Dewitt H. Parker
Enjoyment depends partly upon our knowing that this is so. We may enjoy a work of art in loneliness; but afterwards we want to talk about it to our friends, and make sure that they too enjoyed it. I would even venture to assert that if some despot were to decree that no one should form this day forth speak or write or in any other way communicate with his fellows about books, survive in a world of utter privacy and silence. The communicability of the value of art is, as kant insisted, an essential fact about it. A work of art cannot be beautiful just for me, because its beauty, that is to say, its value, depends upon the possibility of sharing it.
Not only our pleasures, but also our standards with regard to art are social. In all aesthetic appreciation we can distinguish two phases, a primary phase of direct pleasure in what is offered us, and a secondary phase that arises through the fact that the work of art meets the standards which we bring to bear upon it. without the direct appeal, the work of art is ineffective; but unless, besides, it measures up to our expectations, we are disappointed and disturbed. We come to every work of art with a fairly definite idea of what a work of art of that kind should be like; our approach is not naïve, but critical and sophisticated. A good play, a good musical composition, must be so and so; or so and so. I this respect, to be sure, art is not peculiar; for we bring to every type of what makes a good smoke. For one, it is a briar pipe, with a certain brand of tobacco; for another, it is a fine Havana cigar; for a third, a lucky strike; for a fourth, a camel. What is peculiar about art in comparison with, say, smoking, is that we claim for our standards social validity. If you like camels, while I like lucrkies; well, it is all right with me; we will agree to disagree, and that’s the end of it; but if you don’t like john marin, I shall feel that there is something wrong with you, and I may call you a Philistine, and tell you that you are sadly in need of aesthetic e education. And what you think of james joyce is not a matter of indifference to me. If you give me provocation , I shall dispute with you about it until midnight. And unlike our standards of smoking, our standards for art are formed not merely on a basis of personal experience and comparison, but like our standards of manners and morals, on a basis of tradition and education. An aesthetic value is not a given thing, to take or to leave, but something to be educated into. What a long way we are from the mere dream A work of art is part of the history and culture of a people, a dream is a transitory and trivial happening in an isolated brain. It would be an indignity to mention such commonplaces, were they not so flagrantly contradicted by certain “authorities.”