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Art and Evolution "If our value system is rational, consistent and integrated (the result of arduous intellectual effort) and we are living out our values to the fullest capacity through our actions, then when presented with the ideals in directly perceivable form (as through art), we are rewarded by the ultimate emotional experience of self-celebration. The exquisite joy of moments such as these is an end in itself, reflecting the pure exultation of individual accomplishment as if from the intense beam of an inner light shining on an earned self-fulfillment that becomes a salute." There it is, at a corner of New York, that bar with the pensive figures, at 0 hour, as Astor Piazzola so properly captured in his tango (Buenos Aires, Hora 0), a time that isn't midnight but that moment when the city's last reveller hasn't gone to bed and the first worker hasn't waked up yet. The Nighthawks, later pictured by other painters placing MM, Humphrey Bogart and James Dean at the counter, smoking and drinking a cup of coffee to keep sleepiness away. The author is Edward Hopper (1882 - 1967), an artist firmly connected to reality, so much that he even launched in 1953 a magazine with the title "Reality". While Hopper was only one of the artists subconsciously involved with a new movement towards a rational view of existence (others that in my opinion belong to it are Andrew Wyeth and Pierre Doutreleau and, of course, nowadays the Romantic Realists, such as Sylvia Bokor, Bryan Larsen and so many others) his paintings can be seen as an austere example for this renewed realistic observation of mankind's existence. Painting and sculpture clearly depict and describe mankind's painful growth to what nature's evolution itself automatically designed it to be: beings characterized by the faculty of reason, a faculty whose development itself history has shown to be a stumbling, hesitant progress toward the goal of total fulfillment. This road, this progress, can be viewed as steps towards ever-higher rungs, with each level proceeding from early infancy (the bi-dimensional insecure moves of an infant handling for the first time a pencil) to the full development of three-dimensionally handling the theme and the materials to complete it in actual reality. Below is a chart I prepared to easily visualize what is meant (in a way similar to Hopper's dictum that " If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint") and after it I will present a short analysis of it:
The chart has been divided in three levels, each one starting at the most immature stage and then proceeding up to the highest altitude that could be reached at that rung of the ladder against the constant hindrance presented by the promoters of irrationality. Each level starts with an enclave of irrationality facing an increasing challenge by those who consciously or subconsciously operate to promote the full establishment of the faculty of reason. The further "chapters" of each level then show the slow and hard progress towards the highest peak of reason attainable at that plane. Cave art itself, whose earliest expressions were the "paintings" of chalked hands plastered on rock, registers, for the time being, a rapid progress of quality, as seen in the caves of Altamira and Lascaux (all of them bi-dimensional), up to some early experiments in three-dimensional sculpture, like the 30.000 year old "Venus of Willendorf" and the bisons in the cave of Tuc d'Audoubert in southern France, which point already to the 3-dimensionality of Greek and Roman art, with Egyptian art marking the intermediate step between 2- and 3-dimensionality. Still, cave and Egyptian art are mainly related with 2-dimensionality. Through evolution, nature produced and mainly ended the physical development of the human being. But his intellectual advancement is still in the process of progress, a process of steady growth, several times interrupted by fits of irrationality. This is the motive why the chart had to be divided into three levels that point out the slow progress to the full use of the faculty of reason. Each rung could have received a specific name, but I considered that this would have confused the issue. Mankind's intellectual development is the story of the struggle of reason against an environment of irrationality that characterizes non-human nature as such. Irrationality tries by any means to stop or at least delay reason from reaching its final triumph. Philosopher Ayn Rand deduced and exactly defined this struggle in "The Fountainhead", a book that describes the clash with amazing clarity, when she said: "Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of the tribe. Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy." In this slow and, unfortunately due to those adhering to the permanence of irrationality, generally bloody progress, the lines are almost never visibly drawn. Reason does not operate with exclusivity on one line of the fence, since people mainly aligned with irrational beliefs and behaviors use reason in a maimed way for the practical purposes of life, to maintain the hierarchical and financial structures of their own life and their institutions and also to mentally construct an apparently "logical" configuration starting from convictions based on faith, i.e. imagined mental compositions of unreal postulates which are then pursued and promoted with criminal belligerence to obtain political and social ends. This is why Ayn Rand considered it necessary to establish a guide of conduct for the rational human beings in her writing "How does one lead a rational life in an irrational society?" After the first start on the road to civilization, irrationality recovered in two opportunities and, hopefully, no more, the upper hand as shown in the "Infancy and Youth" chapter of the "2nd. Endeavor" and the "Infancy" section of the "3rd. Endeavor". The first time is represented by medieval, i.e. religious art, a time in the "2nd. Endeavor" level when irrationality, on a rampant, stretched its malignity in every possible way, endangering the very existence of what, at that time, amounted to the Western World. The era, properly represented by its 2-dimensional art, faced its demise with the emergence and ascent of the Renaissance, when a new dimension was consciously added by the discovery of the laws of perspective. Raphael's "The School of Athens", with Aristotle pointing to the earth, symbolizes the rebirth of reason. A new era of learning and understanding man's position in the universe as well as his using the new knowledge gained to raise his personal comfort and lifespan began. Through the following periods of Baroque, Neoclassicism and Romanticism, we gain insight to a maturing and aging of the whole period up to the point where the computer precise pixel-by-pixel pointillism of Seurat (the figures of the "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" lack the required perspective of form, look like silhouettes and, thus, create a weird evocation of Egyptian bi-dimensional flatness) moves to the growing uncertainty and vagueness of Monet's Japanese bridge over the pond, thus showing the course to the era's conclusion. Beyond the beauty or ugliness one could sense in what Impressionism expresses (I will not analyze any emotion that this art tendency may evoke in the viewer) it tolls the countdown to disaster that goes hand in hand with the artists that promoted the upcoming of the communist and socialist retreat from individualism to the relapse of the irrationality of communitarianism, painting the coming chaos in "abstract" terms. Mankind slithered into "Abstraction" and WWI, the restart of irrationality, came in its wake, which moved Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary of the then still British Empire to muse that "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." Total senselessness had set in, marking the infancy of the new era, with art returning to the indecision of a child's first and awkward use of a pencil on a piece of paper, thus marking the return of the archaic, in the already well-known typical 2-dimensionality of its way of expression, showing the mind having gone blank. During its gory and senseless domination, irrationality stampeded through mankind by means of world wars, "ethnic" killings and the criminal behavior of political chieftains I generically term as Stalitlers. Irrationality hasn't ceased yet, as the general political and religious terrorist organizations testify, which, added to those politicians and quasi-intellectuals that instigate and hope for the elimination of mankind itself, have brought us to the very final brink of disaster. Irrationality is fully willing to take the final step of total destruction so as to avoid by any means the final triumph of the faculty that characterizes man as such: reason. The majority of the population seems to be either unaware of this or even to favor it, which is an additional indicator of how fast and how far the forces of reason will have to proceed to avoid mankind's demise from the universe. Though darkness surrounds us, reason, even at the worst possible conditions, does not give up. It pushes and advances with relentless insistence, starting a new learning process and persisting until the lessons have been learned. Art does not only "paint" the intellectual spirit of a given era. Its path along the arrow of time allows us also to visualize it as forecasting the coming mental revival. Viewed in this way, it renders a rock solid ground for hope because the artists of reality, of which I particularly pointed out Edward Hopper, inaugurated the coming of the Romantic Realists, whose works are inspired by Objectivism, the philosophy fully deduced from reality by philosopher Ayn Rand. They proudly announce and describe the victory of reason as man's characteristic. This, however, does by no means signify that we, as promoters of Objectivism, have any right to rest on our laurels. On the contrary: we are facing the most formidable challenge of all times, a moral revolution. Ayn Rand set the standard, the call to arms to be followed without hesitation. In "Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World", she said: "A moral revolution is the most difficult, the most demanding, the most radical form of rebellion, but that is the test to be done today, if you choose to accept it. When I say "radical" I mean it in the literal and reputable sense: fundamental. Civilization does not have to perish. The brutes are winning only by default. But in order to fight them to the final and with full rectitude, it is the altruist morality that you have to reject." For the altruist morality is the immorality of the irrationals, its remedy being the philosophy of Objectivism. Through it we will reach the self-celebration mentioned by Alexandra York at the start of this writing.
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