Art and Artists

I wonder why people try to define art in a scientifically systematic and neat formula. For, to define art in such calculated terms is to take away from it all its mystery. Art is the beautiful representation of that eternal mystery which is called life, and as such art itself should be mysterious. I think the best definition of art was given by St. Augustine. St. Augustine said of Poetry, "If not asked, I know; if you ask, I don't know." We can have an insight into art and its beauty, but if we were to condense its essence into a formula we feel we can never have a real understanding of it. That is why till today hundreds of definitions have been given of poetry, but none of them can recall the beauty, the mystery and the truth which smiles in every piece of poetic art. If there is any definition which can satisfy us it is that of Matthew Arnold. He defined poetry as "the criticism of Life," and this can be applied to every art. Art, that is, true art, is that which interprets Life as it moulds itself in the mind of the interpreter. As Shelly has pointed out in his famous essay, every man in his youth is attracted towards order and rhythm, though the attraction may vary with different persons in degree. Though all men observe a similar pleasure in the melody of music and the beauty of Nature, yet some of them feel it more intensely and purely, and "those in whom it exists in excess are poets in the most universal sense of the word." Artists communicate their thoughts to others, enabling others to see and feel what they could not by themselves. This is because, as Bacon said, "the same footsteps of Nature impressed different subjects of the world," and the artist is he who is impressed more purely and intensely than any other. Artists, therefore, can sing the glory of Nature with a more intimate sense than others can.

To make our beings noble we need noble ideas and noble inspirations. A life without inspiration may be well compared to a vast garden which has its hedges, bushes and lawns, but is devoid of those tender flowers which constitute the very soul of a garden. Human beings will ever crave for imagination in art, for their craving is based on an essential requirement of human nature. Imagination has given vent to itself mostly in art, and especially in poetry, and poetry is therefore the most divine of all arts. Art, great art, is the antithesis of what is ignoble and false. It makes a man fly up to the lofty regions of fancy and self-culture–much farther and much above the sordid world of materialism and vulgarity. Any aching soul may seek consolation in art, and any vulgarity may seek in it nobility. True art can never be out of date, though the human race may evolve from time to time, for the best of human sentiments never undergo a change. They are the same in all people and in all times. Art is, therefore, the image of eternal truth. Art is most lasting in its form of poetry. No poetry ever reached the culmination of its fame during the time of its creator, yet it is always reserved for the future generations to derive their pleasure from it. In his time the poet is, in the words of Shelley, "like a nightingale who cheers his own solitude with sweet sounds," but his poetry goes farther than that in "cheering the solitude" of the future generations, and giving them a spiritual satisfaction–" a wisdom mingled with delight."

The important circumstance which has been affecting the place of art today in our lives is the growth of science and of scientific accuracy, that has been invading our minds. Life is more or less a scientific fact, and the world of science is identified with the world of facts. But has art been influenced in any way by the development of scientific knowledge? Science has destroyed so many of our genuine sentiments and has made our mode of life artificial and our outlook materialistic. Yet it can be said that though science is invading our old-world sentiments, as long as Wordsworth and Keats will continue to be read and admired by a few of us, art will never die. Art will, forever, continue to be the perennial beauty of august thoughts. It will for ever continue to unlock the mystery of Nature’s splendour and will teach us to play the music of our life in harmony with the music of the whole creation.

To a scientific mind, however, Nature is not a source of beauty, but it is merely a bundle of phenomena which needs to be "murdered to dissect." A sweet lily is not the "lady of the garden" to his learned eyes, but "a mere composition of hexendry mongenia." It should be remembered, however, that it is not "hexendry mongenia" but the "lady of the garden," adorning the garden with its tender beauty, which we want to see and love. It is not the scientist who unites our life with Nature’s, but it is Wordsworth who tells us:

"To her fair works did Nature link

The human soul that through me ran,"

and it grieves the poet, even as it must grieve every lover of Nature, to think

"What man has made of man,"

Science has been called at once the antithesis and the complement of art. Antithesis, in the sense that it is revealing the mystery and the wonder of creation, and is thus making the reverent awe we used to feel for natural glory less intense and is thus destroying the very sources of art–wonder and awe. It is taking us away from Nature in yet another way. Science explains phenomena as they are in themselves, while we, in our common life, seek our response to her, and from this standpoint science is quite opposed to what is called poetical and emotional thinking. But science has been called the complement of art in another argument: that if science explains things as they are in themselves, art reveals our relation to them. Thus science and art are proved to be complementary, The truth is that even after all the investigations of science there remains a lot for us to wonder at, and, in fact, not phenomena like comets and earth-quakes alone call for an explanation, but even a small wild flower is enough of a mystery to a truly artistic mind. Moreover art springs up only in some heightened moods, and in those moods no scientific explanation continues to exist for the artist. A true artist is he who can feel the presence of that "Absolute Good," as Plato said, in every little thing of creation–for whom every trifle of life and the world is the partial manifestation of the "Absolute Good" which is also the Absolute Beauty and the Absolute Truth.

But should art be realistic or idealistic? Our ancient artists prohibited any subject from their art which affected the moral order of society. The modern vein is, however, quite different. The artist of today wants to be true to life in all its glory and its pathos. Art in reality is the image of life, and as such its function is to show up every deformity as it is, and not to close its eyes to the darker aspects of life. Life is a texture of both black and white, and art should paint it as completely and as truly as it can. The artist, whether he be a realist or an idealist, is to paint life as he observes it. As soon as he begins to solve problems, he ceases to be an artist and becomes didactic. As Anton Tchekhov said, "Artists should create problems, not solve them." His art should terminate in the recreation of the music of the spheres rather than in a solution or an explanation. In other words, as Shakespeare, the greatest artist ever born, said, the artist should hold a mirror up to Nature."

Art is that power which can make the least the most and the meanest the greatest. It can lift up a falling soul and cheer up a degenerating nation. It is beauty–not "beauty that must die" but beauty which lives like a fire through eternity.

To conclude, in the famous words of Shelley, "it is that from which all spring and which adorns all….It redeems from decay the visitations of divinity in man." And not only poets, but all true artists are the "unacknowledged legislators of the world."