Out of Egypt:

On Art and Aesthetic Criteria

[Note: The text below is from a Wittenberg Floor discussion, so some context has been lost.]

...Excellence is crucial to artistic endeavor, as Schaeffer writes in Art and the Bible, referencing the workmen who created the gold inlays in the Temple and the command in the Psalms to make music loudly and with skill.

At the Writer's Box meeting last night, our discussion ran along lines related to this, and Liz Tubergen (I hope she doesn't mind me paraphrasing her) said something that I thought was helpful. I was complaining about how contemporary art, visual art in particular, is often not beautiful by conventional standards and is so diverse in media and content that it's difficult to judge one artist's work in comparison to another. She spoke of the "conceptual soundness" of a work of art, which I understand means essentially the philosophy or rationale underlying it. Artists, of course, do not necessarily overtly articulate this when they are in the process of creating, since to do so would put them in the critic's role prematurely, potentially stifling the spontaneity of creative work (which Plato spoke of, with some truth, as "a kind of divine madness"). However, if I understand Liz correctly, she was saying that an artist should be able to articulate this if one were to ask.

This concept is helpful to me, because it recognizes that both New Criticism and extreme versions of reader(viewer?)-response criticism are fundamentally misguided. Art must, to a certain extent, be understood on the artist's terms and this requires knowledge of the artist beyond that which can be gained from simply viewing the art. Thus, John Cage's chance music and performance-centered works (like 4'33'') can be considered to be good art, in the sense that there is a sound conceptual reasoning behind them; they are a deliberate outward manifestation of his inner outlook on the world - namely, that chance is the fundamental reality of the universe. While we may say that by other traditional aesthetic criteria, such as Plato or Aquinas' views of the beauty, they fail, we cannot dismiss them out of hand. On the other hand, a composition created by a child banging on the keys of a piano, while it may sound the same as one of Cage's pieces, is not art, since there is no rational purpose motivating its creation. (To complicate matters further, however, if that child's banging on piano keys was used by Cage in one of his aleatory works, the resulting work could be considered conceptually sound. This, I believe, is the kind of reasoning that underlies the category of conceptual art.)

In conclusion, mere relativism about aesthetics is an intellectual cop-out, in the same way that it is an even greater intellectual cop-out to use Socrates' words about the wisest man being the one who knows he knows nothing to justify intellectual indolence. I advocate a sort of polyphony of aesthetic criteria, in which works of art can be judged by various standards, including, but not limited, to the following:

1. Genre Criticism
• How does this work (or performance, as for music and plays) compare with others in its genre?
• Does it meet the standards for skillfulness established in its genre?
• For literary works, a more specific question would be: does this work meet the standards of proper English usage, etc., and furthermore, does it have a pleasant style (which, I would argue, and will, if challenged), can be judged objectively in several specific areas?
• For fiction, one could address characterization (flat vs. round), plot dynamics, foreshadowing, etc.
• For poetry, imagery, thematic unity/diversity/development, strophic organization, word stress/meter, assonance, alliteration, etc.
2. Ideological Criticism
• addresses the ideas advocated, explicitly or implicitly, by the work, in their depth and content (religious/political/social/gender, etc.)
3. Creator/Author Criticism
• How does this work succeed in meeting its creator's aims?
• What is the conceptual soundness of the work? (as defined earlier in this post)
4. Criticism According to Particular Aesthetic Theories
• Plato, Aquinas, Romantics, etc. (theories of the good, true, beautiful, and so on - I find it fascinating what a stress Aquinas placed on proper proportion - specifically in the visual arts, though, by extension, this could apply in other fields as well)

Of course, in all this I'm deliberately avoiding talk of a Biblical aesthetic, something to the effect of "How does God see this work?" That would get into complicated questions of axiology and the extent of Biblical revelation that I'm not willing to explore right now. Here and now, I like to think about multiple aesthetic criteria, because it not only makes our discussion of art richer, allowing for more cross-fertilization, but because it keeps me from having to compare all art to all other art by one standard of good or not-good, when it's really like comparing apples to oranges (to use the old cliché). Really, shouldn't we place art on a continuum, not put it in boxes of good or bad? (Not to mention separating judgments on artistic skill and moral soundness.)

Ultimately, I think a good work of art is identified by its longevity, its influence on other artists, and how many ideas it can generate in the critical community.

One aspect of performance-based music that I appreciate is that it recognizes that the concept of contemplation is largely a Western aesthetic (a privileging of the mind over body?). Music as participation seems to be a much broader and more wide-spread concept; indeed, perhaps more Biblical (I think that almost every mention of music involves some sort of participation, but I could be wrong, so don't quote me). Thus, the point is not to sit back and be engulfed by sheer beauty; the point is to be actively engaged in producing something. I am still trying to figure out where the phenomenon of iPods fits in to all this...the changing role of music in society...(or has it really changed?).

Posted by: funke at November 12, 2005 10:18 AM

I agree entirely. That's why I think dance (as we had tonight at Covenant - Castle in the Clouds big band) is so wonderful. "Audience" participation - the musicians and the crowd feeding off each other. Listeners becoming actively involved in creating a pulse. Viva la evolution!

Posted by: Evan Donovan at November 13, 2005 12:24 AM