Die Schöne Und Das Biest Das Böse in Der Kunst

Beauty and the Beast – Evil in Art

When pondering the question of the human free will, sooner or later one inevitably encounters the earliest recorded proscription, the first "no" in the history of humankind: the story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit. But what is so evil, so reprehensible about eating from the Tree of Knowledge? After all, it represents humanity's liberation from determinist dependence, the birth of free will. It is in judging, questioning, pushing beyond limits that we become what we are – creatures that transcend ourselves.

Freedom of thought inherently contains the possibility of evil. The same murky depths that lead us to commit heinous crimes generate ecstatically created art.

According to Schopenhauer, will is the nature of the world, and will is at the heart of all that is dark, mysterious, and creative. But whom or what does this creativity serve? A greater Good? Does art bring about Good? Naturally, the question of the effectiveness of art as an edifying or educational force has always been debated by political thinkers and within the politically active class and its institutions. Plato speculated on what form art should take in an ideal state, or if in such a state there would even be any necessity for art at all.

So, perhaps we should be grateful that the ideal state has not yet been devised and that humanity thus can continue to enjoy great works of art. And, after all, the eternal struggle for justice in the world, for freedom versus order, truth versus censorship has – especially in revolutionary societies – generated both immense cultural destruction and brilliant artistic innovations. Art was turned into a tool of revolution and contributed to overthrowing the old order, as well as to the destruction of the new.

Again and again, art is held accountable and faced with demands that it explain itself, justify its existence and its pursuit of aestheticism in the face of so much misery in the world. Adorno once famously said that "it is barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz." However, he was referring to paralysis in the face of such horror, the functionality of evil in human form, the inability to put such monstrousness into words – not calling for humanity to abandon art altogether. This brings us to purely propagandistic art with the sole goal of "making a statement." Thus, poets have been called engineers of the soul, in other words, people who instruct other people, often against their expressly stated will. Listening to Beethoven made Lenin want to pat people's heads, though he believed that, unfortunately, to be hit on the head was what they actually needed.

What choice does art have but to refuse to be co-opted, to keep its distance from political systems, to remain detached from the world and pursue its own obsessions? It should work itself into a frenzy that would impart a kind of sacred inviolability, and yet possess a certain subversive latency. It should be "wicked", yet this "wickedness" would be meaningless if it is not suffused with an awareness of "Good." There is nothing perfidious, nothing cruel about this wickedness; it does not torment or torture; it does not kill; it does not cause suffering, but is passionate and creative. It is a celebration of life arising from the darkest depths of our consciousness. It is an intrinsic aspect of free will that "wickedness" or "evil" is innate to all human beings – no matter how decent, how righteous they may be. Darkness and demons lurk in all of us – and are sublimated by art.

Art gives a shape to our resistance, our eternal questions; it audaciously challenges our certainties and reminds us of our autonomy. In its fundamental curiosity, in its imaginative quest to create something out of nothing, art is an act of will in the truest sense. It is this impulse that is at the root of what we see in this exhibition: Art sets up house in a former bunker – the very icon of "un-free" will.

I am indebted to the philosopher Rüdiger Safranski; this essay was in large part inspired by his book Das Böse – oder das Drama der Freiheit ("Evil – Or the Drama of Freedom")

Born in 1962, M.O. is a penitent Catholic sinner, and as a Bavarian, tends to take

the bull by the horns. As a "refugee" (from Bavaria), he knows a thing or two about bunkers

and handled arena Berlin's part in coordinating the project "The Free Will" within the program of events marking arena Berlin's tenth anniversary. Markus Orschiedt is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in numerous magazines as well as in books such as Berlin am Meer

("Berlin by the Sea"), published by Bostelmann & Siebenhaar.