Introduction to the Theatre

THE 101 / University of Idaho

Chapter 1 / Art and the Artist

“Art is a lie that enables us to realize the truth.”  - Pablo Picasso

What is Art?

     Few things have been so hotly debated as what is the nature of art.  How can one thing be deemed artistic while another is not?   Why is a can of soup on the supermarket shelf considered lunch, while one sitting on a pedestal in a gallery is considered art - by some? 

     Noted author and artist, Susan Langer states that, “Art is the creation of forms symbolic or expressive of human feelings."   Poet Willa Cather exclaims, "What is art but a mold in which to imprison for a moment the shining illusive moment which is life itself, life hurrying past us and running away, to strong to stop, to sweet to lose."    Meanwhile, David Byrne of The Talking Heads defends the can of soup when he whines out, " I do not have to prove that I am creative" in the song The Artist.   Clearly, even artists themselves do not seem to be in total agreement about what art is.   This is probably due to the fact that art is a creation of personal perception, so while many definitions exist, no truly definitive definition is suitable.    Even Webster’s Dictionary falls short with its fairly vague definition of art as, "The quality, production, or expression, of what is beautiful, appealing or of more than ordinary significance."   Philosophically, Aristotle’s Poetics defines art, "As a mimetic reproduction or imitation of something natural or imagined," while Goethe, on the other hand defines art as a function of society with a purpose.   Goethe goes on to state four principles by which art can be judged.  They are:

·        Art must be entertaining.

·        Art must be exalting.

·        Art must edify

·        Art must be economical

     By being entertaining, art is supposed to hold our attention and give us a chance to observe the work.   By exalting, art inspires us to try and understand what we see.   By edification, art through some form of dialectic or discussion, tries to teach us and give art purpose.   Finally, art needs to be economical both in expression and in its self-sufficiency.   As a means of expression, art should not send any random signals it should be focused and clear.   Goethe also felt that art should be able to monetarily self-support itself and not depend on additional sources of funding.   It is a sort of "survival of the fittest" approach to the existence of any art form.

     This is just a small sample of how artists, philosophers, and educators are defining art.   More importantly, how will you define art?   Would you define it as a good movie, a good piece of music, or a photograph of the Teton Range?   Have you really thought about it?   Why not?   Before you develop your own definition of art there are some issues you might want to think about first.

·        Value & Worth

·        Creativity & Imagination

·        Product versus Performance

·        Realism versus an Abstract Nature

   Should you consider the aspects of value and worth?   Is it necessary that art be of material value?   Is it necessary that art have a price tag?   You might also consider that art might be the act of forming a mental image of something not present or in existence.   In contrast, is art a duplication of something in nature?   To be more specific, is art imagination or imitation?   You might also ask yourself, what role does creativity play in the development of art?   Does art need to result in an actual product?   Finally, does art need to be realistic or can it be non-realistic or even abstract?

     Perhaps, there are too many questions now for you to examine all the pieces and come to your own solid conclusions.   Thus, to move toward a practical definition, we should examine some things we do know.   Art comes from the imagination.   Art is subjective, confirmed by the saying that ”beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”   Art has nothing to do with quantity, only quality.   Quality can be termed as aesthetics and aesthetics is a term used to judge art (sometimes called ‘taste’).   Art is both a vicarious and an involved experience.   As a vicarious event, art often replaces an actual experience while also being an experience in itself.   Art has a split personality.   Art is both real and a product of the imagination.   Finally, as Aristotle thought, art is mimetic.    It imitates something, real or imagined.

     In a classic sense, art can also be categorized by type.   Art can be classified as an applied art or as a fine art.   For instance, the useful crafts of Architecture and furniture making versus the purely aesthetic creations like painting and sculpture.   Art can be classified as either spatial or temporal.   Spatial art requires the use and manipulation of a space or surface like a painting or collage, while temporal art requires the use of time and meter like a music composition or a dance performance.   In short, a work of art can be defined as a form with a sense of space or time.   Art can also be classified as either autographic or allographic.   If it is autographic it is rendered in the medium you see; a painting is a painting.   If it is allographic, what you see or hear means more than is apparent.  For instance, Beethoven's music imparts not only sound and tempo, but elicits emotions, moods, and feelings.

     Historically, art can also be defined by its past, the restrictions put upon it, or the conventions it follows.   For instance, classicism is a style attributed to the Greeks, while neoclassicism is a redefinition of the Greek classics during the renaissance, and romanticism is a departure from both altogether.   Conventions are the representative social benchmarks of those particular cultures and their sense of aesthetic and decorum.   They are the accepted way of doing things.   Conventions can range from the separation of citizen classes by seating, to the acting style, to the content allowed in the play.   These specific conventions will be covered in more depth when we arrive at the latter sections of this text, which discuss history.

     Politically, art is a powerful tool to.  It has been used and suppressed by governments, religions, and societies through history.   Stalin developed the protocult (a theatre bureau) to market his propaganda.   General Franco suppressed Picasso’s Guernica because of the atrocities it revealed.   Joseph McCarthy had artists blacklisted under the guise of ridding communism from America.   The National Endowment for the Arts is under attack for not being "accountable" or "efficient."   (Remember that the average American spends $1.00 on the Arts and $500.00 on defense annually from their taxes.)   Finally, Salman Rusdie, the author of the Satanic Verses, spent ten years in hiding from the Muslim faithful.

What is an Artist?

     So what or who is an artist?   One must seriously ask, who would be crazy enough to become mixed up in all of this?   In actuality, we all are, as human beings there is a little bit of the artist in everybody.   Everyone pursues order and arrangement in their lives through creativity and imagination, don’t you?   Some people just pursue art more aggressively as a lifestyle than others do.   To better understand artistic tendencies, let us discuss some mental aspects of the human mind that help make us all artists.

     All humans have imaginative perceptions.   We see things in association, as symbols, as emblems (symbol sets), and as other things not associated with the object at all (metaphors).   We associate red with hot or flame and blue with cold or water.   We recognize danger signs and heed traffic signals.   The emblem of the cross, we understand to be a symbol of Christianity and we also recognize the swastika and the opposing thoughts that go with that symbol.   Finally, we all recognize and understand the use of the simile and metaphor.   We understand that a government can be a ship of state.   We also know that Muhammad Ali could float like a butterfly yet sting like a bee, although we know that he is neither.   Finally, we also know that someone who is, “out to lunch," is not always hungry.

     All humans also make imaginative choices.   We envision how a table will look for a special occasion and then set out to create that look.   We do this on several levels, through instinct, rational intelligence, teaching and conditioning, emotional sensitivity, and practiced motor ability.   Through our imaginative perceptions and choices we continue to redefine, reorder, and reconstruct our understanding of the world around us.   Design is exactly that process, a process of ‘de-signing’ an object to give it new meaning.

Theories on the Creative Mind and Body

     What about those individuals who pursue art as a lifestyle and are considered to have a ‘talent’ for creating art?   Some might ask, is talent necessary to create art, while others might say that talent is overrated?   More importantly, what is talent?   Perhaps it is as simple as saying that people with talent have a natural proclivity or inclination for creating works of art.   In Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences, he explores the physiological proclivities that make up the human mind.   It is important to note the global nature of this theory.   We all have these inclinations to varying degrees and our minds operate on multiple levels.   There are six intelligences in Gardner’s theory:

·        Linguistic intelligence.

·        Musical intelligence.

·        Logical intelligence.

·        Spatial intelligence.

·        Kinesthetic intelligence.

·        Personal intelligence.

     People with a linguistic proclivity understand words and literary expression, which manifests itself as an ability to write verse and poetry.   People with a musical proclivity understand the organization of sounds, tempo, and rhythm and can express those inclinations through musical composition.   Logical proclivity is an understanding of the causal relationships between phenomena and these individuals can express that understanding through mathematics and science.   People with a proclivity for spatial arrangement continually reorder and design the world around them and choose a lifestyle in design.   People with an understanding of the body and its kinesthetic (movements) are aware of its physical presence and its ability.   These people are able to express their proclivities through dance and athletics.   Finally, people with a personal proclivity understand and are sensitive to the feelings of others which they express through care giving and service like doctors and nurses.   It is the unique combinations and arrangements of these "intelligences" that create or naturally fit into particular art forms.   For instance, dance combines kinesthetic, spatial and music intelligences.   Writers use personal and linguistic intelligences.   And portrait photographers combine spatial and personal intelligences to fully capture their clientele.   Ultimately, our minds can operate on multiple levels and we experience other peoples multiple intelligences in our daily contact with each other.   We have addressed our ability to think along various lines of order and reasoning.   You should be asking, what about the other mental function of creativity?

     David Perkin’s Snowflake Model of Creativity begins to address the process of creativity as a function of the human mind.   It is a psychological model that examines why we bother to create at all.   Interestingly, he uses a snowflake, a crystalline form of infinite variety, much like the model he proposes.   Every creative mind is different in the composition of its characteristics.   It is an appropriate and highly creative choice.   The model presents us with six psychological characteristics:

·        An instinct for unified arrangement.

·        An ability to excel at finding options.

·        Mental mobility.

·        A willingness to take risks and accept failures.

·        Objectivity.

·        Inner motivation.

     Our instinct for a unified arrangement psychologically pushes us to make order from that chaos we perceive as the world.   Creative instincts provide us with a psychological compulsion to increase our creative choices.   Our mental mobility allows us to work on multiple projects; allowing us to grow exponentially and cross share our creative discoveries, and our objectivity makes us seek out and feedback which helps us to refine our better choices while building confidence.   A willingness to take risks and accept failure is the ‘psychological cost’ of the business of art.   As artists, our inner motivation keeps us going to help offset losses, while strengthening the intrinsic value associated with the process of creating.   These are the key factors involved in the psychology of the creative mind.

     We have explored both the physiological proclivities of the human mind and looked at the psychological traits of creativity.   We have seen that our imaginative perceptions and choices lead us to create (and think creatively) daily.   Creativity is a ‘muscle’ that needs to be exercised and used.   It is the author’s viewpoint that the only separation between you and the professional artist is that they have taken the time to learn and exercise these ‘mental muscles’ through training and then applied those muscle skills through practice.   So, lets get started with your first exercise.