A Manifesto of Art and Reality
by Michael J. Morris
There seem to be pinnacles of existence (perhaps even existence itself is one of these) that are so lofty, so seemingly out of reach and sight that they are nearly unapproachable. They are expansive in their seeming unapproachability�in the sense that the cosmos itself is expansive�full of gravity and mystery and systems of tremendous illumination, yet they demand consideration, contemplation, and exploration, for no other reason than that they are necessary for what it means to be alive. I believe art to be one such phenomenon. It is perhaps inseparable from life, and it demands attention, not because it is my field and my pursuit, but because it is necessary for the approach of the nature of existential reality (by this I mean nothing more or less than the nature of the reality of that which exists); in fact, I am convinced that it is in itself the approach of existential reality, not as an end in itself, but as a means to a more excellent end. I am convinced that the nature of art is the pursuit of truth, primarily the truth of existence and the human experience, but in this I see the more transcendent pursuit of ultimate truth. This assertion encompasses a number of additional considerations, as is the case of any truly expansive subject. These considerations�such nuances as the connection of truth to being, the role and of God in reality, as both sovereign and a denominator in the nature of reality, the necessary breadth of the subject of art, the nature of beauty, and the relational nature of art in serving the communal pursuit of truth�are all aspects that I hope to here discuss. In this paper I will attempt to approach this unapproachable pinnacle, to wrestle through these existential considerations and journey towards some fuller understanding of the nature of art.
The primary concern in my exploration is the nature of truth and reality. I know no way to approach this subject apart from my faith (what is faith but the pursuit of truth?). In my understanding of the universe, there must be an Intelligent Designer of all that exists, whom I hold to be God, the Creator of all things and sovereign over all that has been created, thus responsible for the existence and sustenance of all existential reality. If we hold this to be true, it follows that nothing that exists is not as God designs it, that everything that is is as God desires or allows it. Everything that exists does so with intentionality. From this we may conclude that what exists is at the very least a direct expression of God, and quite possibly the ultimate expression we have been given of his nature. If God is the creator and sustainer of all things, if nothing exists apart from him, then all that exists comes from him and must be consistent with him. If God is that which precedes all things, then there is nothing more true than him, there is no truth apart from him. If God is that which is most true and all that is emanates from him, then all that is is an expression of some degree of ultimate truth. If all these things are true, then my conclusion is this: if everything that has being is the intentional design of ultimate truth (God), then truth is apprehensible through all existential reality; by approaching all that is, we approach not only the nature of what is, the nature of our own experience and any kind of common human experience, but also the nature of its design and designer.
A further role of God in the nature and acquisition of truth, beyond that of Creator and sustainer, is his role as a denominator. Just as God is ultimate truth, he is also ultimate being and ultimate beauty, in that all true and beautiful artifacts and phenomena come from him. If this is so, if God is ultimate truth and ultimate beauty, then truth is beauty and being, beauty is being and truth, and being is defined by beauty and truth. From this basic equation I conclude that something can be called beautiful simply by virtue of its being, and it is true by this same virtue. Just as we can approach truth and the nature of God through the experience of the created world, in a more fundamental sense the very state of being is a capacity for truth and a candidacy for beauty.
With this conclusion that all that exists within the created world, all that is, is capable of revealing truth as a direct expression from God and is thus beautiful, it must also be mentioned that for this to be possible, we must accept reality in its fullness and completeness and not simply that which we find to be lovely or comforting. All that exists does so because God wills it so; this means that just as we see Him, and thus truth and beauty, in the �good� of this world�the loveliness, the joyful, the orderly, and the pretty�we must also be willing to accept truth from the �bad�, from the grotesque, the painful, the chaotic, and the ugly. The world we have been given is a world made up of light and darkness, good and evil, that in which we take pleasure and that in which no pleasure can be taken. If it all has been intended as it is, then it must be accepted and approached as it is, in its entirety. Like the Dionysiac of Friedrich Nietzsche, who whole heartedly abandoned himself to face terror and beauty and embrace the fullness of reality, we must be equally accepting of all that is, ready to approach, accept, and learn from whatever is set before us. When we as people and artists start embracing a segmented version of reality, selecting that which meets with our approval and censoring that of which we do not approve, we are essentially sabotaging our apprehension of truth by deciding that there are some aspects of truth we will accept and others we will not. This approach of reality ultimately makes truth unknowable and the god seen through it a false representation of the Creator and a compromised version of his character.
As Madeleine L�engle once said, �Without pain we do not grow� (63). Without the dark, �unacceptable� portions of reality, we cannot grow, we are not challenged to be more than we are, more than we think that we can be; without these parts, there would be nothing to drive us towards the Truth and God. Any anxiety we experience when approaching reality must be countered with the reassuring knowledge that whatever is is good, or at least serves the greater purpose of goodness. This is the comfort of a God who is ultimately good; all that he does and purposes is in the work of goodness. Thus all the contrasting portions of truth and reality are bearable in the knowledge that however dark and atrocious, it is all so that goodness might prevail. L�Engle also said this:
�How can we trust an Abba who has let the world come to all the grief of the past centuries? Who has given us the terrible gift of free will with which we seem to be determined to destroy ourselves? We trust te one called Abba as a child does, knowing that what seems unreasonable now will be seen to have reason later. We trust as Lady Julian of Norwich trusted, knowing that despite all the pain and horror of the world, ultimately God�s loving purpose will be fulfilled and �all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well�� (77).
The intent of the preceding discussion has been simply to serve as a foundation for the discussion of the nature of art. As I stated above, I find the ultimate nature of art to be the pursuit of truth. In the context of all that has been said, this pursuit takes place as we seek to apprehend existential reality. This is an extremely broad definition, one that accommodates almost any aesthetic philosophy asserted in centuries gone by. It allows for imitative art, expressive art, ecstatic art, mundane art, and even art that is merely designated as such. All of these concepts of art fit somewhere into an overall structure of art which either reflects, is produced out of, or experienced within some context of existential reality, some examination or reaction to what is. In fact, try as I might, I am unable to fathom art that does not approach existential reality, either in its process, performance, or product. Even in its conceptualization, art enters the realm of existence; this alone, this state of existence, qualifies it as capable of revealing truth. This is the primary concern of this theory, that if in fact truth is apprehensible through what is, and all art is in some way connected in subject, process, practice, or product to what is, then all art is concerned with the apprehension of truth.
It is not as if this quality of art has gone unnoticed throughout aesthetic history. Even Plato, with his view of art as merely imitative, saw art as reflecting the created world, although he hardly saw it as capable of reflecting ultimate truth. Plato held all art to be an imitation of physical reality, of existential reality, yet this quality separated it from any kind of truth, since physical reality itself was but an imitation of the ultimate forms which emanated from the Ultimate Good, which was Ultimate Truth. Even so, I cannot help but recognize a train of thought resembling my own conclusions, in that even though for Plato, the world was distanced from the Good by several degrees of separation, it ultimately still pointed towards the Creator and Ultimate Truth. Understanding that Plato would most likely have not held this same view, I still find this quality of reality, and thus art, undeniable, even in his structure of understanding.
Leon Battista Alberti also touched on this quality of art, although admittedly from a completely different point of view. What I notice most about Alberti is that, like Plato, the created world (Nature) is the source material for all art. As stated before, I cannot fathom art that does not either draw from or address this reality; I believe Alberti would agree. Yet even more striking is that Alberti holds the created world as worthy of being depicted in art, implying an intrinsic worth of nature and its ability to reveal beauty. He also addresses another idea that will be more fully developed later in his paper: the idea of drawing from multiple subjects within nature to depict a more idealized, perfect beauty, extracting the finest qualities from each subject that the final depiction might approach the more ultimate beauty. This approach of beauty is how I believe we must approach truth as well, in a conjunction of multiple experiences of reality leading to a truer understanding of Truth, just as Alberti insists on bringing together multiple subjects for study in order that a more beautiful beauty might be depicted. I see this notion of a higher, more transcendent experience arising from the joining of multiple sources as prefiguring the broader philosophical implications of my own aesthetic philosophy.
Having discussed what I find to be the overarching, defining qualities of art, I am moved to question the relevance of these virtues. However true it may be, what is the relevance of art�s ability to approach and reveal truth? How does this further human progress or in what way might it better the soul? I have several instincts and conclusions on this subject. My first instinct is a kind of rebellion against pragmatism, a conviction that art need not be burdened with evidence of betterment or virtue, that there is virtue simply in its being, and as discussed above, being truthful simply by its being. Another angle might be that I find the need for truth to be a common hunger of the human soul, and that in nearly every field, the pursuit of truth is what draws humanity onward. I see this as especially true in the practice and creation of art, and as such I view art as a powerful means for furthering this quest of the soul, for both the artist in the act of creation and for the audience in a kind of vicarious experience of the artist�s subject.
Yet even these things do not fully exhaust the role of art in the revelation of truth. An entire aspect of existential reality that I have not yet discussed is the role of subjective experience. An inevitable truth is that all reality is experienced through the subjective lens of the individual; the aesthetic conclusion of this fact is that all art is created and perceived through the subjective experiences of the artist and audience. David Hume discussed this to a degree, allowing for the fact that beauty is a subjective experience, yet ultimately affirming a more objective impetus responsible for provoking the experience of beauty within the human mind. I cannot say that I completely disagree; I also affirm that there is an objective state of being and objective provocation for the experience of beauty, but we diverge with respect to the consistency of subjective experience. I cannot believe that any two individuals will experience these objective phenomena of being/truth/beauty is the same way. Herein is the necessity of art, its startling potency within human experience. In exceedingly simple terms, art is the artist creating out of his or her subjective experience and offering that creation to another or others, allowing them to partake of the artist�s subjective vision. Art has the amazing ability to forge conjunctions between distinct subjective experiences, pushing the limits of our isolated condition in order that we may participate in a kind of communal approach of truth. Art is very much like a language, serving to communicate from one individual to another, overlapping our experiences and meanings in order that we in some small way experience what another individual experiences.
Leo Tolstoy discussed an idea relevant to this discussion in his essay What Is Art? For Tolstoy, art was something very much concerned with the understanding of one�s own state of being and the translation and communication of that state to another person�quite literally, the artist experiencing his own subjective reality and then through his art allowing another to experience that same subjective reality. I see this conjunction of subjective experiences as necessary to the apprehension of any objective truth. If all existential reality is capable of revealing truth, and yet we all experience that reality in our own subjectivity, then it stands to reason that in connecting and communicating among subjective realities, by recognizing the organization and synchronicity of our experiences, we might more clearly approach the underlying truth of reality. It is as if we each hold pieces of a grand puzzle, threads in an ornate tapestry, and in coming together we share those threads and pieces, connecting them in order that we might more fully appreciate the breadth of truth that has been given to us. I see art a means by which such connections are made, different from verbal or written language in its lack of codification, yet undeniably able to clearly address matters of the mind and heart, everything from the literal to the abstract, communicating on levels that run deeper than words alone, and articulate in the sensations it provokes. This capacity of art, not only to reveal truth by approaching the subjective experience of what is, but to more deeply reveal objective truth by forging connections between the experiences of individuals, makes art a phenomenon both as mundane and as transcendent as reality itself.
When approaching ideas so poignant and foundational to our experience and understanding of reality, one wants the conclusions to be apocalyptic and the discussion to be one of genius and exceptional wit. More often than not, however, when we encounter these levels of humanity and reality and divinity, we are mere children, scrambling atop the works and thoughts that have been laid down before us, in the humble need for understanding. One wants these questions and speculations to be lofty, a pinnacle to reflect the heights which we seek to explore and explain, but they hardly seem to be so. They are in fact merely all that they can be: the speculations of an individual within the context of his own subjective experience of reality, understanding as he does, humbly offering what vision he sees, and allowing for that which he does not. Ultimately that is how we must approach Truth and beauty and perhaps even being itself, with the knowledge that we grasp each only insofar as we can see within our own experience. We must constantly allow for that which remains unknown, looking for the clues of truth within the created world and faithfully articulating what we hold to be true, willing to offer audience to the experiences of others and see in and through them a fuller picture of reality. This certainly must be true of art, and it is perhaps through art that this pursuit of truth within existential reality and conjoined subjective experience is most transcendentally facilitated. Perhaps just as reality is an expression of ultimate truth, art, being an expression born out of or directed towards reality, is the most capable vehicle for pursuing and revealing truth. Herein lies the purpose and value of art as it relates to truth, beauty, and existential reality.
Works Cited
Warternberg, Thomas E. The Nature of Art: An Anthology. Thomson Wadsworth Publishers, 2001.
L�Engle, Madeleine. Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. New York: North Point Press, 1980.