Aesthetics and Poetry

 

Aesthetics analyses and attempts to answer such questions as: What is art? How do we recognize it? How do we judge it? What purposes do artworks serve? What (to adopt the philosopher's approach) are its necessary and sufficient conditions? Many have been proposed — countless, stretching back to ancient Greece — but one of the most complete is that of Tatarkiewicz. His six conditions are: beauty, form, representation, reproduction of reality, artistic expression and innovation. Will that do? Unfortunately, it is difficult to pin these terms down sufficiently, to incorporate them into necessary and sufficient conditions — do they all have to be present? — and to cover the aspect of quality. Even in the most hackneyed piece of commercial art we shall find these conditions satisfied to some extent. How do we specify the sufficient extent? By common agreement, a consensus of public taste?

Take a less time-bound view and consider art down the ages? The Greeks did not distinguish between art and craft, but used the one word, techné, and judged achievement on goodness of use. In fact not until 1746 did Charles Batteux separate the fine arts from the mechanical arts, and only this century has such stress been laid on originality and personal expression. Must we then abandon the search for definitions, and look closer at social agreements and expectations? That would be a defeat for rationality, philosophers might feel — it being their role to arrive at clear, abstract statements that are true regardless of place or speaker. But perhaps (as Strawson and others have remarked) art may be one of those fundamental categories which cannot be analyzed further, cannot be broken into more basic terms. And there is always Wittgenstein's scepticism about definitions — that terms commonly have a plexus of overlapping applications, meaning lying in the ways words are used, and not in any fiat of God or philosophers.

Artists have therefore been somewhat chary of aesthetics, feeling that art is too various and protean to conform to rules. Theory should not lead practice, they feel, but follow at a respectful distance. But rather than prescribe it may clarify. Much could be learnt by informed debate between the disciplines, and a willingness of parties to look through each other's spectacles. Obtuse and abstract as it may be, philosophy does push doggedly on, arriving at viewpoints which illuminate some aspects of art.

What is the first task of art? To represent. Yes, there is abstract painting, and music represents nothing unless it be feelings in symbolic form, but literature has always possessed an element of mimesis, copying, representation. Attempts are periodically made to purge literature of this matter-of-fact, utilitarian end — Persian mysticism, haiku evocation, poesie pure, etc. — but representation always returns.

Art is also emotionally alive. We are delighted, elated, suffused with a bitter sweetness of sorrow, etc., rejecting as sterile anything which fails to move us. But are these the actual emotions which the artist has felt and sought to convey? It is difficult to know. Clearly we can't see into the minds of artists, and there is the inconvenient but well-known fact that artists work on "happy" and "sad" episodes simultaneously. They feel and shape the emotion generated by their work, but are not faithfully expressing some preexisting emotion.

Then there is form. Beauty is troublesome and unfashionable term today, there remains organization: internal consistency, coherence, a selection and shaping of elements to please us. Art presents itself as an autonomous, self-enclosing entity. The stage, picture frame, etc. give an aesthetic distance, tell us that what is shown or enacted serves no practical end, and is not to be judged so. We are drawn in — engrossed, enraptured — but we are also free to step back and admire the crafting, to exercise our imagination, and to enjoy disinterestedly what can be more complete and vivid than real life. Is this autonomy necessary?

Until the present century most artists and commentators said yes. They believed that harmony in variety, detachment, balance, luminous wholeness, organic coherence, interacting inevitability and a host of other aspects were important, perhaps essential. Many contemporary artists do not. They seek to confront, engage in non-aesthetic ways with their public, to bring art out into the streets. Successfully, or so the trendier critics would persuade us, though the public remains sceptical. Modernism is taught in state schools, but Postmodernist has yet to win acceptance.

Art, says the tax-paying citizen, is surely not entertainment, or not wholly so. Artists aim at some altruistic and larger purpose, or we should not fete them in the media and in academic publications. We don't want to be preached at, but artists reflect their times, which means that their productions give us the opportunity to see our surroundings more clearly, comprehensively and affectionately. And not only to see, say Marxist and politically-orientated commentators, but to change. Art has very real responsibilities, perhaps even to fight male chauvinism, ethnic prejudice, third-world exploitation, believe the politically correct.

And so on. We only scratched the surface of aesthetics, and answers cannot be definitive. Philosophy does not finally settle anything, but can untangle the issues involved, suggest what has to be argued or given away if a certain position is held. Philosophical questions pass ultimately beyond rational argument (the finding of bad reasons for what we instinctively believe, one philosopher called his subject) into preferences, outlooks, experiences. It would be surprising if they didn't. And more surprising if we could use one small part of our faculties to explain the rest, though that is very much what science, logic and linguistic philosophy have attempted. But if reason has its dangers, the sleep of reason may be worse.  

A greatly expanded article, with references, can be found on TextEtc.

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