The dehumanization of art: Ortega y Gasset’s pernicious art theory

Because I have admired the Spanish philosopher and art critic José Ortega y Gasset (1883 – 1955) for many years, I have been reluctant to review any of his books. His writing style offers a peculiar angle of vision on culture, philosophy and art. As a result, for years I have been a consumer, always taking from your work and never giving you anything back.

But now is the time to give something back. So, here are some very personal likes and dislikes.

The title of Ortega’s book – The Dehumanization of Art – is now a constant in music, literature, aesthetics and philosophy, having come to mean that in postmodern times the human form mimicry (representation of the human) is irrelevant to art.

According to Ortega, the arts do not have to tell a human story; art should be concerned with its own forms and not with the human form. The essay, divided into 13 subsections, was originally published in 1925; In these short sections, Ortega discussed the novelty of unrepresentative art and sought to make it more understandable to an audience very numb with traditional art forms.

A search for the substance of traditional art

In the first section, entitled “Impopularity of New Art”, Ortega extracts from his political creed that it can be said that it is elitist, aristocratic and anti-popular. His analysis concludes with the belief that some people are better than others; that some are superior to others: “Behind all contemporary life lies the provocative and profound injustice of the assumption that men are actually created equal.”

That inflexible political point of view colors his aestheticism.

The masses, he argues, will never understand the “new art” that was emerging with Debussy and Stravinsky (music), Pirandello (theater) and Mallarmé (poetry). The misunderstanding will mobilize the masses – a term Ortega uses frequently to refer to ordinary people – to dislike and reject the new art. Therefore, the new art will be the art of the illustrious, the educated and the few.

Bringing that kind of dividing tool – the few against the majority, aristocrats against democrats – into the arts seems not only narrow-minded, but also false. However, my main objection to Ortega’s analysis and conclusions is more fundamental. In my opinion, “understanding” in the arts is of secondary importance. The arts are created by humans to reach out and touch other humans through appeals to their passions and emotions, through their senses.

When I was 14 years old, by accident, I heard a musical composition so different and strange to my little ears that it prompted me to call the radio station to know that piece. It was Appalachian Spring, a ballet composition by Aaron Copland. What 14-year-old from the Andes (Peru) might be familiar with ballet or Aaron Copland to even begin to understand composition? However, I liked it. And that’s all that mattered to me.

Understanding that piece of music, or even knowing the name of the composer, was as far from my mind as Einstein’s theory of relativity, since I also had no idea who Einstein was. The delight, joy, and ecstasy one feels without express understanding.

By extolling new forms and promoting avant-garde artists and their efforts to produce non-traditional art, Ortega’s book had a significant influence on the rejection of realism and romanticism. So seductive and compelling was Ortega’s prose that many artists and critics began to equate realism and romanticism with vulgarity.

Allowing a brilliant writer to exercise such authority should be a sin. For years Ortega’s authority has bothered me. However, despite this inner annoyance, my respect for the man’s writings prevented me from protesting. So, by stripping Ortega of her dazzling prose of her seduction – by “bracketing” and making a phenomenological reduction – we can see her in her own nudity for what she is: an elitist and harmful point of view.

People should never be ashamed of their likes, likes and dislikes in art. We should enjoy that touch of aesthetic delight whether it comes from primitive, Greek, Gothic, Romanesque, Baroque, Realism or Romanticism, Surrealism or any era or movement.

Ortega advocates the ‘objective purity’ of observed reality

Following Plato’s division of reality into (universal) forms and their simulacra, Ortega invents his own corresponding terms: “observed reality” and “lived reality.”

The representation of real things (lived reality) -man, house, mountain- Ortega calls “aesthetic frauds.” Ortega totally dislikes objects, whether natural or artificial: “Much of what I have called dehumanization and disgust for living forms is inspired by such an aversion to the traditional interpretation of realities.”

Rather, the representation of ideas (observed reality) is what he sees as true art. Therefore, he praises the new art as destroying appearance, resemblance, resemblance, or mimesis. In this destruction of the old human forms of art lies the “dehumanization” of Ortega.

However, it must be remembered that more than 2500 years ago, the pre-Socratic philosopher Protagoras said: “Man is the measure of all things: of the things that are, that are and of the things that are not, that are not” . . “Ortega’s will to” dehumanize “art will always collide head-on against the wall of Protagoras. Art by definition, anything made by man, is deeply human and cannot be otherwise, despite Ortega.

Even in the stark canvases of painters like Mark Rothko, the humanity of the artist in search of the human soul is felt through color and luminosity. Even in the random drips of Jackson Pollock’s works you can feel man’s struggle for freedom. And what is freedom but a human aspiration?

conclusion

Whenever I look at early African art forms, Paleolithic images of animals in the Lascaux caves, or even Mondrian’s balanced and colorful grids, I am amazed by the human spirit. And in those moments I feel that labels, signs, marks and explanations and descriptions (theories) are totally unnecessary.

What we need are theories of art that can bring people together instead of dividing them. Ortega’s “dehumanization” is a toxic theory not because it advocates detestable elitism, but because it attempts to deny the joys of art to ordinary people.