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Ars Gratis Artis or Ars Gratis Hominis?
This article was originally
published in Caelum
Et Terra, Fall1993, volume 3 no 4,
and is used here with the author’s permission.
To obtain permission to
republish this article, contact the author by clicking on the link above.
Anyone
visiting almost any art museum will see exhibited numerous examples of Catholic
religious art, which, depending on the museum, might range from late Antiquity
to more recent times. A glance at the
guidebook or explanation accompanying the picture or sculpture will usually
reveal that the art was originally created for use in a church. It was intended to be the normal
accompaniment for the sacrifice of the Mass and the other services of the
Church. I once visited a wonderful
exhibit at the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe of native Spanish colonial
art. Triptychs and other altarpieces
along with many other examples of religious art of an exquisite blend of
European and American Indian traditions made it one of the most memorable
exhibitions I have ever seen, and certainly enriched the collections of the
Museum of New Mexico. Many museums are
thus enriched throughout the world - along with private collections - but for
every object of religious art that enriches a museum, some church or monastery
or shrine has been robbed of its riches.
Some of these robberies have no doubt been perpetrated by North
Americans simply taking what they wanted from Latin American shrines based on
their unquestioned assumption that the ultimate and proper end of these religious
objects was to amuse and divert the North American museum-goer or by more
conventional thieves looking for a good price, but on the other side are the
misguided or even faithless priests who have been only too glad to rid their
churches of what they considered the superstitions of their peasant
ancestors. But while such thefts and
betrayals justifiably anger us, we do well to quell our anger in order to look
at the underlying phenomenon, something more interesting than greed and
cultural arrogance. The fact that
objects originally intended for use, in this case to accompany worship, are now
in museums instead of in churches is a significant fact that reveals something
of the great cultural changes that the West has undergone in the past three
centuries. For our civilization has
taken art out of life and placed it in special institutions, such as museums or
concert halls, to be viewed or listened to at special times, away from our
normal lives. That what should be the
best of our art and music is today seldom created for actual use as part of
life is unprecedented in the history of mankind - like so much else in the
modern world - and is also the main reason why artists in modern times are so
often alienated from their fellows and from the culture around them, for if
that culture has lost much of its beauty, the artists have lost their
functional relation with the rest of society.
This has created a situation in which the self-expression of the
individual artist is seen as the only end of the arts and complete freedom is
necessarily demanded for this self-expression.
Without denying that art has intrinsic principles of its own,
nevertheless, freedom for artists could become a rallying cry only in a society
which has divorced art from life and thus made any limitation on free
expression seem contrary to the principles of the arts. In fact, this notion of freedom for the arts
makes sense only if art is understood as something entirely autonomous, that
is, having only itself as its law of being, and not related in any way to the
common good of mankind or society or even to truth.
But
if the divorce of art from life has created the alienated artist, it has also
created the bourgeois philistine, who thrives on the plastic products of mass
culture. Artist and philistine glare at
each other from both sides of a great gulf, a gulf that is not inherent in
Western civilization but is the result of the modern world's assault upon the
unity of culture. If ever this gulf is
done away with, we will find, I think, many problems solved and many things
falling into place that we did not suspect were linked to this divorce of
ordinary life from the arts and seem unrelated to this particular matter.
Before
the 18th century almost all art and music were created for some function in
life and society. This purpose might be
religious or civic or private, as in the case of portraits. Music was intended for worship, for dancing,
for military purposes, or to accompany an ordinary activity, for example,
eating. The excellence of the art was
excellence for a purpose. Just as a
good pot is one that fulfills well the purpose of a pot, so good art was art
that fulfilled well the purpose of that particular example of art, whether it
was a painting for an altarpiece or music for a dance. It was not intended to be something called
"art" which must be judged by special canons unique to itself,
anymore than pot makers would claim that their art must be judged by no one but
themselves, without regard to how useful their pots were to the rest of
us. This of course is not to deny the
existence of genuine aesthetic principles, but simply to point out that they do
not operate in isolation from the rest of life or from the function which the
art object is to play in life.
As
the 18th century progressed, however, more and more music was written for
events outside of ordinary life, that is, for concerts, until by the 19th
century that was the norm. Similarly,
visual artists could now work with the intention of seeing their works hung in
galleries, whether in museums or the homes of the rich, but still special
places where one went to view "art."
Though noblemen had had galleries of miscellaneous objects since the
Renaissance, public art museums, as opposed to heterogeneous collections of art,
mechanical inventions and other artifacts, did not exist until around 1800, the
Louvre, for example, being opened in 1793.
No longer were the ordinary activities of life surrounded by the most
beautiful things that could be seen or heard, but these things were
increasingly available only in special places where those with enough time and
money could go.
Even
the forms of the arts changed because of their changing place in society. For example, the symphony, which only began
in the 18th century but became the most characteristic musical form of the
19th, was hardly fitted for any place but the concert hall, because of its
length and the large orchestra which it required. In fact, 18th-century symphonies are fairly short and modest
works, but by the end of the 19th century that genre had grown to massive
proportions. Similarly such
pseudo-liturgical works as Verdi's Requiem or Rossini's Stabat Mater -
however delightful they may be as pure music - were never intended for use in a
church, again because of their length and the large number of musicians needed
to perform them. Though superficially
they were in the form of earlier liturgical music, their musical character
clearly indicates the changed use to which music was now put. Such works were no longer elevating
accompaniments to divine worship, but were ends in themselves, judged solely by
aesthetic principles. It is true that
even in the Baroque era there were such monumental liturgical works, such as
Bach's Mass in B minor, but they were much more of an exception to the quantity
of functional liturgial music written by the best composers of the time.
Now
all this was a chief cause of several related social problems. One, as I said above, was the phenomenon of
the alienated artist. With art removed
from its functions as part of life, and removed from being judged in part on
how well it fulfilled those functions, there was no one left who could evaluate
the worth of art except the artists themselves and the small band of art
critics and connoisseurs, the "arts community," as it is now
termed. In earlier times artists and
musicians worked with reference to men who were outside their fellowship, those
who had commissioned the work and would pay the bill, whether they were
princes, bishops, town councils, cathedral chapters, etc. Artists and musicians today work with
reference to a small group, including other artists, museum or concert
officials, editors, and grants administrators, who themselves are part of the
arts community, and accept the same standards as the artists. It is no wonder
that the judgment of the general public on modern art is so different from that
of its promoters.
In
the beginning of this divorce of art from life, however, the art and its
standards were unobjectionable in themselves.
Apart from the fact that it necessarily is divorced from everyday life
because of its form, who can fault the music of Beethoven or Brahms? But as time went on, in part because of
restlessness and the desire to try something new, in part because of the
general dissolution of Western culture, the contents of art, music and serious
literature became ever more perverse.
But now, when the general public or even some intellectuals tried to
point this out, they were loudly told to mind their own business. No one had a right to judge art except the
arts coterie, and by definition one was not part of the arts coterie if one
found fault with contemporary art or music or literature. And of course, the fact that some of the
criticism coming from the general public was philistine did not help
them make their case against the contents of the arts.
Now
at the same time that artists were growing apart from the rest of society, the
rest of society was being robbed of its best art. Much of the great religious
art was carted off to museums, and few contemporary composers wrote liturgical
music really suitable for use in church.
Of course this did not mean that there was no music or art in churches,
simply that what there was too often
not of a caliber to lift anyone's soul to God.
In most places plainchant or the masses of Palestrina or William Byrd
were no longer sung, but instead music that tended to the mediocre, while the
often saccharine statues and pictures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries
almost excuse the iconoclastic zeal of the post-Vatican II liturgists. No wonder that most men forgot what good art
- functionally good art - was like, and simply appreciated the statues and
music that they did have. At least it
was part of their life and an accompaniment of important activities. But this turn of events was by no means
inevitable.
If
the rich heritage of folk dancing, for example, had not been taken from people
by urbanization and recorded music, would people be happy to dance to the same
steps and music as their ancestors had for hundreds of years? Such music is so clearly superior to any
dance music of the last hundred years that, were it again taught to us as young
children, could even the bleakness of modern life or our television-dulled sensibilities
take away our appreciation of it?
Similarly and more importantly, is there any reason why men must value
bad religious art and music when there is so much that is superlative? The
average person does not visit art museums or listen to classical music, but his
average ancestor of our Western culture worshipped in churches containing the
best art in the world and heard the best music, whether it was simple
plainchant or the complexities of the Baroque.
In some degree, the average modern man has been taught to regard good
art and music as alien to him. He is
taught this by schools that attempt to drill him into liking it, rather than
letting him soak it up unawares; he is taught this by the contemporary guardians
of our artistic and musical heritage, who have kept the best for museums and
concert halls, or who have betrayed their trust by equating Bach or a
traditional folk round with the electronic noises of a John Cage.
As
a matter of fact this separation of art from life has been noticed by the arts
community itself. Thus we have the
government's "art in life" program, placing statues in public places
or NEH putting poetry up in busses or subways.
But aside from the fact that quite often the statues or the poetry that
is offered does nothing but offend the public, are these really steps in the
right direction, however well-intentioned they may be? The placing of statues in public places has
a venerable tradition, but I fear that the above are simply efforts to make a
little bit of life into a museum. In
other words, is there an organic relationship between the piece of art and any
public function, the type of organic relationship that exists in even the most
poorly sculpted and tasteless war memorial in a city park? The war memorial is trying to do what art
has traditionally been supposed to do, beautify and elevate human life by
beautifying and elevating the activities of human life, in this case the
honoring of our dead. It is a part of
life, not a part of a gallery dragged into the public square. In the past great art was created with an
end beyond itself. Though aesthetic
principles are real and important, they are not sufficient for art that is
functionless and organically unrelated to life.
At
one time even the theater was not yet divorced from other activities of
life. The ancient Greek dramas were
produced for religious festivals and, of course, during our own Middle Ages,
drama arose from the liturgy and continued to have an integral religious
connection for several hundred years, as in the Corpus Christi cycles,
large-scale religious dramas depicting the entire history of salvation, which
were performed in medieval Europe around the time of the Feast of Corpus
Christi. But to restore anything like
that, even as regards visual art and music, it would be necessary once more for
our culture to be unified. A unified
culture unconsciously expresses what it considers to be truth through art,
music and drama, and to a great extent, subordinates everything in the society
to the overarching goals of the society.
Thus in the Middle Ages guilds did not simply have an economic
function. They had Mass, processions
and special dinners on the feast of their patron saints; they had chaplains and
shrines of their own. Indeed, even
their economic function grew out of their religious one, in the sense that the
recognition of the need to curb man's acquisitive appetite by regulation and
the fostering of mutual charity sprang from a profoundly Christian desire to
permeate every part of society with the spirit of the Gospel. But as long as men see society as made up of
warring groups each trying to get the largest share of the pie, the arts
community will continue with its program of self-expression and contempt for
the rest of us. The fact that so much
of the rest of our plastic society does indeed deserve that contempt does not
make their criticisms more just or their artistic creations more worthy of
esteem. The remedy instead lies in all
of us submitting to the yoke of Christ, in cultural as in all other matters,
and being willing to jettison both the sophisticated pornography of the elite
as well as the false sentimentality of the masses. Only in this way can our culture be unified and the social reign of
Jesus Christ the King commence once more.
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