Laurus Nobilis: Chapters on Art and LifeLee, Vernon
Philosophy
Laurus Nobilis: Chapters on Art and Life
Lee, Vernon
Aesthetics
Such, to my thinking, is the aesthetic instinct. And I call _Art_
whatever kind of process, intellectual and technical, creates,
incidentally or purposely, visible or audible forms, and creates them
under the regulation of this aesthetic instinct. Art, therefore, is art
whenever any object or any action, or any arrangement, besides being
such as to serve a practical purpose or express an emotion or transfer
a thought, is such also as to afford the _sui generis_ satisfaction
which we denote by the adjective: beautiful.
But, asks the reader, if every human activity resulting in visible or
audible form is to be considered, at least potentially, as art; what
becomes of _art_ as distinguished from _craft_, or rather what is the
difference between what we all mean by art and what we all mean by
_craft_?
To this objection, perfectly justified by the facts of our own day, I
would answer quite simply: There is no necessary or essential
distinction between what we call _art_ and what we call _craft_. It is
a pure accident, and in all probability a temporary one, which has
momentarily separated the two in the last hundred years. Throughout
the previous part of the world's history art and craft have been one
and the same, at the utmost distinguishable only from a different
point of view: _craft_ from the practical side, _art_ from the
contemplative. Every trade concerned with visible or audible objects
or movements has also been an art; and every one of those great
creative activities, for which, in their present isolation, we now
reserve the name of _art_, has also been a craft; has been connected
and replenished with life by the making of things which have a use, or
by the doing of deeds which have a meaning.
IV.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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