Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
- Mortimer Adler's
- Syntopicon
Essays
Art:
Editor's
1-minute essay
- Most people today would likely define "art,"
especially the fine arts, as a painting or sculpture -- something found in a
museum.
It is common to hear the phrase, "music, literature, and the fine arts"
-- as if music and literature were not fine arts!
This extremely narrow and contorted meaning of "art" has been with us
for only little more than 100 years.
Anciently,
- the term "art" described -- not an object
of production but -- a capacity, a skill for the making of something.
This traditional meaning still resides within our language. We speak of
- industrial arts
- arts of war, medicine, cooking, etc.
- arts and crafts
- artisan
All of these speak to a skillful ability to make or produce something. Human
effort, beginning with a mind's creative idea, is very much part of the classical
definition of art; as such, in the room in which you now read this, you are surrounded by
"works of art" -- man-made objects. A tree, a dog, a sunset -- are not works of
art as they are not the product of human effort.
Is a human baby a work of art? Clearly, human effort is involved here. But, Dr.
Adler disallows this example as well.
- A work of art, to be accounted as such, will express human
effort -- but it must be of a certain kind; it is the kind of effort that not only results
in making something but, also, will begin with an idea, a creative, mental conception of
the object to be produced: the work of art will exist in the mind before it enters our
three-dimensional world; and that mental existence, in a very real sense, will be a
deep and most significant expression of the artist's inner person.
While a baby's parents may have desired its arrival, they were not able to dictate
the exact features of the newborn. "Junior" may resemble one or both of them, or
he may not; or he may strike a likeness to Grandpa; there's no way of predicting this. As
such, Adler instructs us, human babies are not works of art (though part of us remains
unconvinced) in the classical sense of the term.
Dr. Adler explores other usages:
- Arts & Science: both words address a kind
of knowledge. "Arts," here, focuses upon "know how" -- an
ability to make or produce something well; as opposed to "science," or "know
what" -- an insight into the essential nature of things. "Skillful
technique and studied theory" might well express the essence of "arts and
science."
- Artificial vs. Natural: things "natural" can come into being without human
effort; but the existence of the "artificial" relies solely on human
intervention.
Are spiders' webs, beavers' dams, bees' hives, and birds' nests works of art? Few
would deny the excellent craftsmanship of these productions (see Editor's essay on Man);
but Marx, expressing the ancient view of art, asserts that the product of the least
skillful human architect is a work of art -- while these animal efforts are not
-- because, before he raises his structure in the world, he does so first in the
imagination of his own mind; no animal does this but is driven only by mechanical
instinct, without conscious plan.
Adler presses this issue further by asking whether music, accidentally produced by
a cat walking on the keys of a piano, might be considered a work of art; no, he says,
because the cat knows nothing of its achievement -- but, if a jazz composer, in an attempt
to musically simulate the sound of a cat walking on those same keys, creates a
piece, such as, "Kitten on the Keys," this is, indeed, a work of art!
- Art is counted as one of the "Great Ideas" of
history because it aids -- as a sister to "science," an ally in the same grand
effort -- humankind's quest to eliminate caprice and chance from life.
From our earliest days on earth, we have sought to make things (art) and know
things (science) in an effort to regulate and even master the vicissitudes and
terrors of mortal existence. Humankind's collective stumblings toward civilization have
been an effort to reduce life to predictable and stabilizing rules and formulas -- as
opposed to merely existing as pawns, subservient to fate. This concept is expressed in the
Greeks' view of the noble physician (skilled artist), one operating with
knowledge and leaving as little to chance as possible; unlike the empiric, the
"quack" of his day, whose methods were nothing more than an ad hoc hash
of trial-and-error.
- Cooperative Arts vs. Productive Arts: the
products of the "cooperative arts" -- farming (plants), medicine (healing), and
teaching (knowledge) -- are referred to as such because, in these efforts, man works
with nature. In each of these areas -- all dealing with living things -- nature is
able to bring about its ends without human aid but, if done alone, less is usually
accomplished. The (merely) "productive arts" seek to create artificial
things: shoes, houses, autos, baseball bats -- anything and everything that would not come
into existence at all but for human skill and toil.
- Fine Arts vs. Useful Arts: Oscar Wilde once
quipped, referring to the "fine arts," that "All art is quite
useless"; that is, it serves no utilitarian purpose -- and, by definition, this must
be the case (which is why his comment is humorous). Probably most people would guess that
the meaning of "fine" here means "excellent," "very good,"
or even "refined." Adler enlightens us: the etymological root of
"fine" is the same as that found in "final." The implication is most
interesting. The fine arts are those which are created as ends in themselves --
just for the sheer enjoyment of them -- without mundane thoughts of utility; their aim is
to delight, to inspire, to enthrall. This is why the "fine arts," in both French
and German, are referred to as "the beautiful arts." The "useful
arts," as the term suggests, speaks to those works of art serving various needful
purposes -- purposes of means rather than ends: brooms, bottles,
lampstands, and top hats.
- Liberal Arts vs. Servile Arts: masters and
slaves in the ancient Greek world occupied themselves with different duties. A master -- a
"free" man -- was educated for his own sake; a slave was trained
to perform various tasks for the benefit of another. A slave, one engaging in
"servile" work, "got his hands dirty" and worked with things: he
milked cows, tended the garden, and picked grapes. The master -- the free or
"liberal" man -- did not get his hands dirty but, if educated as society
dictated, developed and worked primarily with his mind: he studied rhetoric, grammar,
logic, mathematics, and other pursuits.
Today's common phrase,
- "liberal arts," despite its checkered past,
addresses the need for men and women to be educated not (merely) trained;
to develop their minds, to learn how to think; to take their places in society as truly free
persons, intellectual slaves of no one.
The liberal arts and the fine arts are often spoken of in the same breath -- and
rightly so. Both acknowledge humankind's long quest for excellence of spirit. As we've
learned, from ancient times, the definition of art included the artist's mental conception
of the object to be created. As such, a work of art becomes a very personal expression,
indeed, a very extension of the artist's essence.
Speaking primarily of the fine arts, these extensions of hidden inner person,
of character and personality, of soul and mind, become the essential quality of art's
fascination.
Great art is never merely sterile objectivism, the mere imitation of
nature -- if that were the case, quick-print shops and cheap instant cameras would have
put out of business the notable artists some time ago; but neither is great art, in my
opinion, radical subjectivism, an extreme abstraction totally divorced and
without reference to the common experiences of our world.
- Stated another way, art -- if it is to be deemed great art --
must say something! Art is a kind of language. And great works of
art must speak to us, and they must speak to our higher selves, the selves that we
desire to become. If art fails here, we shall do better at the print shop.
Great art will teach us something about life, about death, about love, about
suffering -- but the elucidation offered must not remind us of a trip to the encyclopedia;
it is the artist himself or herself that we want to see, that hidden inner person
expressing itself in plastic art forms -- we want to know not only about matters of life
and death and love, but we want to know what the artist, personally, has learned
about these weighty issues.
Art, in its broadest definition, is a principle related to all human work, of all
skilled labor. Every human being is an artist in some fashion, because everyone is skilled
at and produces something.
- To live is to be an artist.
|