Liminality in Art (2)

The notions of boundaries, borders, limits, thresholds and so on may be as ancient as the human population itself. In Greek/Roman mythology they are expressed by names of different gods/goddesses, hybrids and monsters - Zeus cares for the Olympus, Poseidon is a guardian of waters, Hades rules in the Underground; forests, agriculture, arts and law - every human (divine and monstrous as well) activity and embodiment of the spirit has its own powerful protector/ rules maker and no interference is into each other territory is tolerated.

Religions exist due the numerous polarities, and the most popular story of creation (Book of Genesis) had started exactly from this - from a separation and making sharp divisions between elements and the mater. In order to survive the species would have to define and fight for the territories and the evolution of the human race is an 'epopee' of transcending the boundaries of nature, space and time...

The social, cultural and personal identity couldn't be possible at all without the ongoing, often uncompromising process of the differentation. And when philosophy tends to look for an unity and structure in the universe despite of all the intrinsic and imposed/created dichotomies, art in general would indulge in exploring the world as seen within the "frame" (think now about Derrida's "The truth in painting" and his deconstruction attempt of all the 'frames' we tend to see the art through) and beyond it.

And so it goes - Christ would be a 'worthy' subject, but even some of his disciples not exactly; harmonious human body was only true representation - the ugly/mutilated one was worse than some of the animals ; one 'breed' of art-view was 'high' (read: 'true'), the others were 'pseudo-'; painting the landscape naturally excluded the sky-view and the figurative works were exorcised of all the abstract elements (and vice versa). The universe seen as in an atom of a very particular concept/meaning or a set of those (lets say: christian version of god, humanists' vision of a man, romantic vision of a landscape, modernists' subversion to the classical art) which had to be frozen, clearly and in a division to its possible and apparent opposites... This is basically what all the history of the Western Art is about. About Old Testament God's job of making the world happen by creating borders between chaos and order, good and bad, light and dark, sky and earth, the animals and the human beings, the human beings and the Holy one.

Where the 'liminal' creeps into all of this? Well - right at the start, I guess and simply because the artistic activity in itself situates man on the existential threshold; a bit like a prayer or a sexual act - two different worlds meet and penetrate each other; the universe as it is (or appears to be) and the universe to be created... And the conscious artist is very likely to aim at or to be the 'passeur' -'a boatman', 'smuggler' - the man of passage, the guide who leads his audience beyond the status quo crossing social, cultural, psychological, spiritual and sometimes very physical boundaries in order to show/explain/challenge...

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This article is a part of a series "Liminality in art" where I intend to define and explore the philosophical and aesthetic notion of the liminality. Please, refer to other articles from the series in order to get the fuller view.