How to Think About the Great Ideas by Mortimer J. Adler

Author:Mortimer J. Adler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Court
Published: 2010-06-07T16:00:00+00:00

BAD ART IS STILL ART

Lloyd Luckman: Well, Dr. Adler, right there—

Mortimer Adler: Yes, Lloyd?

Lloyd Luckman: You’ve been using this phrase “good art” and “bad art” quite a number of times. And we’ve received some questions here, one that I would like to bring up right now on good and bad art. This one is from Mr. John Hayes of San Francisco. And he suggests that in all fields of art, useful as well as fine, we ought to reserve the term “art” only for the good works and not to apply it to these poor or mediocre works. Now, have you any comment on Mr. Hayes’s proposition?

Mortimer Adler: Yes, Lloyd. Mr. Hayes, I do have a comment. I have, in fact, three comments on your proposition.

First, I don’t agree with what you say though I think I understand why you say it. The term “art” is sometimes used as a term of praise and sometimes as a descriptive term. It is used as a term of praise when someone does a piece of work and we say, “Oh, that’s really art,” meaning it is a good piece of work. Well, we use the word “art” to say it is a good piece of work. But I think the word “art” should be used as a descriptive term and should be applied to good art and bad art, the best and the worst works of art.

And when it is so applied, when we apply the word “art” descriptively to good and bad, we face, of course, the problem that is left, the question, What is the distinction between good art and bad art? In fact, that is two problems, not one. There is an esthetic problem there, the problem of the good and the bad in works of art in terms of beauty and ugliness. And this leads to all the questions of appreciation, standards of criticism, and so forth. And then there is the moral or political question of good and bad in a work of art conceived as the work being beneficial or injurious. And this leads to questions of moral censorship and political regulations of works of art.

I’m going to take the second question first. The first question is about beauty, and that is dealt with in our program on the Great Idea of Beauty. But let me turn at once to the question of good and bad in works of art in terms of whether the work of art is beneficial or injurious, the morally or politically good and bad aspect of the fine arts--I’m talking only about the fine arts.

What is its problem? Here again, we have another basic tension, this time between two things, the artist on the one hand and the moralist or the statesman on the other. And this tension is sometimes expressed in terms of “art for art’s sake,” as the artist would have it, or “art for man’s sake,” as the moralist and the statesman would have it.

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