Reality and Authenticity after Camus’ speech: Create Dangerously
“A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.”
-- Blaise Pascal
Writer, philosopher, and Noble prize recipient for Literature (1957) Albert Camus is said to have intellectually followed the above quote from Pascal, his literary predecessor in the French language by a few centuries and whose work tends to be relegated to the mathematical, the scientific, the ‘logical’ side of humanity whilst Camus, the existential novelist, is placed to the side of artistic, the creative, and dare I say the more emotional, ruled by feeling, and, *gasp*, illogical side of what we call being human. But if we read those same words above we see that by choosing to relegate either to either side of the room - science or art - would be a folly on our part. The reality shown to us by Pascal and elaborated on by Camus is identity is never a case of ‘either … or’ (apologies to Kierkegaard) but always found in the between, “... touching both as once” and never residing at one pole or the other.
I want to put aside Camus’ musing on the role of the artist and the art made in direct expression of political beliefs which he emphasizes here to focus instead on his use of the term ‘reality’ and what I read sixty-one years later as its relationship to the term ‘authenticity’ and the ambiguous state of artistic identity - both the artist’s and the art-objects - today. But before I get to that I will begin with Camus’ assertion that “To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing.” (Camus: 3) Spoken by Camus well before the Internet and social media brought publication not just to the mass in a way beyond that of Gutenberg’s press, creation today is tantamount to publication from the moment of inception, always dangerous, always exposed to being un-forgiven (or un-forgiveable) from the start. The threat to art, the danger embedded in creative acts, is not necessarily one exerted by outside forces according to Camus but often comes from within the artist’s, the creator’s, self which originates from an internal doubt of the necessity of creating. Camus goes so far as to say “The hatred for art, of which our society provides such fine examples, is so effective today only because it is kept alive by artists themselves.” (Camus: 4) How this hatred could be seen as manifesting itself is exemplified by the history of contemporary abstract painting and particularly in notions of authenticity as applied to this ‘traditional’ form of art-making in the sixty plus years since these words were spoken. Camus did not limit the dangers to this one but allowed multiple reasons all of which working in cohort undermine the basic principle of creating freely by instigating the creator’s self-doubt. (Camus: 5)
Another way of describing this would be to say the artist questions not only the necessity of the creative act and the object resulting from it but the role of the artist his or herself. Moving on to the term reality and applying it to this situation it becomes a question not only of necessity, the object, and the role played by the artist but to the realness of each. If something is real it can also be described as authentic. Is an object generated by an unnecessary act real? Is the maker of the object real? Is the art, if it is art, authentic?
TBC