We must not forget, when dealing with art, that we are dealing with a human activity, and that the work of art entails a process of labour no less than a product. It is important, therefore, to consider the good of the making as well as the good of the thing made.
This can be explored by considering Jacques Maritain’s contribution to the question of what good or goods pertain to works of art. Maritain, working under Scholastic categories, is concerned with the issue of the divergence or convergence of two different orders of value, two different kinds of good – namely, those of Ars and
Prudentia, the practical and speculative or moral orders, respectively.
Prudence is concerned with human good – the good for man, we might say – and good in relation to God; the concern of Art, meanwhile, “is for the work in question to be good in itself […] and it relates to the peculiar good or perfection not of the man making,
116 but of the work made” (Maritain 1943, p.7). But we must note, immediately, that the good of the work might indeed have its roots in the good of the man; in the skill, the virtue, and the mind of the maker. Such a skill is a good and valuable thing to possess – a kind of excellence, on Adams’ model – and as such is good also for the man. It may, furthermore, be the case that the good of the work – the good work – is good for all who encounter it, as an object and occasion for a valuable experience; in the case of Christian art, a Christian experience.
To my mind, then, Maritain’s categories are effective only up to a point. I suspect, at least, that while the above classification or division may be suitable for understanding art and morals in general, it is not suitable to the particular phenomenon of Christian art. For if my model, as a whole, is fitting, then Christian art finds itself at the very centre of a human destiny that, in its holistic nature and final end, does not allow for such neat distinctions between art and prudence, making and morals, but which is concerned only with the dedication to transfiguration – which recognises only the iconic good of likeness to God.
Maritain’s thoughts on these matters, however, revolve less around the issue of the practical and moral orders, and more around a second dichotomy that he discerns within Ars itself; namely, the difference between making and action, where art finds its place in the former category.
As Maritain’s own musings make clear, there are subtle overlaps between making and action; for while art, “remains outside the line of human conduct, with an end, rules, and values, which are not those of the man, but of the work to be produced,” it is
nevertheless essentially entwined with the human processes and values of its making; thus even “if art is not human in the end which it pursues, it is human, essentially human, in its method of working. It involves the making of a man’s work, stamped with the character of man” (Maritain 1943, p.7). Thus we come to speak of a virtue of art in the artisan.
It is important to stress, as Maritain himself does, that this virtue of art does not translate into a moral virtue; for the “actions [of the artist] often runs contrary to his art” (p.12). That is, someone who makes good works doesn’t always do good deeds. We can
117 say, succinctly, that the artist is good at art, without this meaning that he is by any means an ethically exemplary person.
I do think, however, that a work of art is very much an action, and one that demands a great deal of character and personality. Indeed, it demands the embodiment of the virtue of art, as Maritain tells us, not simply mechanical skill. This is not to say that this places the artwork, or the making of it, within the moral order, but to say that
something more than the good of a ‘thing’ is involved in the good of the work; and it is to suggest that to make something good is itself a good thing to do.19
Dostoevsky does not have to be a ‘good man’ in order to write his books, but the iconic good of his novels also, I suggest, attaches to the man (however flawed or sinful) who produced such things as The Brothers Karamazov. There is something exemplary, something iconic, not perhaps about the private individual, in isolation from his labours and his works, but precisely about the man in his making, his dedication, his
achievement.
Richard Viladesau, paraphrasing Thomas Aquinas, writes that “Like an artist, God creates for the sake of beauty. All things are made, therefore, to be beautiful, so that they imitate in various degrees their exemplary cause” (Viladesau 2013, p.115). Also the artist, I would argue, imitates God; so that the artist, whatever his other qualities, is iconic in his creation of beautiful things.
Maritain suggests that such a man must be torn between the very different demands of two kinds of good; “as the artist is first a man and then an artist, it is easy to see what conflicts will rage in his heart between Art and Prudence, his character as Maker and his character as Man” (Maritain 1943, p.15). Perhaps this is true; in any case, it probably would be true if the artist subscribed to this dichotomy, if he recognised two such valid but competing claims on his person and his activities. I would suggest,
however, that the two goods are more conflated than Maritain understands them, and that they may find joint and mutual fruition.
19This is emphatically so when we come to consider the ethical and eschatological implications of
Christian art; indeed, we may even find an imperative which tells us that ‘to make something good’ is something we should do – for the good of our calling, for the good of mankind, for the good of God.
118 The account of man as essentially an artist, a maker of signs and a maker of things, which I shall pursue in the following chapter, should go some way towards
appeasing this apparent conflict of values. David Jones, with his idea of ‘man-the-maker,’ makes a crucial contribution to Maritain’s model. Under Jones’ tutelage, we can affirm that to ‘make good’ is no less vital – to man, to our relation to God – than to ‘do good’. This, I believe, is also Blake’s conviction. It can be supported, moreover, by voices from theology and theological aesthetics. Indeed, as we live in a fallen world that needs
regeneration, our making – our making new, making beautiful anew – may be seen as our divinely appointed task and vocation above all. Thus there may be no place for Prudence as a separate category of value, as it is not a separate aspect of our lives, but is rather assimilated into the regenerative task.
The conflict that Maritain posits is this: on the one hand, the “artistic habit [or virtue] is concerned only with the work to be done [and the] sole end of art is the work itself and its beauty”; while on the other hand, “for the man working, the work to be done of itself comes into the line of morality and so is merely a means […] It is therefore absolutely necessary for the artist, qua man, to work for something other than his work, something better beloved.” And “God,” Maritain claims, “is infinitely more lovable than Art” (p.74).
Insofar as there is a problem here, I suggest that my own model is more capable than Maritain’s of solving it. There need not be an irreconcilable antinomy between the ‘good in itself’ of the artistic effort and the ‘good for’ of the artist as man. For Christian art, as I conceive it, the end of the art-work is subsumed within, and also contributes to, the greater end of a more perfect vision and practice of love. The artwork is an object of love within a greater love; the artistic labour is carried out within a greater labour of love. Such must be the priorities governing Christian art. Perhaps the best way to appease or conflate the two spheres of making and action, then, is to conceive of both as two aspects of our works of love; for love is the end of both creativity and morals. Furthermore, love is both beautiful and good.
Blake’s case is illustrative here, of an artist who is well aware of his personal flaws of virtue, but who conceives of his artistic labour as an act of devotion and a
119 sustained effort at revealing the goods of God. Thus Blake confesses at the beginning of
Jerusalem:
I am perhaps the most sinful of men; I pretend not to holiness: yet I pretend to love. to see. to converse with daily. as man with man: & the more to have an interest in the Friend of Sinners (Blake 2000, p.300).
He ‘pretends’, crucially, to inspiration, and to use his creative powers entirely in the service of glorifying Christ. To do good for him, as I propose for the Christian artist in general, is to make good; and the question of how to be good – for the artist, whose life is dedicated to this making – is answered (in the only way possible for the artist) by his dedication to this creative, regenerative task. Thus, as we have already seen Blake proclaim,
I rest not from my great task;
To Open the Eternal Worlds. to open the immortal Eyes Of Man inwards […] into Eternity
Ever expanding in the Bosom of God (p.302).
120 3.2 PARTICULAR AND TRANSCENDENT GOODS
Whatever is the case for other art, Christian art is at least implicitly committed to (a belief in) an objective and transcendent good, which is in some sense identified as the Good of God. The Christian artwork, therefore, should be posited in relation to this good, and apprehended and appreciated accordingly.
In general, as critics or lovers of art, we should direct our attention and our judgements towards the artwork as artwork – the novel as novel, the poem as poem – quite irrespective of its bearing on other issues. When appreciating and assessing the value of a particular poem, that is, we are first and foremost to engage with and address its poetic qualities; and not, for example, its merits as an ethical or political statement.
As we saw above, however, such theoretically distinct spheres of value are difficult to entirely keep apart; thus, in a similar fashion to the admissible conflation of the good ‘in itself’ and the ‘good for’, the concern for the ‘good as’ of an artwork may legitimately open out to accommodate questions of the artwork being good, pure and simple, in a moral or religious sense – where the criterion of the work’s goodness is no longer simply the categorical framework of values that governs the making and reception of poems as poems, but indeed a supreme and transcendent Good.
However keen we may be to safeguard to the greatest possible extent the artwork’s so-called autonomy from moralistic incursions of the Tolstoyan variety, I do believe that our assessment of an artwork – indeed, the very act of reading or perceiving – is inescapably informed by our faculties of moral judgement. The reading of a great novel, such as War and Peace, indisputably involves a holistic and composite
engagement, where a real grasp on the significant forms of the novel – our understanding of characters, themes, narrative structures – demands of us a moral no less than an artistic literacy.
Still, it is important, I believe – in keeping with the way many of us do speak about art – to maintain a distinction between two different discourses of the good; one of which concerns itself with the goods pertaining to particular things, disciplines or
situations; another which maintains that all our judgements (and indeed our every use of the very word) of the good invokes a transcendent Good. The former way of
121 understanding the good – as the good of a particular thing, according to the criteria
particular to its kind – is prevalent in aesthetic and artistic discourse, and perhaps
justifiably so; for it does make sense to enquire if Ulysses is good as a novel in much the same way that we speak of the good of a car as a car, a fork as a fork, where the relevant criteria will be unique to each kind of object or phenomenon.
We say that something is good as a work of art without meaning that it is also good in the stronger sense of disclosing and partaking of the Good, or the Good of God. Certainly, not every good artwork – however indisputably excellent as a play or a pop song – manifests the form and beauty of God.
The Christian work of art, however, is characterised by this very ambition and achievement; and this commits it to a different understanding of the good from that which pertains to non-Christian art. It need not trouble the atheist or secular artist that their works are only ‘good as’ without also partaking of some transcendent, let alone divine or theistic, Good; but the Christian artist must aim to satisfy both conditions. Indeed,
Christian art, even in order to be good as Christian art, needs to be good in the sense of partaking of and manifesting the Good of God.
Now, beauty is needed to ensure that the Christian artwork is good (in both senses currently under discussion); for beauty is a criterion of what makes a hymn or an
altarpiece good as a Christian work of art, and it is also beauty which manifest God and thus makes the work in question good.20 But beauty is not present in all paintings or novels that we call good works of art; it may even be an inappropriate element in some artworks, contrary to the governing ideas of the school or genre, as in the case of much post-modern and conceptual art. Beauty is therefore not always a criterion of the work being good as. Works may be great art without being good in the iconic sense of disclosing the Good and Beauty of God. Importantly, just as beauty is not a criterion of all art, though it is the chief criterion of Christian art, so we do not say that all good works of art need to be Christian; only that all Christian works of art need to be good.
20 I must reiterate here, lest we forget, that beauty is neither synonymous with, nor dependent upon, the
achievements of harmony and proportion; nor, though every beautiful work is exemplary by virtue of its beauty, does the beautiful work need to be ‘excellent’ in the sense of flawlessness or perfection.
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