What is art? (#2 of 2), excerpted from Art History through Innovators: Sculpture

Now let's talk about what counts as a major innovation in art. To convey his idea of what’s important, an artist must be able to communicate with you. He has to capture your attention— he can’t communicate with you if your brain is channel-surfing. He has to show you something you can understand— he can't communicate without a common language. He has to show you something so unusual or so vivid that it makes you stand still and contemplate what he has created. In short, he has to make you stop, and look, and think about his work of art.

The innovations we’re looking at on this tour are not novelty for the sake of novelty. Every one of them gave its creator more power to make you stop, look, and think. And these innovations were not gimmicks or minor tweaks. They were so effective that they allowed many other sculptors to convey their values and ideas more effectively.

On the list of sculptures and the timeline, the works that illustrate innovations of that caliber— major innovations—are in bold. There are only 7 of them. We'll be looking at the other works on the list for the sake of context and contrast.  Resist the temptation to make a rude noise and fast-forward through those parts of the tour. You may hate medieval art, for example, but you'll appreciate Donatello and Michelangelo more if you've seen it.

What is art? (#1 of 2), excerpted from Art History through Innovators: Sculpture

Over the next month or so, I'll be posting several of the theoretical parts from my new lecture, “Art History through Innovators, Part 1: Sculpture” The lecture is designed as a walking tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but comes with a PDF of images so that you can listen to it anywhere in the world. The references to images below are to the PDF. The entire lecture (26 MP3 files and 50+ pages in PDF format) is available at 

http://www.forgottendelights.com/ArtHistoryThroughInnovators.htm

This first excerpt comes near the beginning of the lecture.

EXCERPT 1A: What is art?

A standard art history course covers the characteristics of the art of every major civilization and every time period, from ancient through modern. In Art History through Innovators, I focus instead on one question: In 5,000 years, how did we get from a sculpture such as Mykerinus and His Queen (#1A on the handout) to Frishmuth's The Vine? What I want to show you are major innovations in art. That’s why the title of this tour is "Art History Through Innovators."

If you have an inquiring mind, you should immediately be asking two questions. Number 1: What is art? Number 2: What counts as a major innovation?

So: What is art? You might be surprised to hear that there’s no widely accepted definition. If you ask 5 staff members at the Metropolitan Museum, they’ll give you 5 different definitions. Same thing if you ask 5 professors who teach art history.

The most difficult part of writing these tours was making sure that when we start, we’re on the same page about the meaning of “art.” So let’s try this.

Look at the Nike logo on the list of sculptures.

Do you know who that is?

Do you know what he's doing?

Is he good, bad, or mediocre at what he does?

How did he get that way: skill, practice, luck, transcendental meditation?

If you recognize this figure as Michael Jordan, then the image isn't just a blob of ink on paper. It carries with it a set of ideas about excellence, and about how you achieve excellence.

Sculptures carry ideas with them, too. For example, look at Michelangelo's David on the supplementary photos. Most people see in it a combination of courage, strength, and alertness.

But a sculptor doesn’t just show any random idea that pops into his head. Art works often endure for centuries, but artists never do. So an artist can’t sculpt an image of every single thing he sees. Nor can he include every microscopic detail of what he does choose to sculpt. He has to choose his subjects and his style based on what matters enough to him to spend days, months, or years working on.

So by showing courage, strength, and alertness in a work of art, Michelangelo says: “Such things are important to me.” A sculptor who represents Uncle Dave drinking beer in a La-Z-Boy reveals a different set of values. In either case, when the artist creates his work of art, he tells you: "This is important, this matters, pay attention to this— this value, this idea, this action." Sometimes it's this kind of place, this sort of person, this kind of feeling. But it’s always something the artist considers profoundly important.

We’ll talk about why that matters to you, as a viewer, after we’ve looked at a couple millennia of sculpture.

Coming shortly: Excerpt 1B, on what qualifies as a major innovation.

Why Ayn Rand's esthetics is the basis for my writing on art

When discussing the theory of art in Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan: A Historical Guide, I cited only Ayn Rand's esthetics. An early reader suggested I "balance" the presentation by mentioning other writers on esthetics. But here's the problem: no one surpasses or even equals Ayn Rand in the field of esthetics. Rand treats art with the same rigor she applies to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics. She begins her discussion by stating what art is and what purpose it serves for human beings. Her definition, "a selective re-creation of reality based on an artist's metaphysical value-judgments," indicates that an artist chooses his subject and style based on what he considers important, and creates something recognizable so that others will see it and grasp his message: "This matters - pay attention to this." Rand lays out the fundamentals of the field of esthetics. Using her definition of art plus her theory of knowledge (see Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology), one can determine what is and is not art: driftwood, paint splattered on a canvas, the Parthenon frieze? One can determine the esthetic requirements for good art: Is a portrait by Rembrandt better than one by Picasso in his Cubist phase? One can even explain why people often react so violently to works of art: "It repulses me but I can't turn away!" I have read hundreds of books by art critics and historians, many of whom have an encyclopedic grasp of their subject and descriptive abilities that make me wildly jealous. Not one of them offers a proper definition of art. The fifth edition of Janson's widely used History of Art, for example, says a work of art is "an esthetic object" and that "esthetic" means "that which concerns the beautiful." The term is, he promptly admits, unsatisfactory, but "will have to do for lack of a better one." When I'm visiting a gallery or reading a novel, I can and do revel in art without first subjecting it to rigorous esthetic analysis. I've found, though, that I can extend my enjoyment if I think about a particular work as well. For purposes of thinking about art and conveying my ideas to others, a proper definition is indispensable. In that respect, I have found Ayn Rand's essays on esthetics in Romantic Manifesto, Art of Fiction, Art of Nonfiction, and Ayn Rand Answers (the esthetics section) invaluable and irreplaceable. This entry appears on the Forgotten Delights site FAQ page, with further references.

Afterword and Appendixes of OMOM

In the Introduction to Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan I described how I became interested in art history and (years later) in outdoor sculpture in Manhattan. The Afterword explains how I was introduced to Ayn Rand's esthetics and why I became intent on developing a systematic method for studying art. It concludes with three answers to the crucial question: "Yes, but why would anyone else want to do that?" While writing the manuscript I wrestled with the question of whether to include that question and its three answers in the Introduction, as motivation. I feared that in the Introduction, giving a lengthy explanation based on Ayn Rand's esthetics and epistemology might lead potential readers to assume OMOM was yet another interminable, incomprehensible work of art criticism. By the time readers reach the Afterword, the answers to "Why analyze art?" merely summarize points I've already made. For motivation in the Introduction, I instead tried to describe my own introduction to art and to New York sculpture with such enthusiasm that it would draw readers in. Appendix A, "How to Read a Sculpture," has four sections:

1. A list of questions to ask when looking at a sculpture, cross-referenced to the OMOM essays in which the topics are discussed
2. A play-by-play description of the process by which I worked out the theme of Joan of Arc (Essay 44)
3. Evaluation of the Cid (Essay 54) in esthetic, philosophical, emotional and art-historical terms
4. Questions for readers to ask themselves about Butterfield (Essay 52), first to determine the theme and then to evaluate the sculpture

Appendix B is a list of OMOM sculptures by date of dedication. Appendix C is an alphabetical list of artists whose works are represented in OMOM. For each, it gives dates, place of birth, major works in the U.S., and all works by the artist that stand outdoors in the five boroughs of New York.