The Artist's Ideas - The Artist's Ethos

Edvard Munch
The Scream, 1893
o/c, tempera & pastel

A work of art can't be questioned or dismissed. Saul Bellow.


The obscure word ethos has a different meaning today than it did seventy years ago, and it has traveled a malleable path since the days of Aristotle. Whereas, today, it is a corporate creed, it formerly held a deeper meaning. Pre-war artists owned the word - it was the artist's ethos. My 1936 Webster's dictionary has the following:

Webster: From the Greek, ethos, ἔθος, character. The moral, ideal or universal element in a work of art as distinguished from that which is emotional in its appeal or subjective.

How do the artist's ideas exhibit themselves in an artwork? Is it important for an artist to express an ethos through the making of art?

We have been considering The Artist's Ideas, with these previous posts:

Have Ideas
Quotes - The Artist's Ideas
The Inner Meaning
The Artist's Ideas
Paint Better Now


The Artist's Ethos.

The Greeks saw ethos as the first proof of debate, and it had to do with trusting the moral competence of the rhetorician. Fast-forward to our concerns and the artist's ethos. Let's unpack the definitions of moral, ideal and universal elements.

The Moral Function of Art.

Webster describes a moral element in a given artwork, which is, by definition, an illumination of right or wrong. As concerns the formal parts of art, there is no right or wrong. "There is no must in art because art is free," Wassily Kandinsky. So, we are left with artworks that reveal a moral quality intended by the artist, such as in the case of Sacred Art. See below some artworks that reveal strong moral qualities in a broader context. See The Sistine Chapel for Sacred Art.

John Dewey said that “Art is more moral than moralities.” Artist and blogger Katherine A. Cartwright is reading Dewey's important 1934 book, Art as Experience, and hosting a community discussion on The Moral Function of Art. See here, here and here, and remember to read the comment fields.

Here is the "see below." For my part of the discussion at Katherine's blog, I have been illustrating the moral function of art by identifying individual artworks that I see as strong moral forces in the canon of Western art. Blogger/artist Linda W. Roth had the idea first, and she chose Edward Munch's The Scream for its moral content. I think she's right on with that, and I thought of Andrew Wyeth's Groundhog Day, and Willem deKooning's Woman 1. These artworks are linked below.

The following opens a window into Dewey's thinking: Art is morally powerful because it is indifferent to moral praise and blame (loosely quoted). Do you agree?

Ideals - The Artist's Ideas.

Notice that the Websters definition relates to a work of art, and not the group known as artists. My understanding of "the ideal" is that an artwork must, to be true to the artist's ethos, reflect his ideas. See these quotes on The Artist's Ideas.

Universal Elements.

Art is a universal mode of language. John Dewey. Philosophers will tell you that language is wanting in descriptive power - it falls short of expressing what man is able to think. Art is a huge bridge in "speaking" to mankind aught words.


Edvard Munch, The Scream.
Andrew Wyeth, Groundhog Day.
Willem de Kooning, Woman 1.






Ethos at Wikipedia.
John Dewey, Art As Experience.

Dark Secrets

Dark Secret
Sketch from Little Hoquiam River
Thumbnail Size
Charcoal on Paper
Casey Klahn

For some time now I have been carrying this dark secret. It just appeared one day, out of the blue, in my painting Blue Wandering.

Blue Wandering

14" x 10"
Original Pastel
Casey Klahn

You can see it there - a dark "spot" or space hovering by the trees. What is it doing there? Soon, dear reader, I shall reveal this dark secret to you.

The Hoquiam River series

The series of works that I have been doing, which I call "The Hoquiam River" series, explores this dark path, or space. My home town of Hoquiam, Washington, is an overcast place - just like my father's home town of Forks, Washington, which was made famous by Twilight.

Stephenie Meyer says about her book, Twilight:

For my setting, I knew I needed someplace ridiculously rainy. This turned out to be the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. I pulled up maps of the area... And there, right where I wanted it to be, was a tiny town called "Forks." It couldn't have been more perfect if I had named it myself. I did a Google image search on the area, and if the name hadn't sold me, the gorgeous photographs would have done the trick. (Images like these of the Hoh Rainforest (a short drive from Forks). Also see forks-web.com ).

This coastal hometown

"Ridiculously rainy;" good one. Rain and clouds dominate everything, and one's cup runneth over with nature, as it were. Trees, moss and greenery as thick as primordial soup cover all aspects of the landscape. Mud and muck; clouds and cold. A place to love, but only if you're from there, it seems.

Little Hoquiam River
No Vampires Visible

This coastal hometown is where I first started drawing and developing my art. As you might imagine, the colorist side of me never flourished until I moved to the sunny eastern side of Washington state. But the fundamentals of light and line were my muse on the coast.

Trees as tall and as big as all heaven surrounded us, and the pathways between them, well - there weren't any. The undergrowth is as thick as a jungle, which coastal forests here are literally. They are called temperate rain forests, and are exactly like jungle, minus the nice temperatures.

What are the dark secrets? Just ask yourself this: what are the ways to create a plastic space in a picture? Why might one's eye fix inside the picture plane and stay there? More when we enter the Hoquiam River Series...

Credit: MP3 Music from the Dark Shadows TV Series.