Submitted by Arthur Pontynen, Jun 7, 2007 10:33

Can we take a moment to consider the content of an alleged Grandiose Surrealism?

Given that the Surrealist Manifesto makes clear that reason is the great enemy of art and culture, then how can a Grandiose Surrealism be recognized as such?

And lacking reason - lacking an ability to comprehend and understand the grandiose in art, life and reality - just what are we to learn from an allegedly exquisite presentation via art of a primitivist-mechanistic-naturalistic-totemic-sexual- sacrificial vision?

If we cannot be committed to obtaining a glimpse of qualitative knowledge, then can any sacrifice or vision can be known to be noble? If not, then is that the Surrealist point? If so, then is not that point both banal and violent? Is art in the service of such a sacrificial vision an empty charade which is farce?

Is there not irony in the work, "The Blind Leading the Blind"? If indeed it suggests the burden of the group, the carrying and sacrifice of that burden, as well as the monument to honor the sacrifice, then ought we ask just what that burden is and what ends that sacrifice serves?If it offers no positive response should we take it seriously?

Given its rejection of reason, the answer offered by Surrealism can only be sociopathic. In the name of culture and freedom it judges as oppressive attempts to understand and defend culture as a set of lofty beliefs. Reason is seen as a mask for power as a false pursuit of truth. The artist, the scholar, the cultured person should then be anti-cultural. The core belief of Western culture - responsible freedom - is thus denied.

For those informed by but not accepting of Post-modernism - be it Surrealist or other - the pressing cultural issue is: What has happened to the pursuit of truth? What has happened to Western culture and its commitment to responsible freedom? The answer lies in what the Surrealists perversely celebrate: Post-modernity has abandoned rationality as a means of attempting to obtain a glimpse of meaningful reality - of ontological beauty.

Exquisite Surrealism? I think not. Is it not time to consider such qualitative questions and to advance beyond the confines of Modernist-Postmodernist dogma?

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