Seeking After Truth and Beauty

As we turn our attention to discovering and discerning works connected to the vast world of the visual arts (i.e. painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography, architecture), we will do so specifically through the lenses of Truth, Beauty, and The Good.

What is the truth in our age? Where do we discover Truth? What is the importance of accessing and discerning truth in the arts? An example of how to approach such questions was taught by President Uchtdorf in a 2013 BYU Devotional:

The great miracle of the Restoration was not just that it corrected false ideas and corrupt doctrines—though it certainly did that—but that it flung open the curtains of heaven and initiated a steady downpour of new light and knowledge that has continued to this day.

So we continually seek truth from all good books and other wholesome sources. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.(Article of Faith 13) In this manner we can resist the deceit of the evil one. In this manner we learn the truth precept upon precept; line upon line.(2 Nephi 28:30; D&C 98:12; Isaiah 28:13) And we will learn that intelligence cleaves unto intelligence, and wisdom receives wisdom, and truth embraces truth (D&C 88:4).

My young friends, as you accept the responsibility to seek after truth with an open mind and a humble heart, you will become more tolerant of others, more open to listen, more prepared to understand, more inclined to build up instead of tearing down, and more willing to go where the Lord wants you to go.”

With this focus on the purposes and effects of truth, let’s dive into truth. A recent AI generator of definitions and essays described truth as a concept that refers to the state or quality of being in accord with fact or reality. It is often used to refer to correspondence between statements or beliefs and actual facts. In other words, something is true if it corresponds to reality. 

There are lots of fun and interesting quotes on truth that are worth thinking about. Here are a few:

●   Buddha: Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.

●   Mark Twain: If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

●   Confucius: The object of the superior man is truth.

●   John Calvin: A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God’s truth is attacked and yet would remain silent.

●   African proverb: The bitter truth is better than a sweet lie.

●   Mahatma Gandhi: Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

●   Unknown author: In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. 

Our current age is filled with fallacies, corrupt ideologies, anti-truths, and some even argue that we live in a post-truth era. It is a scary period of time to deal with this confusion in the world where even the definition of what a man and woman are is being questioned. In an article entitled What is Truth? Jeremy Wyatt makes this statement,

We’ve all come across popular expressions such as speaking your truth or alternative facts. Those who use these expressions seriously seem to think that whatever someone believes is “their truth,” and that this is basically all that we need to say about the nature of truth. This view about truth is a version of simple-minded relativism, which says that there is no such thing as truth—only “your truth,” “my truth,” “my culture’s truth,” “my race’s truth,” “my gender’s truth,” or something of this ilk. 

You can read any of the great books, for example, and most of them are not factually true. However, the books speak of universal truths. For example, Les Misérables by Victor Hugo follows the life of Valjean, who was in prison for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread in France at the end of the 18th century. This person of Valjean is not “real,” but it teaches of universal truths like death and resurrection, brotherhood, redemption, and others. 

Folktales also share universal truths. Folktales have existed for thousands of years in virtually all cultures. In fact, the same story is told over and over. The story of Cinderella is told in many cultures around the world, whether she’s Yeh-Shen in China or Nyasha in Africa. In all versions, she shows goodness and kindness, and she is triumphant. Stories like this teach that good overcomes evil and that human beings can triumph over difficult challenges. Think of your favorite fairy tale or story. What truth does it teach?

One today must do all they can to seek, adopt, follow, and become a lover of truth. It is necessary to start with the closest source of truth—the Prophet and President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, President Russell M. Nelson. He recognizes this earthly problem regarding truth because in general conferences, he has spoken directly about this issue. Watch or read the following talks by President Nelson so you are grounded in some of his proclamations on the topic of truth (both under six minutes). 

• “Pure Truth, Pure Doctrine, and Pure Revelation” (October 2021) President Nelson

• “What is True?” (October 2022) President Nelson

Art and Truth

Sir Roger Scruton was an English philosopher and writer who specialized in aesthetics. He said this about seeking Truth in the Arts: 

But, this brings us back to the parallel between art and religion. Religion provides us with truth, but it’s not just straightforward, literal truth about the way the world is. There are all sorts of things that we believe, but there’s a much more important dimension to it. A spiritual truth tells us how things really are for us and what our position really is in the world of human relations and human emotions. In religion, we recognize that there’s no redemption through falsehood, and the same seems to be true of art. Art has its own way of presenting the spiritual truth of things, and if it falsifies, then it doesn’t produce the kind of redemptive consolation that we’re looking for. This might explain sadness in the works of art. It might explain tragedy. In tragedy, you go to the depths, but you find a kind of rescue there. Only if you go to those depths, however, will you be rescued ... So, art is certainly not going to be any help to us if it loses sight of what we are and what we need.

So, if art has these kinds of limitations, what does it teach us about art? Do we learn from art, a kind of truth—a truth that we, perhaps, couldn’t learn from any other human activity? Well, for a start, art is not one kind of thing. There is abstract art and representational art. Abstract art is like music or like abstract painting, abstract sculpture. It doesn’t actually have a subject matter. That’s the whole point of it. You’re supposed to appreciate it for what it is in itself, for the harmony of lines and figures, for the ways in which things balance against each other.

It’s supposed to attract attention purely for its own sake and not for the subject matter that it represents. Already, that makes it rather difficult to say exactly what it is that we learn from art. One thought, then, is that we don’t actually go to art for information. The information content is not the primary thing; rather, the experience is. But, of course, not all truth is information. We have lots of different ideas of truth. Christ said, famously, I am the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). He didn’t mean truth; in the sense that scientists use that word—that He is somehow a true representation of the world—He meant something deeper. He meant that you can trust in Him; and by trusting in Him, you come to know something about yourself: how far you can go in whatever direction and with what kind of hope. Perhaps that version of the idea of truth, which brings in a notion of trust, is more important for considering art, because we find support in the person we trust. (Roger Scruton Lecture, Wheatley Institute, The True, the Good and the Beautiful)

Consider the following ideas related to searching for Truth in the Visual Arts.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.” [Pablo Picasso in Theories of Modern Art: A Sourcebook by Artists and Critics. Herschel B. Chipp (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1968), 264.]

According to Ludwig Wittgenstein, a philosophy professor at the University of Cambridge from 1929–1947, People nowadays think scientists are there to instruct them, while poets and musicians entertain them. That the latter have something to teach them; that never occurs to them. 18th and early 19th-century art-lovers would have taken a very different view. 

Dr. Samuel Johnson, an 18th-century English writer, assumed that the poets had truths to impart, while Georg Hegel (the German philosopher) insisted, In art we have to do, not with any agreeable or useful child’s play, but with an unfolding of the truth. ... High art aims at truth, in something like the way that beliefs are said to aim at truth, that is, it asserts an internal connection with truth. Each art form aims at truth in its own way or ways. This relatively modest claim contrasts high art with art with a small a that aims merely to please, such as sentimental or sensationalist art. On this conception, the most valuable art leaves open to the audience how it should be interpreted. 

Examples of Artistic Truth

A comparison of the art produced by the late 19th-century Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh — who may have sold only one painting in his entire life — with that of American painter Thomas Kinkade (1958-2012) is instructive. A major difference between Van Gogh and Kinkade is that Van Gogh’s art tends to convey more truth to us as the viewer of artworks. Why? 

Van Gogh's art is known for its emotional intensity and the deep feelings of sorrow and longing it expresses. He used bold colors and thick brushstrokes to convey his inner turmoil, which was often the result of his mental health struggles. Some people believe that Van Gogh's art is a true reflection of his soul and that it reveals deep truths about human experience. 

Regarding one of his last paintings, Wheatfield with Crows, the Van Gogh Museum writes that the menacing sky, the crows and dead-end path are said to refer to the end of his life approaching. But that is just a persistent myth. In fact, he made several other works after this one. The artist did, however, want his wheatfields under stormy skies to express sadness, extreme loneliness, but at the same time he wanted to show what he considered healthy and fortifying about the countryside.

In contrast, Kincade’s paintings are known for their pastoral, idyllic presentation of quaint rural cottages and lighthouses by the sea, all of which are typically illuminated with his characteristic golden light. As a painter, he is also “notable for achieving success during his lifetime with the mass marketing of his work as printed reproductions and other licensed products.” (Wikipedia)

Roger Scrunton's Interpretation

Through works of the imagination, we bring distant things into close relation with each other. That’s what we do in figures of speech, in poetry. We’re bringing things into relation with each other. The brush strokes in the painting bring a human action into relation with a landscape. These imaginary worlds that we create can strike us as true, or as false, as we see in Van Gogh as opposed to that by Thomas Kinkade. Some Americans have a Kinkade above their mantelpiece because it’s a soothing thing. For some people, this is a vision of what painting should be. It’s much truer to the appearance of things than Van Gogh, but there’s a question about it. What is that question? Many people would say there’s a falsification behind this painting. I don’t want to cast judgment on it, but just say a few things about it. Why does this strike so many people as false? In one sense, it’s truer than the Van Gogh. It’s closer to the way things actually look. But the falsification, if it exists, is the falsification of the observer rather than of the observed. It shows a world presented through a veil of self-congratulatory sentiment. That’s at least what the critic would say. It tells you that you’re a good person and no further efforts need to be made. Van Gogh is not telling you that at all. He’s telling you that life is rough, and you need to make efforts even to see this. It tells you that further efforts need to be made, and that meaning lies in the forms and colors. There are pastel shades smeared over the landscape like a disease. Well, is that right? I’ll leave it to you to think.” (Roger Scruton Lecture, Wheatley Institute, The True, the Good and the Beautiful)

In many ways, artists will focus much attention on the first point above, while including elements of the others when necessary. If you think about a pond or small lake in your neighborhood, what qualities does it have? How would you describe it? What elements of life and nature does it include? How would you draw or paint it to express some form of truth? If we look at one of the earliest painted ponds in history from the Tomb of Nebamun in Ancient Egypt New Kingdom (c. 1400 BC), what do you recognize about the image below that says “pond?”

You may say there is truthfulness in the depictions of the animal life, and trees, but in an overall examination it lacks an accuracy of how you might perceive it in real life. So, how can this representation be truer than, say, a photograph of a pond?

One might criticize the Egyptian painting because it is an aerial shot of a pond but the fish and birds are in profile and the trees look like they are lying on the ground. That said, most people could recognize the subject matter as well as the types of trees it portrays. In addition, this image was created for a tomb. The ancient Egyptian tomb was not just a place of burial and pretty images of and for the tomb owner but also a place where order must be manifest in all things. Egyptians believed that chaos was one of the most dangerous elements in the world and nature as seen in its natural form is chaotic, so the artists were mindful of the necessity of the truth in ordering the natural world above any naturalistic view. 

Another example can be found in the landscape paintings of Claude Monet, a 19th century French Impressionist Painter. He loved painting nature, painting directly outdoors looking at it. You might think that this would make his images much more realistic in portrayal, but they instead are imbued with his energy and life and beauty and a love for nature. In 2019, the Denver Art Museum presented an exhibition of works by Monet entitled “Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature.”

Gallery view of “Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature.”

Photo by James Florio

If you look at a specific painting from that exhibit shown below, The Japanese Footbridge (1899), which of Hegel’s art-related truths might be most relevant? Would you say that it leans more toward 1) an expression, presentation, or consideration of truth(s), or 2) a truthful representation (in this case of a water lily pond and Japanese bridge set within a lush garden)? Or another? Monet, himself, recognized the difficulty of knowing whether or not he had successfully arrived at the truth in his landscape paintings: “You have to know how to seize just the right moment in a landscape instantaneously, because that particular moment will never come again, and you’re always wondering if the impression you got was truthful” (Denver “The Truth of Nature” exhibit).

It may be somewhat counterintuitive to one’s thinking, but for Monet, greater truth was found or captured more in the instantaneous impression of a given moment or scene and less in depicting a subject in all its minute detail. Finally, in our pursuit of artistic truth, Monet gives us further encouragement: “It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.” https://news.coloradoacademy.org/learning-through-observation/

The Japanese Footbridge.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia. Public Domain

20^th century Dutch artist, Piet Mondrian, also sought for truth, exemplified in his how his style developed from nature and depictions of trees to his very abstract forms of lines and color, such as his Tableau I shown below.

 Tableau I oil.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

Mondrian stated, “Impressed by the vastness of nature, I was trying to express its expansion, rest, and unity. At the same time, I was fully aware that the visible expansion of nature is at the same time its limitation; vertical and horizontal lines are the expression of two opposing forces; these exist everywhere and dominate everything; their reciprocal action constitutes ‘life.’” (https://muse.jhu.edu/article/598962)

Truth could be represented in a system of verticals and horizontals. It is the viewer’s responsibility to see that—or not. In a world filled with confusion, it is often more difficult to recognize (or discern) and adopt the truth the world offers. Sometimes even in the scientific world where you would expect to find a greater adherence to truth, there is disagreement on even fundamental issues such as climate change and its possible effects as well as the definition of a woman. You may believe in one side of the argument or the other, but that doesn’t make what you believe true. At this point in our society, it should be noted as opinion, but you watch people portray it as fact and truth. If there is any political component to a “truth” for example, recognize that it probably isn’t truth but opinion.

Beauty is Truth in the Arts

How do you calculate whether something is beautiful, as opposed to just average or even ugly? Is there a magic formula? Are there certain patterns of notes or chord progressions that will automatically make a song beautiful? Or proportions and colors that are necessary to have a beautiful painting? Or do you just know it when you sense it? Turns out that going by your intuition is actually not a strong indicator of whether something is beautiful or not. Researchers have conducted studies where they analyze the faces of people who many consider “beautiful people.” It turns out that if you take thirty female faces at random and then morph those faces into one face, the resulting face will look very much like your favorite celebrity. In other words, what many consider to be the most beautiful faces are, in fact, the most average (pause for a moment to let that sink in). Why would we consider something that is average to be beautiful? Derek Thompson, the author of Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction, shows that our familiarity with many faces makes us feel very comfortable and pleased with the average of all those faces. The resulting face is familiar and we have seen that face and other faces like it, many times before. It is the reason why on any given day, 90% of the music we listen to is music we have already heard before. We then conflate beauty with things that are familiar to us, easy to digest, and average.

So, we must turn away from our own intuitions to principles. In his book, Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, philosopher Roger Scruton offers the characteristics and attributes of artistic works that are beautiful. Instead of trying to figure out a formula for beauty or polling a bunch of people, Scruton asks instead what beautiful things do. His answer is five-fold. Beautiful things do the following:

1. Invite contemplation.
2. Have fittingness (fit into their surroundings; pieces fit together well).
3. Help us better understand the human condition.
4. Express our aspirations.
5. Tap into our imaginations (but do not indulge us by gratuitously playing out our fantasies).

With Scruton’s short list of characteristics and attributes in mind, you can already think about music, art, literature and cinema in terms of what is beautiful and what is not.

Scruton sees two forces that are competing to push beauty out of our lives. On the one hand, popular culture often celebrates that which is sordid and ugly because it is “funny” or “witty” or “edgy” or “bad.” Audiences are fed quick fixes: explicit lyrics in songs, explosions and nudity in movies and shows, a quick laugh in a social media post in word or image.

The ugly stands in stark contrast to that which is beautiful. On the other hand, utility often rules our lives. A great example is in architecture. Many people live, work, exercise, and relax in buildings, which are glorified boxes. The buildings are there simply to shelter people from the elements.

Decorative details, architectural design, durable, and attractive materials all add to a sense of well-being both in our bodies and in our souls. Utility can also be an enemy to beauty. If you build for the sake of utility, then what you build will soon pass away. But if you build with beauty in mind, first and foremost, then what you build will be useful forever. There will always be someone who wants to live in a beautiful home or who wants to run their business out of a beautiful building.

As an individual, how do you go about discerning between what is beautiful and what is not? The eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume asked a similar question. In his essay, “Of the Standard of Taste,” Hume points out what you can do to refine your tastes. His conclusion is that “true judges” of art, collectively, can agree upon that which is beautiful in the arts. The idea of collective agreement amongst “true judges” is not time bound. Groups of “true judges” over time would agree with each other (if they could meet together across time and space).

This means that beautiful works are timeless and are not culture bound.

●      This is why the music of many classical composers was beautiful 200 years ago, 100 years ago, and is still beautiful to this day.

●      This is why Botticelli’s Madonna of the Magnificat remains in a prime position in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. (This image is visible below.)

●      This is why Kente cloth was worn by Ghanaian royalty thousands of years ago and is still considered beautiful by Ghanaians today.

Madonna of the Magnificat. Framed Work.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia. Public Domain

The beauty of these works is timeless. What can you do to refine your taste so that you seek the most beautiful works humans have created? Hume writes about five attributes of “true judges” that can be used to work on this in your own life. The attributes are as follows:

1. Strong sense
2. Delicate sentiment
3. Improved by practice
4. Perfected by comparison
5. Unprejudiced

Let’s break these down. “Strong sense” is pretty straightforward. Of your five senses (sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch), you need a strong sense in whatever the artform demands. Of course, we have come up with aids to help us out: eyeglasses, hearing aids and so forth.

Kente Cloth.

Photo Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kente_Cloth.jpg CC BY-SA-4.0

“Delicate sentiment” is more nuanced. To some people, when they listen to classical music, they just hear one thing: one sound coming out of their speakers. To this type of listener, one piece of symphonic music sounds the same as another. Such a listener does not have delicate sentiment yet. If you had delicate sentiment as a listener, you would be able to hear not only the melody of the violin, but also the harmonies in the cellos and clarinets, the counterpoint of the violas and oboes, and the steady line of the double bass. If you had delicate sentiment for paintings, you would sense subtle changes in brush strokes, small details in the background, or symbols hidden in the landscape. “Delicate sentiment” is the ability to sense even the smallest details while still seeing the larger picture, hearing the entire choir, or following the grand story.

“Improved by practice” and “perfected by comparison” go hand in hand. As a patron of the arts, you will have a lifetime available to you to seek out that which is “virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy” in the arts. You could let popular culture decide your intake of the arts for you: whatever is a popular hit, happens to be showing in a movie theater, pops up on an internet search. You could be passive and let the world decide beauty for you.

But if you are intentional about what you take in, you will begin to be “improved by practice.” If you were to get a degree in music or art or theater or film, there would be a requirement for you to learn the history of the art. Why? Why would someone who aspires to film the next Marvel movie need to go back and watch a bunch of black-and-white films from the 1930s–1950s? Or why would someone who aspires to record modern music need to know the music of past composers?

Beautiful works are the standards. “Improved by practice” means you know the standards. You are familiar with the most beautiful works that humans have created. You have standards by which you can judge other works. Along the way, as you take in ever more history in an artform, you will naturally begin to compare how some works stack up against others.

“Perfected by comparison” also means that you will be able to express to others what they might experience. The great movie critic Roger Ebert wrote reviews for over ten thousand movies. He was really good at what he did, especially near the end of his career. In his reviews, he naturally compared elements of movies with other movies. Even if he didn’t say much about the plot of a movie, you would still have a good idea of the quality of a movie from his reviews. Here are a few comparisons he made in his four-star review of the Pixar film Up. Concerning the characters he wrote, “They have tempers, problems and obsessions. They are cute and goofy, but they aren’t cute in the treacly way of little cartoon animals. They’re cute in the human way of the animation master Hayao Miyazaki. Two of the three central characters are cranky old men, which is a wonder in this youth-obsessed era.” If you have seen a Miyazaki movie, then you know about characterization in Up. Ebert then writes that one of the qualities of Up is its beautiful color palette. “Up, like Finding Nemo, Shrek and The Lion King uses colors in a way particularly suited to its content.” If you have seen any of the films in his short list, then you might know what to expect from the colors. In his concluding paragraph, Ebert compares Up to four other movies: “The adventures on the jungle plateau [in Up] are satisfying in a Mummy/Tomb Raider/Indiana Jones sort of way. But they aren’t the whole point of the film. This isn’t a movie like Monsters vs. Aliens which is mostly just frenetic action. There are stakes here, and personalities involved, and two old men battling for meaning in their lives. And a kid who, for once, isn’t smarter than all the adults.” Through comparison, Roger Ebert lets us know how beautiful the movie Up is.

The final attribute of a true judge is being “unprejudiced.” This might be the most difficult attribute to master. It means that you are open to what an artist might offer you regardless of their past offerings. You may have read a book from an author that wasn’t great, but if you were unprejudiced, you might give the author a second chance and see if their next book is beautiful. Or you may have seen a painting that exhibited little craftsmanship or clarity of purpose and did not strike you as beautiful. Hence, you might mentally dismiss that particular artist. But if you were unprejudiced, you would give the artist another chance with their next work.