastery laughed at itself, pointing through the hands of people who thought they were destroying the traditional form or creating something entirely new, when it was really realised in them, through them, in its most mature form - a form that could allow to bend its own rules, to experiment with what it was? a mature form of such certainty in itself that it could experiment on itself? has art really ever broken off from its roots or has it just outgrown them? couldn't it be that the old forms achieved such a stage in development that they could now exist independently from their own definition, the same way nature has given humans a consciousness now capable of bending nature to its own will or even changing nature? doesn't completion of a process usually mean ending it in its current form?
how many times have these who thought they were rebels and destroyers actually brought something to its completion? how many times have they thought they were destroying the form when the truth was it was in them the form has achieved its peak, and enabled itself to look at itself externally, critically? how many times have they thought they were ending something or fighting against it, when in fact that form no longer needed the safety measures, the regulations it has called for to grow that had kept it in its place in the growth process and didn't allow it to degenerate, and now are no longer needed as it can fend for itself in its current shape? it did fend for itself - through them, in them, these who aimed to destroy it. not inherently a negative; a lot of the time, it has exhausted itself as it was, and whatever worth salvaging could survive as its heritage.
coming forth: the nonsensical character of deconstructionist approaches; the necessity of deconstruction but the fact that deconstruction itself is just a stage in development and beautifully delusional in thinking that it stands against, not within. dare i say: silly. for dali did not stand against traditional art: he was the peak of traditional art at the time. he was traditional art where it achieved power over itself. as marx didn't stand against philosophy; he has exhausted a certain current of philosophy, more specifically some applications of dialectics. as nietzsche has elevated religion - christianity - to the position of subject of analysis; it was dead when he approached it. he never fought it - he immortalised it, developed from it - created a current that existed in certain relations to christianity and effectively prevented it from being forgotten. i'm thinking it's necessary to think you're fighting something at a certain in order to see how far you can run with it. it is very rare, though, that you're really fighting what you think you're fighting - it's something nietzsche became aware of pretty early, and knew what he was doing was not defeating religion but trying to fill the void it has left when it died independently, and salvage what was worth salvaging.
this is where i'm getting to the point: the point being why so much modern, present thought presents by itself very little value: and that's because it starts by the end; because it doesn't follow through all the steps in development the past thought has followed through to eventually end up where it ended, where it started to criticise and deconstruct and cannibalise itself. they start from dali. from foucault, from marx, from deleuze. they're only working with the criticism without engaging with the subject it was criticising and knowing for themselves where these criticism come from.
something i hear a lot - 'because only that is worth engaging with'. surely... that's the easy way - to immedietely progress to analysis without ever attempting synthesis to know what you're even analysing and what is your actual purpose. by every repeat deconstruction of deconstruction has less value; a good example is the teenage 'nu-atheism', a general hatred of religion which doesn't afford for understanding theology and its historic role, which dismisses it universally as worthless fairytales without willingness to understand it used to define the whole cultural framework that any modern secular though of the west has derived from and still inherited parts of it - and thus lacks a deeper understanding of itself, refusing to look into its own roots which grow deep into what it defined itself in opposition to. that results in shallow, repetitive criticism, unable to breed anything new; something one, with luck, ends up outgrowing.
rightfully by some conscious age atheists grow out of it and make effort to understand the thought that existed before modern atheism, and as a result, understand the modern atheism better, understand its origins. saying this is an atheist myself: you want to know what the secular culture has differenated and shaped itself from. you will only then really see its shape. you can only know what you stand for if you understand against what you originally stood and what heritage does it still have, continuing, in what remained when it exhausted itself in people like you.
it's these works of the intellectually lazy people who read marx, but don't bother themselves with hegel and dialectics, who read nietzsche, but refuse to even engage in generalities with schopenhauer to know where nietzsche was coming from, that are so lacking in depth: and why are they lacking in depth? because they come from the last stage and thus are the last stage endlessly repeating itself. by only buying ready food and reheating it, you won't learn to cook. by only engaging with whatever is revolutionary in current place and time you won't learn the reasoning that brought them where they're standing. they, who have usually received a classic education and knew the cultural sources they were comming from.
hell, some don't even engage with the thought of these revolutionary ones, just vaguely place themselves in a late postmodernist philosophy oriented towards deconstruction and are trying to develop from from there.
now in order to learn to do something outside of its usual lines wouldn't it makes sense to first learn how to do it within them? in order to learn how to do something unconventionally, wouldn't it make sense to first learn how to do it right within the convention? in order to learn to cross and redefine its boundaries, wouldn't it be logical to first learn where they are? before you start mixing and reinventing techniques, wouldn't you want to know how to utilise them according to purpose they were meant for? before you start challenging the importance of technical skill, wouldn't you want to have that skill? and these who were the best at it, didn't they receive a classic education appropriate in their time and location? didn't they have much more to develop from, more to question and more things to notice in order to then include them in criticism?
i don't think i'll ever stop repeating how important it is to know basics and technical skill before specialising and developing your own personalised style, criticisng and experimenting. you want something to come from - you want an ability to walk a new route too, one brought along by your own processing, that maybe none of your revolutionary critic predecessors have treated, that you would never notice had you been squished into the narrow passage of only one of routes they have already walked.
i don't think i'll ever stop repeating how important self-discipline and a strong core are for developing any positive approaches and changes in life. what are the easy routes of never learning classic styles and only developing i.e. the anime/cartoon style in drawing, if not limiting? if not, in fact, pushing you into one narrow route difficult to develop anywhere from? how much of that same is happening in philosophy and political theory? because i will be honest: a lot! awfully a lot.
there's a plague of deconstructioners who've only read other, the most recent deconstructioners, but never the deconstructed; that, or they only ever cared to engage with them. resulting thought is necessary repetitive and by every 'generation' less meaningful; the original idea eventually gets lost, and there's too little and too specific to develop from. thus we're dealing with a sort of inflation of meaning: a lot of though with little value, because that value got lost in process by these who are developing from a narrow development, and aren't aware they are repeating things already said in that form.
personally, i could have written much more of my philosophy already if i haven't paid that much mind to theoretical ground and preparation; both in terms of reading these before me and eliminating the parts where i would just repeat what i said, and in terms of collecting information on neuroscience and other disciplines that may concern me as grounds to develop from, and data i'm obligated to keep to. that makes the process slower, but arguably more sensible. while i see the purpose of questioning technical rules, i also see the appeal they have: the appeal which is enforcing and upholding certain standards of quality and skill, and assuring that when they are being redefined and challenged it is by someone who has already achieved perfection in utilising their conventional ways. there's an appeal in assuring that only a master can turn back and laugh at his own creation, deconstruct and criticse it.
this all being said, there's of course the problem of systemic exclusion and discrimination, especially when it comes to formal education and degrees - i get it; generally, though, philosophy and politics have it to themselves that anyone can practice them without necessarily having a formal legitimation for it, and if one interprets this essay as calling for a terror of state-mandated certifications on everything rather than peer-review and minding one's own quality of work, i would have to say they are applying a capitalistic bias to this essay and projecting things that clearly aren't there; would probably benefit on taking a step back.
in this current time, a lot of knowledge is available in form of free pdfs; it's often also people of relatively privileged demographics i've seen practice the boldest intellectual lazyness, and produce 'theory' i would only want to use as toilet paper had i run out of any and didn't have tissues nearby - full of tautologies, vaguely esoteric sounding phrasing meant to project a sense of depth and only betraying lack of actual meaningful thought, and otherwise deeply flawed, though 'flawed' isn't the best word; my own writing is, likely, on account of my young age and other factors, flawed. these aren't flawed; they're just meaningless, as they don't really contribute anything new or meaningful. rightfully, one could point out i'm also being bold - i can forgive flaws, but i cannot forgive a masturbatory nature of someone's whole intellectual activity. all intellectual work is a bit narcissistic, and has to be so for the best; but if you're looking for audiences, shouldn't you have something meaningful to say?
here's a request screamed into the void that perhaps we should return to demanding competence of these who want to criticise and skill of these who want to reinvent, and demanding of ourselves to follow the steps through which the modern thought we're coming from has developed, and understand it and its nature and origin before we deconstruct. it's easy to hide lazyness especially behind a mask of political zeal, really. what i want to see is mature, developed theory capable of synthesis, not childish, masturbatory and narrow produce of these who just want to bask in their perceived intellectual or moral superiority. for i don't have an eternity to read modern 'thinkers' and i want to read things that are in their nature stimulating and constructive, and open to further development; i want to read things i can benefit from. i refuse to waste my time on anything less.