Art Appreciation is Not Learned

'"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' ~ John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" l. 46 (1820)

From The European Conservative

By Charles Dailey, PhD

We do not need art critics and experts to educate us. Beauty speaks for itself.

“The modern artist, in his physiology next-of-kin to the hysteric, is also distinguished by this morbidity as a character. The hysteric is false—he lies from love of lying, he is admirable in every art of dissimulation.”

—Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

Often the appreciation of art is framed as if it were a matter of understanding something that one doesn’t yet understand. That is, if one only knew certain things about an alleged work of art, one would appreciate that artwork. This is the line taken especially with regard to modern or abstract art. If one gazes at a banana duct-taped to a wall or at a photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine—both real ‘artworks’—and doesn’t appreciate it, then one doesn’t, it is often argued, know enough about it. Until one does, he must have faith in the judgment of an art expert that the thing is really art, for the expert knows best. Someone, somewhere, determined this—most likely in New York, Paris, or London. If you, dear reader, don’t agree with this, you’re likely a rube, a neanderthal, or a fascist. Best stand aside and let the experts decide the standards of creativity and beauty for all of us.

But in my own life, I haven’t found it to be the case that more knowledge about an object magically transforms it into an artwork. Reflecting on my own many experiences, from childhood on, of art and things called art, I’ve found that in those cases in which I immediately perceived a thing to be art, I still do. And, in those cases of alleged art in which I immediately thought the thing to be ugly, sick, or pretentious, I still do. I’ve never bought into the idea that art can be about something other than the beautiful, or more broadly-speaking, the harmonious. Art is, only is, about the Good and the True; and its visage in this world is a manifestation of the Beautiful, which is the harmony of all transcendental attributes. I’m not, of course, speaking here of inner beauty, which is better named character. I am speaking of (external) aesthetic appeal—the feeling that one gets when in the presence of profundity, sublimity, and incomparable greatness—which I’ve always felt in the presence of great artworks. 

Learning more about a Gothic cathedral, a Da Vinci painting, or a Beethoven symphony, although it may increase (and has increased) my fascination with these artworks, and made me contemplate them even more, has never increased their beauty for me—it has not, in my eyes, made any one of them more of an artwork. In fact, I would go as far as to say that learning itself, at least conscious learning, in no way contributes to recognizing something as either beautiful or a work of art. The attempt, therefore, to apply the terms art and beautiful to objects which don’t warrant these labels is the work either of showmen or swindlers—persons who, for some reason, want to obfuscate these concepts, as well as to destroy the natural recognition of art and beauty.

My accumulated knowledge on various subjects over many years—since I first had conscious awareness of art and beauty—has never changed my perspective on art. I have, for example, never ‘learned’ to see a pile of garbage as beautiful. I also haven’t, after studying the architecture of various eras, ‘learned’ that American houses of the 1950s, with their low ceilings and few windows, are, after all, also art—not really ugly but ‘beautiful in their own way.’ There are a hundred examples I could give, but you get the point. 

In contradiction to popular belief, appreciation of art and beauty is not learned, it is innate. Some people experience art; some do not. Some people are honest about this experience, or lack thereof; some are not. No art expert can teach you to recognize beauty in something in which you do not already recognize it, or explain to me how some object really is a work of art, which I didn’t already take to be one. It is true that one may learn more about objects that are incorrectly called artworks—and also want to learn more about these objects. For example, it is fascinating to ruminate on the psychological traits of humans who create nonsense and expect others to call it art. Such study, however, is not in any way related to the experience of beauty and art. For, again, studying a thing does not magically transform it into art. 

When I was 14 years old, I first saw the Grand Canyon in person. Immediately, I thought that it was beautiful, or, perhaps more accurately put, what Kant called ‘sublime.’ Only later did I learn facts and curiosities about the Grand Canyon—how, for example, different groups of Native Americans had once lived there, how Europeans had explored it in the past, how the native flora and fauna of the region were distributed and interrelated in specific ways, and how a great many people have fallen, and still fall, to their deaths there in a variety of ridiculous ways. These facts about the Grand Canyon were, and are, of interest to me—some more, some less. But interest in an object does not suddenly make it beautiful. 

I don’t remember the first time that I saw Michelangelo’s “Moses,” but I immediately considered it beautiful, as well as a great work of art. All that I knew about it, at the time, was that my father liked it. And lest one begin with the narrative of a son’s emulation, etc., there are many things which he likes that I do not. Alternatively, the first time that I saw Jackson Pollock’s “Number 11, 1952 (Blue Poles),” I immediately considered it to be pretentious and disharmonious, clearly a construct of the ‘art community.’ After studying “Blue Poles” for some time and trying to appreciate it—I even put a small postcard version of it on my office wall for a few years—I concluded (and still believe) that there must be some strange agenda or sickness behind it. “Why,” I thought, “did so many people want to promote and make others call it art?” 

I later read quite a bit about “Moses” and “Blue Poles,” and learned various things about each work. I also read about the lives of the men who, respectively, created them. All, however, which I learned in no way changed my judgment or feeling about these artworks—and hasn’t to this day. “Moses” is a beautiful work of art; “Blue Poles” isn’t. For years, I, nevertheless, experimented with—held in suspense—my gut reactions on this and similar matters. I made myself approach potential artworks—those things called such by the ‘art community’—with the hypothesis that, if I only understood the context in which they were created, or the motives of their creators, or the nature of their creators’ lives, then I might, as they say, appreciate them. But, I didn’t—not really. Of course, in life one goes through phases, some of which are less genuine than others—and friends have some influence on matters as well. How many ‘artist’ friends does a person have in college, for instance? Too many for them all to be artists. I always came back to my initial conclusions. Knowledge, even thinking, does not change a thing from being a non-artwork to an artwork. “Moses” is a work of art; “Blue Poles” isn’t. “Moses” is the product of a higher attunement to metaphysical and cosmic harmony; “Blue Poles” is not. In fact, the latter is, quite oppositely, a product of mental illness or a narcissistic industry—two things that are not mutually exclusive. 

There is a romantic notion in art interpretation or criticism which says that madness is closely associated with talent. One reads or hears of people traditionally thought of as artists being unstable or irascible, for example, or self-absorbed or melancholy, or reclusive or flamboyant. Some critics consider art to be a kind of therapy. Pollack’s madness was scary, but that was his muse. Beethoven was cantankerous and unsociable, but that was a part of his genius. Picasso was an ass, but that was excusable because he saw so much deeper into the social issues of the day. And everyone knows about Van Gogh—yes, the ear, but he also produced some rather good paintings. Ideas like this seem to appeal to a certain type of person. Some people, that is, want to see something as art because they like the idea of it being created by a human type which doesn’t fit in. Such types want, for personal reasons, to sell certain kinds of behavior and thought to the ‘masses’—for non-artistic reasons. 

Such fascination with the psychology of artists, however, is not even art criticism—it is affectation. And then there are also the types which like to be associated with ‘art,’ even if—or especially because—they have no artistic talent themselves. For them, it is the idea of seeing what isn’t art as art that is appealing—because of personal, hidden, or masochistic reasons. What is, for such types, called ‘art’ becomes a means to appear as superior experts on subjects which they have persuaded others requires their particular expertise.

Many times, since I was a child, I have observed at art galleries all the visitors in queues spending most of their time not communing with the art, but, instead, reading the little plaques placed beside the works, so that they might know more about the art. Many times I observed them listening on earphones to the canned explanations of the purported art. And often I thought, as I watched this uniquely modern spectacle, that these recently-contrived rituals were a sad waste of time, a reduction of art to history, to a representation of a certain set of facts. In observing these processes over the years, I began to think it would be better instead to spend one’s time, at the gallery or museum, experiencing for oneself the artworks, rather than just accepting the mass-inculcated belief that knowing something about the work, or the artist, or his income, or his social conditions, is somehow relevant to perceiving the greatness of the work. 

At some point in my childhood, I decided that family trips to museums, art galleries, ballets, etc., were not so much to do with learning about art but learning about myself by means of art. I came to see experiences of art as windows into what the observer is. Family trips became more about self-learning and self-knowledge. Sometimes, the supposed art was what it claimed to be, sometimes it was not. I honed in on the pieces that clearly were art—that is, that could be seen to be art without knowing anything about them. Processes of rumination and self-reflection erupted within myself based upon these close observations. There were also interesting curiosities to be learned about the works and the historical figures related to them, but this was, and is, beside the point. For, the experience of art lies not in learning the context of a supposed artwork and then ‘making a decision’ as to what it, in fact, is. It lies in contemplating the greatness of objects or performances that are immediately grasped as art. It is, thus, that art is not that which is ‘objectively’ studied in order to determine its nature, but that which immediately calls one into a state of wonder and rapture that is not learned. I decided, at some place and time, that I was going to museums, art galleries, and other exhibits and performances to learn how I, personally, reacted to what I already knew—as soon as I was confronted by it—to be a higher expression of being. 

I remember learning on one family trip—it must have been after looking at a horrible Picasso exhibit—that Picasso, although not known for it, could paint proficiently in classical styles. He was, in fact, very good at it. He didn’t create those pretentious Cubist monstrosities because he couldn’t do anything else but because he chose to do something else. He had, as the critics say, created a new style that could more strikingly express what he (and some others) felt to be important socio-political issues. Such pretentious information may have been conveyed at the exhibit itself—I don’t recall. But this information was often conveyed, I believe, to suggest that because Picasso had this ‘new’ ability—because he chose not to paint in a traditional manner—then, syllogistically almost, we the ‘artistically uneducated’ must accept Picasso’s more celebrated works as ‘art.’ Such productions were, we needed to learn, on the edge of aesthetic sensibility: they held a sort of mystery of the master that it was incumbent on us to appreciate. We, then, are obligated to change our expectations, get with the program, and accept the strange and ‘timely’ renderings as ‘great art.’ The general idea is that if the public could only understand the master’s way, then they would naturally see manifestations of ugliness also as art. But my immediate thinking, with respect to such pieces as “Three Musicians” and “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” was akin to my thinking today about strip malls, modern apartment complexes, and Hollywood mansions: they are pretentious, lifeless, and ugly. They are products of minds that are not trying to reveal beauty, but to be different. And no one taught me that. Of course, one is supposed to admire Picasso’s Cubist creations. But I had already decided that art was not a game invented in order to discern who can figure out someone’s genius—and then be graded on this by some art expert. That perspective, I irrevocably decided, is dishonest and irrelevant to what art actually is. For, if art is not about truth and beauty, then it is not art. 

In his 1950 essay “The Origin of the Work of Art,” the German philosopher Martin Heidegger stated that the function of an artwork is “to set up a world.” But what kind of world does an artwork set up? Which world, that is, and for what kind of person? Do Jackson Pollock’s creations, for example, such as the previously mentioned “Blue Poles,” set up a world? If they do, one wonders: is it a world that is fit for the mentally healthy? The individuals and groups behind modern art, it is fair to suggest based upon a wealth of bizarre and horrific examples, either: 1) themselves believe that art can be something else, or 2) want normal people to believe that art can be something else. But can it? What is beauty? Isn’t it to do with wholeness, and completeness, and health? When did we start believing that it isn’t about these things? Whether one is healthy or not is an objective state of being. Mustn’t beauty, like health, also be objective, just in order to have meaning? 

In the last century or two, increasing numbers of individuals became convinced that art is really political, not about beauty or truth but about raising awareness, juxtaposing values, and testing sensibilities. This, again, treats art as if each artwork is a puzzle to be worked out. Those susceptible to thinking this way, however, are slaves to propagandistic ideas, or instead they are constantly troubled about whether they are in the good graces of the timely, progressive set. According to the ‘raising awareness’ view of art, only some gallery-goers are sufficiently socially aware to ‘get’ the ‘artworks.’ Hence, a division in society is created between an in-crowd and an out-crowd. The in-crowd ‘gets’ the ‘important art’ of the age—that art which is needed (for some reason) to be art by certain special interests and forces; the out-crowd does not. But why play the game? Why, that is, should we frequent so-called art galleries just in order to ‘learn’ that our innate, healthy, sensibilities require educating by pretentious strangers called experts? 

Art, not propaganda or self-expression, naturally and immediately resonates with healthy, harmonious souls. It does not require preparation or study to appreciate. Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the Taj Mahal in India, the Great Pyramid in Egypt, Westminster Abbey in England, the Pyramid of the Sun in Central America, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Michelangelo’s “Moses,” the Pantheon, Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana,” Paleolithic cave paintings at Lascaux, and other examples are all—for healthy and harmonious souls—immediately seen to be art, and beautiful. If they are not, then ‘learning’ will not make them so. For, one does not learn after many years of study that, for example, “After reflection, the Pyramid of Khafre is beautiful; it is a work of art!” To recognize art—to acknowledge beauty—is not a parlor trick or a secret password that one must remember and convey to the appropriate ‘expert.’ It is a transcendent experience that evokes feelings of certainty about an object’s or performance’s greatness. That the average person does not understand or get some novelty object which has been labeled art, turns art into a self-serving pursuit for the art critic or expert. In turn, he must be considered as skilled as the artist himself—because only he can interpret the artwork and reveal its ‘real’ truth. This reckoning, however, manifestly, is one at which all healthy and harmonious souls must laugh.

Photo by Fr. Barry Braum on Unsplash