View From the Shallows

In his book,  Refractions, Fujimura describes how pragmatic utilitarianism’s predominance in America gutted the culture and damaged our aesthetic sensibilities. In order to provide more detail he references the industrialization principles of labor and manufacturing efficiency put forward by Frederick Taylor. In many ways, these principles undergirded healthy science and promoted wise industrial use of machines in the 19th and 20th centuries, but when applied similarly to people the results were dehumanizing. People are not machines and our essence (as I assert in the earlier section about man being made in the image of God) and its value is invisible, spiritual, and unquantifiable.  Here are some of Taylor’s main tenets:

·        The primary goal of human labor is efficiency.

·        Technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment

·        Human judgment cannot be trusted because it is plagued by laxity, ambiguity, an unnecessary complexity.

·        Subjectivity is an obstacle to clear thinking.

·        Whatever cannot be measured either does not exist or is of no value.

·        The affairs of citizens are best guided and directed by the experts.

Another recent book by Nicholas Carr called “The Shallows” also asserts that the digital tech-driven age of short, incomplete online engagement with information promotes a similar view of man, a dehumanizing view.

Fujimura insists that in its essence, art transgresses such damaging cultural conventions because these notions attack the innate and distinctive worth of people. Art in its unmeasurable, extravagant, subjective, and ambiguous power reminds of this fact, and by doing so, it affirms our humanity. Art affirms that which separates us from our machines and the social and economic appeal of materialistic life.  

I've done several paintings that depict a liminal space that mediates between industrial principles and more unquantifiable human values. This one called "View from the Shallows" depicts that coke can and the water bottle after they have disappeared below the surface of the marsh water. Somehow, they become part of the natural beauty that continues to express itself around them.