Saturday, August 04, 2007

Does art have to be beautiful?

The following was posted by Final Identity under the Photographers Don't post, and deserves a post of its own.
I've always insisted myself that beauty is essential to art. With the understanding that "beauty" is not the same as "pretty" or "pleasant" or "palatable".

F.I.:
Art begs for a response, or an interaction, or a perception from another person. It can even be "easy" because it didn't take effort at the moment of creation, but that ease was the product of a lifetime of preparation on the part of the creator, whose entire essence and collected world view somehow got translated into the work. Or the effort of creation itself can be "the work" part.

An artist simply trains himself in these various communications and then tries to use them to his purpopses.

I recall a class in "Western Values" or some such, a freshman-level college thing where we all got our first chance to talk about deep philosophical ideas. We did some Sophocles, some Anouilh, a little Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Ya know, old chestnuts.

One question arose. Does an artist have to create something that's beautiful? Plenty of students in our seminar, wise to their newfound politicizations, suggested no, he doesn't. He could create an ugly hideous thing, but the response in the viewer might be the intent of the art. Picasso's "Guernica" for example -- a scene of destruction, with the composition itself destroyed. "Mr. Picasso," asked the disgruntled General, who had wanted the glories of his regime idolized instead of battered, "did you paint that picture?" "No, Mr. General. You did," so responded Pablo.

But I insisted that artists must work toward beauty. Or use some other word -- toward wholeness, or toward sanity, or toward just plain old organic compositional togetherness. I think Picasso would be the first to say that the overwhelming response to "Guernica" was in itself a "beauty" of a sort.

Most of my classmates just thought I was a philistine, wishing for pretty pastel reproductions of impressionist water lilies. After all, who insists on something as bourgeois as "beauty" when so much more deep, philosophical, political concepts are available to the artist -- the struggling worker, the horrors of war, the destruction of the environment, plays about dysfunctional families. These are ART because they're DEEP, so thought the class. This fellow seeking beauty? He doesn't GET that art can be UNSETTLING. And it OUGHT to be. So they thought. It ought to "challenge assumptions."

No. I think "Animal Farm" is quite beautiful. Who doesn't see the beauty in "some are just more equal than others"? What a turn on a turn. Orwell would agree. "Guernica" has an incredible organic wholeness to its composition, line and form in place, colors in unity. Even "Morder Hoffnung des Frauens," a weird experimental theater piece from the Jugendstil period in Vienna about ... ya know ... nothing much, except Angst -- even that has a beauty to it. They missed my intent. Most of them are just lawyers and business executives now. I guess their fervent politicization didn't help them challenge their assumptions much at all.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

"One question arose. Does an artist have to create something that's beautiful?"

Here's a simple rule of thumb. For every question of the type: "Does subject have to verb?" the answer is no. We don't have to anything. Not even should.

A better way to pose the question is: Is it satisfying or beneficial for an artist to create something that's considered beautiful?

There is, of course, no simple answer. To some it may be. To others, the opposite might be true. You as an artist need to follow your bliss. It doesn't matter how others label your work. The quality of your art is a function of your connectedness to your higher self (or, if you prefer, soul). It is its authenticity that matters.

What you are really discussing about is the meaning of beauty. That is an interesting philosophical question, but it has no direct relation to the duty of an artist.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

TTL, while you have a good point philosophically, I think that the original point is not what we must or must not do, but rather if it is still art if it is not beautiful.

laurie said...

I think it's an interesting question, What must I do?

Must I help people?

Must I be beautiful? Is only beauty "the good"?

If it is true, the maxim "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free," then isn't absolutely everything *true*, beautiful?

Does anything exist *in truth* that is not beauty?

just wondering stuff.

Laurie

Anonymous said...

Isn't beauty in the eye of the beholder?

While we all feel that there is some truth in this, the existence of "convergence points" (for example, all will agree that the women on Domai are beautiful , whilst they still may disagree on which is the most beautiful ;) suggest that there is a more universal aspect to the concept of beauty.

Perhaps art could be defined as the search for this universal factor?

If so, then it is certainly a dimension of art to search for what does not participate to this universality, or even to search for the contrary of such a universal factor. Then, art may occasionally verse into the abominable in its quest for truth...

Cliff Prince said...
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Cliff Prince said...
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Cliff Prince said...

... no ...

I just don't buy it. The whole "beauty" question is intrinsic. Art isn't a "search" for some kind of definition. The definition already exists. The artistic creator is simply using it to talk to other people about his own ideas about OTHER things.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

"Perhaps art could be defined as the search for this universal factor?"

That would certainly be a definition I would consider.

By the way, I have worked a lot with these issues in my past. Some of the records are on WhatMeArtist.com

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

"Art isn't a "search" for some kind of definition."

That's not what Bert said. He said it might be a search for the thing itself, not the definition of it. The search for the definition is philosophical or at least semantic.

Cliff Prince said...

Again, I'd have to disagree. We already know what beauty is. (How otherwise could we possibly know how to respond to it.) The only problem is getting it "right" in a work -- either in a verbal philosophical description of it; or in a work of art that's meant to represent it (among any of the many other things the work might be meant to represent).

The problem is stating this thing in terms of a quest for definition. It isn't. The definition part is DONE. Someone else, or someTHING else, has already defined it for humans, and perhaps for the whole universe. The quest is NOT for defining an already-established entity. That would be like looking for the numerical value of two. The value is already there. It's two. Rather, the quest is for what you do WITH two. Do you add it to two and get four; do you subtract it from ten and get eight?

Anonymous said...

"Art isn't a "search" for some kind of definition."

"That's not what Bert said. [...]"

Thank you, Eolake.

--------
"We already know what beauty is."

Really? I suppose, FinalIdentity, that by this 'we', you imply everybody, no? Then you must have a painting of Elvis on velvet in your living room, for there are still people who believe that this is what true art is all about, and according to you, they must know what they're talking about!

We already know what beauty is. Pff! You know what you feel when you look at something beautiful, but that is about as far as innate knowledge of beauty goes. And foolish me who thought that confusing an emotion, awe, and beauty, a state of being, was only for the uneducated mind...

Insecurity has driven man to conquer his environment, for better or for worse.
Fear of death and the unknown has led to religion and spirituality.
Greed built empires.
And awe has led to art.

And art is by no means static. It has been a struggling quest for as long as man's mind has risen above the animal condition. It took the '60s and mass communications (or praise Andy Warhol and The Beatles if you prefer) for the old beards to lose control over what is art and what's not. Since then, art has exploded into a million directions, yielding ever more awesome results.

We already know what beauty is. Pffff again and again! Why did it take so long to get here and more importantly, why is art still changing with every instant that passes, if we all knew what beauty was from the start?

PFFF!!

;)

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

"Pff!"
ROTFL.

Cliff Prince said...

OK OK, I'll rephrase.

Rather than, "We already know what beauty is," I might say instead, "We intrinsically understand what beauty is, and although we cannot verbalize it very effectively, we know how and when to respond to it."

It's like the numerical value of two (or that old saw about pornography): I can't define it, but I'll know it when I see it.

So, for me, the point of art is NOT, a "quest for beauty." For me, beauty is already there. That quest would be the same as a mathematician defining his proof as a quest for two. Beauty is the axiomatic property. Discussing its nature is rather difficult; but using it, is what we go about doing all day every day.

When folks start talking about, "Is this beauty" or "Is that beauty," and "What is the definition of beauty," I feel like they've missed the central question and gone off on a tangent. You aren't going to get very far discussing the NATURE of beauty. But you can do a lot by discussing what beauty can be used for, or what it does to us, or how it performs a role in a work, or ... so on.

So, by that sense, we DO know "what beauty is." It's one of many things that comes up. Like two-ness.

Anonymous said...

There's been 'nuff said here, but I can't help it to point out that your insistence at defining beauty as a means to an end, a plain medium for conveying your petty thoughts, is quite disturbing.

Must be of the mercantile kind, huh?


P.S. Just kidding. :))

Anonymous said...

I agree with his two-ness, even if I don't agree at all.

Just one point: While beauty is an elusive concept, harmony is not. Harmony is pure mathematics. What does that leave for beauty, then? It's spiritual and entirely subjective.

Now watch and listen to the most beautiful man on the planet. (No, not me. I'm #2.)

Cliff Prince said...

Very utilitarian of me, yes; but not mercantile. I didn't imply beauty had to be BOUGHT or SOLD, just USED. In fact, I didn't even say it had to be used; just that its state is already discovered, and that therefore (in my opinion) the quest is not for "finding" or "defining" beauty as much as figuring out its ramifications, uses, or other implications.

I do see where you're going with the harmony concept. That, and rhythm, and composition, and a lot of other concepts can often be described in strictly mathematical terms; perhaps to their detriment or benefit, but I personally think the descriptions are adequate if not even exhaustive. What gets me is when someone tries to be all mathematical without also being artistic. The beauty gets washed out, somehow.

Chew on that one for a while ... :) ...