Art vs. Nature
This past week-end I went to Virginia to visit my sister at her college in the Shenandoah Valley. While there, we took a little trip along the Blue Ridge Parkway, a road made by the park district along the top of the mountains, with many beautiful vistas. Hopefully I will post pictures as soon as I get them. In the meantime, here are some thoughts I had.
I was reading a victorian novel along the way. Back in the day, people seem to talk a lot about art vs. nature in human behavior and how a natural, candid woman was more appealling than an affected, “artful” one. They basically meant that people shouldn’t be fake, which I agree with (not just women either but men as well), but the words caught my attention in a different way, and I came to this conclusion:
Nature is naturally artful.
What I mean by that is that humans can never come close to creating any work of art as beautiful as what God has done in nature. The stars– whole galaxies. Oceans of them; as many as the sparkling grains of sand on the shore. Filling an expanse so vast we cannot conceive of it. Planets– each different. Nebulae, with as many hazy colors as the sunrise. Trees in autumn: sublime crimson and pure gold and deep plum and flaming orange. The water in the ocean near Orlando– blue, blue, you’d have to say it a thousand times to make it as blue as it deserves. The jagged ridge of mountains against the sky, sloping like the curve of a woman’s back into the valleys. The lovely undulating seas, with waves smooth and creamy like silk sheets blown before a breeze. Tree trunks after the rain– darkest grey and deep brown and black with delicate mosses and lacy lichens and spikes of ivy climbing up the trunks– greener than any green, so green it makes you want to be green as well just so that you can be in common with it.
Does that mean human art should end? Not at all! I love art. I love what can be communicated through art on a level that cannot be communicated any other way, on any other level. In creating art humans approach the divine closer than at any other time except when they are sacrificing something for another’s welfare. But the art we create seems to stand always in comparison and in imitation of nature. If not explicitly, as in when a painter paints a mountain or when a jeweler fashions a rink with a leaf design or an architect incorporates a flower motif into the design at the top of a column, then implicitly in the very lines and colors used. The reason I bring this up is to ask why? Why do art and nature seem so inextricably entwined, and why does art seem to fall short? After all, it is no slur on the art or artists, certainly.
Perhaps it is simply that humans have been heavily influenced by our environment– by the specific gravitational force of our planet, which leads to certain constant proportions, and the predominant shapes and colors– when setting up our established modes of art and design; just as the coincidence of having ten fingers has presumably influenced the mathematical systems created by mankind. But perhaps it is instead that there truly is some cosmic set of universal aethetic principles, and God is just better at using them than we are. It would be just like him, wouldn’t it, to be the best at this as well as everything else!
What do you think?
October 17th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
Yep, those romantic poets knew what they were talking about. Well, when they weren’t doped up on opium.
October 18th, 2006 at 8:54 pm
There are a number of interesting studies that have popped up throughout the ages about the possibility about recurring natural formulas of beauty. The Fibonacci numbers are one such example that you may have heard of. (wiki article here) While I think that there is still a lot to be learned in those areas (how does it fit in with many parts of life that are not consistent with those things?), there is potential.
I might take issue with your conception of human art that you use to get there though. While I agree that our creativity is rooted in a divine creativity and that our creations fall short of the complexity of nature, I think they bring their own unique value that adds to what exists. A very limited example would be in the expressionist painters who see shapes and lines that are not physically there, but that exist on some emotional level.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:26 am
Parke,
Good point. I love expressionist painters, and abstract as well. The best explanation I’ve heard of for abstract art is that it communicates pure emotion, free of context. Like classical music. It doesn’t have words, but that doesn’t hurt our ability to appreciate it. Nobody complains that they don’t understand what it means. They just enjoy how it makes them feel. That’s what abstract art is all about; how it makes you feel.
But does that mean that abstract, or expressionist– art does not follow any rules? I haven’t had a formal education in this area, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. I think there are still rules– even if they are unwritten ones– about what looks beautiful and harmonious. For instance, what colors look good together, and where things are placed in the artwork. I believe it is called composition.
Where did these rules come from? Did a bunch of stuffy elitist painters get together and make them up? Well, certainly that did happen. I mean otherwise Picasso and VanGogh would have been better accepted, I think, when they first came on the scene. See, Picasso and VanGogh and even Monet (who, poor guy, really was just painting what he actually saw, because he was losing his vision) broke a lot of rules. But they didn’t break them all, I don’t think. I think they only broke one kind of rules– the superficial rules made up by that group of painters. I think there’s this other, deeper set of rules, the ones I described before, the ones that tell us right off the bat what is, in fact, beautiful.
Of course, people react differently to art. People have different tastes. I suppose that their experiences influence how they respond to things. I may prefer Hopper and you may prefer Sargent. And not all art is beautiful. I don’t think “beautiful” enters into the definition of art. Art, to me, is simply an expression of our human experience here on earth. That may not be pretty and harmonious. But I think that instinct, that awareness of the rules of what is harmonious, does still exist.
October 20th, 2006 at 10:48 am
I guess I’m still left wondering what these rules are or at least if there are as many as we think when so many things like taste, beauty and even what colors go well together (which I think varies across cultures) are up in the air.
October 20th, 2006 at 11:43 am
You may be right.