Abstract:This paper discusses Emerson's thoughts on the history and future of art in his 1841 essay "Art." I suggest that characterizing Emerson as a "functionalist" obscures the radical nature of his views and that Emerson ultimately sought the disappearance of the fine arts altogether through a merger of fine art with other creative activities. Emerson seeks to raise human creativity to a divine level and to incorporate beauty in the nature and actions of human beings themselves. I conclude with a (...) brief discussion of the relation between subsequent art movements and Emerson's ideas. (shrink)

Ralph Waldo Emerson's thinking about art has never been at the forefront of either the philosophy of art or discussions of Emerson's own thought, in part perhaps because of doubts about the depth of his understanding of art. Percy Brown, for example, described Emerson's aesthetic sense as "deficient" and his aesthetic background as "somewhat limited," and claimed that Emerson "dwelt on abstract ideas rather than on the forms of art and its methods of expression."1But although Emerson was no John Ruskin (...) or Clement Greenberg, he was one of the great orators and prose stylists of his day and a poet who could write "strong, wholly memorable poems that say what has never been said before and that no poet has said better... (shrink)