Beauty and the Beats

"When we talk about the 'beautiful' in art, we are always talking about progress toward further realization of the individual capacity to appreciate the 'human.' "

Anselm Kiefer, Vue d'une installation d'Anselm Kiefer. Atelier de l'artiste, Barjac. Monumenta 2007

In the context of art the question of beauty usually leads to a discussion of the meaning, intent, and impact a work of art exercises on human consciousness. Never an easy question, it helps to begin with the counter idea that "beauty" is rarely the meaning, intent or impact of art as it affects human consciousness. Art doesn't have to have a purpose, and "meaning" is often lost over time. (What do the beautiful ancient cave drawings at Lascaux mean?) Artists often create something they never intended to create; and "impact" is usually a subjective reading, or reaction, quite apart from the artwork itself. So any "Beat" concept of "beauty" is immediately called into question. Beats like Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso, and Ferlinghetti often refer to the "Karmic," as in Karma, a "spiritual" sense that permeates human activity and interaction. Words like, "resonance," "echo," "existential field," even the Catholic concept of "grace," enter into the idea that human interaction creates a systemic balance, a "what goes around comes around" closure, a sense of existential "justice" that appeals to human consciousness across a variety of cultures.¹

Well, more fundamentally then, what do we mean when we speak of "human consciousness"? Is it the ability to be "aware" to one degree of "awareness" or another? Let us assume it is, and let's further assume this "awareness" is at the core of human nature, or what it means to be human. (This is an immense subject of course, which ventures beyond art and aesthetics into an array of biological and neurological sciences.) We can also safely assume that human "consciousness" is relative to the individual, and therefore "awareness" is not fixed, neither in the individual nor the culture. Individual "awareness" begins with more or less hardwired biological (evolutionary) presumptions and expands as the individual develops, interacting with other individuals and culture. Awareness, in this sense, can be viewed as mutable and generally progressive, although no particular endpoint need be calculated beyond the obvious, death. Evolution, growth, progress, are terms relevant primarily to the individual, and secondarily, to his or her culture.

So it is within this uniquely individual context of "relative awareness," "subjective consciousness," or "individual consciousness" that art carries some "meaning," "purpose," "intent," or "impact" to any individual. And beauty, that is "the beautiful," is merely one of many possible responses to a work of art. Myriad possibilities reside in the individual consciousness brought to the work, and the power of the work's ability to progress, expand, or deepen that relative state of consciousness. The individual progresses (that is, expands personal awareness) through the art work, or not.

When art advances human consciousness, it reaches to deeper biological (neurological) aspects of consciousness, and triggers (elevates and expands) individual awareness of a universal humanity shared as a species. In this broader sense, this shared human commonality is not restricted to the realm of aesthetics, or course, but carries the totality of human consciousness -- science, justice, human rights, political observations, etc., -- as legitimate subjects of art. This is why it often takes time, years perhaps, to realize the value of a work of art. The work isn't changing, the observer, and his or her cultural context, are always progressing.

So when we talk about the "beautiful" in art, we are always talking about progress toward further realization of the individual capacity to appreciate the "human," in my view, as opposed to some specific definition of "beautiful." We are always progressing, sometimes through art, toward something new and relevant to our expanding personal "consciousness" as human beings. We grow all the time. In fact, when we don't sense or experience this personal "progression" or growth through a painting or piece of art, we often diminish the work as something less than art.

2.

What then do we mean by "Beats" and how does "beat art" move human nature forward? First of all, a "Beat" is generally considered an "outsider" or "alien" artist; represented by a "hipster" state of consciousness, an existential perspective, weary of the mundane and at the edge of society. Largely a product of world war II ennui, the Beat artist (as Plato well understood) is on the outside of society looking in, often provoking a socially critical, de-constructionist, and "subversive" point of view.

The ideal Platonic society has an idealized, status-sustaining concept of "beauty" which presumes society functions best when artists and citizens conform to that ideal. As we know, terms like, "alienation," "beatnik," "hippie," are used to describe the Beat movement as more "anti-social" than Plato might accommodate. (The "beat generation" was progressively more alienated from societal conformity than its post-world war I literary predecessor, the "lost generation.")³

There is also a hard spiritual aspect in the "Beat" aesthetic to be considered. There is a sense that the post-world war II American consumer society is devoid of the spiritual and that organized western religions, based on adherence to irrational dogma, fail the individual in terms of expanding human consciousness. So this "Beat" critique extended to all social and institutional authority, in the name of the subjective and organically personal. In this spiritual sense, Kerouac spoke of the "beatific," a Catholic concept, ² Ginsberg focused on the "Karmic," and many Beats advocated a visceral engagement in social experiences -- as in "consciousness expanding" drug use -- combined with a quest for deeper spiritual understanding, which provoked an attraction to the introverted eastern spiritualism in Buddhism, Zen, Hinduism, etc. So we can begin to shape a definition of "Beat art" as a blend of alienated and critical rationalism -- or "hipsterism" -- infused with a sense of community based on an innate human consciousness or spirituality. On the Road, Naked Lunch, and Ginsberg's grand Whitmanesque epic, "Howl," are emblematic literary works of these early Beat tendencies:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix; Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night. ⁴

But we can extend "beat" beyond the well known post-world war II New York and San Francisco literati. The art of Willem DeKooning, Jackson Pollack, Isamu Noguchi, Franz Kline, Cy Twombly and dozens more artists can also be considered "beat." We might add the entire urbanization experience of African American artists throughout the 20th century as integral to this concept of "hipster art" and the Beat movement. We can locate both the "beat" and "beatific" in the "soul" of Jelly Roll Morton, for example, as well as Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Romare Bearden, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Jean-Michel Basquiat, to name but a few -- all of whom provide edgy critical perspectives, unique states of awareness, and exploration of the potential of human nature. This African American perspective takes shape in an "outsider" or "alien" point of view which rises from (and above) racism, to propel a progressive common culture and broaden human consciousness, and, therefore, acceptance of "the other."

We might also add a number of filmmakers here as well -- Americans certainly -- Kazan, early Wells, Ford, (The Searchers, etc.) come to mind; but particularly the Italian realist movement coming out of war ravaged Italy in the late 1940s. Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief, for example, is a masterpiece of beat cinema, a critique of culture which explores the fundamental ethical impulse in human nature as the primary source for social justice and a valid foundation for the future, following the nihilism of fascism.

We could add the great Japanese architects emerging out of the second world war to this mix, as well French philosophers, certainly Sartre and Camus, and Irish playwright Samuel Beckett; German artists -- particularly the contemporary postmodernist Anselm Kiefer -- all of whom push their art to reinvent, invigorate and progress essentially failed or collapsed cultures, based on expanding aspects of human "consciousness" or "awareness."

Now, If we distill the "beats" further, if we unpack their social context so to speak, we also come to discover the cultural sources of their alienation. Generally, this alienated "outsider" status derives from war, specifically the Nazi death camps of Europe, the use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. against civilian populations in Japan, and the cold war conflict between state and private corporatism. Additionally, American racism, gender and sexual bigotry, became suddenly and obviously socially unjust when contrasted against the massive social mobilization of the American public moving through the Depression era, into and then out of World War II. (How, for example, could the U.S. military possibly justify racial segregation after World War II? Or any American ask a tired working woman -- Ms. Rosa Parks -- to move to the back of any bus, anywhere in America, because of her skin color?)

Post modernism -- which might be viewed here as the globalization of the "beat" (if you will) -- moves beyond the "modern," particularly in American painting, literature, music and film, as well as Italian cinema, Japanese Architecture, French philosophy, and German art, as those societies are restructured, and human awareness expands, after the second world war. We can also view the "beat" movement, in contemporary terms, as a necessary individual reaction against corporatization which simultaneously expanded globally and politically during this period. Corporatization takes the cultural form of commercial and political marketing, advertising, public relations, product design, and media manipulation throughout this global hot and cold war period, all of which impacts on art and definitions of the "beautiful," often distorting traditionalism and modernism into an homogenized "pop" commercial "art" that derives validity, and a self-destructive or "disposable" aesthetic, from consumerism and cultural ignorance, which only further alienates or "Punks" and "Hip-hops" the "Beats" over the decades.

3.

But this brings us back to the question before us. What are we to make of beauty and the beats? The "beautiful" rendered "beat" becomes very powerfully the expanded "consciousness" of post modernism. Awareness of the "hip" becomes beauty in "beat" art, because the legitimization of the "outrè," "the outsider," "the other," diminishes the "un-hip" -- it marginalizes the frightened and the stupid, as well as the sacred and the corporate, and thus "beat" continues to raise the possibility of social and cultural progress, based on the individual's innate and rational curiosity, consciousness, and spirituality, in conflict with authority, well into the 21st century. Ultimately, the beauty in the "beat" is its continually contemporaneous assertion that the Platonic, in any totalitarian dogma or form, cannot withstand human progress.

Robert Philbin, contributing editor, nichenews.com

Notes

¹ Karma (Sanskrit: kárma), kárman- "act, action, performance"; Pali: kamma) is the concept of "action" or "deed" in Indian religions understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect (samsara) described in Hindu, Jain, Sikh and Buddhist philosophies.The concept of karma is part of the world view of many millions of people throughout the world. Many in western cultures or with a Christian upbringing, have incorporated a notion of karma. For some, karma is a more reasonable concept than eternal damnation for the wicked. Spirituality or a belief that virtue is rewarded and sin creates suffering might lead to a belief in karma.

According to karma, performing positive actions results in a good condition in one's experience, whereas a negative action results in a bad effect. The effects may be seen immediately or delayed. Delay can be until later in the present life or in the next. Thus, meritorious acts may mean rebirth into a higher station, such as a superior human or a godlike being, while evil acts result in rebirth as a human living in less desirable circumstances, or as a lower animal. Some observers have compared the action of karma to Western notions of sin and judgment by God or gods, while others understand karma as an inherent principle of the universe without the intervention of any supernatural Being. In Hinduism, God does play a role and is seen as a dispenser of karma; see Karma in Hinduism for more details. The non-interventionist view is that of Buddhism and Jainism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma

² In Roman Catholic theology, the beatific vision is the eternal and direct perception of God enjoyed by those who are in Heaven, imparting supreme happiness or blessedness. While humans' understanding of God while alive is indirect (mediated), the beatific vision is direct (immediate). Thomas Aquinas defined the beatific vision as the ultimate end of human existence after physical death. Aquinas's formulation of beholding God in Heaven parallels Plato's description of one beholding the Good in the world of knowledge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatific_vision

³ This idea of global war and mass destruction of culture, as well as the alienated war veteran artist, giving rise to wide spread societal critique and change, is interesting and relevant here, but just beyond this scope of this essay.

⁴ Howl and Other Poems, by Allen Ginsberg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howl