The sun is rising. The mountains are a black silhouette as the sun peaks out from above their peaks. Clouds dust and sprinkle the sky. The world is slowly illuminated as the sun gets brighter and brighter, and becomes so glorious that you cannot look at it anymore. Suddenly, you can see everything. The dewy grass glistens, and the vines create shimmering shadows.
Is this beautiful? Is this art? In early Renaissance, not quite. However as the 16C progressed, the idea that nature was beautiful in and of itself took a greater hold. Nature when imitated by art maintains beauty. This is because art is only beautiful when it mirrors reality.
Classical art was never meant to look natural (as Vasari insisted.) The Renaissance treatises declare an opposite intention – that the artists duty is to imitate nature. This new style is sometimes described as “realistic.” Yet it begs the difficult question (as Barzun points out in his From Dawn to Decadence) – what is reality? This is a tricky inquiry because the answer varies from person to person. Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Logico Tractatus Philosophicus argues that reality includes the world – everything that is the case, and all possible worlds – everything that will be the case in the future. In short: reality is all that is, and all that will be. Life is the discovery of what is real. This is not an easy task. We may never know for sure if someone has hit upon this reality. Though there may be different perspectives and experiences concerning what is the case and what will be the case, it does not change the facts. Barzun asserts that “all styles of art are realistic.” This may be true, but not all art mirrors reality. Classical art calls to Platonic forms, a form in a possible world – something that will be in the future. “Realistic” art imitates what is. Both can mirror reality. An artist is like a translator. For the artist, the original author is God, and the original text is nature, or reality. The translator mirrors the original author and the original text and must choose between a multiplicity of possible solutions for each sentence. When each word is translated as directly as possible, translators lose sight of the whole. In the same way, the artist may imitate something in a realistic way, but it does not mirror the whole of reality.
Beauty encompasses all of reality, or experience. It is impossible to have beauty without depth. A hollow understanding or character is not a beautiful one. Something is beautiful when it takes the ugliness and brutality of humanity and adds meaning to the suffering. Beauty is the flowers that grow from the mud and manure, and art is the display of both the manure and the flowers. The England based street artist Banksy wrote: “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” True beauty is a type of reality that is not invasive, but employs only gratitude and appreciation, wonder and awe. Truth and goodness are deeply related to beauty, because beauty is an ultimate value. It calls to something within us in which we are free to reject or accept. Roger Scruton in his Beauty: A Very Short Introduction wrote:
Beauty is an ultimate value—something that we pursue for its own sake, and for the pursuit of which no further reason need be given. Beauty should therefore be compared to truth and goodness, one member of a trio of ultimate values which justify our rational inclinations.
God knows what is, and what will be. He knows all of reality, so He is the great determiner of beauty. Yet, artists do not have to be morally sound to mirror reality in their art (though it will likely help.) Barzun writes: “All styles of art… point to varied aspects and conceivings of experience, all of which possess reality, or they would not command the artists interest in the first place and would not spark any response in the beholder.” In The Book Thief, a WWII novel written by Markus Zusak, death is personified, and narrates the story of a simple girl named Liesel that teaches a Jew hiding in her basement how to read. At one point, death says: “Yes, I have seen a great many things in this world. I attend the greatest disasters and work for the greatest villains. But then, there are other moments.” Death, employed by villains, was able to recognize the simple beauty in Liesel’s story. Anyone has access to these moments.
Life is often ugly, impossible, and trite. Even a sunrise reveals the unkempt garden, the homeless bum on the street, or signifies the start of a tedious day. That is reality. But so is the gleam of the grass, the wonder of science, the shimmering of vines, and the glory provided by the sun. This glory adds meaning to the ugly and impossible. This is beauty. When art mirrors this vast expanse of human experience and emotion – when it calls to the immaculate forms of what will and can be – this is when art becomes beautiful. And, as Dostoyevsky wrote: “Beauty will save the world.”
Is this beautiful? Is this art? In early Renaissance, not quite. However as the 16C progressed, the idea that nature was beautiful in and of itself took a greater hold. Nature when imitated by art maintains beauty. This is because art is only beautiful when it mirrors reality.
Classical art was never meant to look natural (as Vasari insisted.) The Renaissance treatises declare an opposite intention – that the artists duty is to imitate nature. This new style is sometimes described as “realistic.” Yet it begs the difficult question (as Barzun points out in his From Dawn to Decadence) – what is reality? This is a tricky inquiry because the answer varies from person to person. Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Logico Tractatus Philosophicus argues that reality includes the world – everything that is the case, and all possible worlds – everything that will be the case in the future. In short: reality is all that is, and all that will be. Life is the discovery of what is real. This is not an easy task. We may never know for sure if someone has hit upon this reality. Though there may be different perspectives and experiences concerning what is the case and what will be the case, it does not change the facts. Barzun asserts that “all styles of art are realistic.” This may be true, but not all art mirrors reality. Classical art calls to Platonic forms, a form in a possible world – something that will be in the future. “Realistic” art imitates what is. Both can mirror reality. An artist is like a translator. For the artist, the original author is God, and the original text is nature, or reality. The translator mirrors the original author and the original text and must choose between a multiplicity of possible solutions for each sentence. When each word is translated as directly as possible, translators lose sight of the whole. In the same way, the artist may imitate something in a realistic way, but it does not mirror the whole of reality.
Beauty encompasses all of reality, or experience. It is impossible to have beauty without depth. A hollow understanding or character is not a beautiful one. Something is beautiful when it takes the ugliness and brutality of humanity and adds meaning to the suffering. Beauty is the flowers that grow from the mud and manure, and art is the display of both the manure and the flowers. The England based street artist Banksy wrote: “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” True beauty is a type of reality that is not invasive, but employs only gratitude and appreciation, wonder and awe. Truth and goodness are deeply related to beauty, because beauty is an ultimate value. It calls to something within us in which we are free to reject or accept. Roger Scruton in his Beauty: A Very Short Introduction wrote:
Beauty is an ultimate value—something that we pursue for its own sake, and for the pursuit of which no further reason need be given. Beauty should therefore be compared to truth and goodness, one member of a trio of ultimate values which justify our rational inclinations.
God knows what is, and what will be. He knows all of reality, so He is the great determiner of beauty. Yet, artists do not have to be morally sound to mirror reality in their art (though it will likely help.) Barzun writes: “All styles of art… point to varied aspects and conceivings of experience, all of which possess reality, or they would not command the artists interest in the first place and would not spark any response in the beholder.” In The Book Thief, a WWII novel written by Markus Zusak, death is personified, and narrates the story of a simple girl named Liesel that teaches a Jew hiding in her basement how to read. At one point, death says: “Yes, I have seen a great many things in this world. I attend the greatest disasters and work for the greatest villains. But then, there are other moments.” Death, employed by villains, was able to recognize the simple beauty in Liesel’s story. Anyone has access to these moments.
Life is often ugly, impossible, and trite. Even a sunrise reveals the unkempt garden, the homeless bum on the street, or signifies the start of a tedious day. That is reality. But so is the gleam of the grass, the wonder of science, the shimmering of vines, and the glory provided by the sun. This glory adds meaning to the ugly and impossible. This is beauty. When art mirrors this vast expanse of human experience and emotion – when it calls to the immaculate forms of what will and can be – this is when art becomes beautiful. And, as Dostoyevsky wrote: “Beauty will save the world.”
