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What Is Art?
Background of Paper:
This paper is an answer to question #10 of Dr. Snoeyenbos' (of Georgia State University) Philosophy of Art test. That link will give you the question, the art cases, and the poems to will enable you to understand the following paper.
The Answer:"What is Art?" by
Karey Perkins
The answer to whether or not they (Tzara's and the seven year old's works) are poems is "no." (Although they ARE both original.) This is an intuitive claim from my own observations, and I also researched my reaction by asking my mother about it this weekend (as I was visiting for spring break.) She has had no formal philosophy of art education, so I reasoned her intuitions would be true and uninfluenced by art philosophers as mine might not be. She emphatically denied that Tzara's and the seven year old's creations are poetry.
But also, when one examines art theory, these poems do not meet the test of art. Before I launch straight into a discussion on these poems, I'd like to first consider two poems by Ben Jonson and John Milton, both considered art, but one considered very good art and one considered very bad art. If we can determine why Jonson's poem is "good," and Milton's is "not good," then perhaps we can better understand why Shakespeare's sonnet IS art, and Tzara's poem MAY be art (it may just barely slip through the cut), but the seven year old's poem is not art.
First of all, Milton's and Johson's poems are both considered art by the art world (Danto), although the art world judges them differently in terms of success. They also both present themselves as art by the artist, and they both use accepted art forms as well, using rhyme, rhythm, and harmony (Bell, Aristotle). However, Milton's poem, on the death of his infant nephew, which was influenced by the great success of Johson's earlier poem on the death of his seven year old son and was Milton's attempt to recreate that success, was considered one of Milton's early failures. (Of course, that may have been serendipitous as we all have to fail before we succeed. He went on to write Paradise Lost.) The language is forced, and the mythology, one myth after another, is not justified and doesn't work. The poem seems contrived. At the end of Jonson's poem, as he (a father) struggles to console himself that his son is happier in heaven, we are sympathetic with his struggles, and
identify with him. Jonson concludes that, because of the pain of this loss, he is forever changed and can never love as deeply again. At the end of Milton's poem, as tries to convey the same tone and message that Jonson gives, he basically tells his sister, "Quit crying, you'll get another kid," and comes off trite, shallow, harsh, unsympathetic. He fails.
Jonson's poem effectively expresses an individual, specific, sincere emotion that Johnson is feeling with clarity (Tolstoy). The feeling is transmitted through the medium (the poem) very effectively to another person (the reader of the poem). The sincerity of his poem is striking as well, and is one of the reasons that the poem is so moving. The reader feels, as much as he can since it is not his/her son, the poet's pain and loss and the poet's struggle with love. By contrast, Milton's poem seems markedly insincere. It seems more of a poetic/intellectual exercise, and Milton does not seem to be mourning or in pain at all over the loss of his nephew. (If he is, he is not transmitting it well at all.) Furthermore, Milton seems even unable to sympathize with the pain of his sister (the mother) at the loss of her son. Instead, he is cold and unfeeling.
Also, in Milton's poem, there are no truths conveyed about basic human inner motivations (Aristotle) or universal psychological laws (Freud). It is not an imitation of the reality a human being normally experiences upon the death of a child. So while Jonson's poem successfully and clearly conveys an individual, specific, particular, sincere emotion (Tolstoy), it also conveys a universal reality and truth about the psychology of all men and women upon the death of a child (Aristotle, Freud). However, it is doubtful whether or not Milton was actually feeling much sympathy or sorrow at his nephew's death, and he certainly fails to convey it if he did, with his comments reflecting his view of the expendability of the infant's life. Perhaps the only basic human inner motivation Milton reveals here is his desire to imitate the huge success of Ben Jonson's earlier poem.
For the above reasons, I would argue that Shakespeare's Eighteenth Sonnet IS poetry, while Tzara's poem is possibly art, though doubtfully so, and the seven-year old's is NOT poetry. Shakespeare effectively conveys significant feeling in his poem. He conveys a message to the reader, and expresses an emotional truth by "imitating" reality -- in this case a real feeling. Tzara's poem is a nonsense arrangement of words, as is the seven year old's. However, the reason Tzara's poem might actually qualify as poetry (where the seven year old's would not) is that Stoppard might have been trying to convey a truth with this absurdity of language -- an intellectual postmodern statement about the nature of our society. Therefore, Stoppard may have intended to convey a universal truth about the nature of the postmodern world -- an imitation of reality. The seven year old, however, was merely having fun with paper and scissors.
Now, if the seven year old inadvertently conveys a truth in his/her childish game playing, inadvertently imitates reality, is it poetry? Is it art? Stolnitz would say yes; that is, if the observer takes the "aesthetic attitude" towards the object, then it is art. The problem here is that anything could be art, and good art and bad art could then only be judged by the subjective attitude of the observer; in that case, we could not objectively say that Milton's poem is weaker than Jonson's. However, in fact, we CAN conclude that.
So what is the most effective theory of art, that can most accurately decide, of the three poems (Shakespeare's, Tzara's, the seven year old's) (and for that matter, Milton's and Jonson's) which is actually art, and of those that are art, which is the greater art? At the moment, I believe that Arisotle's idea of incorporating as many elements of art into an evaluation of "what is art?" is necessary. But of the artist, world, spectator, society, and artwork, the most important is the continuum of the artist - artwork - spectator, which Tolstoy emphasizes. The artist must have the individual, clear, sincere feeling (Tolstoy, Collingwood), which also happens to be a psychological truth, an imitation of reality (Freud, Artistotle), and must convey that through artwork -- a form with rhythm, harmony, order, beauty (Bell, Aristotle, Kant) -- effectively to the spectator (Danto, Stolnitz).
Of these three, (artist, artwork, spectator) the spectator is the least important, because if the first two are successfully accomplished, the third will be a given. And, it is not unheard of that the artworld/aesthetically oriented spectators have been known to hold a work up as art to the artworld, when it is actually quite weak in the two more important areas (the artist and the artwork). Furthermore, the spectator's presence is not as important as the quality of the artwork because even if no spectator arises to view the work as art, it would still be art (a variation on: if a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, did it make a sound?) because at some point in time, there is the possibility that someone may come along and view it as art (which is often a reality for many posthumuously published artists.)
What is interesting is that both the great poems in these comparisons, Shakespeare's and Jonson's, refer to the primacy of the poem (the artwork) imitating life. While Shakespeare acknowledges the place of the spectator in his eighteenth sonnet: "When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:/so long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,/So long lives this, and this gives life to thee" (11. 12-14), he is of lesser important to the poem itself, which "gives life." He admits that the spectator is necessary for the poem to be art (eyes must be able to see the poem), but it seems secondary to the "eternal lines" and the fact that the poem "gives life to thee" (imitates reality). Ben Jonson also refers to the poem imitating life: "...and asked, say here doth lie,/Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry,/For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such/As what he loves may never like too much" (11. 8-12). Jonson's best poetry refers to the poem, but also his son. Both Jonson and Shakespeare make their poems metaphorically one with the subjects of their poems (art imitating life) which seems to be the primary determining factor in the question of "What is art?" and then, "What is good art?"
The conveyance of emotion that is so important for the expressionist theorists (Tolstoy, Collingwood) is a natural side effect of the art effectively imitating life, but perhaps the Expressionist theories can provide a good meter by which to measure the effectiveness of art's imitation of life. That is, it is easy to see that Milton (and the seven year old) convey little emotion effectively, whereas Jonson and Shakespeare do.
Works Cited and Works Consulted
(NOTE: Coding of bibliography is still in progress.)
Aristotle. "Dramatic Imitation: From the Poetics." pp. 207-219.
Aristotle. The Philosophy of the Visual Arts. ed. Philip Alperson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. pp. 171-175.
Bell, Clive. "The Aesthetic Hypothesis: Significant Form and Aesthetic Emotion." The Philosophy of the Visual Arts. ed. Philip Alperson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. pp. 119-126.
Collingwood, R. G. "Art Proper: As Imagination." The Principles of Art. pp. 120-123.
Collingwood, R. G. "Art and Craft." The Philosophy of the Visual Arts. ed. Philip Alperson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. pp. 381-392.
Danto, Arthur. "The Artworld." The Philosophy of the Visual Arts. ed. Philip Alperson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. pp. 426-433.
Danto, Arthur. "Old, New, and Not so New Art History." The Philosophy of the Visual Arts. ed. Philip Alperson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. pp. 530-532.
Freud, Sigmund. "Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood." The Philosophy of the Visual Arts. ed. Philip Alperson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. pp. 171-175.
Freud, Sigmund. "Wish Fulfillment and the Unconscious." The Interpretation of Dreams. 1900. Trans. 1913 by A. A. Brill.
Hume, David. "Of the Standard of Taste." pp. 592-606.
Jonson, Ben. "On My First Son."
Kant, Immanuel. "A Theory of Aesthetic Judgment: From the Critique of Judgement." Part I, Books I and II. The Critique of Judgement (Oxford, 1928) was originally translated by James Creed Meredith, Oxford UP.
Mao Tse-tung. Selected Works. Vol. III. May 1942. pp. 70, 78, 84-90, 382.
Marx, Karl. "Art and History." Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. 1857-1858. Trans. 1971 by David McLellan.
Milton, John. "On the Death of a Fair Infant Dying of a Cough."
Shakespeare, William. "Sonnet 18."
Snoeyenbos, Milton and Robert Frederick. "Aristotle and Freud on Art." Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, Vol. II-III: 1979-1980. pp. 49-63.
Stolnitz, Jerome. "The Aesthetic Attitude." The Philosophy of the Visual Arts. ed. Philip Alperson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. pp. 7-14.
Tolstoy, Leo. "What is Art?" pp. 7-17
Stoppard, Tom. Travesties.
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