Art Reboot

28 That’s why I contend that art’s principal role is as a conduit between our two ways of knowing, whether or not that was our original intent in acquiring or admiring it. But I’d also say that it can perform this role efficiently only when it is fully emancipated, freed of governing restraints and servitude to trivial concerns; in other words, when it is fully mature. In order to achieve such maturity, a culture must recognise its arts as being primarily a means of self-cultivation, through which collectively the culture reaches towards higher understanding. It’s important to distinguish between maturity and modernity here. The latter, a word often co-opted to describe the western artistic revolution of the last century or so, accounts only for a relative change in tone; it says nothing about the broader recog- nition of the importance of art as a whole. More particularly, it completely ignores transcultural issues. As we shall see, modern- ity is an essentially western concept which is highly misleading when exported, particularly to the far more mature artistic cul- ture of China, which was ‘modern’ by western standards well over a thousand years ago. In the West, art only began its path to maturity in the re- cent revolution. Art had been in servitude to our other main vehicles of consciousness for so long, and so deeply, that it took a revolution to overthrow the tyranny. The results of that liber- ation are becoming clearer every day. Art has gained consider- able power in the last century, sufficient to begin to moderate the other vehicles of evolving consciousness in important ways. Religion is just one example; today, art’s practitioners are rapidly becoming a priesthood, our new gurus of understanding.