In the question and answer portion of my TOS-Con presentation on John Singer Sargent, I was asked a particularly interesting question, one that’s stuck with me because I’m not entirely happy with the way I answered it. The question was: to what degree is it necessary to understand the historical or biographical context of an artwork in order to fully grasp its aesthetic merit? Does a work stand on its own? Or do we need to know stuff outside the canvas?
I suppose the question was inspired by my opinion of Sargent’s Madame X, which is probably his most famous painting, and which he called “the best thing I have done,” but which I do not particularly like. Don’t get me wrong: it’s a marvelous example of Sargent’s brilliant skill, but I consider it not his best portrait, and in fact, as I explain here, not really a portrait at all. It’s a piece of social commentary, and one that—whatever its appeal in the 1880s—is now a bit off-putting.
But that’s not at issue here. The question—to what degree does an artwork stand on its own—is a solid one. It’s one that has dogged not just aesthetic theory, but other things, as well. In theology, there’s the longstanding dispute between the Protestant position of sola scriptura and the Catholic view that tradition and elaboration are legitimate parts of the Christian tradition. In law, there’s the dispute over Originalism versus the Living Constitution—where the latter position says that the meaning of the law may not be represented exclusively by the text. (This is a bit of an oversimplification, obviously, since even Originalists will appeal to positions outside the four corners of the document to interpret it, but I think the point remains valid.) In the early 20th Century, there was the dispute in literature between the New Criticism—which said the text should stand entirely on its own—and other crucial positions which examined a work in the context of its age and circumstances and the life experiences of its author.
I’ve never been persuaded of the New Critical position. Yet that isn’t to say that a work’s social and cultural context plays no role. I think if you read a book like, say, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, it’s a superb aesthetic experience—but not until you learn that Conrad actually went to the Congo, and actually rode up the river on a steamer, and based a lot of the novel on actual things that he saw, can you fully appreciate what he was saying.
What I wish I had emphasized more in my answer was that this does not detract from the aesthetic position that holds that an artwork should stand on its own.
The reason has to do with the nature of what philosophers have called “good taste.” I think it’s W.D. Falk who writes that while an art work may strike us as great on the first glance, the “educated taste” is able to appreciate it in many different ways—to bring to it a variety of means of appreciating the work. The richer the art work, the more it will reward such different approaches. This is a consequence of integration, which is so crucial to the success of a work of art. Because the artist selects his details according to some principle, he may produce something of great simplicity is well-integrated (that is, it has “integrity”), or he may produce something of enormous complexity that still has such integrity. Really superb artists accomplish both, by making an artwork that appears simple but is in fact very complicated—because the level of integration is so well done, and the principle being expressed so universally applicable, that the work will reward you from all sorts of different angles.
To make a crude analogy, consider a Lego brick. All Legos are keyed to the same sizes in a way that enables any Lego piece to connect to any other Lego piece. So if you find something with Lego bumps on it, you can snap on to it any Lego piece that you might have. In a similar manner, a great work of art is integrated according to its selective principle, so that you can, so to speak, “snap on” to it the perspective that you bring to it. A person with educated taste is capable of bringing to the artwork a set of tools that can “snap on” to even works that express values radically contrary to one’s own.
Now, this metaphor is crude because I think there are limits—the further away an artwork gets from your own metaphysical values, the more, I think, it is bound to diverge from your own aesthetic values as well, and this “snapping on” quality is bound to fade. But it gets at my point which is that while the artist will typically strive to create a work that speaks for itself, or stands on its own—and while aesthetic analysis is based on that principle of selection—nevertheless, approaching a work from different angles allows you to “snap on” to it in various ways and that enriches the aesthetic experience.
Take, for example, allusions. In 1898, Amelie Gatureau—that is, Madame X—was painted by another painter, Gustave Courtois. He painted her in profile, facing the opposite way she had in Madame X, and painted her in a white dress, the opposite of the black dress in Madame X—and he painted the strap down, off her shoulder, in reference to the fact that Sargent’s Madame X had originally been painted with the strap off her shoulder, which made the painting scandalous. This is an allusion that deepens our appreciation of the work.
If you did not know about the Sargent painting, could you appreciate the aesthetics of the Courtois painting? Of course you could. As Richard Wilbur says in discussing the allusions in A.E. Housman’s poetry, a poem “gains in power and point” if we catch the references, “but if we don’t catch [them], we are still possessed of a complete and trustworthy version of Housman’s poem.” A great work rewards us without “snapping on” our own background, but a greater work rewards us even more for doing so.
Allusions might be thought to be a different subjects since they’re intentional—they’re invitations by the artist to bring in something from outside—whereas the social or biographical context is not. But I don’t think that’s quite true. An artwork—or anything that really deserves that name—is an attempt to communicate, so the artist must anticipate that the audience will come to it with at least some outside context. To take the obvious case, novels don’t contain dictionaries, so the writers expect readers to come in with the context of language and history. Rand expects you to read The Fountainhead at least knowing already what a skyscraper is. She may not expect you to recognize Gail Wynand as inspired by William Randolph Hearst, of course she would entirely expect someone who doesn’t to still grasp in full the novel’s aesthetic success. In that sense, historical or biographical detail is not necessary. Yet the work deepens if we do know that. Other works take even more outside context for granted. If we did not already know the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, could we really appreciate Paradise Lost? Maybe. But the reason Milton is able to devote his time to the psychology of Satan, or the falling out between the first couple, and all the other delicious elements of that poem, is because he knows his readers are already familiar with the basic outline of his story. If he had to also tell you the story in the first instance, he would be unable to take the time to go into depth. Attempting to do so would, at best, swell the poem to the length of Les Miserables. More likely, it would just fail completely. One reason M. Night Shayamalan’s Lady in the Water is so extremely bad is that he simultaneously tells you the “fairy tales” and also explores their meaning—something that is not aesthetically possible (at least, not with his limited talents).
In other words, while I don’t think aesthetic assessment essentially depends on materials or information outside the canvas, I do think such details can expand our appreciation—they are a means of bringing our appreciation to bear on the work. A work that really requires such an appreciation to succeed is probably a failure as an art work, because it is not integrated. But a work that is well integrated and well executed only grows more rich as we understand its context. So to be an art appreciator, we cultivate our understanding as a means of expanding our taste and getting as much out of art as we can.
Update: a perfect meme for this.
Comments policy