Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie,
To lull the daughters of Necessity,
And keep unsteady Nature to her law,
And the low world in measured motion draw
After the heavenly tune, which none can hear
Of human mould with gross unpurged ear
I have argued elsewhere that art, by being an extension of individuality, is the strongest and most worthy expression of the meaning of life. Indeed, without meaning art cannot exist, and so the pursuit of art is fundamentally meaningful and fulfilling; rather than ‘art for art’s sake’ I champion ‘art for life’s sake.’ But how do we define art? Can art be reasonably rated by quality, or does its nature render the attempt futile? And what artforms lend themselves best to artistic expression?
Defining Art
We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.
Let us begin with the definition of art, so as to accurately and purposefully evaluate its concept. Art is human selection with artistic intent, for what else can it be? If we posit that art is equivalent to virtuosity, we must abandon the notion of creativity in art and grant that any technical or complex performance is artistic, including performances that are entirely designed to mimic past performances as accurately as possible. A professional who is tasked with restoring a faded painting, or a pianist who performs a piece of music from the classical era, is just a conduit through which the original art of the creator comes forth. A pianist who adds his own artistic expression to the piece, on the other hand, can be considered an artist by merit of selecting what to add and what to omit. Some musical eras lend their pieces to such performances, and have led to the ingenious interpretations of Arthur Rubinstein and Glenn Gould, but other eras demanded the absolute obedience of the performer. We can thus see how a great musical performer can be an artist, a virtuoso, or both, and delineate the difference between the meaning of the two.
If we argue that art is anything that evokes emotion within human beings, we must stretch our definition of art to include virtually everything. Under this definition, nature can be considered art for evoking our awe, and a pauper for evoking our sympathy. But the pauper lives his life for the sake of art no more than a mountain chooses to be risen by tectonic forces. Nor is art defined by beauty, for beauty can be found in nature and art can depict horrific ugliness.
Suppose now, for the sake of argument, that some form of artificial intelligence selectively composes a beautiful piece that would have been considered artistic if it were created by a human. Would the piece be denied its place in the world of art because of the nature of its creator? No, because the creator of that piece is ultimately the human who selectively designed the programme with the artistic intent of creating pieces that are not in his absolute control. This lack of complete control does not negate the creation of art, just as Jackson Pollock deliberately created his paintings in a chosen chaotic manner.
We can also attempt the approach of essentialism, despite its poor reputation, and claim that art requires some sort of ‘artistic element’ that can be discerned without explanation. This experiment not only begs the question of defining ‘artistic,’ but it also blurs the line between art and beauty, fails to account for much of modern art, and leads to absurd conclusions.
In general, I think we can do without some forms of metaphysics altogether; they were early attempts to explain the world before philosophy and science were adequately separated through advancement, in a time in which we knew naught about our origins and confused the works of the intersubjective with the supernatural. We have only begun to comprehend the natural, but we have learnt enough to conclude that it excludes the supernatural and that words only carry the meanings we have designed for them; to us, metaphysical thought has become an act of contemplative indulgence.
In one final attempt to test my own theory, let us divorce its elements from one another to judge whether they can independently hold the definition of art. Artistic intent, while noble and worthy, is ultimately lost unless it is expressed; it is equivalent to voltage without a circuit, and holds nothing but potential. Human selection cannot create art unless it intends to do so, for it can also seek gains that can be traced back to survival.
A combustion engine is built through careful selection, but that selection only seeks to discover the optimal solution to a problem governed by the laws of nature, and it does so for the sake of human comfort, the extension of human survival. Similarly, a tactical manoeuvre is selected and performed to reach victory for the sake of survival and riches. No, we must differentiate between selection for the sake of usefulness and selection for the sake of art, for art cannot be useful.
I loathed your regarding me as a ‘useful’ person, how no artist wishes to be so regarded or so treated; artists, like art itself, being of their very essence quite useless.
To claim that usability can characterise art is to claim that, ultimately, life itself can be art; for if usefulness is artistic then its result can be considered art, just as artistic composition can create music. Since usefulness facilitates survival, it is supposedly the artistic medium through which survival is created, and therefore the very survival of a human being can be regarded as artistic in nature. By these standards, the beautiful nest of the Satin bowerbird could be considered art despite its clear goal of attracting females for the sake of the survival of the species. But wherefore is the meaning of art if it is passively created by breath? No, we are now in a position to reject the platitudes that point at the ‘art of life’ as well as Shelley’s description of the art of the Romans. Art cannot be useful – only valuable; such is its terminus ad quem.
Neither of the components of art can be divorced from the other. For art to exist, it must be created through human selection with explicit artistic intent; it is the quintessential expression of the individual, and can be regarded as the manifestation of subjective meaning. I hold that such aphorisms as ars est celare artem celare are easily disposable.
evaluating art
One does not base judgement in our art according to the time spent on a work, but only according to the perfection of that work by which one recognizes the excellent master from the ignorant fellow.
We have concluded that art is – and must be – human selection with artistic intent: the ultimate expression of individuality, subjectivity, and personal meaning. How then can we judge, rank, price, and evaluate art? In order to do so, we must first conjure another ens rationis and depart from the realm of subjectivity; we must move to the realm of intersubjectivity, and indeed we shall see that art depends on both equally.
Like man, art is a social being; it cannot exist outside of society. Imagine a lonesome man stranded on an island, and you shall see that his existence is purely that of survival, for he is capable of seeking naught but usefulness. Even if that man were to create a work of art, he would only do so in the hope of being found or in the context of his past existence within a collective body, just as a poet might hide his work in a drawer but still follow proper rhyme and metre. Should the stranded man yearn for music or art, he would only do so as an extension of his yearning for society.
Only through society and the abolishment of necessity, as we shall see, can man create art; for although art is created subjectively, it is ejected into the world of intersubjectivity, and only there can it exist. Il piu nell’ uno. The individual operates within the intersubjective reality of communities, laws, and customs, draws his artistic inspiration from his surroundings, and moulds it into art through his subjectivity; he then releases his art into the intersubjective world and watches the ripples that it creates with glee and terror.
This intersubjectivity has a tremendous effect on art; it is the reason that art, like science, emerges from paradigms that change along the eras. Art can therefore exist only in the presence of other art, with every piece forming a page in a specific chapter. But just as art draws its subject-matter and inspiration from the intersubjective, so can it be judged by the collective based on intersubjective standards. These standards are not fixed, and they change from era to era, but they do not change sufficiently for us to warrant any attempt to describe them irrelevant.
The standards that we apply to art are intersubjectively defined, and include – among others – complexity, virtuosity, creativity, originality, enjoyability, the ability to evoke emotions, interconnectivity, beauty, tastefulness, elegance, social commentary, insightfulness, and the ability to provoke thought. The individual can evaluate art according to his subjective order of preference of those standards, but cannot introduce subjective standards, such as physical sturdiness or electrical conductivity. We need not trouble ourselves with the truthfulness of art, as Fellini and Picasso did, for both truth and deception can lend themselves to artistic expression.
I wish to point out the two standards that I place at the two extremes of my subjective hierarchy: enjoyability and interconnectivity. By enjoyability I refer to how much enjoyment can be drawn from the piece of art, with consumers of popular music acting as the main champions of that standard. I do not deny popular music its place in the realm of art, for it is created through the artistic method, but I place it alongside other forms of detestable modern hedonism.
By interconnectivity I refer to how meaningful of a page the work of art constitutes within its chapter, and how rich it is with allegory and reference. The artist draws his inspiration from other works and creates his own in response, and often observes those other works during his creation; creating a page without accessing other pages of the chapter is a challenging, bare attempt at artistic expression. The more interconnected and influential the piece of art, the greater it becomes.
There is no art where there is no style, and no style where there is no unity, and unity is of the individual. No doubt Homer had old ballads and stories to deal with, as Shakespeare had chronicles and plays and novels from which to work, but they were merely his rough material. He took them, and shaped them into song. They become his, because he made them lovely.
Thus do I reconcile collectivism and individualism; art is the expression of the subjective meaning of the individual, but great art draws its greatness from its place within the collective body and its social richness and interconnectivity. Both individuality and collectivity lend themselves to art, and by extension to the meaning of life; the man of character is the individual who thrives within the collective, walks the line between normalcy and conformity, and shapes both his life and his surroundings by his will and art; only he can evoke the praise that Napoleon granted Goethe. While individuality is the nobler cause of the two, and that through which the noble man should identify, it cannot exist in the absence of the collective.
But is art, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder, or is it limited to the intention of the artist? What is the place of observation in artistic discussion? We can use the definitions we have logically outlined as heuristics to conclude that art incorporates both attributes, for art exists separately and differently in the subjective and the intersubjective. The artist must needs have some intention in his art, for otherwise he cannot engage in the artistic process at all. Even if the artist intends to use his art to challenge the definition of art itself, as John Cage has famously done, the result will still be a piece of art wrought by artistic expression. The meaning of a piece of art belongs (quite literally) first and foremost to the creator, and that meaning, like his subjectivity, cannot be taken away – but can also not be tyrannically imposed on the beholder.
The beholder belongs to the collective, and chooses where the piece of art falls within the chapter of its times. Not all observers are equally positioned to influence that outcome, but they all share some of that ability. After the artist draws his inspiration from the intersubjective, morphs it within his subjectivity, and ejects it into the intersubjective as art, the observer receives that art from the intersubjective and draws it into his subjective. During that process, the observer can attribute a subjective meaning to the work and eject his interpretation back into the intersubjective. As Wilde says, the work of art is simply a starting-point for a new creation; through the observer, new hues might be discovered that the artist did not notice at first, and the artist might choose to adapt his intentional meaning in response or to reject the new interpretation, but can only do so to the extent of influence he wields in the collective body. The final outcome is the intersubjective interpretation of the piece.
How, then, should we evaluate art? We have cleared the way, and the answer lies within our grasp: the value of art is determined by the art’s success in meeting the standards that we have described. The hierarchy of standards within the intersubjective changes from era to era; critics of the Romantic period, for example, valued the evocation of feelings higher than technicality and complexity, but still used the same standards that we have established in their evaluation.
Additionally, the value of art is determined by the purity of the artist’s artistic intent. Reynold’s Venus chided Cupid when he attempted mathematical calculations, for his arrows turned blunt as a result. Any price that is placed upon a piece of art damages its quality by default, for it mars the purity of the artistic intent. Great art cannot be commoditised; it is invaluable not because it cannot be commercially bought, but because the very act of commercialism destroys its value. In risk of appropriating Nietzsche, I hold that great artists possess a Will to Art, and do not engage in artistic creation for the sake of profit. Dali deservedly fell from grace when he gave in to consumerism.
Modern art is so generally held in disdain, or at least lesser value, because of its blatant disregard of these codes: rather than create interconnectivity, it hides behind ambiguity and postmodernism; rather than champion beauty, it attempts to shock us through ugliness, and directly competes with advertisements; rather than refrain from commoditisation, it lends itself to money-laundering; rather than take an insightful stance, it presents the viewer with purposefully pointless enigmas and tasks him with solving them on its behalf; rather than stretch the limits of complexity, it hides its simplicity in the false uniqueness of NFTs.
We need not shy away from rejecting certain pieces of art or judging them to be inferior in our eyes! We can and should evaluate art in our subjective mind and in our intersubjective influence, and demand better pieces from ourselves and our artists. Just as the collective deems the value of art, so does art reflect the worth of the collective. Let those who attempt to confuse you with claims of subjectivity mislead you no longer, for you can see through their self-interest, and judge their works accordingly.
The forms of art
A truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those that he has selected.
Artforms are simply the mediums through which individuality can express itself and on which art ultimately depends, for art cannot exist without a medium. To justly evaluate artforms, we must do so according to their ability to facilitate artistic expression; for just as substance is limited by the characteristics of its chemical elements, so is art limited by the medium through which it is expressed. Additionally, we must also evaluate artforms according to their susceptibility to market pressures, for we have seen that those pressures cannot but tarnish the artistic process.
The traditional subdivision of artforms included only architecture, sculpture, painting, literature, music, and performing, until Riccioto Canudo effected the intersubjective to add cinema to its categories. I argue that subsequent artforms, which were not traditionally included, do not sufficiently diverge from these seven to warrant separate divisions, with the exception of an eighth category that I shall propose.
Performing is the art of physical expression; it is limited, above all else, by the characteristics of the human body, and generally only lends itself to other artforms. Acting complements theatre as dancing complements music, and the performers are judged according to their ability to interpret and execute the intentions of the playwright and composer. Performing is the art of the athlete and the imitator, and relies upon virtuosity above all other standards; it is also, by definition, enacted in front of a crowd, which more often than not votes upon the content with its coin and attends for the sake of entertainment.
Painting is the art of visual expression; it is limited by the effectiveness of the sense of sight, which is arguably second only to the sense of sound in an artistic context. Painting meets many of the standards that we have posited: its interconnectivity has produced more styles than any other artform, its virtuosity and ability to evoke emotions are undeniable, and its subject-matter can inspire thought and express social commentary. Indeed, painting is such a prominent artform that many confound ‘artist’ and ‘painter.’ Based on these attributes, I place painting as my fourth preference for artistic expression.
Sculpture and architecture share many of the characteristics of painting, but sacrifice colour and stylistic flexibility for the sake of the dimension of depth. Architecture differs from sculpture only in size and usability, neither of which grant it an artistic advantage. Michelangelo, a master of both painting and sculpture, argued that the less physical effort the artist exhorts the better his art becomes. Da Vinci, in turn, argued that quanto più un’ arte porta seco fatica di corpo, tanto più è vile! Although Michelangelo did not intend to compare sculpture to painting, both of which he valued dearly, I side with Da Vinci, and draw my conclusions about the elegance of art from his expression. Architecture is the less elegant of the two, and therefore the less refined.
But architecture can provide us with an interesting case study of the importance of beauty. Because architecture is both useful and artistic, its works incorporate both utility and beauty to varying degrees and allow us to scrutinize human preferences; when provided with a choice, do people prefer beauty or usefulness? We need not ruminate about the subject, for we can observe the condition and public appreciation of the creations of the modernist architecture style; ironically, designs that were once chosen for their usefulness are left unused, for their ugliness has caused potential users to feel detestation and disgust. Jonathan Pageau posits an interesting argument: that architecture is the most important artform, because it shapes the physical space in which society operates. Although this position elicits thoughts regarding the proper place of symbology in society, we dismiss it as too collectivistic and utilitarian for our model.
We can now turn to the forms of art that were omitted from the traditional subdivisions and show that they also rely solely on visual delight. Textile arts, pottery, jewel-crafting, design, digital editing, fashion, and photography are all visual artforms, which create physical pieces to be observed. These artforms do not warrant their unique categories, and can be evaluated under the same assumptions about visuality and through the purity of their artistic intention and their compliance with our standards. Indeed, some people consider visual artforms to be the only artforms, although visual arts have not always enjoyed that distinctive status. In the classical period, people dismissed visual arts as mere handiwork, which lacked a theoretical basis. This approach changed only in the renaissance, with the introduction of linear perspective.
Photography, despite its popularity, is the closest to being disregarded from our discussion of artforms. Recall our definition and ask yourself: where does artistic selection occur in the process of photography? It cannot exist within the subject-matter, for we have shown that neither nature nor life is art, and it cannot exist in the risk or challenge that the photographer had to undertake to produce the photograph, for even if a place is hard to reach or an event rare and hard to capture, overcoming those hardships through peril or patience is not artistic.
Suppose a photographer arranges a set of objects through artistic selection and captures it; is the piece of art the photograph or the arrangement? If you were to be brought to the scene to observe the objects with your eyes, would the artistic process have been mitigated? The photograph, in this case, is naught but a means of distribution; it is equivalent to an internet router or a carrier. Were the photographer to artistically influence the way in which the viewer views the photo, as we shall see in cinema, then perhaps we could discern the artistic process.
Furthermore, what makes a photographer a virtuoso? Is it his ability to choose the best aperture and lens? Can that ability be replaced by skills of digital editing, which is but a variation of painting with different means, to produce the desired effect? Similarly, if an exceptionally skilled painter were to paint a room so accurately as to resemble an exact photograph, would he have engaged in artistic selection or in mimicry? To those who would claim that some moments are simply impossible to witness without a camera, such as the split second in which a kingfisher meets its prey, I answer: would you consider observing through a microscope artistic solely due to the overcoming of ocular limitation? To my mind, photography is more of a craft than an artform; its place in this discussion is held only by the force of the intersubjective and by the ambiguity of what I can express only as ‘the selection of which moment to capture and which camera effects to use to augment it.’
We have now come to the seventh artform: cinema. Like painting and sculpture, cinema is primarily a visual art, but its visuality is bound to time rather than space; like music, it uses time as its canvas. What cinema sacrifices in tangibility it doubly regains in motion and juxtaposition, and what music does with notes, cinema does with photographs. As we shall see, one musical note does not make a musical piece, but two suffice. The movement between the notes and the juxtaposition of one after the other creates a musical relationship and story, and those are the essence of music. Just so is the case with cinema – it is the flow of imagery, rather than the images themselves, that matters most.
But the images also matter, even if they cannot be studied as delightfully as paintings can. Suppose that, for the sake of artistic expression, a film features a painting in one of its scenes; by doing so, the film not only immediately introduces all of the interconnectivity and cultural significance behind the painting, but also introduces a relational, almost musical element through that painting. In a single frame, the artist can decide the relation of the painting and the scene; that painting can be at the forefront or in a corner, basked in light or shrouded in shadow, straight or skewed, and even present or absent (supposing the viewer expects it to appear) – all of these decisions can introduce completely different meanings to the art. So much can be expressed through Mise-en-scène alone!
This form of selection creates a new infinity of artistic options that simply do not exist in physical artforms, for if the artists of other mediums were to attempt to incorporate it they would only entice our scorn. Imagine a painter drawing a scene that depicts a set of historic figures juxtaposed alongside a famous painting for allegory; oh, what an offense of double mimicry that would be! To recreate another artist’s work for the sake of emulating the juxtaposition that belongs to another medium! Such a pastiche would shame any artist who sets out to gain appreciation rather than elicit a chuckle of amusement. No, artistic juxtaposition belongs only to those artforms that exist in the dimension of time.
Just like juxtaposition, flow is reserved only to arts that have a timely existence; as we have demonstrated, it is the very essence of their artistic nature. In cinema flow refers to direction, and governs the transition from one frame to another; this element of cinema, as we shall see, is what truly differentiates it from theatre. Through the selection of a series of frames and their composition, the artist can create an artistic experience that does not exist elsewhere, for it controls not only the observed object but also the very essence of the observation. A simple axial cut on an inanimate object can entirely change its meaning, and the method of cutting to the next frame can set the tone of a scene or suggest an outcome. A fade to white, for example, can by itself suggest the death of a character. The haunting beauty of the mostly inanimate introduction to Harakiri provides us with a case study of the force of pure cinematic direction.
The timebound nature of cinema allows it to adopt another artform: music, whose inclusion in stories alongside imagery creates such beautiful synergies. Indeed, music complements cinema so well that we might wonder whether its incorporation within the latter does not necessitate the triumph of cinema as an artform by default. But such a conclusion is a fallacy; music lends itself to cinema as it lends itself to dance – without changing its own pure nature. To cinema, painting and music are alike, and can only be used through juxtaposition; while the flow of notes can complement the flow of imagery, only the latter constitutes the true nature of cinema.
To return to our evaluation of theatre, we must deem it an inferior version of cinema; both artforms are a flow of timebound imagery that employs other visual artforms, performing, and music, but theatre differs in the mutability of the performance and the physical presence of the performer. Those traits enable theatre to augment the art of performing to a higher extent than cinema. Cinema, on the other hand, eclipses theatre through its introduction of a completely new dimension of art – namely, control over the point of observation.
That control over the point of observation is the greatest strength of cinema, and grants it a realm of potential expression that is blocked to other mediums – the combination of motion and emotion. Cinematography and direction are indeed unique to cinema, but this excellent artform also draws force from literary texts, music, visual arts, and performing. By merit of these strengths, cinema becomes the artform with the most artistic potential that we have seen thus far; for, the less limited the artform, the more expressive the artistic selection that it can facilitate.
Must we therefore conclude that cinema is the ultimate artform, whose superior place is firmly rooted in the intricacy of its potential? We can provide a double criticism in this regard that will force us to abandon that conclusion. Let us return to our definition of art: human selection with artistic intent, the quintessential expression of subjective meaning into the intersubjective. But is cinema truly an expression of the individual? Here we can see that the artform’s grand potential beats its own purpose, for indeed it eclipses the capacity of any single artist that has ever walked the earth. Which polymath has ever been so great as to produce a movie that features all of the grandeur that we have illustrated? And even were that creation possible, the resulting film would be limited to some form of Rakugo, for it would necessitate the appearance of a single actor; I remind the importance of the art of performing in cinema to those who would suggest Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen.
We have reached the problem of the Auteur: whose artistic selection is expressed through the medium of cinema? The endeavour of film-creation is too great, and necessitates a whole crew of artists and virtuosos. In addition to rendering complete ownership over the work of art by a single individual impossible, the challenge of cinema also brings immense market forces that affect – and sometimes shape – the artistic process; these forces sometimes possess such a great effect that Scorsese’s criticism becomes unavoidably true.
Our second criticism comes in the form questioning the superiority of cinema’s complicatedness, and here I posit the existence of what would be traditionally considered as an eighth artform, but should really be the sixth under our better categorization: physicality, visual imagery, visual flow, auditory flow, and rational imagination (through literature). We shall henceforth refer to these categories as our separate artforms. The sixth artform differs from the rest because it introduces an element that so powerfully plays on the standard of emotional evocation; namely, the element of interactivity.
This new artform is game development, which enjoys and suffers from the respective benefits and hindrances of cinema to a greater extent. Game development introduces the additional skill requirement of programming for its creation, and therefore necessitates an even more concentrated team effort at the expense of individual expression; it also suffers from the same market forces, and relies even more heavily on enjoyability than cinema does.
But what game development loses through complicatedness it regains through interactivity. A game is simply an interactive film, for it incorporates all of the characteristics of cinema with the addition of game mechanics that govern the player’s experience. What has heretofore been shown to the spectator in cinema can now be felt first-hand. Through game development, an intimidating foe no longer requires the terror or defeat of the protagonist to strike an imposing figure upon us, but can intimidate the ‘interactive observer’ directly through domination, thereby causing the player to personally feel helplessness or frustration. Should the game’s mechanics lend themselves to the characterisation of the foe, the artistic experience would be augmented even further.
The interactivity of games enables them to introduce yet another element to art: skill. For the player to experience the entirety of the piece of art, he must skilfully overcome the limitations set by the developers. This element is brave and unique, and cannot be even imagined in other artforms.
In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister. Its great complicatedness renders game development a challenging artform to apply to thoughtful and meaningful subject-matters and through which to produce elegance. Analogically, games require rules to be played, and by breaking down those rules we will eventually end up without a game at all. As game development breaks down the barriers of artistic mediums, so does it break down its ability to shine through those mediums – its freedom paralyzes it. Having explored the nature of cinema and game development in detail, I place them as equals within my third preference for artistic expression.
Music and literature
Non merita nome di creatore, sennon Iddio ed il Poeta
The two final forms of art warrant a separate discussion, for the struggle for supremacy between them is the fiercest. The debate over music and literature is but an extension of a philosophical debate about the self: sometimes about what it is and sometimes about what it should be. Under the assumption that deterministic forces do not govern the entirety of the mind’s operations, we regard the self as something that is characterised by both emotion and intellect.
Which is the nobler attribute? Is the extraordinary man he who is characterised and governed by great emotion or by great intellect? Which of these two more markedly determines virtue, character, excellence, and even morality? The debate cannot be decisively settled, but we shall attempt to explore it through the champions of its greatest extremes.
Music is without a doubt the most emotional form of artistic expression; what other medium holds such power of influence, such intrinsic relation to human feeling? Its sweetness can soften the heart of the resentful; its mellow sombreness, stronger still, can move us to tears by recollection, or by a pure passionate surge. In relation to music, painting can only dazzle us by a projection of colour and literature can only evoke our feeling through sympathy, but music fearlessly reaches out to the emotion, and grasps it confidently. By fretting on the strings of heart – to such an extent as to affix its rate – music drives artistic expression to emotional depths that eclipse articulation; “if the composer could say what he had to say in words, he would not bother trying to say it in music.”
Literature is the art of the intellect; I hold this truth to be self-evident, for the medium of literature is naught but the rational mind. The page, like the photograph, is but a carrier, and voiced words are but sounds that relay intersubjectively decided upon meanings. We have shown that art requires a medium of expression, but if articulation requires mediums in turn then it cannot hold the true essence of literature. Indeed, the true essence of literature is the rational mind.
I acknowledge that the rational mind has its own limitations, and also that other arts share their place in it. The mind cannot imagine a new colour or dimension, and similarly, painting cannot use light that exceeds the visual spectrum. I concur, additionally, that the rational mind can imagine what to paint or what to musically express; even so, the medium of literature is the rational mind – res ipsa loquitur.
We have referred to artforms such as painting and sculpture as arts of visual imagery, but what we truly mean is the guidance of the visual sense – or perhaps the guidance of physical light through reflection and obstruction to trigger the sense of sight. We have referred to music as auditory flow, but what we truly mean is the guidance of the auditory sense – or perhaps the manipulation of air to trigger the auditory sense. But under these observations, should we not regard pages as paintings and voiced words as music?
Literature is guided thought; it does not exist within the page, but within our subjective minds through the intersubjective meanings of words. The relationship between words and thought is undeniable – the greater the powers of articulation, the greater the powers of mind, and vice versa. Multilingualism is so beneficial to the mind because it enlarges the realm of thought, whereas newspeak would seek to purposefully obstruct that realm.
To refute an anticipated form of criticism: I do not hold that art is different forms of sensual guidance, for the senses are hard to define and unequal in their ability to bear artistic expression. The very notion that all senses are artistic is preposterous; would you perhaps argue in favour of guided hunger, and name hedonism as its philosophical counterpart? Would you attempt to guide proprioception?
We conclude that literature cannot be divorced from the intellect. Literature bears the significance of words and thoughts, and although it sometimes draws lyrical inspiration from music, it inspires, above all else, rumination. Ironically, Nietzsche’s expression on the significance of music is artistic in the literary sense alone. Indeed, words lend themselves to the depths of philosophy as well as to the frivolity of aesthetic poetry, and the line between philosophical thought and literature is hard to define, for excellent literary works often carry philosophical meanings.
Is philosophy reserved to the purely rhetoric mathematical thought of Spinoza, or can it be enriched by the interconnective allegories of Hume? What constitutes the barrier between philosophy and literature? We can refer to our established heuristics to conclude that the difference is intent alone; if the philosopher intends to be artistic and express his thoughts in the style of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, then his philosophy also belongs to the realm of art. Similarly, writers of literary stories can shift their focus from the philosophical, as Sartre did in Les Mouches, to the artistic, as Joseph Conrad did through the impressionistic style of Lord Jim (although, ironically, the former championed music in his first novel). The more the writer focuses on artistic expression, the more his work resembles poetry; for although we have established thought-provocation as an artistic standard, its realm is more philosophical than poetic.
This line of thought presents us with a problem: if words do not necessarily carry an artistic intent, then, like architecture, they carry an element of usefulness. Perhaps that usefulness does not manifest in philosophy, for philosophy is an expression of individuality, but it can be found in dialogue that stems from necessity. In fact, philosophy and human connection are among the rare things that, like art, are valuable, for they belong to individuality and collectiveness rather than to comfort and survivability.
Perhaps even glory belongs to the valuable, and yet too hastily, I judge, did Themistocles boast of not knowing the flute, for he underestimated the value of art and overestimated the value of glory. We have discussed the inartistic nature of tactical manoeuvres, but we must now add glory to their objectives. Indeed, in ancient societies glory held higher value than art, and so Themistocles’ claim was reasonable at the time, but we shall see that glory’s value is already fading away.
We return to music and literature: the usability of language leaves literature at a slight disadvantage in relation to music, for music is inherently useless. One might point at the flow of sound of an alarm siren or argue that music can be used to connect people, but we can easily refute the former, for it holds no artistic intent, and reject the latter. The connection of people, or any force that drives it, is by no means useful; like art, it is valuable, and constitutes the basis of the collective whole. Even if we were to agree that music could become useful through human connection, that attribute would immediately leap to other artforms. Just as the musician can connect people through anthems and dance, so can the painter and the writer. Recollect, dear reader, the historic effect of the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich and the tale of Aeneas.
We must also observe that literature bears the greatest interconnectivity among the artforms. What music can reference through replication or link through leitmotifs, literature can always express in thought; and indeed, words can express and delineate the interconnectivity of other artforms to such an incredible degree that I almost shudder to attempt the description. Consider the notion of envy that is so artistically woven into the work of Proust, and how it links Swann and the protagonist through the motif of Phèdre; it is almost like a musical theme, but one that can manifest itself through every thought or creation that has ever existed. Consider again the “note of doom that runs like a purple thread through the texture of Dorian Gray,” and the critique of possession that is so apparent in the Forsytes, even if it is distastefully pointed out later in their saga. Herein lies Literature’s greatest strength, for literature encompasses interconnectivity to the absolute extent of the word.
And what curious creatures words are! What a history and richness of meaning do they carry, but also what confusion, and what dramatic influence. “Words, words, words.” cries the lost soul, and indeed words can be both clear and enigmatic, both complicated and simple. The term mot juste is too high of a standard even for Chrysostom. As Felix Mendelssohn pointed out, music can be thought of as too definitive to put to words rather than too ambiguous. “Language is metaphor and simile, and the operative word is like – spoken or implied. Words approach experience roundabout; music is specific: what you hear is what you get; language is rich, various, and inexact.”
How magnificently artistic is ambiguity! What vivid colours does it introduce to the realms of thought and communication, and how heavy is the gravity that it introduces through the interconnectivity of multiple layers of meaning. Is ‘circuit’ synonymous with ‘circumference,’ or does the meaning of each word carry the unique philosophical depth that Emily Dickinson attributed to it? To that question we answer: both. “He who knows not the heart of words knows not the hearts of man.” Etymology lends itself to poetry as beautifully as sounds of nature lend their significance to music; the low note draws from the growl of the large beast.
Music and Literature share a border through poetry and song, in which words and music complement one another. We know clearly which of those artforms leans on the force of words for its artistic expression and which leans on musicality. This difference can be accentuated through the difference between these two forms of expression: song is musical notes produced by vocal chords and poetry is stylistic wording. The meaning of the words in song belongs not to the realm of music but to literature, just as the rhyme of the poem is musical in nature. We have come far enough to realise the difference between the two, but also to appreciate the intricate way in which they can be woven together – as in the incredible works of Schubert, whose lieder conjure forms so masterfully as to all but utter the words ‘spindle’ or ‘hooves.’ In addition to their border, music and literature also share multiple ideas; how should one describe the ending of Great Expectations but as a Picardy Third?
The characterisation of music as the art of the emotion and literature as the art of the intellect leads us to suggest another dichotomy between the two artforms: music is the art of the collective and literature is the art of the individual. Although both artforms, by the very definition of enabling artistic expression, exist in both the subjective and the intersubjective, they still have a strong affiliation to one or the other.
Let us explore the collective significance of music. Although all artforms connect people, music possesses the strongest force to bind them, and it is inherently designed to be shared; it moves us to dance in the company of others, creates ethos through national anthems, and guides rituals and ceremonies. Without its elements of human connection, music loses its greater force and becomes a rather fringe mode of experimentation, as can be found in the music of Schoenberg; alternatively, it becomes akin to the cacophony of the Corybantes. This kind of music does not evoke our emotions and therefore surrenders the paramount feature of the musical artform; its alienating nature can explain the failure of Atonality. But music’s connectivity is strongest only in its ability to connect people; music struggles to meet the artistic standard of interconnectivity, for although that standard exists within a certain musical style (or paradigm), a musical piece cannot include many allegories and references without betraying its originality and drawing our scorn.
One need only observe the effect that music has on poor sufferers of Alzheimer’s disease to view the power of collective resonance. Here we see a soul whose intellect has been locked away from reach; as much as the admission hurts me, I must conclude that to call this soul an individual would betray the meaning of the term. And yet, that human can engage with the collective through emotion, and dance to the tunes of music as if he were still surrounded by his friends of old; the nature of collective connection is truly an inseparable part of humanity.
Perhaps even emotion and thought are enabled only through the collective? Let us adopt the style of Locke and Hobbes and make our assumptions about ‘the natural state of man’ without society, even though such a state cannot exist and never has existed. We have seen that the lonesome man, as we have established through the example of the island, is incapable of creating art; we shall now see that the theoretical man who exists without a society is capable of neither emotion nor thought. Such a man can feel and plan; he can flee in terror from the carnivorous beast and construct a tool to fend it off, but he cannot feel the emotion of happiness or ruminate his existence. Indeed, only social animals can exhibit what appears to be intellect and emotion.
The unsocial man lives the life of survival alone and is akin to a beast with superior cognitive abilities. Emotion and thought can appear in the individual only through his relation to the collective, and perhaps those are the true things that separate humanity from the rest of the biological world. Some theologians posit that the difference between man and beast is the soul; if that is indeed the case, then God made his one and only appearance to grant soul to mankind between 200,000 to 60,000 years ago. Any form of human social communication can be traced back to words. The soul, then, is individuality or subjectivity, and it can only exist within the collective under the condition of lingual communication. The larger and more complex the collective body, and the richer its language, the more artistic and thoughtful can its individuals become.
The longer one studies life and literature, the more strongly one feels that behind everything that is wonderful stands the individual, and that it is not the moment that makes the man, but the man who creates the age.
Entertain me a bit longer, dear reader, and allow me to explore but two more aspects of music. We have shown the great emotional power of music, and indeed we know that many people connect to music only in the emotional sense and do not concern themselves with the craft of music – the understanding of the mathematical calculations and technicalities that come with composing. ‘Let us not understand music, for by doing so we shall harm our enjoyment’ they say; even Kierkegaard admitted to not understand music, and praised it only from ‘beyond the borders of its land.’ To those who hold such thoughts we say: live in the land and the bounty of your harvest shall be multiplied; only those who understand the musical process can tap into the depths of musical expression. Art can indeed be liked rationally.
The second interesting aspect of music is its physical expression of art; indeed, the connection between musical performance and the body is inseparable. We have alluded to the way in which the heart matches its pace to a musical beat, and we can observe that musical performers who practice their physical balance improve their sense of rhythm. The connection between music and performing is reciprocal: just as dancers are the athletes of fine music, so are musical performers the “athletes of fine muscles.” Indeed, the musical performer differs from the composer in the very essence of artistic expression; the former belongs to the artform of performing and the latter to music, with some artists, such as Liszt, mastering both. We conclude that musical concerts, in the modern era of musical recordings, are attended mostly for the sake of performance; but the musical performer, unlike the dancer or actor, is also evaluated in accordance with his ability to musically improvise so as to delight the crowd.
What then is the ranking that we shall apply? I propose the following preferences: individuality over collectiveness, intellect over emotion, and interconnectivity over any other artistic standard. Music is only superior in its uselessness; the descendants of Jubal must surrender the first place to the superiority of the literary artform.
The future of art
We picture the future as a reflexion of the present projected into an empty space, whereas it is the result, often almost immediate, of causes which for the most part escape our notice.
We have done our best to scrutinise art; we have broken down the artistic from as many perspectives as we could, and we now possess a better understanding of its characteristics and qualities. But perhaps, although Emerson would protest, we can add yet another shade to the discussion by considering what will come at the fin de siècle: the future of art in a global context.
We have shown that art and value begin where the useful and necessary end. Among the irreconcilable dichotomies that we have proposed (emotion and intellect, subjective and intersubjective, literary and musical), all of which are deeply connected within themselves despite their clear line of difference, perhaps the most important dichotomy is that of the useful and the valuable. Indeed, the valuable cannot be useful because it can emerge only after usefulness has been exhausted. Just so, art can be pursued only from atop the summit of meeting necessity.
Since the man who deals with survival cannot divert his attention (let alone develop a positive sense of ennui), he requires some other being that would carry his burden and release him from his plight; in other words, he needs a slave, for he can only free himself from necessity in sudore vultus alieni. We have already shown that imposing one’s subjective meaning on another human being is tyrannical, and so is using the toil of another being for the same cause. Regardless of whether doing so was just or direct, enslaving another person was – throughout the majority of human history – the only means to create art and value. Even art that was produced by actual slaves was only enabled through their own success against necessity, by the fruits of the horrid reality in which they were subjugated.
There is no real wealth but the labour of man. Were the mountains of gold and the valleys of silver, the world would not be one grain of corn the richer; no one comfort would be added to the human race.
Fortunately, we have left most of human enslavement behind, and in its place introduced mechanical slavery to defeat our needs. By replacing the toil of the intrinsically valuable with that of the intrinsically useful we have freed ourselves from environmental forces and driven ourselves up on Maslow’s Hierarchy. And indeed, what is self-actualisation but the creation of art?
But do we agree with Shelley, and wish to seek wealth and comfort? No, for there lies the greatest threat to art and the intellect! Like wealth, comfort knows no limitations and would usurp art by means of hedonism. Wealth is indeed the greatest antithesis to value, just as comfort is to art. Where necessity ends, both comfort and art begin – we can have either motives or appetites; one can choose but one path in such a yellow wood. What a Pyrrhic victory awaits us should we choose wrongly.
Thus should boast the businessman: ‘It is I who have released you from the jaws of necessity; you shall be a slave to need no longer, for I have enslaved resources and machines for your sake! I have run my course, and provided you with tools to use for your survival; grab the baton from my hand, stand upon the summit of my work, and unlock true value through your art!’ Instead, he boasts of comfort and of wealth; I fear that the future will be shaped by his distasteful hand – quod di omen avertat.
Nor will art be assaulted by comfort alone. Per aspera ad astra; man draws inspiration from experience, which has been engulfed by more shadow than light in previous eras, and still is in many regions. What will be the fate of art when hardship, suffering, and anguish will have been abolished? “Great art has been produced by great terror.” Indeed, the progression of society has rendered many of our instincts and urges inappropriate and misplaced. The cognitive tendencies towards tribalism, conflict, and rapacity have not disappeared, but rather they have been repressed.
Thus, steadfast and beautiful, let us also be enemies, my friends! Divinely will we strive against one another!
Indeed, bona rerum secundarum optabilia; adversarum mirabilia. Will the abolishment of necessity and strife also stifle artistic expression? Can art exist in an ideal world, whose Deleuzian society faces neither scarcity nor vice? I argue that it can; In the question of choosing between human nature and social functionality, so interestingly explored in a work of an artform that has seen much bias and underappreciation, we have already cast our die. Indeed, some of the greatest works of art and philosophy have been produced by those who had not known personal hardship and who lived in eras in which some aspects of human suffering had already been repressed.
Glory, unlike art, cannot exist in an ideal world; its place in our evaluation is doomed to fall from the valuable to the detested, as can already be seen through the rise of the importance of art, science, and philosophy. The collective whose individuals seek glory must seek combat to fulfil its militant aspirations, but the days of military prowess are past. Clausewitz bemoaned the derogatory connotation attached to the term Ruhmsucht in his time, but little did he know what fate awaits that term in the future.
Materiam superabit opus. Perhaps artistic subject-matters will change when suffering and glory are beaten, but just as Sisyphus can choose to lift the boulder despite the absence of objective meaning, so can he choose to create art despite the absence of hardship. Just as Faranita degli Uberti stood erect despite the unspeakable misery of Dis, we can stand erect despite misery’s complete absence. We must only hope that the defeat of necessity will lead us to value rather than wealth.
A third consideration remains: perhaps technological advances will change humanity so much as to exceed the suppression of human nature and replace it with the ability to alter that nature itself; could Horace have erred when he said naturum expellas furca, tamen usque recurrent? The possibilities that come with this potential concatenation of circumstances are limitless; humanity might change its relation to hardship, find new barriers to push against (such as the development of an artificial being that is capable of creating art), or even discover a new artistic dimension. Imagine a seventh artform, by our standards, whose complicatedness does not rely on interacting with the consumer but on changing his nature! Would that not be an interesting way of eliminating the platitude of ‘the art of life?’
One certainty remains: the paradigms and art of posterity are, by definition, beyond our imagination; if they were within our grasp they would already have changed, for they are chaotic at a second degree. We cannot know what we will become, but can only choose a path.
epilogue
L’arte non è mai finita, ma solo abbandonata
We have accomplished what we set out to do; we have shown the nature, quality, and significance of art and settled the way with which to evaluate its mediums and works. Perhaps, one day, we will return to the discussion to tackle the question of beauty, but it yet escapes our grasp. On fait ce qu’on peut.
We have also established that, to art, man is the ultimate God and creator; the artist need only say ‘let there be art’ for art to appear, but let him not forget that he also walks amongst other Gods who will judge his work accordingly.
Allow me but another passing word on the supernatural God: we can draw some humoristic anecdotes about omnipotence from the logical discussion in which we have engaged. We have posited that art is a social being – that art cannot exist in the absence of a collective. Suppose now that God overcomes the paradox of the stone; would he then not have to face yet another challenge of creation? Without polytheism, would God be able to create art?
We have also posited that absolute freedom paralyzes the creator. Perhaps the ultimate cosmic joke is that God is trapped in his own limitlessness? Perhaps his absolute control leaves him without rules, and he does not play with us because he simply does not know how?
But enough of illogical discussion – we must create art.