An analogy between art and play, ranging from
mere
metaphor to literal identification, has been asserted,
for better
or worse, in an extraordinary variety of ways.
The most obvious of these
contrast art and play with
work, with the “serious,”
with activities carried out
under compulsion of some kind, whether moral,
politi-
cal, economic, psychological, or
genetic. Such anal-
ogies have been as
frequently rebutted by those who
insist that art is too serious for such an
equation as
they have been affirmed by those who have seen art
as only
hedonic or entertaining.
Between these extremes are those who find positive
merit in both aspects of
art, and we shall concentrate
our attention on such affirmative theories.
Associated
with these ideas about art and its cultural significance
are: (1) the surplus energy or leisure theory of culture,
seeing art and
play as products of superfluity after basic
needs have been met; (2)
education, imitation, and
vicarious experience theories, whereby art and
play are
valued for the way in which men can encounter harsh
realities
harmlessly; (3) metaphysical theories equating
the two because of an
“as if” element in both, ulti-
mately extending to epistemology and science; (4)
“the
child-in-the-man” theories emphasizing
naiveté and
unconscious processes as contrasted with
sophisticated
hyperrationality.
It is exceedingly rare in antiquity for play to be
associated with art at
all, and where it is, the connec-
tion is
usually found in a condescending attitude to-
wards both, or at least towards play where the function
of art is
conceived rather more loftily. For the most
part, however, play is thought
of as an activity of
animals and children, and, given the relatively unsenti-
mental attitude towards both in
antiquity, play is
reduced to a fairly low status. It is thought of as
non-
purposive, noncognitive,
frivolous, time-wasting, and
hedonic. No doubt there were in antiquity, as
at all
times, those who found the highest value of art in
pleasure,
relaxation, entertainment, and the like, and
if they equated art with play
it was more likely to
damn the former than to praise the latter. Despite
these
unpromising beginnings, however, there is early evi-
dence of some redeeming qualities and among these
may
be traced the origins of ideas immensely fruitful
in the development of
later theories of play and art.
The leading notions are found in the connection of
play with imitation and education, and by
way of these
the affinity with art may be seen ultimately to draw
ever
closer. Scattered references may be found in
Homer (e.g., Iliad XV, 363) as well as in other authors
of antiquity (cf.
Pauly-Wissowa, article “Spiel”) in
which the
propaedeutic value of childhood games is
brought out. Many of these references are to games
with clay,
sand, and stone pre-figuring sculpture and
architecture, but their
importance should not be exag-
gerated. It
would be necessary at first to cast the net
rather widely to find the
connections among ideas
whose interrelatedness as seen in later perspective
was
scarcely apparent in earlier times, and so run the risk
of
appearing to impute to our seminal thinkers a degree
of coherence on the
present topic of which they were
innocent. On the other hand, the problem
of play as
it is concerned with culture generally, with psycho-
logical theories of man and beast,
or even with more
obviously related topics such as the drama or the
agon as “play,” are all beyond
the scope of this article; for
many of these broader issues the reader is
referred to
the works of Groos and Huizinga, among others. Like-
wise the connection between sympathetic
magic or
religious ritual (especially in the sublimated forms of
symbolic sacrifice) and imitation cannot be explored
here even though there
are obvious points of contact
between these and certain aspects of play.
In all of these something is represented or acted out
or made to stand for
something else in a manner that
deliberately falls short of the literal or
actual enact-
ment of the something else. To
this extent, at least,
direct utilitarian or cognitive purposes are not
served
(even if they are never far from the surface) and there-
with a key aspect of play as such is
manifest. Against
this view it is frequently argued that the
“primitive”
mind is incapable of distinguishing
symbol from thing
symbolized, and so what appears to be indirect,
“play-
ful,”
vicarious, etc., to more sophisticated minds has
been misapprehended. The
point is valid but comple-
ments rather than
weakens the argument advanced
here. It is rare for the most sophisticated
(or even the
most prosaic) of minds wholly to lose the ability to
be
immersed in the world of fantasy and imagination,
or to abandon
“reality” for the nonce, however easily
it might be
recovered at need. Even where primitive
languages treat
“play” as childish, frivolous, and so
forth, and do
not adequately distinguish what we
should think of as play or symbolic
activities from
“real” ones, people's actual conduct
will display their
grasp of the distinction.
Methodologically it will always be a problem to
isolate play as it is
manifested in art from the many
other factors with which play is
associated, e.g., human
nature and psychology, the “leisure
theory of culture,”
childish (or childlike) things, imitation,
vicarious ex-
perience, education,
epistemology, anticipations of
knowledge or of “serious
things,” creativity, meta-
physics. For example, the references to play in Plato
display many
of the entanglements of the related
themes considered above. Play is
harmless enough in
very young children, but all too soon it takes on the
aspect of
an irrationality (and therewith unreality) that
it becomes the task of
education to remedy. Play only
becomes tolerable when it is channeled in
desirable
directions. To take another example, play as vicarious
experience is significant both in Plato and Aristotle.
The emphasis in
Plato lies rather in the joint subordi-
nation of art and play to education (itself in the service
of ethics
and metaphysics); hence, as will become
apparent in many other writers, it
is very difficult to
separate play in art from its manifestations under
other
aspects. In Aristotle, the emphasis, to be discussed in
greater
detail below, is on catharsis, in which the
emotions aroused and discharged
by the action of the
drama are serious but harmless—two features
that
almost universally are included in the concept of play
and art.
Only in recent years (say, since Karl Groos
and, most notably, Huizinga)
has a conscious attempt
been made to analyze the concept of play so as to
elicit
its specific features. Until this century the innumerable
discussions of the subject, of which only a few impor-
tant examples can be given here, appear in contexts
displaying the leading interests of their authors; art and
play have
frequently been only incidental to those
interests, however.
