Spiritual Vitality

by Harold Clurman

THE CREATIVE MOMENT IN ART occurs when the thing shown makes the spirit leap into that realm where we seem to be set free by the experience of some essence of being. Without this all entertain­ment – no matter how well wrought – holds us down to a mere exercise of the surface faculties, and offers no release.

With this we enter the world of aesthetics which, to paraphrase Anatole France, is to ‘walk in the clouds.’ What I found myself reflecting about when I saw Henry Moore’s sculpture and drawings at the Museum of Modern Art was not so much the elemental qualities of his work as the pertinence of his pronouncements which serve as a kind of intro­duction to it.

“A work can have in it a pent-up energy,” Moore says, “an intense life of its own, indepen­dent of the object it may represent. When a work has this powerful vitality we do not connect the word ‘beauty’ with it....Beauty in the later Greek and Renaissance sense is not the aim of my sculp­ture. Between beauty of expression and power of expression there is a difference of function. The first aims at pleasing the senses, the second has a spiritual vitality which for me is more moving and goes deeper than the senses.”

I am in sympathy with Mr. Moore’s intention, but I fear his statement is misleading. What Mr. Moore means, in the first place, is that prettiness is not his objective. It is wrong, however, to concede that beauty may be the attribute and goal of one kind of art, while “spiritual vitality” occupies another category. Who today would say that the obviously ingratiating music of Mozart is beauti­ful, while Beethoven, whose music was once regarded as shockingly cacophonous, is not beauti­ful? I much prefer Ibsen’s statement about “Peer Gynt”: “If it isn’t poetry today, it will be tomor­row!” Walt Whitman, too, faced this problem when he declared that what he sought was “not beauty but expression.” Art that merely pleases the senses is not beautiful, and an art that has a rough and even repellent aspect may be beautiful.

The reason such defenses as Henry Moore’s have to be made is that in our time beauty has become synonymous with the pleasing, and vulgar­ized as the pretty. Art has become a pastime, a salve, an opiate. In these circumstances, art as such must die in either a sterile academicism or a trivial debauchery.

Beauty has many faces. It can inform the glowering Christianity of a Russian icon as well as the graces of a pagan statue. It resides in the gentlest psalm and in the harshest words of the prophets. Whitman’s best work is beautiful, with a beauty different from that of Keats. El Greco is certainly as beautiful as Raphael. The “spiritual vitality” that Henry Moore speaks of must be immanent in the beautiful works he refers to or they are not beautiful, and his own work must be beautiful if it has “spiritual vitality.” The critic’s job is always to discover and define the particular kind of “spiritual vitality,” “beauty,” or expression that may lie in each body of work that he encounters.•u1947

Excerpt from his essay: “Death by Entertainment.” Reprinted with the permission of Ms. J.C. Compton and the permission of Ms. Ellen Adler.

© Drawing above reproduced by special arrangement with Hirschfeld's exclusive representative, The margo Feiden Galleries, NY.

HAROLD CLURMAN A dynamic force as producer, director, drama critic, he founded the famed Group theatre in 1931 with Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford. He directed the original productions of Awake & Sing, The Member Of The Wedding, Incident At Vichy and Bus Stop among others. His classic account of the Group Theatre, The Fervent Years is a must read for all theatre lovers, as well as his On Directing and All People Are Famous. A recipient of the George Jean Nathan Award, he was known as the elder statesman of the American Theatre.