What is Art?
What is art?
Why should you care?
Are men that do art effeminate?
Art comes from the Latin word ars, for which the Greek word is techne. Neither of these words would have conjured the modern concept of “Art” in the minds of the ancient Romans and Greeks as we think of it today. If we want to find another English word that can act as a synonym for what the ancient word ars used to mean, we could use the word “craft”, or even “mastery”. Including the Greek word techne, we could say “technical mastery”.
So you tell me, is art important? Should you care about your craft, whatever it may be? Should men hone their technical mastery of things?
If we look at art in this way, not as a pretentious group of people trying to make unreasonable amounts of money by playing around with paint on a canvas, but as people who hone their skills in a given craft, then almost anything can be considered an art, and this potentially turns anything that one puts ones hand to into something transcendent.
That may sound ridiculous, especially when you consider something mundane like vacuuming a carpet, but I think this is what constitutes a healthy work ethic, and it also maximises the amount of contentment you get out of anything you do. It turns anything you lay your hand to into an opportunity and a vocation – a higher calling – not to save the world, but to actually be in it. To be human. And by being present, to actually pour yourself and something transcendent into the world in such a way that it can have a positive, up-building, edifying effect on the people around you.
The highest art form, as far as I can tell, is the art of dying well. It isn’t easy to die, never mind dying well. It requires a mastery of self that few other things demand in this world, and in order to master yourself, you need a clear end – a clear goal. It is good for every man to ask himself, to know in his bones, what he is willing to die for. The rite of passage called “Coming of Age” is a human universal, and the place where boys must discover what they are living for; what they are fighting for; what they would lay down their life for. You need a telos. In order to die well, in order to master the craft of dying, we are given lots of smaller chances, lots of smaller arts, along the way, through which we can practice being present. Being here. Now. And by being present, filling the moment with what it is we stand and die for. Because you are dying for something right now. The question is merely: “What?”
Everything we do along the inevitable road to our death (the goal we can’t choose, but must face) becomes an opportunity to bear witness, an opportunity to become the pen or the instrument of a higher truth. Investing in every task that you are called to, no matter how mundane – it could be cleaning the toilet! – is investing in your mastery of self, and as a result, in your mastery of dying well. This in turn is an investment in the lives of those around you. It is an investment in those that depend on you, in whatever way. Even if it is only an emotional dependence.
Mastering yourself is good, because you only master yourself, if you recognise the fact that the world is bigger than you, and that good things are not limited to whatever goes into your stomach or releases endorphins into your body. By mastering yourself, you grow an awareness and appreciation for the people, the places, and the things around you. You grow an awareness for the things that are beyond you. The noise within quietens, and your attention expands to hear the sounds beyond your own conflicted emotions. You learn how to take part in the world, without losing yourself to it. You learn to play by other peoples’ rules without compromising your own. You grow an awareness for the pains and struggles of others, because you have learned to understand your own struggles. This is what art is about. Art is craft, and craft can be anything you do. Will you do it well? What will your death communicate?
As a Christian, I seek to emulate the Christ, through whom God became present in our reality, and through whom a life beyond death was communicated into the world. His death communicated life. That is the greatest mastery of the art of dying well.
