This essay was submitted to the Goethe-Institut “Sapere Aude” Essay Competition, where it earned third place among high school entries. Originally written in English, it is presented here in its original language and form.
Olivia, a 6 year old pig, goes to the Modern Museum of Art. There, the precocious protagonist of Ian Falconer’s children’s book, Olivia, views a painting by Jackson Pollock. The little pig is confused by its seemingly haphazard splatters and becomes convinced she can replicate it on her bedroom wall. Olivia, like many of us, has strong opinions about what qualities define fine art. The key to understanding how seemingly simplistic paintings such as this one gained admittance into the pantheon of fine art may lie in the pages of Immanuel Kant’s A Critique of Judgement. Here he states the formula for fine art which combines “taste”, the ability to create something objectively beautiful, with “genius”, the ability to translate rational ideas into a tangible form such as art. He also introduces another concept: the sublime. This is the feeling of smallness triggered by a prodigious natural event such as a tornado. In this instance one is helpless but, in that helplessness, realizes how wondrously infinite the universe is in comparison to themself and to the natural event (McCormick, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Although Kant explores both the sublime and fine art he believed the two concepts could not overlap. During his lifetime artists of the Romantic art movement endeavored to capture the sublime in their paintings through detailed representations of dramatic events. They believed these events themselves were sublime which was in conflict with Kant’s notion that the sublime is pure emotion. With the blossoming of the modern art movement, superfluous details were stripped away to make room for deeper emotional connections with the viewer. Mark Rothko stripped away everything but color in an effort to capture “the nature of human drama” (Rothko). This display of untainted raw emotion finally allowed for limitless, wondrous, sublime art.Rothko’s painting “Black in Deep Red” meets Kant’s requirements for “fine art”. In addition, the rich descriptions of his painting in various modern critiques as well as his own thoughts reveal that there is more embedded in his work than pure genius and taste. Comprising lilacs, blacks, and reds without any definite form, “Black in Deep Red” was intended to capture the essence of human drama. Its originality directly correlates with Kant’s ideas of genius by creating a piece for which “no definite rule can be given”. Furthermore, New York Times critic Peter Schjeldahl talks of the painting in a poetic fashion saying, “The black can alternately seem to advance, as a clenched mass, and to recede, as infinite depth. For me, this gives the lilac a lyrical quality of heartbreak”. The description of the lilac being lyrical lends a sense of beauty to the piece which in turn makes it tasteful. Moreover, Schejdahls evocative description goes beyond the confines of Kant’s definition of fine art, revealing something deeper. Schjeldahl’s feeling of “heartbreak” triggered purely by color displays the power Rothko’s piece has over the human mind that can make even concepts seem emotional. Furthermore, Rothko proclaims “The people who weep before my paintings are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them”, an experience of the all-powerful, the “limitless” (Kant), in other words, “the sublime” (Kant). With its “infinite depth” (Schjeldahl) the painting is able to reach through the canvas and touch the audience so profoundly that it triggers an emotion that is found “merely within ourselves” (Kant). Such as what occurred with Schjeldahl when he used “for me” and “seems” in his description connoting a deeply individual response to the painting that is unable to be replicated. This subjectivity encompasses the sublime because true emotion is personal and varied and only a piece seemingly without a true form or story to influence which emotion the audience feels could elicit such a natural response. Rothko’s personification of colors and lack of physical forms depict pure emotions that behave as naturally as possible and thus, allow the sublime to be man made.
Before Rothko succeeded in depicting the sublime, other painters claimed to have done so as well. However, many of these so called “sublime” paintings such as Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa simply relied on sensationalism to elicit the emotion of the sublime. In 1816 a French Royal navy ship was sunk and 150 survivors scrambled onto a raft. Over the next 13 days the majority of the men died due to starvation, cannibalism and murder. This horrific event had an immense effect on the public. Géricault converted this tragedy to paint in 1819. The public was said to have “never been more penetrated in heart by any performance of the pencil ... We never left one more reluctantly, or thought of it more after we had left it, with a charmed melancholy. The impression can never forsake us” (Anon., Examiner, 16 July 1820, p.3.). As a result, many have called the painting sublime. However, the emotion elicited was not one of awe but rather a shared feeling of horror as indicated by the use of “us” and “we”. This signals the universal nature of the painting which directly contrasts the nature of the sublime. Kant said the sublime could reside only in the mind indicating it is a deeply individual experience.. The hollow feeling of shared horror elicited by Gericault’s masterpiece is similar to that evoked by the popular trend of true crime podcasts today. If a story is gruesome enough it will never “forsake” the one that heard it and can give the same feeling of “melancholy”. However, the story is removed from the audience because it is a singular experience that no one in the audience can relate to. When displaying pure emotion in art there is no dilution of the feeling everyone can experience it differently because there is no concrete story or meaning behind it and the experience is real because of the lack of influence the piece has over the unique personal interpretations. Furthermore, Kant stated that “many more kinds of things, from flowers to sunsets, poems to melodies, can be sources of the feeling of the sublime” (Philosophical Beauty: The Sublime in the Beautiful in Kant's Third Critique and Aristotle's Poetics, Gilmore). Each of these objects are easily conceptualized and translated into art, and because of this tangibility are only sources of the sublime. The painting only depicts the physical nature of emotion and how it would appear in the flesh, on the faces of decimated men, instead of delving deeper into the emotion itself. Once the artist strips away these “sources”, just as Rothko did, all that is left is the true sublime. Without objects the human mind automatically struggles to capture the limits of the painting and people can see that “the black can alternately seem to advance, as a clenched mass, and to recede, as infinite depth” (Schjeldahl). This limitless nature is the only true source of the sublime, stories are not limitless, and The Raft of the Medusa was a representation of a story. Thus, art that relies on stories to evoke emotion from the audience limit themselves to evoking only a certain type of emotion instead of the full range of individual emotions that encompass the sublime.
The sublime is an emotion and thus embracing the abstract nature of emotion in art by stripping away previous artistic conventions until the painting is no longer a representation of an event that triggers the sublime but the emotion itself is the only way to create a truly sublime piece. This idea can be applied to our perception of more modern artists. Recently, music has been the preferred art form with singers Sabrina Carpenter, Taylor Swift, and Chappelle Roan taking center stage. Armed with the formulas of fine art as well as for sublimity the world can now decide which of these artists will deserve a place in history rather than simply a flood of Instagram reels. With the culture of today being so tightly intertwined with social media, and thus granted easy access to art as well as easy ignorance of it, discerning whether a piece is sublime is more important than ever. Analyzing music in this philosophical context could seem to be almost impossible. However, by deeply considering the lyrics, which are essentially poetry, the highest art form according to Kant, to discern their originality as well as the depth of meaning (ie: aesthetic ideas) one can discover how “fine” the work is. Moreover, by analyzing the emotions associated with a piece, or lack thereof, the sublimity can be revealed. If a song elicits an overwhelming sensation, a seemingly religious experience from the audience it could be sublime. If the melody envelopes one’s sorrows and ushers them away it could be sublime. It is up to the people of today to continue the legacy of Immanuel Kant of analytical artistic appreciation in order to ensure that artists are given fame where it is philosophically deserved not simply what is on trend.
Works Cited
Galitz, Katherine Calley. "Romanticism." The Met, Oct. 2004, ;www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm. Accessed 28 Sept. 2024.
Gilmore, Richard. "Philosophical Beauty: The Sublime in the Beautiful in Kant's Third Critique and Aristotle's Poetics." The Paideia Project, www.bu.edu/wcp/index.html. Accessed 28 Sept. 2024.
Kant, Immanuel. A Critique of Judgement. 1790.
McCormick, Matt. "Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, iep.utm.edu/kantmeta/. Accessed 28 Sept. 2024.
Riding, Christine. "Shipwreck, Self-preservation and the Sublime." Tate, www.tate.org.uk/art/researchpublications/the-sublime/christine-riding-shipwreck-self-preservation-and-the-sublimer1133015. Accessed 28 Sept. 2024.
Rothko, Mark. Black in Deep Red. 1957. Paint.
Schjeldahl, Peter. "The Dark Final Years of Mark Rothko." The New Yorker, 8 Dec. 2016, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/19/the-dark-final-years-of-mark-rothko. Accessed 30 Sept. 2024.
Falconer, Ian. Olivia. October 1 2000. Simon and Schuster.