Although I disagree with the Pre-Raphaelite’s aesthetics I thought this article’s take on one of the better known works was very interesting.
The author of the article (Waldemar Januszczak) is probably not a Christian and may or may not be at all religious based on the article’s content. His assessment of William Holman Hunt is fairly close to mine. The most interesting part of the article is the conclusion that the reviewer draws.
What is a Beckett play? The question seems simple enough. A definition should be easy to come up with.
Samuel Beckett professed to believe in authorial intent. That is, Becket believed that his plays ought to be performed exactly as he wrote them with no alterations by actors or directors. In addition to the dialogue ...
(or lack thereof) Beckett wrote stage directions, specific movements, and notes about costumes in his plays.
Beckett was not the first playwright to rely on authorial notes to control the way a play was staged. Eugene O’Neil and George Bernard Shaw did the same. Shaw, for instance, wrote long essays to accompany the text of his plays sometimes explaining an ambiguous point in the text. Beckett however tries to control every nuance of a production – every intonation of every vowel and consonant spoken.
Beckett was concerned that meaning or non-meaning that he as the author had programmed into the script would not be lost or adulterated by overly creative actors and directors. His extreme views on this resulted in several humorous theatrical anecdotes. Several of these are recorded here by Fintan O’Toole in a review of the print release of some of Beckett’s production notebooks.
”In 1988, he and his publisher Jerome Lindon forced the Comédie Francaise in Paris to withdraw certain alterations of, and additions to, the prescribed setting and costumes from a production of Fin de partie by Gildas Bourdet, leading to Bourdet's own decision to take his name off the credits. In the same year, through the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Francais, Beckett took legal action to prevent a Dutch company, De Haarlemse Toneelschuur, from staging an all-woman Waiting for Godot. When he lost the case, he banned all productions of his plays in Holland.”
The problem in defining a Beckett play is that Beckett contradicts himself between notes and texts and even between different texts of the same play.
O’Toole questions whether Beckett’s notes about his plays should necessarily be considered authoritative on production values. He points out that Beckett created paradoxes between what he wrote and what he expected on the stage. It is unclear whether these puzzles were intentional or not.
Those who choose to consider themselves Christian’s don’t really suffer from the same dilemma. They, for the most part, accept the primacy of the Bible as a source of truth. They accept this on faith. It cannot be proven logically.
Additionally, Christianity assumes that whatever God comments on in his word can be considered authoritative. Beckett may have used his creatorial control over his work to muddy the waters of meaning. Beckett’s devotee’s rave about the wonderfully misleading works but Christian’s generally assume that God wants us to understand what he is saying.
Christianity assumes that God is the source of everything, the First Cause Wikipedia defines First cause in this way.
First Cause is used alternately to refer to the Cosmological argument for the existence of God, or as an alternate noun for God itself among individuals uncomfortable with the historical and religious meanings associated with the term. Using "First cause" in replacement of "God" may also indicate that the writer has a different concepetion of God than what the popular definition entails.
Christians also assume that the Bible is God’s written communication to man. They assume that if God is trustworthy, then his word is equally trustworthy.
There are two ways to develop a definition of art from the Christian viewpoint. You can either draw your definition from the macrocosm as God’s physical creation or you can cultivate a definition based on the Bible.
Any definition of art based on the physical creation has two major drawbacks. First, creation on its own is so complex that it may be impossible for men to encapsulate it into any useful verbal terms. It is difficult for men who are par of creation to get an objective view of it.
Second, if God’s word is to be taken as accurate, then the macrocosm has been tainted by sin. If it were in it prelapsarian state we could be more confident of any conclusions we raw from observation. Instead, to draw conclusions about God’s view of art based on the created world is like drawing conclusions about a painter’s views based on a painting coated with mud. We might get a few glimpses of the work beneath the mud but we couldn’t be certain whether what we saw was based on the artist’s work or the mud.
The world around us, filtered through the philosophical lens of God’s word can serve as a wonderful illustration of God’s art but it cannot stand alone.
The Bible is a more sure way to find out what God has to say about art. This must be accepted by faith. There is not an objective way to prove the reliability of the Bible. (The Bible does stand up to scrutiny that would discredit many other documents.)
O’Toole points out that even though Beckett held productions to the strict authority of his texts, he himself questioned what he had written as he worked on a production. So, while scholars wrangle over whether Becket’s notes or his published plays ought to be taken as the final received text, we can trust in the reliability of God’s word and start to develop an artistic definition based on the First Cause.
Byzantine Art also illustrates how aesthetic definition impacts the way art is made.
The art of the Byzantine Empire is a timely topic. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is currently (through 7/4/2004) hosting it’s third exhibition of Byzantine art. You can read more about it here. Whether you agree with newyorkmetro.com’s definition of spirituality or not you cannot ignore the popular response to this unabashedly spiritual – even Judeo-Christian – art.
Here is what encyclopedia.com had to say about Byzantine Art.
"The entire church thus served as a tangible evocation of the celestial order; this conception was further enhanced by the stylized poses and gestures of the figures, their hieratic gaze, and the luminous shimmer of the gold backgrounds."
"The center of the dome was reserved for the representation of the Pantocrator, or Jesus as the ruler of the universe, whereas other sacred personages occupied lower spaces in descending order of importance."
Byzantine art was a celebration of the “Pantocrator”. The term comes from the Greek and means "He who reigns over all; almighty" ( Posted by jwaggone at 3:09 PM | Comments (0)
First, if you are interested in being notified whenever an article is added to aesthesis fill your e-mail address into the box on the right (under notifications). If you have a low resolution monitor or if your browser window is too narrow the box may appear below all the blog entries.
Second, my goal for aesthesis isn’t just to promote my own writing. I would like also to post thoughtful, on topic essays by others as well. If you have anything to contribute let me know. I’m looking for art/aesthetics related work and reviews of art related books or good exhibitions. The books should be about the ideas of art not solely technical works.
Jason Waggoner
I believe the way you define art will affect the art you create. African art is the first of two examples I’ll present as illustrations of this point.
Since I am concerned about the connection between faith and art the examples I have chosen are both religious in nature. I chose these two examples because
they seem to me to exemplify the two main functions of art which I’ll get into later.
Encyclopedia.com has the following to say about African art.
As the value of these works was inseparable from their ritual use, no effort was made to preserve them as aesthetic accomplishments. Wood was one of the most frequently used materials—often embellished by clay, shells, beads, ivory, metal, feathers, and shredded raffia.
Encyclopedia.com isn’t the most authoritative or complete reference source but it is readily accessible and gives a good idea of the common definition of the terms it explores.
The key idea here is that the African art works have no value outside the context of ritual. A mask or sculpture in a ritual has great significance but once it is removed physically or temporally from that ceremonial setting it is worthless.
Africa is by no means the only culture to take this view. It is essentially the logical extreme of the art-is-a-process aesthetic. If the process by which an artwork is produced is the meaningful part of the art – if the value of art lies in experiencing the process employed to create it – then the art loses its value once the process is complete.
Drama, for the most part, takes this view. With the exception of closet dramas meant to be read rather than performed, the value of drama lies in performance. The view is not extreme. Shakespeare’s plays have literary as well as performance value. Few will deny however that the power of a Shakespearian text – readily appreciable in performance – is often missed while reading the play.
In any of the arts, intellectual study and tangible experience often reveal different aspects and values in a work of quality.
Parallel to African art in its focus on the performance process are happenings. Although happenings have been documented with photographs and video recordings there can be no doubt that the impact of a happening was primarily on those who experienced the event firsthand. Even if artifacts were preserved, or a more permanent piece was constructed, they only serve as mnemonic devices for a past ritual.
In both happenings and African art, the process aesthetic allowed the artists involved to ignore the archival qualities of their materials (or the lack thereof). Both have used unstable fiber products and unprotected pigments to create temporary offerings. Temporary materials do not necessarily imply that the artistry is less carefully planned or executed only that its audience is limited by time.
The temporary nature of these works is part of their value. God instituted a temporal performance to focus on the permanent. The children of Israel were to perform yearly a sacrifice of a lamb. The process involved choosing a lamb with no blemishes, the killing of the lamb, and burning it on an altar. One point of this temporary ritual was that whatever redemptive value it held physically was limited to the length of the ritual. Once that was done another offering would be necessary because the earlier lamb was gone. The offering had to be offered continually (Exo. 29:38). The priests too were temporal and whatever value they had ceased with their death.
The temporal ritual was to point to a better priest and a permanent sacrifice. Both of these concepts are explained in the book of Hebrews. The offering or priests blessing only extends to the life of the priest or the body of the lamb. Christ, Hebrews explains, has conquered death so he is able to fulfill the priest’s office for eternity. Christ is also the Lamb of God (the Lamb from God, The Lamb who is God, not just the Lamb owned by God) who rose bodily so his offering is continual. His eyes burn like fire and his feet in revelation appear “as if they burned in a furnace” (Rev. 1:15). Unlike the lamb of the sacrifices earlier, the fire cannot burn him to ash. (A parallel can be seen in the Bush that Moses saw. It burned as though it was on fire but it wasn’t consumed by that fire. Also see the story about Daniel’s friends.)
African art is based on the fleeting value of ritual and that aesthetic impacts even the materials used to produce a given work. The temporary materials in a work of art can focus the audience on the temporal nature of something or it can point out by contrast timeless qualities. This should be an intentional choice however. Artists should not choose non-archival material because of ignorance.
Benjamin Lee Whorf in his book Language, Thought, and Reality advanced the theory that the way a person speaks about something affects the way he treats that thing. Whorf’s principle profession was that of a fire insurance salesman. In his book, one chapter deals
Benjamin Lee Whorf in his book Language, Thought, and Reality advanced the theory that the way a person speaks about something affects the way he treats that thing. Whorf’s principle profession was that of a fire insurance salesman. In his book, one chapter deals with examples from his fire insurance work of certain connections between words and ideas that had huge consequences.
One example that I remember was connected with the word fan. A leather treatment company had installed an air fan in a room where they hung pieces of leather for the purpose of drying them. The fan blew air into the room, the air helped dry the leather, and then the air escaped through an exhaust. They only thought of the fan as a device for blowing air. After a huge fire that destroyed their stock they came to the realization that the fan was also capable of blowing fire into to room (if in, as in this case, the fan’s bearings overheated). If the ventilation designer had thought about the fan’s ability to blow things other than air into the room he could have, Whorf points out, installed the fan to draw air out of the room, accomplishing the same task without the dangerous side effects.
The way you define anything can effect how you treat that thing.
Whorf’s point is a bit deeper than that. He says that the way we talk about something influences the way we think about it. I think he would also apply it to people as well as things but his experience was mostly connected to objects. If we constantly say that money is power or that time is money then eventually we will make decisions based on that assumption even though we may consciously espouse some other definition.
Wharf’s evidence is somewhat anecdotal but his theory is intriguing enough that it has had an impact on the study of language.
Similarly, the way you define art will affect the way you treat art and the art work you produce.
If you believe that art is a social tool you will treat it differently that if you believe it is a sacrament.
A definition for art is more complex than a definition of a fan. A good art definition should probably include: source, purpose, content, and audience. Where does the desire or ability to create come from (source)? Why do we need art (purpose)? What is art concerned with (content)? Who benefits from or is affected by art (audience)?
Each part of the definition depends on the others. For instance, you cannot address why we need art if you don’t have a definition of where it comes from. Conversely, to define where art comes from depends somewhat on what it’s purpose is. Defining art is paradoxical in some ways. The definition must be approached holistically or it’s likely to be illogical and inconclusive.
If, in fact, the way we define art affects the art work we produce, then an artist must be conscientious to develop a consistent definition.
If you are interested in Whorf you can order his book here
and you can learn a little more about him here
I am dedicating this web space to furthering dialogue about aesthetics. The goal is to encourage critical thinking about aesthetics, art and the life of the artist.
Things I'm hoping to discuss in the future are: the definition and function of art, purpose of beauty in art, the purpose of
Purpose Statement
I am dedicating this web space to furthering dialogue about aesthetics. The goal is to encourage critical thinking about aesthetics, art and the life of the artist.
Things I'm hoping to discuss in the future are: the definition and function of art, purpose of beauty in art, the purpose of art as it relates to the church, and principles of art drawn from the Bible.
Since I am a Christian I am particularly interested in understanding what God has to say in the Bible about artists and the arts. Many churches never address this issue and others take secular definitions at face value in heir discussions. Since God has used all of the arts and since Christians ought to follow His example, it is critical that we know what he has to say about their use and purpose.
Certainly I don’t consider my thoughts to be final on the subject. My goal is to sow seeds of discussion. I encourage feedback and criticism of what I say.
Artist statement and Bio
Jason Waggoner uses experimental techniques to combine found materials into art that is both intellectually stimulating and morally challenging.
Jason received a BA in art in 2001 and is pursuing an MA in art as it relates to the theater. Jason’s smaller more enigmatic collage pieces contrast sharply to the large-scale sculptures and paintings he does as a theatrical artist at Bob Jones University’s Rodeheaver Auditorium.
Whether large or small, Jason hopes his work will stimulate a kind of dialogue between the viewer and the artist using the art as the medium of communication. “I want to challenge viewers to think about how they relate to others, their culture. How they impact the world, temporal or eternal.” With this in mind, Jason creates works that have a sense of wear-and-tear.
“I remember, growing up near San Francisco, seeing once a billboard that had been layered with years of advertisements. The weather had torn away all but the best-attached parts. Now I think of that image as the cultural parallel to stone that has been worn away by water. The softer stone and dirt is worn away more quickly than the harder sediment. Only the densest cultural ideas can survive a disposable society. I believe there are truths and principles that endure beyond the cultures that record them.”
Jason believes that art can be the wise man’s riddle. “Sometimes a question is the most powerful tool for learning – teaching - changing your culture or the world.”
Jason’s work has been recognized with several awards including best of show in the 2001 commencement competition at BJU.
Thus far in 2004 Jason has had two one man shows and his work was included in an invitational show focused on the collage medium.