The purpose of art, through the lenses of perception

I was talking to a good friend of mine today, and he told me something that struck me: he said art should have just an aesthetic purpose, and it fails when it tries to represent complex ideas and concepts because that’s the purpose of philosophy. Therefore, a piece of music should just be beautiful and evoke emotions in the listeners, and the same thing should happen with a painting, a novel, or a movie. It struck me because I sort of agreed with him and at the same time, I felt like something was wrong with what he was saying, although I couldn’t exactly articulate what it was. So I tried to figure it out. Philosophy extracts patterns and categories from the world, in order to provide a framework through which we can attempt to solve our problems. Art is pure representation. But what do we mean exactly with representation? It may not be as intuitive as it sounds, because that’s not really how our minds work. Our minds work through heuristics: they try to extract patterns in reality that we can use. They are not looking for the most accurate or the most honest representation, they are looking for the most useful one. While we go through our daily lives, we think like philosophers and problem-solvers, not like artists. Here’s what I mean. We barely ever think about the world exactly as it is, or in a way that’s not somehow instrumental, expedient. When we see a tree, we often don’t really see a tree. What we see is, depending on the circumstances, an obstacle to overcome, a potential hiding place, a source of food. If we were running from a predator and the tree happened to be on our way, we would probably focus on its roots, to figure out the fastest way to run past them. If we were playing hide-and-seek, we would probably focus on the highest branches, to see if they are thick enough to hold our weight and close enough to one another to allow us to climb the tree. If we were looking for food, we would look at the lowest branches to see if there is some ripe fruit hanging. All these views are deeply biased, because our perception is clouded by our momentary concerns. But the tree, the real tree with all its complexity, is lurking behind all those expedient meanings and we don’t even notice it. In fact, who knows how many things about the tree we are not able to perceive? The only times when we are able to think about the world in a non-instrumental way is when we think about beauty. Beauty isn’t instrumental. If I see a tree and I think it’s beautiful, I am not seeing an obstacle, a hiding place, or a source of food anymore. I am finally seeing the tree in its very essence. That doesn’t mean that we can understand everything about the object in that case, but the goal of our perception has shifted. Instead of focusing on something with a specific aim in mind, we are waiting for the tree to reveal itself to us, we are exploring with our senses until something is able to grip our attention: perhaps the sound of the wind against the branches, the color of the leaves, or the way the roots form an intricate maze on the ground. Art is often said to be useless. Although I understand why that particular term is used, I also think it’s misleading. What people mean by that is that art isn’t useful in the here and now, therefore it is not expedient. If your sink is broken, then you have a problem and you should probably call a plumber to solve it. If you feel sick, you should call a doctor. That would be useful. If you have a more complex problem, for example, you have to make a difficult choice in your life, you could call a therapist or maybe even read what some philosophers have said on the topic, listen to their rational arguments and decide which one makes the most sense to you. That would be useful. Going to an art museum, reading a novel or listening to music most likely won’t be of any actual use in solving the problem at hand. However, it’s undeniable that we need art and we care deeply for it. Everyone does because everyone experiences beauty in their lives and it’s often the most profound feeling that we can have, and we desperately crave it. Everyone has had an experience with a piece of music, art, or literature that has deeply resonated with him. Every day, thousands of novels are sold, thousands of movies are being watched and perhaps millions of songs are being listened to. Human beings have been sitting around a campfire telling stories and producing art inside caves long before we even knew how to write down our thoughts. The artist is trying to address that need, that desire for a representation of the world that won’t be oversimplified or instrumental in any way. And that need is at least as old as the first humans. When you have a problem, you want to break it down into pieces and see how you can deal with it. It’s a practical process. Art is about something else: it’s about seeing the very essence of a tree, and ultimately the very essence of reality. So maybe my friend was right, wasn’t he? Why should art grapple with complex ideas and concepts if its only purpose is to represent reality in the most authentic and unbiased way, while every time we try to address our problems we necessarily need to put on our biased lenses of rational problem-solvers? Well… it turns out that it’s not so simple. Here is another way to think about reality and its different representations. Irrational numbers were discovered by mathematicians, but they are often used in reality by engineers. If an engineer wants to build a circular building, he will have to be familiar with the irrational number π to be able to work out the total circumference of the building. However, he won’t be able to use π, not exactly. He will have to approximate it. The simple act of digiting π in a calculator and transforming this symbol into a rational number is an approximation. So here is the paradox: we know the mathematical concept, but there is no way that we can use it in reality unless we operate an approximation. But it makes sense if you think that π is composed of infinite parts, so how could we possibly use it without leaving something behind? But then, wouldn’t you say the same thing with regards to reality? Isn’t reality infinitely complex? Just as the mathematicians found a way to represent something infinitely complex with a symbol in a way that an engineer never could, the job of the artist is to represent reality through its art, in a way that a philosopher never could. Simplifying something infinitely complex (be it π, or reality) immediately takes away something from it and makes it less authentic and accurate. And bear in mind, neither the mathematician nor the engineers fully understand the number π, certainly not as clearly as they understand its approximations 3, 22/7, or 355/113. In the same way, the artist can’t possibly understand his own work, and yet, he has managed to encapsulate a fragment of reality in it in a way that would be impossible if we were simply trying to solve a practical problem. As the engineer needs the concept of π, the philosopher needs art to fuel his work. And isn’t it ironic that the artistic process is often considered irrational, just like π, while the very foundation of philosophy is rationality, just like the approximations of π are called rational? My friend was right: the purpose of art shouldn’t be to represent concepts and ideas, that’s not what the artist should be concerned about. He is just trying to capture a new fragment of reality, something that only he can perceive. And yet at the same time, in a piece of art the ideas and the concepts are inevitably always present, lurking in the darkness, barely visible. They should come in the form of questions, and never definitive answers. The artist explores the question with you and then (if he is good at what he does) he leaves you with the most honest possible resolution: he doesn’t have a clear-cut answer. We can never get to the bottom of our problems, but perhaps we can get closer and closer to the solution through the artistic process. It’s in this sense that the artist, as depicted in The Buried Harbour by Ungaretti, tries to get to the depths of the sea and come back with “quel nulla d’inesauribile segreto / that nothing of an inexhaustible secret”, while philosophy, as Hegel put it, “does not appear until reality has completed its formative process, and made itself ready.” Art and philosophy are deeply interrelated. Just like dreams inform our reality and intuitions help our rational side, the artist perceives the world from a new perspective, and his work informs the thinkers, who can then start categorizing and providing a conceptual framework for the new discoveries.

Gabriele Scrima