Art and creative activity

Philosophia Vol. I Nos. 3-4 Pp. 179-190 July 197l

A R T A N D C R E A T I V E A C T I V I T Y

PHILLIP MONTAGUE

In this paper I will attempt to spell out in some detail a view which seems to me implicit in the writings of many aestheticians, but which is seldom explicated. The view in question consists in the claim that an intimate connection exists between the concept of art and the concept of creative activity. In the course of my discussion I hope to elucidate some expressions which, though part of the standard lexicon of aestheticians, somehow seem to remain a source of confusion in the philosophy of art.

I It is not at all uncommon for philosophers and critics of

art to suggest that something extraordinary happens to ordinary physical objects when they are regarded appropriately-- that these objects are "aestheticised," becoming something new and different. 1 Talk of "aesthetic objects," the "aesthetic attitude," and the "aesthetic mode of perception" is common in such contexts. The idea seems, that when one takes the aesthetic attitude toward a physical object, an aesthetic object somehow comes into being.

Remarks like these might be interpreted as attempting to mark a difference in status between objects which are regarded "aesthetically" and those which are not. But even a cursory glance at the literature reveals a different emphasis on the part of many writers. Aesthetic objects are not, in general, characterized as physical objects regarded in a certain way; rather, aesthetic objects are contrasted to physical objects. It is as if there are two classes of objects, perhaps containing members of the same logical type, but definitely disjoint.

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This is not the place to engage in a detailed analysis of the various attempts aestheticians have made to distinguish aesthetic objects from physical objects. 2 Let me simply state that such attempts seem to me misguided. 3 If the expression "aesthetic object" has any value at all, it lies not in the way it can be used to distinguish broad classes of objects, but rather in the way it can be used to distinguish ways of regarding physical objects. What I am suggesting is that referring to an object as an aesthetic object is simply a way of stating that someone is taking an aesthetic attitude toward it or is perceiving it in the aesthetic mode. 4 Thus, any object, even an ordinary physical object, can be an aesthetic object if it can be regarded aesthetically.

All this does not, of course, affect the notion that an object is an aesthetic object in virtue of the way someone is regarding it./Xtnd if one is not careful to distinguish aesthetic objects from art objects, he may assume that whether something is art is also a subjective matter, entirely dependent upon what attitudes are taken toward it or how it is perceived.

That this kind of move must be resisted seems to me evident from the fact that among those things which at least on the face of it can be regarded aesthetically are objects which are certainly not art. The most obvious examples are so-called "natural objects"--e.g, waterfalls, trees, clouds, etc. It is necessary, therefore, to explain the nature of art in terms of a subjective state which cannot result from or be "directed towards" natural objects--or to introduce an element of objectivity into the concept of art. Of these two alternatives, the latter seems clearly to be the more plausible, and to allow for the most obvious way to exclude natural objects from the realm of art. All we need do is require that art be produced by human activity. If we now assume that this re- quirement is all that is necessary beyond a condition referring to an appropriate attitude or mode of perception or other subjective state to distinguish art from non-art, then we can state that an art object is a humanly produced object which someone is regarding appropriately.

Though someone might object to this analysis on the grounds that non-humans can produce art, our major concern here will

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be with the sufficiency of the condition that humanly produced objects, appropriately regarded, count as art, rather than with its necessity. It seems to me that this condition is vulnerable to some fairly obvious counterexamples--that neither objects which result accidentally from human activity, nor certain purposefully produced objects (e.g. ordinary thumb tacks, balls of twine, plain white scratch pads) are art objects, even if such objects are regarded appropriately. Of course if these objects cannot be regarded appropriately, then, according to the analysis we are considering, they are not art; but specifying the nature of this regard to exclude them--and doing so in a plausible, non-question begging way--seems to me an impossible task. That is, if we accept the view under consideration that an art object is any humanly produced object which someone is regarding appropriately, then we must recognize every object resulting from human activity as at least potentially an art object.

Looking at the alleged counterexamples to this view cited above, it might appear that my objection to it arises at least partially from its inclusion in the realm of art things normally valued only for their usefulness. This assumption is understand- able given the common practice among aestheticians of conceptu- ally differentiating art from what is useful. But this contrast can be characterized with reference to attitudes adopted towards objects: the fact that objects of a certain kind are ordinarily viewed as merely useful would not by itself prevent them from being regarded differently on occasion. Since it is being claimed here that, e.g., thumb tacks, balls of twine, and plain white scratch pads are not in general art no matter how such objects are viewed, this claim must rest on something other than the ordinary function of these objects. The source of their status as non-art lies not in how they are normally used, but in how they are normally produced. Art results not simply from human activity, but from human activity of a certain sort.

One condition which activity must satisfy to count as "artistic" activity is suggested by the claim made above that art cannot be produced accidentally. The rub, of course, is that the "same" activity, construed as a bare sequence of events, can be both acci-

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dental and intentional, depending on how it is described. One might, for example, intentionally throw a ball and accidentally sprain his arm: both "He threw the ball" and "He sprained his arm" would serve as answers to the question "What did he do ?" Thus, little light is shed on the nature of artistic activity by charac- terizing it simply as intentional; some specification of the artist's intentions ,~n virtue of which his activity is "artistic" is also required. 5

An obvious first attempt in this direction would consist in describing artistic activity as activity engaged in with the intention of producing an art object. But then we cannot use this concept of artistic activity to define what it is to be art under pain of circularity. A more promising candidate for the intention in question might be that of producing an object which will serve as an aesthetic object.

Requiring art to be produced with a certain intention would answer some questions arising from the presence of certain objects in art galleries. For example, Rauschenberg's "Erased De Kooning by Robert Rauschenberg" (which is just what its title describes) has received a degree of attention which certainly would not be afforded an erased De Kooning by my six year old daughter. Since two such sketches, erased with equal vigor, would no doubt be perceptually indistinguishable, the only apparent way to justify treating them differently would be by referring to the assumedly differing intentions of those doing the erasing.

No matter how helpful references to the artist's intention might be in certain respects, however, we must go beyond such references to settle the question what it is to be art. For just as an object is not determined to be art simply in virtue of how it is regarded, it is not so determined in virtue of this regard and the intention with which it was produced. One might wind a length of twine on a cardboard cylinder with the most artistic of intentions and still fail to produce an art object no matter what worth of attention the result is given.

Attempting to define "ar t" in terms of the subjective states of arbitrarily selected individuals and specific intentions of the artist is, I will argue, fundamentally mistaken. References to the

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attitudes and perceptions of an audience appear relevant to the concept of art primarily because the nature of aesthetic objects is misunderstood, causing the distinction between these and art objects to be badly blurred. Once aesthetic objects are recognized for what they are, the nature of art objects comes into much clearer focus, and the claim that whether an object is art depends on how it happens to be viewed loses much of its plausibility. The relevance of the artist's intentions to the question whether his work is art is not quite so clear cut: they are relevant, but not in the simple, straightforward way considered above.

II If asked what sort of activity results in the production of

art works, most people who answered at all would probably reply "creative activity." For, after all, even to speak of "producing" art sounds like an inept way to speak of its creation; and what more is an artist than a person gifted with creativity? The connection between art and creativity is in fact so obvious, and the latter notion has itself become so badly diluted, that there might seem little hope for elucidating the concept of art in terms of the concept of creativity. But, as will hopefully be revealed below, even so slight a shift in focus is of some help in our attempt to understand the nature of art.

Creativity in the arts has come to be associated primarily with the production of something original. The meaning of "original" in this context is, however, difficult to pin down pre- cisely. All objects must (trivially) be similar in certain respects to other objects; and many works which would count as creatively original bear strong resemblances to earlier works. It is unlikely, for example, that Cezanne was the first man to render Mont Saint-Victoire, and his paintings of the mountain no doubt re- semble in certain respects previous paintings. Yet this fact would not by itself lead us to deny that Cezanne's works are creatively original, since they do differ from others in an interesting and significant way. Indeed, we might want to define creatively original objects as those which differ interestingly and significantly from all other objects. 6

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But this definition is unsatisfactory on at least two counts. First of all, it makes no provision for the fact that a work might be creatively original even if perceptually indistinguishable from some other object--if the former was produced by someone unaware of the latter. This kind of case can, however, be accounted for rather easily, i.e. by amending our tentative definition so that it requires a creatively original work to differ interestingly and significantly only from other objects with which the producer of the former is familiar. A difficulty with the definition not so easily answerable is that it is woefully uninformative. The phrase "differ interestingly and significantly" in the definition simply serves as a stand-in for "differ creatively"; and thus our investigation of creativity has come full circle.

This kind of impasse is inevitable, I think, as long as creative activity is explained in terms of what is produced and how it compares with other objects, rather than on how it is produced. Our tentative definition of creative originality is itself suggestive regarding this point. That definition does not prevent creatively original works from being produced accidentally (under any description); yet without certain requirements regarding inten- tionality there seems little point in including in the definition any reference to works of which the artist is aware. If someone can produce a creatively original work while intending only to empty the garbage, would there be any greater need for his work to differ from objects with which he is familiar than there is for his work to differ from objects the existence of which he is totally unaware? Clearly not. But then we must either deny that an artist's knowledge of other works has any bearing on the creative originality of his own--which is implausible--or recognize that something besides a certain ignorance--something bound up with inten- tionality--is required of an artist for his works to be creatively original. This "something else" consists, I will claim, in exercising what will be referred to here as "aesthetic control over a medium."7

Lack of aesthetic control is more easily characterized than its presence. It is experienced by those of little artistic ability as an exasperating intractability of some medium, or as a failure in communication between their heads and their hands. The me-

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dium seems to call the turn, with the bewildered and somewhat uncomfortable artist simply following along. Even when self- confidence abounds--where the medium is attacked with vigor and determination--the uncreative person cannot help but recognize that what he does at any point is largely independent of what he has already done and what he may do next, and results primarily from whim.

This is not to suggest that creative activity requires some sort of master plan or blueprint which dictates each step in the shaping of a work. Experimentation, trial-and-error, laborious re- working and polishing are clearly part-and-parcel of the creative process. But any uncertainties which might plague the creative artist at any point are resolved in terms of his assessment of what is already before him in the light of his concept of what is aesthetically worthwhile. This is to exercise aesthetic control over a medium, and is what constitutes the essence of creative activity. Creative activity must thus be identified by its causes and not (as on the view considered earlier) by its effects. It is in the kinds of causes involved that the complex role ofintentionality in creative activity is revealed: although there need be no particular over- riding intention (such as that of producing art) involved, the entire process of creating manifests the artist's intentional manipu- lation of his medium in accord with his aesthetic concepts.

Creative activity, I have claimed, consists essentially in exercising aesthetic control over a medium, and is generated by the artist's concept of what is aesthetically worthwhile. But so loose a characterization of the causes of such activity countenances as creative much activity which should not be treated as such. Consider, for example, the following kind of case: an individual writes a poem with the intention of creating a mood of great sadness; his writing is governed all the way along by his aesthetic beliefs, but the completed poem can by no stretch of the imagina- tion be construed as expressing sadness. On any plausible interpre- tation of aesthetic control over a medium such control would evidently not be possessed by our hypothetical poet; yet this conclusion cannot be drawn from our earlier remarks.

The significance of this example is to suggest that a creative

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artist must succeed in carrying out certain of the intentions with which he might undertake production of a work. Although one's creativity cannot be impugned if, for example, he intends but fails to become rich (or to please his wife, or to become immortal) by producing some work, something is clearly amiss if, as in the above example, he wishes his work to be expressive of great sadness bu t fails in this completely. The difference between the two kinds of case is this: in the latter the intention is for the completed work to exhibit some aesthetic property, while in the former the intention is not so directed. Whether a clearcut distinction exists between aesthetic and non-aesthetic properties need not concern us here; it is sufficient for our purposes simply to note the relevance of success or failure in carrying out certain of his intentions to the question whether an artist's activity is creative.

A kind of case which has deeper and more pervasive impli- cations for our discussion concerns the individual who copies exactly some work, and whose act of rendering the copy results from his beliefs about the aesthetic worth of the original. Copying is clearly not creating; yet our copier's activity is caused in part by his concept of what is aesthetically worthwhile, and thus seems to conform to the account of creative activity presented above.

The vulnerability of this account to apparent counterexamples of the sort just cited clearly arises from the looseness with which we have spoken of "the concept of aesthetic worth." Let us now attempt a more satisfactory treatment of this notion.

One's concept of aesthetic worth is acquired in the context of perceiving objects which, in appropriate circumstances, he hears judged nice, or fine, or pretty, or lovely, or graceful, or beautiful, or beautifully balanced, or striking, or ugly, or dull, or garish, etc., because their colors nicely complement each other, or their surfaces intersect in interesting ways, or they lack disci- pline, or they are cluttered, etc. The reasons given in support of the initial judgments are rarely very elaborate and are themselves frequently in need of support and explanation; yet they do serve as the primary means of acquiring the aesthetic concepts the applications of which they are meant to support. And in the process of acquiring aesthetic concepts in this way, one is absorbing what

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we might call "aesthetic principles"--principles which, though seldom articulated to any great extent, function nevertheless as dispositions to judge objects in certain ways when they are seen to possess appropriate properties. It is in terms of this complex of principles, determinate of one's concept of aesthetic worth, that the nature of creative activity must be defined.

Someone who copies a work because he deems the original aesthetically worthwhile, might be influenced so to consider it by his aesthetic principles. But these principles need have no further causal function in executing the copy. In cases of creative activity, however, these principles directly and continuously in- fluence the shape of the work; indeed, such activity consists largely in applying such principles to a medium. When production of a work is undertaken in the absence of any specific "aesthetic intention" of the sort described earlier, creating the work consists entirely in the application of the artist's aesthetic principles. Thus, as was claimed above, the essence of creative activity lies in its causes, not its effects. Any necessary connections between originality and creative activity is bound up with these causes rather than with similarities and differences among objects.

III The preceding section began by suggesting that we look to

the concept of creative activity for aid in understanding the nature of art. But if the account of creativity just given is even roughly correct, the connection between art and creative activity is in need of careful scrutiny. Do we want to say, for example, that for an object to be art it must be manujactured by someone acting creatively? Or do we want to allow for a less direct relationship between creative artist and art object ? In weighing these alternatives we must consider facts like the following: the manufacture of a building is rarely accomplished by its architect; sculptors frequently send plaster molds to foundries for casting; lithographers commonly leave the making of prints to print-makers. If we insist that art objects must be manufactured creatively, then we must either regard the construction worker, foundry-man, and print- maker as creative artists--co-creators (at least) of the art objects

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which they manufacture; or we must withhold the label "a r t " from almost all architecture, as well as many sculptures and lithographs. There seems to me little doubt that neither alternative is tenable, and that in consequence we cannot require art objects to be manufactured creatively.

This is not to deny, however, that creative activity must enter causally somewhere into the sequence of events which results in an art object: a bronze casting of an object found in the woods, for example, need no more be considered art than the object itself. Nor are the above remarks meant to weaken the connection, emphasized so heavily above, between creative activity and aesthetic control. For the creative sculptor (or architect, or lithographer) who does not himself manufacture the final product, must still possess the kind of control over the materials of which the finished work is composed which enables him to shape his "directions" (blueprint, mold, plate) to the artisan in accordance with his vision of the final product, and in the light of his own aesthetic principles.

Interpreting the relation between art and creative activity in the way just described not only enables us to account for the kinds of examples cited, but also puts copies of art objects into new perspective. As was pointed out earlier, copies are not created; and this would, of course, prevent copies of art objects--no matter who executes them or how exact they a re - - f rom themselves being art, if we require that art objects be manufactured creatively.

Suppose, however, that the creator of an art object himself makes a copy of that object; or suppose that someone else makes a copy which is perceptually indistinguishable from the original. Would we really want to deny that either copy is art ? I think not. We can, after all, regard the original as providing a set of "directions" for the copier, analogous to the way in which a mold pro- vides "directions" for the foundry-man. And though the question arises how accurate a copy must be for it to count as art, the fact is, in certain cases a copy of an art object is itself in art object.

In closing I would like to consider briefly an objection commonly raised against accounts of art like the one given here-- accounts which consider the essence of art to lie in its origins.

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The objection runs something like this : it is possible to tell whether an object is art by examining its observational properties and in the absence of detailed information about how it was produced; this is obvious from the fact that little or nothing is known about the actual processes which have resulted in much of what clearly counts as art.

No doubt most judgments that given objects are art objects rest primarily or even exclusively on data concerning the present

status of the objects, particularly their appearances. It by no means follows from this fact, however, that whether an object is art depends upon its observational properties. The way an object appears may be evidence that it is a r t - -bu t only in virtue of its being evidence that the production of the object involved creative activity. And we can very often know by looking at an object, by comparing it with other objects the history of which is known to us, by examining other works by the same person, that, for example, it was produced neither by nature nor by acci- dent. We are also justified in many cases in inferring that an object was produced creatively on the basis of the aesthetic properties it possesses. The complex and disciplined beauty of a Bach cantata clearly did not result from the whimsical activity of someone un- concerned with aesthetic worth. We are, of course, dealing here with the likelihood of the occurrence of a sequence of events which we are not in a position to observe; but to require either certainty or direct observation as a condition of knowledge or justified belief is to take an obviously untenable epistemological stand. Our knowledge of the pas t - -and this includes our knowledge of an individual's past intentional activity--is based on evidence gleaned from the present. What I am claiming here is that we can obtain such evidence that an object was produced creatively, and thus that the account of art in terms of creative activity presented above produces no theoretical barriers to knowing whether an object is art.

WESTERN WASHINGTON STATE COLLEGE

BELLINGHAM, WASHINGTON

U.S.A. RECEIVED: 9 DECEMBER 1970.

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NOTES

1 Cf. Stephen Koch, "Warhol," The New Republic, April 26, 1969, pp. 25-26, for an explicit statement of this view.

2 Virgil Aldrich makes a novel attempt in this direction in his Philosophy of Art (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963). See also Paul Ziff, "Art and the 'Object of Art, '" Aesthetic and Language, ed. William Elton (New York: Phil- osophical Library, 1954), pp. 170-186. Monroe C. Brardsley, Aesthetics (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1958), Ch. 1.

3 This issue is discussed at some length in my "In Defense of Aesthetic Monism," The Journal of Value Inquiry, III (1969). Referring here to the aesthetic attitude and aesthetic mode of perception is in no way meant to preclude the possibility that both can be explicated in terms of ordinary attitudes and perception.

5 The problem of intention is necessarily receiving only scant attention here. For a particularly illuminating treatment of the problem see Donald Davidson, "Actions, Reasons, and Causes," The Journal of Philosophy, LX (1963), pp. 685- 700.

6 This discussion owes much to Vincent Tomas' "Creativity in Art," reprinted in Art and Philosophy, ed. W. E. Kennick (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964), pp. 283-293.

7 Tomas (Ibid.) requires that creative art be subject to "critical control." What he has in mind here resembles in some respects my "aesthetic control," but Tomas characterizes critical control primarily in terms of the difference between creative art and "the art of madmen" on the one hand, and the results of "passive imagina- tion" on the other.

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Art and creative activity