Burgeoning Aesthetic Theory
A map of the arts
Just when I thought I was done with theory, a new theory seems to be sprouting.
In the past, I’ve developed theory pertaining to the nature of the self, a theory of therapy modalities, a theory of symptomatology and character structure, and a number of other theories.
Given that in recent years I’ve been turning my attention to spirituality and music, perhaps it is appropriate that the new theory on my horizon is an aesthetic theory.
A few background elements:
One, I’ve long tended to connect well with visual artists while I myself make music, so it sparked my interest when I heard that the equivalent in the sound realm of photons in the light realm is “phonons” and that while light travels only through empty space, sound travels only through matter.
For two, my involvement with serious ritualists of a gnostic and masonic character and my own personal experience with ritual practice in recent years has allowed me to experience firsthand the connection between transformative ritual and the theater, another area of strong personal involvement. (I was seriously involved in improvisational theater in Austin for many years, and, if you can believe it, did a touch of tap dancing when I lived in Los Angeles, once in the presence of Betty Garrett, who played the on-screen girlfriend of Frank Sinatra’s character in the film version of On The Town — the same character I played in my senior year of high school in our high school musical production of On the Town!) Suffice it to say, it doesn’t surprise me when I hear that the theater evolved out of the ritual drama.
At the same time, it is becoming more and more a part of the cultural zeitgeist to understand religious stories as myths with symbolic significance, rather than as anything ever even really intended to be literally factual in character.
All of these various perspectives combined to start giving me the idea that not only is art connected to religion, art is, in a significant sense, religion, and religion is art.
Another way to put it would be that religion is organized spiritual practice, which is really to say, organized aesthetic involvement, and that artists are, in effect, spiritual pioneers.1
Or as I put it recently in the form of an aphorism: Art is the research arm of spirituality. (One of my favorite jazz artists, Pat Metheny, is always talking about his musical work as “the research.”)
Now, I like lists, and with all of the above in mind it occurred to me to make a list of arts on the basis of the modalities of perception involved.
In this context, there are three modalities of perception: aural, visual, and narrative (or linguistic). Aural is music: sound. Visual is painting and sculpture: light. Narrative is, in the modern day, literature: storytelling. All the other arts are various combinations of these three.
This leads to the following way of conceptualizing the arts (which, while it has resonances with prior aesthetic theories, is, as far as I can tell, a novel taxonomy):
PRIMARY: visual art, music, storytelling
SECONDARY (combining two primary arts): dance, poetry, visual narrative (or “sequential art”)
TERTIARY (combining all three primary arts): theater
...which we can visualize as follows:
In other words, dance combines visual (the human body in motion) and aural (music); poetry combines aural (rhythm and artful sound) and narrative (the use of words); visual narrative (or “sequential art”), a curiously off-to-the-side art form, which could be said to include, in the modern day, comic books and graphic novels, and has had seemingly zero famous purveyors (outside of the popular realm) over the years although some say this is largely circumstantial (in the sense of technical limitations until recently), combines visual and narrative. And the theater (including film, which is really recorded theater in the same way that recording art is recorded music) combines them all.
You’ll notice in my little picture that I also indicate a possible way to begin to understand this layout in terms of its connections with religion (symbol, myth and ritual).
Now: what kind of fruit will this theory bear? I don’t know. I just know that my experience with theory so far is that it facilitates practice in a meaningful way.
I think a lot of people don’t appreciate the connection of theory and practice; I suspect many people see theory as purely armchair in nature.
A significant part of my own approach to theory however comes from my background in music and specifically jazz in which harmonic theory is more or less required, at least since the 1970s, in order to navigate the territory effectively. (Communication between jazz musicians, for example, involves communicating harmonic information in the form of chord symbols which refer to a language whose vocabulary and grammar must be mastered to a degree of fluency that allows for true expression rather than halting attempts to merely get the notes right in a technical sense. But beyond that, music theory gives pathways for training, and allows for the conceptualization of new pathways....)
More specifically, the approach to harmonic structure for hundreds of years now has had a lot to do with the theoretical work of one Monsieur Jean Philippe Rameau who despite being a bit of a piss-ant apparently, was not only a brilliant theorist but a significant (and innovative) composer of French Baroque opera. (And also apparently, as discovered extremely recently, the composer of “Frère Jacques” of all things, which makes him one of the earlier composers of a still-famous melody.)
Anyway I hope you’ve found this interesting. And while I can’t share with you recordings of my therapy work (it’s confidential!) I can share with you recordings of my music if you’re curious: it’s available on Spotify or wherever music is streamed (just search my name).
Here’s one from YouTube:
Hat tip to a longtime inspiration and occasional life mentor of mine, the brilliant painter Michael Newberry (check out his fascinating book Evolution Through Art) who sees artists in this way, although I gather he doesn’t share my sympathy for religion 😅
Great stuff! We might need to talk about this in our next Psy-Phi Dialogue. :-)