Absurd Creation: Making Art Without Seeking Meaning

“The task of art is not to console people but to make them feel the absurdity of their existence; yet showing their freedom within that absurdity is also the work of art.”

“The human being is the only creature that questions the meaning of life, and most of the time the answer to that question is silence.”

Albert Camus’s philosophy of the absurd describes the conflict between the individual’s search for meaning and the silence of the world. But art is sometimes made not to resolve this conflict but to exist alongside it.

Louise Bourgeois: Cell (Eyes and Mirrors), 1989

Mirrors and eyes placed in an enclosed space push viewers into the position of both observer and observed. The self dissolves in this cell; it is the stage of an individual who loses themselves while looking at themselves. Bourgeois gives psychoanalytic dissolution a sculptural form: a construction that breaks meaning apart rather than excluding it.

David Shrigley: Untitled (Life is Fantastic), 2008

Plain lines, a childish typeface and an ironic title. Shrigley presents the absurdity of life with humour; within the cheerfulness of the sentences lies a decaying despair. It is a visual counter-stance developed against the absurdity of existence.

Francis Alÿs: Paradox of Praxis I, 1997

The artist pushes a giant block of ice through the streets of Mexico City, for hours. In the end the ice melts and nothing is left. The work shows the absurdity of labour, repetition and effort through a physical metaphor.

Bruce Nauman: Clown Torture, 1987

The clown repeats, falls, shouts, falls silent. Nauman tells of the endless loop of the modern individual through a grotesque character. On the Lacanian plane, contact with “the real” appears here as a scream that cannot be suppressed.

Paul McCarthy: Painter, 1995

A performance in which the artist drowns in his grotesque state, moving back and forth between paint and excrement. The production of art is represented not as a “ritual” but as a “collapse”. McCarthy caricatures the lost identity of the modern artist.

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The meaning of art sometimes lies in its escape from meaning. Absurd creation offers no explanation, but it keeps the question alive. These works do not look for answers; they make visible the resistance within silence. As Camus is often paraphrased: true courage is to accept the meaninglessness of life and still go on living it.