Meaning Something

A while back, Kevin Holtsberry (Collected Miscellany) solticited a response to these questions posed by Betty Smartt Carter:

[I]sn't storytelling all about finding relationships between things? Isn't that why we write and read novels - to prove to ourselves and each other that the world means something?

Carter prefaces these questions by saying of one of the authors she is reviewing that "I like her dry style and her lack of sentiment. She seems less predictably optimistic, less manipulative with our emotions, and therefore more honest than many writers."

Carter actually seems to be suggesting that she found this writer's novel to be more artful than the second one she's reviewing, which "portrays life not as we experience it, but as it looks beyond our experience, in a place where events and people do tie together in mysterious and even sacred ways," but preferred the second because "That transcendent viewpoint trumps even style. . . ."

In a way, Carter performs a useful service by so forthrightly admitting that she would rather have a "transcendent vision" than art--even art that is ultimately more "honest" in the vision it presents--in the novels she reads. No doubt many readers, including readers less disposed to using novels for religious uplift than Carter seems to be, also prefer novels with something to "say," that reassure us that the world does indeed "mean something" and help us find "relationships between things," to those that manifest style or are "less manipulative with our emotions." These are readers who regard fiction as (potentially at least) more than entertainment but who find this something "extra" in a perceived quality of profundity or wisdom.

I'm not going to say that such readers are wrong to value fiction in this way. I object only when it is asserted that these qualities are synonymous with "art," that it is the job of art and literature "to prove to ourselves and each other that the world means something." A work of art can demonstrate to us that we are capable of creating a kind of meaning through the aesthetic order invented by the artist (although this is certainly not the only way of demonstrating this capability--art is not the sole method of "making meaning" available to us), but more often than not this sort of meaning is perceptible to us only because the "world" itself so obviously lacks it, does not "mean something" prior to our efforts to compel it into becoming meaningful. If readers find that a particular novel or other work of art communicates "meaning" of one kind or another, perhaps even profound meaning that transforms the reader's understanding of the world, all well and good. I would simply suggest that as a work of art it has been able to do this precisely because it has "style," avoids sentimentality and predictability, and doesn't manipulate "our emotions" in shabby and shallow ways.

In his own response to Carter's questions, Kevin contends that art "teaches us something about what it means to be human." Perhaps it does, but this can't be art's most immediate goal or we'll have nothing but moralizing and didactic art. Furthermore, so many of our activities (interacting with family and friends, watching the coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina) teach us "something about what it means to be human" that this can't be what truly distinguishes the experience of creating and appreciating art from other ways of spending our time. Kevin makes a distinction between "Art" and "art":

. . .Art (with a capital A) can be distinguished from mere craft by rising above itself and its literal structure; by becoming more than the sum of its parts it becomes more than mere "thing." Craft, or art with a lower case "a," can be beautiful, interesting, and require a great deal of skill but it is just what it is (an illustration, a piece of furniture, a photograph, etc.). "Art" on the other hand rises above this level and gets at something deeper.

I understand the point Kevin is making, but, again, I don't think what he is after can be devised through conscious intent, by someone seeking to be an "Artist" rather than an "artist." The "something deeper" is produced by the reader or viewer rather than the writer or artist. The artist sticks to craft and hopes he/she can extend it in such a way that what is created in a sense might "transcend" its status as a well-fashioned "thing." But first of all that is its status, and in my opinion to lose sight of that is to overlook what makes art worthy of our attention to begin with.

Comments

[Kevin Holtsberry]

I don't think we disagree that much. There is a certain amount of mystery as to how craft becomes Art. And I agree it happens with the viewer. One can't ignore one's craft in order to try and create Art. And those who try to force the issue often fail at both craft and art. But great art does, in the end, somehow rise above mere craft. I think it is about a tension between "big ideas" and skilled craft. Maybe Art is created in the sweet spot between those two. I am just an amateur philosopher trying to outline my ideas.

[Joseph]

"Craft, or art with a lower case "a," can be beautiful, interesting, and require a great deal of skill but it is just what it is."

I find this statement perplexing, especially since much visual Art (with a capital-A in Kevin Holtsberry's distinction) in the 20th century was concerned precisely with its own self-evidence, its thingness, its being "just what it is." This was the promise of much abstraction; the conceit reached its apex with minimalism (Donald Judd, Barnett Newman, Agnes Martin, et al).