Modernity

For thousands of years, art has been seen as an answer rather than a question. In Bali, bagus is the term used to describe what conforms in every respect to what is expected, an artistic achievement which only partially corresponds to our term of beauty. This bagus means conformity to the requirements of ritual or tradition, and thus distances itself from the European ideal of original, individual research and metaphysical questioning in artistic creation. But this ideal is itself the result of a fairly recent evolution. Previously, between the mask sculptor of ancient Africa and the artist of our seventeenth century concerned with “bringing the arts to their perfection” through the imitation of the best models of Antiquity, there was at least in common the quiet assurance of the work to be done. It was not so much the nature of the work that was mysterious as the transcendent ends it was to serve.