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Art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2024

Eric Gill
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Art is not an aesthetic but a rhetorical activity.

(Ananda Coomaraswamy)

The Incarnation may be said to have for Its object the drawing of men from misery to happiness. Being the act of God It is the greatest of all rhetorical acts and therefore the greatest of all works of art. And as from the fatherhood of God all paternity is named in heaven and earth, so from His creative power all art is named. In the Incarnation we do not only know a fact of history or a truth of religion; we behold a work of art, a thing made. As a fact of history It is the most interesting and illuminating of all historical happenings. As a truth of religion It is of primary and fundamental importance. But It is as a work of art that It has a saving power, power to persuade, power to heal, power to rescue, power to redeem.

But the word ‘art,’ in spite of the obsequious worship which the modern world gives to the works of painters and sculptors and musicians, is not a holy word in these days. Art, the word, which primarily means skill and thus human skill and thus human skill in doing and making, has, in literary circles and among the upper classes, come to mean only the fine arts, and the fine arts have ceased to be rhetorical and are now exclusively aesthetic; they aim only to give pleasure.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 21 , Issue 249 , December 1940 , pp. 680 - 689
Copyright
Copyright © 1940 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 But the word ‘drawn’ is not strong enough. The Latin is rapiamur. The sight of Him is ravishing, not attractive merely.

2 Incidentally me should escape such monstrosities as Renaissance architecture which, for all its charm, is simply theatrical flattery of human vanity on the one hand, and, on the other, is woefully devoid of scientific intelligence. We are mightily pleased when we see St. Peter’s dome or the dome of St. Paul’s and are not aware of the chains that bind them round and the innumerable sacrifices of good construction made by their architects for the sake of dramatic appearance. The should avoid the absurdity of machine-made ornamentation and the indecency of sprawling wens like London; and painters and sculptors, who, under our present financier-run tyranny, are compelled to be simply mountebanks or lap-dogs and their works a sort of hot-house flower, would again find themselves in normal employment as members of a building- gang.

3 ‘Rhetoric or Art of Oratory, in which eloquence is thought of not as an end in itself, or art for art’s sake, or to display the artist’s skill, but as the art of effective communication.’ (Italics mine) Coomaraswamy.