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Introducing The Principles of Art: Art Contains Nothing Due to Intellect
Per R.G. Collingwood in The Principles of Art, art contains nothing that is due to intellect. As a college educated woman who thrives off learning and increasing my knowledge I am at first offended by said remark. As a life long learner and respecter of the arts I am intrigued. Let’s talk about this because I think we can learn something. Especially those of us who like to think we are intellectual and pride ourselves in doing intellectual things. We use our minds and develop them and now someone is saying art, something some of us love, is not intellectual. So what is it? Dumb.
Collingwood’s premise is that art proper contains nothing due to intellect because it is an activity in which we become conscious of our emotions. These emotions existed in our psyche. The activity of art is the means by which we discover what is there. The activity pulls it out and the artist participating in it will see the result in the finished work. From that they should be able to understand the emotion that was contained within.
Art is not due to intellect, yet certain works do contain intellectual emotions. Intellect is used to comprehend a situation and the artist expresses emotion derived from that comprehension. Collingwood uses Shakespeare as an example. As Shakespeare performed his artistic activity he…
