Grace and Necessity - Part Two
- nadinepasin
- Oct 10, 2018
- 6 min read
Now before you say anything about how long that excerpt is, let me explain…
Rowan Williams can pack an incredible amount of profound ideas into one single paragraph let alone three pages and no justice is done for it unless you read it all word for word. I will summarize it and pull out sentences to elaborate on but I wanted you to see the I think it is important to contemplate this particular passage – just for a moment.
Initially, my reaction is silence. Crickets chirp in my brain. Literally, no words. I mean seriously, how can you follow him after all that?!
What about you though, anything come to mind?
If your answer is yes, that’s awesome, I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts! If no, let’s start unpacking this passage, piece by piece, together.
A little background…
In part two of Grace and Necessity (G&N), Williams is mainly addressing David Jones, Christian poet and artist from England. Williams also discusses Eric Gill, another artist and writer. In the beginning of the excerpt, “he” is Eric Gill. Williams is summarizing what Gill absorbed from Jacques Maritain’s themes that he described in his previous part of G&N.
Part One of the Excerpt
“Art is skill’, he wrote, a habit nurtured by practical apprenticeship which develops a natural capacity; we do not need any doctrine of mysterious giftings, spiritual genius, in an artist. The truest art is anonymous; emotions are never the ground of artistic work, only some of the consequences; ‘high art’ or ‘fine art’ is essentially a distraction, and the bulk of post Renaissance is a disaster" (Williams 47).
Art is a skill! It is founded from what Williams calls “a natural capacity.” It is interesting that from this definition, we can see artistic abilities can be built and nurtured with the proper time and appreciation. We don’t need to have some kind of gift that people so often talk about. I hear it all the time, “you’re so gifted, wow!” But Williams in his description of Gill, counteracts that notion.
I find this to be quite freeing although frustrating. Frustrating because I want so badly sometimes to be considered “gifted” at certain tasks, to be able to complete them with ease, be compared to no one, and the results be better than the last. But freeing in the way that it is practically impossible to be the best at something without any practice. The capacity to do something though, is a completely natural thing. Some people simply do not have the capacity or build the capacity to do something. For example, at this very moment, I cannot draw a realistic portrait of someone, but over time with training and the stretching of my capacity, I could be able to complete one.
Part Two of the Excerpt
“It has encouraged us to think of painting not as a sharing in the creative labor of God for the world’s eventual fulfilment but as the record of a particular individual sensibility looking at the world from outside. True art is in some sense a part of nature, nature in its human embodiment pursuing its natural intellectual and formative character” (Williams, 48).
Moving forward, we can see that art is a skill, yes, and this next part of the excerpt takes that idea to a deeper level. Williams goes on to say that true art is nature in itself. Nature being manifested in the human body has the natural capacity to create. Therefore, art has a connection to nature and to God as the creator of it.
Most times when I think of the correlation between nature and art, I think that there must be some actual depiction of nature. For instance, a photo of a landscape, a painting of some mountains, or a drawing of a grassy meadow. But what Williams is saying is that nature as a scene of what we see in the world around us does not have to be depicted. Instead, we are connected by nature to whatever we create or is created for us to see.
This passage makes me think of is how oftentimes people feel like they cannot be connected with God because of the business of life and then can turn to different actions that make them feel closer. In a Huffington Post article that I read, the writer talks about reconnecting with nature by creating land art. There are tons of artists who work with land to create artworks as a way of interacting with nature and becoming connected with it. One of those artists being Andy Goldsworthy. He uses aspects of nature, sticks, rocks, leaves, etc. to create his works within a specific landscape site that he hand picks. This short clip of his movie shows how he creates his pieces and some collapse because he pushes them right to that point and he may have to start all over or do something completely different. He must fail multiple times in order to make the piece work. It doesn’t come naturally to him to get it perfect the first time but he has the natural capacity and desire to make it come to fruition. Goldsworthy works with nature but is connected with nature through the act of making which would be the same case even if he were working with other materials.
Buchanan, Peter. “From the Archive: The Nature of Andy Goldsworthy.” Architectural Review, EMAP Publishing Limited, 16 Mar. 2018, www.architectural-review.com/essays/from-the-archive-the-nature-of-andy-goldsworthy/10029109.article.
Part Three of the Excerpt
“Art is ‘metaphysically superior’ to prudence in its aspiration to collaboration with God. But prudence is more important for human beings as such, more in tune with what human beings concretely are and need. The two exist in a perpetual ‘lover’s quarrel’ (art being male and prudence female): prudence is suspicious of art’s concern with things in themselves, art is equally suspicious of prudence’s utilitarianism. We are lost if we try to separate the two: the truth is that prudence aims at the true good of human beings, but that true good includes, crucially, happiness. And ‘happiness is the state of being pleased with things, of being things" (Williams, 48-49).
This part of the excerpt is the densest I think. It is really difficult to understand until you read it a couple of times. I think what Williams is saying here is that art is not cautious in trying to connect with God and God is not cautious in his creation. Humans are the ones always going back and forth about what we are and what we need, then being leery about the definition. We are cautious to look within an artwork and ourselves but must feel good about ourselves in an authentic way. Once authenticity is achieved, humans are met with happiness which is what they are striving for in the first place.
And yes, that is still a confusing concept and certainly poorly explained. Essentially, Williams is pointing out the human need for happiness and how that all traces back to a connection with God that can be found through art and the creation of it. Even though it is complicated and messy sometimes.
Lastly, Part Four of the Excerpt
“Art must aim at products that please the whole person. And the good of the whole person is something specified by that doctrine to which prudence tries to conform us. In the terms used in the previous chapter, art is good when it relates to the sort of creatures we know ourselves to be” (Williams, 49).
These last couple of sentences really wrap up Williams thought entirely. Art has a purpose, it is a skill that can be built, it is nature in itself, and is a reflection to the goodness we see in and know about in ourselves and others. A person who reflects on, becomes aware of, and understands themselves will know that art is a part of them, nature within their core being brought out and displayed through a work of art; and that art doesn’t even have to be of nature as we tend to think of it.
Wow, we made it through. Thank you for bearing with me!
If you take anything away from all of that, I hope it is this: in Rowan Williams terms, “true art is in some sense a part of nature, nature in its human embodiment pursuing its natural intellectual and formative character,” meaning we are one with nature, connected to God through it, and given a natural capacity to show it (Williams, 47).
References
Buchanan, Peter. “From the Archive: The Nature of Andy Goldsworthy.” Architectural Review, EMAP Publishing Limited, 16 Mar. 2018, www.architectural-review.com/essays/from-the-archive-the-nature-of-andy-goldsworthy/10029109.article.
rawrberrys. YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7sZv4_0Fxg&t=94s.
Williams, Rowan. Grace and Necessity: Reflections on Art and Love. Continuum, 2005.
Zella, Carmen. “Creating Connections With Nature Via Art.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 7 Dec. 2017, www.huffingtonpost.com/carmen-zella/creating-connections-withland-art_b_4833677.html.
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