A Response to "God in the Living Room"

by D.K. Holland

The following essay is a response to “God in the Living Room,” an essay by Cole Jeffrey published in Vol. 6, No. 2.

The sum total of meaning in a work of art is more than equal to its parts. In every art form, from painting to photography, the artist attempts to communicate and the viewer attempts to interpret a message beneath the oil or silver comprising the medium. That being said, the distinction often made by viewers of art remains one of “high” versus “low,” pitting the physical medium against the inherent significance of a given piece. Eerily close to Plato’s Theory of Forms, the belief that the material world reflects a shadow of reality contextualizes the general understanding of art in contemporary culture.
With the default position of Greek philosophy deeply imbedded in Western thought, many people suffer from an inferior understanding of art’s makeup based on the platonic split between the work of art and the ideal it attempts to represent.
Cole Jeffrey, in his essay “God in the Living Room,” asserts that “if we only look at a statue, then we will just see a piece of rock carved and chiseled into an image. But if we see the statue, then we will have our minds carved and chiseled into something by the sculptor.” Jeffrey correctly observes that art has both a tangible substance and a higher ideal. Like Plato, he believes that the eye and the mind work in tandem, but also separately, in the perception of a statue. According to this reasoning, the statue of David has at once a physical image recognized by the eye and a certain “David-ness” that appeals only to the sensitivities of the mind, if it can be perceived at all. What this “David-ness” means varies from person to person. But according to Jeffrey, only the human mind can respond to seeing the real statue.
Jeffrey bases his ideas on Plato’s thinking and unfortunately misapplies the concepts found in the Theory of Forms. In so doing, he wrongly assumes that art is inherently steeped in ambiguity. In “God in the Living Room,” there is a disparity between Jeffrey’s description of emotional reaction and the cerebral understanding of art. Jeffrey does not fully explain what he means by “receiving” art. This eventually leads to frustration when trying to pinpoint what he means by “thinking about what [art] can give us.” Try as he might, Jeffrey’s platonic view of a painting would lead him to see only oil and canvas, leaving the ever-present undertone undefined. Since one’s experience and knowledge differ from that of another observer, there remains the possibility for minor disagreement about the deeper meaning of a piece. Conversation concerning the artwork would circle round to an end with two unaltered, extremely limited original opinions and no conclusion. This scenario seems to be nothing more than the proverbial banging of one’s head against a wall.
Allow me to suggest an alternative. The idea that a moment in time can be captured through human endeavor is known as mimesis, a Greek term meaning the representation of aspects of the sensible world. The viewer viscerally perceives this representation as separate and complete, and the artwork essentially becomes its own autonomous world. Every form of art involves the creation of a mimetic world, whether two-dimensional in painting or photography or three-dimensional in film or drama. This new world is more than a thing with corresponding thought-provocation. It is a separate universe the viewer can explore. With this idea of mimesis in mind, art’s purpose becomes twofold. Sir Philip Sydney, in his Defense of Poesy, enumerated these two purposes when he stated that a poet’s station is to “teach and delight.” Sydney wrote in response to a flagrantly anti-art sentiment proposed by his Puritan peers, specifically Sir Stephen Gossom. In his work, The School of Art, Gossom sarcastically condemned the creation of poetry as well as other arts. Interestingly, this condemnation was based on arguments in the works of Plato. In The Republic, Plato had called for the removal of all poets from his utopian society on the basis that they did not “tell the truth” about the world around them. This assertion appears to be sensible in light of Plato’s belief that the true form of the world cannot be fully captured with the mere words of a poem. Gossom took Plato’s argument one step further and stated that poets were liars, often targeting Sydney personally. Sydney carefully crafted a thorough response, graciously leaving out Gossom’s name in favor of allegorical pseudonyms.
In Defense of Poesy, Sydney describes an artist’s station as teacher and one who brings delight. Poets, according to Sydney, do not invent subliminal messages to deceive and lead listeners away from the higher ideal. On the contrary, artists manipulate their chosen mediums to illuminate the viewer. This allows the viewer to connect diegetic aspects of the artwork with ideas and truths already known. Sydney recognized that man does conceive of abstract forms, but saw that in art these abstractions do not necessarily exist separately from the work of art itself.
In light of Sydney’s astute observations, Jeffrey’s diagnosis of art’s purposes can be seen, not as erroneous, but hasty. The platonic outlook of dividing meaning from substance is in some ways unavoidable. Humans naturally tend to look for a deeper meaning in all things, and their quest for sub-textual information is too fruitful to deny that art is simply material. Since art is a facsimile of reality, no piece can be completely without a “shadow.” A separation between what can be seen and what can be imagined invariably makes for inquisitive viewers. However, the goal of art is not to encourage this schism between imagination and substance, but to close it. In order to promote a broader understanding of the world, artists will continue their attempts to impart to viewers more than pieces that cause emotional reaction. The creation of a mimetic world in which characters or objects act in ways that allude to other areas of life is the surest way to break away from ambiguous and pedantic views of art.