The Metaphysical Agenda

From the beginning of our time, the species of man has expressed himself/ herself through various mediums and proven devotion there in to various ideals . Since the cave paintings of the Upper Paleolithic some 40,000 years ago; past conceptualism into the most modern to post-modern work of today, the dawns of new methodology and concept shatters old and often unfavorable views of the reality. A system of one-up-manship had been desired, one capable of building new structures for society, by that society and into the next (Michael). Some have described this progression by a French term, the avant-garde. According to philosopher Jurgen Habermas, the evolution of the avant-guarde has been a sort of Darwinian survival or the fittest. Since the Enlightenment occurring through the French revolution, he believes the art world has seen a continual line of development of the avant-garde (Wolfin). Although, this may very well be true in the art world, but in a more subtle fashion it has been occurring since the beginning of man's domain. Throughout this context of time, the avant-garde has seen flashes and radical polarity shifts in iconography and acceptable mediums . For French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, in which the only thing certain is change itself, a concept of the meta-narrative was suggested to follow the actual cause and effect; the smooth yet firm transition of one stage to the next. More over, Lyotard may have believed artists did not even have to stay true to their reality, like the modernists, if not creating their own "valid" view of the reality around them to be exploited as the next leap (Curtis). But are these leaps valid? This conjures up, in my mind, the concept and exploitation of one such - the...

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