The Philosophy of Art

Mandy Carol Webb

March l997

Art, by definition, is a form, expressable only in sensory material, which is actualized by its own physical manifestion of that which the artist has first created in his mind.

There exists no definition of art today which seems adequate to descibe its place and importance in the history of mankind. Critics who at one time denied one particular artistic style to be worthy of the title of a work of art, later lauded and praised the same artist as a master of his trade. This, from one prespective, can be explained by the mere change of art itself. But the term art has not changed. Science has changed, so too has religion and philosophy. But there has never been the wide discrepancy of opinion that is held by modern art critics on the question of what is art. There is minimalism, 'found art,' as well as abstract art. A few centuries ago, these artists would have been laughed at and ridiculed.
One may try, as Socrates attempts, to find the unifiying aspect of all things ascribed to the category of art. The process is tidious and seemingly futile. Socrates fails and claims his ignorance only to be justified later in Plato's forms which gives essence to all things of similar quality. This approach would assume that there is an essence to Art of which all particulars partake. The world of essences has been shattered by contemporty philosophy and so too have all eternal, objective definitions. It seems that the use and meaning of art has changed over time. Once used for representation and imitation, it now looks for self-identity and purpose. Modern art not only speaks about the subjects within the material, but also about the abstract quality of art itself. The question remains of how can there be a set definition of art which allows for such changes in subject and validity without becoming too vague in the process. Hegel presented a historical and spiritual approach to defining art. But it too has its limitations.
According to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, art is the first step man takes in understanding the 'Spirit" which is continually unfolding in the world. Hegel's conception of Spirit is not only divine but it is in its own essence pure rationality. Since man is the only rational being in the world, at least that Hegel assumes, it is through man and human history that Spirit reveals itself and becomes fully self-actualized. Human history is the process by which Spirit becomes conscious of itself; it actualized itself through the history of the acts and thought of man. Art exists as the first and most primitive way man is able to understand the world around him. Religion and philosophy follow art in the unfolding of Spirit in history. Art, religion and philosophy are not mutually exclusive, however, but infact use and evolve out of one another. Philosophy exists as the final stage of man's thinking, independent of both art and religion yet able to use them both of subjects of thought.
It is an essential quality of Apirit, the absolute, that is becomes actualized. Since man exists as the highest form of being in the world, man is capable of understanding and actualizing the absolute. Art is one method, or phase, which man participates in the actualization of Spirit in the world.

Man surveys the whole world and plumbs its debths, gradually becoming aware of the absolute itself. Thus man and his cognitive and practical activities are not simply a manifestation of the absolute, but the highest phase of the absolute, that phase in which the absolute becomes self-conscious and 'returns to itself' out of the brute objectivity of nature.

Art is not only a phase in whch man becomes aware of the world around him, but exists as a way in which the Spirit actualizes itself. True Reality is the Spirit. But contained within the Spirit there potential and material aspects. For Spirit to become self-conscious, these potential and material aspects of spirit must be unified. There is the potential, the concept, as well as reality, the material of the world. Idea is the concept and the reality combined; it is the goal of the actualizing spirit. Hegel holds art itself in high esteem. It is essential to the history of man as well as the Spirit. Man is a thinking being, and art is a period of his thinking which takes form in representation of the objects of the world around him.
Art, for Hegel, begins when man becomes conscious of the world, or more particularly, things in the world. Man generalizes and attempts to put these conceptions into representations, for example a simple picture or drawing. Man becomes aware of the universal element as well as the particular manifestations of the universal in this way. He draws a tree, yet is aware that the drawing is not in reality a physical tree itself. He has taken the general concepts he has gathered from experiencing many trees and has abstracted the picture of a 'universal' tree from these. At this stage, art still depends upon material. For man to generalizes in this way, he uses representations, most often pictorial. He begins in a very privitive form his disinterested contemplation of the world, but presently is unable to think purely in the abstract. As the Spirit must acualize itself, so man too must express the Spirit as it evolves in his world. Art expresses the Spirit. There are limitations to art however and about its adequacy of expression. The fact that art has physical manifestation is a signification of this. Art is not the ideal expression of the Spirit because stills depends upon the subject which a work of art attempts to represent. Therefore, its role in the wolrd will be assumed by another method of expression better suited to the higher, more abstract, phase of man's thinking.
The ideal work of art is a unified whole. The concept to be actualized fits the manner of its expression perfectly. For Hegel, expression of the Idea is the form the actualization of Spirit must take. Since art portrarys the material manifestion of the spirit, it is ideal when the concepts are best suited to be expressed through material. A picture of a flower is more vivid to man than a symbolic or conceptual account of a flower. While a concept, such as truth, expressed in material often fails in its representation. When understanding Spirit, man first becomes aware of the world around him, more specifically, the physical world. To express this understanding, he uses representation of material through material. When art takes on concepts which are unable to be manifest in material, like truth and justice, art itself begins to decline. Hegel states that when this occurs, both religion (symbolic represention) and philosophy (conceptional representation) will arise. They better express the higher degrees of abstactness and objectivity that man's thinking will achieve during the more advanced stages of the actualization of the Spirit.
Art contains the same content as philosophy, as well as religion, but through different means and forms.

...(Art)...expresses its content in sensory form, while religion does so in the form of pictorial imagery and philosophy in the form of conceptual thought.

As man moves on to more advanced thinking, so too will his expression of this thought. Human expression conforms to the logical progression of the manifestation of spirit throughout history. But man does not leave art completely begind. Art beomes a subject for religion and philosophy, becoming material for each to work through. Hegel does not believe that art is capable of taking religious and philosophical themes while retaining its ideal form of being a unified whole. Art is an inadequate method for expressing these higher ideas. Art will reach a poing of questioning its own self-identity, that is, questioning its own adequacy of expression. This is not a matter to be solved within the realm of art itself. Not a painting nor a musical score has the capacity for answering the questions of identity and purpose. Individual works of art are only capable of inadequately posing, in material form, these abstract questions. The philosophy of art, therefore, is not concerned with individual pieces of art nor art criticism as such. It deals with a higher level of abstraction and conceptualization.
Art expresses form through senory descriptions. This may include color, sound, and shape. For many, this ascribes to art an asthetic quality when the forms are precieved materially. Since art is percieved in the same way that nature is percieve, both sensory, the problem then arises of how art is distinquished from nature. One can attribute to both the aesthetic quality some define art to possess. What is the difference between a natural expression of form and a human expression of some form. Hegel would assume the rational nature of the human mind differentiates the two, or maybe that the form exists only when expressed by the mind of the man through material. The expression of nature then is different than the expression of man. A beautiful senset or a colorful flower may be just as pleasing if not more so than a well-porportioned sculpture standing in a museum. There seem to be an intuitive difference when one views each of these objects. Although they all are aesthetic all pleasing to the eye (while other forms of expression may be pleasing to the ear, etc), the difference lies in the intention. More specifically, there is a difference of human intention. Man does not create a sunset, or form the image of it in his mind which creates its existence, even though he provides the means by which man views it. The form of the aesthetic quality found in a sunset is inherent in nature. Nature does not create, or give form to objects, in the same way that man creates objects of art. The form of a sunset is inherently in nature. Its beauty and other physical manifestations are not created from a being outside of itself, for nature encompasses it own creations. The form of the sunset exists at the same time in its manifestations and vice versa. Nature is not creative as the artists is creative. All though both create, they are fundamentally different. The form of a sculpture does not exist in the marble, not the form of a painting in the paint and the canvas. For an object to be a work of art, there must be an element of human intention, that is, human creativity. Hegel ascribes this ceativity to the Spirit, and its continually actualization through man. Man imposes on passive objects a form which he has created in his imagination. The form exists first in the man's mind. Only then is the form able to be transposed onto the materials outside of man. In contrast, Nature contains not only the materials but also the form itself. A natural object, say a flower, which is created already contains its own form. The plant which produces it must have the form as well as the material substance of the particular within it. It need not imagine or creat the form of the flower before it blossoms. Man is not only a part of nature but is also able to be detached and distinct from nature. He is the same as nature in the fact that he creates as nature creates. A man contains the form of man within himself and thus is able to produce other men without the imposition of a form which is not inherently in the process of this type of creation. But man, being breated in this way, canot be considered as a work or art nor as an artist when one creates a child. For an object to be a work of art and a man to be an artist, there must be an intentional imposition of a form, first existing in the mind of the man, onto the material in question. Immanuel Kant describes this difference to be the rational aspect of man which also makes hime free to choose, to create, and to be an individual. Man possesses the capability of rationality while nature remains instinctive. Nature does not create things as representation of the world. It is only what it is, not able to be conscious of itself and of the other. It is full, containing forms and materials, not able to create forms outside itself nor even conceive anything other than itself. Man is rational. He separates himself from the world, generalizing and creating representation for things he sees in the world. This is art in a primary definition, neither complete nor meaningful.
When one sees a work of art, one intuitively realizes that it is not actually the thing which it attempts to represent. The statue of a man is not a man, the painting of a tree not actually a tree. An artists creates the form of a man and then imposes this form upon marble, or the form of a tree upon paint and canvas...he does not create man out of marble nor leaves and wood out of oil and canvas. Nature imposes the form of a flower upon material and produces a flower, that is the essence of nature's creative processes-not man's creative processes. Man is, however, able to take the form of things and create those very things, but still in a fashion distinct from nature. Take for example a carpenter who is making a chair. He creates the form of chair in his mind and then imposes this form onto wood which produces a material chair. This process may be called craft and the person a craftsman. Once the standard of human intention is placed upon works of art, then art may be confused with this type of craftsmanship. A man who makes chairs would not, to the majority of people, be consider an artist. What then differentiates what a corpenter does as opposted to the work or an artist? both impose a form upon material (whether wood, paint, or even sounds as in musical notes) which is not inherently found within the material itself. The form exists in the mind not in the matter. Aristotle distinquishes between these two activities (both of which he and his contemporary philosophers called arts - the useful (techne) and the fine arts) by claiming one to exist for utility while the other exists for its own sake. The carpenter does not make a chair for the sole reson of making its form manifest in material without any utilitarian function. The chair serves a purpose, something for a person to sit upon. A work of art, such as a painting, a sculpture, or a muciscal score, has no utilitarian purpose contained within their form. It is in the nature of a chair to be sat upon, the physical manifestation of the chair is not its purpose itself. Art is meant to be seen, felt, of heard; it is not meant to be used to serve another purpose.