Art is essential to man's survival – it is essential to the survival of his consciousness.

Remember, that man's mind does not only operate on the perceptual level – it has the ability to form 'concepts', which allow him to integrate two or more units into single abstraction. As an example of a concept, take 'man'. This speaks of all men currently alive, all that have ever lived, and all that will ever live. There are so many 'men' that no single man could hold them all on the perceptual level in the focus of his conscious awareness all at once – for example he could never look at all 'men' at once. A concept, however, allows a single man to hold all men in his conscious awareness all at once – something a precept could never do.

Above, I examined the purpose of a cognitive abstraction: to identify the facts of reality. There is, however, a second type of abstraction – what is called a normative abstraction. It evaluates the facts of reality – or in other words, an cognitive abstraction deals with 'what is', and a normative abstraction deals with 'what ought to be'. When normative abstractions evaluate reality, they also prescribe a course of action, and a code of values; the field of ethics is to prescribe the correct course of action by identifying what is 'right' and what is 'wrong', and in doing so, ethics prescribes a code of values. Thus, one could say, that normative abstractions are the science of ethics.

Ethics rests on another branch of philosophy, called 'metaphysics'. Metaphysics deals with the fundamental nature of reality; and whether it be conscious or subconscious, man needs an comprehensive view of reality in order to integrate those values – and metaphysics provides this base.

Metaphysics includes man's widest abstractions in the sense that it includes every concrete that he has ever perceived – such a vast sum of knowledge that he could never hold it all in his conscious awareness all at once. This power is given to him by art.

'Art is the selective recreation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments... Art brings man's concepts to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allows him to grasp them directly, as if they were precepts¹.'

Use the example of two different statues: one representing a Greek god, the other an horribly distorted and grotesquely ugly monstrosity in the image of a man – both represent basic metaphysical estimates of man.

That is the fundamental purpose of art – to bring concepts down to the perceptual level and in doing so allow men to grasp them as though it was a precept.

The Oxford Dictionary's definition of abstract art is:

'... any art that does not attempt to represent external, recognizable reality...'

By not representing any reality of any sort, abstract art negates the fundamental purpose of art.

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25.09.03 Front Page

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