The Sacrificial Aesthetic: Blood Rituals from Art to Murder Dawn Perlmutter Department of Fine Arts Cheyney University of Pennsylvania Cheyney PA 19319-0200
[email protected] [Ed. note 2/2017: Many of the links in this article have become invalid and been removed] The concept of the “sacrificial esthetic” introduced in Eric Gans’s Chronicle No. 184 entitled “Sacrificing Culture” describes a situation in which aesthetic forms remain sacrificial but have evolved from a necessary feature of social organization to a psychological element of the human condition. Gans concludes that art’s sacrificial esthetic is essentially exhausted as a creative force and argues that the future lies with simulations, virtual realities in which the spectator plays a partially interactive role. His most significant claim is that “This end of the ability of the esthetic to discriminate between the sacrificial and the antisacrificial is not the end of art. On the contrary, it liberates the esthetic from the ethical end of justifying sacrifice.” The consequence of the liberation of the ethical justification of sacrifice is the main concern of this essay. Throughout the history of art we have encountered images of blood, from the representations of wounded animals in the cave paintings of Lascaux through century after century of brutal Biblical images, through history paintings depicting scenes of war, up through the many films of war, horror, and violence. Blood is now off the canvas, off the screen and sometimes literally in your face. It is no coincidence that this substance has intrigued artists throughout history. Blood is fascinating; it simultaneously represents purity and impurity, the sacred and the profane, life and death.