Dictionary of the History of Ideas Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas |
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![]() | III. | CLASSIFICATION OF THE ARTS |
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![]() | Dictionary of the History of Ideas | ![]() |
CLASSIFICATION OF THE ARTS
I. ANTIQUITY
The history of the classification of the arts is compli-
cated for several reasons but chiefly
because the idea
of art has changed. The classical idea differed from
ours in at least two respects. First, it was concerned
not with the
products of art but with the act of pro-
ducing them and in particular the ability to
produce
them; e.g., it pointed to the skill of the painter rather
than
to the picture. Second, it embraced not only
“artistic” ability but any human
ability to produce
things so long as it was a regular production based on
rules. Art was a system of regular methods of making
or doing. The work of an architect or a sculptor an-
swered to this definition, but so did the
work of a
carpenter or a weaver, for their activities belonged in
equal measure to the realm of art. Art by definition
was rational and
implied knowledge; it did not depend
on inspiration, intuition, or fantasy.
This conception
of art found expression in works of Greek and Roman
scholars. Aristotle defined art as the “ability to execute
something with apt comprehension,” and some cen-
turies later Quintilian explained it as based on
method
and order (via et ordine).
“Art is a system of general
rules” (Ars est systema praeceptorum universalium),
Galen
said. Plato stressed the rationality of art: “I do
not call art
irrational work,” he said. The Stoics placed
greater stress on a
fixed system of rules in the arts and
simply defined art as a system.
Aristotle stressed the
idea that knowledge on which art is based is
general
knowledge.
This ancient conception of art is not foreign to us,
but it appears today
under other names: craft, skill,
or technique. The Greek name for art was
technē, and
as a matter of fact our
term “technique” suits the
ancient idea of art better
than our term “art,” which
is now used as an
abbreviation for fine arts. The Greeks
had no name for the latter since
they did not recognize
their distinctiveness. They grouped fine arts
together
with handicrafts, convinced that the essence of a
sculptor's
or a carpenter's work is the same, i.e., skill.
The sculptor and the
painter, working in different
media with different tools and applying
different tech-
nical methods, have only one
thing in common: their
production is based on skill. And so is the
production
of a craftsman; therefore a general conception which
embraces fine arts cannot but likewise embrace the
crafts.
The Greeks regarded both sciences and crafts as
belonging to the realm of
art. Geometry or grammar
were indeed areas of knowledge, rational systems
of
rules, methods of doing or making things, and so they
certainly
answered to the Greek meaning of the term
“art.”
Cicero divided arts into those which only com-
prehend things (animo cernunt) and
those which make
them (Academica II 7, 22); today we
consider the first
category as sciences, not as arts.
So “art” in the original meaning of the word em-
braced
more than it does in our times, and at the same
time
it embraced less: it excluded poetry. Poetry was
supposed to lack the characteristic trait of art:
it
seemed not to be governed by rules; on the contrary,
it seemed to
be a matter of inspiration, of individual
creativeness. The Greeks saw a
kinship between poetry
and prophecy rather than between poetry and art.
The
poet is a kind of bard, while the sculptor is a kind
of artisan.
The Greeks included music together with poetry in
the
sphere of inspiration. First, there was a psychologi-
cal affinity between the two arts; both were compre-
hended as acoustic productions, and
both were sup-
posed to have a
“manic” character, i.e., to be the
source of rapture.
Second, they were practiced jointly
since poetry was sung and music was
vocalized, and
since both were essential elements of
“mysteries.”
Before the ancient idea of art became modern, two
things were to happen:
poetry and music were to be
incorporated into art, while handicrafts and
sciences
were to be eliminated from it. The first happened
before the
end of antiquity. Poetry and music could
indeed be considered arts as soon
as their rules were
discovered. This happened early so far as music is
concerned: since the Pythagoreans found the mathe-
matical laws of acoustic harmony, music has been
considered as a
branch of knowledge as well as an art.
It was more difficult to include poetry in the arts.
The initial step was
made by Plato: he admitted that
there are two kinds of poetry; the poetry
springing
from poetical frenzy and the poetry resulting from
literary
skill, in short, “manic” and
“technical” poetry.
The second is art, the first is
not. Plato however con-
sidered only the
first as true poetry. Aristotle made
the next step by supplying so many
rules of poetry
that for him and for his successors there could be no
doubt that poetry is an art. It is an imitative art:
“the
poet is an imitator just like the painter or other
maker
of likenesses,” Aristotle said (Poetics 1460b 8).
On the contrary, crafts and sciences were not
ex-
cluded in the classical Greek era from the
realm of
the arts. Neither were they in the Hellenistic period,
in the
Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance—the early,
classical idea of
art survived for more than two thou-
sand
years. Our idea of art is a comparatively modern
invention.
In antiquity numerous attempts were made to clas-
sify the arts; all of them classified the arts in the broad-
est sense of the word, by no means the
fine arts alone.
The first classification had been originated by the
Sophists. Their work was continued by Plato and
Aristotle and by the
thinkers of the Hellenistic and
Roman period.
1. The Sophists distinguished two categories of arts;
arts cultivated for the sake of their utility and
those
cultivated for the pleasure they offer. In
other words,
they differentiated arts into those which are necessary
in life and those which are a source of entertainment.
This classification
was widely accepted. In the Hel-
lenistic
epoch it appeared sometimes in a more de-
veloped form; Plutarch supplemented the useful and
pleasurable arts
with a third category, that of the arts
cultivated for the sake of perfection. He regarded,
however, as perfect arts, not the fine arts, but the
sciences
(e.g., mathematics or astronomy).
2. Plato based his classification on the fact that
different arts are differently related to real objects;
some produce
things, as does architecture, and others
imitate them, as does painting.
This opposition be-
tween
“productive” and “imitative” arts
became pop-
ular in antiquity and continued to
be so in modern
times. Another Platonic classification distinguished
arts
which produce real things, e.g., architecture,
and those
which produce only images, e.g., painting.
For Plato,
however, this classification was in fact the same as the
former. Imitations of things are no more than images
of them.
Aristotle's classification of the arts differed little from
Plato's; he
divided all arts into those which complete
nature
and those which imitate it. This was his excellent
formula for the Platonic division.
3. The classification most generally accepted in an-
cient times divided arts into
“liberal” and “vulgar.”
It was
an invention of the Greeks, though it is known
mainly in the Latin
terminology as artes liberales and
artes vulgares. More than any other ancient classifica-
tions it was dependent on
social conditions in Greece.
It was based on the fact that certain arts
require physi-
cal effort from which others are
free, a difference that
to ancient Greeks seemed particularly important.
It
was the expression of an aristocratic regime and of the
Greek
contempt for physical work and preference for
activities of the mind. The
liberal or intellectual arts
were considered not only a distinct but also a
superior
group. Note, however, that the Greeks considered
geometry and
astronomy as liberal arts, although they
are now considered sciences.
It is doubtful whether it is possible to indicate who
was the inventor of
the division of the arts into liberal
and vulgar; we know only the names of
some later
thinkers who accepted it; Galen, the famous physician
of
the second century A.D., was the one who developed
it most fully. Later the
Greeks called the liberal arts
also “encyclic” arts.
The word, almost a synonym of
the modern word
“encyclopedic,” etymologically
meant
“forming a circle” and signified the circle of
arts
obligatory for an educated man.
Some ancient scholars added other groups of arts
to liberal and vulgar arts;
for instance, Seneca added
those which instruct (pueriles) and those which amuse
(ludicrae). In
doing so he fused, in fact, two different
classifications: that of Galen
and that of the Sophists;
his fourfold division was more complete, but
lacked
unity.
4. Another ancient classification is known from
Quintilian. This Roman rhetorician of the first century
A.D. (inspired by
an idea of Aristotle's) divided the arts
arts which consist only in studying things. He called
them “theoretical” arts giving astronomy as an exam-
ple. The second group embraced the arts consisting
solely in an action (actus) of the artist without leaving
a product; Quintilian called them “practical” arts and
gave dance as an example. The third group embraced
the arts producing objects which continue to exist when
the actions of the artist have ended; he called them
“poietic,” which in Greek means “productive”; paint-
ing served him as an example.
This classification had several variants. Dionysius
Thrax, a writer of the
Hellenistic epoch, added
“apotelestic” arts, which
meant “finished” or “carried
out to its
end”: this was, however, only a different name
for
“poietic” arts. Lucius Tarrhaeus, the grammarian,
added to the practical and apotelestic arts “organic”
arts, i.e., arts which use instruments or tools (organon
being the Greek name for tool), as playing a flute does.
In this way he enriched the classification but deprived
it of its unity.
5. Cicero used several classifications of the arts,
most
of them based on the old Greek tradition, including
the one which
seems to be relatively original. Taking
as the basis of the division the
importance of the vari-
ous arts, he divided
them into major (artes maximae),
median (mediocres), and minor (minores).
To the major
arts, according to Cicero, belonged political and mili-
tary arts; to the second class belonged
purely intel-
lectual arts, i.e., sciences,
but also poetry and elo-
quence; to the third
class belonged painting, sculpture,
music, acting, athletics. Thus he
considered fine arts
as minor arts.
6. At the end of antiquity Plotinus undertook once
again the task of classifying arts. This most complete
classification
distinguished five groups of arts: (1) arts
which produce physical objects,
as architecture does;
(2) arts which help nature, like medicine and agricul-
ture; (3) arts which imitate nature,
like painting; (4)
arts which improve or ornament human action, like
rhetoric and politics; and (5) purely intellectual arts,
like geometry.
This classification, which may seem to
be lacking a principium divisionis (“principle of divi-
sion”) is in fact based on the
degree of spirituality in
the arts; it forms a hierarchy, beginning with
purely
(as he supposed) material architecture and ending with
purely
spiritual geometry.
Let us summarize: Greek and Roman antiquity knew
at least six
classifications of the arts, most of them
having several variants: (1) The
classifications of the
Sophists were based on the aims of arts; (2) the classifi-
cation of Plato and Aristotle—on the relation between
arts and reality; (3) the
classification of Galen—on
physical effort required by arts; (4) the classification of
Quintilian—on products of the
arts; (5) the classification
of Cicero—on value of the arts, and (6) the classifica-
tion of Plotinus—on the degree of their spirituality.
All of these were general divisions of all human skills
and abilities; none
being just a division of fine arts.
What is more, none singled out the
“fine arts,” and
none divided arts in the broader
sense into fine arts
and crafts. On the contrary, fine arts were
distributed,
and divided into opposing categories.
(1) Thus, in the classification of the Sophists archi-
tecture was considered a useful art, while painting
was
an art cultivated for pleasure's sake. (2) Plato and
Aristotle
considered architecture a productive and
painting an imitative art. (3)
Liberal (encyclic) arts
embraced music and rhetoric, but did not
include
architecture or painting. (4) In Quintilian's classifica-
tion dance and music were
“practical” arts, while
architecture and painting
were poietic (apotelestic)
arts. (5) None of the liberal arts were
considered by
Cicero as major arts; only poetry and rhetoric were
supposed to be median arts, and all other fine arts to
be minor arts. (6)
In Plotinus' classification fine arts
were divided between the first and
the third groups.
Consequently, antiquity never did face the possi-
bility that fine arts could form a distinct group of arts.
There
may be a certain affinity between our notion
of fine arts and the notion of
liberal arts, of arts for
entertainment's sake, of imitative arts, of
“poietic” art;
however, all these ancient notions
were broader than
the notion of fine arts and, at the same time, in
some
respects, narrower. Some of the liberal arts, some of
the
entertaining arts, and some of the productive arts,
not all of them
however, belonged indeed to the group
we call “fine
arts.” Neither freedom, nor entertainment,
nor imitation, nor
productiveness were the properties
by which arts in the modern, narrower
meaning could
be defined; imitation came relatively nearest to being
such a property. The historian is tempted to believe
that the ancients
faced all reasonable possibilities of
classifying the arts except the
division into fine arts
and handicrafts.
II. THE MIDDLE AGES
The Middle Ages inherited the ancient idea of art
and made use of it
theoretically and practically. Art
was considered as a habitus of the practical reason.
Thomas Aquinas defined art as an
“ordering of reason”
and Duns Scotus as
“the right idea of what is to be
produced” (ars est recta ratio factibilium, Col. I, n. 19),
or as “the ability to produce based on real
principles”
(ars est habitus cum vera
ratione factivus; Opus
Oxoniense, I, d. 38, n. 5). Medieval
art was indeed
governed by fixed canons and by rules of the guilds.
Hugh of Saint Victor said: “Art can be said to be a
dici potest scientia, quae praeceptis regulisque consistit;
Didascalicon, II). This medieval idea of art embraced
handicrafts and sciences as well as fine arts. Liberal
arts were now considered as the arts par excellence,
the arts proper; “art” without an adjective meant:
liberal art. The seven liberal arts were logic, rhetoric,
grammar, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music
(including acoustics); they were—according to our
understanding—sciences, not arts.
However, the Middle Ages were interested in non-
liberal arts as well; they did not depreciate them any
longer by
calling them “vulgar” but called them “me-
chanical arts.” Since the
twelfth century Scholastics
had tried to classify these arts and made a
point of
distinguishing seven of them, in symmetry with the
seven
traditional liberal arts, as did Radulphus Ardens
in his
“Speculum Universale” (see Grabmann). So also
did
Hugh of Saint Victor, who divided the mechanical
arts into lanificium (supplying men with wearing ap-
parel), armatura
(supplying men with shelter and tools),
agricultura, venatio (both supplying food),
navigatio,
medicina, theatrica. This was
the major contribution
of the Middle Ages to the classification of the
arts. Two
of those seven arts were similar to modern
“fine” arts,
namely armatura,
which embraced architecture, and
theatrica or the art of entertainment (a peculiar medi-
eval concept).
Music was considered a liberal art, being based on
mathematics. Poetry was a
kind of philosophy or
prophecy, or prayer or confession, and by no
means
an art. Painting and sculpture were never listed as arts,
either
liberal or mechanical. Still they certainly were
arts, after all, as
abilities based on rules; why then were
they never mentioned? It was
because they could have
been classified only as mechanical arts,
appreciated
only when useful; the utility of painting and sculpture
seemed insignificant. This shows the great change
which has taken place
since; these arts which we con-
sider as arts
in the strict sense, the scholastics did not
think worthy of being
mentioned at all.
III. THE RENAISSANCE
The classical idea of art and the traditional classifi-
cations of the arts were retained in the
Renaissance.
The philosopher Ramus, as well as the lexicographer
Goclenius, repeated Galen's definition of art verbatim.
Benedetto Varchi, a
major authority on classification
of the arts, in his Della Maggioranza delle arti (1549),
divided the arts, as
did the Sophists, into those which
are produced by necessity, for utility,
and for enter-
tainment (per necessità, per utilità e per
dilettazione);
like Galen, into liberali e
volgari; like Quintilian, into
theoretical and practical
(fattive e attive); like Seneca,
into entertaining, jocose, and instructing youth (ludicre,
giocose e puerili); like Plato, into
those which make
use of nature and those which do not; like Cicero,
into
major (architettoniche) and minor (subalternate) arts.
However, the status of architecture, sculpture,
painting, music, and poetry
changed greatly: these arts
were now so much more appreciated than other
arts,
that to single them out conceptually became a matter
of course.
In order to achieve this, it was necessary
to realize not only what
separates the arts from handi-
crafts and
from sciences, but also what binds them
together. This became a major
achievement of the
Renaissance: it was not a proper classification, but
a
preparatory operation, the integration of fine
arts. It
had to be carried out on several conceptual levels.
1. First, general ideas of particular arts had to be
formed. Neither a general idea nor a general term of
sculpture existed at the beginning of the
Renaissance.
The term “sculpture” had a narrower
meaning, it
meant only sculpture in wood. To denote those, whom
we
call “sculptors,” Poliziano had to use five terms;
statuarii, caelatores, sculptores, fictores, and
encausti,
meaning those who used, respectively,
stone, metal,
wood, clay, and wax. After 1500 the term
“sculptor”
already embraced all five of them. A
similar integration
occurred in painting and architecture.
2. A general idea of plastic art was
also lacking. In
antiquity and the Middle Ages architecture was con-
sidered rather a mechanical and
utilitarian art and
seemed to be unrelated to sculpture and painting.
In
the sixteenth century it was first noticed that all three
of them
are similarly based on drawing (disegno): G.
Vasari
as well as V. Danti started to consider them as
one group and called them
the arti del disegno (“arts
of
drawing”).
3. A further integration was necessary to classify
“arts of drawing” together with music and poetry. A
general idea which would embrace all of them did not
exist. The integration
began in the fifteenth century,
but it took time before the result was
satisfactory. The
affinity of those arts seemed certain, but the principle
that would include all of them and exclude
the crafts
was lacking; since the Quattrocento diverse principles
were
suggested to fill this gap.
Ingenious Arts.
The Florentine humanist of the
fifteenth century, C. G. Manetti,
suggested calling them
ingenious arts because they are produced by the
spirit
(ingenium) and for the spirit. This
suggestion did not,
however, add very much to the traditional
opposition
of liberal and mechanical arts.
Musical Arts.
Marsilio Ficino, the leader of the
Florentine Academy, wrote:
“It is music that inspires
the works of all creators; orators,
poets, painters,
sculptors, architects.” He continued to call
those arts
proper name would have been “musical arts.” His idea
was never published but only expressed in letters and
therefore it never won a more general recognition.
Noble Arts.
G. P. Capriano in his De vera poetica
(1555) singled out the same group of arts, but applied
a different
principle; their nobility. They are “noble
arts,” he
said, as they are the object of our noblest
senses and because their
products are durable.
Commemorative Arts.
L. Castelvetro in his Poetica
d'Aristotele
vulgarizzata (1570) contrasted crafts with
arts on a
different basis. While crafts produce useful
and necessary objects, the
function of painting, sculp-
ture, and poetry
is to keep things in human memory.
Metaphorical Arts.
On the other hand E. Tesauro,
in Cannochiale
Aristotelico (1655) tried to convince his
readers that
metaphorical speech, parlare figurato,
constitutes the essence of these arts and distinguishes
them from crafts.
This was a point of view peculiar
to the manneristic trend in aesthetics of
the seven-
teenth century.
Figurative Arts.
Some theoreticians of the seven-
teenth century supposed that the peculiarity of this
group of arts
consists rather in their figurative, pictorial
character, since even poetry
is ut pictura. Especially
C. F. Menestrier in
his Philosophie des images (1682),
stressed
that all these arts—poetry not less than paint-
ing and sculpture—travaillent en images (“work in
images”).
Fine Arts.
The idea that such arts as poetry, painting,
and music are
distinguished by beauty was very seldom
uttered before the eighteenth
century (e.g., in the
sixteenth century by Francesco de Hollanda, who
called them boas artes). As the traditional idea
of
beauty was very broad, successful works of industry
and handicraft
were also called beautiful. However,
the narrower meaning of the work
permitted one to
separate poetry, music, dance, painting, sculpture,
and
architecture as a peculiar group of beaux
arts, “fine
arts.” This is often believed
to be an achievement of
the eighteenth century. But as early as 1675 the
out-
standing French architect F.
Blondel, in his Cours
d'architecture said
that what these arts, called by earlier
writers
“noble,” “commemorative,”
“metaphorical,”
etc., have in common is harmony.
Although harmony meant certainly the same as
beauty, Blondel failed to call
those arts beautiful. On
the other hand, C. Batteux in his Beaux arts réduits
à un seul
principe (1747), used this term and included
it in the title of
his book. This was conclusive; the
principle of beauty and the name
“fine arts” were now
generally adopted (though
Batteux himself saw the
common link of those arts not so much in their
concern
with beauty, as in the fact that their purpose is pleasure
and their method is imitation). However, a proper
name came to
be as important as a proper concept
for the progress of aesthetic theory.
Elegant and Agreeable Arts.
A few years earlier
different names were proposed for beautiful arts.
In
1744 G. B. Vico suggested “agreeable arts” and in
the
same year J. Harris recommended “elegant arts.”
However, Batteux's terminology has prevailed. The
“system of fine
arts” was established, embracing poetry,
music, theater, dance,
painting, sculpture, and archi-
tecture.
Since the fifteenth century it had seemed cer-
tain that these arts formed a peculiar group of arts.
However, it
took centuries before what unites this
group and what separates it from
crafts and science
was made clear (see P. O. Kristeller [1951-52]). Para-
doxically Batteux contributed to the
acceptance of the
“System of the arts” although his
own system was
different: he divided arts (in the broad, old sense)
into
mechanical arts, fine arts, and intermediate arts (archi-
tecture and oratory).
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-
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.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The most important though indirect contribution to the
history of the
classification of the arts is: P. O. Kristeller,
“The Modern
System of the Arts: A Study in the History
of Aesthetics,”
Journal of the History of Ideas,
12, 4 (1951),
496-527, and 13, 1 (1952), 17-46. W. Tatarkiewicz dealt
with the subject in
The History of Aesthetics, 3 vols. (Polish
ed., Wroclaw, 1960-67; English ed., The Hague, 1970);
idem,
“Art and Poetry, a Contribution to the History of
Ancient
Aesthetics,” Studia Philosophica,
2 (1939); idem,
“Classification of the
Arts in Antiquity,” Journal of the
History
of Ideas,
24, 2 (1963), 231-40.
Classical and medieval sources are: Radulphus Ardens,
in M. Grabmann,
Geschichte der scholastischen
Methode,
(1909), 1, 254. Aristotle, Poetics, passim, and Physica, 199a
oratore, III, 7, 26. Galen, Protrepticus, 14, (Marquardt, 129).
Isocrates, Panegiricus, 40. Plato, Republic, 601D; Sophist,
219A, 235D. Plotinus, Enneads, IV, 4, 31; V, 9, 11. Quin-
tilian, Institutio oratoria, II, 18, 1. Hugh of Saint Victor,
Didascalicon, II, in Migne, 176, cols. 751, 760. Seneca,
Epistolae, 88, 21.
References for modern classification of the arts: C. Bat-
teux, Les beaux arts
réduits à un seul principe (1747). F.
Blondel, Cours d'architecture (1675), pp. 169,
783. G. P.
Capriano, De vera poetica
(1555). L. Castelvetro, Poetica
d'Aristotele
vulgarizzata (1570); Correzione d'alcune
cose del
dialogo della lingua de B. Varchi (1572), p. 72.
V. Danti,
Trattato della perfetta proporzione, (1567),
in P. Barocchi,
Trattati d'arte del Cinquecento, Vol. 1 (Bari,
1960).
D'Alembert, Oeuvres (1853), p. 99. M.
Dessoir, Ästhetik und
allgemeine
Kunstwissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1906). M. Ficino,
Commentarium in Convivium (1561). J. W. Goethe,
review
of Sulzer's paper, Werke, (Weimar, 1896),
37, 206. J. Harris,
Three Treatises (1744), p. 25. G. W. F. Hegel,
“Vorlesungen
über die
Ästhetik,” Heidelberg Lectures,
1818-29 (East
Berlin, 1955). J. Hippisley, The Polite Arts or a Dissertation
on Poetry, Painting, Musick,
Architecture, and Eloquence
(London, 1749), Ch. 2. I. Kant,
Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790),
p.
51. G. Manetti, De dignitate et excellentia
hominis, (1532),
3, 131. M. Mendelssohn, Betrachtungen über die Quellen
der schönen
Künste und Wissenschaften (1757). F. Menes-
trier, Philosophie des images (1683). A. Poliziano,
Panepiste-
mon
(1491). J. G. Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie der
schönen
Künste (1771, 1774). E.
Tesauro, Canocchiale aristotelico
(1655),
p. 74. B. Varchi, Della maggioranza delle Arti
(1549),
reprinted in P. Barocchi, Trattati d'arte
del Cinquecento, Vol.
1 (Bari, 1960). C. Vasari, Le vite, ed. G. Milanesi (Florence,
1878,
1906), 1, 168. G. B. Vico, Scienza nuova
(1744), p.
25. B. Weinberg, A History of Literary
Criticism in the
Italian Renaissance (Chicago, 1961), contains
important
references on the sixteenth century.
W. TATARKIEWICZ
[See also Classicism in Literature; Classification of theSciences; Education; Mimesis; Music and Science; Music
as a Divine Art; Naturalism in Art; Platonism; Renaissance
Humanism; Rhetoric; Style; Ut pictura poesis.]
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