On achieving a Platonic ideal in art

A Platonic ideal is a concept that is only approached by any given physical manifestation. If I think of the Platonic ideal of a coffee mug, any given real coffee mug will have some slight imperfections that cause it to deviate in some way from the ideal form.

I think that some artists have an ideal form in their mind and their art is the result of their chasing that ideal. Michaelangelo carved David from marble by chipping away all the bits of marble that weren’t David, thus finding the Platonic ideal within. What is fascinating is that I think sometimes other people are able to actualize that better than the original artist. One person realizes that David is somewhere in the marble, but a different person actually carves the statue. When Leonard Cohen wrote his magnum opus “Hallelujah”, it took him years of toil and he struggled to see the pure form of the art he was expressing. He knew that he found a diamond in the rough, he wrote dozens of unpublished verses to the song, he anguished over how to polish his discovery from a rock to a gem and to be honest he did a pretty good job. He didn’t quite get to Platonic ideal though. Several other artists had the sight and talent to actualize a version of Hallelujah that was closer to the Platonic ideal than the author himself. Jeff Buckley had a pretty good version which brought the song notoriety, but ultimately it was KD Lang, two decades after the initial release of the song that found the statue of David inside the marble block. She recorded a near perfect piece of art during an awards show that was as close to a Platonic ideal as a human will ever achieve. She recorded the song as it really should be. She found it in the marble, and cut away all the bits that weren’t David.

Many artists revisit paths that are well traveled, and each one who is inspired by a master work is trying to improve upon it, trying to find the Platonic ideal within the block of marble. Once someone finds the ideal, it seems like all those paths that all those artists were traveling down trying to find the perfect version, are now known to be wrong paths. To start a new path knowing that someone has already found the ideal version seems hubristic and silly. Why would I try to find a more perfect statue within the block of marble that is the statue of David, it already is the perfect statue of David.

In sports, one of the highest honors an athlete can receive is having their number retired. I suggest we implement a similar retirement regime for art that has found a perfect Platonic ideal. We don’t need any more versions of Hallelujah because KD Lang found the exact right one. She wasn’t the artist who originally imagined that a form was hidden within the marble, but she was able to carve away all the right bits to make the form visible to us all. She actualized the ideal. We can put a check in that box and move on to other songs. No more need to cover Hallelujah.