Art, Love, the Urge to Appear and The Anxiety of Nonexistence

Photo by Marcio Faustino.

When we are born is when our existence starts. When we die is when we cease to exist. We appear and disappear. From the beginning of our existence we develop to the best of our appearance then we deteriorate until our disappearance.

As alive beings we react to what appears to us. Every smell, shape, color, texture and everything else that is perceived by the body causes it to emote. [1] We may consciously or unconsciously notice our body emoting, still, everything that appears to us tells us something about our own existence. [2]

Because we perceive appearance we also want to appear. "Whatever can see wants to be seen, whatever can hear calls out to be heart, whatever can touch presents itself to be touched. It is indeed as though everything that is alive has the urge to appear, to fit itself in the world of appearances by displaying and showing, not its inner self but itself as an individual" (PORTMANN, 1967). [3]

As we perceive appearance and want to appear, our existence in this world presupposes a spectator. [4] It means, nothing that appears exists in the singular, it appears to something else who senses the other appearance; everything that is is meant to be perceived by somebody. Every subject is also an object. The appearance guarantees its objective reality. [5]

Emoting, the body reaction to senses stimulus as emotion, is an automated body activity. Feeling is the nervous system reading of emotion and association of emotions to memories. As Antonio Damasio explains, emotions work in the body field while feelings work in the mind stage. [6]

When something appears to our body, and we are conscious about our senses perception, it disappears to our mind. The contrary is also true, what comes to us as thoughts - mental pictures and words - ceases to exist as physical to our senses even if the object in our mind is still in front of us. [7] Our mental pictures - our memories and feelings associated with them - keep the image’s existence in the world of ideas, of what ceases to exist from our physical body perception. It is as if the physical world stops to exist when we are penetrated with thoughts. In the opposite direction, the experience of body senses makes the mind silent, and the object experienced with our senses feels real. Being capable to silence the mind, as in a meditative state, is to be willing to let go what temporarily appears to our body senses. [8]

From shocking experiences of surprise and fear to great pleasures, the most impressive experiences are the ones that make us speechless, unable to describe, because our body, and then our brain which works constantly reading and interpreting our body emotions generating feelings and memories [9], are still processing the information; or because the object that appears to us is still very present to our body senses.

It is said that great works of art are the ones that make us speechless by silencing our mind, even though we always attempt to talk about them. Eventually we turn away from the attention of our body emotion experience and we drive our attention towards our mind - feelings and memories of the object we sensed the appearance of.

The stimulation we call art characteristically require us both to look very attentively and to look "beyond" (or "thoughts") what is understood as impediment, distraction, irrelevance. (SONTAG, 1983, p.134). [10]

Just as the great love experience, it is the one we perceive through our body - the body emotion intensity that drives our attention to it and quiets the mind - when we experience the best of other person existence; the height of their appearance to our senses. When the love experience is through the mind it only makes our body to emote to our imagination and memories expectation instead of the real object or person. The very samey is true when contemplating and experiencing art (both as creator and as spectator).

To have consciousness means to appear to oneself, but appearing to oneself (our mind) is not enough to guarantee its objective reality [11]; only what appears to our body. Only through the eye of an other person the individual becomes an object to himself (HUSTVEDT, p.370) [12]. Through artistic expression such as painting, writing, sculpture and photography we are always communicating to somebody, a spectator, to whom we want to appear; Even if the spectators is one's imaginary self, the individual self narrative (where is formed the person's sense of identity). [13] It is as if the urge to create is an urge to appear in another object through which our existence can be perceived beyond our own. The artistic work is also where the artist appears to themselves, this time not only through their self narrative mind but through a materialized self to be experienced through the body senses - the body emotion - in the objective world. As if it confirms our existence to ourselves.

The same is the people's reaction to our own appearance which confirms to us our own existence. When such interaction is lacking we feel invisible. The body feels angry to confirm its existence. It feels empty. It feels as disappearing, resulting in anxiety, apprehensiveness about its own existence, which can only feel rested again once the senses is fed with the interactive reaction of its appearance to another person, confirming then its existence.

In such a perspective, the dream which we always have when sleeping, regardless of our memory of them when we are awake, is a mental stimulation to our body emotion to confirm its existence; A mental self assurance to confirm the body is still reacting, still alive. [14]​

The anxiety to create something beyond our own where we appear through, to guarantee our appearance and self perpetuate through, comes from the awareness of our own death, which is the great anxiety one can have as a human. We fear our disappearance. Because of such fear we create culture, traditions, society, family, mythology, religions and, along it all, art. [15]

The common scientific sense which is highly materialist understands appearance as a function to the body preservation and survival. What if our complex body function is what works for our appearance sake?

Despite the mind, the body has its own impulses, its own automated behavior, its emotion.  Even mono-cellular and protocell life reacts by what appears to them as a bodily impulse.  What Spinoza called Conatus;  the power of existence. [16] What ancient tribal peoples in the east called Mana, the energy from which everything appears from. [17] To be, is to possess desires.  Homeostasis is what defines life, the impulse to preserve, perpetuate itself and guarantee its existence, self-confirming through its self-display.
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[1, 6, 9] DAMASIO, A. The strange order of things: Life, feeling, and the making of cultures. New York: Vintage Books, 2019.
[2] EDEL, L. Henry James: A life.  New York: Harper & Row, 1985.
[4, 9] HUSTVEDT, S. My Louise Bourgeois. Separata de; HUSTVEDT, S. A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Esseys on Art, Sex, and the Mind. UK: Sceptre, 2016.
[3, 5, 7, 11] ARENDT, H. The Life of the Mind: The groundbreaking investigation on how we think.  New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1977.
[8} WATTS, A. Tao: The Watercourse Way.  New York: Pantheon Books, 1975.
[10] SONTAG, S. A Note on Bunraku. Separata de; SONTAG, S. Where the Stress Falls. England: Pinguin Books, 2009.
[12] HUSTVEDT, S. Embodied Vision: What Does It Means to Look at a Work of Art? Separata de; HUSTVEDT, S. Living, Thinking, Looking. England: Sceptre, 2013
[13] SACKS, O. The Lost Mariner. Separata de; SACKS, O. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. London: Picador, 2011.
[14, 15, 17] RANK, O. Psychology and The Soul. Mansfield Center, CT : Martino Publishing, 2011.
[16] SPINOZA, B. Spinoza Reader: The "Ethics" and Other Work. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

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