Aesthetic Realism
Class of March
8, 1948
Taught by Eli
Siegel
Report by Sheldon Kranz
The
purpose of Aesthetic Realism is to present a philosophy of the world
and of the
self. It is to show what it is a self
wants, what it must go after if it is to be wholly happy.
Aesthetics is absolutely necessary for this,
if the word is fully understood and wholly seen.
Mr.
Siegel discussed the meaning of art and how what the artist is going
after all
the time is what every person also is going after, and must go after to
feel
good. Where people have been happy,
whether they knew about Aesthetic Realism or not, he said, the
principles of
art have operated.
Art
Is a One of Self and World
Mr.
Siegel read the Aesthetic Realism definition of art--the joining of
self and not the self so that they are one, showing sameness and
difference, togetherness and separateness--and the Funk and Wagnall
dictionary definition. The dictionary
definition is useful in that it emphasizes original meanings of art
that have
been lost in the popular and sloppy connotations of the word. Art has always had to do with skill, with
organization, with knowledge, with work, said Mr. Siegel.
The artist of the middle ages was an
artisan, a worker or craftsman. He took
materials and organized them. How good
a job he did depended on a combination of himself and the object. Mr. Siegel pointed out that this is every
person's problem. How he, as self, is
going to meet the objects of the world. The neurotic, whether he knows
it
or not,
is deeply against art and aesthetics. He meets
reality and pretends to like it, when actually he is against
it, sees it as an enemy. How good a job
could a painter or a cabinet maker do if he really hated his tools, his
canvas,
or his piece of wood? The utmost in art is a complete fairness
to the object. There is a making one of artist
and material, and the result of this is art. This
combination is also work, said Mr. Siegel. It is a person doing
something with something. Aesthetic
Realism's purpose, he said, is to show that this is exactly what is
going on
with a person. We are meeting objects,
reality, all the time. How much we can
make a happy one of self and world, that much we will be happy or
aesthetic. Like the artist, we must be
fair to objects.We must like reality.
Beauty
and Usefulness
Mr.
Siegel said that the useful phase and the aesthetic phase in art are
really
one. For example, a portrait can please a family because it is of a
member of
the family; it can also hang in a museum as a work of art a hundred
years
later. A building can be useful as a
library, and still be a beautiful example of architecture. The work and
aesthetic phases can really be seen as doing good, said Mr. Siegel.
Life,
he said, in the same way is an aesthetic problem of having the world do
the
utmost good to us, and we doing the utmost good to the world. Life is
different
from art, he said, in that we don't know the end. Still,
a person knows he wants to be happy; that is to have a
sensible relation with things. Happiness, Mr.
Siegel said, is an organization of facts with what we
are. But before one can please himself he must know himself; and the
reality
being dealt with. Wherever good art has
resulted, this has been true. There has
been knowledge. And to be happy, one
must be interested in all of oneself and all of reality.
We would not be satisfied with a coat that
only covered one arm. Like the artist,
said Mr. Siegel, if self and world are to be dealt with beautifully, a
good job
must be done with reality as a whole. Where art
reaches it highest point of relation of a self and everything
else, it is the highest good sense, beauty and usefulness.
The Basic Principle of Art
The
basic principle of art, of making a one of opposites, is clearly seen
in the
Aesthetic Realism definition of art: the joining of the self and not
the self
so that they are one, showing sameness and difference, togetherness and
separateness. But this can be seen in
many other opposites, all of which are put together in good art and
which have
to be put together in every person.
To
show
some of these opposites, Mr. Siegel read one of Francois Villon's most
famous
poems, which contains the well-known refrain: "But where are the snows
of
yester-year?"
Opposites in a Famous Poem by Francois Villon
Every
person, said Mr. Siegel, wants to be free and precise at once. He wants
to be
able to do what he wants, and yet be orderly and accurate.
This poem of Villon's brings these opposites
together beautifully and aesthetically. There
is a feeling here of going into strange places, when
Villon
wonders what has happened to famous women of the past: Heloise, Joan of
Arc,
Charlemagne's mother. Yet the poem is
written in a strict, exact form, the ballade. Also
the form is complicated and intricate, but at the
same time the
poem is simple, sentimental. There is
also the mingling of conscious and unconscious in the poem. This is from the translation by Dante
Gabriel Rossetti:
White
Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies,
With a
voice like any mermaiden,--
Bertha
Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,
And
Ermengarde the lady of Maine,
And that good Joan whom Englishmen
At
Rouen doomed and burned her there,--
Mother
of God, where are they then?...
But
where are the snows of yester-year?
Said
Mr. Siegel, Villon has said what he wanted, which comes from his
unconscious--that is, the selecting of these ideas, these objects; but
it has
been given a conscious form, a certain arrangement. And just as a
person wants
to feel that things can change but also are, so Villon has accomplished
that
here. In the rhymes we feel movement,
difference and yet the rhyme gives also a feeling of sameness, being
like
another word. And the opposites of
speed and restfulness in the poem, of unity and diversity, are ones
that a
person is dealing with and which a neurotic person is dealing with
badly. For example, the neurotic will go from
doing
nothing, being as motionless as possible, to a great deal of furious
activity.
He has not put together speed and restfulness, not made a one of rest
and
motion the way a symphony of Beethoven's does, for example.
Alexander
Pope, Too
Mr.
Siegel then discussed Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism, and showed how
Pope
was also aware of the necessity of putting opposites together if good
poetry
was to result:
Soft
is the Strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth Stream in
smoother Numbers flows;
But when loud Surges lash the
sounding Shore,
The hoarse, rough Verse shou'd
like the Torrent roar.
When Ajax strives, some Rocks'
vast Weight to throw,
The Line too labours, and the
Words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla
scours the Plain,
Flies o'er th'unbending Corn,
and skims along the Main.
And as
the final reading, Mr. Siegel presented a charming story in verse by
Von
Platen, a
German poet of the nineteenth century. The story
about a painter, Signorelli, shows, said Mr.
Siegel, a putting
together of personal and impersonal. The painter's son died. And the father painted a portrait of his son
lying dead on his bier. The painter
then felt he had his son truly and they could bury the body.
Said Mr.
Siegel, a
person has a job even with people who have died, for we still have them
in
mind. How we deal with people who have
died, like how we deal with the past, must be understood, said Mr.
Siegel,
because otherwise we will play tricks with it, which will affect the
present
and the future.
Mr.
Siegel concluded this class by saying: So what Aesthetic Realism says
is that
the highest good sense is to be found in art, for it is the only place
where
conflict is truly resolved in a happy way. What
goes on in art, he said, is what the neurotic is always trying to
understand. If he
did, he would be
happy, healthy, and aesthetic.
Copyright:
Sheldon Kranz, Aesthetic
Realism
Consultant
Note:
We recently found the Von Platen verses in English translation on the
web, and copy them here, reprinted from the 1849 book German
Literature
by Joseph Gostick:
Luca
Signorelli by August von Platen
’Twas at the hour, of
evening prayer—
The painter from his easel rose,
And gazed upon the picture there—
How life-like every aspect glows!
Hark !—what can mean these sudden cries ?—
A pupil comes with hasty tread,
Enters the painter's room, and sighs,
“Master, your only son is dead!
“Alas ! his beauty brought his doom;
He fell beneath a rival's hand,
And yonder, in the minster's gloom,
The praying monks around him stand.”
Then Luca cried—“Oh, misery!
Thus have I lived, and toiled in vain !
This moment takes away from me
The fruit of all my labour's pain!
“What care I that my paintings’ glow
With joy Cortona's people hail?
Or that Orvieto’s church can show
My ‘Judgment,’ making gazers pale? |
“Nor fame, nor laurels
round my brow,
Can bind this wound, and heal my smart;
Thy last, best consolation now,
Bestow on me, beloved art!”
Straight to the church the master went—
He shed no tears—he said no more—
His pupil, guessing his intent,
Beside him brush and palette bore.
He steps into the minster. See!
From many a shrine his paintings gleam:
The monks their funeral litany
Chant by the lamps’ undying beam.
He gazes on the beauteous dead;
Then all night in that solemn place
He sits, with colours near him spread,
To paint the dear boy's sleeping face.
He sits and paints beside the bier,
With father’s heart and painter’s skill,
Till morning dawns—“I have him here—
Bury the corpse whene'er you will.” |
|
