Dear Derek,  

Malraux

Since writing my last post I have been getting further acquainted with Malraux’s views on the history of art, which I must say I find increasingly seductive the more I read.   Several of his views seem quite close to my own, although I’ve either taken a different route to get there, or I’ve ended up in a different place from Malraux altogether.   I may need to study my map again at this stage; clarification on the following would help.   


His argument that artists create a different sort of world in order to retreat from the chaos and uncertainty of our 'world of appearances', in which the only sort of rule is their own, is a plausible one in terms of the way he relates this to our past relationship with mythology.   My view on this would be to introduce the possibility that at least some elements of this different world actually do exist as part of our metaphysical existence.  In this sense, therefore, it substantiates their version of ‘truth’,  merely it isn't obvious to our physical or contemporary understanding.   It could also be argued that some aspects of this view are akin to the sort of dream world that indigenous communities inhabit, such as that of the Australian Aborigines. Chagall’s paintings are very reminiscent of this, although they are heavily infused with large doses of dreamlike Jewish mysticism, which is in itself a sort of mythology.  As such, Chagall must be one of those artists that do not exactly conform to Malraux’s view that the artist’s creation of ‘different mythological worlds’ have been partially caused by the disintegration of religious faith.

A further point I haven’t resolved is how Malraux reconciles his rejection of self-expression in visual art with the work of people such as Bacon or Sutherland, or even Nash, for instance.  Was not their work a direct result of the aftermath of the first and second WWs, and whilst it could be argued that Bacon’s and Sutherland’s work relates to the mythological  and invisible in terms of symbolic elements that are both primordial and disturbing, in what way are they not self-expression?   If art is of and for itself, as Malraux claims, why is it not also self-expression?


Finally, I can only reconcile this 'different world' with the domain of visual art, whereas it does not seem to similarly apply to the different natures of music, performance art or literature, although admittedly some of Kafka's writing is somewhat 'off-the-wall'  Nothing else immediately comes to mind, unless 'Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' is a contender?    

Dilys