Plato’s cave -- passing notes

So what if Plato’s cave turned out to be our own skulls, with only flickering shadow images projected on the wall to discern what’s really going on out there? These flickering images arrive via electrical impulses back the optic nerve to be sorted and deciphered by nearly half the brain’s mass, and it’s there meaning arises. From all the stimulation coming down the pipe, how do we pick and choose what to see? The senses conveniently come with filters built in, and if it isn’t dangerous, good to eat, or worthy of romance we might not notice it at all, a feature of all nervous systems down to flatworms. Beyond that, what you’re able to see is mostly limited to the sum total of everything you’ve seen before, the walls of the cave we live in, by the cultural constraints and imperatives in place at the time, and lastly, by individual character and appetite. These components in equilibrium contribute to the way the world looks to each individual, an inevitably unique landscape, person to person. 

Works of art represent notes passed back and forth by those who live in the cave, guessing Plato meant just about all of us. Painting is an eloquent medium, a conduit of coded messages, reassurances in the darkness. Maybe we could find each other that way, the painting that catches your attention will probably also appeal to someone with similar views on more than just art, and both of you not too different than the artist. In any case, a painting provides a new template for seeing the world, and the thoughtful rendering conditions the eye for seeing more, noticing more, simply following the artist’s example.

Art will surely test what you’re willing to see, and what you’re able to see. For years the art establishment, and all who subscribe, refused to see representational art at all, good or bad, didn’t matter. Painting instructors, confronted by the occasional student who insisted on producing representation art, switched gears entirely, and with derision trivialized and discouraged their efforts. When referential images returned, they were based on commercial packaging, cartoons, the flotsam of visual background noise, boiled down and monosyllabic. Incentives have been upside down, and maybe that explains it, but the hour is late. Is there art around that pushes back the walls of the cave an inch, a low-impact visual trainer that helps its owner to see more, to see differently, one that actually works?

I can’t see your shadows, and you can’t see mine, but we can compare notes when some artist strikes a match, plants a flag, claims some slice from the of the daily flow of images out of context, and reconstructs it on canvas. There we can consider it against our own experience, perhaps even catch a glimpse of what we’ve been taking for granted, and subsequently see everything better just a bit. Art could do that, has done that, is doing it all the time. Boring windows in the cave, that’s a lot to ask, but the spot illuminations of art expands our interior, broadens the sensual world, and relieves the claustrophobia of ever tighter digital caves, so much more important these days.