Ephemeral art

Readers of this issue may well be struck by a paradox: an obsession with the ephemeral has been a permanent feature of human history.

Death has always been there to remind us of the unchanging order of things: that whatever has a beginning must sooner or later come to an end. Whence the urge to look beyond temporary things and seek the eternal through religion, philosophy, and art. Some cultures have been built on the aspiration to transcend time, to construct enduring monuments and give tangible shape to the absolute. The temples of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome bear witness to this ambition, as do the cathedrals of Christianity and the mosques of Islam.

Animism, Hinduism and Buddhism have a diametrically opposite approach. For them, acceptance of life's impermanence is a way of bringing eternity into better focus. Mural paintings, ceremonial masks and mándalas have meaning only because the ephemeral is a pathway to the timeless. In a sense, therefore, an ancient temple and a sacred dance are two routes leading towards the same destination: achievement of the absolute via experience of the transitory.

Modernity has wrought a disturbing change in representations of the ephemeral. By shutting its eyes to transcendence, it consigns the ephemeral to the void.

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