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
