Part 1

EUTERPE OR THE FUTURE OF ART

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

_A Full List of the Series will be found at the end of this Volume_

EUTERPE OR THE FUTURE OF ART

BY

LIONEL R. McCOLVIN

Author of _The Theory of Book-Selection_, _Music in Public Libraries_, _etc._

LONDON: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

Made and Printed in Great Britain by M. F. Robinson & Co., Ltd., at The Library Press, Lowestoft

EUTERPE

I

At the outset it will be desirable to state that when I speak of the future of art I do not mean the “art of the future”. Art can be considered from either an inside or an outside point of view; that is to say, we can deal either with its nature, problems, and performances--art itself, or with the amount and quality of the interest taken in art by men and women--the “art-life” of the community. The latter subject is that dealt with here.

The “art-life” of the civilized world is at present in a transition period, which is fraught with distinct, though maybe unrealized, dangers. Its problems are only indirectly related to the present and the future state of art-production: whether we foresee development or retrogression in modern tendencies in literature, painting, music, and so on, these dangers will need to be faced, or they will, at least, minimize the value of the creative work of to-morrow. For we are concerned not with the production of art but with the enjoyment and appreciation of art. As the latter is the more important, since without it production would be sterile, it is an essential preliminary that the conditions necessary for the healthy growth of a more widespread, deeper-rooted love of the beautiful should exist. We are now viewing the situation as sociologists, as men, rather than as artists. The artist can be satisfied when he attains a certain level of performance: at least he can work with content and happiness while he is seeking to reach a may-be unattainable perfection. He is, naturally and rightly, concerned with absolute values; and the critic and the individual lover can maintain the same attitude. If a painting or a poem reaches perfection, he asks no more. But the sociologist must take a different attitude. To the artist and the critic the work is the end; to the sociologist it is the beginning. It is not enough for him to know that the painting is great, since to him it is only the means by which men attain artistic enjoyment; it has no significance until it has acted upon the minds of men. That being so he must ask other questions about it--firstly, _How many_ men can see it? How many are able to appreciate its value intelligently, gaining the full aesthetic, spiritual, or intellectual stimulus from it?--in short, What is the aggregate of its human significance?

It does not follow, of course, that we can relate the quality of a work of art to the “quantity” of its appeal; it would, in fact, be absurd to suppose that it is necessarily better that 100,000 should know and appreciate the second-rate than that 100 should love the finest--neither, with certain reservations, need this necessarily be untrue. The point I would urge at present is simply that the value of art to humanity does depend very largely upon the desire and opportunity of men to take advantage of it. The poet whose works are ignored saving by the very few may be as impotent as a mute inglorious Milton.

Therefore there are two factors--production and reproduction, or, shall we say, creation and distribution. A musician composes a symphony, a dramatist writes a play, a novelist a story--that is the first factor. If no one ever performed the symphony, produced the play, or published the novel, of what importance would this creation prove to the world?--Practically none. The art-product must be distributed before it can accomplish any part of its essential purpose. It necessarily follows, moreover, that the _wider_ the distribution, the more adequately will it function. This is all very obvious, though often forgotten, and will disclose the next step in the argument, which is that, were it not for certain tendencies, increased means of reproduction and distribution would lead to a better developed, more valuable, and more active artistic life. That being so, the present, which is a period when mankind is enjoying the benefit of recent and important reproductive inventions, should be imbued with hopeful tendencies--Is it?

Yes and no. Let us take stock of our position. Reproduction is almost entirely a mechanical matter, depending upon non-artistic, purely material factors. Production is the business of the creative artists; reproduction that of the scientists. The latter have given us within recent years inventions which have revolutionized artistic conditions--the mechanical processes and innumerable secondary inventions such as stereotyping, and mechanical composition and binding, which have facilitated the reproduction of printed matter, the three-colour and other photo-mechanical methods of reproducing pictorial matter, the gramophone, the piano-player, and wireless to aid the distribution of music, and so on, throughout the range of pure and applied art.

Until recent years the percentage of the population who were in direct contact with the fine arts had remained much the same in civilized countries from probably the earliest times. Art had almost invariably depended upon direct patronage of some kind or other, religious or secular, if not entirely at least to an important degree. I would not denounce this; one cannot, when one remembers that the system fostered art which has not been equalled under the new régime. But direct patronage by the few is rapidly declining and is to-day almost negligible. It has been replaced, simply as a result of the mechanical factor, by a more democratic economic basis. Some arts are still to some extent produced for the few, but others entirely for the many. The important fact is that wherever reproduction is easiest that art is the most democratic--books and music, for example; wherever least possible its range is narrower and its support less democratic, e.g., sculpture, household decoration, etc.

* * * * *

The character of our artistic experience has therefore to a very large extent been decided by purely non-artistic factors. That which _can_ be reproduced has been reproduced, and opportunity has developed taste. This is a generalization, though not a fallacious one. We may assume that the artistic needs of men have been led into their different channels partly as a result of personal inclination, but very largely through the influence of opportunity. If a number of men were cast upon a desert island with only books to minister to their aesthetic needs, the majority would take what was to hand and be quite content. I am not saying that this is a good tendency but that it is a true hypothesis, applicable to modern life, and a contention which is tenable on historical grounds. The favourite pursuits of early civilizations were not those of to-day, and it is very unlikely that any one factor has done so much to change taste as the development of means of reproduction. The pursuit of once-popular arts need not die out; it need not even decline, since the numbers of those interested in all the arts is increasing; but the proportionate or relative interest alters. This being so, can we ignore the influence of the mechanical factor? It is operating in a striking manner to-day when _relatively_ music is being appreciated by more and literature by fewer people, when the theatre is attracting, relatively again, fewer every day than the cinema, when the graphic arts are becoming more significant than the plastic arts.

To ignore the mechanical factor is to put effect before cause. Certainly the character of taste has influenced the direction of invention to some extent, since the scientist would naturally turn first to fields where his work would be most effective. This aspect should not, however, be magnified. Sooner or later science has given all it was capable of giving to _every_ form of art, regardless of its importance or popularity.

And so we realize that the _character_ of public taste--that is to say, the proportionate amount of interest in the various arts--has been dictated by the mechanical factor. We can go still further and assert that its _quality_ has been largely determined by this same influence.

II

Before we can appreciate the truth of that assertion--that the quality of public taste has been influenced by mechanical methods of reproduction--we must be prepared to view the art-life of the community as a whole. Too often we tend to regard only the better elements, the top layer, and to ignore the lower strata. We segregate a section of the populace--that which appreciates, or pretends to appreciate, Art (with a capital A)--and forget that the remainder, which indulges in jazz, ‘the pictures’, light fiction, Bovril pictures, and tin-chapel architecture, is actuated by the same motives. The quality of their artistic experiences and the standard of their taste and artistic education may be very different, yet they seek the same kind of experience as the others. It is entirely a matter of degree.

Therefore we must regard the art-life of a community, as we must and do regard its social, religious, or political life, as comprising a little good, much bad, and more that is indifferent. Once this is realized, and only then, the full significance of the mechanical factor is apparent.

Let us go back to the pre-mechanical era, when only a small number of people had any opportunity for contact with art and only a few had developed a love for and the ability to appreciate its higher manifestations. At the same time a similarly limited populace found satisfaction in the second, third--and fifth-rate. Probably then, as now, more enjoyed the second-best than the finest, and so on, though probably the contrast was not so great as it is now. However that may be, when a new reproductive process was introduced it was naturally applied to the lower types rather than to the better, for an obvious reason. It enabled _more people_ to be brought into contact, and these newcomers must naturally be unaccustomed to and incapable of appreciating the best. The education of taste is a slow process, whereas the new invention was a sudden force, applied immediately in whatever direction offered it the greatest scope. And so we find at once an increase in the lower grades of appreciation which is out of proportion to the benefits bestowed upon the higher.

The trouble did not end there, however. Greater familiarity tends to form taste, especially in these matters. Art serves most men chiefly as a luxury, a relaxation, a recreation; and in our quest for these we are apt to take that which is most easily obtained. The mechanical factor, by making the fourth-rate accessible, _generated a desire for the fourth-rate_: this desire stimulated further reproduction, and this, in turn, brought more into the artistic fold, at each step lowering the quality of the most accessible and the most desired.

The result is that to-day the average quality of the whole artistic consumption of the populace is considerably lower than it had ever been before in civilized times. Though every day more and more people are reading some kind of printed matter, witnessing plays--silent and audible--of a sort, looking at pictures, penny plain or twopence coloured, though the time is not far distant when every man will be interested to some extent in art in one or other of its forms, our art-life is developing not so much in quality as in quantity.

III

There is, of course, a bright side to the picture, and lest we be accused of pessimism it will be well to discuss this now.

In the first place all forms of art, good, bad, and indifferent, have benefited by mechanical means of reproduction. The actual numbers of those who can experience the finest things in art have increased manifold, and to that extent, the art-life of the world is better off than before. My only contention is that _proportionately_ fewer appreciate the best, though _actually_ more do so. My only intention here is to point out the essentially _quantitative_ tendencies of to-day, lest we should mistake them for something better. Quantity alone is not everything, and, if we fail to realize these tendencies and endeavour to counteract their undesirable features, the time will come when the disproportion between those who seek the worthy and those who do not will be very dangerous. Why this will be so I hope to show in the next chapter.

To return to the bright side--Though quantity is not everything, it _is_ something. It is better that people should appreciate the lowest arts than that they should ignore them altogether. Provided, of course, that any art is not definitely decadent and degenerate, it is better than none. But even this aspect has its disadvantages. It might be argued, not without reason, that it is more difficult to wean a person from the poor thing he knows and has come to like than to introduce an absolutely artistically-uneducated person to the moderately good. Of that, however we shall speak later.

Thirdly, improved reproductive methods have enriched art by enabling minorities to flourish.

IV

And so we approach the real danger, which is naturally more potent in some fields than in others. We have seen that the mechanical factor has, by making the fourth-rate more accessible, increased the number of those with fourth-rate tastes. Now we encounter the commercial factor which enters at some stage into every art and almost every artistic activity. Books, music, and pictures must be published, plays produced, concerts arranged, art-objects manufactured, and so on. Outlay of capital is almost invariably involved, and those with capital can seldom be induced to use it without the usual expectation of gain. In short, to some person or other nearly _all our artistic experiences are business propositions_. Practically the only exceptions to this rule are the institutions maintained at the public expense--art-galleries, museums, public libraries, etc.--and even these are not entirely divorced from indirect commercial relationships.

Thus the nature and extent of art-reproduction are very largely governed by commercial considerations. The effect of this is easily seen. The natural desire of the capitalist is to secure the best return from his investment, and this may be sought in two ways. Either he may produce something for which there is a large demand, or he may produce something for which there is less demand and charge more for it. He will certainly avoid the thing for which there is only a small or a problematic demand. Let us now remember that the proportion of those who desire good art is decreasing, and it is clear that the commercial factor is not improving the standard of public taste. Within limits the most demand is for the least worth-while, and yet it is the satisfaction of this demand which makes the most attractive commercial proposition. He who wants the fine thing prized by a minority must pay more for it if he is lucky enough to be able to do so and if he is fortunate enough to have it produced for him, or go without it if he is not.

The snowball rolls on. The vicious sequence operates continuously. The bigger the demand the more ready is the business-man to meet it; the better the supply, the greater the desire.

The extent to which the commercial factor is potent varies considerably, and depends largely upon the amount of capital which is involved in the single reproductive operation. Fortunately there are still business-men in the art-producing world who are glad to compromise, who sometimes put their ideals before their pockets, who are satisfied so long as they are enabled to pay their way, who are prepared at times to lose. Accordingly, whenever the capital involved is not large, and whenever the investor can undertake a number of contemporary ventures the loss on some of which should be covered by profits on the others, better though less popular art is given its chance.

Probably the most fortunate art in this respect is that of literature (in the widest sense of the word), and the most unfortunate the drama. The percentage of worthy books which remain unpublished is very low compared with that of plays or music, and even this percentage does not indicate the real difference, since through lack of opportunity, the number of artists who devote their energies to composition or play-writing is much smaller than it should be. The reason is obvious. A small circulation will pay the cost of publishing the average book--a much smaller circulation (were it not for advertising expenses) than many imagine; on the other hand, commercial conditions being what they are, considerable public support is necessary if the producer of a play, a film, or an orchestral concert is to secure any financial gain. The publisher, moreover, does not put all his eggs into one basket; the producer of plays, unless he is in an unusually strong financial position, must. The former can afford to take occasional risks; the latter cannot.

Even in the case of books, however, the reader who seeks the same kind of reading as many millions of others is in a more favourable position than the man with individual, minority inclinations. The greater the volume of reproduction, the lower the cost per copy. Even were the business-man willing, he could not give the latter the full benefit of mechanical inventions. It would not be worth his while to do so. The complete utilization of mechanical methods involves the use of expensive plant, which is justified only when the output is large. It is, of course, a matter of degree, and many processes (e.g. machine-casing of books) can be applied as readily to the few as to the many. Other processes, on the contrary, never benefit the minority. In graphic art, for example, there are several colour-processes by which very cheap reproductions of pictures can be produced, but their use is, for necessary commercial reasons, confined to popular works. The pictures required by the few are never reproduced by these methods.

V

We may now summarize the problem, before passing to a discussion of ways and means to counteract the dangerous tendencies of to-day.

Firstly--though creative artists and educationists must regard this as a hard saying--the most powerful force in the art-life of to-day is the purely mechanical factor.

Secondly, this factor is to a great extent determining the nature and amount of art-production and reproduction.

Thirdly, it is causing a decrease in the average quality of the total artistic life of the community.

Fourthly, this degeneration must naturally continue unless it is counteracted by other influences.

This statement is not an exaggerated one, and it does not ignore the good effects of the new order. Even though a certain amount of repetition is involved, it will be well to discuss in detail the causes of degeneration in popular tastes.

(1) Mechanical improvements were applied first to those grades of art which offered most scope to the commercial element (and are now still so applied to a greater extent).

(2) Even if, in the beginning, lower tastes were not in a majority, any widening of the circle of those interested would inevitably bring in a large percentage of the artistically uneducated.

(3) Each widening of the circle would involve a lowering of taste, and also increase the commercial inducement to cater for the lower grade.

(4) This being so, those with better tastes become an even smaller minority, and (though they probably would be _actually_ better off) they become _relatively_ at a disadvantage economically. Though they might now have to pay less than they had to before for something, they nevertheless still have to pay more than those who belong to the majority.

(5) Furthermore, the low grade is more accessible, easier to experience, more frequently offered than the better thing.

(6) Therefore, since (especially the large numbers whose tastes are on the border line) we unconsciously tend to follow the easy way, unless we deliberately seek to improve or maintain our taste, it will degenerate. It is necessary to remember that art is usually regarded as a recreation and, in spite of the saying that we take our pleasures sadly, we do often take a short view, and are satisfied to find that artistic recreation for the day which is first to hand, without thought of the morrow.

(7) In art-matters we are mostly conservative. Neither do we readily set ourselves apart from our fellows. The history of any “best seller” will prove this. Up to a point it is read by those who have discovered that they might like it; after that it is read chiefly “because everybody else is reading it”. It is wrong to attribute this tendency to a mere desire to be “in the swim”; much more often it is because readers, unconsciously classing themselves as average, argue that the book which interests the average man will interest them. To a large extent this applies to all popular art. Few people care to “waste their time” experimenting when it is so much easier to fall in line with the crowd. The only wonder is how the popularity of the “best seller” and its kind begins: once that has happened the rest is a normal process.

(8) The average man, being thus willing to follow the dictates of the majority, is seldom likely to look elsewhere for his artistic experiences. And so the tastes of the majority are more firmly established--and the tastes of to-day form the tastes of to-morrow.

I would not describe this as a vicious circle. Rather is it a vicious spiral, the circumference of which ever increases. How can this state of affairs be altered?

Let us not be misunderstood. We are not asserting that this world with its many who appreciate the less valuable is worse than the world of the pre-mechanical era. Far from it. In every way it is better. The actual quantity of good artistic endeavour is much greater, and every increase in the numbers of those who appreciate the least worth-while is a distinct gain to the community and to the individual. Our anxiety is not so much for to-day as for to-morrow. There is no reason to doubt that before long practically the whole population will be interested in some form and grade of art. It is then that the trouble will begin to assume serious proportions. Let us take a biological parallel. It is agreed that if good stocks do not increase at the same rate as inferior stocks they will gradually die out. If, in a world full of artistic endeavour the good artistic stocks are not as sturdy as the remainder, they too will in time die out. So long as the commercial and mechanical factors are allowed full play, the good artistic stocks will be at a disadvantage, and so the future of the finest elements of art depends upon the success of efforts to counteract these factors. We must find means (1) to make the most desirable art more accessible than it is now, and (2) to increase the numbers of those who desire it. The latter will serve two purposes: (_a_) it will help us in the first aim; and (_b_) it will increase the aggregate quality and value of the artistic life.

VI