The Stillest Hour

March 20 – April 19

Opening Friday, April 24 with a reception from 6-8pm

Framed as a fictional narrative of the second life of Zoroaster, the pre-Abrahamic prophet of Good vs. Evil, Friedrich Nietzche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra reimagines the ancient oracle as tormented by an internal voice guiding him to new methods of thinking beyond established moral dichotomies. Canonized by late 20th Century theorists, attacks on dogmatic or binary approaches to critical thinking easily permeate beyond artistic and philosophical circles into mainstream American life. Declarations like “We have art so as not to die of the truth” fit so comfortably into our contemporary verbiage about artmaking it seems almost inexplicable that Nietzsche appears more often cited in bizarre corners of internet subcultures and fringe political podcasts than in coherent artistic didactics or manifestos. Yet the comfort with which some ideas can be historically adopted and others discarded reflects exactly the type of philosophical cowardice that Nietzsche would condemn or as he wrote cryptically “He who hath removed mountains also has to remove valleys and plains.” While the romantic representation of the artist as amalgam of Apollonian and Dionysian traits might flatter our modern sensibilities about the gravity of artmaking, creative interpretations and even direct historical revisionism make phrases such as artist-tyrant or Nietzsche’s notorious Übermensch indigestible to our contemporary belief systems. Nietzsche might anticipate the beauty of unresolved tensions beyond the finitude of congruity, but, in turn, he outright opposed supposed Western ideals like social stability, equality, and peace.

The artists in this exhibition we’re prompted by a section in Thus Spoke Zarathustra titled The Stillest Hour in which Zoroaster realizes he’s been reluctant to speak his full truth and returns to solitude in the mountains 6,000 feet beyond men and time before returning to his followers to proclaim ideas that continue to sound historically compromising. The Stillest Hour represent exactly this type of moral turmoil, the realization that to graduate to a higher level of intellect one must abandon both the axioms you deplore and other you might continue to cherish. Though Nietzsche himself uses many symbolic devices to articulate complex philosophical ideas, e.g., The Mountain, The Tightrope Walker, The Serpent or the Lion/Child, this exhibition examines the implications of making and perceiving artwork through a Nietzschean lens rather than a visual retelling of the text itself. For Nietzsche, artists invent new modes of conceiving of human life because art exists in a distinct realm able to imagine existence outside established ideas. The artist never fears pain and gladly revisits joy, love, trauma, and humiliation. While many critics have targeted Nietzsche’s views as social Darwinism or even proto-fascist, it’s clear that internal and artistic conflict and not organized violence remain at the core of Nietzsche’s ideas, and vitality and optimism often persist in this unfamiliar or seemingly paradoxical language.  Nietzsche aligns his perspective with the artist because he emphasizes the strength and creativity brought by conflict that could be described as perseverance or as Nietzsche says metaphorically as Zoroaster in The Stillest Hour “The earth crumbled beneath my feet, and I began to dream.” Some of the artists in the exhibition represent this moment, the realization that knowledge cannot be bound by social truths, as a physical or psychological struggle—In others, the tension is compositional, pictorial, or stylistic. 

The notion that visual conflict in an artwork might constitute a valid means of hermeneutic appraisal might very well have influenced prominent 20th Century thinkers who continue to maintain an active dialogue with contemporary art, but the implications are less clear for the artist-tyrant, the aspiring Übermensch, and how they might pursue a method associated with these seemingly controversial ideas. Nietzsche’s philosophy never articulates a clear path towards attaining a higher level of creativity only the conditions or mindset for achieving his vision of excellence. Though considering the modernist trajectory, Art never responded to times of war, struggle or tragedy with fear or pity, but rather as an opportunity to abandon every moral and aesthetic dictum that tried to restrain it in order to conceive of something new. 

Artist Featured in The Stillest Hour: Faina Brodsky, Lee Dawson, Kyler Garrison, Madelyn Kellum, Jin Mateo Kim, Claire Lachow, Lucy Luckovich, Alison Peery, Anna Samara, Dylan Teaford, and Melody Tuttle.