Vol. 17 No. 2 1950 - page 180

180
PARTISAN REVIEW
seen the same tendency at work in the dissolution of what he calIed
"romantic" art (the same art which, for Malraux, embodies the value
of the "sacred") -the art whose plastic resources were employed to ex–
press the transcendental values of Christianity. Once these values ceased
to be controlling, once they ceased to furnish the artist-as Hegel writes
in his
V orlesungen iiber die Aesthetik-"a
content, with which his in–
nermost subjectivity lives in primordial unity," the content of art be–
came a matter of impulse and caprice, depending solely on the artist's
subjectivity; and consequently, "without regard for subject matter, the
means of representation became ends in themselves, so that the sub–
jective dexterity and employment of artistic means elevated itself to
become the objective matter of the art work." And in a sentence that
might refer to modern abstract art, although Hegel was actualIy talking
about Dutch
genre
painting, he calIs this "as it were, an objective music,
a singing in colors." For Hegel's dialectic, naturalIy, this freedom of the
artist had a double aspect. Compared to the great periods when art was
an authentic voice for the
Weltanschauung
of an entire culture, the
subjectivity of art represented a decline in status. Art was no longer the
chosen instrument for expressing the highest values of modern culture
-a task which, because of the
lnnerlichkeit
of the modern spirit, had
now devolved on philosophy. At the same time, Hegel recognized that,
in being released from bondage to any particular framework of values, a
new world of possibilities had been thrown open to the artist; "every
form, as every material, now stood in his service and at his command."
Hegel's ideas have been introduced, at this juncture, to highlight
Malraux's conviction that in becoming its own value modern art has
reached a historical apotheosis. Hegel tried to keep a balance between
the positive and negative implications of this tendency; while for Mal–
raux, only the positive elements exist-it is an unconditional triumph.
Manet and the modern art beginning with him, Malraux believes,
"isolated an artistic attitude from the centuries." Instead of turning
back to a single past style for inspiration, the modern artist, deluged by
the creations of all history, forged a new style based on a unique in–
sight into the essence of art. This insight, briefly expressed, was that
"every great artist is a transformer of forms; the new fact was that the
modern artist became aware of this; and whoever was aware of it
formerly is modern in some way." The art of the past, that is, had trans–
formed the world of forms in keeping with some extra-aesthetic value,
whether religious or secular; but the essence of art had only been
obscured by its subservience to these extra-aesthetic values; for this
essence lay in art's pure function as a transformer of the given world
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