I've been working lately on a theory of the metaphysics of traditional objective art, as opposed to modern day subjective art. Most people today probably can't conceive of how art could ever be objective. The field of art today is almost universally (and, I suspect, correctly) described as a purely subjective field. This was not always in the case in the past. In the western context, everything in life was at one time considered to have a metaphysical element, cause or purpose related to it. Artistic expression would be geared towards certain aspects or experiences of life, such as love, but the metaphysical presumptions about love that educated people generally held (and which uneducated people often, in some form, assumed) would influence their work. I've chosen love as an example here because most people have heard about the Shakespearean love sonnets; a sonnet is a type of structured poem, not a free verse poem and sonnets were generally expected to be about love. So why did a sonnet follow a specific structure and why was it supposed to be on the subject of love? This is because the love sonnet was itself considered an act of love and therefore it was a part of the real and tangible metaphysics of love. In this sense then, to write a love sonnet was not a purely subjective act but also an objective one because of the structuring, possibility for comparison to existing standards, the context, perhaps the nature of inspiration in those times and finally also the fact that the author was working towards a defined end goal, not merely obeying his muse. If there is one thing that I've learned in my attempts to be an artist, it's that the muse is described as female for good reason. To structure a work with any kind of requirements, even a deadline but more so when aspiring towards an objectively-oriented artistic expression, is symbolic of the metaphysical man's domination of the metaphysical woman. Just like in a real relationship, it is not enough to materially dominate the woman (the muse), you must make her happy to be dominated or else you will have failed to achieve total fulfillment through the relationship. Yet if you refuse to dominate the muse (the woman) at all, she will walk all over you, make your life hell and by the time you get anything, it's too late. I would even go so far as to see a correlation between the modern ascension of women over men in society generally and the complete untethering of art from any objective standards that once existed.
