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.
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