Empty your mind of your self.
While living in London, in the process of completing my master’s degree, I would often wander to the more affluent side of town, hoping to catch a glimpse of how the well-to-do of London lived. On a scenic route I frequented, was a defunct phone box that had been cleaned out, painted with intricate patterns and filled with various canvases. I would often see a man on the pavement next to the phone box creating abstract and odd paintings while making a point to greet every passerby. As time passed, I grew curious as to what this strange man was doing in this phone box, and one fateful day, a visiting friend and I decided to dine at a Mediterranean restaurant, conveniently located near the phone box. After leaving the restaurant quite late at night, we struck up a conversation with the phone box artist and asked him about this peculiar phone box. He informed us that he had been renting this phone box for £400 per month and was using it as a makeshift studio. From there he would create and sell his art and merchandise for hundreds of pounds.
As my friend and I mulled over this peculiar artist and his questionable studio space, we came to the conclusion that this artist’s success in selling his art — which could be described as mediocre at best — was due to his ability to market himself as a part of the art. It was not the artistic merit of his work that was garnering sales, but rather his eagerness to greet passersby and speak to them passionately and somewhat pseudo-spiritually about the significance of his art. Much of what he said was nonsensical; he was in essence a good salesman, and passersby were buying the idea of him: a struggling artist working out of a strange phone box/studio on a busy high street in a hipster part of the city.
This epitomizes the phenomena of the modern artist, marketing themselves as a part of the art, rendering the art and its meaning as secondary. The commercialization of art and the aggrandization of the self become imperative in propelling the artist’s quest for financial gain. In essence, art is now judged on its ability to be marketed to a wealthy audience who will pay top dollar to feel a sense of belonging to an upper echelon of society that is supposedly able to comprehend the deep significance of an inherently meaningless piece of art.
For millennia, artists were the upholders of civilization, as humans have naturally gravitated toward beauty and searched for various ways of beautifying the world around them. The artists, whether poets, architects, painters, or writers, have been the creators of culture and an integral part of the human experience — tasked with articulating and beautifying our experience of the world. The creation of beauty is the means by which we have venerated God, and it has arguably been a relatively selfless endeavor for most of human existence.
Modernity has forced a fundamental shift within the human experience, resulting in a radical attempt to break from the past and create new forms of art that would speak to a newly industrialized and modern world. This culminated in what can be described as a nihilistic and meaningless form of art, such as Dadaism, a post-war artistic movement that used absurdism to counter the absurdity of the establishment’s descent into chaos with its own kind of nonsense. It’s best understood by the infamous work of Dadaist artist, Marcel Duchamp, who placed the signature “R.Mutt 1917” on a porcelain urinal and called it art.
Image of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 1917, via Wikimedia Commons.
The anonymity of artists and artisans the world over is a testament to the emphasis on the art — not the artist. The priority of perfection and mastery of the art trumps the desire to be known as the artist. The contemporary experience of centering the nafs or the lower self, around artistic practice is symptomatic of modernity’s emphasis on the self as the measure of all meaning. In the Islamic tradition, the nafs is viewed as a negative feature of human nature that is self-serving, egotistical and in a way Machiavellian. The critique of the nafs runs far and wide throughout the Islamic tradition, placing strong emphasis on taming and beating the nafs into submission so that humans can truly align themselves with the will of God. Waging a war against the nafs in attempt to purify oneself of our base desires is a noble act that is honored beyond measure.
Existence in the modern condition is to exist in a state of amazement with oneself, as the self and the ego are at the core of the human experience, around which everything revolves. The collective gaze has shifted from the heavens to the self; modern man looks in the mirror and sees a derelict corpse of flesh and bone, devoid of a soul. Thus, the nafs us central in contemporary artistic expression and God is rendered secondary if ever considered. With the modern man’s supposed deposition of God during the Enlightenment, he has taken himself as the object of veneration. The creation of art no longer centers around a higher power but rather a perverse and narcissistic attempt at becoming Godly.
Somewhere along the way, art went from an expression of beauty, love, reverence, and a manifestation of the divine to a status symbol desolate of meaning or substance, beyond what can only be described as aesthetic decadence. A decadence that was created more for the homes of the wealthy elite and Instagram likes than any attempt at engaging with truth and beauty.
Traditionally, the essence of art was to express the human experience. Where mastery of a craft was appreciated and revered, the art world, now an elitist cabal of the upper class whose tastes dictate what is considered high art, mediocrity now runs rampant. Contemporary art galleries have been rightfully described as standing on the precipice of the void: a meaningless but exhilarating experience. Undeniably, contemporary art is a confusing experience, with most people unable to penetrate the façade of meaning that art galleries conjure. The seemingly impenetrable artworks inspire nothing but confusion and disorientation, as visitors squint at the dense interpretation on the walls of the gallery with confused looks on their faces, attempting to make sense of the word soup that has been written. Patrons wander around not entirely sure what they are experiencing, attempting to dissect meaning in works they can’t seem to understand, while simultaneously looking for the perfect background for their Instagram picture.
“The false society of men –
-for earthly greatness
All heavenly comforts rarifies to air“
– Henry David Thoreau
While working in a sector-leading art gallery, I would often come across visitors who would rave about the profound beauty of the art they had seen in the gallery, standing with their chins in hand staring into the works with looks of stern concentration. There was one exhibition in particular which caused quite a stir due to its “abstract” nature: an orange room where trash had been strewn on the floor while the speakers played ethereal noises, fans blew and lights flashed. This was supposedly a commentary on how we perceive space, memory and climate change, or so I was told. While invigilating the space, I would often ask visitors for their thoughts on the exhibition, to which they would ecstatically respond that it was the most profound work of art they had ever seen, a truly brilliant experience. There was an underlying sense that they felt the need to pretend or dupe themselves into believing they understood the exhibition to feel a sense of belonging in the high art realm the gallery purported itself to be.
This feeling has resulted in the monopolization and commercialization of art, relegating it to a vacuous status symbol adorning the soulless homes of New York and London’s elite. The very fact that a piece of art was acquired from London or New York, the veritable meccas of meaningless and pompous art, became the status symbol that served as a conversation piece for the upper-class dinner parties.
Much of the blame for this sad state of affairs can be placed at the doorstep of the two great art auction houses of Europe and America, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, simultaneously the tastemakers and gatekeepers of modern art. With more wealth than sense, these two great art auction houses of the world have a monopoly on what they deem to be good art, creating a mystique around their artists of choice in order to sell their works for millions. What do you hope to acquire when you bid at a prestigious evening auction at Sotheby’s? A bundle of things: a painting of course, but hopefully also a new dimension to how people see you. As Robert Lacey described it in his book about Sotheby’s, “you are bidding for class, for a validation of your taste”.
My suspicions were affirmed on a trip to Christie’s in Central London, as I struck up a conversation with a visitor assistant in one of the gallery spaces. I asked him the price of the most expensive piece of art he had seen sell on auction and he said it was around £5 million. After a brief conversation, I asked him if he understood the art that was displayed and he confided in me that he was not entirely sure what most of the art meant or what gave it its meaning or its value. He too was dumbfounded by the arbitrary nature of how unimaginable value was assigned to works of art that were often incomprehensible.
Take for example the work “Untitled” (Lover Boys) by Félix González-Torres, which is a 161kg pile of individually wrapped blue and white candies, which sold for $456,000. A pile of candy that holds no inherent significance whatsoever is apprised to be of some great monetary value through the significance applied to it by the gatekeepers of the art world.
The involvement of the wealthy elite is an age-old concept, with the patronage of the arts being common practice throughout history, However, the acquisitions made by the wealthy classes of Europe and America in the last century onwards are questionable, to say the least. The entire institution on every level has become a charade to amplify the nafs, from the very creation of the art to its valuing by prestigious art houses to its sale to wealthy art collectors with more money than sense. The artist wants to be known for his art, no matter how nonsensical it may be. The auction house wants to be known for being the gatekeepers and tastemakers of high art. Those who pay ludicrous prices for the art want to be associated with the prestige that comes with owning the work of so and so artists, from such and such prestigious auction house. This soulless and decrepit ecosystem is dependent on the other for survival and ego inflation, epitomizing the worship of the nafs.
In reality, the value of good art is the visceral experience it evokes, which words often fail to express. It is why millions flock to monuments such as the Taj Mahal, the Vatican, and the like. These works do not require someone with a Ph.D. or an art auction house to sell you some absurd tale of why it is worthy of appreciation. There is something deep within us that gravitates to the beautiful, and we are oft enamored by a desire to surround ourselves with beauty, both in our dwelling places and the natural world around us. Woefully, the modern world eschews such beauty in favor of its glass, concrete, godless modernism that lacks any real substance.
Ideally, the Muslim rises above this soulless endeavor and understands that he or she is an inheritor of a rich tradition of ihsaan or excellence. A pursuit of excellence, truth and beauty that transcends the desire for fame or material gain and is steeped in a desire to worship God as he deserves to be worshipped. While the modern view of the heavens has been clouded by light pollution, the Muslim gazes upwards, seeing the creation of God in all of its splendor, longing for nothing more than to pluck the stars from their heavenly abode and bring them down to marvel at the creation of his Lord.
The artistic output of the Muslims of the past evidences this. Even objects as mundane as cutlery were ornamented and beautified by Muslim artisans to such an extent that they are now housed in the British Museum and marveled at by millions of tourists. It begs the question, what is the driving force behind a people who seek to beautify everything they interact with? What causes a civilization to beautify and sanctify every facet of the human experience from the most commonplace objects to its most significant places?
It is undoubtedly the actualization of the Prophet’s ﷺ saying, “Verily, Allah is beautiful, and He loves beauty.”1 It is to embody and internalize this understanding of God that transcends the human spirit from one of mediocrity and soulless egoism to that of complete veneration of God and alignment with the heavens. The Muslims who find themselves in the perpetual disarray of modernity must cast off the secular world where man with all of his material longings loses himself in the throes of insatiable desires. The great Moroccan thinker, Taha Abdurrahman, speaks to this, offering sage-like wisdom:
“Muslims must think independently and critically of ideas that have become hegemonic not by their intellectual value but by the pure fact of colonialism and of which many Muslims do mimicry of uncritically.”
The Muslim has no use for the shrine to the nafs that is the modern art gallery, as his artistic output is a glorification of Allah. There is no room for cheap mimicry of Euro-American decadence. We must cultivate an art that speaks to the notion of Allah as Al-Jameel, the Beautiful. Soulless artistic expression will not suffice to nourish the human spirit which longs for beauty and meaning. The very essence of the art we create must brim over beauty stemming from His divine remembrance, leaving no need to loiter around with confused faces, attempting to dissect the works that litter the contemporary art galleries.
“Bury your existence in the earth of obscurity, for a seed that is not buried properly never grows properly.“
– Ibn ‘Ata Allah
Photo by Jazmin Quaynor on Unsplash
Disclaimer: Material published by Traversing Tradition is meant to foster scholarly inquiry and rich discussion. The views, opinions, beliefs, or strategies represented in published articles and subsequent comments do not necessarily represent the views of Traversing Tradition or any employee thereof.
- Source: al-Mu’jam al-Awsaṭ 6906 [↩]
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