The Essential Ananda K. Coomaraswamy by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

Author:Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0-941532-46-1
Publisher: World Wisdom

9

Is Art a Superstition, or a Way of Life?

By a superstition we mean something that “stands over” from a former time, and which we no longer understand and no longer have any use for. By a way of life, we mean a habit conducive to man’s good, and in particular to the attainment of man’s last and present end of happiness.

It seems to be a matter of general agreement at the present day that “Art” is a part of the higher things of life, to be enjoyed in hours of leisure earned by other hours of inartistic “Work.” We find accordingly as one of the most obvious characteristics of our culture a class division of artists from workmen, of those for example who paint on canvas from those who paint the walls of houses, and of those who handle the pen from those who handle the hammer. We are certainly not denying here that there is a distinction of the contemplative from the active life, nor of free from servile operation: but mean to say that in our civilization we have in the first place made an absolute divorce of the contemplative from the active life, and in the second place substituted for the contemplative life an aesthetic life,—or as the term implies, a life of pleasure. We shall return to this point. In any case we have come to think of art and work as incompatible, or at least independent, categories and have for the first time in history created an industry without art.

Individualists and humanists as we are, we attach an inordinate value to personal opinion and personal experience, and feel an insatiable interest in the personal experiences of others; the work of art has come to be for us a sort of autobiography of the artist. Art having been abstracted from the general activity of making things for human use, material or spiritual, has come to mean for us the projection in a visible form of the feelings or reactions of the peculiarly-endowed personality of the artist, and especially of those most peculiarly-endowed personalities which we think of as “inspired” or describe in terms of genius. Because the artistic genius is mysterious we, who accept the humbler status of the workman, have been only too willing to call the artist a “prophet,” and in return for his “vision” to allow him many privileges that a common man might hesitate to exercise. Above all we congratulate ourselves that the artist has been “emancipated” from what was once his position as the servant of church or state, believing that his mysterious imagination can operate best at random; if an artist like Blake still respects a traditional iconography we say that he is an artist in spite of it, and if as in Russia or Germany the state presumes to conscript the artist, it is even more the principle involved than the nature of the state itself that disturbs us. If we ourselves exercise a censorship necessitated by the moral inconvenience of certain types of art, we feel it needful at least to make apologies.

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