The Likeness of a Beautiful Thing - 02

In the early 1990s this was given first as a speech to a class at the Lancaster County Art Association, and in briefer form afterwards on a couple of other occasions.
Some of the illustrations come from the text, others from references to physical works that Johannes brought with him, and one from live demonstration.                                                                                        (2nd of eleven sections)                                                                                                                 

           
G.   Perfection, Compromise and Wear

1. Compromise: The perfection of an artifact is not bound by a single function but by several that are traded off against each other: A pitcher permits us to transport a liquid as a solid and ought also to dispense this liquid without spillage. Its interior should be easily accessible for cleaning and its handle so positioned and so shaped that its weight is manageable and its pouring inclination easily controlled.
2. Wear: Even a thoroughly made thing composed of best materials is, in the end, reduced through use to its final material substances and then discarded by the owner. Wear – the deformation of an artifact through use – can be long delayed, but not entirely avoided. A favorable Pace of Wear goes with function and – as a good desired by the patron – is required for completion of the job.

H.   The Integrity and Wholeness of a Perfect Thing

        The constraints of compromise and wear are difficulties which we may dismiss once we have managed them as well as circumstance allows. But we can center ourselves so narrowly on practical utility that we are scarcely able to endure and live with our functional creations.

        Unsightliness – through irritating or distracting and thereby weakening the user – impairs the function of an object. Moreover, artifacts are not just with us when they do their work, but also at their idle periods. Thus, among their varied functions, that of giving satisfaction to the viewer who beholds them has to be included. An artifact is made completely – that is, wholly finished and in that sense perfect – when visual excellence and utility are joined.

        When a man-made thing thus embodies an optimal reply to each of the user’s sensible requirements, it will bear wholly the character of all that it is made to be. It will be itself. That is, within the constraints of its own integrity, it will be perfection, in quite a similar sense that geometric shapes also can be perfect. A circle, for example, will be perfect within the limits of its own identity, because it is unsurpassable in its character of circularity.

I.   The Excellence of Art

        Visual excellence is an attribute of all good art toward one especial function, namely, that of being seen. It is essential in both the applied as well as fine arts, and consists at least of two requirements.

1. Proportion: The just relationship of visual parts is an expression of proportions resulting from the artist’s power to compose by using as a guide his own attentively observed involuntary attractions and repulsions. These are not intuitions, experimentally predicting possibilities, but instinctive reflex actions, such as those which cause us to withdraw from a foul or rotten smelling food but to surrender eagerly to the appealing smell of fresh-baked bread.

           Neither are they predilections in a sense of taste by which we may be fonder of peaches than
           of grapes and prefer blonde girls to brunettes.
          Just proportionality gives to us the unimpeded visual coherence of a thing and hence its ready
           legibility.      (This should be demonstrated live.)

      2. Clarity:  However, clarity is an intrinsic property of the work itself and therefore no more
           dependent upon who can look at it with understanding than is the legibility of writing to be
           judged by those who do not know their letters. For clarity inheres in the exactitude of the
           artist’s reconstruction of his purpose in visible material form. Clarity brings illumination into
           our minds and is there loved by our understanding.        Clarity does not mean an expression
           is directly understood but only that it is amenable to comprehension. However, since we
           mostly want to understand any subject we consider, we love lucidity for granting us what
           we desire.

J.   The Common Foundation

        The Basic Designs – both two and three dimensional – are a line of learning aimed at Visual Literacy pursued by students in every field of art but thereafter put to different uses. All able expression of visual literacy is valuable and deserves a place in art. But the different art disciplines do not, on that account, produce interchangeable results.

      1.  Pictorial Limitation:        
            I cannot put my pictures to work to pour coffee or bicycle myself downtown. But, equally, I
            cannot put the artifacts suitable for these two uses to the assignments that pictures may
            perform. 

       2.  Pictorial Expression: 

• A friend called my Little Steamer in Distress by the name of The Little Tug That Could, and thus read most precisely my intention of articulating tenacious pluckiness in the face of towering adversity. A whole drama of the elements unfolds within the limits of a private space:

       2.   Pictorial Expression (cont’d)  

• Demons over Moby Dick takes up Melville’s many times repeated phrase “the demoniac fish.” My strange beings in the sky are thus the Demon Allies helping the Demoniac Fish in his demoniac work.

      2.   Pictorial Expression (cont’d)  

• Winged Demon and Demonic Monolith are both malevolent and threatening. But the winged creature must find his victims and close his talons on them bodily, while the Demonic Monolith, his furnace eye flashing open in the late afternoon, will work an imponderable but far greater menace at long range.
  

              Pictorial interpretation of Literature, Fantasy and Life is beyond the reach of objects of
              utility, which are expressive chiefly of the use to which we put them, and closely limited
              therefore to an excellence of visual form and the material service desired by the patron,
              without profound interpretive intention.

        3.  Artifacts in Numbers:
              The potential of an artifact is thus exhausted only if we regard it by itself. A work of
              Architecture with various details – inside as well as out – and its assembly of artifacts for
              every sort of use, especially indoors, can, overall, be far more than the sum of all these
              parts. They can give an eloquent articulation of the owners’ habits, character and will.
              Whole human lives express themselves that way. The discipline of Archaeology, from just   
              such clues, endeavors to reconstruct entire cultures.

             Thus, artifacts in numbers – coherently selected and arrayed, achieve an expressive range
             that eludes them singly. For this breadth of creativity, apparently, was Architecture named
             “Queen of all the Arts” by Michelangelo.

        Artifacts can be as powerfully and as far expressive as products of the Fine Arts. But while the latter are able to achieve this purpose singly, artifacts themselves cannot.

        Yet, of the many times when a judgment of what will be better and what worse cannot be evaded, in this case we may let the question rest and strive to design better the objects of utility as well as nobler works of art. It is important only to thoroughly understand what each is all about.

K.   Two Definitions of Art

1. Defining the Exactions of Making:  Art is a thing ably joined together by the imposition of ideas on suitable materials toward clearly stated aims of form and function. The second definition follows from the first, to tell us what form and function want to do.

       2.  Defining the Purpose of the Making:  Visual Art is a language for engaging the participation
             – not of our sense of hearing, but of sight – for sharing, by an apt assembly of the visual parts
             of color, form, and line, the artist’s intention, with our open eyes and receptive minds, so that
             we shall be enriched and, in the end, fulfilled.

Comment:
         You might describe an artifact which you own and love that is beautiful and expressive - a work of art in itself . . .