from The Creation of Adam, circa 1512 by Michelangelo
One’s convictions with respect to artistic understanding may sway one’s religious persuasion and vice versa. Indeed, the view one chooses to adopt with respect to the goal of aesthetics, including that of no goal at all, can greatly influence one’s spiritual disposition. The term “aesthetics” is derived from the Greek “aisthesis” meaning “sense perception.” The discipline of aesthetics as we have come to know it emerged in Germany during the eighteenth century. Alexander Baumgarten, an intellectual during the period, spearheaded the field of study with his work “Aesthetica,” published in 1750. Baumgarten drew a distinction between two aesthetic practices: “aesthetica artificialis,” the intellectual consideration of beauty, and “aesthetica naturalis,” the examination of material bodily perception as such. If one’s aesthetic doctrine is more concordant with “aethetica naturalis,” a more bio-reductionistic, materialistic view may be taken with respect to oneself, others, and reality generally; this could manifest a cynical anthropolgy, a zero-sum ontology, and perhaps a shallow theology.
For Baumgarten and his contemporaries, the endeavor of the aesthetic enterprise should be a dialectical synthesis of representative vision and presentative seeing, that is the passive perception of physical sensory data and the active metaphysic thereof. To denote this newfound engagement with aesthetic investigation, the term “re-presentation” may be employed. The implications of intentional re-presentation within artistic and religious conduct are of great importance to artists, people of a given spiritual framework, and the culture which they inhabit.
To expand on the term, re-presentation emphasizes the active presentation in the present of an “original presence” that has been. The process of re-presentation is mutual among religious and artistic practices; Good Friday services within the Christian tradition re-present the crucifixion of Christ in the way a painting of a landscape might re-present a mountain or a stream. The Eucharist is characterized by Catholics, for example, as an instance of transubstantiation, wherein the substance, understood in the Thomistic sense as essence, is re-embodied in the present. Writers, psychologists, and philosophers examining the nature of spirituality have suggested that it is not knowledge of “god(s)” that is sought by religion; rather, it seeks “life, more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life…” Thinkers such as Benedetto Croce have made claims seemingly inspired by this sentiment in the artistic realm, that expression and its experience, not re-presentation, is the “vehicle” of aesthetic value. This view could be said to align with “ars gratia artis,” or art for art's sake, a philosophy of art that characterizes the artist’s aim as being beyond the mere achievement of a specified end.
From this perspective, the aesthetic enterprise is not conducted with any explicit intent but rather is embarked upon, indeed, for the sake of itself. Conversely, the instrumental view of art regards the elucidation or proliferation of a particular moral or political message as a valid goal of artistry. It may be said that the distinction between the instrumental approach to artistry and that of “art for art’s sake,” as they are generally portrayed, is not one of essence but intent; this is to say that no art is essentially without function, only nominally so. In this case of explicitly nominating a painting as expressive of a political or moral message, art is wielded as a tool, which according to some reduces the work to propaganda. Many scholars, in considering art's goal or lack thereof, form a stark dichotomy between the aestheticism of “ars gratia art” and the functionalism of the instrumental view.
However, by conceptualizing artistry in the classically aesthetic manner, as the synthesis of “aesthetica artificialis” and “aesthetica naturalis,” in addition to the understanding of active seeing as integral to and inexorable from passive perception and vice versa, one may regard an artwork as intrinsically instrumental irrespective of its efficacy being intentional. In harmonizing aesthetic instrumentalism’s emphasis on utility and aestheticism’s insistence on “art for art’s sake,” a reconciliatory ontology of art emerges: a work's function is fundamentally fettered to its form. If it is indeed the case that “the object stares back,” as James Elkins affirms, then the attended and the attendee are reciprocally altered via this aesthetic process.
Therefore, even a painting created non-instrumentally is inherently performing a function qua an object of attention. In artistic and spiritual activity, there is something sought after which lies just beyond the veil of our perception: an ideal. Art strives for “the beautiful” while religion seeks “the good,” both of which are transcendent but nonetheless immanent. The matter of embodied faith as artistry itself is exemplified in the notion of ritual, a structured and intentional activity in which one's attention is honed towards a sacred idea, event, or deity; communication is also often sought through liturgy.
A ritual and an artwork share teleological, or at least ontological, elements: when attended to, these products of intentional agents bring about a change with respect to both the object of attention and the attendee. This idea is strengthened by much neuropsychological research relating to sensory perception and aesthetic appreciation in addition to the latter’s codependence on religious perspective. Art is a cultural category in which objects which elicit this aesthetic affection are placed; this could be seen as a separation of the pure from the profane given the stark compartmentalization observed in many religious rituals and ceremonies.
Concerning the shared cognitive features of religion and art with respect to this phenomenon of sacred/profane segregation, an interesting psychological analogue is found in obsessive-compulsive disorder characterized by contamination concerns. “Beyond compulsive prayer, some persons with ROCD find themselves consumed with the compulsive need to treat religious books or symbols with excessive care. Religious books, statues, jewelry, and images are sometimes the focus of ritualistic cleaning, straightening, and checking behaviors for persons with ROCD. These routines can last for several hours at a time and are often paired with ritualistic prayers.”
To be in the presence of a work of art is to be its viewer or spectator. However, to engage in the seeing of a painting is to be both its benefactor and beneficiary in that one is contributing to the beauty being offered in the act of attending, which is not merely perception, but participation. Likewise, to be merely a believer in the propositions of a particular religious belief system is to be a passive member of an audience; it is only when that belief or faith is intentionally embodied in practice, i.e., ritual, that one may effectively derive meaning and produce good. This approach to religion and art is, of course, reliant on a classical understanding of both.
A prevailing school of thought, postmodernism, posits a different point of view. Originating in France in the mid-twentieth century, though its roots stretch much further into the history of ideas, postmodernism is a philosophical movement with thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jean-François Lyotard being considered its foundational members. Cornerstones of this movement include the dismissal of objectivity and the rejection of grand narrative. Premodernity in Western culture is characterized by the grand narratives of the Judeo-Christian corpus and the notion that truth is a derivative of faith.
Conversely, modernity, the age of the Enlightenment, is the era in which truth was affirmed as a reality to be discovered solely through reason, scientific inquiry, and investigation. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, along with many of his enlightenment-era contemporaries, asserted that a divorce, as it were, had taken place between religion and art in that the employment of the latter as a means of expressing truth, which hitherto had been spiritually understood and construed, was no longer beholden to said task given the burgeoning age of reason-centric rationality. Just as in any divorce, both parties involved are quite altered by the ordeal. Postmodernism, therefore, is an attempt to move beyond the principles of both eras. This point is validated by postmodernist Richard Rorty. He writes, “Both the Age of Faith and the Enlightenment seem beyond recovery.”
Stephen Hicks, in his work on the subject, juxtaposes modernist tenants with those of postmodernism, saying “Instead of natural reality—anti-realism. Instead of experience and reason—linguistic social subjectivism. Instead of individual identity and autonomy—various race, sex, and class groupisms. Instead of human interests as fundamentally harmonious and tending toward mutually-beneficial interaction—conflict and oppression. Instead of valuing individualism in values, markets, and politics—calls for communalism, solidarity, and egalitarian restraints. Instead of prizing the achievements of science and technology—suspicion tending toward outright hostility.”
In the domain of artistry, this worldview may characterize a postmodernist’s aesthetic endeavor, subjugating the aim of beauty, which is, at least, the cultural conception of the aesthetic ideal, to the proliferation of a political idea, resulting in a disordering of intention. However, a work of art may be regarded as beautiful in a particular context given its intent, despite its peddling a moralizing message or not “pleasing when seen.” The work of Hieronymus Bosch exemplifies this point; however, the devil exists in the details, as it were. The nature of the message may intend to revere and aspire to an ideal.
The Garden of Earthly Delights, circa 1515, by Hieronymus Bosch
In Bosch’s case, this ideal is the ethical good. In his work “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” Bosch is setting before the viewer an admonishment against sinful behavior in the Christian understanding by depicting the consequences thereof. While the work may not necessarily “please when seen,” it calls one to the good, a central point of Thomistic beauty. Aquinas’ conceptualization of the good is as that of both a formal and final cause, in the Aristotelian sense, this is to say that it is both an end and a means to an end; beauty, on the other hand, “does not have the nature of a final cause.” Rather, it is that beauty “bids all things to itself,” that is the form, which is “the Good.”
Thus, beauty is a means to the end of good. Returning to postmodernism, one sees an abdication of this aspiration to the good through aesthetic practice. Marcel Duchamp, a celebrated French artist and proto-postmodernist, rightly recognizes the nature of aesthetic experience as a kind of transubstantiation, a process wherein the matter of the work is imbued with aesthetic value via the attention of the spectator meeting the intention of the artist; “The serious spectator's aesthetic re-affirmation of the painting is a kind of re-creation of it, serving the same spiritual purpose as the artist's creation of it.”
Duchamp also acknowledges the inexorability of aesthetic judgment and culture. Indeed, as religious ritual strives to re-present a deity, which is at least an ethical ideal, art endeavors to convey an intimation of the aesthetic ideal, which is at least a product of cultural consensus. For Duchamp, individual expression of the artist is paramount over re-presentation. As such, intending to elicit an aesthetic experience de facto subjugates the work to judgement and cultural critique.
Therefore, the postmodern artist endeavors to divorce art from the aesthetic realm, declaring it beyond judgment, for it was not intended to be judged. However, given the ontology of art established here, an art work will elicit an aesthetic experience and the post-requisite judgement qua object of attention irrespective of the artist's intent. Thus, the inevitable effect of work conducted unintentionally is an aesthetic experience and judgment that is qualitatively lesser than that which is done intentionally, and the re-presentation of banality, not an ideal, is the consequence.
Marilyn Diptych, 1962 by Andy Warhol
Abstract artist Frank Stella seems to affirm this conclusion, saying of the postmodern approach, “The artist becomes, without irony, a willing representative of society's everyday value, losing the integrity of his alienation, and art becomes an instrument of social integration – a sign of social belonging – losing aesthetic purpose and power.” The postmodern reduction of art to the “commonplace” results in qualitative, cultural deterioration in aesthetic creativity. Indeed, “in postmodernity, we no longer see the painting, only the reproduction.”
C.S. Lewis, in his essay “Good Work and Good Works,” makes reference to this twentieth-century shift in artistic sentiment: “Artists also talk of Good Work; but decreasingly. They prefer words such like significant, important, contemporary, or daring. These are not, to my mind, good symptoms.” Lewis also acknowledges this need for working in concordance with the framework of cultural ideals in saying “When an artist is in the strictest sense working, he of course takes in to account the existing tastes, interests, and capacities of his audience. These, no less than the language, the marble, or the paint are part of his raw material; to be used, tamed and sublimated, not ignored nor defied. Haughty indifference to them is not genius nor integrity; it is laziness and incompetence.”
The impact of postmodern ideal-death, the Nietzschean death of God, is not limited to aesthetics; the religious act of ritual practice, when divorced from a pursuit of the ideal, i.e., adherent to a high-order qualitative standard and goal, the spiritual experience elicited is lesser than. As Don Saliers explains, “In nearly every communal religious tradition congruence between the ethos of the enactment and its content is paramount. Casual indifference to words and symbols in funeral rites, for example, diminishes the meaning of the participation in the rite.” To lose sight of the ideal and to have “the high brought low” with respect to art and religious ritual is to reduce them both to the “commonplace.”
Insofar as art and ritual are means of communication, from artist to viewer in the former case and from deity to follower in the latter, postmodern thought “defeats every attempt to bring [the intent of the artist] into contact with the external world, remaining the medium and symbol of the artist’s inner world.” Acknowledging this, it becomes evident that ignoring the cultural ideal results in aesthetic sin and ethical uptake failure, as it were. This is to say that, to the degree that aesthetic and ethical ideals, the beautiful and the good, are cultural conceptions, engaging in artistic and ritual practice without these ideals in mind results in miscommunication, hence the aesthetic and spiritual experiences being lesser than; the term “sin” was employed in the sport of archery in ancient Greece to denote one “missing the mark.”
One may return to C.S. Lewis for a rather helpful synopsis of this matter: “Great Works’ (of art) and ‘Good Works’ (of charity) had better also to be Good Work. Let choirs sing well or not at all. Otherwise we merely confirm the majority in their conviction that the world of Business,” the mundane and commonplace, “which does with such efficiency so much that never really needed doing, in the real, the adult, and the practical world; and all this ‘culture’ and all this ‘religion’ (horrid words both) are essentially marginal, amateurish, and rather effeminate activities.”
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