Art as Reality

This essay was written in 1953.

The self is a means of seeing reality, but it is also a means of interfering with it, lessening it. When reality is seen by a self without interfering with it, or lessening it, it is art. Art can be described as reality seen right by a self seeing right. The possibility reality has of being seen right, is reality, too; so reality, including its possibility, is art.

It can be put this way: Reality is always reality, for it always has the possibility of being seen right; but it is not reality for us until it is seen right. At the moment it is seen right, it is art. Reality, then, needs selves or beings who see, for its completion. Beings who see, or selves, need reality for their completion. When a person rightly uses reality for his completion, his state of mind is the art state of mind.

Complete reality and complete art are the same. Every object has a drama within it, and a drama of relation with all things. The object is not seen as wholly real until the drama within it, and the drama of relation it has with all things, are wholly seen. Until an object is wholly seen in this way our selves are not only a means of seeing, but also a means of not seeing; just as the eye is a means of seeing, but we can use it as a means of not seeing by squinting it in a certain manner, or closing it.

The Drama in an Object

Let us take the curved handle, in wood, of an umbrella as an object. Within the curved handle is a great drama of curved lines and straight lines, horizontal lines and vertical lines, diagonal lines and points—all in relation to the wood and its color and its weight. The drama I have mentioned is immense and contains many, many cunning and pleasing interrelations. While these interrelations are present, the curved handle has to do with everything in the universe. We see the curved handle but we don’t have its reality until, for a beginning, we apprehend or are affected by:

1. The way curved and straight lines are one in the handle;
2. The way horizontal and vertical lines are one in the handle;
3. The way various diagonals intersect;
4. The way the lines in the handle are and change;
5. The way the handle consists of various intersections of the diagonals in it.

All these things can be thought of as being in the handle. But the curved handle has something to do with everything in the world. How it has to do with everything in the world is part of its reality.

So there is the curved handle in light brown wood. I think of it in relation to an upright blade of grass. Is a handle’s relation to a light green blade of grass part of the reality of the handle? Yes, it is, just as our being related to a son, if we are father; or a mother, if we are daughters; or a country if we are citizens, is part of what we are. All that is within a thing and all that a thing is related to, are of that thing: its reality; and because art sees things that way, art is the affirmation of reality, reality itself.

Light can fall on the light brown curved handle. The possibility of light falling on it is part of the reality of the handle. As we look at the handle with light on it, we know it more, just as we knew it more when we thought of it in relation to a blade of grass. If we think of the curved handle in relation to a flat, black, felt hat, we know the handle better: its reality is more of us. And the handle can be related to, is related to, books, little girls, history, oceans, stars, time.

The Crucial Questions

The crucial questions as to a thing are, then: Is a thing all that it has, in any arrangement? Is a thing its relation to all other things? The answer is, yes; and if it is yes, then art is reality seen completely.

We know that a thing means more to us if it is ours. Yet its being ours is a relation; which, by the way, is often misused. Proximity makes a thing different; and proximity is a relation.

We cannot see objects fully, or give them their full reality, unless we give ourselves our full reality. We can hardly be disposed to feel a thing as related to many other things, in all kinds of ways, unless we are happy in our being related to many, many things. To see a thing is to see it in all its withinness and all its withoutness, and all possible arrangements of withinness and withoutness; but if we are disinclined to give ourselves this mobility, multiple externality, closeness to the remote, we shall not be inclined to give universal justice to a thing.

I have said there is a drama within the curved handle I have used. A square of light brown can be seen as together with a diagonal line going across and under part of the surface of the handle, and so being a curved line, too. Is this relation of little square and diagonal curved line part of the reality of the handle? I think it is. Art shows that it is. The showing is part of the reality.

If we can see our ear as together with our toe in ourselves and also in relation to a mountain in Wyoming, we are seeing more of the reality which is ourselves. If we have a disinclination to see ourselves in this way—and such a disinclination has been common—we shall not feel inclined to see the whole drama in an object of wood, or metal, or both, or a growing object, or a human being. Art asks us that we do be so inclined.

Possibilities

Art is always bringing out possibilities of objects, but these possibilities are part of the reality of the object. The first possibility of a thing is that it can be seen or represented. Our being seen is part of what we are; so is a bush’s being seen, or an animal’s. And so the desire to present a thing as it seemed, in wood, or stone, or on the wall of a cave, or on the wall of a temple, or on canvas, was the desire to see reality more as it was.

However, even the distortion that we see is part of seeing reality more. The possibilities of a face or a body are part of what it is. When, therefore, a Polynesian or an African made figures out of wood, somewhat like people or animals, he was, nevertheless, trying to show the full reality of people or animals.

It has been felt in religion that people were seeing something of reality, something which was real, but they were not seeing things wholly. Reality is all that which can affect us, but it is all that: which means all in a thing. Religion supports logic and art. We have not seen reality entirely, or deeply. We have not seen the people closest to us that way. We haven’t seen ourselves that way.

The Reality of a Person

What is a person? We can say that the world is in a person, that universal reality is in a person. But have we seen it or them there? If we haven’t, can we say we saw the reality of that person? And if we haven’t seen how the world, or universal reality, is present in an object, can we say we saw the reality of that object? I don’t think we can. And once more: Should we see it as reality, we shall see it as art.

It can be said that mothers haven’t seen children, children haven’t seen mothers, brothers haven’t seen sisters, wives haven’t seen husbands, because the reality of children, mothers, sisters, husbands as things who see, hasn’t been seen. One of these days we shall find that we have missed this.

Meanwhile, art goes on showing reality as it is. Artists, however, haven’t seen that they were trying to do this. Terms like abstractionism, surrealism, cubism, classicism, representationism, vorticism, formalism, post-impressionism, expressionism, can be used, surely, to make the reality of objects more real, more vivid, more effective; but these terms can be used, and have been used, to obscure the fact that all art, of any kind, at any time, has had as its purpose the having of things come into their full reality.

Reality, then, uses art to have itself seen for what is, as what is. But what it uses is reality. It is just like using our thought to know ourselves with, while all the time the thought is our very selves.