TOWARDS HORIZONTALITY

A skill has a horizontal dimension. As a civilizational impulse, it has always broadened the area of our capabilities and its cumulative excess was once called a talent. Such a deposit of value entrusted in a Human not only confirms the words about...creation in the image and likeness, but it constitutes an extraordinary type of commitment, whose disclosure, development and not-being-wasted significantly expand the personal and institutional circle of responsibility. The con- cern for the skill level is therefore an obvious complement to its horizon, a verticality leading up and down. As always, it is the vertical choice that is fundamental, and its consequences support good or evil. The history of civilizational progress is full of such examples. In the area of contemporary art all dilemmas of an ethical and moral nature are currently prote- cted by an immune, institutional umbrella of apparent, ideological, and politicized, artistic freedom. The enslavement of freedom comprehended in such a manner, is an extremely intricate construction of addictions for which the abilities and the force of creative personality have become no more than unnecessary limitations. The question about the artistic level is not the question of the quality of realization, but above all of the quality of its impact and of ordinary, artistic honesty at a time when bouncing on someone's sensitivity has been called the art of borrowing. It is only a pity that defining one's own activity as a usury is not a form of critical self-reflection in such a case. Lack of skills has always raised the need to monopolize other people's values or to eliminate talented people, and on a global scale it has been the cause of conquests and civilizational failures.

The reveal of talent is the beginning of the effort to "polish" it. Like a diamond, it requires being discovered among other stones, and a time-consuming, sensitive processing. It does not deny or avoid authorities on the path of its development. Alone, it answers with resilience and the necessary existence in the chain of successive achievements. Modern cultural revolutionaries simply do not have time for such an evolutionary process and, according to the belief that everything can be art, they promote the easy expression of ineptitude.

However, is not the vertical spine a form of obligation?

Apparently, it was on the way of evolution that man himself gave up the horizontality assigned by nature, lifting his head, and taking his hands off the ground. Yet, apart from the pragmatic justification for increasing our own capabilities, our presence here and now is denoted by a much more important relationship between vertical and horizontal. Defined by two lines intersecting at right angles, it creates the symbol, both recognizable and dramatic, of the relationship between spiritual reality and the materiality of the world. The sign of remembrance of an event fundamental for the entire modern culture and for the modern man, who nowadays mindlessly dismantling his own foundations, is surprised by the commo- tion on the upper floors. Moreover, he calls such actions progress and their criticism conservatism. However, contrary to the unifying impulses of the Art World followers and several atheistic episodes of history, the authenticity of contempo- rary European culture is still determined by the heritage of ancient Greece, Rome, and two thousand years of Christianity.

Prof. Jerzy Fober