I was watching a snippet of Žižek’s comment on cinema today for a sheer lack of passion in reading anything serious. He caught me with these words, “the right level of oppressions.” In this snippet, he spoke about something I ponder all the time about great art. 

He calls this a “tragic insight,” which is that artists are the most profound when they are in oppressive conditions. When Kieślowski gets out of a dictatorship regime and finally gets to film “half-naked beautiful actresses,” he stops making good films. 

I think the word tragic insight is accurate in describing this unfortunate truth. Coming to Europe made me realize how little do I empathize with West European art, especially the contemporary ones, which celebrate the freedom of everything. Without constraints, art expresses a sensation of boredom. This is especially true with art that describes forms and elevates form to their content. But at the same time, I definitely acknowledge and appreciate the value of a good society, and how it make people much less miserable.

Art is supposed to arouse something that cannot be evoked by other stimuli. Language is my favorate form of expression, but it has strong limitations. Language evokes sensation through meaning, and if meaning is not acquired, the designed sensation is stymied. Although it can evoke alternative ones based on misunderstanding, there usually exists some form of cannonized understanding based on the relatively rigid rules of grammar and syntax. But it is not the case for other art forms. Though paintings, photography, and cinema all have some formalized dyads of sign and meaning, they are not codified. It means that the sensation they are capable of arousing is unlimited. When a piece of art arouses boredom, I don’t think it is considered great. Though I would say it has entertaining effects and should definitely exist for that reason.

A soul that has been cultivated by hardship is able to embed complex stimuli in their artpieces. Though imagination is oftentimes put on the pedestal nowadays, pure imagination has more entertaining power than enlightening ones. Erudition is often another contribution to art that complement imagination, but it doesn’t change the nature of the art fundamentally. 

If it is possible to choose, I guess most people, if they are sane at all, would choose to sacrifice the possibility of creating great art for a better human condition. But human condition is miserable enough with mortality, let alone those who are even thankful for mortality for permitting them to stop suffering at some point. In this circumstance, I agree with Žižek. Unfortunately, great art comes from oppression at the right level.