Home The Nature and Objective of Aesthetics The Possibility of a Definition of Beauty and Art The Value of a Definition of Beauty What Aesthetics Is The Material For a Definition Art and the Artist The Art Work The Art Work in the Making The Creative Mind Art and the Artist Art and the Layman The Experience of Beauty Beauty in Music Painting Poetry	THE MATERIAL FOR A DEFINITION A definition is a summary statement of conclusions based upon an examination of all available reliable data in some field of investigation. The examination of the data must be scientific, that is, disinterested, and the data must be ample and pertinent, if the definition is to have any validity. Our next step, therefore, must be to make a survey of the material, the data, that we might use as a basis for our examination of the nature of art and beauty, and the relative values of the material for this purpose. The literature on art is varied and manifold. But all of it may be grouped under the following heads: Technological, artistic, socio-historical, literary, philosophical, and psychological. Each of these looks upon the art work from a somewhat different angle, the technological dealing with the general laws of artistic structure, the grammar of art, the artistic with the formal analysis of a specific art work, the socio-historical with the influence of social conditions and historical epochs upon the art produced during a given period; the literary with the comments of poets, novelists, dramatists on their respective arts, the philosophical with speculations on the place and function of art in life, the psychological with analysis of and experiments on the nature of the aesthetic experience. Rubens We wish to examine this literature to see what data it promises to yield us for our purpose. Technological. Technology is concerned with the artisanship of the creative activity. It takes for granted the creative impulse, and examines the tools and materials of art in order to deduce the general laws of artistic structure. Books on harmony and composition in music, on color theory and design in painting, on versification in poetry, on the technique of the novel and drama, are examples of the technological approach to art. A familiarity with these laws and skill in their application will produce the craftsman, but not the artist. A musical composition constructed in strict accordance with the laws of harmony and composition and nothing else, will yield a product that is technically correct, but artistically, musically, insignificant. The reason is that artistry is more than craftsmanship. It includes craftsmanship, but it is more than craftsmanship. That is the meaning of the principle that all great art is artless, namely, that the craftsmanship is so perfect that it does not obtrude itself upon the attention, but is a perfect medium for what it conveys. The objective of the artist is not so much to produce a perfect product technically, structurally, as to give perfect expression, adequate embodiment, to some significant personal experience. To accomplish this objective he must be a master of his tools and materials, but his mastery is ever a means to an end, but not an end. All this becomes quite apparent when we consider the fact that one often encounters a product in art which is flawless in structure but insignificant, ineffective artistically. The product arouses admiration, but not appreciation. A number of artists may paint a landscape in accordance with the laws of painting, and what they produce will be correct technically, but worthless artistically. They produced something that is perfect in letter but lacking in spirit. Now it is the spirit of art that we are seeking rather than its letter, and hence, the technological approach to art is quite inadequate for our purpose. Artistic. "There is nothing more disheartening to man," wrote Stevenson, "than to be shown the springs and mechanisms of any art. All our arts and occupations lie wholly on the surface; it is on the surface that we perceive their beauty, fitness and significance; and to pry below is to be appalled by their emptiness and shocked by the coarseness of the springs and pulleys." The springs and pulleys of an art work are disheartening and appalling only to the layman, as would be an outlay of the parts of the human body. To the anatomist and physiologist these parts are anything but empty and coarse, and far from causing a shock, are viewed with admiration and enthusiasm. The reason is that the layman sees nothing but wreckage, while the professional man is aware of the contribution of each item to the whole of which it forms a part. Viewed in the light of the whole, the part is as significant as is the whole, being a symbol of the whole. Without an idea of the whole, the parts are just so much rubbish, empty and meaningless, and therefore appalling. Now for the artist, being a creative worker, imbued with the spirit of the whole, the letter of the springs and pulleys is of vast significance. His dissection of the whole into its parts is inspired and guided by his love of the whole, and he who loves seeks also to understand. But without the love of the whole, the analysis of it into its constituent parts is motiveless, therefore meaningless, and therefore also without understanding. It is full of toil and trouble, but it signifies nothing. What the analytical approach to an art work gives us then is the ways and means, but not the end, the goal, that is to be attained, and which instigated the ways and means and gives them their warmth and vitality. Means arise out of ends to be achieved, and can be evaluated and appreciated only in the light of the ends. "Art," said John Stuart Mill, "proposes to itself an end, and looks out for means to effect it." Now the task of aesthetics is to inquire into the ends of art. The definition of art and beauty that it seeks is in terms of artistic impulse and objective. It is not a description of how the artist works that gives an insight into the nature of his activity, but an account of why he works, what the driving force of his activity is, and the objective that the activity seeks to attain. Artistic analyses of how only arouse the queries why and what, forcing the investigator to seek data for an answer wherever these may be found. Socio-historical. When the investigator turns to the sociohistorical material and evaluates it he again finds little of value for his purpose. In spite of the apparent fact that art works may be utilized as historical and sociological records, he finds himself in agreement with Algernon Clarke Swinburne that "the question whether past or present afford the highest matter for high poetry and offer the noblest reward to the noble workman . . . is really less debatable on any rational ground than the question of the end and aim of art. . . . Art knows nothing of time; for her there is but one tense, and all ages in her sight are alike present; there is nothing old in her sight, and nothing new . . . (S)he cannot be vulgarized by the touch of the present or destroyed by the contact of the past. . . . No form is obsolete, no subject out of date, if the right man be there to rehandle it." Any artistic product of the past that has value for us today as an art work does not owe that aesthetic value to its mere subject-matter as a record of an event or a condition of the times, no matter how skillfully done. The subject-matter is certainly not irrelevant, but neither is it paramount. It is but the raw material that the creative mind utilizes for its creative purposes. Neither time, nor place, nor subjectmatter make the artist. Time and place and available material influence him and his work, but they do not determine his significance as an artist nor the value of his output as art works. An Ibsen or Shakespeare living today would produce dramatic literature of the same quality he produced in his day, although the material would be different. The placing of an art work historically or sociologically neither adds nor detracts anything from its status as an art work. Art is neither dependent nor independent of time and place, because it is neither dependent nor independent of subject-matter. It needs subject-matter, and so is dependent on time and place. But since mere subject-matter is not art, only its raw stuff, it is also independent of time and place, for whatever the raw stuff, it will be turned into artistic gold by genius, while in the hands of mediocrity it will remain but artistic dross. Hence the sociological and historical materials of art offer little of direct value for the purpose of the aesthetician. Literary, Philosophical, Psychological. The literary, philosophical, and psychological material on art we may consider together, for they are mutually inclusive, since the literary man often philosophizes and psychologizes about art and beauty, while the most significant philosophical and psychological writings, as for instance those of Plato, Schopenhauer, or Santayana, who have written extensively on art, are not only philosophy or psychology, but literature. Each of these views art and beauty from a somewhat different angle, but all are equally significant, since their interest is not in technique or formal analysis, but in the nature and function of art as a whole. Thus, the philosopher, whose aim is to obtain a unified, integrated view of the world, comes upon art and defines it in the course of his attempt to ascertain the particular living need that gives rise to it. Consequently a patient search through the writings of the philosophers from Plato to Croce gives us many a valuable clue to the secret of the aesthetic realm. The contradictions of the philosophers that "stupify" their critics are due to a superficial reading or to second-hand accounts of their writings and not to the stupidity of the philosophers. For if mental giants like Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Schopenhauer, Kant, Hegel, are stupid, then their stupidity is the sole wisdom that we possess about the prime human values of the good, the true, and the beautiful. It were well that we examined the beam in our own eyes before we point our fingers in derision at the motes in the eyes of philosophers. The philosopher is an earnest seeker for wisdom on the basis of the facts supplied him by the sciences of his day, and his conclusions are not only worthy of our respect, but it is our wisdom to study them earnestly and seriously. And the aesthetic theories of the philosophers, whether consistent or inconsistent with each other, possess the one supreme virtue of being the earnest search of a great mind for the truth that is in him, a virtue that the detractors of the philosophers might do well to cultivate and emulate. Psychology is the scientific study of the interests, motives, and activities of living organisms. Its objective is that of any other science, namely, to discover by experiment and observation the laws of sequence of events and thereby obtain control over them. To effect this science asks of any phenomenon what is happening, how it is happening, and when it is happening. These questions apply to an organism as they do to a mechanism, since the laws of cause and effect operate for living bodies as they do for the non-living, only that causes and effects are more complex and varied for the former than the latter. This only means, however, a difference in degree, not in kind, in that the scientific investigation of animate matter presents difficulties not encountered in the study of inanimate substances. To obtain information on the what, how, and when of phenomena calls for analysis, the breaking up of the whole into its constituent parts. Consequently, when psychology turns to the study of the phenomena of human nature, analyzes it into its ingredients, it encounters among the other elements of human interest and activity the experience of beauty and its expression in art works. Hence the question: What is the nature of this experience and this expression, and in what way do they differ from other interests and activities such as the good, the true, and the useful. So psychology proceeds to draw distinctions by analyzing out the features that are unique to beauty. In doing so, psychology begins where philosophy leaves off. Philosophy inquires into the place of beauty and art in life, while psychology examines the nature of the experience of beauty and the creative activity. But the two are supplementary. For in dealing with the function of the experience philosophy must also consider its nature, while the psychological analysis of the experience also suggests its function. In fact, a good many philosophical theories of beauty deal as much with its nature as with its function, while psychological writings on aesthetics more often than not discuss its function in connection with its analysis. Nevertheless there is a difference, in that psychology, in so far as possible, relies upon data experimentally obtained, while the philosopher views beauty in a somewhat interested manner as a part of his philosophical system. Since psychology and philosophy concern themselves so intimately with art and beauty, examining both at their very well-head, they supply an important source from which we can draw reliable data for a science of aesthetics. But they are not the principal source. For that we must go to those who know, because they do, the artists themselves. When the artist, whether as poet, novelist, dramatist, or true critic, expresses himself on art, his word must be taken as coming from the court of last resort. He speaks by the authority of the living spirit of personal experience, not as the scribe of theory, dogma, or creed, by the dead letter of the law. Even when the artist insists that he does not know, he gives away many a secret in his very denial. But more often than not, the great artists of the ages have expressed themselves directly or indirectly on their work. The poetry of Keats is, in large measure, an examination of the nature of poetry in particular and art and beauty in general. Many of Browning's greatest poems, like Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea del Sarto, Pippa Passes, Sordello, Toccata of Galuppi, Abt Vogler, are expositions of the passions and aims of painter, poet, and musician. Here then we have first-hand material which, together with the speculations of the philosophers and the analyses of the psychologists, we can utilize as data from which to draw fairly reliable conclusions of the nature of art and beauty. In our study we shall rely primarily on the original source material of the creative minds, using the findings of philosophy and psychology as corroborative evidence.