Part 9
While such enormous differences in reward and chance of appreciation exist, as they do at present, in art, it is not encouraging to the artist in wood, stone, or metal to find that, however sincerely he may work, he must work in comparative obscurity, and with a very modest scale of remuneration. As long as the chance of both individual distinction and substantial reward is so conspicuously in favour of the pictorial artist, in spite of the best schools of design, and all the machinery for diverting the stream of artistic feeling, skill, and invention into their proper channels, I am afraid the tendency will be for every student who fancies he develops artistic ability to press into the already overcrowded ranks of picture-painters.
When we hear, for instance, of five shillings being offered as a price for carved panels in a cabinet, it is not stimulating to those who look to winning a competency in the practice of so highly skilled and artistic a craft as wood-carving.
We may lay such facts at the door of competition or apathetic indifference to applied art, as it pleases us; but I venture to think that if the crafts and arts were recognised in public exhibitions of art, which are now practically devoted to one form of painting, it would do something. It would at least offer a chance for individual distinction in some other form of art. The work of the designer and craftsman could be seen, and by degrees people would begin to realise that beauty of design and workmanship counted for something besides in painting, and that the main business of an artist was not to emulate the photograph, or to take the wind (or the effect) out of the canvas of his neighbour in the pictorial struggle for existence (through unnatural selection), known as a “Fine Art Exhibition.”
The arts are really inseparably associated and interdependent. None is greater or less than another, and all are in some sense applied. We are all consciously or unconsciously affected by our surroundings. We may become sensitive to beautiful shapes and colours, or lines, and afflicted by those ugly and coarse, or grow callous and insensible to them, which is perhaps the commonest result. It is therefore hardly possible to attach too much importance to art in its applied forms, seeing its intimate association with and bearing on life itself through all sources of refined pleasure.
In those periods of the past which we regard as great epochs in art, the arts and crafts are in harmony and close relationship with each other. The culminating glory and mastery of Renaissance painting could hardly have existed without being founded upon the firm basis of the handicrafts, set as it were like a gem in a not less beautiful framework of invention in all branches of design; and we know that more than one great Florentine painter came out of a goldsmith’s workshop. Such pictures as that of “The Adoration of the Magi,” by Mabuse (shown at Burlington House a winter or two ago), or Crivelli’s “Annunciation” in our National Gallery, seem to sum up the contemporary beauty of the handicrafts, and give them back to us again. A beautiful book was lately brought out, of Italian ornament, taken from the patterns and on dresses and hangings in pictures in the National Gallery; and taking the fifteenth-century painters generally we might get a perfect cyclopædia of applied design from the beautiful details which enrich their pictures. It was not archæology then, but the love of beauty and richness, the delight in the splendour of life, which led them to paint such things, and also, probably, because they were craftsmen themselves as well as painters.
I believe we are making a mistake in training students in art, from first to last, solely with the pictorial view. The imitative powers are cultivated to the utmost, while the inventive are neglected. The superficial effects of nature are studied, while the expressiveness and value of pure line, and its bearing on applied art, are very much overlooked. Thus the designing, constructive power seems to be considered secondary to the depicting power, or rather one phase of it; the consequence is we get large numbers of clever painters and graphic sketchers, but very few designers. Everything is looked at from the pictorial point of view, and the term artist has been narrowed to mean the pictorial or imitative painter.
I should like to see a reversal of the principle. I should like to see a course of training in the handicrafts come first, as the most important to the cultivation of a sense of beauty in common life, not to speak of its importance to an industrial country, in an industrial age.
ART AND COMMERCIALISM
We have been lately told by a brilliant impressionist, no less in words than in paint, that there never have been such things as artistic periods; that art is solely individual, and lives and dies with the artist. And among other interesting facts we learned that, after all, one thing is as beautiful as another (to a painter) if you only get it in the right light; that, in short, those striking features of modern landscape--wharves and factory chimneys--look just as well as antique towers and palaces when merged in the twilight--that is, when you can no longer see what they really are, and the imagination is free to invest them with the romance of a past age.
Now, whatever germs of truth such statements contain, they only throw us back upon the question, “What is art?” If it is the art only of the impressionist, the record in paint of the children of the mist, of factory-smoke even, and London fog; if nature must only be seen with the eyes half shut, and in the abomination of desolation--the squalid outskirts and Stygian rivers of modern cities--then, indeed, former ages were but poorly furnished in the matter of art. What availeth the clear-cut noble sculpture of ancient Greece, and the work of her vase painters? What availeth the endless decorative invention of the Asiatic peoples, and of mediæval and early Renaissance times, lavished upon all the accessories of life, not to speak of its culminating glories in painting and sculpture? Could all this beauty of design and workmanship, in its constant growth and development through the centuries, have hung upon a thread--upon the lives of one or two persons of genius, springing, like mushrooms, from universal indifference, ignorance, and decay?
Such an opinion is, however, only a sign of the times. When every man fights for his own hand, and every artist has to make his own public, such an individualistic conception of art is not altogether surprising; and, were it intended to apply to the art of the present day only, would be very near the truth. But a little inquiry and consideration would show that art has deeper roots. The delight in beauty, be it human or of wild nature, be it of light, colour, form, or sound, is a common possession and a necessity of life, as in the higher sense it must always be, so long as the human has any claim to be the higher animal. And it should be remembered that certain animals and birds have been proved to be sensitive to certain colours and decorative effects, which sensibility is indeed wrapped up with the very fact of the germination and continuity of life itself; and this only convinces us how far down and deeply rooted is this sense in nature which has been so highly developed and specialised in man. Differing, it may be, in degree, but not in kind; cultivated, or uncultivated; modified by centuries of habit and association; influenced by modes of thought and conditions of life--wheresoever humanity dwells, in northern snow or southern sunshine, it flowers and seeds, and springs anew.
Art, in all its forms, is normally but the language of this universal feeling which, shared more or less by all, consciously or unconsciously, is fully comprehended, passionately expressed, and communicated in tangible and eloquent shape by comparatively few. But I should say that every one whose heart is stirred at the voice of music, at the music of poetry; every one who feels the magic of beauty and is touched by its pathos, who is moved by the strangeness of the shifting drama of life; every one who vibrates, as it were, to the harmonies of nature, is a potential or latent artist.
As far as we can judge from its history, it would seem that this power of artistic expression, controlled as it is by countless influences of soil, climate, and character; constantly intercrossing and blending; springing from simple beginnings, and passing through various stages of growth, development, and decline, with the life of nations--this power, I say, seems to have reached its noblest and most beautiful results under collective conditions--of the arts, at all events--when all art was decorative, and all were allied with architecture, depending technically upon a certain continuity of tradition, and intellectually on a certain consentaneousness or universality of sentiment, ere it reached a high perfection among a people, being always at its highest in public monuments. It is obvious, since these conditions depend upon a vast number of other conditions, since art is the flowering of the tree of life in man’s moral nature, the form in which it is cast must, finally, be the outcome of the social, political, and economic conditions of society.
We have only to remember the temples and palaces of antiquity, whether the colossal fragments of the crumbled civilisations of the East, the sculptured triumphs of Greece and Rome, or the cathedrals and public halls of the Middle Ages. Art in such buildings touches sublimity. The effect, for instance, of such a building as that of St. Mark’s at Venice is like embodied music--rich, mysterious, splendid, harmonious; storied with the legends and emblems of a faith, and a conception of the universe then corresponding with the knowledge and aspirations of mankind, full of solemnity, pathos, and dignity. But one of our own English cathedrals, where the ruthless hand of the modern restorer is not too obvious--say our historic Abbey of Westminster--will impress us in the same kind; and this impressiveness is not due merely to the effect of antiquity, though it no doubt contributes. We feel it to be the collective work of artists and craftsmen, as well as of ages, and we feel it embodies the aspirations, the religious sentiment, even the humour and satire, of its time, and, speaking through the architect, the mason, the carver, the glass painter, is heard the voice of a whole people.
But if one should go into a modern church in search of the ideas of the time, I am afraid he would only find the ideas of the new curate.
The former dignity and impressiveness of art is usually accounted for by the fact that it was in the past chiefly devoted to the service of religion; but that was only because religious ideas had the strongest hold upon the human mind--because with religion were wrapped up all other ideas, and the sources of knowledge were in the hands of the priesthood. Art is bound by its very nature to give expression to ascendant ideas. But both art and religion have since been broken to fragments, and these are often so small and so incongruously pieced together, that they refuse to reflect any ideas at all; or so feebly and falsely, that men, in distrust of both art and religion, have turned to nature and science, which in the strongest minds fill the place of both.
But this, after all, is only like saying that the loss of the eyesight is compensated for by the increased stimulation of the other senses. It is a serious loss all the same.
Let us try to find, however, what ideas, even in the fragmentary and artificial condition to which it is now reduced, art gives us in our day. The one great distinction and difference which marks it from the art of ancient times consists in the absence of what is called popular art--the art of the people, hand in hand with everyday handicraft, inseparable from life and use--that spontaneous native art of the potter, the weaver, the carver, the mason, which our economical, commercial, industrial, competitive, capitalistic system has crushed out of existence by division of labour, the factory system, and production for profit; yes, our three-headed Cerberus has devoured the art, together with the wellbeing and the independence of the people, and stands unappeased at the smoke-gloomed industrial gate, over which is written, “All hope abandon ye who enter here.” But this basis of popular art was the soil in which all art germinated, and from which the goodly tree grew and branched out, to blossom in the more delicate kinds of painting and sculpture which, since they have ministered to the caprices of wealth, fashion, and luxury alone, branded in a separate class as “fine arts,” have turned their backs upon their humble relations, the handicrafts, with the result that their house is left unto them desolate. Cut off, as it were, like flowers from their natural stem, they presently languish and wither away, or linger on, fantastic ghosts, shadows, and travesties of their former beauty.
But we are calmly told that “we must recognise, however, that modern art has no tendency in this latter direction (that of beauty). Beauty no longer suffices for us.”[6] This is clear and emphatic enough. It comes from the French, too, who have assumed the position of dictators of taste, at least in painting, to the world at large. It is from a book on æsthetics, by Eugene Véron; I quote from the English translation. The book is an attempt to find a scientific basis and reasonable position for art under the conditions of modern society, and while the author fails to recognise the causes of its deterioration in the quality of beauty, he boldly acknowledges the difference between past and present aims, and insists on freedom of development. Yet the writer is possessed by a distinction which he himself sets up between decorative, and what he calls expressive art, applying this latter title to the pictorial art of the present day. As if all good art was not expressive!
In my view, however, all forms of plastic or graphic art, properly so called, must be dominated by the sense of beauty, as the condition of their normal existence and the condition of their successful appeal to the eye. The expression of beauty naturally controls all other expressions. Otherwise, it seems to me, art is overstepping the border line which divides it from other operations of the mind; from scientific analysis, for instance, and from photography, where the object is totally different, and everything is sacrificed to the attainment of fact.
Yet this is just what is happening in modern painting--everything is being sacrificed to the attainment of fact in some form or other, and painting has almost ceased to be an art of design.
The modern French view is frankly expressed in a passage quoted by Véron from Fromentin, who says: “The time has come for less thought, and for less lofty aims. We must now look at things more closely, and observe better. We must paint as well, though in a different fashion. We must work for the general public, for the citizen, the man of business, and the _parvenu_--everything is now for them.” And he goes on to point out in effect that the painter must do the best he can under these rather depressing circumstances, copy his model, and take comfort in the belief that henceforward the greatest genius will be the man of the least invention. Here, at all events, it is clearly recognised that painting now exists for a class, which, possessing the wealth, commands all things that may be commanded by wealth, and as these things are many, a money standard is set up, which is in danger of becoming the only standard and test, whether of virtue and character, or artistic ability.
The results of such a state of things are visible on every side. We have seen that in all ages it has been natural to art to express the ascendant characteristics and ideas of its time, as well as to reflect the material facts of life.
Art is the sensitive plate in the dark camera of history, which records both the mental and physical features of humanity without prejudice, when all other sources of light are shut out.
So in an age when commercialism is supreme, and bourgeois ideas are triumphant, it is only natural that they should make themselves felt in art.
Accordingly, we see the influence of profit-making principles in the way in which painters become specialised for certain sorts of work, and in the rise and progress of the middleman or picture-dealer. As illustrating this, it is said of Verboeckhoven, the cattle painter, that the dealers were in the habit of sending orders couched in terms like the following: “Wanted, by Monday, three pictures of the usual description--cow, with two sheep.” There is a story told of him, too, which is very suggestive of the effect of commercial ideas on art. One day an American entered the studio; he saw a picture which pleased him, and bought it at the artist’s price--1200 francs. He could not take it away with him immediately, and when he came for it some time after, the painter had another, just like it, nearly finished. He was putting in an extra lambkin, when the American returned. A happy thought struck the latter; he would take the second picture too; it would form a pendant to the other. But Verboeckhoven wanted 1300 francs for it. His customer hesitated. “Well, well!” said he, “the same price, then;” and dipping a rag in turpentine he wiped out the lamb.
That grand development of the shop, the modern picture exhibition, is, again, another triumph of commercialism in art, which, faithfully following the accepted theory of the trader that supply will produce demand, succeeds in something like real over-production. Consider the huge annual pictorial displays and their chief product--the child of competition in art--the “pot-boiler.” Truly the temple of art is the market, and its high priest the picture-dealer! “Take your choice” (or, rather, the recommendation of the adroit salesman), “go to so-and-so for your fish and your salt-water pieces--fresh every year, but all alike. If your fancy is flesh or fowl, you must go farther. This other gentleman will give you game pieces--he has a special license. Then you can finish with flower and fruit,” and so forth. Yes, division of labour has triumphed even in painting, and to excel a man must specialise his talents; that is to say, adapt them to the continual production of the same sort of thing. Thus, and thus only, can he hope to make either reputation or a living.
Very good; but what becomes of art, unless the whole of art is comprehended in portraiture? For, in spite of our classification, our labels for landscape, portrait, genre, historical; under this specialising, ticketing, commercial system, the tendency is for painting to become really limited to forms of portraiture. I do not mean merely the production of portraits, though that is a noticeable feature, but I apply the term to characterise a certain literal and prosaic habit of regarding all nature, and literal methods of representation, whether of persons, scenes, or animal life; while the conditions of the market, even apart from the tastes of the ascendant class we have been considering, cut against even honest and faithful portraiture, but encourage that conscious making-up, dressing, and forcing of effect to catch the public eye, amid the further falsification of pictorial values caused by the entire want of classification and harmonious arrangement in the picture exhibition. So that in the result, where every inducement is held out in this fierce pictorial competition to painters to consciously work for forced effect, and put out their possible neighbour, pretentiousness and meretriciousness too often win the day.
When the decline in modern art is mentioned, it is usual for the average man, imbued with the commercial ideas of the age, and with the all-sufficient standard of money-value in his mind, to point triumphantly to the enormous sums given for certain pictures in these days, and to the wealth of certain successful artists. But those enormous sums only show that pictures are a marketable commodity in which the chances of large profits are involved, and the fluctuating values in the market make them objects of speculative investments for capitalists. Reputations fall and rise, often according to what appears to be the mere caprice of fashion, though even fashion is controlled by commercialism. And as to the wealth of successful painters, is that always in proportion to the excellence of their work, or the labour bestowed upon it, and is it always the accompaniment of the highest skill and the loftiest aims? Overwhelmed with commissions, the fashionable painter has the alternative before him of over-work or inevitable deterioration. In many cases he becomes the victim of both. Then, too, for one favourite of fame and fortune, how many unfortunate, struggling, obscure? Thus at both ends of the scale the influence of commercialism is only for evil.
Consider, too, the waste of energy and talent in this unequal struggle for artistic life and recognition--this pictorial lottery, where so many blanks are drawn. Think of the capacities now swallowed up in the tasteless contention of exhibitions, which, properly organised and directed, might co-operate to adorn our streets and public places, our lecture halls and railway stations, left desolate now to another and more hideous form of competition in the clamorous posters of commercialism, which cover our waste walls and hoardings, and crowd upon the weary eye in all their shameless self-assertion and sordid language of the market, shouldering one another in the unspeakable coarseness of colour-bedizenment and graceless superscription.
In spite of our refinement, our care for art, our æstheticism, forsooth! and the lavishly-decorated private interiors of wealth, to this complexion must we come out of doors!
And in the meantime we are so inured and hardened to such disfigurements that we cease to feel their enormity. Nay, we must grow to like them, for are not advertising and bill-sticking an inseparable part of our system? There is no escape. So it is, and so it will be, so long as we allow this selfish, demoralising, and unscrupulous demon of commercialism to tyrannise over and exploit us, ever with its continual cry of “Profit, profit, profit!” Every aspiration will be shouted down as visionary and unpractical; every real attempt to better our disorganised condition will be opposed by the dead weight of vested interests.
It is on record that one of the few living artists, properly called ideal--George Frederick Watts--offered to decorate the hall of the Euston Station with frescoes without charge, if the Company would bear the cost of the materials; and the offer was refused. How can monumental art, which is but decorative art in its highest form, exist in such apathetic conditions? To grow the flower you must not only have the seed, but a favourable soil and climate. It will be written of our age that we squandered the talents of our more original writers and artists upon the newspaper and periodical press. We preferred to be amused with a constant succession of brilliant trivialities and passing sensations, to beholding our best thoughts embodied in enduring and noble forms of art; and it did not seem to signify how many lives might be frittered away--how much energy and talent ground to powder in the process.