The nature of art
Moreover, art is social not only for the appreciator, but also for the artist. A really fatal misunderstanding about this matter has arisen in certain quarters, in connection with the definition of art as “expression.” That art is expression or self-expression, no one would deny. It is a free creation of an imaginary world through which the artist finds surcease for his desires and a solution for his problems. But art is not self-expression the way baby’s cry or a bird’s song is; it is not even What Wordsworth called poetry, a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. No genuine artist is content merely to give form to his feelings, burning desire clean in creation, and out of its flame warming his group from whom he demands sympathy and understanding. He is not trying to please the group; that is the last thing he wishes to do; rather he is insisting that his group find pleasure in what pleases him. The idea that art is mere expression is valid only for the work of amateurs and dilettantes. Such people are, in fact, just expressing themselves for the sake of expression; amusing, pleasing themselves. They do not care whether anyone likes what they do or not; that is no part of their purpose. The improviser does not need an audience; the amateur painter will not show his work except perhaps and grudgingly to his wife or intimate friend. How different is the artist He stands for something in a group and insists that what he creates shall be known and valued as he values it.
A final implication of the social character of art is the necessity that imagination shall be embodied in some physical thing by means of which it may be reproduced in many minds and at many moments. So close in fact is the connection between imagination and physical embodiment that common sense hardly knows how to distinguish between them. The unphilosophical mind means by the Mona Lita, a canvas that hangs on a wall in the another room of the Venus de milo sculptured block of marble set up in another room of the palace; and by a poem something he can find written on a certain page of a certain temple or even in a certain piece of wood in a shrine. If you remind him that the same poem can be found in many books; the same statue in many blocks of marble, of which the one in the Louvre was probably not the original; or ark how a landscape can hang on a wall, or Venus who dwells on Olympus can live in a museum; and enquire how it happens that the same music many be heard in Budapest that he is hearing in New York, he would probably be as much puzzles as the pagan nurtured in a creed outworn would be if you were to ask him how god can inhabit so many shrines and temples at once. The solution of the prob-
The nature of art Moreover, art is social not only for the appreciator, but also for the artist. A really fatal misunderstanding about this matter has arisen in certain quarters, in connection with the definition of art as “expression.” That art is expression or self-expression, no one would deny. It is a free creation of an imaginary world through which the artist finds surcease for his desires and a solution for his problems. But art is not self-expression the way baby’s cry or a bird’s song is; it is not even What Wordsworth called poetry, a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. No genuine artist is content merely to give form to his feelings, burning desire clean in creation, and out of its flame warming his group from whom he demands sympathy and understanding. He is not trying to please the group; that is the last thing he wishes to do; rather he is insisting that his group find pleasure in what pleases him. The idea that art is mere expression is valid only for the work of amateurs and dilettantes. Such people are, in fact, just expressing themselves for the sake of expression; amusing, pleasing themselves. They do not care whether anyone likes what they do or not; that is no part of their purpose. The improviser does not need an audience; the amateur painter will not show his work except perhaps and grudgingly to his wife or intimate friend. How different is the artist He stands for something in a group and insists that what he creates shall be known and valued as he values it.A final implication of the social character of art is the necessity that imagination shall be embodied in some physical thing by means of which it may be reproduced in many minds and at many moments. So close in fact is the connection between imagination and physical embodiment that common sense hardly knows how to distinguish between them. The unphilosophical mind means by the Mona Lita, a canvas that hangs on a wall in the another room of the Venus de milo sculptured block of marble set up in another room of the palace; and by a poem something he can find written on a certain page of a certain temple or even in a certain piece of wood in a shrine. If you remind him that the same poem can be found in many books; the same statue in many blocks of marble, of which the one in the Louvre was probably not the original; or ark how a landscape can hang on a wall, or Venus who dwells on Olympus can live in a museum; and enquire how it happens that the same music many be heard in Budapest that he is hearing in New York, he would probably be as much puzzles as the pagan nurtured in a creed outworn would be if you were to ask him how god can inhabit so many shrines and temples at once. The solution of the prob-
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