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Art
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Anti-Destiny: Foundations of André Malraux’s Theory of Art This
essay was published in Literature and
Aesthetics - Vol.13, No 2, Dec 2003. Abstract
Once we begin to ask fundamental questions about art, the question of the relationship between art and ‘reality’ quickly arises. But it is often assumed that ‘reality’ is a self-explanatory idea – loosely conceived as something like ‘the world we see and experience around us every day’. Such formulations are inadequate. Two of the major complexities involved in the notion of ‘reality’ are discussed. What does Malraux mean when he speaks of 'reality' in the context of art? For Malraux, art is addressed to the realm of mere appearance in which the presence or absence of everything, including man, is a matter of indifference. (These ideas are explained.) Art ‘stands for unity as against the chaos of appearances.’ It has nothing to do with the 'representation' of reality, however broadly one interprets the term representation; its purpose is to create a rival, coherent world that affirms man’s presence. Malraux does not, as some have suggested, regard art as a new absolute – a kind of ‘secular religion’. Art stands for unity as against the chaos of appearances, but does not claim to reveal a timeless reality beneath appearances: art makes the world one, but does not, like a religion, affirm that there is only one world. It is a ‘revolt against man’s fate’ (an 'anti-destin') but at no point claims definitive victory. Malraux’s extensive writings on art explore the implications of these ideas. Issues he discusses (not covered in this essay) include the nature of the creative process, the relationship between art and history, the notion of beauty (which, he argues, offers an account of art that is no longer adequate), and, above all, the key question of the relationship between art and time where he makes one of his most revolutionary contributions to the theory of art. |
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An extract:
... It may be useful here to draw a comparison with the thinking behind some of the more familiar claims of Western aesthetics. If one thinks of art in terms of traditional concepts such as mimesis, representation or expression, the entity denoted by terms such as ‘reality’ or ‘the world’, or sometimes ‘nature’, is usually understood as a basic reference point, or guide, to which the artist must remain faithful if a successful work of art is to result – whether this fidelity finds expression through the ‘naturalism’ of, say, a Chardin or a Courbet, or through the quite different style of, say, a Cézanne or a Picasso (choosing examples from visual art). Malraux’s argument constitutes a radical challenge to this theoretical schema. Far from being a reference point or guide, ‘reality’ for Malraux, as we are now in a position to see, is that against which art seeks to provide a defence, and a key feature of his account of art is his consistent and unambiguous rejection of traditional approaches of the kind just mentioned, even if proffered by artists themselves. ‘Whatever the artist himself may say on the matter,’ he writes in The Voices of Silence, ‘never does he let himself be mastered by the outside world; always he subdues it to something he puts in its stead.’ What is this 'something he puts in its stead'? It is, Malraux answers unequivocally, 'another world - not necessarily a supernal world, or a glorified one, but one different in kind from that of reality'... and a little later: ... For Malraux, art is a human creation with a quite specific purpose: it has nothing to do with the representation of reality – however broadly one likes to interpret the term ‘representation’; its purpose is the creation of another world, and in doing so the assertion of man’s presence in a universe in which his existence seems a matter of indifference... |
 Chardin
- Still life
 Picasso - Still life |