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MLA citation for this article: Watson, Robert. "Essay on 'A Mirror for Artists.'" 8 Sep. 2001. Date of access. < http://www.smarrpublishers.com/stand03.html >.
Essay on "A Mirror for Artists"
by Robert W. Watson
(8 September 2001)
Donald Davidson's "A Mirror for Artists" is especially compelling, because Davidson touches that part of us that is often neglected during our defence for Southern independence. Since he was a poet, Professor Davidson understood the importance of talking to the Southern soul in addition to the Southern mind.
In his essay, Davidson argues that artistic genius can flourish solely in a region that has an agrarian foundation and is severely curtailed, if not completely destroyed, in an industrialised state. The apologists for industrialism will agree that there are some nasty side-effects that plague an economy based on financial capitalism such as over-production, boredom, alienation, unemployment, and pollution. However, all of this nastiness is supposedly counterbalanced by industrialism's providing more "leisure" time for the masses. If an industrialised citizen wish to spend his "non-productive" time reading a book, writing a poem, or painting a picture, then what in the world is preventing him from doing so? He has both time and money to dabble in the fine arts. The industrialists will further argue that industrialism has made the arts more accessible to more folks than ever before. Radio, television, movies, museums, libraries, and concert halls ensure that everyone can enjoy the higher tastes. However, as Mr. Burchell states in The Vicar of Wakefield, "Fudge!"
What is supposed to belong to the domain of artwork, musical compositions, and the belles-lettres is the cultivation of Beauty. However, since the industrialised American has sold his soul to the Devil in order to chase entertainment and materialism, he is incapable of cultivating his higher tastes. Sadly, the American consumer has no soul for aesthetics, which is the study of the Beautiful.
As a philosophical study, aesthetics began in the eighteenth century as part of the social movement called modernism. Because modernism has its roots in evolutionary theory, the "traditional" view of aesthetics begins poorly. Modernism insists that progress in the arts is a continuing refinement of the past and that the artist should actively work for social change through his art. Since art is supposedly evolving, it is not surprising that critics believe that art is constantly "progressing" forward. However, it is clear today that this progress in an industrialised society does not clarify, but rather moves towards greater abstraction.
On the other hand, postmodernism rejects this progressivism of the modernist. Whereas modernists court evolution, postmodernists embrace subjectivity. According to the postmodernists, the history of art does not show a line of progression, but rather a co-existence of several kinds of art. Therefore, to prefer one expression of art over another is meaningless, because the art can be applicable only in its cultural setting. In this case, objective standards do not exist to determine the value of any art. The postmodernists must therefore reason that some art is preferred over another only because the elite is repressing alternative expressions of art, which it disapproves.
Of course, the positions of both the modernist and the postmodernist are unsatisfactory for defining art. While on the one hand, art and music are at the mercy of a materialistic determinism, the arts become non-existent on the other, because a painting by Monet would be no better than a teenager's graffiti on a subway wall. While modern philosophers wrangle over the definition of art, most people instinctively believe that art is connected with whatever is beautiful, regardless of the culture that produced it. What the philosophers fail to understand is that beauty is not a quality to be philosophically scrutinised; it falls outside the realm of the intellect, defying logic and making most philosophical conclusions about art hopelessly deficient. Beauty is an effect that touches the emotions; thus, art affects the soul, not the mind. While John Crowe Ransom suggests that our defence of the European tradition is what gives us our Southern nature, Professor Davidson proclaims that the soul, the seat of our emotions, is primarily what makes us Southerners.
Davidson refuses to put much faith in industrialised philanthropy with its "surplus capital" to sustain the arts. While the self-appointed guardians of good taste purchase masters and rare books for their personal collections or museums, it is hoped that this desire for a higher taste will trickle down to the masses, manifested by consumers buying inexpensive prints of the masters and cheap paperback editions of the classics. The industrialists glibly thought that public "education" would bring about this renaissance. After all, they reasoned, only the best art will be taught to the students. But what sabotages this industrialised golden age for the American consumer is in fact his education--or rather his lack of it. Beginning with the 19th century, American schools have centred their curricula on vocational training, helping students to become proficient with controlling processes, but little else. The humanities with an emphasis on history, literature, and the fine arts have had to justify their usefulness for the past 200 years. Indeed, the student of the liberal arts must endure many incredulous looks while being asked, "But what job can you get with that?" After defending his desire to learn more about what it means to be human, the student is almost shamed into changing his major to engineering, education, or accounting; in other words, a major that is perceived to be more "useful."
But even assuming that the schools conscientiously present the arts and humanities to their students, there is no natural law that remotely suggests that only the best of the arts will be offered. If there is a natural law, it is the tendency of governmental education to peddle the worst of the arts upon students. College students today are having to study the lyrics of John Lennon and Madonna instead of Shakespeare, Donne, or Keats. Supposedly the words of popular singers are relevant for today, whereas the classics are not. Again I quote Mr. Burchell, "Fudge!"
In addition to the inability of technical training to cultivate a taste for the arts, marketeers are not compelled to distribute only the best art. As the past fifty years have demonstrated well, the propensity of industrialism is to distribute the worst. Pornography, comic books, trashy movies, cheap novels, gaudy artwork, and deplorable "music" are just as apt to be foisted on the public as good art. Professor Davidson states, "But it is just as easy to distribute bad art--in fact, it is much easier, because bad art is more profitable." Good art affects the emotions; bad art appeals to the fleshly appetites. If you want to make a million dollars, then cater to the consumer's lusts, not to his soul. The arts are considered just another commodity to be bought and sold in the industrialised society. The modern writer is not an artist, but a business man, who churns out one novel after another, not to enrich anyone, but to enrich only himself. Advertising with its exaggerated claims creates an inordinate desire for an author's book. Modern song writers, whether secular or religious, fail to produce anything of lasting value. The goal is not to elevate the reader or listener to a higher plane of consciousness, but rather to lower everyone down to an abject commonality and baseness.
Thus, Davidson states that the industrial theory of art "views art as a luxury quite beyond the reach of ordinary people. Its attempt to glorify the arts by setting them aside in specially consecrated shrines can hardly supply more than a superficial gilding to a national culture, if the private direction of that culture is ugly and materialistic." In the case of the American empire, we cannot talk of an American culture, because no such creature exists. On the other hand, we do have regional cultures. The Boston culture is quite unlike the culture found in rural Vermont. And the Southern regional culture is nothing like the culture found in Alaska. For this reason, the most enduring of "American" arts will be the art, music, poems and prose from a specific region. Many have tried to produce the great American epic, but all have failed. Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, and Hollywood have tried without success. Such a task is the same as anyone trying to create the great European Union epic. Davidson argues that creative inspiration comes to the artist,--acting as man, not as machine--as he is influenced by a local culture and tradition: "Mr. Eugene O'Neill may have every wish to be Sophocles, but he cannot be Sophocles in a New York skyscraper, any more than Mr. Thornton Wilder can be God by sending his astral body to Peru." It is the culture that inspires the artist and not the artist who inspires the culture.
Thus, the crux of Professor Davidson's essay is that if the artist wishes to offer Beauty to his community, he must be a giver and not a taker, one who edifies the soul and not one who merely uses the consumer to get wealth. The true artist will express himself not as an alienated soul like Emily Dickinson or even T. S. Eliot, but will become an extension of his local culture. This is what Davidson meant when he said to Jesse Stuart, "Go back to your country. Go back there and write of your people. Don't you change and follow the moods of these times." However, if the local or regional culture is undermined by industrialism, if the people are worshipping entertainment more than God, and if nature is polluted, spoiled, and marred by cell-phone towers, junkyards, and interstate highways, then the artist will most certainly become ex-patriated like the Lost Generation of the 1920s, will rebel against the social order by trying to reform it, or will become "realistic" by integrating the ugly and the mechanical into what remains of art. Yet these are not solutions for fostering the arts. The ex-patriate finds himself in an alien culture with no common sympathies, the rebel purposely alienates himself from society, and the realist ceases to be an artist by becoming a dismal historian.
Why should an agrarian culture produce the best artists and works? At the centre of all that is beautiful is the holiness of God. God's holiness along with His glory is reflected throughout His creation, but more specifically in the earth's display of nature. Whenever the artist paints a landscape, a poet writes a poem, or a composer creates a concerto, he attempts to capture an experience that is beautiful, hoping to suspend the experience in time. The artist or composer will be successful only if he expresses well the sublimity of the moment by using the tools available to him that are found in nature. Therefore, the artist does not create in the sense of producing anything ex nihilo, but duplicates that which is already perfect. Indeed, no painter can improve upon the colours of a sunset or a rainbow; nor can the composer improve upon the notes of the musical scale. For this reason, the key for legitimate art is "the imitation of nature." On the other hand, industrialism wars against nature. Because of this conflict, Davidson asserts that industrialism can neither encourage nor patronise the arts. To do so would be working cross purposes with industrialism's own nature. It is the love of money that destroys men's souls; yet legitimate art elevates and edifies the very souls that industrialism seeks to destroy.
Thus, due to its predominate agrarian tradition, it follows that the Southern culture is most conducive for creating art. According to Davidson, "...only in an agrarian society does there remain much hope of a balanced life, where the arts are not luxuries to be purchased but belong as a matter of course in the routine of...living." The South can boast of her abundance of authors, writers, and painters. Southern music, Southern writing, and Southern art are uniquely regional. When Southern artists write, sing, and paint about the South, they are successful. Whether the Southerner is painting, writing, or composing, he has been inspired by the little towns and farms and not by Atlanta, Birmingham, or Dallas-Fort Worth. I would even argue that the South can claim to have a Southern epic: Gone with the Wind. Perhaps the reason that the novel has such universal appeal is because Southerners can relate to Gerald O'Hara and Melanie Hamilton who epitomise the Southern way of life, while Yankees admire Rhett Butler and Scarett O'Hara, who were opportunists and learned to make a quick dollar at the expense of others. Miss Scarett was charming when she acted like a Southern belle, but was contemptible when she played the role of an industrialist.
Yet the Northeastern establishment of self-appointed judges of the arts have questioned whether anything good can come out of the South. The elite are quick to point out that very little "great" art has come from the South. Perhaps, but has any region in the empire produced a profusion of "great" art? As a matter of fact, has the world in general ever produced a lot of "great" art? True artistic genius is rare among men. Whenever a great artist does appear, he is always in harmony with his culture. Davidson correctly points out that not only does the South enjoy a "native architecture," but the "South has been rich in the folk-arts, and is still rich in them--in ballads, country songs and dances, in hymns and spirituals, in folk tales, in the folk crafts of weaving, quilting, furniture-making." Of course, since the 1930s, these things are preserved less and less, but there still is a remnant of this tradition. In short, no one can conclude that the South is "inartistic."
Farmers know that the land is not completely benign, yet neither is it completely hostile. The artist whose roots are in an agrarian community will allow nature to balance his work. This balance is possible, because Davidson states that nature constantly reminds the artist "that art is not a substitute for nature." Thus, Davidson pleads with the Southern artist not to deny his Southern roots: "Go back there and write of your people." Indeed, it is the Southern writers, poets, painters, and other artists who must lead the charge by not merely preserving the Southern culture but by advancing it. However, while he is surrounded by his Southern community, the Southern artist cannot divorce himself from the fact that he is first a human being. The fight will not be successful if the artist merely behaves as an artist. Davidson concludes his essay with the following charge: "[The Southern artist] must be a person first of all, even though for the time being he may become less of an artist. He must enter the common arena and become a citizen. Whether he chooses, as citizen-person, to be a farmer or to run for Congress is a matter of individual choice; but in that general direction his duty lies."
If the Southern independence movement is to be successful, all Southerners--artist, statesman, scholar, small businessman, or housewife--must become active members in their respective communities, participating in the local events and organisations. We must be givers of value and not takers of filthy lucre. The worst future for the South will be for us Southerners to retreat behind closed doors and remain cloistered with fellow Confederates, while industrialism destroys our families, our communities, and our region; in other words, we will lose all that is worthwhile.
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