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| Hugh Blair (1718-1800) |
The fuzzy nature at the edge of beauty reflects the subjective as objective and evades capture by Blair. The author's clarification amplifies elusiveness into ever greater references to that which cannot be named in terms other than itself. After reading his lecture I came away with the sense that the author knew nothing about what he called Taste. Taste to him is something common to all people. And, he knew that the ancient geniuses possessed good taste because their works are still appreciated. Despite the author's scant knowledge of his subject, he proved beyond any doubt and throughout his lecture that Taste equals Taste.
Hugh Blair's lecture on rhetoric and belle-lettres, well let me interject here, to set the tone of my analysis, with a quote from the renowned author of eloquence: "Asiatics at no time relished any thing but what was full of ornament, and splendid in a degree that we would denominate gawdy" (32). The author thus proclaims and condemns himself as being (to express such a human state as inoffensively as possible) full of crap; he so offends the sensibilities by his elitist opinions that one cannot consider his arguments valid. But let me not dissuade the reader from continuing and rather elucidate Blair's lecture on Taste by comparing it with a modern point of view.
Written during the Enlightenment, the author's essay relies on the biases of his audience and the acceptance of his style as a means to persuade. For the basis of his conclusion about the subject of Taste Blair calls on an analogy to the standards held by the Court: those of the "standard of good breeding; and the scripture, of theological truth" (36). Standards during the Enlightenment were a topic of discussion and a way of establishing oneself within the eyes of peers. Of good breeding, Henry Fielding says "In short, by good-breeding ... I mean the art of pleasing, or contributing as much as possible to the ease and happiness of those with whom you converse" (Essay On Conversation). The tone of Blair's lecture is very much within the context of the Enlightenment, a time when "[u]pwardly mobile middle-class bourgeoisie increasingly tried to identify themselves with the elite through their adopted artistic preferences and their standards of behavior" (Wikipedia). His prose achieves the status of behavior expected during the Enlightenment. His words, despite the quantity of them, are pleasingly innocent of holding a unique opinion; he leaves little chance of ever being accused of saying anything of substance. His portrait bears the image of a man content to have simultaneously said everything and nothing. Blair fails to determine standards beyond the examples of "the Illiad of Homer, and the Aeneid of Virgil (43). More generally, he states that one with good Taste has the ability to discern beauties that have "the power to command lasting and general admiration" (43). The author claims that Taste is improved by science and philosophy but only addresses Taste through conjecture. He knows of Plato's Ideal Forms and yet fails to utilize the concept in a meaningful way. To me, the author's lecture shows how much he lacks the faculty of aesthetic perception.
The following quote from Blair, when compared to what is noted as meaning by Samuels and McGann in their essay "Deformance and Information" helps to demonstrate one of the many false conclusions/assumptions made by Blair.
Taste [--aesthetic appreciation--] therefore admits of latitude and diversity of objects, in sufficient consistency with goodness or justness of Taste . . . I must observe farther, that this admissible diversity of Tastes can only have place where the objects of Taste are different. Where it is with respect to the same object that men disagree, when one condemns that as ugly, which another admires as highly beautiful; then it is no longer diversity, but direct opposition of Taste that takes place; and therefore one must be right, and another wrong, unless that absurd paradox were allowed to hold, that all Tastes are equally good and true. (35)
To clarify my criticism of Blair, I'll attempt to address the issue of the paradox where men disagree about whether or not the same object is beautiful or ugly. The author states that "one must be right and the other wrong" (35). According to the authors, Samuels and McGann "meaning is more a dynamic exchange than a discoverable content, and that exchange is best revealed as a play of differences" (4). Could it not be that one person's Taste prefers to focus on discoverable content, and the other person's Taste prefers to focus on the play of differences within that same object; and yet another person's Taste claim that a beautiful aesthetic perception exists in the interplay between discoverable content and the play of differences?
As an example of critics, persons with an acclaimed sensitivity to the nuances of aesthetic appreciation, and how their opinions of a single work may differ, I offer the fact that the movie Blade Runner discontinued playing at theaters after only one week but is now continuously playing in a theater somewhere over thirty years later. At the time of its release according to Rutger Hauer half of the critics loved it and the other half hated it, and no critics were between those opinions. Another example of divided opinions held by critics is in reference to the Rondanini Pietà sculpture by Michaelangelo which is a block of granite that the artist practiced on until his death. Some critics believe it is a masterpiece and other critics believe it to be a block of practice granite that is comprised of multiple unfinished attempts. More typically than not, it is a sure sign that a work of art is a masterpiece when critics are polarized in their criticisms. This shows that not only are Blair's assumptions wrong but he holds the opinion that Tastes of aesthetic value have something to do with the words "good and true." The author's rhetoric aims at eloquence but misses the mark due the superficiality of Hugh Blair's Taste.
