Category: Utility

The Likeness of a Beautiful Thing - 02

4/1/2016

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

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.
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.

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

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 . . .

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The Likeness of a Beautiful Thing - 01

3/25/2016

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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:

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 –
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:

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.
Lack of Good Will: If our purposes are feeble or we intend to cheat the buyer, the outcome must be flawed.
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.”
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

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.
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.
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

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.
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.
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:

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

Immanent Cause – originating or evolving within an entity (Spinoza)
Transient Cause – originating outside the entity affected by it (Spinoza)
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

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.
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 . . . .

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Johannes Writes

The Likeness of a Beautiful Thing - 02

The Likeness of a Beautiful Thing - 01

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