Our thanks of course must go to Mr. Pullin whose untiring efforts made this all possible. The trip formed a valuable experience for everybody, an experience which would never have taken place without his guidance and support. C.J.A.
SELECTIONS FOR 1972 SIR LUMLEY DODSWORTH ESSAY PRIZE THE ARTIST AS CREATOR
For the purposes of discussion, some definitions are essential. Therefore, let art be considered to fall into three groups, visual art, literature and music. Since it is impossible to consider the whole of these three subjects in toto, one must consider what makes a piece of work a work of art. In both music and static art, the devotees of a particular genre will consider it to be "art." Thus, though one person may find Jackson Pollock's work quite valueless, those who see the physical act of painting as important will find value in such abstract expressionism. Similarly in music, even Mahler has his devotees. In literature however, no one, however intelligent, would think of calling the detective thriller, the women's romance or contemporary pornography art. A limit must therefore be set—and for convenience's sake, let it be that everything accepted as "literature" is art. There have been times in the past, however, when art was only that which was undertaken purely for the sake of art. In those days the artist —and this applies most strongly to writers—had an overwhelming obsession wih his role as artist. The result is often a highly polished surface, frequently concealing a somewhat hollow subject matter. A recent example of this is Ezra Pound, who, after a number of years of almost cult popularity, has at last been seen to have written—I think, particularly, of the "Cantos"—something with a highly sophisticated, not to say obscure, surface and sadly little content. Stephen Dedalus, created in 1906, and delivered in 1916, though born with Joyce in 1882, lived in a period when "art" was a term fraught with contemporary implications—one thinks particularly of Oscar Wilde's attitudes. One might expect from him, therefore, a somewhat limited definition—even limiting. This statement he made may be treated as such a limited definition, i.e., to constitute art, a piece of work must be impregnated with some quintessential spirit of the author, but left free from his more conscious personality. The prepositions and adjectives Dedalus uses are distinctly those of one tarred with the brush of artistic one-up-manship, for though they sound profound, sonorous, even anagogic as though uttered by the Creator himself, they are, in literal terms, little more than meaningless. For one thing, physical prepositions convey nothing when one is dealing with something as spiritual as art. "Behind" any work of art there is always the creative mind. "Above" is indefensible, since no artist exceeds his art in excellence; in fact, frequently the opposite is true, and the masterpiece is something far greater than the artist's original conception. 58
