Vidunderlig klumme, ‘Learn to love ambiguity’, af min yndlingsskribent Janan Ganesh:
To the After Impressionism show at the National Gallery. There is a Georges Seurat landscape so hazy that I can’t tell if I am looking at sand or wheat. There is a Picasso portrait so fractured in perspective that three-quarters of the sitter is lost. As for the customary “Mont Sainte-Victoire”, Cézanne makes the kilometre-high rock look as though it might blow away in the next breeze. Nothing is certain here. Nothing is fixed.
And that, around the turn of the 20th century, is what so upset audiences. It seems there is a psychic need for structure and order in a meaningless world. Not all of us feel it. But those who do can feel it to the nth degree.
This is the real root of evil, isn’t it? Greed, yes, but for clarity, not for cash. It drives people to embrace political dogma rather than live with ambiguity. We are at the beginning of the end of one such phenomenon. I think the cultural left peaked in 2020. Listen to the derisive connotation of the word “woke” now. Look at newspapers, once all-in on this stuff, edge back a bit. But don’t cheer. Because it will be something else next. What “activists” of the left were looking for wasn’t that dogma, but a dogma: a system of thought that clarifies the farrago of real life into categories (“patriarchy”) and rules (“do better”). Exactly which system meets that demand at a given time is a matter of chance and fashion.
…
After Impressionism covers 1880 to the Great War. In that era, or thereabouts, Marxists and Freudians tried to bring the exactitude of Newtonian physics to the clutter of human affairs. Historical laws were “discovered”. Human behaviour was taxonomised. One of these dogmas would go on to sweep about a third of the world. The other, in the form of psychobabble, still has a grip on educated urbanites in the west. It is there when someone tells you their Myers-Briggs type. It is there when behaviours too banal to need labelling are called “gaslighting”. This isn’t just upper middle class boredom at work. It is a deeper-seated urge to impose order on a world that has disturbingly little.
In the end, then, the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists lost. Yes, art was changed forever. But the world outside art remained the same in its desperation for certainties: for clean lines of thought, if not of paint. What happened to European politics in the first half of the 20th century is the deadliest example. Others are just frivolous. It is impossible to be single without noticing the awesome persistence of astrology among otherwise rational adults.
If I see this craving for certainty everywhere, it is because I am so much the other way. My three favourite cities in the world — London, Los Angeles, Bangkok — are defined by a lack of definition. There is no master plan, no architectural coherence, no telling from the look and atmosphere of one street what to brace for in the next.
Undskyld den voldsomme citation, men jeg er decideret opstemt. Først og fremmest over referencen til min absolutte yndlingsperiode i kunsthistorien. Dernæst: at uanset om man er enig i den lidt vel forsimplede opdeling af menneskeheden i dogmatiske, neurotiske strukturfascister vs. åbensindede bonvivant spontanitetselskere, så er der noget potens i det grundlæggende argument:
At verden er kaotisk, meningsløs og præget af inerti, men at de fleste mennesker vedholdende forsøger at applikere mening, klarhed og struktur til tilværelsen. At uanset om det drejer sig om klassisk eller sekulariseret religion (politiske ideologier, karriere, personlig udvikling, moderskabet, skønhedsidealer, den snorlige græsplæne, virtue signalling, bæredygtigt forbrug, statusmarkører, personlig branding – indsæt selv din egen Ersatz-religion her), så er behovet for en meningsfuld, klarhedsskabende og strukturerende fiktion om en selv og ens plads i kosmologien konstant. Og at dette behov for struktur, mening og klarhed kan have uintenderede og negative konsekvenser for én selv og andre, både på det personlige plan og aggregeret til samfundsniveau.
Jeg er splittet.
På den ene side nærer jeg rent intellektuelt en afsmag for planlægning, struktur, styring og højmodernisme. Intet kan få mit blod til bruse mere rasende end Le Corbusier. Jeg dør indeni, hver gang jeg er i Ørestaden. Og jeg har det intenst vanskeligt med mennesker, der gerne vil fortælle andre at de lever forkert.
På den anden side må jeg tilstå, at jeg selv har et stort emotionelt behov for at tillægge ting, begivenheder og min tilværelse mening og klarhed. Jeg trives heller ikke selv specielt godt i ambivalente og udflydende tilstande. Et stykke tid, måske. Men derefter vil jeg også gerne have ‘klare linjer’ og forfalder til at betragte verden gennem diffuse ‘principper’, ofte af bedagede protestantisk-arbejdsetisk karakter (Max Weber ville elske mig, tror jeg).
Men jeg må jo lære det. At sammenhængen mellem den virkelige verden og min egen fiktive konstruktion af orden bryder sammen. Og at det i en verden med konstante kriser og stigende usikkerhed, kun bliver værre. Måske vejen – som Ganesh siger det – er at lære at elske tvetydigheden. Men nemt er det ikke.