The Likeness of a Beautiful Thing - 01

        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.                   (FIRST of eleven sections)                                                                                                                 

I     The Artifact and the Art Object

A.   Rules for Right Making in Utility and Art
        In past times distinctions were drawn between products of the Fine Arts and humble Objects of Utility, adding to the latter ever the inferior rank. Much thinking in this century turned this around, proclaiming the well-made artifact the equal of the work of art and, in all essential ways, indistinguishable from it.
        The difficulty may not be amenable to any final settlement. There is a common good desired of them both: We want our furnishings as well as our pictures to be beautiful. But their capabilities and purposes can also differ widely; and that needs to be accounted for before this search for understanding ends. Yet, for our start it will be helpful that the ground rules for creating a good product govern equally the object of utility and one existing solely for its beauty – the Applied as well as the Fine Arts.

B.   John Benson’s Course and the Twin Purposes of All Instruction
        Undergraduates at Rhode Island School of Design in the 1950s studied during one semester a subject called Philosophy of Design. The course was taught by a great man, John Howard Benson. It was beautifully organized, and ably introduced us to a domain of intellectual concern that few artists ever get to know. Also, it fulfilled better than most others the twin purposes of all instruction:     

1. It saved the student time, advancing our understanding far beyond what any of us could have reached on our own in whatever many years; and –
2. For me, it stimulated the widely-ranging labors of philosophic thought, now making possible this series of talks.

        I have in my possession only skeleton notes of this course, so that the fleshing out will be my work and its failings my responsibility. But my debt would be plain to any who have shared this excellent beginning, and deserves to be acknowledged.

C.   Ways of Delivering the Wrong Results
        When an otter lies upon its back and opens a mussel by breaking the casing with a stone, or a raptor rises to some height and drops its catch to shatter on the ground below, or again, an early hominid seized a rock to cleave with it the brain-case of his game, the deeds appear identical in their complexity of mental action. But they are most dissimilar in their cultural and, in the end, historic consequences. Man alone evolved to overcome, to an extent, the specific limits all other species failed to breach. These, however, remain the causes of inferior work at the hands of man, to the present day. They are:

1. Ignorance: Inadequate understanding of the problem to be solved in terms of the materials and the tools required, as well as of Technique – that is, the body of orderly procedures demanded by the job.
2. Lack of Good Will: If our purposes are feeble or we intend to cheat the buyer, the outcome must be flawed.
3. Lack of Inventive Sensibility: That is, the intelligent discernment of a promising conception, or road to choose – the failure to see beyond what our teachers have transmitted, in the sense of Leonardo’s dogma that “It is a wretched student who cannot surpass his master.”
4. Lack of Skill: A kinesthetic ignorance, not of the intellect, that is, but of the muscles through want of aptitude or training. Failure to govern our tools as instrumental extensions of the body, that is, of bodily dexterity and strength.

        The way we fail by Ignorance, Ill Will, Want of Imagination, and Bodily Ineptitude portrays man as a being who at his best can succeed by all their opposites. That is – by his gifts of Reason, Will, Forward-Looking Vision, and Dexterity. In consequence, man recognizes . . .

D.   The Worthwhile and Essential Callings of Man’s Life

1. Science, or Right Knowing: Assembled by the faculty of intellect, conscious realizations bound by actuality and truth, not subject to the will. I have some comments to contribute later about how knowledge must rely on will to constitute itself. But will is not involved in what is and what is not a truth.
2. Prudence, or Right Doing: choices made by the faculty of will. It presupposes and depends on knowledge, and we often know much better than we are behaving. We smoke, though we know it devours our lungs. Though we know fattening foods are harmful and will cause us to grow heavy, we eat them all the same. Right Doing calls upon the power of resolve to sustain an appropriately chosen path, that is, upon free will.
3. Art, or Right Making: It presupposes and depends upon Right Knowing as well as on the Right Resolve, but prospers by the Faculty of Intuition – what I have called Inventive Sensibility – which, forward-looking, takes us from the known to the unknown, and is thereby our means of progress.

        Of all the callings, the Arts are most clearly dependent upon skill, that is, the artist’s corporeal suitability for his work of making.

E.   The Causes of Things Made
        There are reasons, or causes, why Man-Made Things Exist

1. Final Cause: The beginning, as opposed to the final, form. The end for which a work is undertaken, the problem posted by the patron. The intended function of the object will therefore be a good desired by the user.
2. Material Cause: The substances from which a thing is made, and without which it would not exist. These are chosen always for their serviceable qualities toward the desired end.
3. Efficient Cause: The means by which materials are given their appropriate shape through one of the following:

•          The Material Means, that are the artist’s Tools
•          Kinesthetic Means, which are the artist’s Skills
•          Technical Means, which are Instrumental Actions or Techniques that are

                    the employment of the tools in their right relationship to the materials
                    and of the materials to each other.
                   Techniques are the union of the Material and Efficient Causes. Materials
                    properly chosen for their purpose are shaped according to what the right 
                    tools and materials can suitably be made, and want, to do for a desired  end.

         4.  Formal Cause: The solution of the problem and its final form are achieved in
               Stages. The Stages are reductions, that is, Abstractions derived from the
               problem posted by the patron. Stages constitute the successive images
               to which the materials must by shaped.
 
        [Other Causes than those cited as Antecedents of Results –from notes at end of essay:

1. First Cause – the self-created being and prime mover – God

1. Immanent Cause – originating or evolving within an entity (Spinoza)
2. Transient Cause – originating outside the entity affected by it (Spinoza)
3. Occasional Cause – a desire or resolve as remote cause (occasion) but not an immediate – such as the efficient – cause of an effect.]

                                           
F.   Stages as Instrumental Intermediate Forms 

1. Stages are thus Instrumental Intermediate Forms. Themselves deliberately simple, they clarify one step at a time the tasks to be performed, so that the greatest complications can be managed. They represent the orderly Division of the Work Path, and serve equally for the tasks of mass production and the creation of unique works in the fine arts.
2. Through dividing the Work Process into its appropriate sequential forms – each requiring the performance of but simple tasks – the artist is delivered from anxiety and put at rest in his own mind about the progress of the job.

•         Clarity of planning and simplicity of operations are the purpose of the Stages.

                  They represent a good desired by the artist rather than the patron.

•         Only to the degree that tasks have grown accustomed can the required

                  Stages be well known. But for the breaking of new ground, not only
                  knowledge, will, and skill, but also inventive sensibility, is brought to bear
                  to set the correct milestones in their places as the Work Path gradually
                  unfolds. It is here, when we must rely on our uncertain intuitions, that we
                  cannot altogether escape our own uneasiness of mind.

        3.  The last of the abstractions that we call a Stage is the Final Form and
               conclusion of the worker’s effort. It represents perfection as a thing complete
               and thoroughly constructed.

               Perfection is here not an attribute divine, but must be rightly understood as a
               property of man-made things within their range of possibilities, that is, within
               the impediments or limits of the job. When the last possible  duty is faithfully
               performed, perfection as achieved because we can do no more – the final
               chore and last detail.   
   

Comment:
Perhaps you can comment from work you have done in Arts, Crafts or other projects using Stages as Intermediate Forms . . . .