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Life@death 2017 Exhibition: The Sleep of Reason…
There have been times in history when Reason and Rationalism have
dominated. Then in reaction we find movements like Romanticism which
sought other ways of knowing that allowed for more human freedom and
creativity. Goya working in the Romantic period explored the human
condition, especially in the tension between Reason and imagination. His
famous etching “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters” has intrigued
historians in this regard.
Aldous Huxley writing in 1960 noted two possible interpretations of Goya's
famous etching. Firstly he noted that when Reason sleeps, “the absurd and
loathsome creatures of superstition wake and are active, goading their victim
to an ignoble frenzy”. But he put forward another interpretation. “Reason may
also dream without sleeping, may intoxicate itself, as it did during the French
Revolution, with the daydreams of inevitable progress, of liberty, equality and
fraternity imposed by violence, of human self sufficiency and the end of
sorrow… by political re-arrangement and a better technology”.
Life@death 2017 theme “The Sleep of Reason...” asks the question, is there
a crisis of reason for us in the western world at the beginning of the 21st
Century? The great Western contract with Reason was that we trusted it to
bring understanding and therefore enhance life and living. Has Reason
delivered? Can we trust it to bring all that it has for so long promised? Has
Reason been put to work towards the wrong reasons? Has Reason kept the
monsters at bay or has it produced its own monsters?
Blaise Pascal once said that 'the heart has reasons of which reason knows
nothing”. Art which works from the heart may well forfeit reason in its quest to
deal with the life and death issues that face us. As artists we may lay claim to
ways of reasoning that are more intuitive, more heart-driven, less logical.
Maybe there are many ways to reason. Maybe reason applied to different
starting points end up with very different results.
Artists of all persuasions are invited to contribute work to the 2017
Life@death Exhibition reflecting on theme “The Sleep of Reason...” - to
critique reason or champion reason, or even to suggest other ways of
bringing us life or understanding death. I look forward to what you will bring to
the discussion.
Regards,
Dieter Engler