The Sublime
sublime
səˈblʌɪm/
adjective
adjective: sublime;
comparative adjective: sublimer; superlative adjective: sublimest
1.1.
of very great excellence or
beauty."Mozart's sublime piano
concertos"
2.synonyms:
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3.exalted, elevated, noble, lofty, awe-inspiring, awesome, majestic, magnificent, imposing, glorious, supreme; Moregrand, great, outstanding, excellent, first-rate, first-class, superb, perfect, ideal, wonderful, marvellous, splendid, delightful, blissful, rapturous;
informalfantastic, fabulous, fab, super, smashing, terrific, stellar, heavenly, divine, mind-blowing, too good to be true, out of this world
"a
sublime vision of human potential"
|
4.
5.antonyms:
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7.
▪
producing an
overwhelming sense of awe or other high emotion through being vast or grand."a sense of the sublime"
8.
9.2.
(of a person's attitude or
behaviour) extreme or unparalleled."he had
the sublime confidence of youth"
10.
synonyms:
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12.
verb
verb: sublime; 3rd person
present: sublimes; past tense: sublimed; past participle: sublimed;
gerund or present participle: subliming
1.1.
CHEMISTRY
(of a solid
substance) change directly into vapour when heated, typically forming a solid
deposit again on cooling."the ice
sublimed away, leaving the books dry and undamaged"
▪
cause (a substance)
to sublime."these crystals could be
sublimed under a vacuum"
2.
3.
archaic
elevate to a high degree of moral or spiritual purity or
excellence."let your thoughts be sublimed
by the spirit of God"
Thoughts
gleaned from The sublime
Morley,
S (ed) 2010, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
From
the introduction:
‘Today we are constantly learning of new
realities too vertiginously complex, it seems, for us to fully encompass them
in our minds. Astronomers now believe for example that the visible universe
contains an estimated 100 billion galaxies and that each galaxy also consists
of stars emitting rays in myriad variations from glimmering cool reds to radiant
hot blues and whites. ‘Wow’ often tends to be our initial lost for words
response to such intimations of otherness or infinity.
…The sublime experience is fundamentally
transformative, about the relationship between order and disorder, and the
disruption of the stable co ordinates of space and time’.
Concept of sublime – became important in 18th
C art in relation to nature. Morley suggests that now it is the power of
technology that is ‘more likely to supply the raw material’ for contemporary
sublime. Sublime arose in importance after WWII AbEx artists desired to evoke
sublime feelings of transcendence and exultation. It diminished then returned
in 80s – reaction against trivialization of art in Pop art. Artists to look at
-
Bill Viola
-
- James Turrell – space &
light
-
Mike Kelley – more disturbing
aspects
-
Doris Salcedo, Anish Kapoor,
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Fred Tomaselli – trauma/sublime
Meaning
of sublime
Latin – sublimis – elevated, lofty
Sub – up
Limen – threshold,
surround or lintel of the doorway
Limes - boundary or limit
Middle Ages:
Sublimare – (alchemy) purifying process by which substances turned into gas on being
subjected to heat, then cool and become a newly transformed solid.
History of the Sublime
17th C – Du Sublime
translation of Longinus (Roman era) author
true human nobility
discovered with confrontation of the threatening and unknown – art that
challenges our capacity to understand and fills us with wonder
1750s – word used – away from the
self - attention to intense experiences
which lay beyond conscious control & threatened individual autonomy
challenging traditional systems of thought/religion.
1757 – Burke – sublime – nature
vastness/obscurity – a side of horror/fear transformative power of fear- self
survival
1790 – Immanuel Kant – Critique of Judgement
3 types of sublimity:
·
the awful
·
the splendid & lofty
·
the limits of reason – complex
experiences we cant make sense of – ‘indiscernible, unnameable, undecidable,
indeterminate and unpresentable’, independence of nature
1800s – Hegel – saw the sublime ‘not so
much as voiding the power of reason but as a moment of fusion with the Absolute
in which the beautiful is fulfilled and declared that sublimity was the way by
which the divine manifested in the natural world’- opposite of the void-
Nietsche –
sublime individual as - freedom -
abandonment of reason – Apollian –
light/sanity instead Dionysian intoxification wine/madness
1900s Freud – psychic stability found by
the ego suppressing ‘undesirable urges and traumatic memories and these are
transformed into purer morally and socially acceptable forms’ – only partially
repressed these produce the uncanny and unsettling ambivalence – fera
originating in ‘what is known of old and lomg familiar things’.
mid 20th C – Walter Benjamin –
modern life – technological society causes one long uncanny or sublime
experience: ‘disorienting psychic condition of traumatic shock’- destabilizing
consequences
Carl Jung – mystical and alchemical parts
of sublimity self becoming more self aware – individuation
Georges Butaille – self is forced to
‘remain in intolerable non-knowledge, which has no other way out than ecstasy’.
The
sublime and contemporary culture
·
70s and 80s – culture and
values are socially constructed rather than from a timeless essence – t’he
sublime addresses unresolved problem in social constructionist argument because
while we may no longer believe in eternal essences or values we still often
sense that our lives are fashioned by forces beyond our control’.
·
Assertion that our lives are
not totally accounted for by saying they are produced wholly from cultural
signs and systems – this is where thought comes to an end ‘and we encounter
that which is ‘other’.
·
Creates more questions!
·
Linked to time – heightened
awareness – nature vs culture
·
Self- transcendence is not
linked to a higher being (secular world) – rejection of idea of self/spirit
that moves upwards towards and essential thing instead about Immanent transcendence – transformative
experience that happens hear and now.
·
Contemporary artists shy away
from describing their work in such terms as has kitsch, trivialized
associations as well as the sublime being employed by totalitarian regimes eg
Nazis to seduce masses.
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