Dear Unknown Friends:

Here is part one of Eli Siegel’s powerful (also delightful) 1969 lecture Art Is within Science, a lecture in his definitive series on the relation between science and art. They, art and science, have largely been seen as apart from each other, as inevitably so, as two contrary divisions of human endeavor. The world of imagination, emotion, beauty has seemed a different world from the world of exactitude and logic.

The sense of the fundamental apartness of art and science corresponds to a division people make within themselves. Day after day people feel that the Me who tries to be logical and exact is separate from the Me who has emotion. Yet this rift makes us unsure and ashamed. We cannot like ourselves unless our emotions seem truly logical to us, and unless our desire to be accurate is not aloof but has true feeling inseparable from it.

In his art and science lectures, Mr. Siegel showed that the two, science and art, are not inevitably apart: indeed, they are of each other, deeply and livingly. As we see this, the corresponding opposites in ourselves are closer: we see that our emotion and our knowing can be increasingly one. These opposites were beautifully one in Eli Siegel himself, and we meet that oneness in the present lecture. His style and his explanations are at once warm—sometimes playful—and simultaneously scholarly, and richly exact.

The Interference with Knowing & Feeling

The enemy to both science and art, Aesthetic Realism shows, is the desire—present in everyone—for contempt. Contempt is “the addition to self through the lessening of something else,” and from it comes every brutality. Contempt is anti-science, because it does not want to know, to see what’s true. Contempt in a person says, I’m not interested in truth—I’m interested in having my way; besides, what’s true is what I decide, what suits me.

Contempt is also anti-art, because of the slovenliness and dishonesty with which it deals with feeling. Going after contempt, a person on the one hand wants to feel as little as possible about things and people—because having feeling about them interferes with the ability to manage or dismiss them. On the other hand, our contempt also tells us that any feeling we have is correct—simply because we have it.

Knowing, Feeling, & a Tree

I am going to give an instance, fairly ordinary, of the fact that the desire truly to know—the scientific desire—is always joined with that which is so fundamental to art: feeling. Anything we look at or think about with a desire to know, will cause feeling in us about it and the world.

Through a window near my desk, I have looked many times at a particular tree across the street. It is a large Callery pear tree, and yesterday I saw it amid rain and wind. And I thought, I will look at it freshly to illustrate knowing and feeling, for this TRO. It was in full bloom, with white blossoms rich, abundant; and its branches were very dark.

I saw that those dark branches went in different directions: some rising high; some reaching widely; some rising then drooping, in various degrees, downward—and all carrying those white blossoms. Seeing this, made for a feeling in me about the pride and sinking, aspiring and drooping, that can be in people and reality—a drama that, in this tree, was inseparable from sweet white grandeur.

Then, there was the drama of delicate white blossoms joined with trunk and branches that were near-black and stark in rain. There was a sense, through these, of the world’s gentleness and severity, hope and foreboding.

Of course, all people do not have exactly the same feeling, because each person is particular. Yet in any of us, the quality of our feeling depends mightily and centrally on how sincere our desire to know is.

And always, both the thing we’re trying to know and our own ensuing emotion are described in this Aesthetic Realism principle: “The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.” In every instance of knowing we are feeling something not only about the object but about the world with its opposites—which opposites are in us too. Whenever a person has tried to know, reality’s opposites have been there, felt in some fashion, even as usually the person has not been so conscious of them. Through Aesthetic Realism we can be very much aware of them, and so our knowing anything can be a means of knowing ourselves proudly and liking the world honestly.

Looking Further at a Tree

The tree, as I saw it in gentle rain, was first composed, quiet in its beauty. Then sometimes the wind blew hard, and the branches shook tumultuously. Then, as the wind would subside, the branches would move more gently, and become still again. The motion and rest of the world were felt in the seeing of that tree. The tumult and stillness that have been in the life of everyone, sometimes tormentingly, were felt as beautiful in this sidewalk tree.

In trying to know this tree I have been writing factually, though not as a dendrologist might, a formal scientist of trees. Let’s take, however, two statements that can be seen as in the technical scientific field. They’re from the website environmentalscience.org.

First, we have the simple sentence “Trees evolved around 380 million years ago.” That statement can make for ever so much feeling. To think of it as we look at a nearby tree has us feel vast stretches of time at one with this very minute; has us feel that this living thing we care for brings millions of years close to us.

Then we’re told that the immediate ancestor of trees is

believed to be…a giant type of fern that began the process of developing a woody stem.

It is clear that the important opposites of hardness and softness were in motion, changing, making for something harder than what a fern had, making for something that became a grand oneness of hardness and softness: the trunk of a tree. A tree is one of the huge successes of those opposites—opposites that are also in every person. We accuse ourselves of being too hard—and also too yielding. We long to do with our own hardness and softness, toughness and gentleness, what evolution did for the tree: make those opposites one.

Knowing makes for feeling. Through Aesthetic Realism, that knowing and that feeling can be greater than we imagined, can be magnificent and terrifically sensible, can change our lives and make us proud.

—Ellen Reiss, Aesthetic Realism
Chairman of Education

Art Is within Science

By Eli Siegel

I ’ve called today’s talk Art Is within Science. Of course, it could be the other way around too—Science Is within Art. The book I have before me (as one used to say) is the Catalogue of the 68th Exposition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants (1957)—which means that in this catalogue there is a better chance of seeing how the everyday French person was than through catalogues of other exhibitions. That is because the Society of Independent Artists is the largest association of art in France: anybody who has gone to art school and has relatives can be in it.

It was felt at the time of impressionism that the customary way of judging art, by the people associated with the Louvre and the exhibitions, was not just. This society was formed—and the catalogue proudly says the exposition has no admission jury. So we have the large question: Was there a difference between Picasso and persons whom I’m sure no one here has ever heard of?

Meanwhile, the catalogue in various ways shows the interrelation of science and art. In the first place, there’s a list of the kinds of art, or styles of art. The list is signed by Henry Valensi, Membre de la Société Française d’Esthétique—which means he has given his thought to the matter. He calls the list “Définition Succincte des Tendances”—“Succinct Definition of Tendencies.” And within his descriptions one can see the interrelation, how science is within art, and art is within science.

Styles in Art: Is Science There?

For the first tendance he uses the term classiques; it’s the style had by classical painters. I’ll translate M. Valensi’s description literally. He says the classiques include:

Every painter who reproduces faithfully that which exists (or which likely could exist) and who works according to the traditions and the techniques of the Masters of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

I don’t think that’s a sufficient idea of the classique. The classical, or classicism, is still around, and it does seem to be more with science than some other styles are. A classical painter isn’t exactly a scientist but seems to be more so than a romantic painter. Romantic was a term as to painting around 1830 and a little later. Géricault was an eminent romantic painter, romantique with horses and with his raft. Jacques-Louis David was classique although révolutionnaire. He was very much interested in Romans taking oaths, but also he was interested in Marat*.

A classique is someone like Poussin (1594-1665) or Claude Lorrain (c. 1604-1682). Fragonard (1732-1806) could be called a frail classique. An artiste classique is restrained, and in about every instance has something to go by—something, as Valensi says, that he or she “reproduces faithfully.” So the classique seems nearer to the scientifique. The painters of the 17th century studied, and they looked at the object very much. That phrase “reproduces faithfully” has to do with science. When you reproduce faithfully you are doing that which science, in its way, tries to do, because the purpose of science is to have the processes of nature faithfully reproduced, represented, and contained within the human mind.

While there are very few classical artists around today, every working drawing, every picture that is supposed to be useful for science, is, in a way, classique: you are supposed to present the object. When an engineer reproduces faithfully a bridge, or, in some way, a new kind of pulley or machine, he or she is classique.

Sometimes the art and science are very close. Audubon is an example of the art of the scientist, and the scientific artist. His birds are birds as Audubon found them. They’re the true birds, and they are also seen as important American art. There is other work like that. Edward Lear made his living not by his nonsense poems—though they sold pretty well—but by his faithful paintings.

The Neoclassic, & Color

Often in art, with a little time, we get to a neo. This means artists are looking at a style again. So Valensi has in his list néo-classiques, the neoclassics. His description is, in English:

Every painter who works as was said about the classical painters, but who carries to the technique of the great Masters modifications in their workmanship or in the use of colors.

The classiques used color, of course—but they didn’t revel in color. They simply used it. Veronese is less classique than Raphael because Raphael used color, but like a gentleman, while Veronese did a little reveling. Titian did too. The Venetians did more reveling than others. But reveling occurred with Lorrain. And later, a gift of romanticism was more reveling in color. The great reveler-in-color of the 19th century is Turner; and Delacroix is unrestrained. In the 19th century, the seeing of color as a reality in itself came to be. And it is now seen as a reality in itself.

Color has taken on another meaning. Once it was thought that color is something a painter uses in order to have a painting, but it’s not that anymore: you have a painting in order to give the inner significance of color in motion. You paint the city in order to show what color is for. Color, then, becomes the predominant thing, and the other matters, including the subject, are subservient. So when the néo-classiques did more “in the use of colors,” we were approaching the time when color would be almost the same as God.

The seeing of color as an important reality, just as important as the object concerned, would mean, for example, that the color in space, given perhaps by the sunset, would be just as important as an object in that space. The color around water could be as important as water. All of this belongs quite clearly to science, because such matters as water, clouds, air, wind, and sun, however appealing, do belong to science. Sunlight is a scientific datum, though it is meant to cheer you up.

Impressionism Has to Do with Science

The next description is of the impressionnistes, and names come into this description:

Every painter who works according to the principles of Manet, Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, etc.; these principles being essentially: 1) to attribute apparent colors no longer to objects (as the classics did), but to light and to the reflections which make them luminous; 2) to bring out colorings in shadows; 3) to paint by juxtaposed touches.

Valensi gives principles to Manet and Monet—who were very different. It would seem it’s only one vowel that separates them, but there’s a great deal more. For one thing, Manet was given more to people than Monet was.

So Manet has principles, Monet has principles, and these principles concern the following: Is the eye only a receptor or does it do something to the object? Is light passively around the object, or does it transform the object? Does shadow do something to an object? The things that could happen through oneself or through light concerned the impressionists. And so we have the example of a cathedral looking mostly like feverish grand sunlight, in Monet. Then, we have boats that seem to be boats of wood but seem to be sunlight too. You rowed the sunlight in a Monet boat. Manet is more restrained that way. He isn’t a luminous person, the way Monet was. Sisley and Pissarro were more methodical; Pissarro has quietly remained.

The eye is both art and science. The eye does something and it also knows something, and that makes it, in keeping with an early talk in this series, both art and science. Art is that which does. Science is that which knows. That’s exceedingly simple and has the perils of simplicity, but it’s worth saying.

“To attribute apparent colors no longer to objects (as the classics did), but to light.” This would mean that light is seen as predominant. A cathedral is something that happens in light; light isn’t there as something that says, Cathedral, I’m here to help you. The cathedral is there to help the light. A church spire is there to help the light of late afternoon.

All of this is a distinguishing among objects. Light, space, and color are objects. The eye is an object. Then, a place of worship, whether a cathedral or a Methodist church, is an object. So we have a change in the looking at objects.

“To bring out colorings in shadows”: the relation of these two, color and shadow, is also a relation of art and science. Color would be the art, and shadow would be the science, because as soon as something is restrained it gets a little into the scientific field. Meantime, both belong to art and science. Color is used in art, but it is a subject of science. And one of the best things about vibrations is that science can’t let them alone. So we have waves, the vibration of color, as we have in sound. Shadows belong to the science of optics, but are used in art quite clearly.

The Way an Object Is Made

Valensi, without naming him, brings in Seurat when he says “to paint by juxtaposed touches.” Something that art deals with and that science deals with is the way an object is made. If we look at a pane of glass, we can see it as continuous. But there is a kind of glass that is very rough and it’s made not to be seen through. Jails love that kind of glass. Also, certain old-time saloons had doors of that kind of glass, rough—so a lady couldn’t see if the gentleman was there. Meantime, we have the proper pane of glass, which is smooth and seems to be of one piece, like a luminous surface of a pond. Still, it is possible to make bits out of the glass, say 1/32 inch wide, tall, and even, if need be, deep.

The point is that everything can be seen as consisting of lesser wholes within it, which are parts. Every part is a whole, as a finger is a part of a hand but has a construction of its own. And Seurat accented the fact that all color—like this glass pane with its 1/32 inch bits—was made up of things within it, and they could be juxtaposed.

The manner of Seurat has remained, though we don’t read of any person now doing work of the kind he did. Nature has gone around juxtaposing, even if more recent painters have pretty much left “juxtaposed touches” alone.