What
is art?
Our senses are so open
to all kinds of impressions and so interwoven one with
another, that there is no simple answer to the question: What is art? All that can be
said is that common to all works of art is something we call form. The form of a work
of art is the shape it has taken. It does not matter whether it is a building, or a statue,
or a picture, a poem or a sonata–all these things have taken on a particular or
'specialized' shape, and that shape is the form of the work of art. Artists are all
people who give shape to something. The best works of art are the works with the
best form, and one form is better than another because it satisfies certain
conditions. Generally, of course, they are the conditions which give our senses the
most pleasure, and by that we mean the conditions which give pleasure, not only to
one sense at a time, but also to two or more senses working together, and finally to
that reservoir of all our senses which is our mind.
However, what
pleases one person does not necessarily please another. What we
have to find, therefore, is some touchstone outside the individual peculiarities of
human beings, and the only touchstone which exists is nature. By nature is meant
the whole organic process of life and movement which goes on in the universe, a
process which includes human beings, but which is indifferent to our generic
idiosyncrasies, subjective reactions, and temperamental variations.
Art
in nature
But nature is so immense
and multiform that at first sight it would seem to be quite
impossible to select any general or universal features which we could then take as
the touchstone for the form of things we are to make. And actually, of course, artists
have not usually sought for such a touchstone. They have sensed it: they have found
it instinctively in the elementary forms in nature which artists have given to their
works of art. They are present in the vast interstellar spaces of the universe as well
as in the most microscopic cells and molecules of matter. A scientist will make an
image to show, for example, the orderly arrangement of atoms inside a crystal of
diamond. We then see that the atoms form a regular pattern, a pattern which the
scientist himself will describe as 'beautiful'. The image is a is a man-made structure
derived from a formal arrangement of light and shade which he recorded on a
photographic plate. An astrologer will make an image in which the movements of the
planets are gauged against the fixed background of the zodiac.
If we are to compare
art and nature, we can simply begin with what the human eye
sees in its daily activity, but ignoring, of course, all that has been formed by human
hands. Our eyes then feast upon the accidental forms of nature. Rocks thrown up in
volcanic eruptions, trees blasted by lightning, valleys carved out by ice. Although
these are not universal or absolute forms, particularly pleasing arrangements of
mass are easily perceived and remembered, photographed or drawn.
The other category
of natural forms are the universal shapes all unimpeded growth
assumes: the growth of crystals, the growth of vegetation, of shells and bones and
flesh. All these processes of growth take on definite shapes and proportions, and if
we can find general laws which govern these shapes and proportions, then we shall
have found in nature a touchstone of form which we can apply to works of art.
Plato and Pythagoras
found in number the clue to the nature of the universe and to
the mystery of beauty. Science and philosophy have undergone many
transformations since that time, but the final result is the same, and goes to show
that number, in the sense of mathematical law, is the basis of all the forms which
matter assumes, whether organic or inorganic in kind. Moreover, we do not find a
mathematical chaos, as might be the case if every form had its own mathematical
equation: the truth is rather that the innumerable forms, of lifeless substance no less
than of living things, obey a definite number of comparatively simple laws. That is to
say, the growth of particular things into particular shapes is determined by forces
acting in accordance with certain inevitable mathematical or mechanical laws.
Expression
of individuality
We are essentially
human when we use graphic ways of portraying other realities,
and the Paleolithic artist deep in a cave, or balancing on a rocky mountain-side, was
expressing a mind identical to our own in order to serve his community.
An equally powerful
biological imperative is to promote 'self'. In the sense of the
'selfish gene' scenario, any behavioural characteristic that gives one's own genetic
endowment an advantage in passing to the next generation is subject to natural
selection. From this aspect, art is also one of many behavioural expressions that
allows an individual to be distinguished from the crowd. Piet Mondrian put it this way:
"Although art is fundamentally everywhere and always the same, nevertheless two
main human
inclinations, diametrically opposed to each other, appear in its many and varied expressions.
One aims at the direct creation of universal beauty, the other at the aesthetic expression of
oneself, in other words, of that which one
thinks and experiences. The first aims at representing reality objectively, the second
subjectively".
The advantages of contributing
to group identity by reinforcing the contemporary
norms of representation (subscribing to locally agreed icons of beauty and meaning),
and the cultivation of an individual output are not opposing principles of artistic
creativity. They represent primeval skills of being able to help highlight group identity
through mapping one's social unit, and having the ability to produce new ideas about
the environment which improve one's own survival.
ART, as is true of all
of man's profound experiences, is not for art's sake, nor for religion's sake, nor for the sake
of beauty nor for any 'cause.' Art is for man's sake. It may be for one man's sake, or two billion.
It may be for man
today or man a hundred years from now. No matter. Man, the artist, creates what he creates for himself
as a
living part of mankind - not because of external compulsion but because of a passionate need to bring
forth the
inviolate part of his deepest experience and fuse it with elements of both earth and human past until
it suddenly
has a life of its own. And when he does this, other men call it theirs, also. The dialogue may rise
and fall in
cadence, now becoming a mighty chorus in which the whole world seems to be participating, now only a
whisper. But it never ceases. A time will come when it seems to rise again from the dead: that piece
of sculpture
or an entire age of painting, or a book or poem - and once more, millions of men are talking with it,
sharing their
unborn dream with this ancient thing and taking from it what their dream needs to bring it alive.
And by the listening
and the sharing we not only are enriched but we bestow wealth on our world. For we are 'in
dialogue,' we are forming a new quality of human relationship. In doing so, we are, as Henry Miller
has said,
'underwriting' our age 'with our lives,' because we believe utterly in its power to transmute its terror
and grief and
sorrow and mistakes into a music which the future can claim as its own.
And yet, how long the
artist feels in his ordeal. As alone as Guillaumet when his plane came down in the Andes;
as Saint Exupery on that flight to Arras when he came to terms with the word responsibility; or the
young
Lindbergh as he opened up a new path in the sky. As alone as little Bill on those nights when his heroes
somehow were not there to sustain him and it was too dark to read the letters his father had written
him in Korea;
or Marty, as she struggled to find her way to the love in her nature which was so long blocked off by
her fears;
or Mrs. Timberlake, arranging shells and starfish on small windswept graves to speak her faith; or two
Negro
women, on a stormy night, driving along a dark highway - who must have felt that the whole world had
a white
face and there was no acceptance written on it.
But the artist is never
alone. He has an intimate relationship with the wood he is carving, the paint and canvas, the
words, the stone: these are making their demands and their plea and offering their gifts and he is answering
and
the dialogue sustains him - as do another man's beliefs and memories and the knowledge that there are
those
who care. The artist knows something else, wordless, oftentimes, but he knows it deep within him: that
were it
not for the struggle and the loneliness he undergoes in his search for integrity there would be no strength
or
beauty in his work. (And though art is not for the sake of beauty, beauty must be there or the profound
revelation
the artist makes would be unbearable.)
The artist in us knows,
the poet in us knows: it is the mark not of ordeal but of mastered ordeal that gives a face,
a life, a great event, or a great work of art its style. The wound is there but the triumph also, the
death and the
birth, the pain and the deep satisfactions: it is all there in delicate equilibrium, speaking to us.
from The Journey LILLIAN SMITH
