• An idea you may like, or you may reject
First, let me say, I know this is going out on a limb, even concluding that there is something all good art has in common, let alone that I know what that is.
So let’s start from the understanding that I am proposing this notion for your consideration. I don’t expect it to be dispositive. But then, this is a philosophical issue, and I once heard a quote (which I cannot now find on line) that the purpose of philosophy is not to settle questions, but to keep them open. That sounds right to me.
That said, I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I’m comfortable with the idea I’m about to share. I find it useful, I guess, but mostly, I just find it interesting. I hope you will too.
• Getting to the meat of it
My proposition is that all good art has what I like to call retrospective inevitability. By that, I mean that once you have seen/read/heard/experienced the artwork, it seems as though it absolutely had to be done exactly the way it was done, even though you would never have thought of it had someone not created it and put it before you.
This is sort of the flip side of what I think about inspiration. Inspiration is an idea that wasn’t there, right up to the moment when it was. When it’s right, it has a feeling that it just has to be that way. This occurrence is so phenomenal that it has the feel of being granted by an outside force—inspiration literally means to be breathed into. And, by the way, the definition of a phenomenon that I prefer is that it is something that has to be experienced to be understood. Well, that is certainly true of inspiration. And I would argue that it takes inspiration to produce good art.
But let’s get back to retrospective inevitability. It is easiest to see in the context of artworks with an arc, a plot, like a movie or a novel. We are, most of us, exquisitely tuned to whether every aspect of a movie “rings true”, especially the ending. That’s what I mean. You may not see it coming, but afterwards, you’re, like, “Oh, yeah, that really had to happen that way—he had to marry her and she had to die, otherwise none of it made any sense”.
• As important in my life as food
That’s the same thing I’m always looking for in art. Ideally, there should be an element of surprise, something I didn’t see coming, but it all fits together in what seems like the only way it could and should. In retrospect, there was no other way that would have worked quite so well—there is the sense that it was inevitable.
When I encounter this feeling, whether it is from the exact turn of phrase in a poem, or the way one note slides into another in a song, or the curl of a piece of wire on a found-object lamp, it gives me a feeling of the most profound satisfaction and joy. And when I get that from something that I, myself, have created, it makes everything worthwhile.
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Very insightful and very true. It also gets to the heart of why I advise my students not to try and base their creativity on other people’s art … when it’s good, its “inevitability” (to use your perfect term for it) makes it nearly impossible to find ways to innovate on it because it just works. When it’s bad, it’s nearly impossible to get beyond the unintentional discordance of it to find your way to beauty or creative accord.
This reminds me of one of my favorite passages in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galazy series, where he’s telling about a statue of a man named Arthur Dent, in frustration, throwing a cup at a machine. When Arthur Dent himself discovers this statue in his honor, he is very surprised, but also asks, “How do you get the cup to stay where it is, unsupported?” And the Wise Old Bird answers, “Art. … It stays there because it’s artistically right.”
Wow. All I can say is wow; well said, um, I mean written. I feel very lucky to have you for a teacher.