pleases the ear by pure sound; then, as arts all tied to the task of imitation, sculpture, painting and poetry, taken in progressive order according to the progressing comprehensiveness of their several resources.
The thinker on these subjects has, moreover, to consider the
enumeration and classification of the lesser or subordinate fine
arts. Whole clusters or families of these occur to the
mind at once; such as dancing, an art subordinate
to music, but quite different in kind; acting, an art
Place of the minor or subordinate
fine arts.
auxiliary to poetry, from which in kind it differs no
less; eloquence in all kinds, so far as it is studied and
not merely spontaneous; and among the arts which fashion or
dispose material objects, embroidery and the weaving of patterns,
pottery, glassmaking, goldsmith’s work and jewelry, joiner’s work,
gardening (according to the claim of some), and a score of other
dexterities and industries which are more than mere dexterities
and industries because they add elements of beauty and pleasure
to elements of serviceableness and use. To decide whether any
given one of these has a right to the title of fine art, and, if so,
to which of the greater fine arts it should be thought of as
appended and subordinate, or between which two of them
intermediate, is often no easy task.
The weak point of all classifications of the kind of which we have above given examples is that each is intended to be final, and to serve instead of any other. The truth is, that the relations between the several fine arts are much too complex for any single classification to bear No one classification final or sufficient. this character. Every classification of the fine arts must necessarily be provisional, according to the particular class of relations which it keeps in view. And for practical purposes it is requisite to bear in mind not one classification but several. Fixing our attention, not upon complicated or problematical relations between the various arts, but only upon their simple and undisputed relations, and giving the first place in our consideration to the five greater arts of architecture, sculpture, painting, music and poetry, we shall find at least three principal modes in which every fine art either resembles or differs from the rest.
1. The Shaping and the Speaking Arts (or Arts of Form and Arts of Utterance, or Arts of Space and Arts of Time).—Each of the greater arts either makes something or not which can be seen and handled. The arts which make something which can be seen and handled are architecture, sculpture and painting. First classification: the shaping and the speaking arts. In the products or results of all these arts external matter is in some way or another manually put together, fashioned or disposed. But music and poetry do not produce any results of this kind. What music produces is something that can be heard, and what poetry produces is something that can be either heard or read—which last is a kind of ideal hearing, having for its avenue the eye instead of the ear, and for its material, written signs for words instead of the spoken words themselves. Now what the eye sees from any one point of view, it sees all at once; in other words, the parts of anything we see fill or occupy not time but space, and reach us from various points in space at a single simultaneous perception. If we are at the proper distance we see at one glance a house from the ground to the chimneys, a statue from head to foot, and in a picture at once the foreground and background, and everything that is within the four corners of the frame. There is, indeed, this distinction to be drawn, that in walking round or through a temple, church, house or any other building, new parts and proportions of the building unfold themselves to view; and the same thing happens in walking round a statue or turning it on a turntable: so that the spectator, by his own motions and the time it takes to effect them, can impart to architecture and sculpture something of the character of time arts. But their products, as contemplated from any one point of view, are in themselves solid, stationary and permanent in space. Whereas the parts of anything we hear, or, reading, can imagine that we hear, fill or occupy not space at all but time, and can only reach us from various points in time through a continuous series of perceptions, or, in the case of reading, of images raised by words in the mind. We have to wait, in music, while one note follows another in a theme, and one theme another in a movement; and in poetry, while one line with its images follows another in a stanza, and one stanza another in a canto, and so on. It is a convenient form of expressing both aspects of this difference between the two groups of arts, to say that architecture, sculpture and painting are arts which give shape to things in space, or, more briefly, shaping arts; and music and poetry arts which give utterance to things in time, or, more briefly, speaking arts. These simple terms of the shaping and the speaking arts (the equivalent of the Ger. bildende und redende Künste) are not usual in English; but they seem appropriate and clear; the simplest alternatives for their use is to speak of the manual and the vocal arts, or the arts of space and the arts of time. This is practically, if not logically, the most substantial and vital distinction upon which a classification of the fine arts can be based. The arts which surround us in space with stationary effects for the eye, as the house we live in, the pictures on the walls, the marble figure in the vestibule, are stationary, hold a different kind of place in our experience—not a greater or a higher place, but essentially a different place—from the arts which provide us with transitory effects in time, effects capable of being awakened for the ear or mind at any moment, as a symphony is awakened by playing and an ode by reading, but lying in abeyance until we bid that moment come, and passing away when the performance or the reading is over. Such, indeed, is the practical force of the distinction that in modern usage the expression fine art, or even art, is often used by itself in a sense which tacitly excludes music and poetry, and signifies the group of manual or shaping arts alone.
As between three of the five greater arts and the other two, the
distinction on which we are now dwelling is complete. Buildings,
statues, pictures, belong strictly to sight and space; to
time and to hearing, real through the ear, or ideal through
the mind in reading, belong music and poetry. Among
Intermediate class of arts
of motion.
the lesser or subordinate arts, however, there are several
in which this distinction finds no place, and which produce,
in space and time at once, effects midway between the
stationary or stable, and the transitory or fleeting. Such is the
dramatic art, in which the actor makes with his actions and gestures,
or several actors make with the combination of their different
actions and gestures, a kind of shifting picture, which appeals to the
eyes of the witnesses while the sung or spoken words of the drama
appeal to their ears; thus making of them spectators and auditors
at once, and associating with the pure time art of words the mixed
time-and-space art of bodily movements. As all movement whatsoever
is necessarily movement through space, and takes time to
happen, so every other fine art which is wholly or in part an act of
movement partakes in like manner of this double character. Along
with acting thus comes dancing. Dancing, when it is of the mimic
character, may itself be a kind of acting; historically, indeed, the
dancer’s art was the parent of the actor’s; whether apart from or in
conjunction with the mimic element, dancing is an art in which
bodily movements obey, accompany, and, as it were, express or
accentuate in space the time effects of music. Eloquence or oratory
in like manner, so far as its power depends on studied and premeditated
gesture, is also an art which to some extent enforces its
primary appeal through the ear in time by a secondary appeal
through the eye in space. So much for the first distinction, that
between the shaping or space arts and the speaking or time arts,
with the intermediate and subordinate class of arts which, like
acting, dancing, oratory, add to the pure time element a mixed
time-and-space element. These last can hardly be called shaping
arts, because it is his own person, and not anything outside himself,
which the actor, the dancer, the orator disposes or adjusts; they
may perhaps best be called arts of motion, or moving arts.
2. The Imitative and the Non-Imitative Arts.—Each art either does or does not represent or imitate something which exists already in nature. Of the five greater fine arts, those which thus represent objects existing in nature are sculpture, painting and poetry. Those which do not represent anything so Second classification: the imitative and non-imitative arts. existing are music and architecture. On this principle we get a new grouping. Two shaping or space arts and one speaking or time art now form the imitative group of sculpture, painting and poetry; while one space art and one time art form the non-imitative group of music and architecture. The mixed space-and-time arts of the actor, and of the dancer, so far as he or she is also a mimic, belong, of course, by their very name and nature, to the imitative class.
It was the imitative character of the fine arts which chiefly occupied the attention of Aristotle. But in order to understand the art theories of Aristotle it is necessary to bear in mind the very different meanings which the idea of imitation bore to his mind and bears to ours. For Aristotle the The imitative functions of art according to Aristotle. idea of imitation or representation (mimēsis) was extended so as to denote the expressing, evoking or making manifest of anything whatever, whether material objects or ideas or feelings. Music and dancing, by which utterance or expression is given to emotions that may be quite detached from all definite ideas or images, are thus for him varieties of imitation. He says, indeed, most music and dancing, as if he was aware that there were exceptions, but he does not indicate what the exceptions are; and under the head of imitative music, he distinctly reckons some kinds of instrumental music without words. But in our own more restricted usage, to imitate means to copy, mimic or represent some existing phenomenon, some definite reality of experience; and we can only call those imitative arts which bring before us such things, either directly by showing us their actual likeness, as sculpture does in solid form, and as painting does by means of lines and colours on a plane surface, or else indirectly, by calling up ideas or images of them in the mind, as poetry and literature do by means of words. It is by a stretch of ordinary usage
