I Like It, But Is It Art?
“The ultimate question in the philosophy of art is not only what art is but also what its purpose, function, and importance are in our lives” (Bowie, Michaels, Solomon 614). What deems a collection of words, a visual representation, or concert of sound a work of art? How does individual taste shape how we perceive and thus classify art from non-art? And what role does culture have in regards to artistic schematizing as well as development? In the essays collected by Bowie, Michaels and Solomon in the chapter titled I Like It, but Is It Art? each author or set of authors takes a strong stance on one of these points in an attempt to address the philosophical questions regarding art and its relationship to the human experience.
In his foundational text What is Art? the famous Russian novelist and philosopher Leo Tolstoy addresses the most basic question that continues to be debated today: how do we know when an object is a work of art and not just another ordinary object of human invention? What sets some creations apart from others as uniquely belonging to the classification of “art”? Tolstoy believed that “art begins when one person, with the object of joining another or others to himself in one and the same feeling, expresses that feeling by certain external indications”( Bowie, Michaels, Solomon 617). Meaning, intention and skill of the creator to externalize a state of mind or feeling through their creation is integral to qualification as artwork. Furthermore, one can delineate “real art from its counterfeit” by the power of its “infectiousness”. Tolstoy explains it thus, “…however poetic, realistic, effectual, or interesting a work may be, it is not a work of art if it does not evoke that feeling (quite distinct from all other feelings) of joy and of spiritual union with another (the author) and with others (those who are also infected by it)” (Bowie et all 618). This contagion of emotional expression and reception is heightened by three principles put forth by Tolstoy: the more personal the emotion being expressed the more personally it will be felt by those who benefit from the piece being shared; the sharper the clarity of the emotion being expressed the clearer the reception; “the artist should be impelled by an inner need to express his feeling”, meaning that without the authentic desire of the artist to project his internal nature there is no art. Art must communicate the truth of the artist’s inner being (Bowie 619). In Tolstoy’s words, “Art is a human activity consisting in this that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them…”(Bowie 618). Simply put, art is the capacity of the artist to pass on a genuine expression of emotion and experience to an audience who can emotionally connect to the artist as well as others through the power of the work.
In The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, philosophers Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer explain that culture and society with their great advancements in technology have so reshaped the world that the notion of mass media and mass production has created a type of conformity of watered down tools of a cultural conglomerate monopoly. ”Under monopoly all mass culture is identical, and the lines of its artificial framework begin to bleed through…Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce” (Bowie et all 621). The machine of rapid fire information and entertainment has created a culture in which critical thinking and hence understanding and appreciation of art in all its forms is practically stifled into nonexistence. And not only does the media machine hurl content at the masses it also prioritizes and categorizes it all for them. As Adorno and Horkheimer explain it the individual “has to accept what the culture manufacturers offer him…industry robs the individual of his function. Its prime service to the customer is to do his schematizing for him” (Bowie 622). The pervasive group think spoon fed dynamic of mass media and the all flash no substance cultural production that results from it deceives its victims into believing what Tolstoy would say was the counterfeit of art; producing no sincere emotional connection between creator and recipients but in fact a large scale cultural disconnect.
Roger Scruton’s essay “Art, Beauty, and Judgment” focuses on the pervasive “cultural relativism” which he argues is destroying the essence and function of art. Scruton decries:
If anything can count as art, then art ceases to be art. All that is left is the curious but unfounded fact that some people like looking at some things, others like looking at others. As for the suggestion that there is an enterprise of criticism which searches for objective values and lasting monuments to the human spirit, this is dismissed out of hand…. (Bowie 625-626)
He makes the argument that art cannot be defined by subjective experience and terms but by a return to aesthetic principles; that while it has become passé to accept it, taste, like humor, has certain boundaries that differentiate the good from the bad. Art should be a means by which the best within humanity is explored and celebrated not a tool to mock and demean the human spirit in order to condone a cultural free-for-all. Like Adorno and Horkheimer, Scruton observes that society “has been taken over by a culture that wishes not to educate our perception but to capture it, not to ennoble human life but to trivialize it”(Bowie et all 627). How can there be any notion of what art actually is if there is no standard or even support in the public square for “aesthetic judgment”?
C.J. Ducasse’s essay “What Has Beauty to Do with Art?” refutes Scruton’s notions of returning the concept of aesthetic beauty to the definition of art. According to Ducasse, while beauty may be “a condition of the social visibility of a work of art… it is not a condition of the existence of one. Ugly art, although easily overlooked or forgotten…exists in vast quantities” (Bowie 628). Ducasse refers to the work of two authors, one of whom is Leo Tolstoy, in establishing an understanding of what art is if beauty is not a requisite characteristic. Art “…is the critically-controlled attempt to give objective expression to, i.e., to embody a feeling. That it is objective expression that art directly aims at, means that in the light of which the artist exercises critical control of his own work is, not the beauty of what he creates, but the adequacy of it as embodiment of his feeling”(Bowie 629). Furthermore, in defining the term beauty in aesthetic terms, Ducasse points out what may be aesthetically pleasing or displeasing to the beholder will vary from individual to individual making a completely objective standard for such a requirement illogical.
In “Art, Practice, and Narrative” professor Noel Carrol puts forth the theory that classifying something as artwork would be directly tied to its whether or not as well as how it fits in to “the evolving tradition of art…That is, whether an object (or performance) is identified as art is a question internal to the practice or practices of art” (Bowie 631). If something is to be categorized as a product of artistic creation its relationship to its predecessor’s characteristics plays a key role. In the definition of what may or may not be art art history and culture are integral. As Carrol explains, “Art is a cultural practice. A cultural practice is an arena of activity that governs itself such that it reproduces itself over time…However this replication cannot be absolutely rote…the practice must readjust itself and evolve, in order to adapt to new circumstances” (Bowie 632). The output of the creative process is always viewed in reference to the history from which it evolves. Carrol would suggest we understand the relationship of this new object to be classified with the contemporary as well as historical art scene by looking for one of these three determining factors: repetition, amplification, and/or repudiation. The key to categorizing any work as art, according to Carrol, we must find its place in the evolutionary pattern either by its adoption, expansion, or rejection of artistic principles already universally understood.
In the last two pieces, both authors use the discussion of art to engage in a study of either how art can enhance the human experience as in Kathleen M. Higgins’, “The Music of Our Lives” or how art reflects the perspective of the society from which it is born, as in Mary Devereaux’s, ”The Male Gaze”. Higgin’s begins her appeal for a more intensive study of music on the human experience by looking to Plato who taught that “musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul…making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill- educated ungraceful” (Bowie et all 637). For an element of our daily lives that seeps in by means of every possible outlet music has been vastly undervalued in its connection and power to shape our ethical values. What music we have exposure to, beyond that of the traditionally accepted purity of the classical genre can allow for a larger world view in that when we determine to diversify our listening choices we are shaping our minds to be more receptive and expansive in appreciating diversity; a philosophy that can easily diffuse from our musical interactions to our interactions with a variety of other people and cultures; and as Higgin’s points out, “By so developing our potential to understand others, music serves a role of decided ethical significance” (Bowie et all 639).
Mary Devereaux, however, looks not at how the art we produce can change our cultural perspective but how our cultural perspective shapes what we produce. Starting with the premise that “Observation is always conditioned by perspective and expectation” and that art reflects some form of individual human observation ”...feminist claims that our representations inscribe a male gaze” because “Both men and women have learned to see the world through male eyes” (Bowie et all 640). Why do women spend years and thousands of dollars in the Quixote-like quest for beauty? Because culturally there is a perception of what “beauty” looks like and that is a product of the domination of the male perspective throughout society and the socialization of females to accept that standard. At the heart of this problem lays, what Devereaux calls “male institutional control” meaning while women participate in the creative process in many forms there are very few women who are involved at the level of authority and power brokering. The creative process is thus not only disproportionately managed by the male perspective but it becomes the acceptable and expected paradigm in the cultural practice we call art as a result.
These pieces each offer a nuanced insight into the complexity of any conversation to be had about what art is and how it affects and is affected by the human experience. In reading Tolstoy’s description of how we can know what art is I reflected on the first time I saw Van Gogh’s Starry Night up close and in person. It was certainly a transporting experience for me. There was an instant recognition of this moment when Tolstoy wrote “the receiver of a true artistic impression is so united to the artist that he feels as if the work were his own and not someone else’s as if what it expresses were just what he had long been wishing to express” (Bowie et all 618). There does seem to be a unifying spirit between artist and receiver through the masterful works of art, however there is an element Tolstoy does not address in depth what role aesthetic beauty plays regarding how we are to qualify objects as “art”. It was Ducasse’s essay, written in the historical context of post WWI modernism, a world defined by chaos and uncertainty of the state of humanity, that struck me in its belief that art could not be simply relegated to the category of visually or aesthetically pleasing. For if “…the work of art is essentially an attempt by the artist to express objectively what he feels” our concern in categorizing art should not primarily be the “beauty” of the creation but of its power to “transmit to [us] the feeling objectified in it” (Bowie et all 629).
