Art in Time

[image error]

One of the main features of art is permanence, or the eternal. Albeit it is a feature which some post-modernist artists have tried to disconnect from, even to the stage where artists promote ephemerality in their work (e.g. Joseph Beuys and Fluxus). However, as these attempts have been considered anti-art by the artists themselves, then even the anti-eternalising efforts point toward the link between art and the longing for permanence.

Art strives for the eternal, and it is this desire for permanence, or at least for a process of a becoming that is always moving toward the universal, that makes it essentially antithetical to the marketplace. In order to manage art the market had to invent fashion. Fashion tries to situate art in the realm of the actual. In doing this, however, it robs art of its essence, which is a striving for eternity. Fashion is always, therefore, a perversion of art.

Theatre is unique amongst the art forms because one of its essential qualities is the ephemeral. Nevertheless, this ephemerality does not, or should not, rob theatre of its desire for permanence. Great theatre happens when it is able to create the eternal moment within the ephemeral. And here we also see the real success of art in its relation to time and space. Art can transcend the momentary nature of the moment by infusing it with the eternal.

However, the nature of theatre also carries a pessimism which is embedded in all kinds of art forms: Art can never be permanent, it can only strive for it. Great art (like great theatre) works when it touches on the eternal and transmits it, although this is also a paradox. Art presents the eternal in the fleeting which is logically absurd. The effect is joyous, but also melancholy, because of this absurdity. Once could also say soulful: psychologically it moves us because it reveals the impossible permanence that the human spirit is striving for.