Art and Philosophy

Here my friend and i have talked about philosophical skepticism and its relevance in modern world. Check it out. Would love your feedback.

“The confrontation with death—and the reprieve from it—makes everything look so precious, so sacred, so beautiful, that I feel more strongly than ever the impulse to love it, to embrace it, to let myself be overwhelmed by it…. Death and its ever-present possibility makes love, passionate love more possible.”

Impression,Sunrise was painted by Claude Monet in 1873. It depicts the sunrise in French harbor of Le Havre in 1873.This painting is said to have started the impressionism movement. It might look less subtle with its short brush strokes but it never intended to be in the first place. Here Monet captured an atmospheric condition by painting vivid , adjacent and contrasting colours. It emphasizes the light itself and subjects are given less importance. The flickering light from sun in the early morning pierces through fog and reflected on the water. We see two silhoutted figures on the boat. The painting tries to capture the light from sun as it travels. The blotch of orange in the sky gives us more of a feel for nature. The seascape and horizon meets with no actual separation depicting the serenity of this moment in time. As my eyes wandered from left to right, i sense nothing but the vastness of time and shortness of human life. Maybe i am seeing things that are not there, maybe the illuminated atmosphere is what is missing from my life. I don't know, i am a human being whose sense of perception can be deceived through the use of few brush strokes. But whatever that is , i tend to be grounded in reality and maybe Monet actually tries to send this message across instead of working on the details and subtlety of his paintngs. So in my opinion(which doesn't matter as no one else's opinion matter),this painting eerily produces a realist portrayal of nature and its relationship with humans. A moment or experience, far away from the cacophony of what lies ahead.

I woke up today at 4 am after a restless night of changing positions and ocassional pondering over weird scenarios with a frantic inner monologue as they unfold. The pessimist in me went on a ramapage but only after looking at my cracked window. Looking at it i thought, how fragile it is, like our lives. We could easily be damaged, whether it is through our personal relationships, or a loss of a beloved being from our lives. Even small things have a lasting impact on our thinking and affects our concentration to do other things. I thought about my life and its many cracks which is still yearning for light to enter and shine its darkest corners. Somewhere out there in the world there are people who are completely shattered and may have lost all hope for any light. I wonder what those people feel who beg to live for a day or two. Those who are already born with cracks. These cracks may never mend but it has made it possible for some light to enter. Hardships and unbearable moments are a part of this chaos called life. I wonder who or what is going to fix these cracks. But it's also possible that you won't ever grow into the person you hoped to become without these cracks. I guess i'll have to wait. It is all there is to life; wait. Wait for that glimmer of light. Sometimes i ask myself, is it even worth it? You always have a fear of unknown and death. You never know who or whats going to hurt you and take you to a certain despair and anguish state, a lostness of the human condition. Who or whats gonna make you happy, though it happens rarely(in my life).The inexorable passage of time does not care about your good or bad moments, it just passes and takes you along. It is the human desire and hope which form a basis for human struggle and suffering.In the famous words of William Irvine, it is desire which animates life, 'Banish desire from the world and you get a world of frozen beings who have no reason to live and no reason to die.' Hopes and desires are personal aspects of human life, and it is these desires that tell us to wait a little longer. But for now i am just waiting at my balcony for that sun to rise.

Sunset by Aykut Aydoğdu, 2018.

Visitors by Joe Baran

-Jean-Paul Sartre

End of the Journey by Friedrich Kunath, 2019.

This painting took a hidden feeling of mine and brought it to light. Reńe Magritte's Time transfixed talks to you like your imaginary friend(lets be honest guys) who knows you inside out and tells you harsh truths without ever judging you. Looking at the painting, our attention goes straight to the locomotive charging out of fireplace. It disturbs the mundanity of the scene and took us by surprise. The painting also emphasizes the clock placed over the fireplace in front of a mirror and in between two candles. Through the combonation of these odd objects, Magritte captures our vacillated and lost selves. The one which yearns to be a part of the crowd, to get emotional fulfilment socially. But at a certain point, wants to be left alone with his/her gloomy thoughts. The picture seems like a real motion event in which the locomotive may charge through the fireplace at any moment and disturbs the placidity of the room. But at the time It is stopped. It enters our consciousness and urges us to think about our banal but hidden feeling. It tries to redeem those moments when you are unwelcome and do not want any intrusion of any kind even after having many friends. It also depicts our desire to capture and eternalise delightful moments with someone before they become memories. This is the level of contradiction this picture tries to capture. The reflection of left candlestick is visible, but it's not the same for right one. This represents our two contrasting feelings. We carry this dilemma our whole lives and in the way we get misunderstood by people. Its quite interesting how Magritte uses locomotive and clock to bring these feelings to the surface, but only through these candles we see their faces. The mirror does not reflect the rest of the room and tries to focus our attention to these candles. Every object carries a sense of purpose, it only depends on the viewer to extract these purposes. This painting assures us about the normality of our feelings and tells us its not our fault.

Little Death by Glenn Brown, 2000.

I have been listening to this song for 5 years now. I don't really ever listened to much of Coldplay, but this song is very atypical of them. The video sits almost perfectly with the song. The use of inverted colours catches the eeriness of the song along with the scenery. Chris Martin's distorted vocals contributes to the desperation and sort of fear and anxiety. The song tries to tell us that there is always an eerie darkness lurking around us, no matter what you do and where you are in your life. And it is this 'on the horizon' darkness that makes us vulnerable to giving up everything. But the line 'leave a light on' tells us to hold onto our emotions and feelings amidst crisis, one day everything would be past for you and you will move on, but only if you do not extinguish this flare of hope inside you. The part between 2:20 and 2:50 is so mesmerizing that it takes me to a trance-like state. This song is not perfect nor is it very good technically but whenever i listen to it, i feel happily sad and what more can i ask for(beacause this sadness will last forever).

The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad — because you never know what will be the consequence of the misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune.

Cardiff Docks by Lionel Walden, 1894

Dir. Derek Cianfrance

Vasily is trying to show the realistic picture of war to poets and prophets who dreamt of a utopia in which war will not exist and peace will reign on earth. It can be misunderstood by some as glorification of war, but he condemns the war by showing us its brutal nature. He tries to show that men are dynamic creatures who can't live contended merely with peace. These men don't think about the post calamities of war but are guided by their accumulated energy filled with ignorance and hate. The tendency of modern wars becoming global is pretty disturbing to us. The fact that radical difference in policies and abhorrent political ideologies of countries cannot always be settled by mere discussion, puts us as a civilisation into a bleak and uncertain future. I do not know how many wars could be prevented by art, but i do know that any stable, lasting peace depends on creating societies with a richness of opportunity and variety that can meet human needs.