A Long Time Coming?

"There is no art when one does something without intention."
-Edward Kennedy Ellington

Notice what Duke did not say; he did not mention art as an action followed by consequence.

I found this quote last night and it stuck in my mind overnight. One of the main reasons I find it so interesting is because it reaffirms art as an aesthetic. Meaning, what is pleasing to me may not be pleasing to you, and vice versa.

A couple of months ago, an anonymous commenter suggested I locate and read "The Painted Word" by Tom Wolfe. [I'm reminded of the line from Good Will Hunting: "So without further ado, come forward silent rogue, and receive thy prize].

Wolfe explores the same topic - art as aesthetic - after allowing an article he read in the New York Times percolate in his head for a while. The catchphrase in this particular article was "to lack a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial."

Without debating the veracity of the phrase, I do wish to explore it a little bit and offer my underdeveloped rudiments.

And I enter this gateway of prose labeling myself a pragmatic. I fall short of the absolute Utilitarianist argument that if an object has no immediate and constructive purpose, it must be thrown to the wayside. As a pragmatic, I am willing to concede an argument or object can be enjoyed in the theoretical or periphery of usefulness. Much like this blog, I guess.

I just pulled out the Travel Journal of when Melissa and I went to Italy five years ago. After visiting The Uffizi and Accademia in Florence, I wrote the following:

"It is a really old museum that houses mostly 13th to 15th century art. It was pretty cool but not great. I am not that big an art lover but do appreciate its historical value. It is interesting that most of the art - songs, writings, paintings, etc. - were about religious themes. Compare that to today. We walked to the Accademia and saw more art and the David. I'll admit it is something to admire - the attention to detail and the craft it took to chip all the marble away. I was a little more impressed with the four unfinished sculptures in the same room."

I had forgotten about those four unfinished sculptures. They are on the opposite side of the hallway from David. If Michelangelo once said that he didn't sculpt the David, he just chipped away until the figure was released, I'd be interested to hear the explanation for the four pieces relegated to the corner which would have been thrown away centuries ago but for the happenstance Michelangelo worked on them.

So if Duke's comments were complete and true, that art is an aesthetic to be enjoyed in the intention and not function, the four unfinished and untitled pieces deserve as much fame and praise as the finished statue at the end of the hallway.

Of course, we know why this is: we cannot envision intentions. Were this to be true, we'd know what was to be released from the marble lumps and appreciate them as if they were complete. But the mind often demands tangibility to precede understanding.

I bought a book yesterday about one particular year in Willliam Shakespeare's life. The book focuses on 1599. Why this particular year? It was the year that he completed, finished, or worked on Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet. The author contends that these plays were not written in a vacuum, but there were other political forces shaping the play's events. We know how political Shakespeare was (eg. Macbeth - indicting the Scottish ruler and his wife of regicide while making the Stuart ruler the rightful heir of the throne.) But in 1599, Queen Elizabeth faced foreign policy threats from Spain, an internal rebellion in Ireland, and a potential economic crisis involving the East India Company. His plays were not only meant to encapsulate contemporary times, they were to do so with a historical twist for future generations to enjoy, as well.

Since Shakespeare did not keep a journal, we do not know much about his everyday life. Even gaps from important periods of his life exist and befuddle modern biographers. Scores of scholars have written a library of books debating anything from whether Shakepeare was the sole author of the works ascribed to him to whether what exists is a complete catalogue of his writings. Authorship is less important to me; what has survived is great regardless of who was holding the quill at the time. But it is unfortunate that many plays and poems were never copied for posterity or apparently never survived. So if the intent was for permanency, it was not brought to fruition. They exist less tangibly than Michelangelo's untitled marbled pieces, if at all.

So to me, art is a varying formula of intention and completion. I prefer to know the thinking of the artist, the forces that led that person to interpret an event and be publicly displayed in writing, song, or other visual medium. Likewise, I don't find it disturbing that this may limit my freedom of interpretation. If art is to be a method of communication, it is more important to listen to what the artist is saying, rather than hearing what I want to hear.

There's too much of that anyway.