User:Anandgadapa/Sandbox

Relocating ‘Tragedy’ in art: an inquiry into pre-modern and contemporary art practice Over the years, fine art has been understood as the true expression of an artist, exploiting an assortment of mediums, themes and intentions. However, art is nothing but what he or she perceives, scrutinizes, experiences and represent the world he or she lives in. imagination, fantasy, real and metaphysics are some other aspects that an artist deals with using his formal training. Visual and plastic arts are meant for audience; bring forth social, cultural, political and personal issues to the larger discourse with or without any ideological intentions. Most of the civilized elites react to ‘art’, analyzing what that is meant for and aspire to have the art that they feel is close to their hearts. Where as, a common man too reacts to the same, inspires, experience and appreciate what the artist is trying to communicate explicably, perhaps emotionally concerning with the aesthetics. Both categories of spectators are spot on in cherishing art in terms of aesthetics but somewhere they are not same in treating art as a true or personal expression of an artist. In similar way, artist too create art what they like in the beginning and gradually succumbs to the limitations. That is the real tragedy. The tragedy further continues when he encounters issues of practicalities such as notions of good or bad, new/’modern’ or much consumed languages, viewership, rat race for the fame and last but not insignificant is monetary value of his or her creation. It is however, a real tragedy to observe how artists of various periods made an effort to represent ‘tragedy’ in art. The issue of tragedy is now becomes one of the prominent areas of my present paper, where I would be examining the complexity of making art in given culture and throw some light on some key areas of methodologies that had long been neglected since ages. Greek Theory of Tragedy: Aristotle's Poetics The classic discussion of Greek tragedy is Aristotle's Poetics. Aristotle defines tragedy as "the imitation of an action that is serious and also as having magnitude, complete in itself." He continues, "Tragedy is a form of drama exciting the emotions of pity and fear. Its action should be single and complete, presenting a reversal of fortune, involving persons renowned and of superior attainments, and it should be written in poetry embellished with every kind of artistic expression." The writer presents "incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to interpret its catharsis of such of such emotions" The basic difference Aristotle draws between tragedy and other genres, such as comedy and the epic, is the "tragic pleasure of pity and fear" the audience feel watching a tragedy. For this, the tragic hero has to arouse these feelings in the audience, he cannot be either all good or all evil but must be someone the audience can identify with; however, if he is superior in some ways, the tragic pleasure is intensified.

Hero’s disastrous end results from a mistaken action, which in turn arises from a tragic flaw or from a tragic error in judgment. Often the tragic flaw is regarded as hubris (arrogant, ambitious attitude), an excessive pride that causes the hero to ignore a divine warning or to break a moral law. It has been suggested that because the tragic hero's suffering is greater than his offense, the audience feels pity; because the audience members perceive that they could behave similarly, they feel pity. So, audience likes tragedy or tragic pleasure more than any kind of pleasure. Hence, there are many ‘saas bahu’ serials are telecasted in India.

The problem play or play of ideas usually has a tragic ending. The driving force behind the play is the exploration of some social problem, like alcoholism or prostitution; the characters are used as examples of the general problem. Frequently the playwright views the problem and its solution in a way that challenges or rejects the conventional view; not surprisingly, some problem plays have aroused anger and controversy in audiences and critics. So why tragedy is so important in art or what causes the audience to like tragedy? To understand this phenomenon, we need to know how Mimesis operates in the minds of people. Is this any thing to do with our ego? Or it’s a complex understanding of ontological stuff?