The Game of Art

On a hill overlooking Los Angeles, my sister Megan and I sat talking about an artist. Just inside, a little girl no more than seven years old was sketching Monet's Rouen Cathedral in the Morning. The security guard told us she arrived in the morning and sketched her way around the entire Impressionism & Post-Impressionism room. She was sketching every room in the Getty. Megan and I could not believe the innate talent of that seven year old. Until I remembered my art history. Impressionism started in the 19th century. If the girl was sketching room-by-room, she had days of sketching behind her. She wasn't just an artist because of her talent, she was an artist because of her training.

Most people in an art museum go in chronological order like our seven year old artist, from ancient Greek & Roman busts all the way through Campbell's Soup Cans. Somewhere along the way, it's easy to ask, "When did art get weird? When did Michelangelo's world give way to Mark Rothko's?"  Most Fine Arts majors gets asked a corresponding question. "What do you do with an art degree? How is it useful?" It seems today that the game of art is relegated to those who work in museums and design aesthetically-pleasing condos. Is art a game only for those who enjoy it or is art a tool to be used for something more practical?

So, I ask, "Is art used or is art enjoyed?" To begin an answer, I turn to one of my "go-to" advisors.

"So then, there are some things which are meant to be enjoyed, others which are meant to be used...Enjoyment, after all, consists in clinging to something lovingly for its own sake, while use consists in referring what has come your way to what your love aims at obtaining, provided, that is, it deserves to be loved. De Doctrina Christiana Book I

Augustine divides things in our world into two categories: things used & things enjoyed. His context concerns interpretation, how we come to understand and use the words available to us. So, notice Augustine's definition of enjoyment. "...to something lovingly for its own sake." It seems that most people do not cling to art lovingly for its own sake. On the other hand, people have laid down their lives to protect works of art. As a general rule, when someone is willing to die for something or someone, it is worth the time to learn why. I now clarify my question, "Is art used to enjoy something worth loving or is art itself worth loving?" Here, I turn to the task of interpreting works of art to shed light on the game of art.

Imagine if someone tossed a basketball into a football game. From the crowd, you seeing half the players dribbling and the other half taking a 5-yard penalty. The spectator would be rightly confused! That is what many experience in an art museum sometime between Rubens & Picasso. Hans-Georg Gadamer saw the division in art between "Classical" & "Modern" art. He saw this division, and in The Relevance of the Beautiful, he attempted to find the unity between past & present. Essentially, Gadamer's project was to clarify the game of art through how we interpret works of art.

One way Gadamer clarified the game of art was in the image of "Play." Watching a child play often does not make immediate sense. The back & forth, to & fro movements may not make sense until you ask the child what they're playing at. The answer they give may simply be, "I dunno." Then they get right back at it. It makes sense to them, and once you catch on to what they're doing, you may start playing too. For Gadamer, "Play" is the experience of some kind of intentional movement that draws the people playing out of themselves and into the game, even if the game has no immediate purpose. Once you understand the game, you become a participant. And conversely, only when you participate in the game can you understand its appeal. That's the kind of game art is. What the artist thinks is not the point. (The work of art is more than the self-expression of the artist.) The tools & equipment are not the point. (The work of art may be a graphite sketch or an oil painting.) The rules are not the point. (Just look at Picasso.) But in every particular work of art, there is something universal that, once you begin to understand the particular, you begin to see the universal. (The Mona Lisa is not just a painting of a lady.) The game of art draws you out of the work into the universal enfleshed in the particular. You go from being an onlooker to a participant.

For Gadamer, the process of interpreting a work of art does not change. The beautiful work of art is used, but not separated from the universal experience/encounter the work points to. It turns out art did get weird, but it is still playing the same game. It turns out that art is useful for drawing anyone from a particular work into a universal encounter with something timeless. What could be more universal than that which is worth loving for its own sake? So, after asking Augustine & Gadamer, I answer that works of art are used to enjoy things worth loving when we move from interpreting the particular work to appreciating the universal beauty beyond the work. That's the game of art. That seven year old girl at the Getty was learning how to play the game better. May you and I appreciate the particulars of a work of art, enter the world of the creation, and find ourselves transformed by what is worth loving. You have the capacity to enjoy art. And nothing is more useful than loving well.

-HGM