Transcript: The Age of Fragmentation (Episode 8, How Should We Then Live?)

Video Transcript – Unit 08 – Episode VIII - The Age of Fragmentation (Dr. Francis Schaeffer)

Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sicily and De Gaulle, were following nature, as it was then called in their painting. They were

impressionist, they painted only what their eyes brought them. But what's the reality behind the light waves, reaching their

eyes after 1885 Monet carry this to its conclusion, and reality tended to become a dream. With Impressionism, the door was

open for art, to become the vehicle for modern thought. As reality became a dream, impressionism began to fall apart. These

men, Suzanne, Van Gogh, Goga, Seret, all great post impressionists felt the problem felt the loss of meaning. They set out to

solve the problem, to find the way back to the reality to the absolute, behind the individual thing behind the particulars.

Ultimately, they failed. I am not saying that these painters were always consciously painting their philosophy of life. But rather

than in their work as a whole, their worldview was often reflected. Suzanne reduced nature to what he considered its basic

geometric forms. In this he was searching for a universal, which would tie all kinds of individual things in nature together.

But this gave a broken fragmented appearance to his pictures. In his faders, there is much freshness, much vitality, and

absolute wonder in the balance of the picture as a whole. But he portrayed not only nature, but man himself in fragmented

form. I want to stress that I'm not minimizing these men as men to read Van Gogh's letters, is to weep for the pain of the

sensitive man. Nor do I minimize their talent as painters. Their work often has great beauty indeed. But there aren't did

become the vehicle of modern man's view of fractured truth and life. As philosophy had moved from unity to fragmentation,

so did painting. In 1912, Kandinsky wrote an article saying that insofar as the old harmony, that is a unity of knowledge have

been lost, that only two possibilities remained extreme abstraction, or extreme naturalism. Both he said, we're equal.

With this painting, modern art was born. Picasso painted it in 1907, and called it Les Damoiselle Davignon. it unites

Suzanne's fragmentation with Gauguin's concept of the noble Savage, using the form of the African mask, which was popular

with the Parisian art circle of that time. In great art technique is united with worldview. And the technique of fragmentation fits

well with the worldview of modern man, a view of a fragmented world and fragmented man and a complete break with the art

of the Renaissance, which was founded on man's humanist hope. Here man is made to be less than man, humanity is lost.

Speaking of a part of Picasso's private collection of his own works, David Douglas Duncan says, of course, not one of these

pictures was actually a portrait, but his prophecy of a ruined world. But Picasso himself could not live with this loss of the

human. When he was in love with Augur and later Jacqueline, he did not consistently paint them in a fragmented way. At

crucial points of their relationship. He painted them as they really were, with all his genius with all their humanity. When he

was painting his own young children, he did not use pragmatic techniques and presentation. I want you to understand that I

am not saying that gentleness and humanists are never present in modern art, but as the techniques of Modern Art

advanced, humanity was increasingly fragmented. The opposite of fragmentation would be unity. And the old philosophic

thinkers thought they could bring forth issue to the from the humanist base. And then they gave this up. And the modern

thinking, has accepted fragmentation as a defeat really, a defeat that human mentality beginning from itself can bring forth a

unity, of thought, and of life. Now, by unity, what we mean is that which would include all thought, and all of life, and it can be

achieved, if indeed God has spoken, who has not been silent, and in giving is the fact that man couldn't find for himself.

There is a unity inside of which all that marvelous diversity which then men can study, and has a unified place, whether it's a

knowledge or in values, and life. It was Dadaism, which carried the concept of everything being a matter of chance to its

logical conclusion of the ultimate absurdity of everything, including humanity. This is Marcel Duchamp's nude descending a

staircase. Duchamp perhaps understood most clearly and consciously the absurdity of all things, including man on the basis

of modern man's worldview. Here he carried fragmentation further, the human being disappeared completely. He realized that

this absurdity of all things included the absurdity of art itself. This is one of his ready mades he took any object near at hand

and simply signed it. The philosophers from Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard onwards, had given up a hope, of a

unity of life and of knowledge, and had come to a fragmented concept of reality, then the painters painted that way. However,

the artists being sensitive men came more quickly to the understanding of what the end of this view would be. And that is that

all things are observed.

The American Jackson Pollock, is perhaps the clearest example of deliberately painting in a way that says, all is chance. This

is how Pollock went about creating some of his art versus paintings were a product of chance. Await, is there not order in

these lines of paint? Yes, because you see, it is not really chance that shaped his canvases. The universe is not a random

universe, it has ordered. The movement of the swinging can of paint follows the order of the universe itself. The universe is

not what these painters said it is. It was a bankrupt humanistic philosophy, which first taught that reason, leads to pessimism.

And that optimism is only to be found in the area of non reason. This basic idea filtered down to art, then the classical music,

and later to popular music.

Started with Beethoven's last quartets could not call these modern, but there was a shift from the previous music. In France,

Claude Debussy opened the door for modern music. Many of us have a profound admiration for his music and enjoy it very

much indeed. But Debussy say it opened the door, not to non resolution, as the German composers did, but to fragmentation,

a fragmentation, parallel to the fragmentation in painting fragmentation which was a great influence on almost all the

following composers of classical music, as well as the later forms of jazz, and rock. In Germany, after Beethoven's quartets

came Wagner and Mahler, then Shurberg with his 12 tone, throw. Here's perpetual variation, but never resolution. This is Karl

Heinz Stockhausen. You're listening to the publish score of electronic music, concerned with the element of chance was part

of Stockhausen's work. This ties him in with John Cage. Cage believes the universe is a universe of chance. To express this

he produced music by chance.

Cages music turned out to be sheer noise. Significantly, entitled this composition music from Marcel Duchamp. John Cage

was another one, we could not live with his concept of the chance universe, because it does not fit the universe, which exists.

Cage was an expert in the knowledge of mushrooms. He Himself said, I became aware that if I approach mushrooms in the

spirit of my chance operation, I would die shortly. His theory of the universe did not fit the universe that exists. Why is the

aeroplane carefully formed an orderly and what Cage produced is other noise. Because the aeroplane must fly in the

universe that exists and are orderly flow lines in the universe that exists. The university is not like Pollock in his paintings, and

Cage in his music said it was. And because Cages music does not fit what man is either, it had to become increasingly

spectacular, to keep us interested.

What a contrast to Bach, who had much diversity and yet, always resolution. As a Christian believed that there was resolution

for the individual and for history, as the music that came out of the biblical teaching of the Reformation was influenced by that

worldview. So the worldview of modern man shapes modern music. Is this still art? Is it not rather a bare philosophic,

intellectual statement? Separated from the fullness of who man is and what the universe is? Tending to be only a bare

intellectual statement rather than a work of art. It often has become anti art, art. After philosophy, art, music, poetry, the novel

and drama became the vehicle for these ideas. In the English speaking world. T.S. Eliot's the wasteland, came first. These

fragments I have showed against my ruin, by denial fit you Geronimos mad again. You see, he matches a fragmented

message for the fragmented form of poetry. Just as Picasso opened the way for a fragmented concept of life and lay

Damoiselle Davignon soul fragmented poetry in the English speaking world began with TSL wasteland. Later, Eliot became a

Christian, and his form of writing change from that of the wasteland. More and more philosophy was expressed not as formal

statements of philosophy as such, but rather in the novel and other art forms. Sart wrote Nasiha, Camel the stranger, and the

plague, and Sima de Beauvoir Lon Vite.

In the 60s, many of the basic philosophic statements were made through the cinema. And being carried by the cinema they

reached a far wider circle of people than I've ever been the case through painting or literature, let alone through the writings

of the philosophers. Among these films were Silence And The Hour of the Wolf by Bergman Julieta the Spirits by Fellini, Blow

Up by Antonioni, Bell Du Jour by Buoy Well. They showed pictorially and with great force, what it is like if people are only

machines, and also what is like if people try to live in the area of non reason. In the area of non reason, there is no way to

distinguish between right and wrong, or even between what is objectively true. And that which is illusion or fantasy. A good

example is Antonioni on his Blow Up. The advertisement for the film reads, murder without guilt, love without meaning. In this

film, there are no certainties concerning moral values, and no human categories either. Blow Up has no hero. All one has is

Antonioni's none hero. All there is is the camera which just goes click, click click, and the human factor has disappeared.

Some of the films of that period went even further the last year Marian Bond, Juliet of the Spirits, the Hour Of The Wolf, Bell

Du Jour. They were saying something even more profound. They were saying that his modern man leaps into the area of non

reason to try to find his optimism without reason that he not only does not have any categories for moral are humans values,

but he does not have any certainty upon which to distinguish between reality and illusion.

They just have a realistic line. They are no dreams. fantasies of the Spirit, there's no difference between the dream and the

reality is a new way to live in reality, you know it's for the Creator, I see that what he does is his only reality. Don't give me

dizzy reality means that you don't understand memorality it can appeal to like mushroom things without any meaning.

Bergman was a clear case. At this point, he directed the hour of the wolf, where one cannot tell the difference between what

is real. And what is fantasy was what was being presented really happening, or wasn't in the mind of one of the characters. If

people begin only from themselves, and think that they live in a universe in which there is no personal God to speak,

universe, such as Bergman indicated in his film silence, then they have no final way to distinguish between reality and

fantasy or illusion. That Bergman, like Sark and Kambou could not live consistently with his own position. And therefore, the

background music for the film silence is Bach's Goldberg Variations. Bergman said, there is a small, only part of human

beings where music speaks. Bergman also said the while he was writing the script for the film silence, that he had the music

of Bach's Goldberg Variations playing in his home, and the music interfered with that which was being set forth in that film.

The Christian knows why music speaks. He knows the people are not a product of chance.

The people are made in the image of God. And on this basis, it is understandable that music is music to man. And because

God has spoken in the Bible, there is not silence. And there are certainties concerning moral values, and human values. And

there are categories upon which to distinguish between reality and fantasy. For the people with the humans position, this is

not so within the humanist position, there is no base for knowing. Christianity is not romantic. The Bible is not romantic about

man man is seen as fallen man is seen as rebellion, as man is seen as rebellious against God, with all the goodness of God

with all the knowledge he has, on one hand, from the surrounding universe in this forum and the management of man and on

the other hand, from the more detailed knowledge of the Bible in the revelation in Christ, man is a rebel. And we know

Christian does not romantically think that this can be just left over. But having said that, a Christian is not a pessimist. He's

not a pessimist on two levels. First of all, history is going someplace. And a part of the Christian message is a Christ is

coming back. And this is the final solution. But every Christian who really understands the scripture also every generation, he

is waiting and fighting and struggling and doing all that he can not only to see individuals become Christians, but the culture

touched by these individual Christians.