For in the unfolding of the cosmos, and the unhurried progression of time (the indifference of which suggests the pattern of a divine and unremitting patience), is to be found a plan by which the highest and ugliest recalcitrance, which had its origin in the spiritual realm, and which now roams the world not by its own power, but by an allowance of the creator, does not increase as it would like to (though it may exert its influence for an age, and summon to itself those souls that, through the momentum of their own volition, would belong to it), but is diminished, overwhelmed, and, finally, snuffed out, so that nature is restored to an incorruptibility, and humankind to an abundance of love that is, perhaps, greater than it would have been had humankind not participated in the choosing of it.
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Which is to say, I suppose, that humankind is loved by its creator, and so should love itself.
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Even from a Judeo-Christian perspective, humankind is something of a disappointment, inasmuch as the act of disobedience that first separated it from its creator is perpetuated today, in our individual lives, through sin. And yet the disappointment isn’t entire; it isn’t the last word. For the gift that is the freedom of our will exists as a constant source of potential to alleviate it, as is evidenced by the lives of people we describe as saintly, or holy, or ordinary but decent. And in the messianic promise of the Hebrew scriptures (which Christianity sees as fulfilled, and which Judaism awaits and expects) is a reversal of the consequences of that disappointment.
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I cannot say I agree, though I understand the sentiment, as I think does everyone who knows what humans are capable of.
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To be sure, it is the conviction of not a few that reality would be better off were humankind and all its works to vanish, or to never have existed.
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I mentioned such conspicuous examples as those structures (a tower, a bridge, the pyramids) for how clearly they introduce their shapes into reality. And how lacking their locations might seem to us were these structures to disappear. But the same idea can be applied to any genre — a book, a film, a song, a painting. The best works of art seem to intensify the ‘thereness’ of reality, so that reality would seem lesser had they not existed, though it would not be lesser.
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The Japanese rock garden and the French formal garden are good examples of this. The value of a work of art that installs itself in nature should be the measure by which it brings the mind into focus, and the soul into a state of recollection and tranquility.
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For while it is true that nature, as a spectacle, contains within it a grandeur that is sufficient to itself, humankind, through its capacity for art (and participating in the spiritual in a way the rest of nature does not), will often bring to nature that principle of order of which nature itself is innocent, or lacking, and that, when wielded correctly (which is to say with reverence and virtuosity), will magnify or heighten, and not disfigure or mar.
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In other words, while the concerns that made these structures possible might at first have been practical, eventually those concerns yielded to, or merged with, spiritual and aesthetic ones. The significance of which is that they attempt to bring to nature, without neglecting or disregarding nature, a presence that does not exist in nature.
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More specifically, they were designed not merely for brute purpose, but to respond to the geometry of the landscape, to accentuate the contours of nature, and to invigorate the spaces into which they would be brought forth.
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Rather, if one is willing to give these works the benefit of the doubt, and allow them to exist for a moment outside the contexts in which everything participates, so that they might be considered on purely aesthetic grounds, one will see, I think, that although they were designed to have a function, and arose from a cultural inertia that might be critiqued in a number of ways, they also were designed to be beautiful.
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Certainly there might be some who consider these structures an eyesore, and perhaps they are right, who am I to say? But I doubt anyone would be of the persuasion that such was the intention of the architects and engineers who designed them.
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Though by ‘necessity’ I don’t mean only that which is practical (the tomb that is the basis for the pyramid, for example, or the span of road that is the basis for the bridge), but also that which is expressive — the flair, the scale, the proportions, the adornment, the color, the suppleness or the severity of the lines, the austerity or the profusion.
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And the monumentality, in each case, is a consequence of the necessity that brought it to fruition.
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Try to imagine Paris without the Eiffel Tower, or San Francisco without the Golden Gate Bridge, or Giza without the Pyramids. These works do more than just belong to those places; they increase the spiritual volume of those places by their monumentality.
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In other words, a great work of art will enrich the world by introducing to reality the shape of its own necessity.
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Which isn’t to say that all attempts at art are equally necessary (or necessary beyond the personal or therapeutic concerns of the artist, which form a legitimacy of their own), but that, in those wherein a mastery of technique is equal to the vision, one encounters a thing that one did not even know one needed.
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Though perhaps what I ought to say is that while the industriousness of the artist has no necessity that can be identified or evaluated prior to its results, by way of those results does it establish and validate its own necessity.
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I suppose the reason that a ‘patron of the arts’ emerged, as an idea, is because art is the result of an industriousness that has no necessity, or that cannot be valued according to conventional standards of currency.
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We do not ‘need,’ for example, the extravagance of the interior of the Sistine Chapel, but who would object to it, or say that the world would be better off had Pope Julius II not given Michelangelo the job of painting its ceiling?