An Aesthetic Habit of Mind

Habits are interior growths of spontaneous life,
vital developments which make the soul better in
a given sphere and fill it full of vigorous sap.
Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism

Years ago, my friend Colonel Doner and I were in St. Petersburg, Russia, on business. One day, our host, Father Sorokin of the Russian Orthodox Church, arranged a tour: the tour group included various ministers and heads of charities from the U.S. who were also in the city. It was an amazing experience: both because of the art we were able to see, and because of the Philistines who accompanied us.

The Hermitage consists of six buildings that were the home of the tsars. One of my favorite paintings on display there is by Leonardo da Vinci: his Madonna and Child (little Madonna). One of the houses contains over 300,000 items that reflect 1,000 years of Russian history. Here you will find everything from famous icons of the 14th century, to the carriages and clothing of Peter the Great, to portraits of Catherine the Great. Faberge’s models of the Imperial regalia, as well as many of his other creations are also housed here.

Upon our return, Father Sorokin gathered us together and wanted to know about our experience. One young man stood and asked, “Why don’t you guys just sell all that art and feed the poor?” I guess this explained why these men rushed through the museum as if they feared contracting some exotic Russian disease. Visibly shaken, our host could barely gather his thoughts, so I decided to help him out.

“First of all, you could start a war with Georgia or Ukraine, as each State believes some of this art is rightfully theirs. Second, do you remember what Jesus said about the poor, how they would always be with us? Well, the poor will always be with us but there was only one Leonardo da Vinci, one Faberge!”

What goes into the mind of someone who looks at a great work of art and immediately thinks about what you could do with it?

A Habit of Mind
All of us have a “habit of mind.” There is a certain quality of the mind that determines how we look at the world. Some people have an aesthetic quality about their mind, where they can stare at an object for hours and hours, allowing the values embodied in the object to wash over their souls. Others have a more utilitarian habit of mind, where they look at the world around them with two questions in mind: What is this, and how can it be of use to me?

St. Augustine refers to these two mindsets when he makes a distinction between the use of a thing (uti) and the communing with the thing (frui), noting that these are the two basic attitudes toward the good. It is appropriate to look at a computer and ask about its usefulness (uti). However, when looking at a work of art, it is appropriate to commune (frui) with the object.

A person’s habit of mind directs his or her awareness to the world around him. As it is impossible to pay attention to all the information that is bombarding our five senses at any given moment, our attention must be selective. What directs our focus and guides our behavior is our unique perspective (habit of mind) of the world that, in turn, gives us unique purposes and goals in life.

Our unique habit of mind guides our responses to all the various stimuli we encounter: it keeps us acting in harmony with our immediate and long-term goals. “I will look at this—I will not look at that. I will say yes to this—I will say no to the other.”

When I am driving down the road, there are cars all around me, the radio is playing, someone in the car is talking, and there are pedestrians, birds flying overhead, buildings and billboards to see on every block. If I intend to arrive at my destination safe, sound and with no police seeking to pull me over, or ambulances rushing to an accident that I caused, I must focus my mind on the immediate goal of arriving safely. I select what to look for and what to ignore.

As I live my life, I intend to be useful. I am committed to making a difference in the world. As I gradually decide how specifically I am going to do this, I begin to perceive the world around me according to my long-term goals and purposes. “This will serve my ends, that will not.” Furthermore, just as driving a car becomes second nature to me, and allows me to “unconsciously” pay attention to all that I need to focus upon, so does my purpose in life become second nature. Without even being aware of it, my responses to the world around me are dictated by my long-term goals in life.

The practical habit of mind is most helpful in the world of commerce, rarely wise in the world of relationships, and never appropriate in the world of art. Art was not created to be practical. Therefore, we are never to approach a work of art and ask, “Of what use are you to me or others?”

The aesthetic habit of mind does not look at objects of art with any ulterior purpose. It looks so as to see and experience. In fact, serious artists do not create art with a view to anything other than the work to be done, and seeing to it that the work is well made. “Art operates for the good of the work done…and everything which diverts it from that end adulterates and diminishes it.” (Maritain) There is no utilitarian purpose for creating art, and none for communing with it.

Contemplating Art
An aesthetic mindset contemplates a work of art: it communes with it, seeking to penetrate the surface of what is seen, so as to experience the “truth” that it incarnates. As the late John Peale Bishop said, “You can’t say Cezanne painted apples and a tablecloth and have said what Cezanne painted.” To get at the truth of Cezanne, we must get beyond the details and allow the artist’s work to penetrate our hearts.

Practical people approach art with a demand that it move them, teach them, shock them or edify them. These people have already decided what art must “do” for them: how specifically it can be useful to them. Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), author of Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness and other such classics, comments on these people, suggesting they may not be looking deeply enough.

"(A)nd if the [artists] conscience is clear, his answer to those who in the fullness of a wisdom which looks for immediate profit, demand specifically to be edified, consoled, amused; who demand to be promptly improved, or encouraged, or frightened, or shocked or charmed, must run thus: My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see. That—and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there, according to your deserts, encouragement, consolation, fear, charm, all you demand—and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask." (Quoted by Flannery O’Conner in Mystery and Manners.)

Art is not an abstraction to identify or figure out; it is an experience. Therefore, in contemplating a work of art, we must be open to it, giving it a chance to move us on its own terms.

I am not suggesting that we should stand passively before a work of art. In contemplation, we are fully aware of and awake to what the artist has produced. Contemplation includes the cognitive: it is utterly conscious of being affected by the values within the work it is experiencing. When I contemplate the artwork before me, I absorb its truth, goodness and beauty.

Think of contemplating a passage of Scripture. As we reflect on what was written, we do not demand it tell us what we want to hear. We are, rather, receptive to what the author offers to our perception. In much the same way, we should have a sympathetic mindset to the art we are contemplating, allowing it to show us what it will.

Contemplation is not analytical. While there is a place for and even need for analyzing art, it is post-contemplation! As soon as we begin critiquing and analyzing, we have ceased contemplating, and the experience is over; at least for the time being. The challenge for us is to refrain from anything that would restrict the full experience of the work of art until we have penetrated and communed with the thing (Augustine), so as to actually know what it is we are analyzing.

John Dryden said, “We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.” If you wish to expand as a human being, utilizing more and more of your God-given capacities, you must take on new habits: habits that, in turn, will re-make you. Merely because you have yet to develop an aesthetic habit of mind, doesn’t mean, “God didn’t make me that way.” It simply means you have yet to begin establishing a habit of mind that will allow you to see and experience more of God’s reflected beauty in the world of art.

Copyright, 2005, Monte E Wilson