Instead of treating art as a unique creation that
requires reason and refined taste to appreciate,
Elizabeth Grosz argues that art-especially architecture,
music, and painting-is born from the disruptive forces
of sexual selection. She approaches art as a form of
erotic expression connecting sensory richness with
primal desire, and in doing so, finds that the meaning
of art comes from the intensities and sensations it
inspires, not just its intention and aesthetic. By
regarding our most cultured human accomplishments as the
result of the excessive, nonfunctional forces of sexual
attraction and seduction, Grosz encourages us to see art
as a kind of bodily enhancement or mode of sensation
enabling living bodies to experience and transform the
universe. Art can be understood as a way for bodies to
augment themselves and their capacity for perception and
affection-a way to grow and evolve through sensation.
Through this framework, which knits together the
theories of Charles Darwin, Henri Bergson, Gilles
Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Jakob von Uexkull, we are
able to grasp art's deep animal lineage.Grosz argues
that art is not tied to the predictable and known but to
new futures not contained in the present. Its animal
affiliations ensure that art is intensely political and
charged with the creation of new worlds and new forms of
living. According to Grosz, art is the way in which life
experiments with materiality, or nature, in order to
bring about change. |
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