Art Review: Dr. Patricia MacCormack

MacCormack's presentation "Inhuman Ecstasy: Art as Monstrous Desire" has honestly left me a little dumbfounded. When she first started speaking I was enchanted by her accent and her charm, but I soon realized I didn't have much of a clue what she was arguing. Her main focus was our relationship with art--not simply what we see but how we see it, not what art is but rather what art does. Art affects us and clings onto us even after we walk away from it. Truly meaningful art is difficult to describe, and should leave one in what MacCormack calls a state of ecstasy, a type of pleasure outside of time or any signification.

The few parts of her talk that I think I understood were insightful and compelled me to agree with her, like the idea of art creating a language that doesn't exist and that the power of art is its ability to change who we are. Most artists would love to hear that their work has changed lives or made an impact on an audience. It not only validates themselves but it lets their work live on in a new way and allows it to travel beyond merely being an object. I want my thoughts and my work to inspire others and leave them speechless because it would reassert my talents as an artist.

And yet MacCormack considers this to be wrong in a sense. "To satisfy the self is death". That's a bit harsh, don't you think? It's a very Hobbesian take on desire--it assumes that all humans objectify others and impose their ethics in order to achieve selfish pleasures. This is where I got lost. The female, the monster, the idea of mucus, the notion of catalysts of a fluid mode of desire... what? It seemed even Ross was confused by her various theories. While I found the discussion fascinatingly disturbing, I can't say that I was able to fully digest MacCormack's thoughts or take away any deeper meaning.

Quotes that stood out to me:

"We become inhuman through the ecstasy we achieve by looking at art."

"Ethics is not about who or what you are, but your capacity to be affected or affect others."

"Illumination can happen in the dark."