The artist as Critical Thinker

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

The artist as Critical Thinker

The Critical Thinker as artist

First, for this essay, I wish to define the artist as a creator of the concrete forms that give credibility to the abstract ideas of a society or culture. Since we are creatures driven by artificial symbols we need more artists capable of the concretization of the symbols we live by.

In “Art and Artist”, when speaking about primitive humans, Otto Rank says–“The urge for abstraction, which owed its origin to a belief in immortality and created the notion of the soul, created also the art which served the same ends, but led beyond the purely abstract to the objectivizing and concretizing of the prevailing idea of the soul.”

The creative personality makes use of the art-ideology of her culture in a critical manner. He abides in it, but constantly struggles against it in a critical thinking manner. S/he does not merely “trust but verify”; he analysis and forms a concrete expression that is intended to present a critical evaluation of the ideologies of the epoch. However, no matter how strong the personality of the artist may be, s/he is deeply embedded within the ideologies of society and thus greatly affected by the same.

In a chapter titled “The Artist’s Fight with Art” Rank focuses upon the dual role the artist often must play. Naturalistic art, which grows out of wo/man’s sense of superiority, represents man’s imitative command of his world; “on the contrary, in abstract art, which is born of a sense of dependence, he appears as self-creative.”

Otto rank has, as some conclude, arrived at “this knowledge of the artist’s soul and of the creative process…Because he has seen this process as a phase in that larger creative activity by which man, being man, has built up the totality of civilization. Thus, specifically, he has been able to interpret the development of creature to self-conscious creator in the course of the ages and, above all, the process whereby art gradually becomes differentiated from religion and tends finally to take religion’s place…he solves the old riddle of “imitation” in art, proving that the creative activity is always a free and by intention a transcendent one, of which “imitation” is but a cultural mood and method.”

Rank tells me that the artist is a creator who gives concrete form to abstract ideas. This artist may be an Einstein, Picasso, architect, engineer, or even you. Do you ‘buy’ that as a possibility?

2

Good OP as usual, Chuck.
It’s difficult for me to think in Rank’s terms of artists doing concretization. I think artists of the caliber you mention are those who stretch the envelope, who see beyond the box. Concrete is our given. Abstract is our assumptions, including our potential. An artist works from concrete structure to move beyond that structure’s supposed limitations. Novel ideas do gell and become archival relics, sooner or later. Yet each is an advancement. What is concrete, if it fails to produce what is dynamic, is just another dead end.

3

Ierrellus

The urge for abstraction originated in the sense of immortality within primitive wo/man. The conjunction of abstraction with immortality in turn developed in the concept of ‘soul’. This chain of events subsequently created religion; art then led beyond abstraction to the objectivizing and concretizing of the prevailing idea of the soul.

Anything produced objectively in a period by the current idea of the soul was considered to be beautiful. The aesthetic history of the concept of beauty is likely to be nothing more than changing contemporary conception of the soul that resulted from the ever increasing knowledge.

Artistic creation, “art-will” must be comprehended as an expression of both a personal will of the artist and also as an expression of the collective ideologies, i.e. the religious and philosophical ideologies, effecting the artist. “The artist as a definite creative individual uses the art form that he finds in order to express something personal”. We might well ask ‘what are the motives and processes that trigger the art-will in order to create an art-achievement’?

To comprehend art and the artist we must focus upon the art-will of the artist and we must also consider the religious and philosophical tendencies of the times; we must consider the collective ideologies of the time. The artist must use what is at hand to express something personal and creative that is somehow connected with the collective nature of the times. The individual artist creates her art while simultaneously using the art in vogue at the time.

The belief in immortality seems to express it self both in art and in social institutions like religion in a parallel manner. The essence of the art-will seems to be to eternalize the object of the art-accomplishment. To give an object of art immortality in an abstract form is to bring it to its absolute value. There is in art an “instinctive urge to abstraction”; religion being the best example of that urge. The primitive religious belief in souls is abstract in conception and has been called by more advanced religions wherein gods have already taken a concrete form

The idea of soul as it progresses through history is important consideration here. Original primitive art is an attempt to make concrete what is abstract. The soul, an abstraction, is represented in a concrete manner. It is evident that art and religion are conjoined from primitive times to the present.

Religious art is a display of the ever changing concept of what is beautiful. The concept of the beautiful that inspires the art of a period is derived not from the abstract concept of soul but from the concretization of that concept.

Religious art concretes the abstract idea of soul and thereby makes the soul convincing; it creates something tangible and lasting of a concept as it moves down from generation to generation by a mystical verbal tradition that became fixed only later.

“This close association, in fact fundamental identity, of art and religion, each of which strives in its own way to make the absolute eternal and the eternal absolute, can be already seen at the most primitive stages of religious development, where there are as yet neither representations if gods nor copies of nature.”

Quotes and ideas from “Art and Artist” by Otto Rank

4

Hi guys,

If I recall correctly, intellectual processes are generally described as integration and differentiation. To me abstraction has to do with these intellectual processes.

If we are looking at the motivation for abstraction then, for me, it is simple intellectual curiosity and not a belief in immortality.

Is there any data to support Rank’s claim?

5

Ed3

I do not know and he has been dead for some time now.