Part 11
Yet the man who makes a fortune in business generally thinks it well to spend something in pictures. We do not, however, as a rule, see such subjects in his gallery. Our attention is called to the finished product of civilisation, and it is thought desirable to draw a veil over some of the intermediate processes. But few have the hardihood to invite the skeleton to the feast.
Among the curious developments of latter-day civilisation is the rise of a school of painters who apparently spend their talents in discovering, if they can, the beauty of ugliness--the attraction of repulsion! For instance, I noticed at Paris this summer that there was quite a run on pictures of operations in hospitals. Even over here we have men who quite revel in London smoke and fog, and in the charm of the most ill-favoured spots.
This is no doubt more attributable to competition and picture shows than to democracy, but it is hugging your chains with a vengeance. If our artists are so affected by the ugliness of modern life that they--the supposed apostles of beauty--deliberately prefer an ugly subject to show their skill in treating it, we may perhaps lose our sense of beauty altogether in time. While we can, however, let us insist on the difference.
Art of course has many sides and capacities--as many, perhaps, as democracy. While from one point of view it may be regarded simply as the language of observation and record, and as such, I freely admit, it has an important sphere of usefulness; on the other, by means of figurative embodiment and poetic suggestion it is capable of appealing to and stimulating our highest faculties.
The figurative emblematic form of art has always had a strong hold upon the human mind. We see it under the influence of religious ritual and associated with civil life paramount in the art of past ages; and though under the modern search for naturalism symbolism has practically disappeared from the canvas of the painter, except in some few instances among the more thoughtful and poetic, it still maintains an active and popular life in political cartooning. Every week’s public affairs and public characters are treated in a series of pictorial parables, and appear in every variety of comparison, analogy, and disguise, pointing a satire or a political purpose according to the editorial or proprietorial views of the journal. It is noteworthy that it is always in the expression of the strongest feelings and convictions that the parable or symbolical form is used.
Politics and social questions in our time have largely taken the place which religious faith formerly occupied in the popular mind. They are the only questions in which you can interest the mass of mankind--the only questions, perhaps, on which people get really excited. Accordingly they delight to see the expression of their political or social faith in emphatic, familiar, and yet allegorical form, with a satiric sting in it if possible.
Nothing so forcibly expresses the common current of political opinion, or rather sentiment (or even prejudice), of the dominant sections of society as its political and satiric cartoons. They will be valuable material for the future historian. It is curious, too, how long a symbolic figure once accepted will last. Take the familiar one of John Bull himself. Is he really any longer typical of the comfortable, powerful classes--the financier, the banker--who really rule the roast-beef of old England? Instead of a mixture of semi-agricultural, sporting, and Quaker characteristics, a commercial and semi-oriental cast would now perhaps be nearer the truth. But even he must be prepared to give way to the rising power, the real John Bull--LABOUR. I think more advantage might be taken of this widespread love of parable, symbolic and emblematic art. Something, for instance, might be done in it as an effective means of conveying those fundamental economic truths which are so necessary to realise before we can hope to make real progress.
Illustrations might be given, for instance, of Mr. Ruskin’s parallel--the _Crag_ Baron and the _Bag_ Baron.
The first is the baron of feudal times, with his castle on the crag behind him, and the lances of his armed retainers ready to swoop upon all coming through his territory and levy his blackmail.
The second is the baron of modern commercialism, with his own appropriate scenery behind him--his castles, gaunt factories, and instead of the forest of lances, a forest of chimneys. He rules by the power of the money-bag. His bag is beside him, duly labelled rent, profit, interest--the three great sources of his riches and power. He is only disturbed by reading of the progress of socialism.
Another effective design might be a symbolic representation of the present relations of capital and labour, suggested by the Hindu idea of the universe--namely, that the world is supported upon the back of an elephant, and the elephant stands upon a tortoise.
Even so the world of wealth and leisure rests upon capital (the elephant), which again is supported by labour (the tortoise), which indeed may not stand or go except by the will of the elephant and its rider.
The relation of capital to labour might be further symbolised by the _two_ coins in the elephant’s trunk to _one_ in the mouth of the tortoise. The tortoise naturally looks discontented and resentful, and altogether the position of affairs is insecure--insecure because unnatural and unjust.
An emblem of evolution might be given by means of the design of a plant growing from the root up, putting forth leaves, buds, and finally flowers, with the caterpillar, chrysalis, and final transformation into butterfly, typifying the progress of human society--a spiral progression, but culminating in higher organisation. And so from the course of growth and development in nature the socialist takes hope for the future of humanity, through changing conditions and transitions, and causes ever at work evolving a more humane and just order.
While on the subject of popular symbolism, I noticed a while ago a correspondence on the Lord Mayor’s show. Though we may not approve of its present symbolism or its artistic taste always (and I have always wondered that a tableau representing Wat Tyler, who struck a blow for English freedom and the worker in the fourteenth century, prostrate at the feet of Lord Mayor Walworth was allowed to proceed through the streets of London), still the fact remains that it is the one free, popular, open-air spectacle for the people of London, and a historic relic of great interest; and since it brings people together in good-humoured crowds it cannot be an anti-social function. Much more might be made of it if its organisers were inspired by popular sympathies. It might be at once made more beautiful, more instructive, and more significant, and I should suggest that the money now spent on the banquet might be devoted to improving the show as a popular spectacle; spectacles and processions always will be popular. It is not as if the community--except perhaps the business part--would gain anything by the suppression of the show, whereas the poor would lose what is evidently an excitement and a pleasure.
Few sights are more impressive than the vast processions of workmen marching to the park with their bands and banners on one of those great occasions of demonstration or protest, which become so important and so necessary from time to time. Here, at least, is one of the artistic aspects of democracy which is likely to increase with the growth of true democratic institutions, and which affords in the design of banners and emblems the highest scope for emblematic and decorative art.
Processions as a means of propaganda, too, would be no bad thing. A series of groups illustrating the progress of political liberty and social progress from the earliest times to the present, for instance, or the relations of labour and capital (as in our elephant and tortoise), would afford splendid dramatic and picturesque material, and there are still a sufficiently large number of people who take in more ideas through their eyes than by any other door of the brain luckily.
This fact is at least taken advantage of by the advertising tradesman, not so much from a love of art, but with a view to gain his private ends; and so we allow a perfect epidemic of posters and puffery to pursue us everywhere with their vulgar effrontery and hideous forms and colours, from the streets to the stations, from the platform into the railway carriages, trams, buses, in wearisome iteration; or even to cram themselves impertinently between the leaves of the magazine or book we are reading. Well, we can but hope that posters are not the last word in mural decoration, and that perhaps another generation may think it worth while, instead of throwing away labour and skill in pasting every temporary boarding with flagrant announcements and sensational eye-sores, which must come out of the cost price of the articles puffed, to endeavour to relieve the monotony of our house-fronts with some attempt at beauty of design or colour for its own sake.
I have been dwelling on some of the characteristics of our present transitional state of society. “Now is the winter of our discontent,” but the spring will surely come. The new leaves are ever ready to spring from the shrivelled husk. New ideas, new forces, are at work which are destined to change the face of the earth. We may look either to the past or the future, but it is to the future we must look to realise the true ideal democracy--not a commercial, but a social democracy; the first business of which will be to take care of human life itself, and its conditions; to see that the tree is nourished at the roots before we ask for flower or fruit; to raise the standard of life all round; to make the present extremes of poverty on the one hand and luxury on the other impossible; to set up a new ideal of life--simple, but by no means ascetic, which will provide work, as well as full opportunity for leisure and cultivation of individual abilities; which will aim at the organisation of such a system of labour that the useful work of the community shall never press unduly upon one class; and which will not find it tolerable that the price of the comfort and enjoyment of one class should be the degradation of another. No, let our aim be _the abolition of class_ and the establishment of a truly human society of equals; enough for us if a man is true to his manhood and a woman to her womanhood--and what prouder title or higher praise is possible if we consider this true meaning in all the relations of life?--with full scope for those infinite varieties of talent and character which are sure to assert themselves. Faithful service to the community according to the capacity of each the only compulsion, in exchange for all the possibilities which a full and human life may afford, stimulated by friendly emulation in the true service of man.
Every one who contends for human freedom, for justice, and regulates his actions as far as he is able on the principles of equality and fraternity, which are practically the love of one’s neighbour,--every one who does so, not in an ascetic spirit of sour self-denial, but because he takes his highest happiness in so doing, is helping to realise this ideal, is adding in his own way a stone to the great edifice of human effort and human progress, the spirit of which from remote ages, through persecutions, calumnies, oppressive laws, tyrannies, superstitions, ignorance, through good report and evil report, has led man out of the primal darkness, steadfastly bearing the torch of hope till hope becomes a faith--faith in socialised humanity.
If we are working in this spirit we need not trouble about the fate of art, for if we take care of life, art will take care of itself; it will become the natural and spontaneous expression of such a life, both as its familiar friend and helpmate, and its final crown and aspiration.
IMITATION AND EXPRESSION IN ART
To any one who has put his head beneath the magic cloth of the photographer, and has seen, focussed on the glass screen, a beautiful pre-Raphaelite miniature of nature, the thought must have occurred--if the secret of retaining colours as well as forms in chiaroscuro by photography could be discovered, what would become of modern painting?
But, it may be said, photography is already one of the chief props and ministers of modern painting. As it is, the camera and the dry plate often supplement, if they do not supersede, the sketch-book and the laborious study, and the influence of photography and photographic effect is apparently the paramount influence in contemporary work. Would painting thus lean upon photography if she felt that she was but being led to her own destruction? Very likely not; yet, of necessity, the weaker leans upon the strong, and the object being the imitation of superficial fact, photography is strong where painting is weak.
For the last quarter-century and more, the stream of tendency in art, reflecting that in life and thought, has been setting strongly towards naturalism; and this naturalism (or literalism, as I should prefer to call it) is both the cause of the effect and the effect of the cause. It both acts and re-acts, and certainly its action upon art is one of the most striking signs of the times.
Amid the confusion of critical tongues, the artificial conditions of the market, the absence of public taste, the false values of exhibitions, and the hopeless commercialism upon which they are based, what wonder is it that painters should eagerly seize upon such help as photography can give, to force still further already forced effects. But it is a fatal alliance, and photography must win in the long run in such an unequal race.
Art, like the aged and world-worn sage Faust, ardent for life and enjoyment, snatches eagerly at the promise of renewed youth--the vision of realised nature--held out by the demon, and ignores the consequences.
It is time to ask whether the game is worth the candle? The answer of course depends on our conception of the scope of art; what are its ends and aims? If it is indeed the exclusive pursuit of naturalism or literalism, there is nothing but the prospect of this unequal race with photography, which, in the attainment of fact or of phase, and even in beauty of tone and effect, puts any painting or drawing hopelessly at a distance.
On this course it is clear that art is destined to be finally beaten by science. It may be indeed that art is destined to be absorbed and comprehended in science, for even the hitherto uncontested field of ideal conception is threatened by the results of the composite photograph, and Mr. Galton’s generic images.
Painting would certainly never have been brought to this pass if she had not been parted from the early companion of her way, but she has severed herself from craftsmanship, from ornamental design--nay, generally speaking, from design and invention, too--and given herself body and soul to literal imitation of nature dominated by commercial sentiment and sensation.
Again it may be objected, is not the business of painting then to imitate? I answer, only a part of the business, and only in so far as imitation contributes to expression, whether of beauty, or thought, or story, or phase of nature, in which it ceases to be merely imitation and becomes an art--that of representation. Where would be either use or enduring pleasure in art, if it did not express something besides the mere accidents of superficial fact? As well might the poet deal in nothing but description, or the musician limit himself to reproducing the noises of the farmyard, as the painter be content to ignore invention and design, story and poetic suggestion. In these things the human mind comes into play, and it is these qualities that give life and endurance to art. Nor is there any substitute for them. We cannot get our designing done by machinery, or our thinking by photography. The only known mechanism for these processes is that of the brain itself.
Mere cunning of hand invariably tires, and this is why superficial literal imitation by itself is always so dull. We are bored to death by what is called realism, and can only keep up our interest by a constant succession of novelties; like the audience in a theatre, who tire of a mere scene, an arrangement of properties however real, according to stage realism. On the stage, however, strongly as it reflects the literal tendencies of the day, art may safely go much farther in that direction, as the meaning and expression (to which thought, scenery, and properties may contribute in a high degree) must finally depend upon the dramatic action of the living persons, and these, at least and from the pictorial point of view of the stage, from the very fact that they are alive, can never be overpowered by accessories.
Of course, I admit, as regards painting, apart from any poetic embodiment or abstract treatment, there is the expression of the facts of light and colour, texture and tones, and these--although, with the exception of colour, they can be rendered by photography with an accuracy and completeness quite unapproachable--really would appear to be at present the only qualities, the only facts, the expression of which is worth the attention of the painter. If that is really the case, painting--pending its final extinction by photography--must be content to take an inferior intellectual position among the arts. “Art is art, precisely because it is not nature,” said Goethe, but the modern painter, so far as he is articulate, would render it, “Art is art, precisely because it mocks nature.”
The career of an illustrious contemporary (as shown in a recent collection at the Grosvenor Gallery) illustrates in a remarkable way certain degrees of expressiveness and imitation in painting. It is remarkable, too, as showing that, even when the object in painting is to cast off all convention, and to represent nature without prejudice or prepossession, how, even then, unconsciously, under the influence of passionate feeling striving for expression, the painter develops, as it were, a new convention of his own. The most striking quality about the earlier pictures of Millais is not what was commonly supposed to be the chief characteristic of the pre-Raphaelite school, namely, their unflinching truth to nature, but rather the intellectual force of their poetic and dramatic expression. Comparing the work of the earlier period--say from 1849 to 1856--with the work of the later--say of the last ten years--one may see as totally different aims as are perhaps possible in the work of one man. The close textures, beautiful detail, fine and finished execution, deep though not always harmonious colours, and romantic feeling of the earlier time have in the later work entirely disappeared, and nearly everything is sacrificed to the more superficial facts of full relief, and accidents of lighting, atmosphere, and surface. I do not lay so much stress on the fact that the recent pictures are chiefly portraits in the technical sense (although one certainly does rather resent that personages of mere wealth and fashion should have usurped so much of the painter’s time, and filled so many of his canvases, to the extinction, in great part, of the romantic and dramatic element in his art), for Millais has always been a portrait painter whatever his subject. His one particular idiosyncrasy as an artist has, from the first, consisted in the force and directness of his realisation of nature, which is of the essence of portrayal, or portraiture. He never showed any tendency to idealism in any shape, so far as I am aware, but has always been content to take nature as he found her, without endeavouring, by careful and conscious selection and comparison, to build up types of form, or elaborate schemes of decorative composition and colour. He is not a seer of visions or a dreamer of dreams. Life and circumstance are enough, without reading between the lines. In this directness lie both his strength and his weakness as an artist.
Again, to compare the last with the first, one is struck with a certain flatness of the general effect of the early work, as in the Ophelia, for instance. And to this, no doubt, the multiplicity of careful and beautiful detail contributes, as well as the deep and frank tones of colour afore-mentioned. The impressiveness of the results is dependent upon those qualities--upon this treatment--bound up with them as inseparably as the words of a poet are with his matter and style. When relief, and superficial and accidental facts of light are sought after, the whole feeling changes, and the method with the characteristics expressed. We stand in the common light of day, and talk with the members of Society. Gone is the glow of the romance--the passion and the earnestness of youth, with the beautiful detail, and the even and certain finish of the workmanship. We have to make the best of it, and extract what satisfaction we may from the contemplation of a coarser realism of more obvious facts, including a certain amount of British brutality, a vulgar ostentation of wealth, and the attraction or repulsion of matter-of-fact personalities--these things being expressed by an execution which shows more directness than care, and more force than finish or beauty.
We draw the lesson that with increased facility there is less care, and a coarser literalism takes the place of earnest realism, and while the attention is narrowed to individual and accidental characteristics, there is a notable decline of thought, dramatic power, and decorative effect; depth of colouring has departed with beauty of execution, which are the natural vehicles of the expression of quite different aims.
We are led to the conclusion that the search after a more obvious, literal, and surface imitation of natural fact is followed at the sacrifice of the more refined and delightful qualities, and with the limitation of these comes the limitation of the range of expression. The more of nature,--at least of her more superficial facts,--the less, apparently, of art--the less of the expression of the individual thought of the artist.
If this be a true statement of the tendency of modern painting, let us be satisfied with photography. If we value literal representation solely, and the preservation of superficial facts and effects of surface lighting, photography can give them better and more certainly than any paint--can produce in a moment of time what years of labour could never accomplish. And then, too, the photograph gives us the facts, and, within their limited range, as much force of expression as belongs to facts, without any false sentiment, which is too often the case with the painter. If we can get our facts registered for us with absolute certainty and fidelity, and without individual bias, let us take them and be thankful: but let art give up the struggle for territory over which she can no longer claim exclusive or absolute jurisdiction. Let her rest in her own borders. There is a large and ample domain in which there is no fear of invasion; a fair and beautiful region, peopled with the
Forms more real than living men,
flowered and fruited with the rejuvenescence of the thought of all time; where invention and expression are the familiar friends and counsellors of art, and truth becomes identical with beauty in the large control of design.
But this is the possession of merely Decorative Art--despised and rejected of men; fit only to be lounged upon or trodden under foot: a toy in the hand, not credited with brain or soul, or power of expression, speaking in strange tongues and parables, or at the best a harmless species of lunacy, fed but with the crumbs from the table of the pictorial Dives.