CHAPTER XIII
THE CONTRIBUTION OF ART TO
CREATIVE HUMAN POTENTIAL
NGUYEN VAN HUYEN
Whether or not each country can achieve its development target depends
first on the human factor. To speak of man as a factor is to speak of his
talents and contribution to society. Creative ability is seen as the first index
of this talent and contribution, as it is the decisive factor for the efficiency
of each individual activity, especially in the present era marked by
intelligence.
Since time immemorial, mankind has focused upon social life and the
ability of human development in perception, education, prediction and creation.
Of itself art is both creativity and the creative product. The world of
art and that of the human spirit, in which lies the human creative potential,
are similar. Using art to educate and develop man in general is one of the most
effective ways to develop the creative ability of each social subject.
THE
CHARACTERISTICS AND STRUCTURE OF ART
Art is a lively and attractive way to reflect the world. Like scientific
conceptions or ideological forms the art image is itself the subjective image of
the objective world. The only difference is that the art image constitutes a
dialectical unity of the content expressed in matter. Through the prism of
subjective-objective relationship the different art forms reflect the real world
in the individual human consciousness. According to the degree of life,
knowledge, experience, ideology and world outlook, art reflects in the form of
feeling-emotion the aspiration to harmony between the genuine good, the
beautiful and the perfect in life, moving always towards a true ideal. In his
"Reflex Theory," academician Todor Pavlov explained the art image as a
perfect whole of aesthetic reality, ideology, spirit and art. To reflect the
world art uses such methods as symbolization, idealization, ideologization,
exaggeration, stylization, metaphor and comparison.
These art methods reached high art and expression due to the impact of
the dialectic between the plastic and the expressive elements as principles of
all art forms. The art image was always the model in which the particular and
the common combined the qualities of the haphazard and the indispensable. The
haphazard and the indispensable combine in a symbol. The artist's subjective
action through images make art richer and livelier, and gave it personal life
with joy, happiness, pain and sadness. It enables life to be evaluated and
judged and provides orientation for thought and action.
Art unites content and form, the outward and the inward. Such elements go
deeply into human psychology and provide a starting point for broadening and
reaching deeply into the world of imagination, fiction and creation. In contrast
to other forms of reflection, in any stage of creative art, feeling is always
mixed with reason. Thought is never separated from image, for it expresses both
feeling and reason.
A perfect art image has a wholeness which consists of a central nucleus
with reciprocal impact between several parts and the whole. Each part in its
turn is a "smaller whole," creating the greater whole and thence
constituting the substance of new content-image.
These characteristic attributes create a three layer structure of the art
image: (1) the material layer -- word, sound, line, color, light and their
combinations; (2) the psychological layer -- feelings and emotions which create
the symbolic and typical; and (3) the abstract philosophical aesthetic layer --
ideology, intelligence and significance.
The expressed and hidden implications which appear in the three layers
constitute two dialectically united aspects: real content and ideological depth.
One is expressed as the integrity of the reality described; the other is hidden
but implied is the depth reality of society and humankind.
It could be said that nature as a rich, comprehensive, original structure
exists only in art whose dialectical unity, flexibility and dynamism comprise
many attributes and qualities; the common and the particular, feeling and
reason, the conventional and the similar, the concrete and the abstract, the
expressed and the hidden. All these attributes and qualities react and struggle
against one another to create a lively "art field."
By the artist's creativity the art image becomes a "special
aesthetic sign" which concentrates and condenses in itself feeling,
emotion, reason and experience. It is enlightened and reflected in the aesthetic
sign as both a product of creation and creative in nature. It constantly
corresponds to images created from outside, and adds flesh, blood and memories
of life. This provides the vitality of art and therefore the explosive energy of
its creative potential. Such images have great capacity to spread, awaken and
discover.
ART'S
CAPACITY TO EVOKE CREATIVITY
From the nature of art and its original structure, psychologist Vygotski
has uncovered in art a great force for creative suggestion. He illustrated its
impact in the form of a funnel: the funnel's stalk being the expressed content
and the rim being the wider field of hidden implications.1 A.K.
Jonkovski also experimented with the art work as a "great magnifier":
"The principle of art's magnification is its mode of creating circumstances
in which what is normal could generate a great and exceptional result."2
The art image is lively and carries great power because in our
consciousness the images evoke feelings, emotion and intelligence. The active
elements here are: organization, stimulation and aesthetics.
The operative principle of this is a small "force" which opens
channels for a broader perception: a small stimulation that could create a
volume of energy many times larger than itself. It was as if we glued our eyes
to a small window gap and suddenly saw open before us an endless space, a
spiritual world seeming to fly out from the window.
The picture "in the hospital" by a French painter described an
old worker who came to see his daughter at the hospital. Looking at the picture,
we see only the worker's grayish back sitting by the bed of his daughter, but
the worker's whole life of hardwork exuded from his naked grayish back.
Similarly, by the bark of the dogs in the dark of night writer Ngo Tat To, in
his work Lights Off, led us by the tense circumstance of people being
hunted down, to the oppressive plight of the Vietnam peasantry in the '30s under
the French colonial regime.
British poet William Blake described the force of poetry as follows:
To find the eternal in an instant
Find the immense world in each grain of sand
Find the inexhaustible in your hand palm
And find the firmament in your flower vase
The impact of the organization-stimulation-aesthetic element in art is
the total mobilization of man's spiritual force. When we look at a design in
decorative art which is taken by many as of little artistic value we might find
a similar image emerging in our consciousness. Sometimes the image is first
suggested by association with a memory or with a current happening which spreads
to our whole spiritual life. They turn into incentives and are kneaded into a
code of psychological signals. They regulate the emotional system and create
emotions with varying degrees of heat and light. Such a process takes place only
within the scope of art awareness, which suggests feeling and reason throughout.
In fact, when we read a verse from Kieu by Nguyen Du, we touch
only three aspects of his music-poetry. As a result, however, a whole rich
"symphony" vibrates in us. As analyzed above, that was the principle
of building an art image: from countless signs in a man's life and soul, only a
few signs were used. Such art is called a "miraculous tune," whose
nature restores the force of life and the rich world of imagination.
Art has its impact through the original structures of the miraculous tune
which left the door half open, connected, and waiting. Other art works continue
to effect the sensitive person according to a special logic of art carried out
in the world of the imagination and personal projects.
Finally, an entire symphony vibrates within us, with not 3 but 13, not 13
but 130 signs, and not merely signs but images, concepts and memories as well.
This is extended further from images and art to ethics, politics and sciences --
all that had existed or never existed in the life of the spirit and whose
creative projects accumulate in life. By way of association and imagination,
everything which seemed to sleep at the bottom of our subconscience in a single
moment wakes up and spreads out. All those thoughts which were not clear enough
or did not help bring about accurate conclusions with their strong emotions are
now lightened up.
Composer A.I. Serov wrote to his colleague V.V. Stassov when he attended
a concert by Liszt:
I cannot compose myself any more. I do not even know if it was reality or
a dream? How happy I am. Today is such a solemn day. The whole world seemed to
change. Miraculous things were made by one man and his music. That force of
music was so great; it was an indescribable state of passion. I felt
light-hearted in my own self. No bonds have exited since those new melodies
vibrated.3
In the world of architecture Pierre Loti in his reportage "Smile on
the Bayonne Tower" wrote:
I arrived in Bayonne on a moon night. It seemed to be a temple of another
world created by men of a strange world. I felt I was back to the time of
legends when Genie Indra, to organize a wedding for her son to marry the
daughter of Neptune, built up this temple in the form of a celestial world. As I
looked up at the high tower, something new suddenly rose up in my soul, a rising
force which brought me back to the world of imagination.4
Of the many people who visit museums, exhibition halls, theaters and
conservatories, some come for entertainment and the enjoyment of art as a relief
from work. But many came to art with a pressing need: to prepare for some
research work, creation or conclusion they are not able to provide.
Not only does art stimulate its own creations and help with social work,
the great physicist Einstein thought that music might have helped him
concentrate while building his basic theory of space, time and movement. What
the time and space structure provided to his physics was itself a stimulation
from a certain organized force, which he got directly from one of those
concertos for piano and orchestra by Mozart. They enriched his imagination when
he succeeded in explaining how the curve of space and time was close to material
attraction which was the nature of the universe. He further affirmed that, under
the impact of the sound, he felt that he could concentrate more easily than by
paying attention only to the curves of physical fields. The aspects and melodies
of Mozart concertos had built up in his inmost feelings impressions of the
thrust and curvature of straight lines.5 As for the impact of
literature on scientists, Einstein affirmed that Dostoevski benefitted him more
than any other thinker, including the famous mathematician, C. Gauss.
Atomic physicist Kouznetsov used to visit the Tretiakovski art museum.
The religious images of saints in the museum could not satisfy the severe
logical character of scientific research, but vague conclusions needed to be
shaped and perfected by symbols. He went to a room of ancient pictures of Saints
by Rublev. Standing in passion and meditation among the medieval art works,
Kuznetsov said he felt arise in his heart a strong stimulus which awoke in him a
gradual tension, a sense of the well-proportioned, the coherent and the
intimate; it was those very items which provided the necessary elements for his
new conclusions regarding the character of physical laws.6
The strong inspiration drawn from art by artists, scientists and ordinary
people showed that art had a special force in suggesting images to sensitive
people. They turned the spiritual into material force and creative action. The
reason for this is that in the final analysis art and scientific activity are of
the same united process of creative activity by man in general. In spite of the
fact that both of these creative activities were different in quality, they have
in common building a picture of the world. In this activity, the wholeness of
art, thought and image, the harmony of the details with specific
characteristics, the moving rhythm, the indispensability of each detail -- all
were united into a world of wholeness and harmony. From his own experience,
Kuznetsov affirmed that "both genuine science and genuine music demand the
same thinking process."7 Stolovitch also asserted that
"aesthetics by nature exists in all creations -- even in the field of
political reality, organization and control."8
In these circumstances, the contributions of the various art forms to
scientists were not through philosophical thinking, ethics or the social thought
expressed in novels, nor by the arrangement of any theory or scientific law
imaged in terms of sound or color. The important thing was that scientists
perceived in literature, music, painting, elements of scientific meaning of
harmony and wholeness, whose character created the scientific laws. The
stimulation arose not from logical consciousness, but from awareness of
aesthetics and art. They were able to draw this not by logical impressions but
by aesthetic-psychological impressions, not as a result of direct situation but
from the kind of activity that suggested.
This creative psychology shows that artistic creation covers not only the
layers of consciousness, but also those of the subconscious and the unconscious.
Thus, art had its impact on the consciousness, the subconscious and the
unconscious.
On the other hand, to reflect art was to reflect in images that develop
into symbols -- the nearest link to intuition. For this reason, art and its
activities bear the specific character of intuition which results from
developments in the creative potential of the conscious, subconscious and
unconscious. "Intuition was extremely important for Einstein in grasping
scientific creation, making his scientific creation nearer to artistic
creation."9 The leap from a "vague project" to a
"new project" took place by way of intuition. Within a single moment
in art this enables the search to reach its goal.
CONCLUSION
The above analysis showed that art played a special role in the creative
spiritual life. It contributes easily: to satisfying the aesthetic need,
developing thinking and feelings and building for man a noble soul. The creative
potential in art is a strong force of nature, usually predominant over other
capabilities. Such force is needed not only for creators and researchers in art,
but also for scientific workers, inventors and discoverers, and not only for
social science but for natural science as well.
This does not mean, however, that each and every person experiences the
impact of art. A wonderful piece of music has no value for the ears of someone
who has no knowledge of music. Thus, for the force of art to have impact one
should first be equipped with aesthetic knowledge and scientific theory as a
basis for sensitivity to the art work and aesthetic sensitivity to the life of
the real world. It is necessary to know art in its various forms. This brings
man to a higher level of aesthetic knowledge and a progressive world outlook,
assuring proper evaluation, sensation and creative orientation. A high degree of
aesthetic sensitivity is a prerequisite for the spiritual and creative world.
For this reason, the subject must build for him or herself a rich spiritual
world, a pure and clean life, and form a capacity for delicate and sensible
emotions on the basis of a pure and clean aesthetic ideal. To develop a creative
heart is constantly to enhance the active character of individual creation for
the noble purposes of society and for the development of human creativity.
As for art itself, i.e., the objective side of the aesthetic impact, to
raise the capacity and the impact of art means raising the quality of the work
not only in its content, but also in its form and method of reflection. Art
should strive to create rich and noble art images of society and man,
contributing in major part to the development of man's spiritual world.
Creation is of the nature of man; hence it is permanent and awaits only
the proper conditions in order to be activated. The task of art is to create
these conditions: to build original art works of high quality as special
aesthetic signs which bear in themselves precious creative potential.
NOTES
1. Excerpt from I.A. Philipev, Aesthetic Information Signals
(Moscow: 1971), pp. 80-81.
2. A.K. Jonkovski, "On Magnifying Character," in the book, Research
on Type Structures (Moscow, 1962), pp. 168-169.
3. Letter to A.I. Serov. Stassov in his book V.V. Stassov, Liszt, Schumann
and Berlioz in Russia. Collected works, pp. 13-14.
4. "Smile on the Tower of Bayonne." Art Research (Hanoi:
1975), no.6. P. 75.
5. B.G. Kuznetsov, Essays on Einstein (Moscow: 1965), p. 119.
6. Excerpt from I.A. Philipev, Aesthetic Information Signals
(Moscow: 1971), p. 100.
7. B.G. Kuznetsov, Einstein (Moscow: 1963), p. 88.
8. L.N. Stolovitch, Life, Creation, Man (Moscow: 1985), p.
300-301.
9. E.G. Kuznetsov, Einstein (Moscow: 1963), pp. 86-87.