In The Religion of Art, Sangharakshita composes a definition of art and the purpose of beauty. He saw a correlation in spirit, between the way Buddhist practice and artistic practice are executed, in that both refine perceptions and are potentially trans-formative. What he ends up with has a 'Ruskinesque' ambiance too it, though thankfully not delivered in such Victorian self aggrandising terms. It is characteristically succinct:~
"Art is the organisation of sensuous impressions that express the artist's sensibility and communicate to his audience a sense of values that can transform their lives."
Lets start by examining 'the organisation of sensuous impressions.' As beings with sense faculties, we receive and process sense input, our worldly experience bombards us with them all the time. We have no control over the nature of that sense input, but have control only to a moderate degree over how we respond, whether we find it painful or pleasureful, ugly or beautiful to engage with. Appreciating 'artistic' or 'everyday beauty' is one of many impressions arising from sense input. Such impressions are a basic instinctual assessment, a knee jerk reaction to sense input ranging from attraction through to aversion. How sensitive and receptive we are to this, affects the depth of how negatively or positively 'impressed' we are by them. As the interpreter of sense input, we are daily engaging in composing a long running narrative drawn up by an instinctive and selectively aesthetic sensibility.
Sangharakshita uses language with clear precision, it is not just any old sensuous impression, but organised sensuous impressions. The one thing you can be certain about everyday sense experience is that it will be disorganised and random in how things strike you. Sangharakshita believes that art, with a capital A, requires someone to take the chaos of their sense input, organise it and present their sensuous impressions to us - an artist, with a capital A. Let's skip over Sangharakshita's use of the possessive pronoun 'his', and proceed on the basis that there is no need to specifically gender the artist when making a general definition of art. There is an artist whose aesthetic sensitivity, based on their own sense impressions, expresses those impressions through a sensory based medium, that in some way stimulates other people's sights, sounds, taste, touch or consciousness.
Though 'an organiser of sensuous impressions' is adequate in describing what an artist does, it also is what all human beings do constantly. It doesn't exclude anything we find in our daily experience either. We are literally surrounded, if not engulfed, by other individuals organised sensuous impressions, by our neighbour's garden, by the design of knives and forks, by advertising, cars, houses, interior decor, roads, lights, police sirens. Even aspects of nature have been re-organised, into fields, forest plantations and canals, into productive and non-productive, urban and countryside, into idealised, romantic and symbolical landscapes. These maintain an impression of being part of natural beauty, even though they're a reconstituted version of it. The motivation for such 'reconstitution' is often for practical, social or economic reasons. The outcome has, nevertheless, a refined and refining aesthetic quality in-spite of that not being its primary intention. We cannot avoid being affected aesthetically by everything that we make or come into contact with. How much we are aware of that is a separate concern.
One cultural legacy of the Renaissance that lingers on, is that we still give creative prominence to an artist, a lone visionary genius. Aesthetic sensitivities, to appreciate and create beauty have become limited to a gifted elite. The artistic emphasis is placed on the transcendent qualities of great beauty, that light a lofty beacon for the mass of people stuck in lives of ugly squalor, suffering and despair., well, that's how the story goes. The ability to experience 'everyday beauty', can appear to offer no such relief from suffering or a transcendent option. It is stuck right there in the muck of life, however illimitable it maybe for everyone to access. 'Everyday beauty' includes but doesn't depend upon the output of a single artist as sole creative instigator. All artists organise their sensuous impressions within a context, as part of a culture, a loosely interdependent, collective supporting framework. The Renaissance view tends to downplay or ignore the broader role that society plays in supporting the flourishing of artful beauty.
Prior to that, in the early medieval period, few artisans signed their name to anything. If we look for those involved in constructing a cathedral, we tend to refer to them by the buildings they made as The Master of so an so, because distinct stylistic signatures show an individual's talent and skill can be identified. In that period, a cathedral was viewed as a collective effort, and whilst there was someone whom we would now call an architect, they were just one of a broad team of artisans involved. Any individual's visionary skills and effort flowed into the collective creative melting pot. Whether they thought of what they were doing as art or craft, is unlikely to have been considered. Artisans had a low position in society, and as such no evaluation of their skills into a creative hierarchy was made. The power of the feudal society they lived within was greater than any individuals skills or need for recognition
Sangharakshita's intention in writing his definition was to place artistic endeavour within an overarching spiritual intent. When he says an artist's work should communicate.'a sense of values that can transform our lives' he wasn't meaning with a desire to redecorate your front room or bake a superlative carrot cake. If we return again to our medieval cathedral workers. They did have a belief in a greater value, beyond the practical task of building a cathedral and earning themselves a living. They were constructing a cathedral, not just to benefit themselves but for the benefit of everyone in their community. They held a belief, in this case a Christian one of souls needing to be saved, and that a cathedral, once constructed, could contribute towards transforming the meaning and purpose of everyone's lives.
Likewise, the purpose of Buddhist practice is not just to enlighten your individual consciousness, but to ultimately enlighten everyone's. Sangharakshita believes this process of altruistic transformation is given further impetuous by running an artistic process in parallel with it. Both are examples, for him, of an individual striving for the higher evolving of all human consciousness.
Artists puts something of themselves into their work, what they value fuels their perceptions, purpose and process. For those looking at their art, its unclear how, if at all, those values might become communicable through the finished piece? In my experience, I don't believe there to be such a tight correlation between personal values, talent and the spiritually trans-formative impact of the art produced. Can any artwork be inherently spiritually trans-formative simply by virtue of who made it? The aesthetic refinement, spirituality or skill of the artist may not actually be that important. The perceptions and receptivity of the individual engaging with the artwork, could be a decisive and more crucial element. Otherwise any piece of art would have exactly the same effect on everyone who looked at, heard or felt it, which generally they do not.
It's conceivable that mutual aesthetic communing is going on. Yet, for the values and aims of the artist to be communicable, would require the viewer of their art to be aligned and resonate with them. A work of art, or 'everyday beauty', is like a spiritual teaching that has no potency until someone who is receptive enough to it, encounters it, allowing moments of insight to burst within them. Receptivity seems to be key. I doubt whether a work of art, or 'everyday beauty', can inherently possess or actively trigger such a response in others The power to stimulate insight, appears to be primarily dependent upon specific conditions; the individuals receptivity, the cultural background that they approach it from.
What has previously caused me to question Sangharakshita's definition, is that I find it hard to see artists who exemplify what he's describing. Even if there were artists whose were sensitive to the sublime, that doesn't necessarily mean their art will have that effect upon others. I can certainly remember experiencing momentary explosions of bliss whilst listening to a piece of music, or viewing a painting. But like peak meditation experiences these arise from suddenly finding oneself alive in the present moment, there is an element of surprise to them, and they tend not to be consciously repeatable afterwards. They are not in the possession of the artwork, niether are we possessed by the artwork. You could say we read into and receive from an artwork and everyday life, precisely what we want from them.
Two of my peak experiences were both when looking at paintings by Van Gogh. The paintings were in themselves muted and low key for Van Gogh, one of a patch of grass, and one of forest undergrowth. There is nothing particularly exceptional or special about either painting, but the moment my gazed rested on them I had this huge emotional response, like a lift rapidly and ecstatically ascending to the top floor. What I brought to this experience was an enduring love for Van Gogh's work, his passion, expressiveness, his strength and use of colour, and an identification with the self evident drama and tragedy of his life. All of these may have primed me emotionally, to be ready to receive moments of bliss-filled recognition.
When it comes to an elevated sense of beauty versus an everyday sense of beauty, I can't help but feel such a dichotomy is an unnecessary one. One can hold an opinion about aesthetics or spiritual efficacy, but it will never be based on objective facts, only subjective responses given a rational veneer. I myself have only an instinctual sense that our perceptions of everyday objects and events can be transformed, that the elevated exists muddled up and entangled within the mundane. I cannot know any of this with objective certainty. So my belief, whilst awaiting more definitive proof or refutation, has to be held lightly and provisionally.
Everything begins, travels through and ends back in everyday experience. Cultivating receptivity and reciprocity with 'everyday beauty' is similar to developing an appreciation for a 'high art' sense of beauty. To fully appreciate everyday life takes a lot of awareness, and that starts as a conscious practice. To sense what the value of it might be, to cultivate receptivity to it, to relax the rigidity of our likes and dislikes. There is pain there, as much as pleasure, and how you approach them both is key, but this will not in itself make then go away. Nonetheless, a way to relax and ease those pain-filled / pleasureful ties needs to be found, because as Dogen put it they 'bind ones self without a rope.'. Transformation, if it happens anywhere, will arise out of our everyday vicissitudes, from our sense impressions of it.
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