Art for Arts Sake?

I recently read an article by the founder of The School of Life, Allain de Bottom, who broaches the question “Should Art Really Be For its Own Sake Alone?”  I would highly recommend this brief article to anyone at all interested in the intersection of Theology, the Church and the Arts.  The article reminds me of much of Nicholas Wolterstorff’s critique of the arts in his book Art in Action which I would also recommend.  de Bottom argues that an artist’s reason for creating doesn’t necessarily undermine the value of that which is created.  This of course butts heads so to speak with much of the modernist “art for arts sake” aesthetic, which he suggests loathes any whisper of aesthetic utility.  From this relatively rigid perspective, art must be encountered and experienced only as art, nothing more, and nothing less.  At any rate I wanted to take a few moments and play his assertion, which I generally agree with against another assertion I tend to agree with, Jacques Maritain’s assertion that the artist should create first and foremost for the good of that which is made, and see which one might come out on top. 

I appreciate de Bottom’s concern with artistic content.  Most artists through history don’t share the 21^st century art world’s aesthetic.  Most through the 18^th century at least connected art with some other purpose. Their art wasn’t created solely for its own sake.  Even modern artists respected in the art world have done the same.  de Bottom sites one of my favorite artists Mark Rothko as an example.  He suggests that Rothko himself hoped his work would accomplish something: “allowing the viewer a moment of communion around an echo of the suffering of our species.”  I would suggest many who have seen his work, particularly the layered black canvases he painted for his work for the Rothko Chapel, can attest that he accomplishes this, and perhaps more.  From the opposite direction I was struck on a trip to the National Gallery of Art in DC last year (after reading Art in Action) at the manner in which art work intended for devotional use, for example altar pieces which at one point were installed in churches, were displayed outside of their intended context, with no meaningful nod to their liturgical past.  This removal of an art work from a utilitarian context in order to serve in a purely aesthetic one seems peculiar at best to me.  So I resonate with the assertion that the artist inserts some content into what they create, even if that content is the assertion that what they create carries no content.

On the other side I resonate with the notion of art’s inherent value regardless of its content.  For that I go to Roman Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain, who I must confess I read largely through Flannery O’Connor’s understanding of him which she shares in her book on writing Mystery and Manners.  I’ve since read Maritain’s Art and Scholasticism, but for some reason I still tend to prefer O’Connor’s Maritain over Maritain himself.  At any rate, I tend to agree with O’Connor that the artist, particularly the Christian artist, should not create as a means to simply promulgate some message.  She would suggest that message lives inside the artist and will reveal itself through the work.  In order for it to be truly heard it must be deeply incarnated into the work, in a manner similar to the way in which the Being and truth of God were incarnated into Jesus, partially to give that truth a greater resonance with those with whom the Divine intended to communicate.  So in short, the purpose the artist hopes to accomplish must be deeply packed into their work.  It must come second to the value of the work itself.  The viewer, hearer, reader of the work’s encounter with the artist’s purpose must be earned through the hard work of the artist to incarnate this purpose into their work. 

So which side wins?  Well, you may have figured out by now if you’ve read any of my blogs that I tend to be a both/and type of person.  I believe both the aesthetic and utilitarian, for the lack of a better word, have to live together for art to function in a manner in which I would tend to recognize as art.  Now I understand the subjectivity of that statement.  And I understand the cans of worms opened by that conclusion, but that’s what the comment section and future blogs are for, isn’t it?