IV. MODERN TIMES
In about the second half of the eighteenth century
there was only one major
controversy (chiefly in Ger-
many) concerning
the arts: whether or not poetry
belongs to the fine arts. Some writers
contrasted beaux
arts with belles lettres, considering them as two differ-
ent fields of human endeavor. Still,
Moses Mendelssohn
in 1757 called for a common theory of both. This was
done first by J. G. Sulzer in his Allgemeine Theorie
der
schönen Künste (1771-74). The agreement
was not
general. Goethe in his review of Sulzer's book (1772)
ridiculed the linking of two things which, for Goethe,
were very different
(Kristeller [1951-52]).
By now new problems of classification arose and had
to be solved. First, how
is all human activity to be
classified and what
place do fine arts occupy in it? The
classical solution was prepared by
Francis Hutcheson
and the Scottish thinkers such as James Beattie and
David Hume, and eventually formulated in 1790 by
Kant: there are three
major human activities: the cog-
nitive, the
moral, and the aesthetic; fine art is the
product of aesthetic activity.
The second problem was how to classify the nar-
rower field of fine arts. Let us again take Kant
as an
example; he suggested that there are as many kinds
of fine arts
as there are ways of expressing and trans-
mitting thoughts and feelings. There are three different
ways, he
said, and likewise there are three fine arts:
using words, plastic images,
or tones. The first way is
used by poetry and oratory, the second by
architecture,
sculpture, and painting, the third by music. Kant sug-
gested other classifications as well: he
distinguished
(following Plato) the arts of truth and the arts of ap-
pearance, architecture being an art of truth and paint-
ing an art of appearances. On the other
hand, he
divided fine arts into those which, like sculpture, deal
with
objects existing in nature and those which, like
architecture, deal with
objects possible only through
art.
Classifications of the arts were continued in the
nineteenth century. While
the ancients attempted to
classify arts in the broad sense of the word, the
nine-
teenth century classified only fine
arts. It did this in
various and ingenious ways. It distinguished not
only
“free” and “reproductive”
arts, but also “figurative”
and
“nonfigurative”; arts of motion and motionless arts;
spatial and temporal arts; arts which require a per-
former (like music) and those which do not (like paint-
ing); arts evoking determinate associations (as
painting
or poetry do) and evoking indeterminate associations
(as do
music or architecture). These different principles
lead after all to a
similar classification of the arts. This
result is demonstrated in Max
Dessoir's table (1905):
Spatial arts
Motionless arts
Arts dealing
with
images |
Temporal arts
Arts of motions
Arts dealing
with
gestures
and sounds |
|
SCULPTURE
PAINTING |
POETRY
DANCE |
Reproductive arts
Figurative arts
Arts with
determinate
associations |
ARCHITEC-
TURE
|
MUSIC |
Free arts
Abstract arts
Arts with
indeterminate
associations |
Dessoir, the most expert aesthetician at the turn of
the twentieth century,
ended his review of art classifi-
cation,
however, with a pessimistic conclusion: Es
scheint kein
System zu geben das allen Ansprüchen
genügte (“there appears to be no system that satisfies
all claims”).
Hegel's well-known division of the arts into sym-
bolic, classical, and romantic had a different purpose:
it did not
differentiate branches of arts, poetry, paint-
ing, music, etc., but diverse styles of poetry,
painting,
music, etc. In classifying styles the nineteenth century
was
not less ingenious than in classifying arts.
In summary we may say that the meaning of the
classification of arts has changed; in antiquity the clas-
sification of arts was a division of all human
abilities;
during the Middle Ages it was a division between
purely intellectual (artes liberales)
and mechanical arts;
in the Renaissance attempts were made to divide
arts
into “fine arts” and others; since the
eighteenth century
it has been a division among fine arts themselves.
The problem seemed to have been settled, but in
the twentieth century
unexpected difficulties emerged.
The established classification was based
on three as-
sumptions: (1) there exists a
closed system of arts; (2)
there is a difference between arts and crafts
and sci-
ences; (3) the arts are distinguished
by the fact that
they seek and find beauty. It took a long time and
much
effort to get this system accepted but eventually it
seemed to be
firmly established. However, we must
observe that: (1) new arts were
born—photography and
cinema—which had to be included
in the system. The
same applied to those arts which have been
practiced
before but were not covered by the system, like town
planning. Moreover, the character of arts included in
the system has
changed: a new architecture, abstract
painting and sculpture, music in a
twelve-tone scale,
and the anti-novel have appeared. (2) Doubts arose
whether one really ought to contrast crafts with arts.
As recently as the
end of the nineteenth century
William Morris argued that there can be no
nobler
art than good craft. And ought one to contrast science
with
art? Indeed, many twentieth-century artists regard
their work as cognitive,
similar to science, or even
science itself. (3) Finally, is it correct to
assume that
seeking beauty is essential in art and represents its
differentia specifica? Is not the concept of
beauty too
vague to be useful in defining art? One can say of many
works of art that beauty was not their objective. What
one can say of them
rather is that the reason for their
creation was the artist's need of
expression or his desire
to excite and move other men.
Everything seems to speak for the need to define
anew the concept of art.
And, consequently, for the
need to start afresh the classification of arts.
