p Epistemological analysis of art as cognition makes it imperative to examine its links and relations with the object of reflection, with the real world itself.

p Idealist aesthetics divorces art from reality. The idealists see artistic creativity, not as a reflection of life, but merely as a form of self-expression for the artist, as a means of penetrating the subconscious depths of man’s mind, or as the embodiment of some ideal (divine) principle. It is revealing to note that even in idealist doctrines, whose adherents declare that there is a specific link between art and reality, this problem is treated in such a way that, when it comes to the point, a division is drawn between life and creativity. The neo-Kantian writer, Ernst Cassirer in his An Essay on Man proclaims that the main task of art.is profound penetration of the structure of reality. The true implications of this statement come to the fore when Cassirer elaborates his interpretation of reality. He sees art as a symbolic form of culture, but all symbolic forms, according to Cassirer, do not reproduce reality, but create it. From this it follows that reality is revealed to the great artist, not in the sense that he apprehends it, but on the contrary, it is created and fashioned by him.  [32•*  Reality is here interpreted in a subjective and idealist light.

p A follower and pupil of Cassirer’s, Susanne K. Langer, who is a well-known American aesthetician in her own right, elaborates the above idea, writing that "everything in the arts is created, never imported from actuality”.  [33•*  Naturally;, she does not see the fundamental task of art as establishing how principles of life are reflected in artistic principles, but in defining the "essential difference" between the images of art and actualities.  [33•**  The images of art are of course qualitatively different from the facts of real life, yet Langer implies here through the phrase "essential difference" the fundamentally different nature of these two spheres.

p The gulf between art and reality is pivotal to Freudian aesthetics. Freud wrote that "art is almost always harmless and beneficial, it does not aspire to be anything but illusion ... and does not venture to trespass into reality ”.  [33•***  This gulf between art and reality is expressed in different ways in the various conceptions found in idealist aesthetics. The neo-positivist credo for resolving the problem of "art and reality" finds expression in an address to the V International Congress of Aesthetics delivered by Kate Hamburger, who maintains that the ageold problem of the relationship between poetry and reality is in the final analysis not an epistemological problem, but a question of the theory of language.

p Contemporary idealist aestheticians base their analysis and assessment of modernist art on an interpretation of the essence of art as a separate "aesthetic reality", which takes shape independently of the real world and its laws. One of their number, the American critic Edward G. Ballard supports the traditional tenet of idealist aesthetics— that art does not reflect reality but merely provides a medium for the individual’s self-expression—and goes on 34 to maintain that modernism corresponds most fully to the nature of artistic creation.  [34•* 

p The question then arises: does not the “creation” of surrealists, abstractionists, tachists and other anti-realists demonstrate that art can exist which really is not a reflection of life?

p The answer of course is “No”. Any art, regardless of its context, always confronts us with a reflection of reality, however, the reflection can be either true or false: it can give rise to meaningful or artificial trends. The content and the manner of the reflection of life to be found in realist and anti-realist art are essentially different and fundamentally opposite to each other.  [34•** 

p The realist artist reproduces reality in a way that is true to life. He achieves this through a wide variety of forms: in open and objectivised forms as for example in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Balzac’s Comedie Humaine, Sholokhov’s And Quiet Flows the Don, Fadeyev’s The Young Guard, in the films of Eisenstein and Pudovkin, Chaplin and Kramer we can find direct and straightforward reflections of reality, can single out the main idea, and grasp the “message” or meaning of the work. At the same time, however, a profound grasp of reality also distinguishes those realist works of art, where ideas are presented in complex, “closed” forms, whose meaning needs to be apprehended via a metaphorical, sometimes grotesque language, such as that to be found in Goya’s work. The “closed”, complex form of Dostoyevsky’s 35 novels did not detract from the depth of his realistic picture of life, but on the contrary testified to the richness of the realist method. ’

p A very different situation obtains when it comes to anti-realist art. In formalist works it is difficult, more often than not impossible to find any trace of real life, The organisers of an exhibition of French painting in Moscow in 1961 provided the following commentary to an abstract work entitled Composition by Gerard Vulliamy: "Here all is fluid, denuded, obscured, and dispersed in fleeting visions." Indeed, this description might well be applied not only to the picture by the French artist, but to anti-realism in all types of art. This suggestion should not be taken to imply that art of this type has come out of the blue or does, not reflect life. We are not concerned here with the fact that in anti-realist works everything is "dispersed in fleeting visions", but with the fact that the reality reflected in them is distorted beyond recognition, rendered ugly and false through the prism of the artist’s split consciousness. An example of such work is provided by .Genet’s Journal du voleur, in which the writer of the Absurd school compares man’s situation in the modern world to that of a visitor to a fun-fair, hope1-essly lost in the Hall of Mirrors. One of the characters in the Journal, the tramp Stilitano, rushes aimlessly about, panic-stricken by his own horribly distorted reflection in this world of mirrors, from which there is no way out; gripped by fear and despair and a sense of absolute and complete helplessness after giving up hope of finding a way out, Stilitano falls to the ground. This scene presents us with an allegory of the Absurd world outlook: the world is alien to man and man alienated within his world. This alienation is not seen as the inhumane reality of a society based on exploitation, but reality as such; then again our attention is focussed not on man living within an actual alienated world, but man as such. When approached thus, alienation is traced back not to the nature of societies based on exploitation, but it is seen to lie in eternal and unchanging aspects of human nature, and 36 hence to be insuperable. Eugene lonesco states: ’It is not any particular society which appears ludicrous to me. It is man... .”  [36•*  Writers of this stamp would have their readers believe that man lives in a futile, absurd, inhumane world that is alien to him, that man is isolated and helpless. They leave their readers no room for hope. They do not rally men to any cause; their ideas and images merely serve to undermine and numb man’s will, leaving him to face unaided a world which, supposedly, cannot but crush him. Yet in actual fact societies based on the oppression of one man by another do not only present us with a picture dominated by inhumane relations leaving room for no other; also at work within these societies is the real process of struggle by the progressive classes against such relations. lonesco presents an undeniably powerful picture of the dehumanisation of life under capitalism in his works, but he does not apprehend the forces capable of transforming the world in keeping with humanist principles. One-sided reproduction of reality inevitably means its distortion. In the works of modernists we find reflections of inhuman reality, but it is presented in distorted form as a result of their mistaken view of the world.

p To a large extent this even applies to such considerable and talented writers as Kafka and Camus. Their vivid writings not only bear the mark of true talent but are also permeated by a sincere sense of pain and revulsion at the inhumanity of the bourgeois world. Yet for our purposes what is important is not their particular subjective intentions, but the way in which their false view of the world left its mark on their writing. In The Trial and The Penal Colony and some other works, Kafka succeeded in depicting in his imaginary world certain aspects of the terrible and forbidding reality, into whose abyss mankind was hurled by fascism. Yet he was no prophet: he had neither knowledge of, nor faith in, the possibility of overcoming those inhumane conditions. His artistic 37 imagination is anti-historical and, viewed objectively, his ideas play into the hands of reactionary forces, whose interests would stand to suffer if any radical changes in the world were brought about.

p Marxist aestheticians find it impossible to accept the point of view of those writers who do not see the artist as bound to disclose the sources of alienation and work out ways for overcoming it, but consider it sufficient that he should indicate its existence. The artist is a student of life, its main trends, its profound nature and he cannot confine himself merely to confirming that alienation exists. Marx held that "immediate task of philosophy, which is at the service of history, once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked, is to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms.”  [37•*  Yet does not this also constitute the task of art, not all art of course, but that art which "is at the service of history", in other words, realist art that is passionately concerned with the future of mankind? The artist’s task is not merely to diagnose; he cannot stand outside good and evil.

p The writer and philosopher Albert Camus whose work provides the most detailed elaboration of the existentialist viewpoint, drew the following conclusion in one of his major theoretical works, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, which depicts the futility of human existence: "There is only one philosophical problem that is a really serious one: and that is suicide. To judge whether life is worth living or not is to reply to the fundamental question of philosophy.”  [37•**  Camus substantiates the absurd nature of man’s existence by pointing out the disharmony between the irrational world and human thought, once man has grasped the inevitability of death. The more man penetrates the essence of the world, the more meaningless, in Camus’ eyes, his life becomes, and the only reality in this life of 38 ours he sees in death.  [38•*  Reason—man’s greatest treasure —is thus seen as his “curse”: man knows he is going to die and his life then becomes terrible and aimless, be4 cause it all consists in anticipation of death.

p The talent of certain avant-garde artists has meant that their works contain not only a negative reflection of modern bourgeois reality, but also in a number of cases humanist principles, anti-fascist motifs break through to the surface. Yet if we look at the work of modernist artists as a whole, the less content taken from real life, the more all truthful reflection of life gives way to subjective ist play of forms. Such art, through its deflection of our attention from the real issues of life, serves to stifle men’s social conscience and energies, concentrating their thoughts on inessentials and concealing what is truly important. This applies still more to-openly decadent trends in bourgeois art, in which the flight from real life becomes a vehicle for the expression of reactionary ideas. .

p Art of the blatant propaganda type occupies a relatively unimportant place in contemporary bourgeois society. There is reason to believe that nowadays another tendency dominates, a tendency towards a “critical”, or, to be more precise, pseudo-critical stance, for it starts out from false premises and draws false conclusions. Art of this kind can and indeed does show certain negative aspects of bourgeois society through its depiction of man’s life in an inhumane world, but it turns its back on social analysis and ignores history in its presentation of contemporary reality and hence does not go beyond negation of the existing order, so that in the end its criticism can be summed up in the formula "the world is terrible but cannot be otherwise". If we fail to appreciate this we have failed to grasp the true essence of this art behind its outward appearance, to understand its place in the life of contemporary society.

p A contrast to this type of "philosophy of life" is provided in realist art by the humanist conception of the individual and his relations with the world, a conception which affirms, the vital resilience, profound interest and significance of human existence. Let us take as an example of a work in the latter vein the German film Naked Among Wolves directed by Bruno Apitz and Frank Beyer, which depicts the terrible life facing prisoners in a nazi concentration camp. All the ideas and images in this film serve to refute the philosophy of hopelessness, life’s lack of meaning and the idea of man’s interminable isolation. The audience is shown the crematorium ovens and men and women behind barbed wire, SS-men bestial in their cruelty, and the terrible happenings at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Nevertheless, in this film which shows life in a form a thousand times more terrible than that which confronts us in Beckett’s plays, for example, there is no spirit of despair. In the most terrible Conditions the heroes created by Apitz and Beyer uphold unscathed their faith in the inevitable triumph of humanity. Even when these, heroes perish, they leave life behind them undaunted and; morally speaking they triumph over their executioners.

p So these fundamentally divergent approaches to the correlation between art and reality epitomise the contrast between the materialist and idealist interpretation of art. In passing it should also be pointed out that any vulgarmaterialist identification of art with reality is just as alien to Marxist-Leninist aesthetics as the idealist. approach.

p Vulgar-materialist theories of art provide the theoretical foundation for naturalism. In such theories art is. regarded not as the creative reproduction of reality but as a mechanical repetition of real phenomena of life, a straightforward copying of these phenomena. This approach to art is essentially anti-aesthetic. When art is seen as a simple repetition of real phenomena, then the question as to its ideological, content becomes null and void, and hence art loses its social significance.

p Art is the creative reproduction of reality: this 40 principle is central to the materialist interpretation of art, the basic premise of Marxist-Leninist aesthetics. Yet we cannot stop there; it is not sufficient to acknowledge reality’s priority in relation to art. Another question also has to be answered: why does the reflection of reality in man’s consciousness presuppose the existence of such a form of social consciousness as art? To reply to that question we must analyse the specific qualities of various forms of social consciousness and establish not only those features common to all forms, but also the features which distinguish them from one another.

p The most elementary difference between certain forms of social consciousness—and this can be established with no difficulty at all—lies in the fact that each of them reflects reality in its own particular way. Yet why do there exist different forms of the reflection of reality in men’s consciousness, what lies behind them and what determines them? Does the content of the various forms differ?

p Certain schools of idealist philosophy have explained the appearance and existence of various forms of spiritual life by the existence of various properties found in man’s psyche. Philosophers of the Kantian school, when referring to such mental faculties as thought, imagination, will, etc., maintain that it is they which determine the existence of science, art, morality, etc.: thought determines science (concepts), imagination determines aft (images), will determines morality (moral principles), etc. Following in the footsteps of Kant and his disciple Coleridge, a similar line in explaining the mainsprings of art has been adopted by the new Hegelians—Croce and Collingwood. To their way of thinking the fundamental principle of art stems precisely from fantasy and imagination.  [40•*  To these writers the existence of various forms of consciousness is traced from the special features of man’s mind, from man’s own consciousness, and not from his being.

p The materialists of the past who rejected these idealist concepts were, however, as a result of their limited historical perspective, unable to provide a materialist resolution of this all-important question. They were inclined to think that the specific nature of this or that form of social consciousness was simply a question as to various ways of reflecting reality. This viewpoint was progressive in its day; it was materialist in character, since it regarded the real world as the only source of all forms of social consciousness and opposed the idealist separation of various forms of consciousness. Yet this position is not something Marxists of today can accept automatically. Characteristic of Marxist writing in this field is the widespread acknowledgement of the idea that the differences between science, art, morality, etc., cannot be seen solely as differences in methods of reflecting reality.

p Marxist writers consider that the diversity of forms of social consciousness is born first and foremost of the diverse and many-faceted nature of real life. To apprehend the features, relations, direct and indirect links in the real world we require a variety of methods and forms of reflection.

p The subject of political ideology, for instance, embraces the class struggle, relations between classes, the motive forces behind social development, the essence of the state, the character and forms of the state structure. The subject of juridical ideology embraces property relations, which constitute first and foremost the legal expression of economic relations. The subject of morals covers relations between the individual and society expressed in standards of human behaviour and reinforced by public opinion and established traditions. The subject of science covers the objective laws pertaining to various fields of Nature and society, etc. It is therefore easy to deduce that the principle according to which any form of social consciousness and its particular method for the reflection of reality can be explained by the existence in the objective world of a special sphere of phenomena that constitute the core of its interests, is perfectly applicable to art as well.

p Naturally the question of the subject of art in the history of aesthetic theory has preoccupied above all those writers who have linked art with objective reality and sought in that reality for the phenomena that have become the object of its creative reproduction.

p Idealist aestheticians who separate art from life often do not even raise the question of the subject of art. Aesthetic theories which present art as no more than the play of pure forms, a self-sufficient construction bereft of tangible content, cannot confront the question as to the subject of art. Nor can this question be answered in modern formalist theories that approach art as an abstract activity. Louis Afagon, the well-known French writer, wittily summed up the situation saying that formalist artists compete among themselves, as it were, to create art which has nothing to say. The subject of art and abstract (or “subjectless”) art upheld by formalist aestheticians are incompatible concepts. To be sure, this calls for closer scrutiny—at least in two dimensions.

p First, when pointing out that interest in the study of the subject of art was shown above all by materialist aestheticians, it was in no way intended to reject the obvious fact that certain theories in idealist aesthetics, as those to be discerned in Plato’s philosophy in classical times and more recently in the philosophy of Hegel, have examined this question. Yet in idealist writings on aesthetics the subject of art has been taken not from the real wealth of the objective world, but from the life of the mind and emotions. This also applies to the trends in idealist aesthetics representing the subject of art as phenomena of the real world as perceived through the senses, since this latter reality was seen as the offspring and objectivisation of the ideal principle.

p Second, when we say that subjectless art and the subject of art are incompatible concepts it is important to remember that a certain confusion of concepts has been allowed to come about. To be more precise, art of this type does not lack a subject in the philosophical or aesthetic sense, for, as is commonly accepted, subjectless, non- 43 representational art is also a reflection of reality, although an ugly one, distorted beyond recognition. It is subjectless in the everyday sense, or at least from the point of view of art criticism: its lack of a subject finds expression in the fact that it categorically rejects graphic representation. Why do we consciously allow this confusion? It is because formalist aesthetics, when providing a “theoretical” basis for art of this variety, transforms this concept from the realm of art criticism into a general aesthetic category, which implies a refusal to accept the objective source and subject of artistic creativity.

p Through its definition of the subject of art materialist aesthetics accomplishes two things: on the one hand, it provides a basis for opposition to formalist theories and the, dehumanised world of anti-realist art, on the other, it provides methodological direction for realist artists’ creative practice. As noted earlier, in the rich diversity of the real world artists are showing more and more interest in men’s characters, destinies and relationships. These are central to the subject-matter of art, although the subject of art is not confined to them alone. . In his depiction of reality the artist does not confine himself to any particular framework. Art depicts all that comes within our aesthetic perception: however, the environment in which man lives, the things which surround him, arid Nature are represented in art as connected with man and they facilitate our understanding of his essence, assuming as they do a humanised character.

p Still-life paintings which depict "nature morte" (dead nature) arouse in the beholder thoughts and feelings that bear jjpon living man. He apprehends vivid representations of things, smooth surfaces of glass and the texture of a tablecloth as components of his own existence. The objects depicted in a still life are rendered human, as it were, and bear the imprint of human needs: they evoke human reactions, their representation serves to express man’s relationship to external reality. In short, whether it be directly or indirectly, any picture taken from life and reproduced through art, regardless of form or genre, 44 always contains a definite human factor. If we accept George Sand’s view that a book is man or nothing, then it would follow on logically from there to apply the same principle to art as a whole, not just literature.

p Here it is appropriate to dwell on an elementary external fact. Man constitutes the central subject of art in the purely quantitative respect, quite apart from any other: the absolute majority of works of art are devoted to direct representation of human life. Yet this fact in itself is not our primary concern. Far more important is the fact that man constitutes the main and all-important subject of reflection in art, irrespective of what the work of art may depict.

p It is important not to confuse direct representation and the actual essence of phenomena revealed in a work of art. In any fable, for instance, more often than not it, is animals’ ways and habits that are depicted, but even children are capable of appreciating the allegories used by writers of fables to portray or expose human morals and characters.

p Nature taken on its own is not what attracts the artist and beholder. When depicting scenes from Nature the artist always gives expression to certain human feelings and moods, which in their turn lead the beholder to muse on human existence. This thought was aptly expressed by the writer Mikhail Prishvin, who painted the Russian countryside in such inspired word-pictures: "I have found a task after my own heart—searching for and unfolding in nature the inspiring facets of the human soul." These words pinpoint the main task of the landscape and stilllife painter, as indeed of any artist concerned with depicting Nature.

p Without setting itself special tasks in the analysis of the life of Nature, art at the same time can convey to the reader or beholder certain facts about it, and provide them with a true conception of Nature as it really is. In just the same way art can provide us with information as to the technology of production or even of machine parts. Yet all this is a passing element in art, It would be wrong 45 to adopt a narrowly pedantic approach and confine the subject of art within the framework: man and his inner world. The perfectly correct formula—man is the principal subject of art—should not hem in the artist. And yet there are cases when allusions to this formula are used to set the artist free, as it were, from concrete knowledge and representation of the environment in which man lives. Truthful depiction of the environment, milieu and conditions of life is here stygmatised as something little short of naturalism, which impedes the pursuit of the artist’s most important goal—unfolding man’s inner world. Certain theoreticians are even inclined to maintain that the environmental conditions in which man lives constitute something that the artist should not only not depict, but indeed cannot depict, for it is beyond him. That point of view is quite unacceptable. It would be out of place to draw the rigid distinction, that science probes reality and art investigates man. Science and art are equally concerned with reality and with man. The subject of art is not only man, but the whole of the real world approached in the light of the objectives implicit in the aesthetic apprehension of that world.

p Yet then we come to the question: where is the difference between the subject of art and the subject of social science? After all the social nature of man in all its diverse manifestations provides not only the subject of art but also that of scientific cognition.

p Social sciences are concerned with the laws of social life, and moreover each concrete social science is concerned with certain particular groups of laws or patterns at work in distinct spheres of the life of society. Social sciences study the life of society by concentrating on certain specific elements of that life. Art on the other hand is concerned with an integral reproduction of man’s life, depicting men in the totality of their relations with each other and the world around them, depicting various aspects of their life and the ways in which the diverse spheres of men’s activity interweave. The objection could be made here that not all social sciences adopt a 46 specialised approach to the study of society. Unlike certain specialised social sciences, historical materialism is concerned not with individual aspects of the life of society, but society as an integral whole. However, the subject of art and the subject of Marxist sociology—historical materialism—are different aspects, or, to be more precise, different levels of social reality.

The subject of historical materialism is constituted by the most general laws of history which reveal the essence of the. social process and which are fixed in the form of abstract definitions. Art, for its part, deals not only with the essence of social phenomena, but unfolds that essence in concrete pictures of life, and concrete characters typifying individuals as representatives.of the social milieu to which they belong. At the same time art reflects phenomena from the real world in their aesthetic particularity. This means that art reflects phenomena of life, evaluating them as beautiful or ugly, lofty or base, tragic or comic. In art phenomena taken from life are assessed from the ideological and aesthetic angle.  [46•*