Per Rudolf Otto,

Maurizio Cattelan, L.O.V.E. (2010). Courtesy of Ralf Steinberger.

the Sacred is the “Wholly Other” and thus outside of the scope of discursive understanding and accessible only to a cognitive faculty open to revelation. In traditional societies, artistic forms are symbolic representations of what cannot actually be seen . . . or said. In the modern era, sacred knowledge is dismissed as superstition, and art, now discnnected from the sacred, becomes Art, an object of purely aesthetic veneration. Early modernists like Rilke and Mallarme could still sense the presence of the sacred in art. The glow was faint but still there.

“Postmodernism” is the triumph of banality, the total subjugation of art to materialism. This is why what floats to the surface in this period is the idea of art as anti-art, art as the spectacle of its own self-degradation. The concept of art is retained strictly for the sake of its abuse.

In the ancient caste systems (which were not exclusive to India), the merchant classes always came third, after the priestly class and the warrior class (the nobility). The merchant class had its place but was not ever considered fit to rule. The revolutions of the modern era undid this sacred order and gave the top spot to the bourgeoisie. The cultural consequences did not show themselves immediately because the rich legacy of the pre-democratic age and its aristocratic standards briefly outlived the passing of the aristocratic age. Today, however, we cannot escape or contain those consequences. We are subjected to the collapse of all boundaries and distinctions inherited from the old world and the monstrosities that proliferate when money overtakes nobility.

Modernism attempts to resacralize art by elevating art itself to a religion. It fails because art is meant to serve the sacred not mimic it. The beauty of sacred art resides in its pious humility, in the fact that it does not advance itself as something more important than the symbol it embodies. Form is a nullity when all it conveys is a will to form. And ultimately, that is the most that modern art can express, a will to form.