«What is the position of “newness” in art? Its effect is well known by people of our time, which is one superficial effect of modernism. In fact, present-day life has a cult of the sensational in the press, literature, cinema, advertising, sports, etc. These manifestations, which are presented in a chaotic form and with the most vulgar, cruel and abnormal images, are condemned by religion, by morality and by reason. We, on the contrary, do not condemn them a priori, but we seek to understand them out of simple curiosity; a curiosity that is lacking among those who are partial to those sensational emotions. We are discussing this desire for sensations in terms of pure knowledge, without making any moral judgment.
The sensational and unexpected effect of surprise, which is called shock, can be provoked in an extremely primitive manner by a little violence and by inhabitual impressions of lights, colors or sounds. It has long been known that such effects can serve as treatments for certain psychological states. Normal people have just as much need for these violent blows in order to awaken their vitality. The importance of the shock effect in the arts has already been made evident by the Surrealists. (In their case it’s a matter of provoking abnormal states, of more complex phenomena provoked by extraordinary and aggressive situations.) We find ourselves in the presence of a very important phenomenon in the arts, one that classic studies ignored. This explains the widespread popularity of all the manifestations of fantasy in modern popular art, but above all it enables us to establish a new objective systematization of aesthetics that surpasses the classic quest for harmony and beauty. The conclusion of this point is that the ugly (i.e. that which is striking) is at the foundation of our actual aesthetic. When one goes beyond the state of unconsciousness and total ignorance, one enters into the field of partial knowledge of things: and this is precisely the vast field of artistic activity.
The feeling of stupor and surprise in the face of novelty is, in the presence of things whose representation is partially known, transformed into a superficial feeling of admiration or disdain, a sentiment that may be tragic or comic but that is always distinct between the spectator and the creative artistic activity; this distinction is gradually reduced insofar as the art becomes continually more evident. One thus arrives at the poetic summit, the moment where the work of art blends with popular sentiment, the drama of the emotion thus being transformed into poetry.
Feeling cannot find itself wedged between “the unlimited will to discovery and the power of reasoning” because feeling is the will to discovery. Discoveries and inventions do not owe their existence to some logical reasoning, because the sole basis of logical reasoning is existing reality. Evolution is based on desires, imaginary goals, dreams, cravings, powerful emotions and sensations: “New — and ever newer” is the form that propels evolution».
Asger Jorn. Form and structure (1956). In Ruth Baumeister. Fraternité avant tout. Asger Jorn’s writings on architecture. Rotterdam: 101 Publishers, 2011, p. 295-296.
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