Art

Art, for Marsh, is defined by its relationship to life energy rather than by shock, taste or market. Primary anima is energy accessed directly, the animating force of life, and art is creation that either channels that energy or stores it, holding it like a capacitor to be released in whoever encounters the work. This puts her at odds with what she calls the industrial aesthetic, which defines art by its power to provoke a reaction. She rejects that as a redefinition and appropriation of the word: art is not the ability to shock, and beauty is not subjective but is found in primary anima. On her account a work is art to the degree it carries or transmits the energy of life, which is why she can say plainly that art is not subjective, since the presence of primary anima is what the judgement tracks.

Definitions of art fill entire branches of aesthetics, from imitation and expression to form, institutional theories where art is what the art world accepts, and the modern emphasis on provocation and concept. Marsh rejects the reaction-based and purely subjective accounts explicitly, and grounds art instead in primary anima, making the presence of life energy, not consensus or shock, the measure.