West 28th Street

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

That art that matters to us – which moves the heart, or revives the soul,or delights the senses, or offers courage for living, however we choose to describe the experience – that work is received by us as a gift is received.  Even if we are touched by a work of art something comes to us which has nothing to do with the piece.  I went to see a landscape painter’s works, and that evening, walking among pine trees near my home, I could see the shapes  and colors I had not seen the day before. The spirit of an artist’s gifts can wake our own.  The work appeals, as Joseph Conrad says, to a part of our being which is itself a gift and not an acquisition.  Our sense of harmony can hear the harmonies that Mozart heard.  We may not have the power to profess our gifts as the artist does,and yet we come to recognize, and in a sense to receive, the endowments of our being through the agency of his creation.  We feel fortunate, even redeemed.  The daily commerce of our lives – “sugar for sugar and salt for salt,” as the blues singers say – proceeds at its own constant level, but a gift revives the soul.  When we are moved by art we are grateful that the artist lived, grateful that he labored in the service of his gift.

If a work of art is the emanation of its maker’s gift and if it is received by its audience as a gift, then is it, too, a gift?  I have framed the question to imply an affirmative answer, but I doubt we can be so categorical.  Any object, any item of commerce, becomes one kind of property or another depending on how we use it.  Even if a work of art contains the spirit of the artist’s gift, it does  not follow that the work itself is a gift.  It is what we make of it.

And yet, that said, it must be added that the way we treat a thing can sometimes change its nature.  For example, religions often prohibit the sale of sacred objects, the implication being that their sanctity is lost if they are bought and sold.  A work of art seems to be a hardier breed; it can be sold in the market and still emerge a work of art.  But if it is true that in the essential commerce of art a gift is carried by the work from the artist to his audience, if I am right to say that where there is no gift there is no art, then it is possible to destroy a work of art by converting it into a commodity.  Such, at any rate, is my position.  I do not maintain that art cannot  be bought and sold; I do maintain that the gift portion of the work places a constraint upon our merchandising.       

Lewis Hyde, The Gift

Comments are welcome.