Antonin Artaud - Philosophical Views

Philosophical Views

Imagination, to Artaud, was reality; he considered dreams, thoughts and delusions as no less real than the "outside" world. To him, reality appeared to be a consensus, the same consensus the audience accepts when they enter a theatre to see a play and, for a time, pretend that what they are seeing is real.

Artaud saw suffering as essential to existence and thus rejected all utopias as inevitable dystopia. He denounced the degradation of civilization, yearned for cosmic purification, and called for an ecstatic loss of the self. Hence Jane Goodall considers Artaud to be a modern Gnostic while Ulli Seegers stresses the Hermetic elements in his works.

A very important study on the Artaud work comes from Jacques Derrida. According to the philosopher, as theatrical writer and actor, Artaud is the embodiment of both an aggressive and repairing gesture, which strikes, sounds out, is harsh in a dramatic way and with critical determination as well. Identifying life as art, he was critically focused on the western cultural social drama, to point out and deny the double-dealing on which the western theatrical tradition is based; he worked with the whirlpool of feelings and lunatic expressions, being subjugated to a counter-force which came from the act of gesture. Definitely, the Artaud work gave life to all of what has never been admitted in art, all the torment and the labour into the creator consciousness, which is about the research of the meaning of making a work of art.