The Functions of Art and Fine Art in Communication

Author(s): Milton C. Nahm

Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Jun., 1947), pp. 273-280
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics
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 FUNCTIONS OF ART IN COMMUNICATION 273

THE FUNCTIONS OF ART AND FINE ART IN COMMUNICATION'

MILTON C. NAHM

We live in a world in which it is increasingly evident that problems of mutual

understanding and intercommunication may not with impunity be relegated to
discussion in academic halls; a world, in fact, in which we must surmount barriers
of cultural differences or suffer dire consequences. It is also evident that we
live, in this respect at least, in a world of seeming paradox. Were a favored
citizen of that scientific utopia described by Sir Francis Bacon in the New Atlantis
permitted to visit our world, he would without doubt be impressed by a con-
certed desire to resolve the profoundly difficult problems of intercommunication.
I should hazard the guess, however, that his original gratification would shortly
give way to perplexity and frustration. The utopian land imagined by Viscount
St. Alban is precisely the land in which we live. Atlantis, it will be recalled,
was a "land of magicians, that sent forth spirits of the air into all parts to bring
them news and intelligence of other countries." Indeed, in this respect, the
island was said to be "somewhat supernatural" and for good reason: there were
"perspective-houses, where we make demonstrations of all lights and radiations,
and of all colours", wherein "we represent, also, all multiplications of light,
which we carry to great distance." There were procured "means of seeing ob-
jects afar off; as in the heavens, and remote places." On that fabled island, the
inhabitants possessed "'certain helps which set to the ear do further the hearing
greatly ... means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and
distances." Moreover, its peoples imitated the "flights of birds" and had "some
degrees of flying in the air." In a word, the visitor from Solomon's House would
discover that these visions and imaginings of the year 1624 are no longer visions
and imaginings. He would come to a world in which success without parallel
had been achieved in the perfection of means, instruments, and apparatus for
communicating. But, paradoxically enough, he would discover men still
genuinely puzzled by the prodigious task of bridging cultural gaps, while he,
the product of the Baconian scientific imagination, could point out that in
telephones, radios, aeroplanes, automobiles, railroads, telegraphs, radar and
their infinitely diverse and delicate refinements, the "bridges" had already been
built.
I doubt, indeed, that Bacon himself would have concluded that the paradox
was other than an ostensible one. He was too shrewd to assume that under-
standing and the use and direction of mechanisms may be separated, as he was
too wise to suppose that it is not necessary, if men are truly to acquire knowledge,
that they make every effort to go behind the meanings of the "idols" that assail
men's eyes and ears. And were our own assumptions not similar to Bacon's, we
might well be faced by the skeptical alternative, the assumption that there is an
ultimate incommunicability of ideas and, in consequence, that men of divergent

I Presented before The American Society for Aesthetics, Hunter College November 24,
1945. Discussed by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion as a portion of
the program, 4'Cultural Bridges in Letters, Art and Music", New York, August 25, 1945.

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 274 MILTON C. NAHM

cultures are to be forever separated. Because we do not put all our faith in
machines but do believe that minds are required for the construction and opera-
tion of apparatus, and because we grow weary of skepticism and its aridity, I am
encouraged to present the argument for art as an ancient and powerful but a not
particularly obvious instrument of communication. Properly employed, I be-
lieve that art may share with science, religion, and philosophy the task of further-
ing communication across differences of background. Its proper employment
requires some attention to the philosophy of art. I shall avail myself of this
discipline to the extent that I shall be concerned with the grounds for and the
function of art in communication and with tentative suggestions concerning a
methodology by which the symbols of art may be made increasingly available
in this field.

The perfection of isolated philosophical disciplines has not infrequently led

researchers within a given discipline to claim more for their subject than the
subject can by its nature fulfil. As regards philosophy of art, we should be con-
tent to try to ascertain by its use the specific circumstances under which art is
the best means of communication. This we may perhaps most effectively do by
contrasting philosophy of art as a means of communication to its polar antithesis,
the science of formal logic. It appears to me to be true that in our experience
of art we come closer to an understanding of the religious, scientific, and moral
beliefs held within a culture than we do in consequence of logical investigation,
precisely because works of art preserve permanently particular factors and in-
dividual characteristics of a people, whereas the examination of propositions in
logic tends to become a formal evaluation of the proposition's truth or falsity
independent of the particular meaning of the terms. Let me add, at.once, that
I hold that philosophy of art, no less than logic, impinges upon problems of
"signs" and "symbols". The philosophy of art is concerned, however, with
"signs" and "symbols" which originate in, and are directed to, feeling. It is this
fact that restricts both the "abstractness" to which the work of art is susceptible
and the limits to which an individual work of art may be "abstracted" from its
context. Indeed, as we shall see, it is precisely because art symbolizes the non-
aesthetic factors in our experience to which feeling attaches that it may become
a superb instrument for communication among men of divergent cultures.
Art, however, does not only preserve and immortalize the particular and inti-
mate aspects of a culture. It communicates and is intended to communicate to
men within a culture. Its potentialities for communication among men of the
same, as well as of different cultures may be actualized, however, only because
the work of art is a symbol in which are implicit generic as well as specific mean-
ings. The implications of this fact for the problem of a possible facilitation of
inter-cultural communication are presupposed by general considerations of the
relation of artistic creativity and aesthetic experience to communication in
general, and some examination of those more general presuppositions is neces-
sary for the statement of the more restricted problem. In even a cursory ex-
amination of the more general problem, the extent to which the great tradition
in the history of aesthetic has related what Plato called the "profit" to be de-
rived from art to the function of communication is significant.

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 FUNCTIONS OF ART IN COMMUNICATION 275

So intimately related, indeed, are philosophy of art and the problem of com-
munication that Croce's identification of linguistic and aesthetic, of art and ex-
pression, is, historically, little more than the extreme extension of the implica-
tion central to one of Plato's earlier dialogues. In the magnificent figure of the
"magnetic rings" in Ion, Plato wrote that "the spectator is the last of the rings
which ... receive the power of the original magnet from one another.... The
rhapsode and the actor are intermediate links, and the poet himself is the first
of them." Similarly, Aristotle is interested not only in the fact that art begins
in imitation but that "it is also natural for all to delight in works of imitation."
The central problem of Kantian aesthetic turns on an examination of the "uni-
versal capability of communication of the mental state in a given representation."
It is significant that Hegel's philosophy of fine art has been criticized-whether
justly or not-because in it "art is practically reduced to a philosophical error."
I have pointed briefly to the writings of Plato, to Aristotle, to Kant, Hegel,
and Croce because these philosophers are significant figures in the great tradition
of aesthetic. They are not, however, isolated figures in their linking of art and
communication, and for good reason. The fact of communication is implicit in
the very nature of the aesthetic transaction between the artist and the aesthetic
percipient. The very pervasiveness of the assumption that the two activities,
art and communication, are not dissimilar leads one to speculate upon the reasons
for the negative attitude of philosophy of art in general toward the problem of
communication across differences of background. The speculation is not idle.
As we shall see, it not only suggests some of the conditions which must be laid
down before art may be treated as an instrument for the end we are considering
but serves as well to suggest certain concentrations of interest which, while
relevant to aesthetics, may impede progress in our specific search.
Aesthetic theory has failed to develop the potentialities of art for communica-
tion for two primary reasons, one internal, the other external to the subject.
The internal reason follows from the aesthetician's method and his single-minded
purpose. Intent upon proper definition and upon the exclusion of irrelevant
data, one entire tradition of aestheticians has tended to restrict the aesthetic
universe of discourse to objects and events regarded as "formally beautiful".
By definition, these theorists have ruled from consideration all products of "mak-
ing" not in accord with the "form" judged to be "absolutely beautiful" or not
regarded as the objects of the judgment of taste. Another entire tradition in
aesthetic, and one no less powerful, is the chronicle of analyses centering upon
the problems of the function of art. Since, perforce, its proponents must define
the objects and events and could correctly distinguish fine from technical art
only by ascertaining the nature of the unique aesthetic function of fine art, the
theory has excluded works of art definable in functional but non-aesthetic terms.
These historical efforts precisely to define the objects of art and to limit the
aesthetic universe of discourse have lent internal strength to the subject of
aesthetic and have given direction to its speculation. They have tended, none-
theless, to impose a strait-jacket upon thinkers with other interests, to the detri-
ment of speculation upon subjects more nearly allied to that which we are at
present considering. From the too iigid impositions of the metaphysicians of
beauty, philosophy of art has been moving toward emancipation, largely in

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 276 MILTON C. NAHM

consequence of the efforts of the archaeologist, the ethnologist, the anthropol-

ogist, the iconologist, and the historian of ideas. The discoveries made and
methods employed by these scientific empiricists have served to diminish the
assurance with which metaphysicians have asserted the a priori grounds for the
identity of art and communication. The wealth of empirical data, drawn largely
from the primitive arts, and the cogent genetic theories put forward to support
the contention that there are many motives for "making" other than that of
communicating, have introduced a liberality of spirit into the subject. But it
is a liberality perhaps too all-embracing. One of its consequences is that all
"making" comes to be of equal interest for the archaeologist and all ends of
"making" assume equal importance or come to be subordinate to such issues as
the history and sequence of scientific or stylistic techniques.
One may scarcely doubt that the metaphysical and the archaeological schools
in philosophy of art have tended to draw apart. On many issues, in fact, they
have come into tacit, if not overt, opposition. The contributions of each are
required, nevertheless, for the proper consideration of such a practical problem
as communication across differences of background. What is lacking for the co-
operation required is a common ground. To secure it calls for a radical proce-
dure. We shall make progress, I believe, if while we consider our problem we
exclude all reference to the term "beauty"2 and ignore the theorist's demand
that we apply our efforts to the statement of the conditions under which may
operate the "universal judgement of taste". We should take full advantage,
however, of the aesthetician's great contribution, precise definition. As regards
the archaeologist, let us take advantage of the skill he employs in providing the
materials of divergent cultures and of his wide knowledge in their interpretation.
But let us also make every effort to interpret the data he provides not only within
the context of his circumscribed interest but in the larger context of communica-
tion as well.
We discover the common ground of aesthetic and archaeology if we make an
assumption that ostensibly runs counter to much that traditional aesthetic has
held concerning art. The tradition in that subject has customarily assumed
that the only products of the activity, art, relevant to its problems are objects
of "fine art". The conditions under which the differentiation between "fine"
and "technical" arts may be made need not concern us here. What is of sig-
nificance for us is that all products of "making", including objects of fine art,
are at least in part definable in non-aesthetic terms. In its most primitive sense,
this statement merely means that the work of art is an object or event, produced
by the artist's technique and occupying a status in space or time, or both, ex-
ternal to the maker. In a less primitive sense, the object or event is made at a
particular time, in a particular place, and, ordinarily, for a specific purpose such
as that of decorating a wall, glorifying God, commemorating an event, or pro-
viding for the artist's livelihood. Not all art is definable in aesthetic terms, but
all art that is definable in aesthetic terms is at least bi-functional and is definable
2 There is, of course, a higher level of communication at which an aesthetic interchange
takes place. I am here primarily concerned with the lower level which is the presupposition
of the aesthetic.

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 FUNCTIONS OF ART IN COMMUNICATON 277

in non-aesthetic terms. I do not claim that fine art so defined is defined in all
adequacy. I do claim that the non-aesthetic aspects of fine and technical art
provide the proper ground for approaching the problem of communication across
divergences of background.
It may be urged emphatically, however, that to ignore the aesthetic aspects
of the work of art, to concentrate upon its non-aesthetic characteristics and func-
tions, and to regard only one aspect of its bi-functional character, is merely to
adopt lock, stock, and barrel the assumptions and procedures of the archaeol-
ogist, the ethnologist, and the anthropologist. It may be urged, equally, that
these technical experts have seized all too firmly upon the non-aesthetic values
of fine arts and that their considerations of the products of art have erred pre-
cisely in this, that the work of art is valued solely as a tool intended for com-
memorative, religious, calendrical, decorative, economic, political, or moral
purposes. If it is true, however, that the aesthetician has abstracted the work
of fine art too completely from the context of art, it is also true that the archaeol-
ogist has in his turn tended to consider all art as if it were completely absorbed
in its context. The latter has treated music, poetry, and the spatial arts as mere
objects and events among other objects and events, whereas, in fact, the work of
art is a symbol.
We shall fail, I believe, if the method of either the aesthetician or the archaeol-
ogist is regarded as mutually exclusive. The work of art is neither a mere
abstraction nor is it a mere object or event. Precisely as the aesthetician has
tended to ignore the non-aesthetic function of every work of art, fine or techni-
cal, so the archaeologist has forgotten that art produces an object or event sepa-
rated from the maker but intimately related to him because it is an expression of
his feeling in the separate medium of art. The work of art that is of significance
for communication is not an "expression of impressions", as Croce would have
us believe, abstracted from "making" and from the "object made". Expression
is fulfilled in the "making" and in the encountering and overcoming of the prob-
lems presented by the media. Nor is the work of art a limited structure under-
standable without reference to external relations. However attractive at first
glance may be such a statement as Mendelssohn's-"What any music I like
expresses for me is . . . the song itself precisely as it stands"-such isolation of
the work of art is purchased at the expense of its comprehensibility. Each
theory I have cited instances a false "abstraction" which excludes from our
analysis some essential aspect of what I should like to call the "total structure
of art", the fundamental interrelation of artist, artistic creativity, object made,
aesthetic percipient, and end of art, the broad outlines of which are traceable in
Plato's Ion and the development of which we owe to Aristotle and Hegel.
What, then, is the work of art that its meaning may be communicated? It is
the product of "making" and as such is externalized in space and time, but it is
also an object made by processes through which the artist objectifies his feelings
in the medium of the work of art. The artist's actual feelings are bodily be-
havior. To be "objectified", even in the loose sense in which we are using that
term, the feelings must be signified or symbolized in the product made by the
artist. But the feelings are likewise not mere abstractions. Men, including

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 278 MILTON C. NAHM

artists, find their feelings attached to or aroused by incidents, events, ideas,

and objects. "The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over
the place," writes Picasso, "from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper,
from a passing shape, from a spider's web."
But the complicated process by which the artist makes the work of art a sym-
bol or sign of his feelings concerning these non-aesthetic aspects of experience is
the precise process by which the individual artist makes art a communication,
makes it a work of art. Housman saw clearly that ". . . to set up in the reader's
sense a vibration corresponding to what is felt by the writer . .. is the peculiar
function of poetry." Each work of art is a specific work of art and an individual.
But it is an individual belonging to a class and without the knowledge of the
class to which it belongs it is incomprehensible.
The work of art is a 'sign' or 'symbol' of the artist's feelings concerning non-
aesthetic aspects of his experience. But its comprehensibility turns upon the
fact that it is a generic or class symbol as well as an individual one, and the mode
of its comprehension in aesthetic experience turns upon the fact that both the
artist and the aesthetic percipient bring to the work of art, the one in "making",
the other in "re-making", the recognitive predisposition of experience that is a
fundamental aspect of all feeling. It is, in fact, feeling as reproductive imagina-
tion that provides the organism with the predisposition for a sufficient familiarity
with the specific aspects of the presented world to make experience of that world
possible. In feeling, we come upon that aspect of mind described by Bergson
as "pure memory", the memory "fixed in the organism" which is "nothing else
but the complete set of intelligently constructed mechanisms which ensure the
appropriate reply to the various possible demands" and "enables us to adapt
ourselves to the present situation." We know this predisposition normally
under the name of "tropism" or "instinct" in which such actions as panic-fear
or rage constitute what the mechanist calls "trigger-like" reactions to stimuli.
In feeling we react in part as preorganized nervous and physiological structures
to "extrinsic" stimuli. There are various modes of feeling, however, and in some
of them, including the aesthetic, there is considerable reduction in the intensity
of the reaction of the overt behavior. But throughout the range of these various
modes of feeling, whether they be tropistic, instinctive, emotional, or that of
mood, the recognitive aspect of feeling operates epistemologically to make
familiar the world of our experience. To feeling, as a form of primitive pre-
disposition, we owe the familiarity we experience in the realm of art, as well as
the recurrence of generic themes, symbols, and subjects in art. For the im-
portant fact to be remembered is that the artist does not create the non-aesthetic
frame of reference for the symbols to which his feelings attach and by means of
which they are aroused. That frame of reference is the racial and cultural back-
ground of men. More specifically, the artist secures whatever generality of
interest his work may have by signifying in it the feelings men as a race and men
within particular cultures attach to the ideas, events, incidents, and situations
they derive from religion, art, science, and morality, that is from the fields of
their various efforts to understand and to control the world in which they live.
Because of this common frame of reference for the symbols of art, art is the realm
of the familiar and the accustomed. The generic symbols of art refer to the

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 FUNCTIONS OF ART IN COMMUNICATION 279

science, the law, the theology, the social organization that have become the con-
text of our ordinary experience.

I have suggested, in brief outline, what I take to be the presuppositions' for

communication between the artist and the aesthetic percipient and I have done
so because in the extension of the applications of the theory of communication
between the artist and his audience we shall find the "guiding threads" leading
to the "bridges" between different cultures and divergent backgrounds. The
beginnings of the study of the art of a culture different from our own must neces-
sarily provide for the amassing of particular works of art and their examination.
But granted that the gathering of material has been made, we are forced, I be-
lieve, almost at once to a consideration of the generic or class symbols implicit
in the art of a given culture. We proceed from them to their specifications and
individualizations.
Of generic symbols in art, we shall discover two classes. To the first, for want
of a better term, I should apply the name "racial", to the second, "cultural".
Both are symbols to which feelings attach and which, in turn, arouse feeling.
Consequently, our experience of them will be one of more or less familiarity, but
the experience of "cultural generic symbols" in art relates to a frame of reference
of restricted generality. "Racial generic symbols" in art, in contrast, have their
presuppositions not so much in the human context of experience but in that
heritage that man shares with the brute. One such symbol is that of the leader,
the "wintry slayer" of epic, romance, and tragedy, the meaning of which is known
to all men whatever the divergences of culture because men are social animals
and because the leader evokes feeling. Hamlet and Orestes derive from the self-
same source as do Alcibiades, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and Lincoln. And
diverse arts offer them and similar symbols for our study of men because the
relation of men to such men is comprehensible to all men. Similar symbols in
art refer to combat, mating, and to the beneficent or destructive forces of nature.
It appears to me that art in all lands does incorporate these symbols of a primi-
tive life and our problem is to examine among men of different cultures the vari-
ous specifications of these signs.
The truly difficult problem of bridging gaps between men of divergent cultures
begins at the level of "cultural generic symbols" in art. For while this realm of
symbols may in one sense be represented as the extension or the redirection of
feeling to a frame of reference that is in turn what man shares with animals as a
brute heritage, it is evident that the art derives from situations, ideas, events
and incidents meaningful to men and to man alone. For example, the idea of
immortality may be, as Bergson holds, the extension of the primitive instinct of
self-preservation. It is, nonetheless, an extension of experience that lies be-
yond the powers of the brute. A similar extension inheres, to cite another
illustration, in so-called "Platonic lov&'. At this level, it is the codes of law,
the theologies, the moralities, and the general principles to which men in par-
ticular cultures attach their feelings. The symbolization occurs, for the most
part it is true, in more or less specific and concrete modes. At this level, also.

I For a fuller account, see my Aesthetic Experience and Its Presuppositions.

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280 MILTON C. NAHM

emerge the divergences which in the history of man have brought cultures and
nations to destruction and death on behalf of creeds, beliefs and prejudices.
Were we to consider, for a moment, the consequences of divergent beliefs in im-
mortality, we might well ask whether the ideas which evoke such profound feel-
ing could ever be reconciled. In art, however, we seek and are provided with
the solution to no such problem. Art as a means to communication provides
only the grounds for understanding but for this it does provide the grounds.
Differ as do the beliefs men hold concerning the soul, we do discover in the symbol
of light a generic cultural sign of such generality that it is common to the art of
much of western culture and this symbol permits entry into an understanding
of cultures sufficiently divergent to hold to theories of metempsychosis or of
personal immortality. One tends to think of the specific uses of light in pictorial
art and literature, of the differences between Milton's and Dante's symbols of
light, of the dissimilarities that distinguish the Egyptian conception of the
"luminous Khu" and its artistic derivations from Plato's comparison of the
good to the sun and from the Neo-Platonic conception of a stream of light. We
note the specific uses of such symbols of immortality or divinity as the nimbus
or the halo or the streams of light emanating from the fingers of Aten, "lord of
the beams of light." But what is of primary interest for communication is the
generic symbol of light common to all instances and the possibility that where
the symbols are not identical, if one search, one may find analogues.
Our search will be meaningful, I believe, only if we, the seekers, have attained
a status at least equal to that reached by the culture we are investigating. For
it appears to me to be true that while generic cultural symbols are pre-supposed
by racial symbols, it is equally true that those who have experienced the exten-
sion of the realn of feelings beyond the lower levels may work downward, finding
analogues and cognate symbols, whereas the reverse process fails. Thus, we
who read St. Exupery and learn of the fears, hopes and aspirations of the man
born to flight know that he is the modern analogue of Aeneas and Ulysses and
across the divergences of cultures we may extend our knowledge.
Beginning with such generic or class symbols, we may increase our knowledge
of men through the art of cultures divergent from our own by tracing the speci-
fications of symbols within the various arts. We should here call upon the
iconologist to guard us against error in the interpretation of the significance of
the symbol. We should call upon the archaeologist for the history of the develop-
ment of tools and styles from adjacent cultures and in matters of date and authen-
ticity. Implicit in this examination is the history of industry, commerce and
conquest. We should turn to the historian of art to trace for us the use and
significance of indigenous content in old and established forms of art. Finally,
we shall emerge at the ultimate specification, the work of the individual artist.
Once we have come to the individual artist, we arrive at the stage at which
feeling is productive as well as reproductive in its operations. However im-
portant this aspect of art may be for communication, its analysis goes beyond
the scope of the present paper. My own conclusion is simply this, that, as
Plato remarks of justice, we search for communication and its means only to
find them tumbling at our feet in the permanent record of feelings which men
symbolize in their art.

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