The Idea of Substantive Arts

Firenze University Press Aisthesis www.fupress.com/aisthesis The idea of substantive arts Citation: D. Alvargonzález (2021) The idea of substantive arts. Aisthesis 14(1): David Alvargonzález 135-151. doi: 10.36253/Aisthesis-11912 University of Oviedo (Spain) Copyright: © 2021 D. Alvargonzález. This [email protected] is an open access, peer-reviewed arti- cle published by Firenze University Press (http://www.fupress.com/aisthe- Abstract. The Spanish philosopher Gustavo Bueno coined the expression “substantive sis) and distributed under the terms of arts” to refer to those arts that do not serve any immediate, mundane or practical pur- the Creative Commons Attribution pose. In this paper, I briefly present this idea and put forward a definition of the sub- License, which permits unrestricted stantive arts as an alternative to those used until now. Starting from the assumption use, distribution, and reproduction that since the end of the 18th century there has been a set of arts that have their own in any medium, provided the original substantivity, I expound on certain criteria widely used as distinctive features to define author and source are credited. the substantive arts. I subsequently put forward an alternative intensional criterion to Data Availability Statement: All rel- characterize the substantive arts. To end, I draw some corollaries following from the evant data are within the paper and its application of this criterion. Supporting Information files. Keywords: fine arts, definition, substantive arts, distinctive features. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. INTRODUCTION In this paper, I make the supposition that the idea of substantive arts emerged at the end of the 18th century and in the first half of the 19th century to designate arts that ceased to serve practical worldly interests external to them. Having reached their own autonomy, they apparently would have no other meaning than the aesthetic enjoyment of their own content. Such art has been called fine art, noble art, pure art, useless art, aesthetic art, contemplative art and superfluous art. I prefer “substantive arts”, coined by the Span- ish philosopher Gustavo Bueno (Bueno [2000a]), since it best reflects the fact that these arts no longer conceive of themselves as servants of some other cultural institution – thus ceasing to be deemed as adjective arts – but are self-understood as endowed with their own substantivity. In the first section, I take up Paul Oskar Kristeller’s thesis that the emancipation of these arts came at the end of a long historical process that did not culminate until the 18th century (Kristel- ler [1951], [1952]). The arts began as adjective arts serving the pur- Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell'estetico 14(1): 135-151, 2021 ISSN 2035-8466 (online) | DOI: 10.36253/Aisthesis-11912 136 David Alvargonzález poses of religion, politics, the army, the interests In the third section, I draw certain corollaries of specific social classes, morality and entertain- following the proposed criteria to characterize the ment, and were gradually emancipated from these substantive arts. adjective functions. Theories of art in antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance sought to understand the arts in historical moments insofar 1. THE IDEA OF SUBSTANTIVE ARTS as they were adjectives serving other institutions, Paul Oskar Kristeller argued that the fine arts but they ceased to be applicable once emancipat- are recent in origin, which he located in 18th-cen- ed, since their autonomy enabled expansion in tury Western Europe (Kristeller [1951], [1952]). unforeseen directions. I will comment briefly on As his thesis goes, in classical antiquity and the some of the most influential theories in the arts Middle Ages the aesthetic qualities of artworks that have been put forward to account for the new were not separated from other practical functions reality of the substantive arts. This review does typical of the techniques also sustaining that the not intend to make a detailed critique of all such artworks that today we place within the group of theories, but simply to place my definition within fine arts were dispersed and classified in highly the context of the others. heterogeneous groups. Poetry, grammar and rhet- oric appeared together, whereas music was always The second section lays out an alternative pro- accompanied by mathematics and astronomy and posal that starts by recognizing that an intensional the visual arts were considered purely technical definition of the arts is possible. While extensional and artisanal: painters were associated with phar- definitions list everything falling under the defi- macists, sculptors with goldsmiths and architects nition by enumerating the extension of the set, with masons and carpenters. In the Renaissance, intensional definitions specify the necessary and the visual arts were linked with geometry, per- sufficient conditions to fall under such definition spective and anatomy, and were championed so by indicating the internal content of the defined that painters, sculptors and architects could be concept. The set A = (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) can be defined emancipated from artisans and grouped into what either by listing the items (extensionally) or by Vasari called arti del disegno. The development giving its distinctive characteristic (intension- of modern sciences in the 17th and 18th centu- ally): “odd natural numbers less than ten”. In this ries led to a progressive separation of the sciences paper, I hold that the substantive arts are a species (geometry, optics, astronomy) from the arts, pav- within the genus of techniques that have certain ing the way for the appearance of the modern pre- special distinctive characteristics. Contrary to for- Romantic system of the arts, such as Batteux’s five malist theories, I argue that artwork and art per- fine arts (1746): music, poetry, painting, sculpture formances can never achieve total disconnection and dance. For Batteux, architecture and elo- from other parts of the world and that the purpose quence were “mixed arts” since they pursue both of the substantive arts is not autonomous or self- utility and aesthetic pleasure (Kristeller [1951], referential, but depends on that connection with [1952]). the world external to the arts. This connection is first genetic and then structural since it supposes According to Wilcox and Murphy, in the early that there is a more or less close analogy between 19th century Benjamin Constant, Victor Cousin works of art and these other parts of the world. and Théophile Gautier first used the formula of If so, based on the theory of analogy proposed “art for art’s sake”, albeit with different meanings, by David Alvargonzález, the substantive arts ful- contending that the arts have no other purpose fill the two functions typical of analogies: to ana- than their very own cultivation and that all pur- lyze this analogous world and to explore ways to poses pervert art (Wilcox [1953]; Murphy [2018]). extend and vary it freely (Alvargonzález [2020]). The idea of substantive arts 137 The arts were defined as an end in themselves, as The expansion of the substantive arts invali- “pure art”, as the free, independent, autonomous dated the classical ideas used to characterize the construction of specific works, as superfluous, adjective arts as a way to understand the now non-useful, non-utilitarian, contemplative arts emancipated arts. Characterizing substantive removed from the contingencies of everyday life. works of art as bearers of positive aesthetic val- In my view, as introduced by the Spanish philos- ues (what we could call the “aestheticist” theory of opher Gustavo Bueno (Bueno [2000a]), the label art) ceased to be effective for three reasons. First- “substantive arts” has the advantage of focusing ly, because aesthetic values, especially beauty, are on the difference between the arts understood as also present in many artifacts and performances serving other institutions and pursuing practical of human etiology having immediate practical purposes external to them (“adjective arts”) and utility. Aesthetic values do not then serve as a dis- the arts self-conceived as sovereign, independent, tinctive feature of the substantive arts since the autonomous and therefore endowed with their deliberate search for aesthetic values can occur own substantivity. My preference for the label in both substantive and servile works of art. Sec- “substantive arts” rests on the drawbacks carried ondly, because aesthetic values also appear as by other alternative denominations. These sub- predicated aesthetic values (not constructed or stantive arts do not always embody the value of acted upon), insofar as we predicate them on the beauty (they are not, therefore, “fine arts”) and works of nature which, however, are not works of may be neutral from an aesthetic point of view substantive art. Thirdly, in some cases the newly (they are not, therefore, always “aesthetic arts”). emancipated substantive arts claimed to culti- Their usefulness can only be evaluated ex post vate negative aesthetic values (deformed, dispro- facto, with which they are not adequately coined portionate, gloomy, grotesque, dirty, disgusting, as “useless”, “contemplative” or “superfluous” arts. rude, clumsy, vulgar, imperfect and incomplete, Nor are they activities to be characterized as more to cite but a few), as Karl Rosenkranz (1853) stud- “noble” or “purer” than others. ied in Aesthetics of Ugliness.

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