Why “no?” These patterns exist and develop only in works of art. While talking about art, we have no substance to look and point at other than works of art. Art does not exist beyond works of art. Art in itself is a paradox, and this paradox is the exact reason that art develops through its own laws.
Let us make the ideas behind the “yes” more concrete. The patterns mentioned above translate into the more or less articulated rules that an artist has to obey. This, by the way, returns us to another issue: whether or not there are laws of culture that must be obeyed in order for culture to be at its best. Yes, there are laws. They are employed in works of art, and they are developed within works of art.
An artist obeys and develops at least three sets of rules. We may call them “Generic Set,” “Canon Set” and “Work Set.”
The first set of rules is concerned with categories of art (genres, media, etc.). Obeying these laws is one of the conditions of molding a piece of artwork into a perfect form. Let us take a look at movies based on books. Simply rewriting a book as a script cannot work because things that have to be said in a book can simply be shown in a movie. Inversely, things that can be explained in a book cannot be shown in a movie. For this reason, some movies based on the Bible are not convincing at all. The Passion of the Christ serves as a counter example because Mel Gibson adhered to the laws of his medium.
The second set of rules is concerned with canon. From ancient Greek tragedy and sculpture to medieval poetry and classical music, the arts have always been developed through a cycle: invention of a canon, development within the canon, offshoot of a new canon. You either learn an existing means of expression, or you invent a new means yourself. But you still have to follow some rules so that your creation will fit into a cultural context. This makes your work readable, visible, understandable, recognizable, and so forth.
The third set of rules is really mysterious. It is concerned with the “dictatorship” of the author’s own work. That is, this set represents a unique world that is implied in every single work of art. No matter what it is—a novel, a short story, a song, a play, a painting, a poem, etc.—it is a whole new and different world. To reiterate, it is new and it is real. Importantly, it becomes real when all its elements play
