THE CULTURAL EVOLUTION OF THE HEART OF HELIOS.

HELIOS CONSOLIDATES HIS FACULTY OF FEELING.

The recent Apollonian era, comprised, in accord with the Apollonian love of unity, only one named period, the Enlightenment. But the present Dionysian era, the “R-PT” era, comprises, in accord with the Dionysian love of diversity, several named periods: the Romantic, the Modernist, the Postmodernist and, now, the Post-Truth period. The present text is an account of how Helios’ integrated faculty of Will has been developed. This document discusses how Helios’ heart, his feelings, the consolidation of his will, evolved significantly by means of the natural cultural dialectic as he neared what must be the end of his incubation in Gaiaon during the first part of the R-PT period, the time of Dionysos Metria, the Romantic and the Modernist periods. Progress was made as humanity learned how one human being can most effectively communicate his or her positive feelings to another. The evolution ended when Dionysos Akraia emerged and came to dominate.

It ia appropriate to confine this narrative to the art of painting, though a discussion of the other arts would be similar: this is the story of how progress had been made toward the consolidation of Helios’ Good-Will during the Romantic and Modernist periods, only to have all progress stopped during the Postmodern and Post-Truth periods. But the knowledge that the early R-PT pioneers had acquired has been preserved—it will serve, now, at the beginning of the Postnatal era, as a solid foundation for work that will complete the consolidation.

We trace this dynamic, thesis to antithesis to synthesis to decay, in the art movements of the time, specifically, he looked at painting as an art. He placed the focus upon meaning, representation of visual reality, and formal qualities (or composition; or beauty) in painting.

The drama of modern art can be seen most sagaciously as Helios’ struggle to understand how best to consolidate the feelings of the quasi-autonomous elements of his psyche (the pre-processing brainlets, his human emergers, those from whom he emerged) into one integrated sensibility.

This drama can also be seen as a phase of the long struggle (which had begun with the Australopithecines) between the two elemental, subordinate, emergers of Helios, the colossi, Apollo and Dionysos. This recent “modern art” phase of the “Elemental War” began with a quarrel between Apollo Akraia and Dionysos Metria: “left-brained” Apollo, as Apollo Metria had productively come to dominate over unproductive “right-brained” Dionysos during the early and mid Enlightenment, but now had become the dogmatic and unyielding Apollo Akraia; and Dionysos had become Dionysos Metria, the fresh force who would now drive innovation as the antithesis to the stale thesis of Apollo Akraia and who would, during the struggle, come to dominate, only then to degenerate into the destructive, crazy Dionysos Akraia at the close of the modernist period.

And the drama can also be seen as a struggle between Helios’ art-world emergers, the painters and art theorists themselves—those who adhered dogmatically to the old attitudes being those from whom Apollo Akraia emerged, and those individuals who were at first driving the evolutionary dialectic toward Helios’ consolidation of his feelings being those from whom the productive Dionysos Metria emerged, and from whom destructive Dionysos Akraia (PoMo) later emerged.

Keeping in mind how the drama most generally represents Helios’ struggle to understand the truth, let us describe the dialectic broadly, looking at it mostly as the battle between the subordinate terrestrial colossi, Apollo and Dionysos, and in detail, looking at it in terms of the artists and theorists.

Chapter I. the Classical era, the Renaissance and the

Enlightenment and the Neo-Classical period

During the CLASSICAL ERA, the RENAISSANCE and the ENLIGHTENMENT, both Apollo and Dionysos believed that for a painting to be esteemed in the broad sense that highly esteemed art of the past had been esteemed, it was necessary (and some might have said sufficient) for it to possess MEANING.

And they believed that REPRESENTATION in a painting was necessary for it to possess meaning.

And they believed that ACCURATE representation in a painting was necessary for it to possess meaning. (The influential Renaissance artist and theorist, Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) believed that the aim of art was to represent the world faithfully).

And they sensed that GOOD FORMAL COMPOSITION somehow complemented the painting’s meaning or was necessary for the painting to possess meaning. (Vasari said, “All the arts belong to desegno or depend on it.” Francis Hutcheson [1694–1746] correctly defined good formal composition as amounting to Unity in Variety, but his views were not widely embraced; nor are they to this day. Immanuel Kant [1724–1804] came close to truth when he defined it as having no purpose though appearing to be purposive.)

Chapter II. The Neo-Classical period (1760-1830)

Artists of the NEO-CLASSICAL PERIOD included Jaques-Louis David (1748 –1825), Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780 –1867)

MEANING: During that part of Helios’ development that is called, in one aspect, the Neo-Classical Period and, in its other aspect, the Romantic Period Apollo Akraia, whose activity defined Neo-Classicism, still believed that for a painting to be esteem-worthy, it was necessary (and some of his emergers might have said sufficient) for it to possess meaning, that is, to be worthy of esteem, a painting had to be expressive of the artist’s feelings about the subject matter, or it had to convey some insight into reality. For instance, he saw that Titus Reading, painted by the very late Renaissance/Baroque painter, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), evoked in the viewer the artist’s love for his son, and, more generally, that Rembrandt’s portraits provided insight into the character of their subjects—and that it was this expression and these insights, that is, the paintings’ meaning, that evoked in the viewer the deep sense of satisfaction and joy that made Rembrandt’s paintings worthy of esteem.

Meaning in the works of David and Ingres consisted of the expression of Apollo’s own aspirations at the time, the aspirations of the Enlightenment: a sense of the classical, clarity of contours, a sense of the eternal, a noble simplicity and a calm grandeur.

And, as he had for centuries, Apollo believed that the REPRESENTATION of visual reality was a necessary condition for a painting to possess meaning.

And, as he had for centuries, Apollo believed that ACCURATE representation of visual reality was necessary for a painting to be esteemed.

And he continued to sense that GOOD FORMAL COMPOSITION, was somehow a necessary condition for a painting to be worthy of esteem—either because good formal composition made meaning possible, or because it was a necessary complement to meaning. According to Ingres, it seems, beauty was tied to representational accuracy; he said, “the secret of beauty has to be found through truth.” And he said, “Calmness is the main beauty of the body.” He may have conceived of beauty’s value as that which facilitated expression, that emotions are best expressed through the portrayal of calmness, not activity.

Chapter III. The Romantic Period (1780-mid 1800s)

THE ERASURE OF REPRESENTATIONAL ACCURACY

Artists of the ROMANTIC PERIOD included Caspar David Friedrich (1774 –1840), J. M. W. Turner (1775 –1851), Théodore Géricault (1791–1824), Francisco Goya (1746 –1828) and Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863).

These are among the names—forever to be associated with the last years of the Prenatal world—of those heroes from whom Dionysos Metria, whose activity defined Romanticism, emerged during the time of the Neo-Classicists.

MEANING: Dionysos Metria, at this time, believed, as did Apollo Akraia, that for a painting to be esteem-worthy, it was necessary for it to possess meaning; although in the Dionysian view, meaning did not consist of the expression of the Apollonian aspirations of the Enlightenment, but, rather, the emotions—awe, terror, sublimity, exaltation—of nature and of the past, of medieval rather than classical times, and of heroic individualism.

REPRESENTATION: Dionysos Metria (Apollo in both his aspects is a different person from Dionysos in both his aspects, but (in the “Metrian unity”) the Metrias are, in fundamental ways, the same person), like Apollo Akraia, still believed that representation in a painting was necessary for it to possess meaning, and thus for it to possess esteem-worthiness.

ACCURACY OF REPRESENTATION: But Dionysos Metria argued against Apollo Akraia; unlike Apollo, Dionysos did not believe that accurate representation was necessary for a painting to possess significant meaning, and thus was not necessary for the painting to possess esteem-worthiness. His painter-emergers, the Romantic artists, applied their paint in a more liberated way than had been done in the past. Their paintings were less restrained and more expressive of feeling. Turner’s work was often very abstract.

This argument would eventually turn into a monumental struggle, a major dialectical conflict in Helios’ biography, one that would someday reveal to him the true source of art’s power—since the colossi Apollo and Dionysos are emergers of Helios, the struggle was Helios’ struggle: Helios had begun to doubt the correctness of his belief that accurate representation was a condition of a painting’s esteem. Even though the doubt was small, the thought troubled him—intuitively, he sensed that the issue was important, and that he should be clear about it, In fact, that he should clearly understand art, that he should understand how positive feelings might best be communicated among his emergers, so as to become consolidated within his psyche, so that he could complete himself, so that he could be born. He tried to push the argument out of his mind, but the notion kept returning.

GOOD FORMAL COMPOSITION: It is important, at this point, also to see how Dionysos Metria, that is, how the Romanticist artists and theorists, understood beauty, that is, good formal composition. For them, beauty was independent of, and complementing, meaning—the Romantic artists clearly viewed good formal composition as necessary for esteem-worthiness. Delacroix, in fact, apparently believed that formal composition was the most important factor determining a painting’s esteem-worthiness. He said, "The primary merit of a painting is to be a feast for the eye”—however, the romantic painters’ colors were often somber, and the subject matter was sometimes unpleasant.

Modernism (1860s-1970s)

Chapter IV. Early Modernism

During the period of Early Modernism, Dionysos Metria began to grow bolder in his challenge to Apollo Akraia. The art movements of Dionysos Metria were:

AESTHETIC MOVEMENT (1860-1900): artists included James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834 – 1903), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 –1882) and Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898).

REALISM (1840-1880): artists included. Edouard Manet (1832-1883) and Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) were Realist artists.

IMPRESSIONISM (1872-1892): artists included Claude Monet (1840-1926), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Mary Cassatt (1845-1926), Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919).

MEANING: Dionysos Metria (and therefore the early Modernist artists and theorists) continued to believe that for a painting to be esteem-worthy, it was necessary for it to possess meaning.

AESTHETIC MOVEMENT: these artists believed that meaning consisted of the expression of the feelings of the artist. But emphasis was taken off of expression and placed onto formal beauty by these artists—this despite criticism from writers such as Tolstoy, who believed that art’s conveying of morality and knowledge was its essential function.

REALISM: these artists believed that meaning in a painting involved challenging public ethical and aesthetic boundaries. IMPRESSIONISM: Monet, believed that meaning in a painting nvolved illustrating how we see. Renoir and Cassatt focused on the human figure and on the sychological state of their subjects.

REPRESENTATION: Dionysos Metria, like Apollo Akraia, continued to believe that representation in a painting was necessary for it to possess meaning, and thus for it to possess esteem-worthiness.

ACCURACY OF REPRESENTATION: Dionysos Metria was now completely convinced that accurate representation was not necessary in a painting for it to possess significant meaning, and thus for it to possess esteem-worthiness—and he continued quarreling with Apollo Akraia, who still dominated the arts.

AESTHETIC MOVEMENT: Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1875) is as abstract as Turner’s paintings.

REALISM: Manet’s paintings were executed with a loose painting style and bright colors; his work advanced the move toward abstraction.

IMPRESSIONISM: The Impressionists took abstraction farther than did their predecessors—Monet’s plein air images are extremely painterly--the loose brushwork and intense colors betray to the viewer their identity as paint on canvas. But, for the Impressionists, accurate representation was still a goal, in a way: they believed that, by capturing the momentary impression, the fleeting sensory effect, of the scene, they were capturing reality more truly than artists of the past had.

GOOD FORMAL COMPOSITION: For Dionysos Metria during the Early Modernist era (that is, for most of the artists and the theorists of the time) good formal composition complemented meaning.

AESTHETIC MOVEMENT: The thoughts of these artists constituted, at this time, Dionysos Metria’s inkling that he might be mistaken about the role of beauty in art: artists of the aesthetic movement believed that beauty (composition, the painting’s formal qualities) played an important and independent role in the estimation of a painting’s esteem-worthiness; for Whistler, in fact, formal composition was of primary interest. Whistler was the main proponent of “art for art’s sake.” Acknowledging the close relationship between painting and music, he gave his paintings titles such as “harmonies,” “arrangements,” and “nocturnes.” The artists of the aesthetic movement were beginning to grasp the superior power of good formal composition. Thus, the truth continued to emerge, more and more fully, that good formal composition is the power source of the artistic expression of positive will, a truth the possession of which by mankind would, as noted above, someday facilitate the completion of Helios’ faculty of Will-consolidation. But the full realization that Unity in Variety is the key to formal excellence will have to wait until the time of the Ontological Revolution.

IMPRESSIONISM: at least one of the Impressionists was beginning to see good formal composition as primary. For Renoir, beauty was a stated goal; he said, "Why shouldn't art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world." Later in his career, he noted the limitations of the Impressionist goal of focusing on optical sensations and became an advocate of line and composition.

Chapter V. Middle Modernism

THE ERASURE OF REPRESENTATION

During the period of Middle Modernism, Dionysos Metria continued to evolve Helios’ ability to consolidate his Will. His art movements during this period were:

POST-IMPRESSIONISM (early 1880s-1914): artists included Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Paul Gauguin (1848 – 1903), Vincent van Gogh (1853 – 1890), Henri Rousseau (1844-1910), Georges Seurat (1859 – 1891), Edvard Munch (1863-1944) and Gustav Klimt (1862-1918).

FAUVISM (1899-1908): artists included Henri Matisse (1869-1954)—the leader of the movement, Andre Derain (1880-1954), Maurice De Vlaminck (1876-1958), Raoul Dufy (1877-1953), Kees van Dongen (1877-1968), George Braque (1882-1963)—later a cubist, Paul Gauguin (1848 – 1903).

EXPRESSIONISM (1905-1933): artists included those of the Die Brücke group: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938), Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976), Emil Nolde (1867-1956), members of the Der Blaue Reiter group: Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Franz Marc (1880-1916), Paul Klee (1879-1940), August Macke (1887-1914). Other expressionist artists were: Marc Chagall (1887-1985), Chaïm Soutine (1893-1943), Oskar Kokoshka (1886-1980), and Egon Shiele (1890-1918)

CUBISM (1907-1922): artists included Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Georges Braque (1882-1963) and the Salon Cubists, Juan Gris (1887-1927), Robert Delauney (1885-1941) and Fernand Léger (1881-1955), who, though influenced by Picasso and Braque, were not close associates of them. The first phase of Cubism is called “Analytic Cubism.” The second phase, when newspapers and other printed materials were incorporated into the artists’ collages, is called “Synthetic Cubism.”

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MEANING: Dionysos Metria (and therefore the middle Modernist artists and theorists) continued to agree, in general, with Apollo Akraia that for a painting to be esteem-worthy, it was necessary for it to possess meaning.

POST-IMPRESSIONISM: these artists believed that for a painting to be esteem-worthy, it was necessary for it to possess meaning. Whereas the Impressionists had focused on the mere momentary visual impression perceived by the viewer, the Post-Impressionists focused on self-expression and their own subjective vision—there were exceptions—Cezanne and Gaugin, for example, felt that they were revealing hidden realities.

For Cézanne, meaning involved the ostensible revelation that physical nature is composed of basic, constituent, geometric shapes.

Gauguin’s brand of Post-impressionism has been called Synthetism, a term that refers to the way in which Gauguin’s work brings together the three possible properties upon which we focus here: outward appearances (representation of visual reality), the artist’s feelings (meaning) and the abstract effects of color, line and form (beauty/composition). For Gauguin, meaning consisted of his disclosure of a parallel world of spirit and mystery existing beneath the world of ordinary experience. He said, “Color which, like music, is a matter of vibrations, reaches what is most general and therefore most indefinable in nature: its inner power.” And he said, “How do you see this tree? Is it green? ...Don't be afraid to paint it as green as possible.”

Van Gogh was interested in expressing his feelings through his art: in Starry Night, we sense the artist’s tumultuous, chaotic feelings, yet the scene is beautiful: we feel that van Gogh loved the world, and perhaps was here expressing the spirituality he found in nature. “I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion.” “I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say 'he feels deeply, he feels tenderly'.” But it is not the expression that gives van Gogh’s work its power. Compare van Gogh’s Starry Night with a typical painting by a troubled person who, perhaps, is confined to an institution—expressive and interesting for the psychiatrist or therapist, but not something that would be considered esteem-worthy as art.

Meaning for the Post-Impressionists also involved challenging the public ethical and aesthetic boundaries.

FAUVISM: The Fauves believed that they were expressing their strong reaction to their subject matter. Matisse said, "Color was not given to us in order that we should imitate Nature. It was given to us so that we can express our emotions." And he said, "I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me." And, he said, “The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive; the place occupied by the figures, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything has its share." So, Matisse saw his art as an “expression of my emotion.” But artists do not always fully understand their own motivations: if an artist’s primary (conscious or unconscious) goal is to produce beauty, and that beauty produces an emotion, namely, a feeling of satisfaction in both the artist and viewer, then the artist has created that feeling—he did not express it.

EXPRESSIONISM: The Expressionists, for the most part, did express their subjective feelings and moods in their work. The artists of the Die Brücke group were interested to express emotions connected to the alienation and to the loss of the spiritual dimension in German cities, or to express the decadence of Austrian society.

The artists of the Der Blaue Reiter group sought to express their emotions and to convey, by means of the symbolic qualities of color, a spiritual experience. Paul Klee, like Gauguin, believed that visual art, like music, could reveal realms beyond the physical world. Klee felt that he was expressing unseen truths. His painting is expressive, very abstract but representational, symbolic and poetic. Klee said, "All art is a memory of age-old things, dark things, whose fragments live on in the artist." Franz Marc said, "I try to intensify my sensitivity for the organic rhythm of all things; I seek pantheist empathy with the vibration and flow of the blood of nature—In the trees, in the animals, in the air.” Kandinsky (wrongly) saw formal composition as completely and powerfully expressive.

CUBISM: Braque, was interested in expression, but not as fervently as many of his fellow painters; he sought an art that avoided ”the expressive excesses of Fauvism." Braque said, “Perspective is a ghastly mistake which it has taken four centuries to redress.” His work was nearly non-objective, though there was a certain amount of symbolism, images that communicated his thoughts about the world.

Meaning for Picasso consisted of portraying truth. Influenced by Cézanne's idea of reducing objects to their simple geometric forms, he was especially interested in presenting objects as if multiple sides of them could be seen at the same time--he felt that he was thereby depicting the world in some sense more accurately or more fully than other artists did. Picasso said, "Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth." It is unclear whether Picasso was interested primarily in abstraction or in supposedly representing a truer, or somehow a fuller, picture of the world. In his collages, he created groups of signs that referred to objects in the world.

REPRESENTATION: Not only did Dionysos Metria remain convinced that accurate representation was not necessary in a painting, he was beginning to believe that representation in a painting was actually not necessary at all for there to be meaning, and thus for the painting to possess esteem-worthiness. That is, although the Middle Modernist artists believed that accurate representation was not necessary for esteem-worthiness, most of them still believed that representation was necessary for there to be meaning, and that meaning was necessary for a painting to possess esteem-worthiness.

POST-IMPRESSIONISM: these artists believed that that representation in a painting was necessary for it to possess meaning, and thus for it to possess esteem-worthiness.

FAUVISM: Though some of their work was highly abstract, the Fauves continued to view their paintings as representational.

EXPRESSIONISM: It was one of the Expressionists that erased representation: Kandinsky, though believing that meaning, expression, was necessary for esteem-worthiness, did not believe that representation was necessary for there to be expression—he created the first non-objective paintings in 1910.

CUBISM: Though some of their work was highly abstract, the Cubists continued to view their paintings as representational. A possible exception was Braque, who became critical of Picasso’s quasi-representational work.

ACCURACY OF REPRESENTATION: Dionysos Metria was still completely convinced that accurate representation was not necessary in a painting for it to possess significant meaning, and thus for it to possess esteem-worthiness—and he continued quarreling with Apollo Akraia, who, though becoming weaker—Dionysos was beginning to win the argument—still dominated the arts.

POST-IMPRESSIONISM: these artists, retaining a focus on expression, believed that color could transmit feelings and insights in a way that did not rely on accurate representation.

Gauguin said, “Don't paint from nature too much. Art is an abstraction. Derive this abstraction from nature while dreaming before it, and think more of the creation that will result.” He said, “I shut my eyes in order to see.”

Cézanne did not accurately represent the world as we see it, but he believed that, in representing objects by emphasizing the basic geometric shapes from which they were constituted, he was portraying reality more truly than if he had faithfully reproduced their visual appearance.

FAUVISM: The Fauves’ work is characterized by intense color, applied as flat patches in a painterly manner. Some of Matisse’s works are nearly non-objective (see, for instance, his collage, The Snail). They believed that this method could best convey meaning.

EXPRESSIONISM: Those Expressionists who continued to see their work as representational did not believe that accuracy of representation was necessary for esteem.

CUBISM: The Cubist, Picasso, distorted reality in his paintings, though he might have argued that he was showing us a truer reality.

GOOD FORMAL COMPOSITION: For Dionysos Metria during the Middle Modernist era (that is, for most of the artists and the theorists of the time) good formal composition complemented meaning.

POST-IMPRESSIONISM: Like Renoir, the postimpressionist, Cézanne, was dissatisfied with the lack of compositional structure in impressionist painting. He said that he wanted to "redo [Nicolas] Poussin after nature and make Impressionism something solid and durable like the Old Masters." In another quote he said, “… I wanted to make out of Impressionism something solid and lasting like the art of the museums.” Gaugin asked, “Is there a recipe for making beauty? The schools give recipes, but they do not beget works that make people exclaim: "How beautiful that is!” “Beautiful colors exist, though we do not realize it, and are glimpsed behind the veil that modesty has drawn over them.” He saw beauty in single colors; he said, “When two of us (he and Van Gogh) were together in Arles, both of us mad and at constant war over the beauty of color, me, i loved the color red.” Van Gogh’s work has great compositional beauty, but the source of that beauty in nature was more important to van Gogh than the rigid rules that were promulgate by the Academy. Speaking disparagingly of the Dutch painters—except for Rembrandt—he said, “Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous.” He struggled against the Academy, that “mistress who freezes you, who petrifies you, who sucks your blood…this woman of marble (or is it plaster of Paris??? how horrible!)” Whereas, “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”

FAUVISM: The Fauves, too, were concerned with the formal qualities of paintings—in particular, they were interested in color theory, and how complementary colors intensified each other. They were interested in how form could be put in service of expression (however, they did not realize that Unity In Variety was enough for esteem-worthiness, or that aesthetic pleasure was what gave expression its energy—color clashes can add to expression, but without the beauty, it lacks power.) Matisse saw the formal qualities as only furthering expression: "The chief function of color should be to serve expression as well as possible.” He also said, “You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject.”

EXPRESSIONISM: Wassily Kandinsky, believed that the formal qualities of a painting had sufficient expressive power, all by themselves, without the painting representing visual reality at all, to make the work esteem-worthy. He believed that the composition of line and color could express, could communicate, deep emotion, spirituality. He wrote, "Color is a means of exerting direct influence on the soul." So he believed that the formal qualities of a painting had sufficient expressive power, all by themselves, without the painting representing visual reality at all, to make the work esteem-worthy. Kandinsky, who still saw expression as the source of art’s power, theorized that the painting’s formal qualities were inherently expressive (which they can be, but minimally) and so that no representation was necessary at all for a painting to be esteem-worthy.

CUBISM: Braque, possibly more clearly than most of the modernist painters, seemed actually to sense that good formal composition was the primary condition for a painting’s esteem-worthiness. He regarded the source of formal composition’s power as a mystery: he said, “There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain;” and “To explain away the mystery of a great painting - if such a feat were possible - would do irreparable harm... If there is no mystery, then there is no poetry, the quality I value above all else in art.” Pictorial composition, balance and harmony were his primary conscious goals. Braque said, “I couldn't portray a women in all her natural loveliness.. I haven't the skill. No one has. I must, therefore, create a new sort of beauty, the beauty that appears to me in terms of volume of line, of mass, of weight, and through that beauty interpret my subjective impression. Nature is mere a pretext for decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art. I want to express the absolute, not merely the factitious woman.” Braque, did, in fact, have some insight into the real nature of formal beauty, of unity in variety, as the play of sameness and difference; he said, “I do not believe in objects. I believe only in their relationships.” Of all the well-known artists of the period, Braque may have had a view closest to truth—he had the insight that formal composition, not expression, was the source of art’s power, though the precise nature of that source was a mystery to him .

Summary: Most of these artists continued to misattribute the deep sense of satisfaction and joy that the viewer of their paintings felt to meanings that the artist bestowed upon a represented subject—the artists were not the authorities on what they were doing. The truth continued to emerge, helped along most notably by Braque, Matisse and, especially, Kandinsky, that good formal composition is the power source of artistic expression of positive will. That Unity In Variety is key to the power of formal composition is yet to be understood by Helios—but his possession of these great and essential truths will someday facilitate the completion of his own faculty of will-consolidation..

Chapter VI. Formalism

Theorists Roger Fry (1866-1934), writing c.1920-1934, and Clive Bell (1881-1964), writing c. 1914-1956, understood that esteem-worthiness was not rooted in expression of the “emotions of life,” or in any sort of meaning, but in the special “aesthetic emotion” (Bell’s term)— Fry and Bell were unknowingly pointing to the joy that is felt when we see parity in sameness and difference, Unity in Variety.

There were no named groups of artists and few artists who would have described their goal as creating work that focused not on meaning but only on the power of the formal elements alone to stimulate the aesthetic emotion within the viewer. Unity in Variety is art’s power source, but few if any during the period of Dionysos’ ascendancy were able to appreciate this fact.

Written works by Fry and Bell, published in the nineteen-teens, -twenties and -thirties, reinforced the ideas that paintings could be created that possessed esteem-worthiness but that lacked all meaning and representation, and that Good Formal Composition is the power source of artistic expression of positive will, a truth the possession of which by mankind would someday facilitate the completion of Helios’ faculty of will-consolidation (but these theorists did not articulate what Francis Hutcheson had shown already in 1725, namely, that Unity in Variety was the key to formal excellence.)

Chapter VII. Late Modernism

DADA (1916-1924): artists included Henri Jean Arp (1886-1966), Marcel Duchamp(1887-1968), Max Ernst(1891-1976), George Grosz(1893-1959), Francis Picabia(1879-1953), Man Ray(1890-1976), Hans Richter(1888-1976), Kurt Schwitters(1887-1948), Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943).

DE STIJL (1917-1931): artists included Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) and Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931).

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM (1943-late 1965): artists included Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), Mark Rothko (1903-1970), Clyfford Still (1904-1980), Franz Kline (1910-1962), Hans Hofmann (1880-1966), Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) and Barnett Newman (1905-1970).

MEANING: Dionysos Metria (and therefore his emergers, including the artists and theorists of the time) continued to believe that for a painting to be esteem-worthy, it was necessary for it to possess meaning.

DADA: Dada painters described the meaning that they wished to express as discontent with society, expressing irrationality, nonsense, intuition, anti-war, as a rejection of cultural conformity, of nationalism, and of the aesthetics and the logic, the reason, of the modern world. Grosz: the Dadaist artists were protesting "against this world of mutual destruction."

DE STIJL: Mondrian, saw his non-objective work having meaning, as expressing a spiritual order that underlies the visible world. Mondrian painted in order to express, to reveal, what he believed to be the true, spiritual foundation of things: basic forms, balance, rhythm, tension, dynamic evolutionary forces—forms of “universal beauty.” Though he did not clearly grasp the nature of UIV, he did correctly discern the fact that the evolution of art coincided with the evolution of humanity.

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM: The stated goal of the Abstract Expressionists was to imbue their canvases with expression. De Kooning: “I paint the way I do because I can keep on putting more and more things in - like drama, pain, anger, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas of space.” Newman: 'Instead of making cathedrals out of Christ, man, or ‘'life'’, we are making it out of ourselves, out of our own feelings.'

REPRESENTATION: Some of these artists’ work was representational and some was not.

DADA: The paintings of the Dada artists were sometimes representational--some of their works are quite non-objective.

DE STIJL: the work of the members of the De Stijl group was totally non-objective. Much of the mature work of Mondrian and van Doesburg consisted of black grid lines forming rectangles that were filled with color of left white. Mondrian, calling his art “Neoplasticist,” limited himself to horizontal and vertical lines and primary colors, while van Doesburg used diagonals and a greater variety of colors.

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM: Almost all of the work of the Abstract Expressionists is totally non-objective (De Kooning is an exception). The compositions of the “color field” abstract expressionists like Newman and Rothko were characterized by large areas of color; the compositions of the “action painters” of the group, like Pollock and de Kooning consisted of sweeping, expressive brush stokes that had been, or that gave the impression of having been, spontaneous applied, directly from the unconscious mind to the canvas. De Kooning said, “I might work on a painting for a month, but it has to look like I painted it in a minute.”

ACCURACY OF REPRESENTATION: none of these artists whose work was representational thought that accurate representation was necessary for there to be meaning, and thus for for a painting to possess esteem-worthiness.

GOOD FORMAL COMPOSITION: For Dionysos Metria during the Late Modernist era (that is, for most of the artists and the theorists of the time) good formal composition complemented meaning.

DADA: Dada painters protested against existing traditions, yet it’s clear that some of them, for example, Kurt Schwitters, Sophie Taeuber Arp and Jean Arp, at least intuitively, were masters of good formal composition.

DE STIJL: the paintings of these artists were clearly the products of a desire to produce aesthetically refined work, in a rather minimal sense. Mondrian equated beauty with what he saw as the spiritual realities underlying the processes of nature, balance, rhythm, tension, and dynamic evolutionary forces.

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM: The Abstract Expressionists minimized the importance of formal qualities, though their work was generally aesthetically well-formed: de Kooning said, “I'm not interested in 'abstracting' or taking things out or reducing painting to design, form, line, and color.” Rothko said, “If you are only moved by color relationships, you are missing the point. I am interested in expressing the big emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom.”

Summary: During this time, Apollo Akraia struggled against the now dominant Dionysos Metria, who was now just beginning to transform himself into Dionysos Akraia, who is also known as PoMo—the first such transformation occurred in the arts. Some of the Dada artist-emergers’ work, and all of the work of the De Stijl and then of the Abstract Expressionist artist-emergers reinforced and continued to acknowledge the idea that paintings could be created that possessed esteem-worthiness even though they failed to represent visual reality at all, but due to the growing presence of Dionysis Akraia, the knowledge that pure form is the source of art’s power was not advanced by these innovators—Mondrian, for instance, believed that he was revealing a truth about the world, a spiritual foundation of human experience, when his work was actually an act of creation. Dionysos Metria had “erased” the notion that representation was necessary for esteem, but mistakenly retained the idea that meaning was the source of esteem-worthiness. The advances that had been made by Braque, Matisse and Kandinsky were not being reinforced; the idea that Formal Composition is the power source of artistic expression of positive will, this truth the possession of which by mankind would someday facilitate the completion of Helios’ faculty of will-consolidation, was being lost. The truth that Unity in Variety was the key to formal excellence, which just a decade or so before had been nearly within the grasp of humanity, was now very far from being possessed by mankind.

Chapter VIII. Postmodernism

THE EVOLUTIONARY PAUSE—

THE DESTRUCTIVE THOUGHTS OF DIONYSOS AKRAIA

Up until the 1950s, whether intentionally or not, Dionysos Metria, his emerger artists, were identifying and uncovering the conditions for artistic greatness, for what made highly esteemed artworks of the past highly esteemed—it was an important inquiry, because if this could be revealed, then Helios would gain important knowledge about how his feelings could best be consolidated. Over the decades of Romanticism and Modernism, these pioneers had first discovered that, surprising many, these conditions did not include accuracy of representation, and then they found out that, in fact, they did not include representation at all.

At the time of the abstract expressionists, however, Dionysos Metria was just beginning to transform into his destructive form, and the search for truth was beginning to come to an end. Artists still (wrongly) believed that the key to a painting’s esteem lay in the meanings, the feelings, that the artist was able to imbue it with—Dionysos Akraia (PoMo), who had a strong affinity for emotion, was not able to admit that esteem came from something as intellectual as the calculus of relations. Further progress would be impossible until Apollo Metria became dominant.

With postmodernism, progress ended. Postmodernism continued modernism’s rejection of artistic tradition, but in a radical way: The early examples of postmodern art anticipated the popularity in academic circles of the French postmodern sophists. Postmodern artists rejected the past “grand narratives” of art, the idea of progress in art, and so rejects the idea of the avant-garde. It often blurred the traditional concept of high and low art by using industrial materials and images of ordinary objects; it undermined the traditional ideas of authenticity and originality. Postmodernists have aimed at pluralism and diversity. It no longer seemed to make sense to try to figure out what made great art of the past great.

Many, embracing the diversity of relative truth, goodness and beauty, deny that paintings can legitimately possess any objective values whatsoever, not inherent meaning, much less formal value. Nothing of the Enlightenment has remained, the productive synthesis has been all but destroyed: Those that do not accept these ultra-radically Dionysian views are nonetheless radically Dionysian, believing that expression, a focus on the diverse emotions, is key (the earlier artists were Dionysian, but not so radical)—formalist views, with their focus on the Apollonian unity of form, are vehemently eschewed. The progress made by the artist emergers of the Romantic and Modernist periods has been wiped from public consciousness--but it has been retained in Helios’ unconscious memory, and it can now be resurrected by Apollo Metria.

NEO-DADA (1952-1970): Artists of the Neo-Dada movement included Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) and Jasper Johns (1930-).

POP ART (mid 1950s-early 1970s): Artists of the Pop Art movement included Andy Warhole (1928-1987), Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) and James Rosenquist (1933-2017).

MEANING: Postmodern artists seem to have thought that art should have meaning, but their view of meaning was nihilistic. Postmodernism rejected the idea that a painting could inherently express a single meaning, determined by the artist. It maintained that a painting’s meaning consisted of whatever the viewer saw in it. Meaning no longer was seen as something that artists of the past had infused their paintings with and that made their work great—there was no clear sense that, other than being the subject of multiple interpretations, a painting could have any intrinsic value..

NEO-DADA: The Neo-Dada artists rejected the Abstract Expressionists’ focus on intense emotion. Rather, they were interested to incorporate mundane subject matter into their works, simultaneously deriding it and saluting it. They borrowed imagery from mass media and popular culture—this lack of input from the artist took the focus away from artist’s intent and onto what each viewer might see in the work. These artists paved the way for Pop art, Minimalism, and Conceptualism. For the Neo-Dada artists, a painting’s meaning was whatever the viewer might see in it.

POP ART: The Pop Art artists often simply reproduced imagery of mass culture, thus rejecting the values that earlier artists took seriously. Humor is a kind of Unity In Variety, and the notion that such mundane images should be found in art museums and galleries may be said to be slightly funny—a small bit of humor, not consciously recognized as such, may make the work seem important. Unity in Variety can manifest as beauty (the usual kind in art) or as humor (e.g. Pop art and Jonathan Winters’ art) or as surrealism (e.g. Dali)/symbolism. With Pop Art, the good work of the emergers of Dionysos Metria, which had been in decline since the Abstract Expressionists, had come to an end.

REPRESENTATION: Some Postmodern artists incorporated photographs into their paintings; many postmodern paintings are loosely representational.

NEO-DADA: The For the Neo-Dada artists, Johns and Rauschenberg, representation is not necessary

for meaning, and thus for esteem-worthiness—much of their work is totally non-objective.

POP ART: Some of Warhole’s work is realistically representational.

GOOD FORMAL COMPOSITION: The postmodern embrace of low-art features had the effect that formal composition, beauty, was not a consideration in many postmodern works. The postmodernists were averse to judging paintings good or bad on the basis of traditional criteria.

Chapter IX. the Completion of Helios’ Heart/Will

Summary of the Early to Mid R-PT Era—and the Future

THE FUTURE ERASURE OF MEANING—THE PRODUCTIVE THOUGHTS OF

APOLLO METRIA

First, the Romantics and the Early and Middle Modernist artists showed Helios that (1) accurate representation was not necessary for there to be esteem-worthy expression in a work of art. Then Matisse, Braque and especially Kandinsky (who believed that formal composition was essentially expressive) convinced Helios that (2) representation was not necessary for expression at all; this is what Helios was thinking when Dionysos Akraia brought to an end the brilliant, hard-fought, evolutionary progress forged by the romantic and early-to-middle modernist artists. Dionysos Akraia was then dominant during a long period of slow, then very fast, degeneration.

But Apollo Metria will now pick up the lost thread. Taking lessons not only from these great artists, but from theorists like Hutcheson, Fry and Bell—and others, Helios will take the next step: he will realize that (3) formal composition, itself essentially non-expressive, is the power behind expression. Then he will realize that (4) good formal composition is potentially so powerful that it alone, in stimulating the mysterious aesthetic emotion within the viewer, can make a painting esteem-worthy, that meaning is not necessary for esteem-worthiness at all; then he will come to understand that (5) Unity in Variety, parity of sameness and difference, is the key to formal composition. Helios will learn then that which it is his destiny to learn; that is, Helios will come to realize that (6) UNITY IN VARIETY, THAT IS, PARITY OF SAMENESS AND DIFFERENCE, IS THE POWER BEHIND EXPRESSION AND SO IS THE KEY TO THE CONSOLIDATION OF HIS WILL; this is true because with the discovery that Unity in Variety is the power source in conveying meaning in art, humans will now know how to maximize the expression of their feelings.