It is likely that the very first artifacts of human invention were created
in the absence of an æsthetic sensibility. Their design knew no
constraints save the fulfillment of a very specific function: kill an
animal, start a fire, keep out the wind and rain. Our ability to create
such a wide variety of implements - each designed to aid in some specific
task - is what accounts for our evolutionary success, and we can imagine
that it must have been precisely this enormous functional advantage that
originally drew our ancestors to the practice of invention. But we can
also imagine that these first inventors were almost at once
dissatisfied with the purely practical nature of their creations. We can
imagine, for instance, that the first makers of earthen pots and jugs were
immediately seized by the idea of carving designs into the vessels before
they were fired. Or that the first makers of clothing were drawn, almost
intuitively, to decorate their garments with beads and stitchery. We can
imagine also that everyone, not just the inventors themselves, immediately
recognized the superior value of a beautifully decorated water jug as
opposed to an undecorated one.
But what is it that makes the well decorated
vessel better than the undecorated one? Clearly its value does not lie in
its capacity to perform the function for which it was originally designed:
it is not a better water carrier in virtue of its being decorated. Rather,
its value lies in its ability to simultaneously perform two functions: in
addition to carrying water, it also performs the function of eliciting a
positive æsthetic response - it performs the function of being
beautiful.
This last statement deserves clarification. We are often led to think that
form and function are distinct attributes of a thing - that
“form follows function,” or that a thing
can do its job without looking good. And, of course, there is a sense in
which this is true. A Volvo will certainly get you around town despite its
bad looks; so in this sense it performs its
“function” without looking good. But to
leave it at that is to suggest that looking good - having good form
- is not an important function of a thing. We have already said that human
beings were drawn to the practice of invention in order to better fulfill
their various needs, and once we recognize that among these needs is the
need for positive æsthetic experience, we see that there is a sense
in which the Volvo is less functional than, say, a Porsche. It is less
functional inasmuch as it fails to perform the function of providing us
with a positive æsthetic experience. In other words, form doesn't
just follow function, form is a function.
But is it really a necessary function? Do human beings really have a
need for positive æsthetic experience? The answer to this
question depends on what we mean by “human
being.” Certainly the human being qua biological
organism requires little more than food, water and appropriate protection
from the elements to survive. But to be human in a more important sense
requires much more than this: to be fully human is to be part of a complex
web of social interactions and relationships, to experience a wide spectrum
of emotions, and to think self-consciously about ourselves and the world
around us. And to be human is to experience the æsthetic quality of
the world: to recognize some things as beautiful and others as ugly, to be
pleased by certain combinations of shape and color, or certain sounds, and
repulsed by others. Indeed, this capacity for æsthetic experience,
perhaps more than any other, singles us out as unique among the inhabitants
of this planet: almost all non-human animals exhibit some degree of social
interaction, many appear to have rich emotional lives, and a few may even
possess a kind of self-awareness - but nowhere will we find a dolphin
or a dog or a chimpanzee that is moved by Van Gogh and bored by Picasso.
It is not enough, of course, to merely possess the capacity for
æsthetic experience. Just as one might possess the capacity for
positive social interaction without ever engaging in such interaction, so
might one possess the capacity for positive æsthetic experience
without ever having such experience. It is not the capacity for social
interaction or æsthetic experience that makes us human, but rather
the fulfillment of such capacities. We understand this readily enough in
the case of social interaction: a life without meaningful human contact is
hardly a fully human life. This is perhaps less obvious, to some, in the
case of æsthetic experience. But we need only imagine a world devoid
of such experience in order to understand the profound rôle it plays
in our humanity. Indeed, such worlds already exist: inside our prisons and
mental institutions, where form has been forsaken for some other function,
or where its absence is part of a conscious effort to undermine or deny the
humanity of those who inhabit these worlds. These are worlds in which none
of us would choose to live, and not merely because their inhabitants are
confined. The horror of the prison and the hospital is the product of a
distinct æsthetic, or more precisely: it is the product of the
absence of any æsthetic whatsoever - an anti-æsthetic.
But this anti-æsthetic is not confined to our prisons and hospitals.
We find it wherever makers of physical objects have forgotten the
æsthetic function of the things they make. We find it in the
sprawling housing projects of our urban centers, in the 1960's cement-block
architecture of our college campuses, in the endless tracts of identical,
vinyl-sided suburban homes, and in the windowless, aluminum pole-barns that
have sprung up to provide cheap real-estate for retail stores. Every year,
every day, every minute, the anti-æsthetic infects a new portion of
our world. And when the anti-æsthetic has finally taken over
- when we have at last completely forgotten what our earliest ancestors
knew about the importance of beauty - then our whole world will be as a
prison, and we will live like prisoners, deprived of our humanity.
The Director
June, 1997
Nicholson, Georgia
