Art and ethics

The arts and vital force

As already noted the arts are an essential part of the cultural pattern of a primal society. Hence it is not surprising that craftsmanship as well as the artefacts it gives rise to are also seen as endowed with vital force. Jamshij Behnam tells us that the African painter, sculptor, singer, dancer believes in the existence of the “life force” and “his art is at the service of his beliefs”. What is more, to make a work of art is

“to breathe the life force into the tangible form of a mask or a statue so that in time of need this life force can be released and blossom again through dance prayer or recitation.” [29]

For Behnam, man

“is part of the pyramid of life’s forces, by fulfilling the appropriate rituals that transmit this force the artist can transmit this force, not only to his children and family but also to all the beings round him and to the earth which makes him and the earth bountiful and the earth gives him her fruit.” [30]

It is only in the light of their contribution to the achievement of this end that the masks and statues that Africans make as well as their music and dance can be understood. Artefacts however, can only be seen as endowed with vital force, and hence as sacred, if they are made in the correct way: that is to say if the requisite rituals are carried out at every stage of their production.

What is more, the materials themselves, from which they are made, cannot be chosen at random. They must above all be natural. Joseph Epes Brown tells us that among the North American Indians,

“each natural material had to be living and imbued with a form of vital force” that had to be respected if its own vital force could be preserved and the appropriate amount transmitted to the objects made from it and the ceremonials in which these objects played a part.” [31]

Thus as Brown notes,

“When an Indian Artisan models a bowl out of dry clay, he is establishing a powerful relationship with the creative forces of the earth and the artisan thereby himself becomes the creator, while the bowl is transformed into a living thing and is thereby imbued with a special type of transmittable vital force.” [32]

Titus Burckhardt in his little classic Sacred Art in East and West tells us that this was also true in early Christendom. Sacred buildings also had to be built from natural materials, wood, brick and stone corresponding

“to the hyle or materia prima, the plastic substance of the world. The mason dressing a stone sees in it the materia which will participate in the perfection of the world only to the extent that it takes on a forma determined by the divine Spirit that is inspiring him.” [32]

So it is not only the mason who is building the sacred building from these materia prima, but the divine spirit itself.

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Sacred Tools

But it is not just the artefact itself or the materials out of which they are made that can be endowed with vital force and hence with sacredness – but also the tools used for creating them, which were seen as providing the link between different cosmological realms or different levels in the cosmic hierarchy – that between an artist, his society, the natural world and the world of the Gods.

Cline, for instance, writing about the the Chaga of Kilimanjaro, tells us that “a special power was seen to dwell in the smith’s hammer, as the chief bearer of all the spiritual force of his profession”. [34] The hammer, the bellows and the anvil were seen as “animate miraculous objects”. This being so, they were regarded as capable of operating by their own magico-religious force, unassisted by the smith. [35]

Adrian A. Gerbrands tells us that the tools used for making masks among the tribes of the Ivory Coast, are capable of “greatly influencing not only the success of the work, but the health of the artist”. It is for these reasons that they

“are treated with the greatest care, offerings are brought to them, and they may not be shown to women or uninitiated persons . . . or the work will miscarry, and great evil will come on the unauthorised person who saw it.” [36]

The same seems to have been true in primal societies just about everywhere. In this way, tools could “evoke the mythological era of ancestors and origins”. [37] Also it appears, that musical instruments can represent and even themselves become, first ancestors or form an connecting tie with the ancestors and Gods. [38]

The great cathedrals of early Christendom, like the temples before them, were models of the cosmos and, according to Titus Burkhardt, the tools used to shape the sacred materials used for their construction “accordingly symbolized the divine instruments which fashion the cosmos out of the undifferentiated and amorphous materia prima” and hence must further sanctify both the builders of the cathedral and the cathedral itself. [39]

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The Role of Aesthetics

There is no doubt but that fine craftsmanship and aesthetics alone also contribute to increasing the sacredness of buildings and artefacts that we already regard as sacred, which explains why the finest building in a traditional city is the temple, or later the cathedral, which by being a microcosm of the cosmos is already endowed with a great deal of vital force or sacredness.

That it was made by the most skilful craftsmen from the finest materials and with the most elaborate ornamentation clearly contributed to their sacredness, as did the beauty of the sacred music and of the rituals performed within their walls.

Thus Seeger tells us that

“fine craftsmanship and the beautiful object that it brings into being transform the ordinary into the extraordinary, or the secular into the sacred.” [40]

According to William H. Davenport, the final stage of the burial ceremony of the Aoriki of the Solomon Islands is the huge festivities that are “infused with the spirit of an arts festival”, the aesthetic embellishment transforming “the ordinary material goods into non-economic goods – into sacra”. [41]

He further informs us that the Aoriki eat their everyday meals out of simple wooden bowls which almost anyone can make, but for sacred meals, the bowls must be elegantly carved and inlaid and only a few skilled craftsmen know how to do this.

The same is true with their fishing canoes. For everyday fishing purposes, simple ones are used, but for catching sacred Bonito, and Tuna more elaborate canoes are constructed and they require a degree of craftsmanship that few people are capable of providing and that is reserved for sacred rituals.

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Art as re-enactments of creation

Finally, as already intimated, the rituals involved in the creation of an artefact are often seen as re-enactments of the original act of creation that brought the cosmos into being. By virtue of these rituals, the artefacts are ‘cosmicised’, in other words, they have been made into the differentiated part of the cosmic process itself and correspondingly endowed with a high level of vital force and hence of sacredness, while at the same time, these rituals contribute to the society’s overriding goal of maintaining the continuity and integrity of the cosmos.

Anthony Seeger tells us that acts of crafting that create visible representations of the conjunction of inside-outside cosmological realms are also often seen “as acts that recreate the cosmological order originally formed and established by creator gods” who are often also mythologically described as artisans. Among the Suya of the Northern Matto Grosso, Seeger also tells us that song was seen as “an important way of re-establishing the cosmos in its correct order”. [42]

The Papagos of the south west of North America, as Joseph Epes Brown tells us, also see the production of their traditional baskets from the prescribed herbs and vegetable dyes

“as the recapitulation of the original act of creation. The basket is an image of the universe. The woman who has made it is literally fulfilling the role of the original creator.” [43]

The Pueblo Indians, he also notes, who are known for their theatrical dances, rehearse them in underground and very sacred chambers (Kivas). Each one contains a well, (the Sipapu) from which the first humans are seen to have emerged. The well is a “centre of the universe” for the land is connected with the sacred mountains where the earth joins up with the heavens. [44]

Of course, these theatrical dances do not occur haphazardly but according to a strict ritual calendar. This is ensured by a priest who belongs to a specific clan and who has special knowledge of the annual movements of the sun. The dances that take place in the village squares mark the periodic return of the gods to the earth so that they can remain in contact with the sacred places. The object of the dances is to assure the renewal of the sacred earth, for

“If they are not performed, then the powers which maintain life will simply come to an end and the earth will die.”

And this would clearly be the acme of immorality – immorality, in fact, on a cosmic scale.

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References

1.	M. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1978 (first published 1958). Cited by Edward Goldsmith in The Way; chapter 8, p.44. University of Georgia Press, Athens, 1992.
2.	Alexander Von Humboldt, Cosmos: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe; p.58. Translated by E. C. Otte & B. H. Paul, Bohns Scientific Library, Henry A Bohm, London, 1849.
3.	Father Placide Tempels, La Philosophie Bantoue. Translated by A. Rubbens, Presence Africaine, 1948.
4.	James Lovelock, Gaia. A New Look At Life On Earth. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979.
5.	Note: The famous Austrian artist, Frederic Hundertwasser, is reported to always have said that “nature abhors straight lines”.
6.	P. Weiss, cited in “The Physics And Chemistry of Freedom”; p.30. Chaitanya Krishna, Somaiya Publications, Bombay, 1972.
7.	R. Jeffers, The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers; p.594. Random House, New York, 1959.
8.	A. Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac; chapter 17, p.100. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1953. Cited by Edward Goldsmith, ibid..
9.	G. G. Simpson, The Meaning Of Evolution: A Study Of The History of Life And Its Significance For Man; pp.306 & 347. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1950.
10.	A. K. Coomeraswamy, The Transformation Of Nature In Art; pp.16-17. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1935.
11.	F. K. Errington, Manners And Meanings In West Sumatra; p.38. Yale University Press, Newhaven, NJ, 1984.
12.	Soyyed H. Nasr, Religion and the Order of Nature; p.33. Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford, 1996.
13.	J. M. Chernoff, African Rythmn and African Sensibility; pp.150-151. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1979.
14.	G. Cajete, Look To The Mountains: An Ecology of Indigenous Education. Kivaki Press, 1994.
15.	Ibid.
16.	W. Radcliffe Brown, Structure And Function in Primitive Society. Cohen & West, London, 1965. Cited by Edward Goldsmith (ibid); p.100.
17.	D. S. Nivison, from: M. Eliade, Encyclopedia of Religions, Vol. 14; p.283.
18.	J. J. M. de Groot, The Religion of The Chinese. Macmillan, New York, 1910. Cited by Edward Goldsmith (ibid.); p.174.
19.	Wing-Tsit, A Sourcebook In Chinese Philosophy. Princetown University Press, 1963. Cited by R. D. Peerenboom, Beyond Naturalism: A Reconstruction of Taoist Environmental Ethics, Environmental Ethics, Vol. XIII, Spring 1991; p.9.
20.	W. K. Mahony, Mircea Eliade’s Encyclopedia of Religions, Vol. 12; p.480.
21.	Note: The term R’ta has the same linguistic root as harmos (Greek) and the later Ars meaning ‘skill’ and ‘craft’, hence ‘art’ and ‘artist’.
22.	Ibid. Vol. 14; p.329.
23.	F. M. Cornford, From Religion To Philosophy; p.13. Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1957.
24.	Hesiod. Cited by Edward Goldsmith (ibid.); p.98.
25.	F. M. Cornford, ibid.; p.14.
26.	E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life; p.199. George Allen & Unwin, London, 1964 (first published 1915).
27.	Cornford, op.cit.
28.	L. Senghor, La Pensée Africaine; p.32. Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1983.
29.	J. Behnam, Catalogue of an Introduction to the Art of Black Africa; p.21. Tehran, November 1 1977.
30.	Ibid.
31.	Joseph Epes Brown, L’Heritage Spirituel Des Indiens d’Amerique; p.107. Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, 1982.
32.	Ibid.
33.	T. Burckhardt, Sacred Art In East And West; p.52. Perennial Books, 1967 (first published 1958).
34.	W. Cline, Mining and Metallurgy in Negro Africa. General series in Anthropology, Number 5, George Bantu Publishing, Menasha, Wisconsin, 1937; pp.115-116. Cited by Mary Helms, Craft and the Kingly Ideal; p.21. University of Texas Press, 1993.
35.	M. Eliade, The Forge And The Crucible; p.29. Harper & Row, New York, 1962.
36.	A. A. Gerbrands, “Art As An Element of Culture in Africa”. In Charlotte M. Otten ed., Anthropology and Art; p.369. 1971. Cited by Mary Helms, Craft and the Kingly Ideal; p.21. University of Texas Press, 1993.
37.	G. Balandier, Daily Life In The Kingdom of The Kongo; pp.224, 110-114. George Allen & Unwin, New York, 1968.
38.	J. M. Chernoff, African Rythmn & African Sensibility; p.150. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1979.
39.	T. Burckhardt, Sacred Art In East And West; p.52. Perennial Books Ltd, 1967.
40.	A. Seeger, Why Suya Sing. Cambridge University Press, 1987. Cited by Mary Helms, Craft and the Kingly Ideal; p.62. University of Texas Press, 1993.
41.	W. H. Davenport, “Two kinds of value from the Solomon Islands”. In Arjun Appadurai ed., The social life of things; pp.105-6. Cambridge University Press, 1986.
42.	Seeger, op.cit. Helms; p.24.
43.	Ibid. p.111.
44.	J. Epes Brown, op.cit., pp.42-43.

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