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ART AND REALITY.

(2nd draft December 2024)

What is the relationship between, on the one hand, the (pleasant) feelings that constitute the appreciation of works of art and, on the other hand, feelings of the same sort we might get from real life experiences.

When I say ‘works of art’ I am thinking in particular of the two things: fiction and visual art. Fiction is novels and TV dramas etc. And visual art is paintings, sculpture etc. The corresponding real life experiences of these two would be hearing about real life people and the things they do and looking at the things around you in the real world.

A particular example of the first might be: you have a serious conversation with another person and you feel moved by what they say. Or you feel like the conversation gives you an insight into their life and maybe the lives of some other people they tell you about. Or you feel amused by the way they express themselves. But both of these effects are ones that are often attributed to great literature. So does this mean that the conversation is in some sense a work of art?

(The question as I have stated it here is related to, or maybe just is, a well-known particular problem in ‘the philosophy of art’ and I am not going to go into it any further here.)

Are art-feelings (feelings got from the experience of works of art) in some sense a substitute for the life-feelings (feelings you get from experiencing things in real life)? So, as per the example above, we read fiction and get experience of the lives of other (fictional) characters instead of talking to people to get an experience of their lives.

If so then there is the danger that the surrogate second-hand art-feelings become preferred and we avoid, or fail to appreciate, the real life equivalents. There is a moral objection here which is that, we feel moved by, for example, not-real people in dramas on a stage and so neglect the dramas and sufferings of real people.

Consider the example (attributed to Tolstoy) of some wealthy woman who rides in her coach to the theatre to witness the elegant suffering of some consumptive heroine on the stage. While at the same time not caring at all for the suffering of her coachman who is outside sitting and waiting in the bitter cold slowly freezing to death. She prefers the staged version of suffering because it is more ‘beautiful’. And maybe also because it does not require her to do anything about it. She doesn’t really care.

(Which is a bit like what Holden Caulfield says in the novel ‘The Catcher In The Rye’: “You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phoney stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they’re mean bastards at heart.” … Oh, by the way, YES I am aware of the irony of me quoting a fictional character in this post which is largely negative about fiction and art in general.)

I sometimes worry that there are professors of English Literature who understand the fictional character Othello more than they do their own spouses or close friends. When I was at school and we were studying fictional characters in Literature classes, I would have wanted instead to study real life lives with the same amount of effort and in the same amount of detail as we were studying these made up lives.

Apart from the moral objection there’s the more general sense that art is fake and inauthentic. And reality is better than fake, even if the fake is in some sense better. Living a real average life is better than living a brilliant fake one. Experiencing art is living life once removed and so there is something wrong with it.

(In the Wim Wenders movie ‘The State Of Things’ there is a character who is proud of a little saying he has come up with: “Stories only exist in stories whereas life goes by without the need to turn into stories.” Meaning life is better because it does not have that need to turn into (fake) stories?)

It seems wrong that there are people who put so much time and effort into made-up stuff.

And then there’s a third point too. So even if we overlook that art feelings are morally suspect and that they are inauthentic. There’s also the point that they aren’t necessary are they? They are redundant. Because we can get the same feelings from real life.

People say they read novels because reading tells them about the lives of other people. I don’t think it does. And even if it did, if that’s what you want then why not just go and meet real people? They’re everywhere!

When it comes to visual art this kind of thing has been going on for a while. We will walk past trees to go to an art gallery to look at pictures which are a lot less beautiful than the trees we have walked past. (Especially if it is autumn or spring.) This is a very odd thing to do. Especially if you’re going to the art gallery to look at paintings of trees. (Even a tree painted by Caspar David Friedrich!)

As well as natural objects, there are also mass produced objects. Which are again, often as impressive, as actual ‘works of art’. Coins, banknotes, furniture, electronics.

So, at the very least, there is a certain redundancy about Art. Especially representational visual art and narrative fiction. You might ask yourself: “isn’t there enough reality already, why do you need to create some more fake reality?”.

Nathaniel Hawthorne writes (in ‘The House Of The Seven Gables’): “Is not the world sad enough, in genuine earnest, without making a pastime of mock sorrows?”. (Although here he is also making a different point which is: why are we adding to real life misery by creating more of it?)

Sometimes a movie will be advertised as being a “feel-good movie”. And I think to myself: why do I need a movie to make me feel good? Surely I can do that in my ordinary life.

Art is to reality what pornography is to sex. Or rather the relation between pornography and sex is a particular example of the more general relationship between Art and reality.

Often real life is better.

So, looking at a photo (or even HD video) of something is nothing compared to standing in front of something real and looking at it.

Seeing a minor fight in the street in real life has a greater effect on the viewer than all the fights, no matter how violent, you might see in the movies.

TV dramas always appear contrived and inauthentic and to bear no relation to real life. They seem to be about some other place entirely. When I was at school I used to watch a TV drama set in a school. And I thought: this is nothing like the school I go to!

More generally the truth is stranger than fiction. Stranger and so more intriguing.

So: The idea is that reality is better than art but often it fells like that someone has persuaded us that a fake version of something is better than the real thing which we already have. So we neglect the real and indulge in the fake. Paying money for it to the people who have persuaded us. (The ‘people’ here being (at least in part) professional artists and writers etc.)

Of course (on the other hand) a lot of the time art is better than real life.

An amusing conversation with a friend is nothing compared to the best stand-up comedians in the world broadcast to us via electronic media. The feelings associated with learning of everyday real life dramas are not enough: we want to experience the exaggerated and more intense sorrows of a King Lear (or some other soap opera character) dying a bitter death brought on by his own folly.

And it may be that for certain people in particular their lives are so boring.

Any fake experience is better (even the ones that aren’t better for most people!!!). They lack emotional experiences completely in their real lives and this causes them to seek those experiences elsewhere. (The instance of pornography is particularly pertinent here.)

But, to return to the authenticity point, is it better to live a brilliant fake life than an average real one?

And maybe also: the distinction is between eating sensibly and being gluttonous. Just because lots of pleasant fake experiences are available doesn’t mean you should indulge in them.

Also, this is all related to issues of convenience. It’s easy to dial up a fake experience then to go out and have a real one. Needless to say that doesn’t excuse this kind of behaviour from an authenticity point of view.

You’re probably thinking (I know I am) that what I am saying here about the non-necessity (redundancy) of art is just wrong. Because art is not the same as reality. It is special and so not redundant. That’s the whole point of it.

It’s like so far I have been talking as if the only thing that art does is to imitate reality. But that’s not true. Like Oscar Wilde said: “art begins where imitation ends”. Art is not just imitation.

So, to answer a question stated earlier, feelings we get from experiencing art are not just a substitute to ones we might get from real life.

The ways in which art is not like real life constitute the reasons why people choose it.

Not because, as previously said, they have been fooled into it. Or because it is simply more intense.

The value of art isn’t because it imitates reality but because it distorts it the way the artist wants. That’s what ‘art’ is. To be ‘artful’ is demonstrate skill at this distortion. It’s the distortion that we appreciate when we appreciate art. And so all the issues raised previously about morals and authenticity and redundancy simply don’t apply.

Having said that: art as produced isn’t always non-imitative. A lot of it, especially (dare I say) ‘low art’ is still just imitative and the previous criticisms still apply.

A different element to the value of art is that it serves a purpose like play fighting

It’s a way of experiencing things that is useful but would be harmful in real life.

So we can get the experience murders and the life of a murderer (Raskolnikov) but in real life we couldn’t and wouldn’t want to.

The idea of Art (particularly visual art and ‘the fine arts’) as a separate category is a fairly new idea. Starting sometime in the late 18th century I think. Maybe it’s even a capitalistic thing. I mean maybe Art became a separate category when it became a commodity. Mozart was marketed and promoted (by his father) and the 18th century was when composers started selling their products to buyers such as the Viennese middle classes. Before then composers produced for their patrons and employers who were royalty or high clergy.

Imagine a place where there is no such thing as Art. Because Art and life are indistinct. Everyday things are beautiful things. There are no professional artists, novelists etc and no specially designated places where Art happens (galleries, concert halls, theatres).

Of all the arts music is the one that is the least imitative of reality and so is the least subject to all the negative things I have said above. Music produces things which are not like anything you might find in the world anyway. You don’t hear anything like string quartets or symphonies in your real life but you do see nature (which is what a lot of visual art is about) in your real life and you do meet people (which is what a lot of narrative fiction is about) in your real life. Another way of putting it is that music is never ‘about’ anything. But other art forms are often ‘about’ other things. ... So we can list the Arts in terms of their value as follows: (in descending order) music, non-representational visual art, poetry, narrative fiction, representational visual art. ... The superiority of music as an art form is expressed in the remark “all art constantly aspires to the condition of music”.

Coda. The only value I have ever found in visual art is that it often draws my attention to the beauty in reality that I had not noticed before. Caspar David Friedrich reminded me about the trees. Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden drew my attention to the beautiful intricacies of the folds in my clothes and if it wasn’t for Andrei Tarkovsky I might never have known about how astonishing things look when submerged in slightly agitated shallow water.

Maybe because of these kinds of things I find myself distracted pleasantly when out walking. By trees and peeling paint on wood and by the patterns created by the legs of two people walking together as their legs go in and out of sync.