Abstractionism and Finitude: From the Phenomenology of Death to the Ultimacy of Art

Abstract

The article attempts to prove a thesis according to which the general cultural Western phenomenon of death in philosophy – that of history (Hegel, Marx, Kojève), subject (Foucault), God (Nietzsche), substance (relativism, nihilism), author (Barthes, Foucault) and human (Deleuze, Braidotti, Land, Negarestani) – is symmetrical to the transition from the mode of phenomenological consideration of consciousness to the experience of abstract art overcoming finitude. Abstractionism expresses the “artistic model of death”, the possibility of the truth of finitude in the era of the “end of history”. The purpose of this article is to analyse abstractionism as the limit of the phenomenology of consciousness, where aesthetic forms define the overcoming of the finitude of human existence. Finitude in abstractionist creation ceases to mean limitation, opening up a pure possibility of death. The proposed conceptualization of death through abstractionism and phenomenology reproduces a paradoxical gap. On the one hand, it preserves the finitude of “non-objective” art, which lends itself to phenomenological consideration by revealing the eidetic level of the work. On the other hand, it paves the way for the transgressive function of abstract art, demonstrating the finitude of phenomenology itself, since death is not a phenomenon. Thus, a model of “fading life”, or “eternal life” of death and large narratives in cultural dominions, is reproduced: a never-ending series of deaths in philosophy and art is recreated, which is reflected in phenomenological thought. At the same time, the death of the subject, substance and the end of history has already happened, which is manifested in the ultimate forms of expression used by abstractionism. This speaks of the “symmetry” or “correlativity” of two processes, namely, the development of post-Kantian philosophical thought within the framework of phenomenology and the development of abstract art.