Sesquipedalianism!

This is a passage taken from a description of an artists inspiration for a new body of work:

This project, while it is more physically engaged, follows on from MacKenny’s on-going interest in examining the intersection of different visual conventions (illusionism and flatness occupying the same frame), and the conflation of potentially oppositional vocabularies which provide a locus for exploring perception within a worldview that is personal yet contextually aware. Her works investigate ‘solastalgia’ – a term coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht to describe the effects of global warming on the mental states of Australians. The combination of solacium (comfort) and algia (pain) infers an emotional disquiet that results from nostalgia firmly rooted in the now. The pain of nostalgia comes from taking comfort in the things that have given one pleasure in the past, but realising that those things are no longer. Solastalgia, however, indicates a present that is becoming a past before one’s very eyes; the environment, which we imbue with so much meaning, is disappearing as we watch it.
 

The artist is an old friend and a once mentor and teacher of mine. I have always been inspired by her abilities as a painter and it pains me to witness such a talent in the service of such a farce. The pretensions in this verse reflect the disease that has gripped many segments of Western society not only the arts. The essay in its entirety is an explanation of what the exhibition is about as well as what has motivated the artist to make the works in it.

Art today must have a rationale, it is no longer acceptable just to make art because you feel like creating something. Today we must be motivated by something bigger, more 'universal' (the Quixotic quest) something of a 'religious' nature. In the pursuit of a questionable freedom, Western intellectuals have turned from a reasonable faith; Christianity (which they insist is irrational) to an 'upper-storey' (unreasoned and truly irrational) faith; namely Gaia.

Tom Wolfe writes about the literary arts thus:

"It is at this point that poetry, if it is to be considered serious, becomes difficult. The serious poet begins to make his work hard to understand in order to show that he is elevating himself above the rabble, which is now known of course, as the bourgeoisie. He is writing for what the French critic Catulle Mendes referred to as 'a charming aristocracy," "an elite in this age of democracy." There was something vulgar and common about harping on 'meaning.'"

In the visual arts you find millions upon millions (ad nauseaum) of words trundled out in support of the new(old)age neo-paganistic cult of Gaia (It was classified a cult in the 1st Century!). And the words visual artists embrace to explain their art and motivations are like those the Wolfe poet above uses; esoteric in nature and arranged in ways intended to confuse the non-initiate (bourgeoisie). The fact that such language tends to confuse the wannabe initiate (often even the initiates are baffled) is besides the point, the myth of the Emperors clothes is alive and thriving in the 'world of art'. The pretensions behind such buffoonery are almost amusing if they were not so tragic in their consequences.

Lord: May those who truly seek find true truth.