The Critical Path and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1963-1975 by Frye Northrop;O'Grady Jean;Kushner Eva.;

Author:Frye, Northrop;O'Grady, Jean;Kushner, Eva.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LIT000000
ISBN: 9780802096258
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2009-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

14

Design as a Creative Principle in the Arts

1966

From StS, 56–65. Originally published (without the notes, and with two minor variations) in The Hidden Harmony: Essays in Honor of Philip Wheelwright, ed. Oliver Johnson et al. (New York: Odyssey Press, 1966), 13–22. Translated into Chinese in 1997. Philip Wheelwright (1901–70) was a friend of Frye’s who taught philosophy at different American universities; Frye often cited his work on Heraclitus and the Presocratics. He had most memorably been the driver of the car involved in a crash in which Frye’s arm was broken in 1950 (see Ayre, Northrop Frye, 226). The Festschrift was prepared for his sixty-fifth birthday and presented at the University of California at Riverside in 1966. Apparently the essay was not written specifically for this purpose, but was based on a lecture Frye had given at the University of Rochester (see letter to Oliver J. Johnson, NFF, 1988, box 60, file 7). Since it has proved impossible to date this appearance or to locate an original text for comparison, the 1966 date has been retained.

There is a time-honoured distinction which divides the arts into a major and a minor group, the fine and the useful, but this distinction is rapidly losing all its fineness and most of its usefulness, and is now practically vestigial. It was never in any case a distinction among artists, only among the arts themselves. In reading Cellini’s autobiography we can see how the well-trained artist of that day was ready to switch from a commission in the “major” arts to one in the “minor” ones and back again, with no loss of status or feeling of incongruity. We think of Michelangelo as dwelling on the loftiest summits of the major arts, but Michelangelo too had his handyman assignments, such as designing the uniform of the Papal Guards, in which he acquitted himself indifferently but not incompetently. Similar conditions still prevail. In the early years of our marriage, when finances were a bit difficult, my wife assisted the family fortunes by getting a job painting magnolias on coffee trays. She met a sculptress at a party, and approached her with some trepidation, feeling that anyone who practised so majestic an art might take a dim view of her magnolia project. The sculptress, however, had been living on a private income cut off at the source as a result of the war, and she was making her living painting roses on babies’ chamber pots.

One of the primitive functions of art is the production of luxury goods for a ruling class: armour for the warrior, vestments for the priest, jewellery and regalia for the king. Eventually the same kind of social demand produces temples, cathedrals, castles, and palaces, with all their contained treasures. Such art is often characterized by great complexity and ingenious skill, a skill sometimes regarded with superstitious awe by contemporaries who do not possess it. One thinks of the legends of the mysterious smiths and forgers of weapons like Weyland and Hephaestus, of the

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