The exclusivity of artistic experience

Abstract

If art were open to the public, it would cause irreparable damage - to paraphrase one of the most important philologists of the modern era, Friedrich Nietzsche. The thoroughly experimental nature of art, which oscillates around uncertainty and aimlessness, effectively prevents it from being accessible to everyone. The popularization of the work of art remains a socially harmful assumption, as it leads to the self-destruction of ‘mediocre nature’. The exclusivism of the artistic experience vouches for the identity of brave personalities ready for numerous sacrifices and dangers. The boundary between madness and a state of inspiration is very thin. Crossing it requires extraordinary sensitivity and subtlety. In his work ‘On Love’, Stendhal, in the spirit of aristocratic chauvinism, states: “despite my many efforts, I cannot give ears to the deaf and eyes to the blind”. Thus, the psychagogy of artistry is a paradoxical endeavour and the result of misunderstandings arising from the pushing of an educational model founded on absolutist egalitarianism. At the same time, the artistic experience excludes no one and nothing - for it is a kind of the most exquisite apologia of Life. In the creative act, a particular kind of activity, thoroughly sporadic and rare, readiness for the New takes centre stage. Unpredictability, which frightens most, is the highest kind of inspiration for the creator. For something to come into being par excellence, it cannot pre-exist, even in a supernatural reality. Nor can it be pre-conceived if it is to be unique. And this already escapes all rules. Man believes in truth, the artist in the World — the abode of the mysterious.