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Explain Paul Valery’s idea of art.In the essay of “The Idea of Art”, Paul Valery tries to investigate the art, its nature and characteristics.Valery starts his article by stating that art is “the ways of doing that involve voluntary actions or actions initiated by the will”. The desired result of an...

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Explain Paul Valery’s idea of art.

In the essay of “The Idea of Art”, Paul Valery tries to investigate the art, its nature and characteristics. Valery starts his article by stating that art is “the ways of doing that involve voluntary actions or actions initiated by the will”. The desired result of an art can be achieved through perception, training, or concentrated attention in the agent. We find art in everything; there is an art of breathing, walking or silence. The art is created by an artist. The art’s meaning, quality or value changes depending on what type of art it is and who is the artist. There arises confusion when it comes to identifying who is an artist. There are two characteristics of an artist: one is her/his singular, native aptitude, her/his inalienable personal gift. And others consist of what she/he has learnt or acquired through experience, which can be put to words and passed on to others. Hence, it can be said that “art can be learned, but not the whole art”. Overcoming this confusion is inevitable because the distinction between these two characteristics is easier to state than to discern in observing a particular case. Therefore it can be said that “Art is that quality of the way of doing (whatever its object may be) which is due to dissimilarity in the modes of operation and hence in the results- arising from the dissimilarity of the agents”. Then Valery comes to the second distinction that explains how it comes to designate the production and enjoyment of a certain species of works. He distinguished between works of skill which includes the production or operation of any kind and with a practical aim. And the other one is a work of art). However, Valery tries to focus on the essential characteristic of the latter. He wanted to see how do we know that an object is a work of art, or that a system of acts is performed with the view of art? To answer these questions, Valery examined the characteristics of work of art. He stated that the chief attribute to work of art can be termed as uselessness with certain considerations taken into account: Firstly, uselessness in impression and perception. It means we receive things from our senses that don't play a role in our life supporting system. For example, if a dog’s eye perceives a table, however the dog makes nothing of the visual image out of it. He, thus, annuls it at once. He doesn’t dwell on the perception. Secondly, in continuation of the idea of sensation uselessness can be explained in terms of the arbitrary. According to Valery, when we receive more sensation than necessary, we make our motor organs more combinations than we really need. In short, we use our extra to fashion something without any specific purpose. Thus, uselessness can be explained in terms of “useless sensation” and “arbitrary acts”. And according to Valery, “Art originated in the attempt to endow these sensations with a kind of utility and these acts with a kind of necessity”. However, this utility and necessity are by no means self-evident or universal because each individual judges or perceives things differently according to her/his taste. Valery stated that there are some useless impressions that may take hold of us and make us wish to prolong or renew them. Or they may lead us to expect other sensations of the same order that

will kind of satisfy the needs they have created. Anything sight, smell, or movement can increase our sensibility. Such actions, having sensibility as the origin and the goal, is clearly different from the actions of practical order because the latter responds to needs and impulses that are extinguished by satisfaction. For example, the sensation of hunger dies in a person as soon as they finish their food and the images that illustrate their needs are dispelled. However, according to Valery, this kind of sensation is different from exclusive sensibility when we talk about art. When it comes to art, the satisfaction we get when we create the art “resuscitates desires, response regenerates demands; possessed: in a word, sensation heightens and reproduces the expectation of sensation, and there is no distinct end, no definite limit, no conclusive action that can be directly halt this process of reciprocal stimulation.” He underlines that “to organize a system of perceptible things possessing this property of perceptual stimulation, that is an essential problem of Art; it's necessary, but far from sufficient, conditions”. Valery stated that we pass this elementary properties of excited retina to the most mobile parts of the body, even if these possibilities of movements and efforts has nothing to do with utility, has includes any number of associations between tactile sensations and muscular ones which fulfil the conditions of “reciprocal correspondence, resumption, or indefinite prolongation”. For instance, we feel about the object by touching the object with our hands, whether or not we recognize the object, we are “compelled or induced to repeat our enveloping maneuver indefinitely, we gradually lose our sense of arbitrary action and a certain sense of its necessity is born in us”. According to Valery, “there is a whole system of human activity that is quite negligible from the standpoint of the immediate preservation of the individual. Moreover it is opposed to intellectual activity proper, since it consists in a development of sensations tending to repeat or prolong what the intellect tends to eliminate or transcend- just as the intellect tends to abolish the auditive substance and structure of a discourse in order to arrive at its meaning”. On the other hand, Valery stated that this activity is opposed, in and of itself, to vacant idleness. He mentioned that “sensibility in its beginning and its end abhors vacuum” and react simultaneously against every shortage of stimuli. Whenever there is a gap between the activities of a person, there is an increasing tendency within the person to bring back the productivity, that is, the regular exchanges between “potentiality” and “activity” in the sensibility. This helps the person to overcome the absence and have a positive effect in her/his life. For example, a song that is suddenly composed in silence felt too keenly as a response or counterbalance the absence of excitation. It is also seen that sensibility is not just limited to responding, sometimes it demands and then produces for itself. And all these things are not just limited to sensation. In close observation, it is noticed that the production, the effects, and curious cyclic substitution of mental images, the same relation of contrast and symmetry is found and the same system of indefinitely repeated regeneration is found in specialized sensibility. These images can be complex, may develop over a period of time, may resemble the outside world or may sometimes combine with practical needs yet these images are described in terms of pure sensation. And what is more astonishing is that these images make us want again, to see or feel or hear again, to experience indefinitely. For example, the lover of glass painting would repeatedly do the glass painting again and again that

excites her/his sense of touch. Or the music lovers that want to listen to the song again and again or hum the tune that delight her/his mood. Valery stated that these elementary properties of sensibility have helped art to grow and produce prodigious outcomes over the years. This is possible “because of the contributions made by those of our faculties in which sensibility plays but secondary part”. Those abilities which are not useless and at least useful for our existence have been cultivated so that these abilities are better controlled by humans. And as a result art is benefitted from this advantage and created various techniques for the needs of practical life have given the artist their tools and methods. At the same time, intellect and its abstract instruments which are sometimes opposed to sensibility has given Art “the help, beneficial, or otherwise, of repeated and critically formed thoughts, constituting distinct, conscious operations, rich in forms and notations of admirable generality and power”. From these elementary properties of our sensibility man’s industry has derived prodigious results. The innumerable works of art produced over the ages, the diversity of means and methods, the variety of types represented by these instruments of the sensory and affective life, are wonderful to conceive. But this immense development was possible only because of the contribution made by those of our faculties in which sensibility plays but a secondary part. Those of our abilities which are not useless have been cultivated and given greater force or meticulousness by man. Man's control over matter has become stronger and more accurate than ever. Art has benefited from these advantages, and the various techniques created for the needs of practical life have given artists their tools and methods. On the other hand, the intellect and its abstract instruments have brought to Art the help, beneficial or otherwise, of repeated and critically formed thought, constituting distinct, conscious operations, rich in forms and notations of admirable generality and power. Art, considered as an activity at the present time, has been forced to submit to the conditions of our standardized social life. It has taken its place in the world economy. The production and consumption of works of art are no longer wholly independent of each other, but tend to be organized together. The career of the artist is becoming once again what it was in the day when he was looked upon as a practitioner, that is to say, a member of a recognized profession. In many countries the State is trying to administer the arts; it does what it can to "encourage" artists and takes charge of preserving their works. Art has its press, its domestic and foreign policy, its schools, its markets, and its stock markets; it even has its great savings banks, the museums, libraries, etc., which accumulate the enormous capital produced from century to century by the efforts of the “creative sensibility.”...