Useful Art
In current usage, the term "art" is most commonly associated with the beautiful, that is, with aesthetics or the fine arts. Frequently, it is restricted even more to signify one group of the fine arts, namely, painting and sculpture. For instance, one refers simply to an "art exhibit" or an "art" museum but specifies further "a center for the performing arts."
However, historically the word "art" was related to utility and knowledge, and its traditional meanings still exist today. For example, we speak of "industrial arts" and "arts and crafts" through which useful things are produced. On the other hand, "liberal arts" (work befitting a free man) are those related to skills of the mind. We also refer to the art of medicine, of teaching, of nursing, of politics, of navigation, of military strategy, and so forth.
The word "art" can refer to both the effect of human work (works of art) and the cause of things produced by human work (the knowledge and skill of the artist). It is obvious that not only knowledge but also some form of work and skill are involved in all art, useful or fine. "Art" is the root of "artisan" as well as of "artist."[12]
Some arts, such as nursing, medicine, and teaching, may be considered useful, yet they differ from other useful arts, such as industrial arts, for they {91} do not result in tangible products. Nursing for instance, aims purposively for well-being, more-being, health, comfort, growth. These are the results of the art of nursing. As an artist, therefore, the nurse must know how to obtain desired effects and must work skillfully to get them. The nurse cannot make well-being or comfort or health as one can make a shoe or a painting or a speech. The art of nursing involves a skillful doing rather than a making. Furthermore, nursing is concerned with changes in human persons not merely with the transformation of physical objects. It is intersubjective and transactional, so the art of nursing must involve a doing with and a being with.
Performing Art
Along this vein, nursing may be viewed as a kind of performing art. Fahy, nurse-educator-actress, draws an interesting comparison between the process of nursing and acting in a drama.
"In a play the actors know certain things, there are a certain number of given circumstances: plot, events, epoch, time, and plan of action, conditions of life, director's interpretation. The technical things are also there: setting, props, lights, sound effects, and so forth. But it remains at the time of curtain for the actors to go on alone and produce. In the act of nursing there are some known facts that the nursing student or the nurse can pick up: name, age, religion, ethnic background, medical diagnosis, and plan of care (sometimes), her own background knowledge and experience, and her own unique personality. However, when she encounters other patients—watch it! The same thing happens in the teaching-learning process."
"Edward A. Wright in Understanding Today's Theater says about the actor and acting something which I believe about the nurse and nursing.
'… the actor … is his own instrument. His tools are himself, his talent, and his ability. Unlike other creative artists, he must work through and with his own body, voice, emotions, appearance, and his own elusive personal quality…. He uses his intelligence, his memory of emotions, his experiences, and his knowledge of himself and his fellow men—but always he is his own instrument.'"[13]