the modern work of art presents in one way or another a lack of fit between
actuality and the ideal.
Schiller’s taxonomy of modern poetry yields an astonishingly accurate and
insightful account both of the modes of always less than perfect success in
artistic making that are open to us (tragedy, comedy, idyll [ideal, beautiful
form], and elegy strictly so-called) and of the predominant modes of failure to
achieve the aims of art. Exhaustion in the effort to present the ideal in
plausible relation to actuality, where this effort can never wholly succeed,
is all too likely to occur. The attentions of both artists and audiences are
likely to drift toward entertainments and decorative, escapist forms that fail
to engage with the actual.
The state of mind of most people is a matter of stressful and exhausting
work, on the one hand, and the kind of indulgence that works like a sedative,
on the other...[Exhausted by work, many people seek to be] relieved at
once [by art] of the burden of thinking and, in this relaxed state, such natures
may indulge themselves in the blissful pleasure of nothingness, on a soft
pillow of platitudes. In the temple of Thalia and Melpomene, as it is cultivated
among us, the beloved goddess is enthroned and receives in her ample
bosom the stupid savant and the exhausted businessman. Rekindling their
numbed senses with her warmth and swaying the imagination to a sweet
motion, she rocks the mind to sleep, gently mesmerizing it.^18
There is no doubt that many people–perhaps all of us at least some of the
time–bring such expectations to the experience of art. It is natural for
makers of artistic representations sometimes to cater to such expectations
with an offer of beautiful form or the ideal unmixed with attention to reality,
in the form of a predictable happily-ever-after story or a pleasing play of
shapes. Art’s some-time indulgence of these expectations is what leads people
who think of themselves as serious about work and knowledge to scorn it or
to reserve it for idle moments of reverie and recovery.
Alternatively, critical thought in relation to actuality may become strident
and insistent. Insistence on presenting a message–a thought about the
imperfections of the actual–may take the shape of outright experimentalist
provocation that challenges any form of settled social life and advocates
bohemianism, relentless iconoclasm, or nomadism. The result is a kind of(^18) Ibid., pp. 245, 246.
260 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art