May 25, 2024

中译

I recently returned to Tolstoy’s What Is Art, a book I discarded years ago as “an old man shaking his fist at modernity.” In this work, Tolstoy argues that true art is not about beauty or pleasure, but the transmission of sincere human emotions. For him, art must be universal and accessible, capable of uniting people and serving humanity. Tolstoy spent 15 years shaping this argument, ultimately dismissing what we now consider the entire Romantic–Modernist canon. His rejections span Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to Nietzsche, Wagner, Baudelaire, the Symbolists, the Impressionists, Pushkin, Ibsen, and Wilde. The list of revered names he deemed unintelligible and false stretches further still. If Tolstoy considered the fathers of Modernism “incomprehensible counterfeiters”, what, then, would he say about the Postmodernists? Noam Chomsky once remarked of them, “I can’t understand what they’re talking about, but they seem to understand each other.”

Both Tolstoy and Nietzsche gazed into the same abyss—–the spiritual void—–but they responded to it differently. Tolstoy withdrew; Nietzsche leapt in.

Speaking of those who embraced the abyss and danced while falling, Mark Rothko comes to mind. His canvases masterfully captured that existential void.

Rothko’s Suicide: The Danger of Too Much Abstraction

Though I admire Rothko—–his colour fields have genuinely moved me—–I suspect that his tragic suicide was partly a consequence of abstraction taken to its final limit. Once the boundaries of representation are dissolved, one risks stepping into nothingness, and for Rothko (at 66), perhaps there was no return.

Consider the enduring works of art—–Greek sculptures, Song dynasty paintings, Shakespearean plays. These paragons share the ability “to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.” When art abandons its engagement with the natural world, it risks becoming hollow, its abstraction devoid of meaning.

If Modernism is defined by Individuality, what, then, is the hallmark of art today? Ephemerality?

I was born at the bottom of this abyss, yearning for resurrection.