Proper Art is a divine gift of inspiration so rare that only the most foolish of artists would claim that they actually set out to create it as such. Email Article Print Article Bookmark RSS Related Content:   Artist Finances   How to Sell Your Art Online   Quit Job for Art?   Create Your Blog

I have literary and scholastic heroes like all of you and, for me; there is none greater than Joseph Campbell. Campbell was a lifelong scholar of James Joyce and loved to speak about the aesthetic definition of art he laid down in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In this book, Joyce makes a distinction between Proper and Improper art and it is this distinction that any artist worth their salt needs to be living and breathing.

Joyce defines Improper Art as kinetic and breaks it down into two categories: the pornographic and the didactic. Pornographic art is any expression that inspires desire in the observer to possess the object. All advertising art is pornographic in this sense and therefore improper.

The second category of Improper Art, in Joyce's aesthetic, is the Didactic. Didactic Art is any artistic expression which instills fear or loathing in the observer and thereby pushes them away from the object being observed.

All comedy is didactic, at the least the best comedy is. All tragedy is didactic and all social expressions of anger are didactic. Whether it's Dave Chappelle, Saturday Night Live, Nine Inch Nails, or KRS-ONE--it's improper by Joyce's definition.

98% of all art produced since World War II (Post-Modern or whatever ridiculous term the literati call it now) is improper in Joyce's sense because it has been inherently kinetic—suffused with internal movement that either pulls the observer toward it in a desire to possess or pushes the observer away with fear or loathing.

But then we get to Proper Art which Joyce defines as static and this is where things get interesting. Joyce defines proper art as that which does not pull the observer toward it or push the observer away from it, but rather holds them still in aesthetic arrest of the moment.

In this definition, if a work of art is true, it uses the forms of time and space in terms of contemporary life (people, objects, and their relationships to each other) to blow apart the illusory divisions that allow us to exist as individuals who are born from the great blank, grow old through similar stages of life, and die back into the great blank. And here we finally get to the Holy of Holies.

The Great Blank is the space between thoughts and it is what proper art is concerned with--leading the individual observer back to The Mysterious Ground of Being. We are talking about a sublime and complete dissolution of the individual and collective ego into the great void of creative energy from which all life springs. All great art that has moved individuals, and hence the world, along from social epoch to epoch has been rooted in The Great Blank.

But here's the catch--Proper Art is a near impossible thing to plan out and achieve. It's a divine gift of inspiration so rare that only the most foolish of artists would claim that they actually set out to create it as such.

Joyce himself never completed his master work of art--a tetrology of books beginning with A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man moving into Ulysses (a book banned the US for a short period of time), then into Finnegan's Wake (an almost impenetrable book without Campbell's own A Skeleton Key to Finnegan's Wake) and finally what should have been a fourth novel that brought the reader back through the void into the waking moment of life where their ego would be released to roam from the aesthetic arrest between books three and four. But the fourth book was never completed as Joyce died at too young an age.

By using this definition of proper art as an analytical device, it is easy to see that most of the art produced these days is that of the improper variety. But there are also a few shining gems among us and while we as artists may never get lucky enough to be struck with divine inspiration and the passion to see it through to completion, we can prepare ourselves to enjoy and partake in those works which can lead us into bliss. The experience on either side of the creative process of a Proper work of art is enough to change our lives and replenish the world that was once only a wasteland.

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Joshua Minton is an author and President of Family Bliss Enterprises, Inc. His book Flipping the Temple: Win the Information War Using the Internet to Achieve Fantastic Success as an Author will be available in September only on JoshuaMintonDotCom. You can keep up with Josh by checking in on his blog daily at BoysWearPantsDotCom and signing up for his free newsletter by sending a blank e-mail to moreminton@aweber.com. In exchange for letting Josh keep you up to date with what's going on in his world, he will send you two of his novels and a book of his poems immediately upon confirmation of your e-mail address (make sure to click the link that will come to you after you sign up).

Art Ideas:

Whether you're creating proper art or improper art you'll need some great art lessons to get started!  Just as James Joyce created his art through literature, you too can create art in your own way.  Perhaps starting with some drawing lessons is the easiest way to start making art right away!  Someday you may even go to school to learn art!

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