Artistic Creation and Cosmic Creation

Abstract

THE usual theory of artistic creation is that the work of art, previous to its execution, “exists in the artist's mind as an image or intuition.” In his Adamson lecture (“Art and the Material”), Prof. S. Alexander has already given reasons for believing that this conception is mistaken. On the contrary, the artist “does not in general first form an image (if he is a poet, say) of what he wants to express, but finds out what he wanted to express by expressing it; he has, in general, no precedent image of his work, and does not know what he will say till he has said it, and it comes as a revelation to himself.” The work of art is “a material thing … dyed through and through with meanings, and these meanings sustained and supplied by the appreciating mind.” Thus the essence of the work of art is that in it “creative mind and the material are indissolubly fused.” But in applying the analogy of the arts to the universe, “we must discount the finitude of the partners in the transaction.” The infinite, being infinite, can have nothing outside itself upon which to work as an artist works on his material. The finitude involved in art must be stripped off; we must abandon the idea of “a mind or spirit which precedes the world and creates it.”

Artistic Creation and Cosmic Creation.

By Prof. S. Alexander. (Annual Philosophical Lecture, Henriette Hertz Trust, British Academy, 1927.) (From the Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 13.) Pp. 26. (London: Oxford University Press, 1928.) 1s. 6d. net.