Nietzsche proclaims, "Art and nothing but art... we have art in order not to die of the truth." Is the creation of art an act of absurd rebellion, or is it a refuge/escape from the truth?
Art and the creation thereof will tag alongside humanity forever, so it’s vital we take a moment to ponder it. In a proclamation concerning art, Friedrich Nietzche claims that “we have art in order not to die of the truth.” It is important to analyze the language present: Nietzche does not say that art is merely some escape from the truth, but rather that art allows us to face the truth and not suffer at the harshness of it all. The truth of our existence hurts and may even kill us, but art enables an avenue for us as humans to less painfully navigate towards the truth. I believe we can take this one step further in that art allows humanity to rebel against the absurdity of existence. In a world not fully intelligible by reason and reason alone, art offers a safe haven of human-invoked irrationality within the maelstrom of all existence. Art is the unwavering and tenacious soul of humanity— a reflection of the human ability to meditate and find something within their existence in the universe. Ultimately, art enables man to stave off the irrational existence with a powerful, transcendent irrationality of its own.
I think before we discuss how art acts as a rebellion against the absurd, it is important we determine what art is. The concept of art involves a diverse range of human skills and applications thereof. It is vital we encompass this variety, yet still remain precise so that we may understand what form this rebellion takes on exactly. As such, for the sake of argument within this paper, I suggest the idea that art is the realization of concepts in the form of human expression where a concept is any general notion or idea. This expression may take on many forms: physical media like sculptures and paintings; aural media such as music; written media of all sorts including novels, plays, and essays (including this one!); and mixed media like movies and games. Art is distinct in that it is provided as a united product– a grand display of multiple moving parts that comes together as a whole greater than the sum of its parts. It is through this gestalt of human expression that we recognize art as it is.
Now that we have a definite idea of art, we may come to understand how exactly it rebels against the absurdity of existence. As a creation brought unto this world, art exists as a layered entity, enwrapped in both meaning and the irrational. There exist surface-level thoughts, such as the sympathy or empathy we feel when a sad song plays or the joy we feel at a nice ending to a sweet and lighthearted movie. Deeper than those feelings, there exist inexpressible sensations as we find ourselves enraptured and entangled within art— a feeling otherworldly. The feeling of drifting off into the haze of a deeply aurally layered and dreamy music album or captured into the spinning sensations of the gesture within Franz Kline’s artwork. Art allows man an ephemeral glance into the irrational. An artwork is a finite thing from which we can take away nearly endless meaning and experiences. The very fact that art is something greater than its parts allows us to recognize that perhaps it is an irrationality within this absurd universe that we by our nature seek to rationalize. Whether we realize it or not, in our quest to express ourselves by any means possible, we fight back against the irrationality of existence with our own underlying irrationalities within human expression. It is through this that the creation of art is ultimately a form of absurd rebellion against this absurd existence where we fight the irrational with our own purest form of irrationality.