Forms and Substances in the Arts

by Étienne Gilson, Salvator Attanasio (Translator)

-- First paperback edition.
-- In this engaging companion to Arts of the Beautiful, Etienne Gilson turns his attention toward the creative process. Distinguishing the arts of the beautiful from the merely functional, Gilson proceeds to argue that the limits of art are imposed only by the materials which the artist uses to create.
-- A world-renowned philosopher and historian, Etienne Gilson was a Professor of Medieval Philosophy at the Sorbonne and at the College de France. He helped to found the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author of many works, including Painting and Reality, The Philosopher and Theology, and The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy.
-- First published by Charles Scribner's Sons (1966).

Genres: Art

282 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2001

About the author

Étienne Henri Gilson was born into a Roman Catholic family in Paris on 13 June 1884. He was educated at a number of Roman Catholic schools in Paris before attending lycée Henri IV in 1902, where he studied philosophy. Two years later he enrolled at the Sorbonne, graduating in 1907 after having studied under many fine scholars, including Lucien Lévy Bruhl, Henri Bergson and Emile Durkheim.
Gilson taught in a number of high schools after his graduation and worked on a doctoral thesis on Descartes, which he successfully completed (Sorbonne) in 1913. On the strength of advice from his teacher, Lévy Bruhl, he began to study medieval philosophy in great depth, coming to see Descartes as having strong connections with medieval philosophy, although often finding more merit in the medieval works he saw as connected than in Descartes himself. He was later to be highly esteemed for his work in medieval philosophy and has been described as something of a saviour to the field.
From 1913 to 1914 Gilson taught at the University of Lille. His academic career was postponed during the First World War while he took up military service. During his time in the army he served as second lieutenant in a machine-gun regiment and was awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery upon relief from his duties. After the war, he returned to academic life at Lille and (also) Strasbourg, and in 1921 he took up an appointment at the Sorbonne teaching the history of medieval philosophy. He remained at the Sorbonne for eleven years prior to becoming Professor of Medieval Philosophy at the College de France in 1932. During his Sorbonne years and throughout his continuing career Gilson had the opportunity to travel extensively to North America, where he became highly influential as a historian and medievalist, demonstrating a number of previously undetermined important differences among the period’s greatest figures.

Gilson’s Gifford Lectures, delivered at Aberdeen in 1931 and 1932, titled ‘The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy’, were published in his native language (L’espirit de la philosophie medieval, 1932) before being translated into English in 1936. Gilson believed that a defining feature of medieval philosophy was that it operated within a framework endorsing a conviction to the existence of God, with a complete acceptance that Christian revelation enabled the refinement of meticulous reason. In this regard he described medieval philosophy as particularly ‘Christian’ philosophy.

Gilson married in 1908 and the union produced three children, two daughters and one son. Sadly, his wife died of leukaemia in late 1949. In 1951 he relinquished his chair at the College de France in order to attend to responsibilities he had at the Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto, Canada, an institute he had been invited to establish in 1929. Gilson died 19 September 1978 at the age of ninety-four.

Reviews

[David Haines · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very interesting philosophical exploration of the principles or causes of the fine arts (the arts of the beautiful), whose purpose, suggests Gilson, is ultimately to produce (in the ways proper to each art) something that is beautiful or pleasing to the observer. He discusses the basic nature of the arts he intends to consider, and then spends a full chapter diving into each of the principle fine arts. Gilson approaches this topic as we all should: humbly telling us what he has seen, and inviting us to look—perhaps we will see the same thing?

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A worthy companion to the preceding volumes in Gilson's trilogy on the arts, though I found it the least consistently gripping of the three. This is largely because each chapter is focused on a specific art form, allowing the master plenty of room to ruminate on the angles of approach, problems, and complications which he finds most pertinent (you might be surprised; they are often not the ones you'd suggest). Gilson is never less than engaging, but I found my interest waxing and waning according to my interest in the art being discussed; to this end, my favourite chapters were those on Music, Poetry, and Theatre, with an honourable mention for Painting (which somehow manages to not rehash at all the many words on painting in the previous two books). As far as I know, Gilson did not write an entire book about theatre or the dramatic arts, but the final chapter of this gives a glimpse of what a rich undertaking that would've been.

[Jacob Rouse]

EVERYTHING HERE CONNECTS AND COMMUNES IN A NATURAL IDENTITY, BUT THERE IS DIVERSITY IN THE UNITY

Inorganic Art

1. Arts of Extension
a. Volume
i. Architecture
ii. Sculpture
b. surface
i.drawing
ii. painting

2. Art of Sound
a. Instruments
b. Human Voice (bridge)

Organic Art

1. Arts of the Human Body
a. Dance

2. Arts of Linguistic Expression
a. Spoken or Written

3. Human Life
a. Imitation
b. Free Re-creation
(pantomime and theatre)

Descent from the Cross by Peter Paul Rubens
Madam Bovary by Gustave Flaubert