The Great Emotional Mind

MARGARET C. ANDERSON

Every one talks about Art when he wants to be interesting. Whether he knows anything about it or not makes no difference. You can tell a man that unless he’s an expert in interstate railway regulation he mustn’t argue with a man who is. That sounds sensible to him and he will defer to the expert. But if you tell him that he mustn’t argue with an artist, not being one himself, he considers your remark insulting.

Some people condemn artists and their ways; some praise their work and condemn their ways; some imitate their ways and patronize their work; some believe in their work and discredit the whole scale of values on which alone such work could be built. The latter seem to be the most numerous in these days, and they are the most exasperating. But all of them together act the same way when it comes to talking about Art. If the artist disagrees with them they are sure he is in the wrong, and if in their eloquence they have tried to make him out a fool it’s difficult to understand their rage when the artist says, “Very well, you are not an artist, why should we be expected to agree?” You can tell a man that he knows nothing about philology or philosophy or metaphysics or comparative religions or science or plumbing or gardening, and he will confess that he doesn’t. As for aesthetics, he can’t deny fast enough any connection with such a subject, as though it were something beneath his character. But the moment Art is mentioned the thing seems to have become personal, and you realize from his angry or injured air that not to know about Art is a sin instead of a lack, a thing one can be blamed for, a matter not to be compared to an incapacity for metaphysics or plumbing, for some mysterious reason.

This is the great emotional mind, holding itself proudly above the much-maligned lay mind but really only articulating the beloved theories of them both. The lay mind says: “I don’t know anything about Art but I know what I like.” The emotional mind says: “I am capable of being moved profoundly, and what moves me is Art.” Here are the articles of its faith—every one of them as untrue as education can make them. It believes:

That beauty is loveliness.

That beauty is art.

That truth is art.

That truth is beauty, beauty truth.

That taste is art.

That reproduction is art.

That technique is form.

That style is form.

That “significant form” is an unstable quantity. (They say: “What is beautiful to you is ugly to me. Therefore what is art to you is not art to me. Therefore, how can you say what is art?”)

That there is no distinction between feelings and imagination.

That an emotional experience is the same as an aesthetic experience.

That the fundamental impulse behind art is the search for truth.

That art can be gauged by meaning.

That the capacity to suffer intensely makes art.

That the artist is the interpreter of life.

That the artist paints life as he sees it.

That the artist mirrors the problems of his age.

That art springs from the fever and turmoil of life.

That art is a medium for expressing life.

That art is a criticism of life.

That art is a justification of life.

That art is the release from and the compensation for pain.

That the ideal of the arts is the expression of the human spirit.

That art ministers to our desires.

That the function of art is to make the race happier.

That art will free man from lies and superstitions.

That art is to dissipate reality.

That the social vision implies the creative vision.

That man’s organic necessity to listen to music or be thrilled by poetry is identical with the art impulse.

That to live fully is the requisite of art.

That intellect is the motive power in creation.

That philosophy, which directs or explains, has some relation to art, which makes or reveals.

That special insight implies creative power.

That special knowledge means special intelligence.

That one must experience to know.

That facts or fancies belong to art.

That a poetic temperament makes a poet.

That to act with great feeling and passion is to be a great actor.

That to “be Mary Garden in every role she does” is to be a bad actress.

That “the books we read and reread” are those that stand the test of literature.

That the artist escapes from life into beauty.

That this “escape” is a falsification of life.

That criticism should be sincere and unprejudiced.

That artist and genius are identical terms.

Finally, that art is the expression of the whole man, as even Mr. Willard Huntington Wright and The Seven Arts believe. It is not. It is the expression of the thing that man brings into the world with him. His life is the expression of the whole man. His art is the carefully-selected expression of his personality.