Chaos Art

This article is more than an article. Actually its two articles, the first one written around 3 years back and the sequel to it a few months ago.

It might appear to be a contraction that a dyed in wool Objectivist has created and mastered an art that apparently implies ‘A is not A’.

The seeds were sown early. It’s a not so uncommon story of a restless mind forced to attend not so intellectually stimulating lectures. But a fascination with ink pens proved to be that adventitious factor which makes serendipities possible.

The invention of ink pen was a stroke of genius, but unfortunately no amount of research and development could make the ink pen change its habit of getting dry when kept idle for a while.

But a discovery by another genius made any such change unnecessary.

In order to keep the ink pen busy, I would scribble aimlessly to come up with a senseless, chaotic figure- a perpetual hatred for fastidiousness makes sure that it IS a chaotic figure. But, on closer observation the figure does starts to make sense. The trick is to observe. Observing a chaotic figure is like gazing at clouds on lonely nights or reading maps on worn out walls with peeled paint.

So to sum up, the appreciation of chaos art entails an ability to find the method in the madness of things.

When I wrote this stupid article a couple of years back I was barely introduced to the philosophy of Objectivism and not unlike many fledgling Objectivists believed the badge of ‘Objectivist’ to be a symbol of pride rather than as an identification of a person who has completely understood and has integrated each and every aspect of Objectivism. Now that I have a better understanding of Objectivism, the ‘apparent’ contradiction can be resolved.

According to Ayn Rand there are two interrelated elements of art which are crucial means of projecting an artist’s sense of life. These are the subject and the style. In chaos art the subject follows the style, because it’s the style that determines what you will end up sketching.

The style of an artist is the way he chooses to present his sense of life and it expresses a view of his consciousness. By sense of life Ayn Rand means a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, in other words it’s a general appraisal of the nature of reality- of men and of nature. It is a counterpart of a conscious philosophy which a person derives by an active process of concept formation. The sense of life of a person is reflected in his habits and his automatic response to the world around him.

So according to her a person whose normal mental state is that of full focus will choose to create a style of clarity and precision, projecting sharp outlines, cleanliness, purpose and a commitment to full awareness and clear identity. While a style characterized by blurred outlines indicates a person who is out of focus. So there was in fact no contradiction. My sense of life was in conflict with my consciously chosen philosophy of life.

Philosophy though can not replace a person’s sense of life which is after all an automatic sum of values; it does set the criteria of his sense of life according to a consistent view of life. So the period of transition from thereon was that of a programming of my emotions from an explicit metaphysics and epistemology of Objectivism. And this is reflected in the evolution of ‘Chaos Art’ over a period of 2-3 years. Now the sketch is no more a nebula which can be interpreted in any manner possible. It is no more like a cloud or a worn out wall- purposeless- but an accentuated and near clear cut figure, not a distortion of reality but a selective recreation, a more focused work of art.