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© Donald Richardson
(April, 1999)
The discussion by Tony Rogers and Rita Irwin of the concept art
- or, rather, the lack of such a concept - in the Andyamathanha
and Sechelt people they have been studying (Australian Art
Education, 21, 2, 1998, pp36-43) is done very sensitively
and is deserving of our serious consideration. It raises issues
that are well known to those of us who have attempted to understand
the 'art' of indigenous people and to relate it to the modern
western concept of art.
However, in view of the fact that Rogers and Irwin place such
(and, certainly, due) emphasis on the relationship between concepts
and linguistic capacity, it is somewhat surprising that they
never say what they mean by the term 'art'. Similarly,
while they illustrate vividly the difficulty people in these
two traditional cultures have identifying what (in western terms)
could validly be called 'art', they never say what they
mean by the term either.
I suppose Rogers and Irwin believe that readers of this journal
will know what 'art' means and will have, in their minds, the
same concept it refers to as they have - and this may not be
an unreasonable assumption. In my own reading of their article
I believed that what they assume (and what gave their subjects
such difficulty) is that, inherent in the contemporary Western
concept of what art is, is the imperative that it must involve
the creative self-expression of an individual human, rather than
the reproduction of time-honoured paradigms. But, I know that
not everybody will share this assumption. And I am sure that
many readers will have difficulty in accepting that at least
some of the artefacts produced by traditional cultures
cannot be called 'art'. After all, isn't there is a growing market
in 'traditional art'?
Rogers and Irwin are understandably - and advisedly - sensitive
to the situation; but I believe they are unduly distressed by
the prospect of subsuming the artefacts of traditional people
under 'the mental boxes in which Eurowestern culture likes to
isolate its notions' and, thus, 'distorting the realities of
the cultures'. Neither pejorative expression nor gloom or embarrassment
is warranted here, in my view. If traditional cultures have no
words to describe concepts westerners have identified (because
they have not identified them themselves), this is a simple,
observable fact which requires no apology or recrimination on
either side. The situation is common in all the physical and
biological sciences and in other fields as well. So, why should
it not be possible - and acceptable - in art?
It may be true in some cases - but it does not necessarily follow
(as Rogers and Irwin imply) - that, if a culture does not have
words to describe a concept which outside observers have identified
and can name, then 'constructs that exist in one culture do not
necessarily exist in other cultures'. There are plenty of instances
of one culture - either validly or invalidly - identifying and
naming concepts in another which individuals in the latter are
unaware of or do not agree exist. It may be that individuals
in the less self-aware culture have simply not yet identified
the concepts which do exist and which do underlie accepted practices
and rituals. This may well be the case with art.
But, I am inclined to think that, in the present situation, the
reverse is true; however, discussion of this issue is made difficult
by the fact that we in the West have no more facility with the
concept art (and, hence, the usage of the term) than the
Adnyamathanha and the Sechelt have. Not only Rogers and Irwin
and their subjects labour under this disability.
It is a commonplace that noone has ever defined 'art' adequately.
However, while I acknowledge that there is often disagreement
on what the term means, I believe that this is largely due to
poor logic, historical ignorance and linguistic inconsistency
among those of us who talk and write about the subject a lot.
It is a matter of extreme regret to me that many critics and
educators (ie those who are charged with explaining and interpreting
the often arcane features of works of art to the public) are
usually content to 'agree to disagree' on the matter and - what
is worse - refuse to discuss it at all! Is there any wonder,
then, that researchers like Rogers and Irwin have difficulty
discovering what traditional people mean by the term?
Consequently, it is an imperative in their research that they
'question the very notion of art'. That they have found 'that
there is no such thing as art within the traditions of
either the Sechelt or Adnyamathanha peoples' is not surprising,
and can be explained by the following.
WHAT ART IS
Many in the West have attempted to define art. Some
of these definitions are amusing:
o art is anything you can get away with (Marshall McLuhan,
1967)
o if it sells, it's art (a director of Marlborough Fine
Arts Ltd, 1950s)
These were devised in desperation about the 'state of the art'
of the art of their day by people who - in spite of their involvement
in the field - did not really understand the situation. There
is a sly truth in the McLuhan quote, but the other one is about
the art-market - rather than about art per se - and is
actually (at least in the Australian context) more likely to
be the reverse of the truth than otherwise.
Others are more serious, universal and to the point:
o skill, especially human skill (Concise Oxford Dictionary)
o Then shall we set down the artistsÖ.as mimics of a
copy ofÖ.virtue, or of whatever else they represent, who
never get in touch with the truth? (Plato)
o a corner of nature seen through a temperament (mile
Zola)
o The artist is the creator of beautiful things (Oscar
Wilde)
o an attempt to create pleasing forms (Herbert Read)
o People will come to understand the meaning of art only when
they cease to consider tha tthe aim of that activity is beauty
(Leo Tolstoy)
o the ordering of what in most minds is disordered (I
A Richards)
o art is vision or intuition (Benedetto Croce)
o What turns something from a piece of nature into a work
of art is magic (David Hockney)
All of these (and many others I could have quoted) contain at
least one element of truth, but none (perhaps) is totally adequate,
and some directly contradict each other.
A minimum statement which, I believe, can be agreed upon is:
art is made by humans. Spiders' webs, nests and the bowers
of some birds, ant-hills, and such like are created structures
which humans may admire for their ingenuity and beauty, but they
differ from similar things made by humans in that the creatures
which create them have no option but to do so, and their forms
are dictated by genetic inheritance, not aesthetic choice. No
matter how 'driven' some artists seem to be, human art is, at
base, a voluntary activity.
ART AND DESIGN
Of course, art is part of the vast universe of things which
humans create. But, most of the things humans make are functional
(ie they are instrumental to our existence and well-being): this
includes buildings, machinery, clothing, vehicles, processed
foods, communications systems and such like. I believe that these
things are generally agreed to belong in the category design.
Even though individual examples of these things may be mass-produced
and (therefore) identical to each other, a designer designed
their prototypes (even if that person did not honour him/herself
with the title 'designer'). The mental, practical and aesthetic
processes and faculties used by designers in the development
of these prototypes are identical in many ways to those used
by artists - except that they are always used in the service
of a specific, functional, end.
Pictures, sculptures, artists' prints and the photographic and
electronic products of artists are also part of the universe
of things which humans create. However, they have no functional
imperative. Whereas a designer is told what to design (given
a 'design-brief', in the jargon), no one tells (or can
tell) an artist what to art (sic). Herein lies the - absolutely
clear - distinction between art and design.
A third term that is relevant to this discussion is craft.
It is an unfortunate fact that the 'art-craft debate' vitiates
the issue by limiting the discussion to two terms, whereas there
are three concepts to be considered. Craft in its
strictest sense means skill, but - as we all know - what
is admired in 'creative' functional objects is much more than
the facility by which they are created. What is admired in 'creative'
craft-works (as well, perhaps, as the skill with which they were
made) is their creativeness, which means the creativeness
of their design (or designer/s).
So - there are three concepts involved in any discussion of the
things humans create:
craft - the skill of the operator as evidenced in the
work
design - the realm of functional things, and
art - the realm of non-functional things.
And this related trio of concepts must apply in all human cultures,
regardless of whether individual members are aware of them or
not - and, to say so, cannot be condemned as cultural colonialism
or 'distorting the realities' of other cultures. (We could also
observe here that these distinctions are not confined to the
visual world: the functional and the non-functional, and the
identification of skills, are as relevant to the creation and
discussion of music, drama and literature as to the visual.)
MODERNISM
We should not be surprised that traditional cultures have
no concept of art as it is known currently in the West,
because the concept itself is a product of Western thought -
and only in the last one hundred years or so. It may well be
that theorists disagree radically on the meaning of 'art', but
we only have to inspect the works of the great artists
of the modernist period to understand that what they though
art is is the creative self-expression of an individual. This
is the evident common criterion of value that these artists held
to - in spite of the diversity of their works and attitudes.
But, although we can see intimations or forerunners of this attitude
in the art - and read them in the writings - of earlier painters
and sculptors, only in the latter part of the 19th century were
the conditions such that it could achieve full and independent
realization.
Before the middle of the 19th century, most pictures and sculptures
were commissioned, which means that the patron provides what
we now call (in relation to the designing of products) a 'design-brief',
which specifies the function of the work - although not its form.
A portrait has to represent a particular person, a religious
or historical work a specified theme, just as an architect
has to design either a church or a house. Of course, the brief
allowed - and even encouraged - a certain amount of freedom of
the artist to interpret the patron's wishes, just as it does
the modern product designer, but the functional imperative remained
nevertheless. Thus, there was virtually no pure art - even in
Europe - before the middle of last century, which is the situation
still in traditional cultures, as Rogers and Irwin illustrate.
Because all the artefacts in these cultures are functional, the
modern Western term, 'art', cannot be applied to them - a fact
the Adnyamathanha and Sechelt people are obviously aware of.
But these works can properly be called design - a term
which would be very useful for ethnographic researchers. Functional
objects are not devoid of aesthetic qualities - far from it -
so designating traditional artefacts 'design' enables us to discuss
these just as we do the form or performance of a Porsche. The
aesthetic can be seen as a dimension of discussion which
overlays all three of the concepts art, design and craft.
It will be obvious that, in all created works, more than one
of the trio of concepts will be present, and the relationship
between them can be a complex one. To take as an example Michelangelo's
Sistine Chapel ceiling: the artist had a clear design-brief to
illustrate certain passages from The Bible, and he had to fit
his scheme to the format of the building itself; but he operated
as an artist in his creative interpretation of his theme; and
his skills in representation and in the fresco medium are evident.
All three are integrated in the work, but each is, nonetheless,
distinguishable and can be discussed in isolation from - or in
relation to - the others. An object that is purely functional,
however, has only design and craft aspects and
can only validly be discussed as such.
'ART' AS AN HONORIFIC
But, it is all very well to be coolly logical about all this:
the fact is that people - including even art educators - are
not always logical or consistent in how they talk about art,
design and craft. The most curious example of this is how we
commonly use 'art' as an honorific term. We praise the Sydney
Opera House as 'art', believing in so doing that we are (justly,
no doubt) raising it above other, more pedestrian, architecture
in terms of its originality and individuality. Yet, it is
architecture, nevertheless (although some of its functionality
has been criticized). Would it not be more logical to praise
it as 'excellent, creative design', or use some such qualitative
expression?
THE AMBIGUITY OF 'DESIGN'
Another common, yet confusing, practice is to speak of the
'design' of a work of art. By this, we usually mean the arrangement
of the formal elements of a picture or sculpture - and it is
valid to discuss this, of course. But it would be less confusing
if we used the equivalent term 'composition' here and left 'design'
to cover the field of individually-designed functional things.
In recent years, the line between art and design appears to have
been blurred by those who make objects which traditionally would
have been functional, but for which the purpose has been to make
things which are more exhibitable (as works of art) than objects
for utilitarian use. Thus, we see marvelously rich glass dishes
or vases which could only minimally be used to hold liquids or
food and leather pieces or silver objects which could never be
worn on the human body. This is an interesting and valid current
development, but it can only be seen as a whimsical discussion
of the very concepts of art and design and not
to invalidate the distinction made between the two which is made
here and is readily observable in the real world.
'CRAFT'
This term, too, has had its confusing usage. This stems from
the post-World War II 'Crafts Movement', which sponsored the
production of individually-created functional objects that had
been denied consumers due to the austerity of the wartime. The
problem arose when 'craft' was used to cover all functional
things regardless of whether they were individually designed
or mass-produced - thus blurring the distinction between craft
per se and design per se. Hopefully, we can avoid
this difficulty now.
CONCLUSION
Unfortunately, we have not been well served by the theorists
in negotiating through this linguistic chaos.
Two Australians - Bernard Smith and Donald Brook - each achieved,
in his own terms, what many consider to be adequate descriptions
of what art is (even though their definitions differ in
significant ways). Yet both is exclusively concerned with 'high'
or 'fine' art. Neither goes into any depth about the rest of
the universe of things which humans make.
Smith, in his recent Modernism's History, distinguishes
between what he calls 'art in the special sense' (which equates
roughly with 'fine art' as in 'high' painting and sculpture,
and also includes architecture, but only in its highest expression)
and 'art in the general sense' (which covers all the rest of
human creation, undifferentiated further, although he sometimes
uses the term craft in this context).
Brook's most-quoted definition of art as 'non specific
experimental modeling' (1970s) also equates only with 'fine art',
emphasizing the fact that artists, properly so-called, have always
pushed the avant-garde edge; but it, too, ignores the rest of
human creation.
On the international scale, the eminent art-historian E H Gombrich
created confusion in the minds of those who read the last page
of his influential The Story of Art (1950 and many reprints)
by writing: 'There really is no such thing as Art. There are
only artists.' Unfortunately, Gombrich did not go on to tell
us what artists make, if it is not art!
Even Nikolas Pevsner, whose seminal An Outline of European
Architecture (1943 and many reprints) was a basic text for
many trainee art educators, says that, whereas Lincoln cathedral
is 'architecture', a bicycle-shed is not: it is 'a building'.
Although this makes an important qualitative statement, in doing
it this way Pevsner begs the questions of whether Lincoln cathedral
is a building or not, and what to call a bicycle-shed which has
been designed by an architect!
On the other hand, we have had greater assistance from some of
the key writers on art education. Both Viktor Lowenfeld and Herbert
Read always meant 'modern art' when they used the term 'art'.
This is because they were concerned to have school-students express
themselves freely and creatively, just as the modernist artists
did when they were bringing about the revolution in art and in
our intuition of what art really is in the twentieth century.
Let us - as art educators - hold on to this and go forward to
develop and use terminology to describe adequately and consistently
the rest of the things humans make - viz 'craft' and 'design'.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brook, Donald (1978) 'Children's Art and People's Art', Educational
Philosophy and Theory, 10, 1, pp. 19-30.
Gombrich, E H (1950) The Story of Art New York: Phaidon.
Lowenfeld, Viktor (1947) Creative and Mental Growth New
York: Macmillan.
Pevsner, Nikolaus (1943) An Outline of European Architecture
Great Britain: Penguin.
Read, Herbert (1941) Education Through Art London: Faber.
Rykwert, Joseph (1996) The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture
Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Smith, Bernard (1998) Modernism's History Melbourne: Oxford
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