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diff --git a/27183-h/27183-h.htm b/27183-h/27183-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..362d1de --- /dev/null +++ b/27183-h/27183-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4488 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Gate of Appreciation, by Carleton Noyes</title> +<style type="text/css"> + body {margin-top:100px; + margin-left:10%; + margin-right:10%; + text-align:justify} + hr { width: 100%; + height: 5px; } + a:link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:red} + pre {font-size: 75%;} + blockquote {margin: 1em 5em 1em 5em;} + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gate of Appreciation, by Carleton Noyes + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Gate of Appreciation + Studies in the Relation of Art to Life + +Author: Carleton Noyes + +Release Date: November 7, 2008 [EBook #27183] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GATE OF APPRECIATION *** + + + + +Produced by Ruth Hart + + + + + +</pre> + +<p>[Note: for this online edition I have moved the Table of Contents to the beginning of +the text. Also I have made one spelling change: irrevelant circumstance to +irrelevant circumstance.]</p> + +<center> +<br> +<br> + +<p>THE GATE OF APPRECIATION</p> + +<p>Studies in the Relation of Art to Life</p> + +<p>BY</p> + +<p>CARLETON NOYES</p> + +<p>BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br> +HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY<br> +The Riverside Press, Cambridge<br> +1907</p><br> + +<p>COPYRIGHT 1907 BY CARLETON NOYES<br> +ALL RIGHTS RESERVED</p><br> + +<p><i>Published April 1907</i></p><br> +<br> + +<p>TO<br> +MY FATHER<br> +AND THE MEMORY OF<br> +MY MOTHER</p><br> +<br> + +<p>"Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves,<br> +As souls only understand souls."</p><br> +<br> + +<p>CONTENTS</p><br> + +<table> +<tr> +<td align="right"></td> + +<td><a href="#0">Preface</a></td> + +<td align="right">i</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td align="right">I.</td> + +<td><a href="#1">The Impulse to Expression</a></td> + +<td align="right">i</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td align="right">II.</td> + +<td><a href="#2">The Attitude of Response</a></td> + +<td align="right">23</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td align="right">III.</td> + +<td><a href="#3">Technique and the Layman</a></td> + +<td align="right">44</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td align="right">IV.</td> + +<td><a href="#4">The Value of the Medium</a></td> + +<td align="right">87</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td align="right">V.</td> + +<td><a href="#5">The Background of Art</a></td> + +<td align="right">105</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td align="right">VI.</td> + +<td><a href="#6">The Service of Criticism</a></td> + +<td align="right">137</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td align="right">VII.</td> + +<td><a href="#7">Beauty and Common Life</a></td> + +<td align="right">165</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td align="right">VIII.</td> + +<td><a href="#8">The Arts of Form</a></td> + +<td align="right">201</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td align="right">IX.</td> + +<td><a href="#9">Representation</a></td> + +<td align="right">221</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td align="right">X.</td> + +<td><a href="#10">The Personal Estimate</a></td> + +<td align="right">254</td> +</tr> +</table> +</center><br> +<a name="0"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>PREFACE</p> + +<p>IN the daily life of the ordinary man, a life crowded with diverse interests and +increasingly complex demands, some few moments of a busy week or month or year are +accorded to an interest in art. Whatever may be his vocation, the man feels instinctively +that in his total scheme of life books, pictures, music have somewhere a place. In his +own business or profession he is an expert, a man of special training; and intelligently +he does not aspire to a complete understanding of a subject which lies beyond his +province. In the same spirit in which he is a master of his own craft, he is content to +leave expert knowledge of art to the expert, to the artist and to the connoisseur. For +his part as a layman he remains frankly and happily on the outside. But he feels none the +less that art has an interest and a meaning even for him. Though he does not practice any +art himself, he knows that he enjoys fine things, a beautiful room, noble buildings, +books and plays, statues, pictures, music; and he believes that in his own fashion he is +able to appreciate art, I venture to think that he is right.</p> + +<p>There is a case for the outsider in reference to art. And I have tried here to state +it. This book is an attempt to suggest the possible meaning of art to the ordinary man, +to indicate methods of approach to art, and to trace the way of appreciation. It is +essentially a personal record, an account of my own adventures with the problem. The book +does not pretend to finality; the results are true for me as far as I have gone. They may +or may not be true for another. If they become true for another man, he is the one for +whom the book was written. I do not apologize because the shelter here put together, in +which I have found a certain comfort, is not a palace. Rude as the structure may be, any +man is welcomed to it who may find solace there in an hour of need.</p> + +<p> C. N.<br> +CAMBRIDGE, <i>November second, 1906.</i></p><a name="1"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>I</p> + +<p>THE IMPULSE TO EXPRESSION</p> + +<p>TOWARD evening a traveler through a wild country finds himself still in the open, with +no hope of reaching a village that night. The wind is growing chill; clouds are gathering +in the west, threatening rain. There rises in him a feeling of the need of shelter; and +he looks about him to see what material is ready to his hand. Scattered stones will serve +for supports and low walls; there are fallen branches for the roof; twigs and leaves can +be woven into a thatch. Already the general design has shaped itself in his mind. He sets +to work, modifying the details of his plan to suit the resources of his material. At +last, after hours of hard thought and eager toil, spurred on by his sense of his great +need, the hut is ready; and fee takes refuge in it as the storm breaks.</p> + +<p>The entire significance of the man's work is <i>shelter.</i> The beginning of it lay +in his need of shelter. The impulse to action rose out of his consciousness of his need. +His imagination conceived the plan whereby the need might be met, and the plan gave shape +to his material. The actual result of his labor was a hut, but the hut itself was not the +end for which he strove. The hut was but the means. The all-inclusive import of his +work—the stimulus which impelled him to act, the purpose for which he toiled, and +the end which he accomplished—is shelter.</p> + +<p>A man of special sensitiveness to the appeal of color and form finds himself also in +the open. He is weary with the way, which shows but broken glimpses of the road. His +spirit, heavy with the "burden of the mystery," is torn by conflict and confusion. As he +looks across the stony places to the gnarled and weather-tortured trees beyond, and up to +the clouds piling black above him, there is revealed to him a sudden harmony among the +discords; an inner principle, apprehended by his imagination, compels the fragments of +the seeming chaos into a regnant order. These natural forms become for him the expression +external to himself of the struggle of his own spirit and its final resolution. The +desire rises in him to express by his own act the order he has newly perceived, the +harmony of his spirit with the spirit of nature. As life comes to him dominantly in terms +of color and form, it is with color and form that he works to expression so as to satisfy +his need. The design is already projected in his imagination, and to realize concretely +his ideal he draws upon the material of nature about him. The picture which he paints is +not the purpose of his effort. The picture is but the means. His end is to express the +great new harmony in which his spirit finds shelter.</p> + +<p>Both men, the traveler and the painter, are wayfarers. Both are seeking shelter from +stress and storm, and both construct their means. In one case the product is more +obviously and immediately practical, and the informing purpose tends to become obscured +in the actual serviceableness of the result. The hut answers a need that is primarily +physical; the need in the other case is spiritual. But it is a matter of degree. In +essence and import the achievement of the two men is the same. The originating impulse, a +sense of need; the processes involved, the combination of material elements to a definite +end; the result attained, shelter which answers the need,—they are identical. Both +men are artists. Both hut and picture are works of art.</p> + +<p>So art is not remote from common life after all. In its highest manifestations art is +life at its best; painting, sculpture, poetry, music are the distillment and refinement +of experience. Architecture and the subsidiary arts of decoration adorn necessity and add +delight to use. But whatever the flower and final fruit, art strikes its roots deep down +into human need, and draws its impulse and its sustenance from the very sources of life +itself. In the wide range from the hut in the wilderness to a Gothic cathedral, from the +rude scratches recorded on the cave walls of prehistoric man to the sublimities of the +Sistine Chapel, there is no break in the continuity of effort and aspiration. Potentially +every man is an artist. Between the artist, so-called, and the ordinary man there is no +gulf fixed which cannot be passed. Such are the terms of our mechanical civilization +to-day that art has become specialized and the practice of it is limited to a few; in +consequence artists have become a kind of class. But essentially the possibilities of art +lie within the scope of any man, given the right conditions. So too the separation of the +"useful arts" from the "fine arts" is unjust to art and perversive of right appreciation. +Whatever the form in which it may manifest itself, from the lowest to the highest, the +art spirit is one, and it may quicken in any man who sets mind and heart to the work of +his hand. That man is an artist who fashions a new thing that he may express himself in +response to his need.</p> + +<p>Art is creation. It is the combination of already existing material elements into new +forms which become thus the realization of a preconceived idea. Both hut and picture rose +in the imagination of their makers before they took shape as things. The material of each +was given already in nature; but the form, as the maker fashioned it, was new. Commonly +we think of art as the expression and communication of emotion. A picture, a statue, a +symphony we recognize as the symbol of what the artist has felt in some passage of his +experience and the means by which he conveys his feeling to us. Art <i>is</i> the +expression of emotion, but all art springs out of need. The sense of need which impels +expression through the medium of creation is itself an emotion. The hut which the +traveler built for himself in the wilderness—shaping it according to the design +which his imagination suggested, having reference to his need and to the character of his +materials—was a work of creation; the need which prompted it presented itself to +him as emotion. The picture which the other wayfarer painted of the storm-swept +landscape, a harmony which his imagination compelled out of discords, was a work of +creation; the emotion which inspired the work was attended by need, the need of +expression. The material and practical utility of the hut obscures the emotional +character of its origin; the emotional import of the picture outweighs consideration of +its utility to the painter as the means by which his need of expression is satisfied. The +satisfaction of physical needs which results in the creation of utilities and the +satisfaction of spiritual needs which results in the forms of expression we commonly call +works of art differ one from the other in their effect on the total man only in degree. +All works of use whose conception and making have required an act of creation are art; +all art—even in its supreme manifestations—embraces elements of use. The +measure in which a work is art is established by the intensity and scope of its maker's +emotion and by his power to body forth his feeling in harmonious forms which in turn +recreate the emotion in the spirit of those whom his work reaches.</p> + +<p>In its essence and widest compass art is the making of a new thing in response to a +sense of need. The very need itself creates, working through man as its agent. This truth +is illustrated vividly by the miracles of modern invention. The hand of man unaided was +not able to cope with his expanding opportunities; the giant steam and the magician +electricity came at his call to work their wonders. The plow and scythe of the New +England colonist on his little farm were metamorphosed into the colossal steam-driven +shapes, in which machinery seems transmuted into intelligence, as he moved to the +conquest of the acres of the West which summoned him to dominion. First the need was +felt; the contrivance was created in response. A man of business sees before him in +imagination the end to be reached, and applying his ideal to practical conditions, he +makes every detail converge to the result desired. All rebellious circumstances, all +forces that pull the other way, he bends to his compelling will, and by the shaping power +of his genius he accomplishes his aim. His business is his medium of self-expression; his +success is the realization of his ideal. A painter does no more than this, though he +works with a different material. The landscape which is realized ultimately upon his +canvas is the landscape seen in his imagination. He draws his colors and forms from +nature around; but he selects his details, adapting them to his end. All accidents and +incidents are purged away. Out of the apparent confusion of life rises the evident order +of art. And in the completed work the artist's <i>idea</i> stands forth salient and +victorious.</p> + +<p>That consciousness of need which compels creation is the origin of art. The owner of a +dwelling who first felt the need of securing his door so that he alone might possess the +secret and trick of access devised a lock and key, rude enough, as we can fancy. As the +maker of the first lock and key he was an artist. All those who followed where he had +led, repeating his device without modification, were but artisans. In the measure that +any man changed the design, however, adapting it more closely to his peculiar needs and +so making it anew, to that extent he was an artist also. The man who does a thing for the +first time it is done is an artist; a man who does a thing better is an artist. The +painter who copies his object imitatively, finding nothing, creating nothing, is an +artisan, however skillful he may be. He is an artist in the degree in which he brings to +his subject something of his own, and fashioning it, however crudely, to express the idea +he has conceived of the object, so creates.</p> + +<p>The difference between work which is art and work which is not art is just this +element of the originating impulse and creative act. The difference, though often +seemingly slight and not always immediately perceived, is all-important. It distinguishes +the artist from the artisan; a free spirit from a slave; a thinking, feeling man from a +soulless machine. It makes the difference between life rich and significant, and mere +existence; between the mastery of fate and the passive acceptance of things as they +are.</p> + +<p>If a mind and heart are behind it to control and guide it to expression, even the +machine may be an instrument in the making of a work of art. It is not the work itself, +but the motive which prompted the making of it, that determines its character as art. Art +is not the way a thing is done, but the reason why it is done. A chair, though turned on +a lathe, may be a work of art, if the maker has truly expressed himself in his work. A +picture, though "hand-painted," may be wholly mechanical in spirit. To set about "making +a picture" is to begin at the wrong end. The impulse to art flows from within outwards. +Art is bound up with life itself; like nature, it is organic and must grow. The form +cannot be laid on from the outside; it is born and must develop in response to vital +need. In so far as our acts are consciously the expression of ourselves they are prompted +by the art spirit.</p> + +<p>All our acts are reducible to one of two kinds: either they are acts of creation, +effecting a new result, or they are acts of repetition. Acts of repetition tend rapidly +to become habits; and they may be performed without attention or positive volition. Thus, +as I am dressing in the morning I may be planning the work for the day; while my mind is +given over to thought, I lose the sense of my material surroundings, my muscles work +automatically, the motor-currents flowing through the well-worn grooves, and by force of +habit the acts execute themselves. Obviously, acts of repetition, or habits, make up the +larger part of our daily lives.</p> + +<p>Acts of creation, on the other hand, are performed by an effort of the will in +response to the consciousness of a need. To meet the new need we are obliged to make new +combinations. I assume that the traveler constructed his hut for the first time, shaping +it to the special new conditions; that the harmony which the painter discerned in the +tumult around him he experienced for the first time, and the picture which he paints, +shaped with reference to his need and fulfilling it, is a new thing. In the work produced +by this act of creation, the feeling which has prompted it finds expression. In the +making of the hut, in the painting of the picture, the impelling need is satisfied.</p> + +<p>Although acts of repetition constitute the bulk of life, creation is of its very +essence and determines its quality. The significance and joy of life are less in being +than in <i>becoming.</i> Growth is expression, and in turn expression is made possible by +growth. In our conscious experience the sense of becoming is one of our supreme +satisfactions. Growth is the purpose and the recompense of our being here, the end for +which we strive and the reward of all the effort and the struggle. In the exercise of +brain or hand, to feel the work take form, develop, and become something,—that is +happiness. And the joy is in the creating rather than in the thing created; the completed +work is behind us, and we move forward to new creation. A painter's best picture is the +blank canvas before him; an author's greatest book is the one he is just setting himself +to write. The desire for change for the sake of change which we all feel at times, a +vague restlessness of mind and body, is only the impulse to growth which has not found +its direction. Outside of us we love to see the manifestation of growth. We tend and +cherish the little plant in the window; we watch with delight the unfolding of each new +leaf and the upward reach into blossom. The spring, bursting triumphant from the silent, +winter-stricken earth, is nature's parable of expression, her symbol perennially renewed +of the joy of growth.</p> + +<p>The impulse to expression is cosmic and eternal. But even in the homeliness and +familiarity of our life from day to day the need of expression is there, whether we are +entirely aware of it or not; and we are seeking the realization and fulfillment of +ourselves through the utterance of what we are. A few find their expression in forms +which with distinct limitation of the term we call works of art. Most men find it in +their daily occupations, their profession or their business. The president of one of the +great Western railroads remarked once in conversation that he would rather build a +thousand miles of railroad than live in the most sumptuous palace on Fifth Avenue. +Railroad building was his medium of expression; it was his art. Some express themselves +in shaping their material environment, in the decoration and ordering of their houses. A +young woman said, "My ambition is to keep my house well." Again, for her, housekeeping is +her art. Some find the realization of themselves in the friends they draw around them. +Love is but the utterance of what we essentially are; and the response to it in the loved +one makes the utterance articulate and complete. Expression rises out of our deepest +need, and the need impels expression.</p> + +<p>The assertion that art is thus involved with need seems for the moment to run counter +to the usual conception, which regards art as a product of leisure, a luxury, and the +result not of labor but of play. Art in its higher forms becomes more and more purely the +expression of emotion, the un-trammeled record of the artist's spiritual experience. It +is only when physical necessities have been met or ignored that the spirit of man has +free range. But the maker who adds decoration to his bowl after he has moulded it is just +as truly fulfilling a need—the need of self-expression—as he fulfilled a need +when he fashioned the bowl in the first instance in order that he might slake his thirst. +Art is not superadded to life,—something different in kind. All through its ascent +from its rudimentary forms to its highest, from hut to cathedral, art is coordinate with +the development of life, continuous and without breach or sudden end; it is the +expression step by step of ever fuller and ever deeper experience.</p> + +<p>Creation, therefore, follows upon the consciousness of need, whether the need be +physical, as with the traveler, or spiritual, as with the painter; from physical to +spiritual we pass by a series of gradations. At their extremes they are easy to +distinguish, one from the other; but along the way there is no break in the continuity. +The current formula for art, that art is the utterance of man's joy in his work, is not +quite accurate. In the act of creation the maker finds the expression of himself. The man +who decorates a bowl in response to his own creative impulse is expressing himself. The +painter who thrills to the wonder and significance of nature is impelled to expression; +and his delight is not fully realized and complete until he has uttered it. Such art is +love expressed, and the artist's work is his "hymn of the praise of things." But the joy +for both the potter and the painter, the joy which is so bound up with art as to partake +of its very essence, is the joy which attends self-expression and the satisfaction of the +need.</p> + +<p>A work of art is a work of creation brought into being as the expression of emotion. +The traveler creates not the wood and stone but shelter, by means of the hut; the painter +creates not the landscape but the beauty of it; the musician creates not the musical +tones, but by means of a harmony of tones he creates an emotional experience. The impulse +to art rises out of the earliest springs of consciousness and vibrates through all life. +Art does not disdain to manifest itself in the little acts of expression of simple daily +living; with all its splendid past and vital present it is ever seeking new and greater +forms whose end is not yet. I spoke of the work of the traveler through the wilderness as +art; the term was applied also to railroad-building and to housekeeping. The truth to be +illustrated by these examples is that the primary impulse to artistic expression does not +differ in essence from the impulse to creation of any kind. The nature of the thing +created, as art, depends upon the emotional value of the result, the degree in which it +expresses immediately the emotion of its creator, and the power it possesses to rouse the +emotion in others. To show that all art is creation and that all creation tends toward +art is not to obscure useful distinctions, but rather to restore art to its rightful +place in the life of man.</p> + +<p>In the big sense, then, art is bounded only by life itself. It is not a cult; it is +not an activity practiced by the few and a mystery to be understood only by those who are +initiated into its secrets. One difficulty in the way of the popular understanding of art +is due to the fact that the term art is currently limited to its highest manifestations; +we withhold the title of artist from a good carpenter or cabinet-maker who takes a pride +in his work and expresses his creative desire by shaping his work to his own idea, and we +bestow the name upon any juggler in paint: with the result that many people who are not +painters or musicians feel themselves on that account excluded from all appreciation. If +we go behind the various manifestations of art to discover just what art is in itself and +to determine wherein it is able to link itself with common experience, we find that art +is the response to a need. And that need may waken in any man. Every man may be an artist +in his degree; and every man in his degree can appreciate art. A work of art is the +expression of its maker's experience, the expression in such terms that the experience +can be communicated to another. The processes of execution involved in fashioning a work, +its technique, may be as incomprehensible and perplexed and difficult as its executants +choose to make them. Technique is not the same as art. The only mystery of art is the +mystery of all life itself. Accept life with its fundamental mysteries, with its wonders +and glories, and we have the clue to art. But we miss the central fact of the whole +matter if we do not perceive that art is only a means. It is by expression that we grow +and so fulfill ourselves. The work itself which art calls into being is not the end. It +fails of its purpose, remaining void and vain, if it does not perform its function. The +hut which does not furnish shelter is labor lost. The significance of the painter's +effort does not stop with the canvas and pigment which he manipulates into form and +meaning. The artist sees beyond the actual material thing which he is fashioning; his +purpose in creation is expression. By means of his picture he expresses himself and so +finds the satisfaction of his deepest need. The beginning and the end of art is life.</p> + +<p>But the artist's work of expression is not ultimately complete until the message is +received, and expression becomes communication as his utterance calls out a response in +the spirit of a fellow-man. Art exists not only for the artist's sake but for the +appreciator too. As art has its origin in emotion and is the expression of it, so for the +appreciator the individual work has a meaning and is art in so far as it becomes for him +the expression of what he has himself felt but could not phrase; and it is art too in the +measure in which it is the revelation of larger possibilities of feeling and creates in +him a new emotional experience. The impulse to expression is common to all; the +difference is one of degree. And the message of art is for all, according as they are +attuned to the response. Art is creation. For the artist it is creation by expression; +for the appreciator it is creation by evocation. These two principles complete the cycle; +abstractly and very briefly they are the whole story of art.</p> + +<p>To be responsive to the needs of life and its emotional appeal is the first condition +of artistic creation. By new combinations of material elements to bring emotion to +expression in concrete harmonious forms, themselves charged with emotion and +communicating it, is to fashion a work of art. To feel in material, whether in the forms +of nature or in works of art, a meaning for the spirit is the condition of +appreciation.</p><a name="2"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>II</p> + +<p>THE ATTITUDE OF RESPONSE</p> + +<p>IT is a gray afternoon in late November. The day is gone; evening is not yet come. +Though too dark to read or write longer, it is not dark enough for drawn shades and the +lamp. As I sit in the gathering dusk, my will hovering between work done and work to do, +I surrender to the mood of the moment. The day is accomplished, but it is not yet a +remembrance, for it is still too near for me to define the details that made up its +hours. Consciousness, not sharp enough for thought, floats away into diffused and obscure +emotion. The sense is upon me and around me that I am vaguely, unreasoningly, yet +pleasantly, unhappy. Out of the dimness a trick of memory recalls to me the +lines,—</p> + +<p> "Tears! tears! tears!<br> + In the night, in solitude, tears,<br> + On the white shore dripping, dripping, suck'd in by the +sand,<br> + Tears, not a star shining, all dark and desolate,<br> + Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head;<br> + O who is that ghost? that form in the dark, with tears?<br> + What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouch'd there on the +sand?<br> + Streaming tears, sobbing tears, throes, choked with wild +cries;<br> + O storm, embodied, rising, careering with swift steps along the +beach!<br> + O wild and dismal night storm, with wind—O belching and +desperate!<br> + O shade so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and +regulated pace,<br> + But away at night as you fly, none looking—O then the +unloosened ocean<br> + Of tears! tears! tears!"</p> + +<p>Now I know. My mood was the mood of tears. The poet, too, has felt what I was feeling. +And as a poet he has been able to bring his emotion to expression. By the magic of phrase +and the mystery of image he has, out of the moving of his spirit, fashioned a concrete +reality. By means of his expression, because of it, his emotion becomes realized, and so +reaches its fulfillment. And for me, what before was vague has been made definite. The +poet's lines have wakened in me a response; I have felt what he has phrased; and now they +become my expression too. As my mood takes form, I become conscious of its meaning. I can +distill its significance for the spirit, and in the emotion made definite and realizable +as consciousness I feel and know that I am living. Doubly, completely, the poem is a work +of art. And my response to it, the absorption of it into my own experience, is +appreciation.</p> + +<p>I appreciate the poem as I make the experience which the poet has here phrased my own, +and at the instant of reading I live out in myself what he has lived and here expressed. +I read the words, and intellectually I take in their signification, but the poem is not +realized in me until it wakens in me the feeling which the words are framed to convey. +The images which an artist employs have the power to rouse emotion in us, so that they +come to stand for the emotion itself. We care for nature and it is beautiful to us as its +forms become objectively the intimate expression for us of what we feel.</p> + +<p> "O to realize space!<br> + The plenteousness of all, that there are no bounds,<br> + To emerge and be of the sky, of the sun and moon and flying +clouds, as one with them."</p> + +<p>In his contact with the external world the artist identifies himself with his object. +If he is painting a tree he in a measure becomes the tree; he values it at all because it +expresses for him concretely what he feels in its presence. The object and his spirit +fuse; and through the fusion they together grow into a new and larger unity. What his +work expresses is not the object for its own sake but this larger unity of his identity +with it. To appreciate the artist's work, therefore, we must in our turn merge ourselves +in his emotion, and becoming one with it, so extend our personality into larger life.</p> + +<p>To make the artist's emotion our own, to identify ourselves with the object which he +presents to us, we must pass beyond the material form in which the work is embodied, +letting the spirit and meaning of it speak to our spirit. In itself an individual picture +or statue or symphony is an objective, material thing, received into consciousness along +the channel of the senses; but its origin and its end alike are in emotion. The material +form, whether in nature or in works of art, is only the means by which the emotion is +communicated. A landscape in nature is composed of meadow and hills, blue sky and +tumbling clouds; these are the facts of the landscape. But they are not fixed and inert. +The imagination of the beholder combines these elements into a harmony of color and mass; +his spirit flows into consonance with the harmony his imagination has compelled out of +nature, becoming one with it. To regard the world not as facts and things, but as +everywhere the stimulus of feeling, feeling which becomes our own experience, is the +condition of appreciation.</p> + +<p>To the awakening mind of a child, life is full of wonder, and each unfolding day +reveals new marvels of excitement and surprise. As yet untrammeled by any sense of the +limitations of material, his quick imagination peoples his world with creatures of his +fancy, which to him are more real than the things he is able actually to see and touch. +For him the external world is fluid and plastic, to be moulded into forms at will in +obedience to his creative desire. In the tiny bundle of rags which mother-love clasps +tight to her heart, a little girl sees only the loveliest of babies; and a small boy with +his stick of lath and newspaper cap and plume is a mightier than Napoleon. The cruder the +toy, the greater is the pleasure in the game; for the imagination delights in the +exercise of itself. A wax doll, sent from Paris, with flaxen hair and eyes that open and +shut, is laid away, when the mere novelty of it is exhausted, in theatric chest, and the +little girl is fondling again her first baby of rag and string. A real steel sword and +tin helmet are soon cast aside, and the boy is back again among the toys of his own +making. That impulse to creation which all men feel, the impulse which makes the artist, +is especially active in a child; his games are his art. With a child material is not an +end but a means. Things are for him but the skeleton of life, to be clothed upon by the +flesh and blood reality of his own fashioning. His feeling is in excess of his knowledge. +He has a faculty of perception other than the intellectual. It is imagination.</p> + +<p>The child is the first artist. Out of the material around him he creates a world of +his own. The prototypes of the forms which he devises exist in life, but it is the thing +which he himself makes that interests him, not its original in nature. His play is his +expression. He creates; and he is able to merge himself in the thing created. In his play +he loses all consciousness of self. He and the toy become one, caught up in the larger +unity of the game. According as he identifies himself with the thing outside of him, the +child is the first appreciator.</p> + +<p>Then comes a change.</p> + +<p> "Heaven lies about us in our infancy!<br> + Shades of the prison-house begin to close<br> + Upon the growing Boy,<br> + But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,<br> + He sees it in his joy;<br> + The Youth, who daily farther from the east<br> + Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,<br> + And by the vision splendid<br> + Is on his way attended;<br> + At length the Man perceives it die away,<br> + And fade into the light of common day."</p> + +<p>Imagination surrenders to the intellect; emotion gives place to knowledge.</p> + +<p>Gradually the material world shuts in about us until it becomes for us a hard, inert +thing, and no longer a living, changing presence, instinct with infinite possibilities of +experience and feeling. Now custom lies upon us</p> + +<p> "with a weight,<br> + Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!"</p> + +<p>It happens, unfortunately for our enjoyment of life, that we get used to things. +Little by little we come to accept them, to take them for granted, and they cease to mean +anything to us. Habit, which is our most helpful ally in lending our daily life its +practical efficiency, is the foe of emotion and appreciation. Habit allows us to perform +without conscious effort the innumerable little acts of each day's necessity which we +could not possibly accomplish if every single act required a fresh exercise of will. But +just because its action is unconscious and unregarded, habit blunts the edge of our +sensibilities. "Thus let but a Rising of the Sun," says Carlyle, "let but a creation of +the World happen <i>twice,</i> and it ceases to be marvelous, to be noteworthy, or +noticeable."</p> + +<p>"Except ye become as little children!" Unless the world is new-created every day, +unless we can thrill to the beauty of nature with its fair surfaces and harmonies of +vibrant sounds, or quicken to the throb of human life with its occupations and its play +of energies, its burdens and its joys, unless we find an answer to our needs, and +gladness, in sunlight or storms, in the sunset and evening and solitude under the stars, +in fields and hills or in thronging city streets, in conflict and struggle or in the face +of a friend, unless each new day is a gift and new opportunity, then we cannot interpret +the meaning of life nor read the riddle of art. For we cannot truly appreciate art except +as we learn to appreciate life. Until then art has no message for us; it is a sealed +book, and we shall not open the book nor loose the seals thereof. The meaning of life is +for the spirit, and art is its minister. To share in the communion we must become as +children. As a child uses the common things of life to his own ends, transfiguring them +by force of his creative desire, and fashioning thus a wonderful world of his own by the +exercise of his shaping imagination, a world of limitless incident and high adventure, so +we must penetrate the visible and tangible actuality around us, the envelope of seemingly +inert matter cast in forms of rigid definition, and we must open ourselves to the +influence of nature. That influence—nature's power to inspire, quicken, and +dilate—flowing through the channel of the senses, plays upon our spirit. The +indwelling significance of things is apprehended by the imagination, and is won for us in +the measure that we feel.</p> + +<p>As we respond to the emotional appeal of the great universe external to ourselves we +come to realize that the material world which we see and touch is not final. In the +experience of us all there are moments of exaltation and quickened response, moments of +illumination when—</p> + +<p> "with an eye made quiet by the +power<br> + Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,<br> + We see into the life of things."</p> + +<p>The "life of things" is their significance for the spirit. By spirit I mean the sum of +our conscious being, that complete entity within us which we recognize as the self. The +material world, external, visible, tangible, may be regarded as the actual world. The +real world is the world of spiritual forces and relations, apprehended by the imagination +and received with feeling. Life, in the sense of our conscious experience of the world, +is the moving of the spirit in emotion.</p> + +<p>The measure of life for the individual, therefore, is the degree of intensity with +which he feels. Experience is not meted out by weeks and months; it is to be sounded by +the depth and poignancy of instant emotion. Variety and multitude of incident may crowd +through insentient years and leave no record of their progress along the waste places of +their march. Or a day may be a lifetime. In such moments of intensest experience time and +space fall away and are not. The outermost bounds of things recede; they vanish +altogether: and we are made free of the universe. At such moments we are truly living; +then we really <i>are.</i></p> + +<p>As the meaning of art is not the material thing which it calls into form, but what the +work expresses of life, so in order to appreciate art it is necessary to appreciate life, +which is the inspiration of art and its fulfillment. To appreciate life is to send out +our being into experience and to <i>feel,—</i>to realize in terms of emotion our +identity with the great universe outside of us, this world of color and form and sound +and movement, this web of illimitable activities and energies, shot through with currents +of endlessly varied and modulated feeling. "My son," says the father in Hindu lore, +pointing to an animal, a tree, a rock, "my son, thou art that!" The universe is one. Of +it we are each an essential part, distinct as individuals, yet fusing with it in our +sense of our vital kinship with all other parts and with the whole. I am sauntering +through the Public Garden on a fragrant hushed evening in June; touched by the lingering +afterglow, the twilight has not yet deepened into night. Grouped about a bench, children +are moving softly in the last flicker of play, while the mother nods above them. On the +next bench a wanderer is stretched at full length, his face hidden in his crooked-up arm. +I note a couple seated, silent, with shoulder touching shoulder. I meet a young man and +woman walking hand in hand; they do not see me as I pass. Beyond, other figures are +soundless shadows, gathering out of the enveloping dusk. It is all so intimate and +friendly. The air, the flowers, the bit of water through the trees reflecting the lights +of the little bridge, are a caress. And it is all for me! I am a child at his tired play, +I am the sleeping tramp, I am the young fellow with his girl. It is not the sentiment of +the thing, received intellectually, that makes it mine. My being goes out into these +other lives and becomes one with them. I feel them in myself. It is not thought that +constitutes appreciation; it is emotion.</p> + +<p>Another glimpse, caught this time through a car window. Now it is a winter twilight. +The flurry of snow has passed. The earth is penetrated with blue light, suffused by it, +merged in it, ever blue. Vague forms, still and shadowy, of hills and trees, soppy with +light, are blue within the blue. The brief expanse of bay is deeply luminous and within +the pervasive tempering light resolves itself into the cool and solemn reaches of the sky +which bends down and touches it. Once more my spirit meets and mingles with the spirit of +the landscape. By the harmony of nature's forms and twilight tones I am brought into a +larger harmony within myself and with the world around.</p> + +<p>All experience offers to us at any moment just such possibilities of living. The +infinite and ever-changing expressiveness of nature at every instant of day and night is +ours to read if we will but look upon it with the inner vision. The works of men in +cities and cultivated fields, if we will see beyond the actual material, may quicken our +emotions until we enact in ourselves their story of struggle, of hopes and ambitions +partly realized, of defeat or final triumph. The faces seen in a passing crowd bear each +the record of life lived, of lives like ours of joys or disappointments, lives of great +aims or no aims at all, of unwritten heroisms, of hidden tragedies bravely borne, lives +sordid and mean or generous and bright. The panorama of the world unrolls itself <i>for +us.</i> It is ours to experience and live out in our own being according as we are able +to feel. Just as the impulse to expression is common to all men, and all are artists +potentially, differing in the depth of their insight into life and in the degree of +emotion they have to express, so appreciation lies within the scope of all, and the +measure of it to us as individuals is determined by our individual capability of +response.</p> + +<p>Life means to each one of us what we are able to receive of it in "wise passiveness," +and then are able by the constructive force of our individuality to shape into coherence +and completeness. As the landscape which an artist paints is the landscape visioned in +imagination, though composed of forms given in nature, so life furnishes us the elements +of experience, and out of these elements we construct a meaning, each for himself. To one +man an object or incident is commonplace and blank; to another it may be charged with +significance and big with possibilities of fuller living. "In every object." says +Carlyle, "there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what it brings means of +seeing." To <i>see</i> is not merely to receive an image upon the retina. The stimulation +of the visual organ becomes sight properly only as the record is conveyed to the +consciousness. When I am reading a description of a sunset, there is an image upon my +retina of a white page and black marks of different forms grouped in various +combinations. But what I see is the sunset. Momentarily to rest the eye upon a landscape +is not really to see it, for our mind may be quite otherwhere. We see the landscape only +as it becomes part of our conscious experience. The beauty of it is in us. A novelist +conceives certain characters and assembles them in action and reaction, but it is we who +in effect create the story as we read. We take up a novel, perhaps, which we read five +years ago; we find in it now new significances and appeals. The book is the same; it is +we who have changed. We bring to it the added power of feeling of those five years of +living. Art works not by information but by evocation. Appreciation is not reception but +response. The artist must compel us to feel what he has felt,—not something else. +But the scope of his message, with its overtones and subtler implications, is limited by +the rate of vibration to which we are attuned.</p> + +<p> "All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon +it,<br> + (Did you think it was in the white or gray stone? or the lines +of the arches and cornices?)<br> + All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the +instruments."</p> + +<p>And again Whitman says, "A great poem is no finish to a man or woman, but rather a +beginning." The final significance of both life and art is not won by the exercise of the +intellect, but unfolds itself to us in the measure that we feel.</p> + +<p>To illustrate the nature of appreciation and the power from which appreciation +derives, the power to project ourselves into the world external to us, I spoke of the joy +of living peculiar to the child and to the childlike in heart. But that is not quite the +whole of the story. A child by force of his imagination and capacity of feeling is able +to pass beyond the limits of material, and he lives in a world of exhaustless play and +happiness; for him objects are but means and not an end. To transcend thus the bounds of +matter imposed by the senses and to live by the power of emotion is the first condition +of appreciation. The second condition of appreciation is to feel and know it, to become +conscious of ourselves in our relation to the object. To <i>live</i> is the purpose of +life; to be aware that we are living is its fulfillment and the reward of +appreciation.</p> + +<p>Experience has a double value. There is the instant of experience itself, and then the +reaction on it. A child is unconscious in his play; he is able to forget himself in it +completely. At that moment he is most happy. The instant of supreme joy is the instant of +ecstasy, when we lose all consciousness of ourselves as separate and distinct +individualities. We are one with the whole. But experience does not yield us its fullest +and permanent significance until, having abandoned ourselves to the moment, we then react +upon it and become aware of what the moment means. A group of children are at play. +Without thought of themselves they are projected into their sport; with their whole being +merged in it, they are intensely living. A passer on the street stands and watches them. +For the moment, in spirit he becomes a child with them. In himself he feels the +absorption and vivid reality to them of what they are doing. But he feels also what they +do not feel, and that is, what it means to be a child. Where they are unconscious he is +conscious; and therefore he is able, as they are not, to distill the significance of +their play. This recognition makes possible the extension of his own life; for the man +adds to himself the child. The reproach is sometimes brought against Walt Whitman that +the very people he writes about do not read him. The explanation is simple and +illustrates the difference between the unconscious and the conscious reception of life. +The "average man" who is the hero of Whitman's chants is not aware of himself as such. He +goes about his business, content to do his work; and that makes up his experience. It is +not the average man himself, but the poet standing outside and looking on with +imaginative sympathy, who feels what it means to be an average man. It is the poet who +must "teach the average man the glory of his daily walk and trade." It is not enough to +be happy as children are happy,—unconsciously. We must be happy and know it +too.</p> + +<p>The attitude of appreciation is the attitude of response,—the projection of +ourselves into new and fuller ranges of feeling, with the resultant extension of our +personality and a larger grasp on life. We do not need to go far afield for experience; +it is here and now. To-day is the only day, and every day is the best day. "The readiness +is all." But mere contact with the surface of life is not enough. Living does not consist +in barely meeting the necessities of our material existence; to live is to feel vibrantly +throughout our being the inner significance of things, their appeal and welcome to the +spirit. This fair world of color and form and texture is but a show world, after +all,—this world which looms so near that we can see it, touch it, which comes to us +out of the abysms of time and recedes into infinitudes of space whither the imagination +cannot follow it. The true and vital meaning of it resides within and discovers itself to +us finally as emotion. Some of this meaning art reveals to us, and in that measure it +helps us to find ourselves. But art is only the means. The starting-point of the +appreciation of art, and its goal, is the appreciation of life. The reward of living is +the added ability to live. And life yields its fullest opportunities, its deepest +tragedies, its highest joys, all its infinite scope of feeling, to those who enter by the +gate of appreciation.</p><a name="3"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>III</p> + +<p>TECHNIQUE AND THE LAYMAN</p> + +<p>A PEASANT is striding across a field in the twilight shadow of a hill. Beyond, where +the fold of the hill dips down into the field, another peasant is driving a team of oxen +at a plow. The distant figures are aglow with golden mellow light, the last light of day, +which deepens the gloom of the shadowing hillside. The sower's cap is pulled tight about +his head, hiding under its shade the unseeing eyes. The mouth is brutal and grim. The +heavy jaw flows down into the thick, resistive neck. The right arm swings powerfully out, +scattering the grain. The left is pressed to his body; the big, stubborn hand clutches +close the pouch of seed. Action heroic, elemental; the dumb bearing of the universal +burden. In the flex of the shoulder, the crook of the outstretched arm, the conquering +onward stride, is expressed all the force of that word of the Lord to the first toiler, +"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread."</p> + +<p>Three men are standing before Millet's canvas.</p> + +<p>One recognizes the subject of the picture. With the pleasure of recognition he notes +what the artist has here represented, and he is interested in the situation. This is a +peasant, and he is sowing his grain. So the onlooker stands and watches the peasant in +his movement, and he <i>thinks</i> about the sower, recalling any sower he may have read +of or seen or known, his own sower rather than the one that Millet has seen and would +show to him. This man's pleasure in the picture has its place.</p> + +<p>The second of the three men is attracted by the qualities of execution which the work +displays, and he is delighted by what he calls the "actual beauty" of the painting. With +eyes close to the canvas he notes the way Millet has handled his materials, his drawing, +his color, his surfaces and edges, all the knack of the brush-work, recognizing in his +examination of the workmanship of the picture that though Millet was a very great artist, +he was not a great painter, that the reach of his ideas was not equaled by his technical +skill. Then as the beholder stands back from the canvas to take in the ensemble, his eye +is pleased by the color-harmony, it rests lovingly upon the balance of the composition, +and follows with satisfaction the rhythmic flow of line. His enjoyment is both +intellectual and sensuous. And that too has its place.</p> + +<p>The third spectator, with no thought of the facts around which the picture is built, +not observing the technical execution as such, unconscious at the moment also of its +merely sensuous charm, feels within himself, "<i>I</i> am that peasant!" In his own +spirit is enacted the agelong world-drama of toil. He sees beyond the bare subject of the +picture; the medium with all its power of sensuous appeal and satisfaction becomes +transparent. The beholder enters into the very being of the laborer; and as he identifies +himself with this other life outside of him, becoming one with it in spirit and feeling, +he adds just so much to his own experience. In his reception of the meaning of Millet's +painting of the "Sower" he lives more deeply and abundantly.</p> + +<p>It is the last of these three men who stands in the attitude of full and true +appreciation. The first of the three uses the picture simply as a point of departure; his +thought travels away from the canvas, and he builds up the entire experience out of his +own knowledge and store of associations. The second man comes a little nearer to +appreciation, but even he falls short of full realization, for he stops at the actual +material work itself. His interest in the technical execution and his pleasure in the +sensuous qualities of the medium do not carry him through the canvas and into the emotion +which it was the artist's purpose to convey. Only he truly appreciates the painting of +the "Sower" who feels something of what Millet felt, partaking of the artist's experience +as expressed by means of the picture, and making it vitally his own.</p> + +<p>But before the appreciator can have brought himself to the point of perception where +he is able to respond directly to the significance of art and to make the artist's +emotion a part of his own emotional experience, he must needs have traveled a long and +rather devious way. Appreciation is not limited to the exercise of the intellect, as in +the recognition of the subject of a work of art and in the interest which the technically +minded spectator takes in the artist's skill. It does not end with the gratification of +the senses, as with the delight in harmonious color and rhythmic line and ordered mass. +Yet the intellect and the senses, though they are finally but the channel through which +the artist's meaning flows to reach and rouse the feelings, nevertheless play their part +in appreciation. Between the spirit of the artist and the spirit of the appreciator +stands the individual work of art as the means of expression and communication. In the +work itself emotion is embodied in material form. The material which art employs for +expression constitutes its language. Certain principles govern the composition of the +work, certain processes are involved in the making of it, and the result possesses +certain qualities and powers. The processes which enter into the actual fashioning of the +work are both intellectual and physical, requiring the exercise of the artist's mind in +the planning of the work and in the directing of his hand; so far as the appreciator +concerns himself with them, they address themselves to his intellect. The finished work +in its material aspect possesses qualities which are perceived by the senses and which +have a power of sensuous delight. Upon these processes and these qualities depends in +part the total character of a work of art, and they must be reckoned with in +appreciation.</p> + +<p>In his approach to any work of art, therefore, the layman is confronted first of all +with the problem of the language which the work employs. Architecture uses as its +language the structural capabilities of its material, as wood or stone, bringing all +together into coherent and serviceable form. Poetry is phrased in words. Painting employs +as its medium color and line and mass. At the outset, in the case of any art, we have +some knowledge of the signification of its terms. Here is a painting of a sower. Out of +previous experience of the world we easily recognize the subject of the picture. But +whence comes the majesty of this rude peasant, the dignity august of this rough and +toil-burdened laborer, his power to move us? In addition to the common signification of +its terms, then, language seems to have a further expressiveness, a new meaning imparted +to it by the way in which the artist uses it. In a poem we know the meaning of the words, +but the <i>poetry</i> of it, which we feel rather than know, is the creation of the poet, +wrought out of the familiar words by his cunning manipulation of them.</p> + +<p> "The grey sea and the long black land;<br> + And the yellow half-moon large and low;<br> + And the startled little waves that leap<br> + In fiery ringlets from their sleep,<br> + As I gain the cove with pushing prow,<br> + And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.</p> + +<p> "Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;<br> + Three fields to cross till a farm appears;<br> + A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch<br> + And blue spurt of a lighted match,<br> + And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,<br> + Than the two hearts beating each to each!"</p> + +<p>A drama in twelve lines. These are words of common daily usage, every one,—for +the most part aggressively so. But the romance which they effuse, the glamour which +envelops the commonplace incident as with an aura, is due to the poet's strategic +selection of his terms, the one right word out of many words that offered, and his subtle +combination of his terms into melody and rhythm. The wonder of the poet's craft is like +the musician's,—</p> + +<p> "That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a +star."</p> + +<p>A building rises before us; we recognize it as a building, and again easily we infer +the purpose which it serves, that it is a temple or a dwelling. And then the beauty of +it, a power to affect us beyond the mere feet that it is a building, lays hold upon us, +an influence emanating from it which we do not altogether explain to ourselves. Simply in +its presence we feel that we are pleased. The fact, the material which the artist uses, +exists out there in nature. But the beauty of the building, the majesty and power of the +picture, the charm of the poem,—this is the <i>art</i> of the artist; and he wins +his effects by the way in which he handles his materials, by his <i>technique.</i> Some +knowledge of technique, therefore,—not the artist's knowledge of it, but the +ability to read the language of art as the artist intends it to be read,—is +necessary to appreciation.</p> + +<p>The hut which the traveler through a wild country put together to provide himself +shelter against storm and the night was in essence a work of art. The purpose of his +effort was not the hut itself but shelter, to accomplish which he used the hut as his +means. The emotion of which the work was the expression, in this case the traveler's +consciousness of his need, embodied itself in a concrete form and made use of material. +The hut which he conceived in response to his need became for him the subject or motive +of his work. For the actual expression of his design he took advantage of the qualities +of his material, its capabilities to combine thus and so; these inherent qualities were +his medium. The material wood and stone which he employed were the vehicle of his design. +The way in which he handled his vehicle toward the construction of the hut, availing +himself of the qualities and capabilities of his material, might be called his +technique.</p> + +<p>The sight of some landscape wakens in the beholder a vivid and definite emotion; he is +moved by it to some form of expression. If he is a painter he will express his emotion by +means of a picture, which involves in the making of it certain elements and certain +processes. The picture will present selected facts in the landscape; the landscape, then, +as constructed according to the design the painter has conceived of it, becomes the +motive or subject of his picture. The particular aspects of the landscape which the +picture records are its color and its form. These qualities of color and form are the +painter's medium. An etching of the scene would use not color but line to express the +artist's emotion in its presence; so line is the medium of etching. But "qualities" of +objects are an abstraction unless they are embodied in material. In order, therefore, to +give his medium actual embodiment the painter uses pigment, as oil-color or water-color +or tempera, laid upon a surface, as canvas, wood, paper, plaster; this material pigment +is his vehicle. The etcher employs inked scratches upon his plate of zinc or copper, +bitten by acid or scratched directly by the needle; these marks of ink are the vehicle of +etching. To the way in which the artist uses his medium for practical expression and to +his methods in the actual handling of his vehicle is applied the term technique. The +general conception of his picture, its total design, the choice of motive, the selection +of details, the main scheme of composition,—these belong to the great strategy of +his art. The application of these principles in practice and their material working out +upon his canvas are an affair of tactics and fall within the province of technique.</p> + +<p>The ultimate significance of a work of art is its content of emotion, the essential +controlling idea, which inspires the work and gives it concrete form. In its actual +embodiment, the expressive power of the work resides in the medium. The medium of any +art, then, as color and mass in painting, line in drawing and etching, form in sculpture, +sound in music, is its means of expression and constitutes its language. Now the +signification of language derives from convention. Line, for example, which may be so +sensitive and so expressive, is only an abstraction and does not exist in nature. What +the draughtsman renders as line is objectively in fact the boundary of forms. A head, +with all its subtleties of color and light and shade, may be represented by a pencil or +charcoal drawing, black upon a white surface. It is not the head which is black and +white, but the drawing. Our acceptance of the drawing as an adequate representation of +the head rests upon convention. Writing is an elementary kind of drawing; the letters of +the alphabet were originally pictures or symbols. So to-day written or printed letters +are arbitrary symbols of sounds, and grouped together in arbitrary combinations they form +words, which are symbols of ideas. The word <i>sum</i> stood to the old Romans for the +idea "I am;" to English-speaking people the word signifies a "total" and also a problem +in arithmetic. A painting of a landscape does not attempt to imitate the scene; it uses +colors and forms as symbols which serve for expression. The meaning attaching to these +symbols derives from common acceptance and usage, Japanese painting, rendering the +abstract spirit of movement of a wave, for example, rather than the concrete details of +its surface appearance, differs fundamentally from the painting of the western world; it +is none the less pregnant with meaning for those who know the convention. To understand +language, therefore, we must understand the convention and accept its terms. The value of +language as a means of expression and communication depends upon the knowledge, common to +the user and to the person addressed, of the signification of its terms. Its +effectiveness is determined by the way in which it is employed, involving the choice of +terms, as the true line for the false or meaningless one, the right value or note of +color out of many that would almost do, the exact and specific word rather than the vague +and feeble; involving also the combination of terms into articulate forms. These ways and +methods in the use of language are the concern of technique. Technique, therefore, plays +an important part in the creation and the ultimate fortunes of the artist's work.</p> + +<p>Just here arises a problem for the layman in his approach to art. The man who says, "I +don't know anything about art, but I know what I like," is a familiar figure in our +midst; of such, for the most part, the "public" of art is constituted. What he really +means is, "I don't know anything about technique, but art interests me. I read books, I +go to concerts and the theatre, I look at pictures; and in a way they have something for +me." If we make this distinction between art and technique, the matter becomes +simplified. The layman does not himself paint pictures or write books or compose music; +his contact with art is with the purpose of appreciation. Life holds some meaning for +him, as he is engaged in living, and there his chief interest lies. So art too has a +message addressed to him, for art starts with life and in the end comes back to it. If +art is not the expression of vital feeling, in its turn communicating the feeling to the +appreciator so that he makes it a real part of his experience of life, then the thing +called art is only an exercise in dexterity for the maker and a pastime for the receiver; +it is not art. But art is not quite the same as life at first hand; it is rather the +distillment of it. In order to render the significance of life as he has perceived and +felt it, the artist selects and modifies his facts; and his work depends for its +expressiveness upon the material form in which the emotion is embodied. The handling of +material to the end of making it expressive is an affair of technique. The layman may ask +himself, then, To what extent is a knowledge of technique necessary for appreciation? And +how may he win that knowledge?</p> + +<p>On his road to appreciation the layman is beset with difficulties. Most of the talk +about art which he hears is either the translation of picture or sonata into terms of +literary sentiment or it is a discussion of the way the thing is done. He knows at least +that painting is not the same as literature and that music has its own province; he +recognizes that the meaning of pictures is not literary but pictorial, the meaning of +music is musical. But the emphasis laid upon the manner of execution confuses and +disturbs him. At the outset he frankly admits that he has no knowledge of technical +processes as such. Yet each art must be read in its own language, and each has its +special technical problems. He realizes that to master the technique of any single art is +a career. And yet there are many arts, all of which may have some message for him in +their own kind. If he must be able to paint in order to enjoy pictures rightly, if he +cannot listen intelligently at a concert without being able himself to compose or at +least to perform, his case for the appreciation of art seems hopeless.</p> + +<p>If the layman turns to his artist friends for enlightenment and a little sympathy, it +is possible he may encounter a rebuff. Artists sometimes speak contemptuously of the +public. "A painter," they say, "paints for painters, not for the people; outsiders know +nothing about painting." True, outsiders know nothing about painting, but perhaps they +know a little about life. If art is more than intellectual subtlety and manual skill, if +art is the expression of something the artist has felt and lived, then the outsider has +after all some standard for his estimate of art and a basis for his enjoyment. He is able +to determine the value of the work to himself according as it expresses what he already +knows about life or reveals to him fuller possibilities of experience which he can make +his own. He does not pretend to judge painting; but he feels that he has some right to +appreciate art. In reducing all art to a matter of technique artists themselves are not +quite consistent. My friends Jones, a painter, and Smith, a composer, do not withhold +their opinion of this or that novel and poem and play, and they discourse easily on the +performances of Mr. James and Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Shaw; but I have no right to talk +about the meaning to me of Jones's picture or Smith's sonata, for my business is with +words, and therefore I cannot have any concern with painting or with music. To be sure, +literature uses as its vehicle the means of communication of daily life, namely, words. +But the <i>art</i> in literature, the interpretation of life which it gives us, as +distinct from mere entertainment, is no more generally appreciated than the art in +painting. A man's technical accomplishment may be best understood and valued by his +fellow-workmen in the same craft; and often the estimate set by artists on their own work +is referred to the qualities of its technical execution. As a classic instance, Raphael +sent some of his drawings to Albert D<font face="Times New Roman">ü</font>rer to +"show him his hand." So a painter paints for the painters. But the artist gives back a +new fullness and meaning to life and addresses all who live. That man is fortunate who +does not allow his progress toward appreciation to be impeded by this confusion of +technique with art.</p> + +<p>The emphasis which workers in any art place upon their powers of execution is for +themselves a false valuation of technique, and it tends to obscure the layman's vision of +essentials. Technique is not, as it would seem, the whole of art, but only a necessary +part. A work of art in its creation involves two elements,—the idea and the +execution. The idea is the emotional content of the work; the execution is the practical +expressing of the idea by means of the medium and the vehicle. The idea of Millet's +"Sower" is the emotion attending his conception of the laborer rendered in visual terms; +the execution of the picture is exhibited in the composition, the color, the drawing, and +the actual brush-work. So, too, the artist himself is constituted by two qualifications, +which must exist together: first, the power of the subject over the artist; and second, +the artist's power over his subject. The first of these without the second results simply +in emotion which does not come to expression as art. The second without the first +produces sham art; the semblance of art may be fashioned by technical skill, but the life +which inspires art is wanting. The artist, then, may be regarded in a dual aspect. He is +first a temperament and a mind, capable of feeling intensely and able to integrate his +emotions into unified coherent form; in this aspect he is essentially the <i>artist</i>. +Secondly, for the expression of his idea he brings to bear on the execution of his work +his command of the medium, his intellectual adroitness and his manual skill; in this +aspect he is the <i>technician</i>. Every artist has a special kind of means with which +he works, requiring knowledge and dexterity; but it may be assumed that in addition to +his ability to express himself he has something to say. We may test a man's merit as a +painter by his ability to paint. As an artist his greatness is to be judged with +reference to the greatness of his ideas; and in his capacity as artist his technical +skill derives its value from the measure in which it is adequate to their expression. In +the case of an accomplished pianist or violinist we take his proficiency of technique for +granted, and we ask, What, with all this power of expression at his command, has he to +say? In his rendering of the composer's work what has he of his own to contribute by way +of interpretation? Conceding at once to Mr. Sargent his supreme competence as a painter, +his consummate mastery of all his means, we ask, What has he seen in this man or this +woman before him worthy of the exercise of such skill? In terms of the personality he is +interpreting, what has he to tell us of the beauty and scope of life and to communicate +to us of larger emotional experience? The worth of technique is determined, not by its +excellence as such, but by its efficiency for expression.</p> + +<p>It is difficult for an outsider to understand why painters, writers, sculptors, and +the rest, who are called artists in distinction from the ordinary workman, should make so +much of their skill. Any man who works freely and with joy takes pride in his +performance. And instinctively we have a great respect for a good workman. Skill is not +confined to those who are engaged in what is conventionally regarded as art. Indeed, the +distinction implied in favor of "art" is unjust to the wide range of activities of +familiar daily life into which the true art spirit may enter. A bootblack who polishes +his shoes as well as he can, not merely because he is to be paid for it, though too he +has a right to his pay, but because that is his work, his means of expression, even he +works in the spirit of an artist. Extraordinary skill is often developed by those who are +quite outside the pale of art. In a circus or music-hall entertainment we may see a man +throw himself from a trapeze swinging high in air, and after executing a double +somersault varied by complex lateral gyrations, catch the extended arms of his partner, +who is hanging by his knees on another flying bar. Or a man leaning backwards over a +chair shoots at a distance of fifty paces a lump of sugar from between the foreheads of +two devoted assistants. Such skill presupposes intelligence. Of the years of training and +practice, of the sacrifice and the power of will, that have gone to the accomplishment of +this result, the looker-on can form but little conception. These men are not considered +artists. Yet a painter who uses his picture to exhibit a skill no more wonderful than +theirs would be grieved to be accounted an acrobat or a juggler. Only such skill as is +employed in the service of expression is to be reckoned with as an element in art; and in +art it is of value not for its own sake but as it serves its purpose. The true artist +subordinates his technique to expression, justly making it a means and not the end. He +cares for the significance of his idea more than for his sleight of hand; he effaces his +skill for his art.</p> + +<p>A recognition of the skill exhibited in the fashioning of a work of art, however, if +seen in its right relation to the total scope of the work, is a legitimate source of +pleasure. Knowledge of any subject brings its satisfactions. To understand with +discerning insight the workings of any process, whether it be the operation of natural +laws, as in astronomy or chemistry, whether it be the construction of a locomotive, the +playing of a game of foot-ball, or the painting of a picture, to see the "wheels go +round" and know the how and the wherefore,—undeniably this is a source of pleasure. +In the understanding of technical processes, too, there is a further occasion of +enjoyment, differing somewhat from the satisfaction which follows in the train of +knowledge.</p> + +<p> "There is a pleasure in poetic pains<br> + Which only poets know,"</p> + +<p>says the poet Cowper. There is a pleasure in the sense of difficulties overcome known +only to those who have tried to overcome them. But such enjoyment—the pleasure +which comes with enlightened recognition and the pleasure of mastery and +triumph—derives from an intellectual exercise and is not to be confounded with the +full appreciation of art. Art, finally, is not the "how" but the "what" in terms of its +emotional significance. Our pleasure in the result, in the design itself, is not the same +as our pleasure in the skill that produced the work. The design, with the message that it +carries, not the making of it, is the end of art.</p> + +<p>Too great preoccupation with technique conflicts with full appreciation. To fix the +attention upon the manner of expression is to lose the meaning. A style which attracts +notice to itself is in so far forth bad style, because it defeats its own end, which is +expression; but beyond this, our interest in technical execution is purely intellectual, +whereas art reaches the emotions. At the theatre a critic sits unmoved; dispassionately +he looks upon the personages of the drama, as they advance, retreat, and countermarch, +little by little yielding up their secret, disclosing all the subtle interplay of human +motives. From the heights of his knowledge the critic surveys the spectacle; with an +insight born of his learning, he penetrates the mysteries of the playwright's craft. He +knows what thought and skill have gone into this result; he knows the weary hours of +toil, the difficulties of invention and selection, the heroic rejections, the intricacies +of construction, the final triumph. He sees it all from the point of view of the +master-workman, and sympathetically he applauds his success; his recognition of what has +been accomplished is his pleasure. But all the while he has remained on the outside. Not +for a moment has he become a party to the play. He brings to it nothing of his own +feeling and power of response. There has been no union of his spirit with the artist's +spirit,—that union in which a work of art achieves its consummation. The man at his +side, with no knowledge or thought of how the effect has been won, surrenders himself to +the illusion. These people on the stage are more intensely and vividly real to him than +in life itself; the artist has distilled the significance of the situation and +communicates it to him as emotion. The man's reaction is not limited to the exercise of +his intellect,—he gives himself. In the experience which the dramatist conveys to +him beautifully, shaping discords into harmony and disclosing their meaning for the +spirit, he lives.</p> + +<p>A true artist employs his medium as an instrument of expression; and he values his own +technical skill in the handling of it according to the measure that he is enabled thereby +to express himself more effectively. On the layman's part so much knowledge of technique +is necessary as makes it possible for him to understand the artist's language and the +added expressiveness wrought out of language by the artist's cunning use of it. And such +knowledge is not beyond his reach.</p> + +<p>In order to understand the meaning of any language we must first understand the +signification of its terms, and then we must know something of the ways in which they may +be combined into articulate forms of expression. The terms of speech are words; in order +to speak coherently and articulately we must group words into sentences according to the +laws of the tongue to which they belong. Similarly, every art has its terms, or "parts of +speech," and its grammar, or the ways in which the terms are combined. The terms of +painting are color and form, the terms of music are tones. Colors and forms are brought +together into harmony and balance that by their juxtaposition they may be made expressive +and beautiful. Tones are woven into a pattern according to principles of harmony, melody, +and rhythm, and they become music. When technique is turned to such uses, not for the +vainglory of a virtuoso, but for the service of the artist in his earnest work of +expression, then it identifies itself with art.</p> + +<p>A knowledge of the signification of the terms of art the layman may win for himself by +a recognition of the expressive power of all material and by sensitiveness to it. The +beholder will not respond to the appeal of a painting of a landscape unless he has +himself felt something of the charm or glory of landscape in nature; he will not quicken +and expand to the dignity or force caught in rigid marble triumphantly made fluent in +statue or relief until he has realized for himself the significance of form and movement +which exhales from every natural object. Gesture is a universal language. The mighty +burden of meaning in Millet's picture of the "Sower" is carried by the gesture of the +laborer as he swings across the background of field and hill, whose forms also are +expressive; here, too, the elemental dignity of form and movement is reinforced by the +solemnity of the color. Gesture is but one of nature's characters wherewith she inscribes +upon the vivid, shifting surface of the world her message to the spirit of man. A clue to +the understanding of the terms of art, therefore, is found in the layman's own +appreciation of the emotional value of all objects of sense and their multitudinous power +of utterance,—the sensitive decision of line, the might or delicacy of form, the +splendor and subtlety of color, the magic of sound, the satisfying virtue of harmony in +whatever embodiment, all the beauty of nature, all the significance of human life. And +this appreciation is to be won largely by the very experience of it. The more we feel, +the greater becomes our power for deeper feeling. Every emotion to which we thrill is the +entrance into larger capacity of emotion. We may allow for growth and trust to the +inevitable working of its laws. In the appreciation of both life and art the individual +may be his own teacher by experience.</p> + +<p>The qualities of objects with their inherent emotional values constitute the raw +material of art, to be woven by the artist into a fabric of expressive form and texture. +Equipped with a knowledge of the terms of any art, the layman has yet to understand +something of the ways in which the terms may be combined. Every artist has his idiom or +characteristic style. Rembrandt on the flat surface of his canvas secures the illusion of +form in the round by a system of light and shade; modeling is indicated by painting the +parts in greater relief in light and the parts in less relief in shadow. Manet renders +the relief of form by a system of "values," or planes of more and less light. The local +color of objects is affected by the amount of light they receive and the distance an +object or part of an object is from the eye of the spectator. Manet paints with degrees +of light, and he wins his effects, not by contrasts of color, but by subtle modulations +within a given hue. Landscape painters before the middle of the nineteenth century, +working with color in masses, secured a total harmony by bringing all their colors, mixed +upon the palette, into the same key. The "Luminarists," like Claude Monet, work with +little spots or points of color laid separately upon the canvas; the fusion of these +separate points into the dominant tone is made by the eye of the beholder. The +characteristic effect of a work of art is determined by the way in which the means are +employed. Some knowledge, therefore, of the artist's aims as indicated in his method of +working is necessary to a full understanding of what he wants to say.</p> + +<p>In his effort to understand for his own purposes of appreciation what the artist has +accomplished by his technique, the layman may first of all distinguish between processes +and results. A landscape in nature is beautiful to the beholder because he perceives in +it some harmony of color and form which through the eye appeals to the emotions. His +vision does not transmit every fact in the landscape; instinctively his eye in its sweep +over meadow and trees and hill selects those details that compose. By this act of +<i>integration</i> he is for himself in so far forth an artist. If he were a painter he +would know what elements in the landscape to put upon his canvas. But he has no skill in +the actual practice of drawing and of handling the brush, no knowledge of mixing colors +and matching tones; he understands nothing of perspective and "values" and the relations +of light and shade. He knows only what he sees, that the landscape as he sees it is +beautiful; and equally he recognizes as beautiful the presentment of it upon canvas. He +is ignorant of the technical problems with which the painter in practice has had to +contend in order to reach this result; it is the result only that is of concern to him in +so far as it is or is not what he desires. The painter's color is significant to him, not +because he knows how to mix the color for himself, but because that color in nature has +spoken to him unutterable things and he has responded to it. The layman cannot make a +sunset and he cannot paint a picture; but he can enjoy both. So he cares, then, rather +for what the painter has done than for how he has done it, because the processes do not +enter into his own experience. The picture has a meaning for him in the measure that it +expresses what he perceives and feels, and that is the beauty of the landscape.</p> + +<p>Any knowledge of technical processes which the layman may happen to possess may be a +source of intellectual pleasure. But for appreciation, only so much understanding of +technique is necessary as enables him to receive the message of a given work in the +degree of expressiveness which the artist by his use of his medium has attained. A clue +to this understanding may come to him by intuition, by virtue of his own native insight +and intelligence. He may gain it by reading or by instruction. He may go out and win it +by intrepid questioning of those who know; and it is to be hoped that such will be very +patient with him, for after all even a layman has the right to live. Once started on the +path, then, in the mysteries of art as in the whole complex infinite business of living, +he becomes his own tutor by observation and experience; and he may develop into a fuller +knowledge in obedience to the law of growth. Each partial clue to understanding brings +him a step farther on his road; each new glimmer of insight beckons him to ultimate +illumination. Though baffled at the outset, yet patient under disappointment, undauntedly +he pushes on in spite of obstacles, until he wins his way at last to true +appreciation.</p> + +<p>If the layman seeks a standard by which to test the value of any technical method, he +finds it in the success of the work itself. Every method is to be judged in and for +itself on its own merits, and not as better or worse than some other method. Individually +we may prefer Velasquez to Frans Hals; Whistler may minister to our personal satisfaction +in larger measure than Mr. Sargent; we may enjoy Mr. James better than Stevenson; Richard +Strauss may stir us more deeply than Brahms. We do not affirm thereby that impressionism +is inherently better than realism, or that subtlety is more to be desired than strength; +the psychological novel is not necessarily greater than romance; because of our +preference "programme music" is not therefore more significant than "absolute music." The +greatness of an artist is established by the greatness of his ideas, adequately +expressed. And the value of any technical method is determined by its own effectiveness +for expression.</p> + +<p>There is, then, no invariable standard external to the work itself by which to judge +technique. For no art is final. A single work is the manifestation of beauty as the +individual artist has conceived or felt it. The perception of what is beautiful varies +from age to age and with each person. So, too, standards of beauty in art change with +each generation; commonly they are deduced from the practice of preceding artists. +Classicism formulates rules from works that have come to be recognized as beautiful, and +it requires of the artist conformity to these rules. By this standard, which it regards +as absolute, it tries a new work, and it pretends to adjudge the work good or bad +according as it meets the requirements. Then a Titan emerges who defies the canons, +wrecks the old order, and in his own way, to the despair or scorn of his contemporaries, +creates a work which the generation that follows comes to see is beautiful. "Every +author," says Wordsworth, "as far as he is great and at the same time <i>original,</i> +has had the task of creating the taste by which he is to be enjoyed." Wordsworth in his +own generation was ridiculed; Millet, when he ceased painting nudes for art-dealers' +windows and ventured to express himself, faced starvation. Every artist is in some +measure an innovator; for his own age he is a romanticist. But the romanticist of one age +becomes a classic for the next; and his performance in its turn gives laws to his +successors. Richard Strauss, deriving in some sense from Wagner, makes the older man seem +a classic and conservative. Then a new mind again is raised up, a new temperament, with +new needs; and these shape their own adequate new expression. "The cleanest expression," +says Whitman, "is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself and makes one." As all life +is growth, as there are no bounds to the possibilities of human experience, so the +workings of the art-impulse cannot be compressed within the terms of a hard and narrow +definition, and any abstract formula for beauty is in the very nature of things +foredoomed to failure. No limit can be set to the forms in which beauty may be made +manifest.</p> + +<p>"The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of beauty." And +Whitman's own verse is a notable example of a new technique forged in response to a new +need of expression. Dealing as he did with the big basic impulses of common experience +accessible to all men, Whitman needed a largeness and freedom of expression which he did +not find in the accepted and current poetic forms. To match the limitlessly diversified +character of the people, occupations, and aspirations of "these States," as yet +undeveloped but vital and inclosing the seed of unguessed-at possibilities, to tally the +fluid, indeterminate, outward-reaching spirit of democracy and a new world, the poet +required a medium of corresponding scope and flexibility, all-inclusive and capable of +endless modulation and variety. Finding none ready to his hand, he created it. Not that +Whitman did not draw for his resources on the great treasury of world-literature; and he +profited by the efforts and achievement of predecessors. But the form in his hands and as +he uses it is new. Whatever we may think of the success of his total accomplishment, +there are very many passages to which we cannot deny the name of poetry. Nor did Whitman +work without conscious skill and deliberate regard for technical processes. His +note-books and papers reveal the extreme calculation and pains with which he wrote, +beginning with the collection of synonyms applying to his idea and mood, and so building +them up gradually, with many erasures, corrections, and substitutions, into the finished +poem. Much of the vigor of his style is due to his escape from conventional literary +phrase-making and his return to the racy idiom of common life. His verse, apparently +inchoate and so different from classical poetic forms, is shaped with a cunning +incredible skill. And more than that, it is art, in that it is not a bare statement of +fact, but communicates to us the poet's emotion, so that we realize the emotion in +ourselves. When his purpose is considered, it is seen that no other technique was +possible. His achievement proves that a new need creates its own means of expression.</p> + +<p>What is true of Whitman in respect to his technique is true in greater or less degree +of every artist, working in any form. It is true of Pheidias, of Giotto and Michelangelo +and Rembrandt, of Dante and Shakespeare, of Beethoven and Wagner, of Monet, of Rodin, in +fine, from the beginnings of art to the day that now is. All have created out of existing +forms of expression their own idiom and way of working. Every artist owes something to +his predecessors, but language is re-created in the hands of each master and becomes a +new instrument. There can be then no single formula for technical method nor any fixed +and final standard of judgment.</p> + +<p>An artist himself is justified from his own point of view in his concern with +technique, for upon his technique depends his effectiveness of expression. His practice +serves to keep alive the language and to develop its resources. Art in its concrete +manifestations is an evolution. From Velasquez through Goya to Manet and Whistler is a +line of inheritance. But a true artist recognizes that technique is only a means. As an +artist he is seeking to body forth in external form the vision within, and he tries to +make his medium "faithful to the coloring of his own spirit." Every artist works out his +characteristic manner; but the progress must be from within outwards. Toward the shaping +of his own style he is helped by the practice of others, but he is helped and not +hindered only in so far as the manner of others can be made genuinely the expression of +his own feeling. Direct borrowing of a trick of execution and servile imitation of a +style have no place in true art. A painter who would learn of Velasquez should study the +master's technique, not that in the end he may paint like Velasquez, but that he may +discover just what it was that the master, by means of his individual style, was +endeavoring to express, and so bring to bear on his own environment here in America +to-day the same ability to see and the same power of sympathetic and imaginative +penetration that Velasquez brought to his environment at the court of seventeenth-century +Spain. The way to paint like Velasquez is to be Velasquez. No man is a genius by +imitation. Every man may seek to be a master in his own right. Technique does not lead; +it follows. Style is the man.</p> + +<p>From within outwards. Art is the expression of sincere and vital feeling; the material +thing, picture, statue, poem, which the artist conjures into being is only a means. The +moment art is worshiped for its own sake, that moment decadence begins. "No one," says +Leonardo, "will ever be a great painter who takes as his guide the paintings of other +men." In general the history of art exhibits this course. In the beginning arises a man +of deep and genuine feeling, the language at whose command, however, has not been +developed to the point where it is able to carry the full burden of his meaning. Such a +man is Giotto; and we have the "burning messages of prophecy delivered by the stammering +lips of infants." In the generations which supervene, artists with less fervor of spirit +but with growing skill of hand, increased with each inheritance, turn their efforts to +the development of their means. The names of this period of experiment and research are +Masaccio, Uccello, Pollaiuolo, Verrocchio. At length, when the fullness of time is come, +emerges the master-mind, of original insight and creative power. Heir to the technical +achievements of his predecessors, he is able to give his transcendent idea its supremely +adequate expression. Content is perfectly matched by form. On this summit stand +Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo. Then follow the Carracci, Domenichino, Guercino, Guido +Reni, Carlo Dolci, men who mistake the master's manner for his meaning. The idea, the +vital principle, has spent itself. The form only is left, and that is elaborated into the +exuberance of decay. Painters find their impulse no longer in nature and life but in +paint. Technique is made an end in itself. And art is dead, to be reborn in another shape +and guise.</p> + +<p>The relation of technique to appreciation in the experience of the layman begins now +to define itself. Technique serves the artist for efficient expression; an understanding +of it is of value to the layman in so far as the knowledge helps him to read the artist's +language and thus to receive his message. Both for artist and for layman technique is +only a means. Out of his own intelligent and patient experience the layman can win his +way to an understanding of methods; and his standard of judgment, good enough for his own +purposes, is the degree of expressiveness which the work of art, by virtue of its +qualities of execution, is able to achieve. Skill may be enjoyed intellectually for its +own sake as skill; in itself it is not art. Technique is most successful when it is least +perceived. <i>Ars celare artem:</i> art reveals life and conceals technique. We must +understand something of technique and then forget it in appreciation. When we thrill to +the splendor and glory of a sunset we are not thinking of the laws of refraction. +Appreciation is not knowledge, but emotion.</p><a name="4"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>IV</p> + +<p>THE VALUE OF THE MEDIUM</p> + +<p>AS I swing through the wide country in the freshness and fullness of a blossoming, +sun-steeped morning in May, breathing the breath of the fields and the taller by inches +for the sweep of the hills and the reaches of sky above my head, every nerve in my body +is alive with sensation and delight. My joy is in the fragrance of earth, the +ingratiating warmth of the fresh morning, the spacious, inclosing air. My pleasure in +this direct contact with the landscape is a physical reaction, to be enjoyed only by the +actual experience of it; it cannot be reproduced by any other means; it can be recalled +by memory but faintly and as the echo of sensation. There is, however, something else in +the landscape which can be reproduced; and this recall may seem more glorious than the +original in nature. There are elements in the scene which a painter can render for me +more intensely and vividly than I perceived them for myself. These elements embody the +value that the landscape has for my emotions. The scene appeals to something within me +which lies beyond my actual physical contact with it and the mere sense of touch. The +harmony that the eye perceives in these open fields, the gracious line of trees along the +stream's edge, the tossing hills beyond, and the arch of the blue sky above impregnating +the earth with light, is communicated to my spirit, and I feel that this reach of radiant +country is an extension of my own personality. A painter, by the manipulation of his +color and line and mass, concentrates and intensifies the harmony of it and so heightens +its emotional value. The meaning of the scene for the spirit is conveyed in terms of +color and mass.</p> + +<p>Color and mass are the painter's medium, his language. The final import of art is the +<i>idea,</i> the emotional content of the work. On his way to the expression of his idea +the artist avails himself of material to give his feeling concrete actuality and visible +or audible realization. He paints a picture, glorious in color and compelling in the +concentration of its massing; he carves a statue, noble in form or subtly rhythmic; he +weaves a pattern of harmonious sounds. He values objects not for their own sake but for +the energies they possess,—their power to rouse his whole being into heightened +activity. And they have this power by virtue of their material qualities, as color and +form or sound. A landscape is gay in springtime or sad in autumn. The difference in its +effect upon us is not due to our knowledge that it is spring or autumn and our +consciousness of the associations appropriate to each season. The emotional quality of +the scene is largely a matter of its color. Let the spring landscape be shrouded in gray +mist sifting down out of gray skies, and we are sad. Let the autumn fields and woodland +sparkle and dance in the crisp golden sunlight, and our blood dances with them and we +want to shout from full lungs. In music the major key wakens a different emotion from the +minor. The note of a violin is virgin in quality; the voice of the 'cello is the voice of +experience. The distinctive emotional value of each instrument inheres in the character +of its sound. These qualities of objects art uses as its language.</p> + +<p>Though all art is one in essence, yet each art employs a medium of its own. In order +to understand a work in its scope and true significance we must recognize that an artist +thinks and feels in terms of his special medium. His impulse to create comes with his +vision, actual or imaginative, of color or form, and his thought is transmitted to his +hand, which shapes the work, without the intervention of words. The nature of his vehicle +and the conditions in which he works determine in large measure the details of the form +which his idea ultimately assumes. Thus a potter designs his vessel first with reference +to its use and then with regard to his material, its character and possibilities. As he +models his plastic clay upon a wheel, he naturally makes his bowl or jug round rather +than sharply angular. A pattern for a carpet, to be woven by a system of little squares +into the fabric, will have regard for the conditions in which it is to be rendered, and +it will differ in the character of its lines and masses from a pattern for a wall-paper, +which may be printed from blocks. The designer in stained glass will try less to make a +picture in the spirit of graphic representation than to produce an harmonious +color-pattern whose outlines will be guided and controlled by the possibilities of the +"leading" of the window. The true artist uses the conditions and very limitations of his +material as his opportunity. The restraint imposed by the sonnet form is welcomed by the +poet as compelling a collectedness of thought and an intensity of expression which his +idea might not achieve if allowed to flow in freer channels. The worker in iron has his +triumphs; the goldsmith has his. The limitations of each craft open to it effects which +are denied to the other. There is an art of confectionery and an art of sculpture. The +designer of frostings who has a right feeling for his art will not emulate the sculptor +and strive to model in the grand style; the sculptor who tries to reproduce imitatively +the textures of lace or other fabrics and who exuberates in filigrees and fussinesses so +far departs from his art as to rival the confectioner. In the degree that a painter tries +to wrench his medium from its right use and function and attempts to make his picture +tell a story, which can better be told in words, to that extent he is unfaithful to his +art. Painting, working as it does with color and form, should confine itself to the +expression of emotion and idea that can be rendered visible. On the part of the +appreciator, likewise, the emotion expressed in one kind of medium is not to be +translated into any other terms without a difference. Every kind of material has its +special value for expression. The meaning of pictures, accordingly, is limited precisely +to the expressive power of color and form. The impression which a picture makes upon the +beholder maybe phrased by him in words, which are his own means of expression; but he +suggests the import of the picture only incompletely. If I describe in words Millet's +painting of the "Sower" according to my understanding of it, I am telling in my own terms +what the picture means to me. What it meant to Millet, the full and true significance of +the situation as the painter felt it, is there expressed upon his canvas in terms of +visible aspect; and correspondingly, Millet's meaning is fully and truly received in the +measure that we feel in ourselves the emotion roused by the sight of his color and +form.</p> + +<p>The essential content of a work of art, therefore, is modified in its effect upon us +by the kind of medium in which it is presented. If an idea phrased originally in one +medium is translated into the terms of another, we have <i>illustration.</i> Turning the +pages of an "illustrated" novel, we come upon a plate showing a man and a woman against +the background of a divan, a chair, and a tea-table. The man, in a frock coat, holding a +top hat in his left hand, extends his right hand to the woman, who has just risen from +the table. The legend under the picture reads, "Taking his hat, he said good-by." Here +the illustrator has simply supplied a visible image of what was suggested in the text; +the drawing has no interest beyond helping the reader to that image. It is a statement of +the bare fact in other terms. In the hands of an artist, however, the translation may +take on a value of its own, changing the original idea, adding to it, and becoming in +itself an independent work of art. This value derives from the form into which the idea +is translated. The frescoes of the Sistine Chapel are only sublime illustration; but how +little of their power attaches to the subject they illustrate, and how much of their +sublimity lies in the painter's rendering! Conversely, an example of the literary +interpretation of a picture is Walter Pater's description of Leonardo's Mona Lisa.</p> + +<blockquote> +The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the +ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all "the +ends of the world are come," and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought +out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and +fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white +Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this +beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and +experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power +to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of +Rome, the reverie of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, +the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among +which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets +of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; +and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of +Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but +as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has +moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The fancy of a +perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern +thought has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, +all modes of thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the +old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea. +</blockquote> + +<p>It is Leonardo's conception, yet with a difference. Here the critic has woven about +the subject an exquisite tissue of associations, a whole wide background of knowledge and +thought and feeling which it lay beyond the painter's range to evoke; but the critic is +denied the vividness, the immediateness and intimate warmth of vital contact, which the +painter was able to achieve. The Lisa whom Leonardo shows us and the Lisa whom Pater +interprets for us are the same in essence yet different in their power to affect us. The +difference resulting from the kind of medium employed is well exemplified by Rossetti's +"Blessed Damozel." The fundamental concept of both poem and picture is identical, but +picture and poem have each its distinctive range and limitations and its own peculiar +appeal. If we cancel the common element in the two, the difference remaining makes it +possible for us to realize how much of the effect of a work of art inheres in the medium +itself. Painting may be an aid to literature in that it helps us to more vivid images; +the literary interpretation of pictures or music gives to the works with which it deals +an intellectual definiteness. But the functions peculiar to each art are not to be +confounded nor the distinctions obscured.</p> + +<p>Pictures are not a substitute for literature, and their true meaning is finally not to +be translated into words. Their beauty is a visible beauty; the emotions they rouse are +such as can be conveyed through the sense of sight. In the end they carry their message +sufficingly as color and mass. Midway, however, our enjoyment may be complicated by other +elements which have their place in our total appreciation. Thus a painting of a landscape +may appeal to us over and above its inherent beauty because we are already, out of actual +experience, familiar with the scene it represents, and the sight of it wakens in our +memory a train of pleasant allied associations. A ruined tower, in itself an exquisite +composition in color and line and mass, may gather about it suggestions of romance, +elemental passions and wild life, and may epitomize for the beholder the whole Middle +Age. Associated interest, therefore, may be sentimental or intellectual. It may be +sensuous also, appealing to other senses than those of sight. The sense of touch plays a +large part in our enjoyment of the world. We like the "feel" of objects, the catch of raw +silk, the chill smoothness of burnished brass, the thick softness of mists, the "amorous +wet" of green depths of sea. The senses of taste and smell may be excited imaginatively +and contribute to our pleasure. Winslow Homer's breakers bring back to us the salt +fragrance of the ocean, and in the presence of these white mad surges we feel the +stinging spray in our faces and we taste the cosmic exhilaration of the sea-wind. But the +final meaning of a picture resides in the total harmony of color and form, a harmony into +which we can project our whole personality and which itself constitutes the emotional +experience.</p> + +<p>All language in its material aspect has a sensuous value, as the wealth of color of +Venetian painting, the sumptuousness of Renaissance architecture, the melody of Mr. +Swinburne's verse, the gem-like brilliance of Stevenson's prose, the all-inclusive +sensuousness, touched with sensuality, of Wagner's music-dramas. Because of the charm of +beautiful language there are many art-lovers who regard the sensuous qualities of the +work itself as making up the entire experience. Apart from any consideration of intention +or expressiveness, the material <i>thing</i> which the artist's touch summons into form +is held to be "its own excuse for being."</p> + +<p>This order of enjoyment, valid as far as it goes, falls short of complete +appreciation. It does not pass the delight one has in the radiance of gems or +the glowing tincture of some fabric. The element of meaning does not enter in. +There is a beauty for the eye and a beauty for the mind. The qualities of +material may give pleasure to the senses; the object embodying these qualities +becomes beautiful only as it is endowed with a significance wakened in the human +spirit. A landscape, says Walter Crane, "owes a great part of its beauty to the +harmonious relation of its leading lines, or to certain pleasant contrasts, or a +certain impressiveness of form and mass, and at the same time we shall perceive +that this linear expression is inseparable from the sentiment or emotion +suggested by that particular scene." In the appreciation of art, to stop with +the sensuous appeal of the medium is to mistake means for an end. "Rhyme," says +the author of "Intentions," "in the hands of a real artist becomes not merely a +material element of metrical beauty, but a spiritual element of thought and +passion also." An artist's color, glorious or tender, is only a symbol and +manifestation to sense of his emotion. At first glance Titian's portrait of the +"Man with the Glove" is an ineffable color-harmony. But truly seen it is +infinitely more. By means of color and formal design Titian has embodied here +his vision of superb young manhood; by the expressive power of his material +symbols he has rendered visible his sense of dignity, of fineness, of strength +in reserve. The color is beautiful because his idea was beautiful. Through the +character of this young man as revealed and interpreted by the artist, the +beholder is brought into contact with a vital personality, whose influence is +communicated to him; in the appreciation of Titian's message he sees and feels +and lives.</p> + +<p>The value of the medium resided not in the material itself but in its power for +expression. When language is elaborated at the expense of the meaning, we have in so far +forth sham art. It should be easy to distinguish in art between what is vital and what is +mechanical. The mechanical is the product of mere execution and calls attention to the +manner. The vital is born out of inspiration, and the living idea transmutes its material +into emotion. Too great an effort at realization defeats the intended illusion, for we +think only of the skill exercised to effect the result, and the operation of the +intellect inhibits feeling. In the greatest art the medium is least perceived, and the +beholder stands immediately in the presence of the artist's idea. The material is +necessarily fixed and finite; the idea struggles to free itself from its medium and +untrammeled to reach the spirit. It is mind speaking to mind. However complete the +material expression may seem, it is only a part of what the artist would say; imagination +transcends the actual. In the art which goes deepest into life, the medium is +necessarily inadequate. The artist fashions his work in a sublime despair as he feels how +little of the mighty meaning within him he is able to convey. In the greatest works +rightly seen the medium becomes transparent. Within the Sistine Chapel the visitor, when +once he has yielded to the illusion, is not conscious of plaster surface and pigment; +indeed, he hardly sees color and design as such at all; through them he looks into the +immensity of heaven, peopled with gods and godlike men. Consummate acting is that which +makes the spectator forget that it is acting. The part and the player become one. The +actor, in himself and in the words he utters, is the unregarded vehicle of the +dramatist's idea. In a play like Ibsen's "Ghosts," the stage, the actors, the dialogue +merge and fall away, and the overwhelming meaning stands revealed in its complete +intensity. As the play opens, it cuts out a segment from the chaos of human life; step by +step it excludes all that is unessential, stroke by stroke with an inevitableness that is +crushing, it converges to the great one-thing that the dramatist wanted to say, until at +the end the spectator, conscious no longer of the medium but only of the idea and +all-resolving emotion, bows down before its overmastering force with the cry, "What a +<i>mind</i> is there!"</p> + +<p>In the art which most completely achieves expression the medium is not perceived as +distinct from the emotion of which the medium is the embodiment. In order to render +expressive the material employed in its service, art seeks constantly to identify means +and end, to make the form one with the content. The wayfarer out of his need of shelter +built a hut, using the material which chance gave into his hand and shaping his design +according to his resources; the purpose of his work was not the hut itself but shelter. +So the artist in any form is impelled to creation by his need of expression; the thing +which he creates is not the purpose and end of his effort, but only the means. Each art +has its special medium, and each medium has its peculiar sensuous charm and its own kind +of expressiveness. This power of sensuous delight is incidental to the real beauty of the +work; and that beauty is the message the work is framed to convey to the spirit. In the +individual work, the inspiring and shaping idea seeks so to fuse its material that we +feel the idea could not have been phrased in any other way as we surrender to its +ultimate appeal,—the sum of the emotional content which gave it birth and in which +it reaches its fulfillment.</p><a name="5"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>V</p> + +<p>THE BACKGROUND OF ART</p> + +<p>SCENE: The main hall of the Accademia in Venice.</p> + +<p>Time: Noon of a July day.</p> + +<p>Dramatis personae: A guide; two drab-colored and tired men; a group of women, of +various ages, equipped with red-covered little volumes, and severally expressive of great +earnestness, wide-eyed rapture, and giggles.</p> + +<p><i>The guide, in strident, accentless tones:</i> Last work of Titian. +Ninety-nine years old. He died of smallpox.</p> + +<p><i>A woman:</i> Is that it?</p> + +<p><i>A high voice on the outskirts:</i> I'm going to get one for forty dollars.</p> + +<p><i>Another voice:</i> Well, I'm not going to pay more than fifty for mine.</p> + +<p><i>A straggler:</i> Eliza, look at those people. Oh, you missed it! <i>(Stopping +suddenly?)</i> My, isn't that lovely!</p> + +<p><i>Chorus:</i> Yes, that's Paris Bordone. Which one is that? He has magnificent +color.</p> + +<p><i>The guide:</i> The thing you want to look at is the five figures in front.</p> + +<p><i>A voice:</i> Oh, that's beautiful. I love that.</p> + +<p><i>A man:</i> Foreshortened; well, I should say so! But I say, you can't remember all +these pictures.</p> + +<p><i>The other man:</i> Let's get out of this!</p> + +<p><i>The guide, indicating a picture of the Grand Canal:</i> This one has been +restored.</p> + +<p><i>A girl's voice:</i> Why, that's the house where we are staying!</p> + +<p><i>The guide:</i> The next picture . . .</p> + +<p>The squad shuffles out of range.</p> + +<p>This little comedy, enacted in fact and here faithfully reported, is not without its +pathos. These people are "studying art." They really want to understand, and if possible, +to enjoy. They have visited galleries and seen many pictures, and they will visit other +galleries and see many more pictures before their return home. They have read +guide-books, noting the stars and double stars; they have dipped into histories of art +and volumes of criticism. They have been told to observe the dramatic force of Giotto, +the line of Botticelli, the perfect composition of Raphael, the color of Titian; all this +they have done punctiliously. They know in a vague way that Giotto was much earlier than +Raphael, that Botticelli was rather pagan than Christian, that Titian belonged to the +Venetian school. They have come to the fountain head of art, the very works themselves as +gathered in the galleries; they have tried to remember what they have read and to do what +they have been told; and now they are left still perplexed and unsatisfied.</p> + +<p>The difficulty is that these earnest seekers after knowledge of art have laid hold on +partial truths, but they have failed to see these partial truths in their right relation +to the whole. The period in which an artist lived means something. His way of thinking +and feeling means something. The quality of his color means something. But what does his +<i>picture</i> mean? These people have not quite found the key by which to piece the +fragments of the puzzle into the complete design. They miss the central fact with regard +to art; and as a consequence, the ways of approach to the full enjoyment of art, instead +of bringing them nearer the centre, become for them a network of by-paths in which they +enmesh themselves, and they are left to wander helplessly up and down and about in the +blind-alleys of the labyrinth. The central fact with regard to art is this, that a work +of art is the expression of some part of the artist's experience of life, his vision of +some aspect of the world. For the appreciator, the work takes on a meaning as it becomes +for him in his turn the expression of his own actual or possible experience and thus +relates itself by the subtle links of feeling to his own life. This is the central fact; +but there are side issues. Any single work of art is in itself necessarily finite. +Because of limitations in both the artist and the appreciator the work cannot express +immediately and completely of itself all that the author wished to convey; it can present +but a single facet of his many-sided radiating personality. What is actually said may be +reinforced by some understanding on the beholder's part of what was intended. In order to +win its fullest message, therefore, the appreciator must set the work against the large +background out of which it has proceeded.</p> + +<p>A visitor in the <i>Salon Carr<font face="Times New Roman">é</font></i> of the +Louvre notes that there are arrayed before him pictures by Jan van Eyck and Memling, +Raphael and Leonardo, Giorgione and Titian, Rembrandt and Metsu, Rubens and Van Dyck, +Fouquet and Poussin, Velasquez and Murillo. Each one bears the distinctive impress of its +creator. How different some of them, one from another,—the Virgin of Van Eyck from +the Virgin of Raphael, Rembrandt's "Pilgrimsat Emmaus" from the "Entombment" by Titian. +Yet between others there are common elements of likeness. Raphael and Titian are +distinguished by an opulence of form and a luxuriance of color which reveal supreme +technical accomplishment in a fertile land under light-impregnated skies. The rigidity +and restraint of Van Eyck and Memling suggest the tentative early efforts of the art of a +sober northern race. To a thoughtful student of these pictures sooner or later the +question comes, Whence are these likenesses and these differences?</p> + +<p>Hitherto I have referred to the creative mind and executive hand as generically <i>the +artist.</i> I have thought of him as a type, representative of all the great class of +those who feel and express, and who by means of their expression communicate their +feeling. Similarly I have spoken of <i>the work of art,</i> as though it were complete in +itself and isolated, sprung full-formed and panoplied from the brain of its creator, able +to win its way and consummate its destiny alone. The type is conceived intellectually; in +actual life the type resolves itself into individuals. So there are individual artists, +each with his own distinctive gifts and ideals, each with his own separate experience of +life, with his personal and special vision of the world, and his characteristic manner of +expression. Similarly, a single work of art is not an isolated phenomenon; it is only a +part of the artist's total performance, and to these other works it must be referred. The +kind of work an artist sets himself to do is determined to some extent by the period into +which he was born and the country in which he lived. The artist himself, heir to the +achievements of his predecessors, is a development, and his work is the product of an +evolution. A work of art, therefore, to be judged aright and truly appreciated, must be +seen in its relation to its background, from which it detaches itself at the moment of +consideration,—the background of the artist's personality and accomplishment and of +the national life and ideals of his time.</p> + +<p>If the layman's interest in art is more than the casual touch-and-go of a picture +here, a concert there, and an entertaining book of an evening, he is confronted with the +important matter of the study of art as it manifests itself through the ages and in +diverse lands. It is not a question of practicing an art himself, for technical skill +lies outside his province. The study of art in the sense proposed has to do with the +consideration of an individual work in its relation to all the factors that have entered +into its production. The work of an artist is profoundly influenced by the national +ideals and way of life of his race and of his age. The art of Catholic Italy is +ecclesiastical; the art of the Protestant North is domestic and individual. The actual +form an artist's work assumes is modified by the resources at his +disposal,—resources both of material and of technical methods. Raphael may have no +more to say than Giotto had, but he is able to express himself in a fuller and more +finished way, because in his time the language of painting had become richer and more +varied and the rhetoric of it had been carried to a farther point of development. +Finally, as all art is in essence the expression of personality, a single work is to be +understood in its widest intention and scope by reference to the total personality of the +individual artist as manifested in his work collectively, and to be interpreted by the +appreciator through his knowledge of the artist's experience of life.</p> + +<p>In order to wrest its fullest expressiveness from a work of art it is necessary as far +as possible to regard the work from the artist's own point of view. We must try to see +with his eyes and to feel with him what he was working for. To this end we must +reconstruct imaginatively on a basis of the facts the conditions in which he lived and +wrought. The difference between Giotto and Raphael is a difference not of individuality +only. Each gives expression to the ideals and ways of thought of his age. Each is a +creative mind, but each bases his performance upon what has gone before, and the form of +their work is conditioned by the resources each had at his disposal. To discover the +artist's purpose more completely than he was able to realize it for himself in the single +work,—that is the aim and function of the historical study of art. A brief review +of the achievement of Giotto and of Raphael may serve to illustrate concretely the +application of the principle and to fix its value to appreciation.</p> + +<p>In the period of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire art passed from Rome to +Byzantium. The arts of sculpture and painting were employed in the service of the Church, +imposing by its magnificence and all-powerful in its domination over the lives and minds +of men. The function of art was to teach; its character was symbolic and decorative. Art +had no separate and independent existence. It had no direct reference to nature; the +pictorial representation of individual traits was quite outside its scope; a few signs +fixed by convention sufficed. A fish—derived from the acrostic +<i>ichtbus—</i>symbolized the Saviour; a cross was the visible token of redeeming +grace. And so through several hundred years. The twelfth century saw the beginnings of a +change in the direction of spiritual and intellectual emancipation. The teachings and +example of Francis of Assisi brought men to the consciousness of themselves and to a +realization of the worth and significance of the individual life. The work of Giotto is +the expression in art of the new spirit.</p> + +<p>Of necessity Giotto founded his work upon the accepted forms of the Byzantine +tradition. But Giotto was a man of genius and a creative mind. In the expression of his +fresh impulse and vital feeling, the assertion of new-found individuality, he tried to +<i>realize</i> as convincingly and vividly as possible the situation with which he was +dealing; and with this purpose he looked not back upon art but out upon nature. Where the +Byzantine convention had presented but a sign and remote indication of form by means of +flat color, Giotto endows his figures with life and movement and actuality by giving them +a body in three dimensions; his forms exist in the round. Until his day, light and shade +had not been employed; and such perspective as he was able to achieve he had to discover +for himself. For the first time in Christian painting a figure has bodily existence. +Giotto gives the first evidence, too, of a sense of the beauty of color, and of the value +of movement as a means of added expressiveness. His power of composition shows an immense +advance on his predecessors. In dealing with traditional subjects, as the Madonna and +child, he follows in general the traditional arrangement. But in those subjects where his +own inventiveness is given free play, as in the series of frescoes illustrating the life +of St. Francis, he reveals an extraordinary faculty of design and a dramatic sense which +is matched by a directness and clarity of expression.</p> + +<p>Not only in the technique of his craft was Giotto an innovator, but also in the +direction of naturalness and reality of feeling. He was the first to introduce portraits +into his work. His Madonnas and saints are no longer mere types; they are human and +individual, vividly felt and characterized by immediate and present actuality. Giotto was +the first realist, but he was a poet too. His insight into life is tempered by a deep +sincerity and piety; his work is genuinely and powerfully felt. As a man Giotto was +reverent and earnest, joyous and beautifully sane. As a painter, by force of the +freshness of his impulse and the clarity of his vision, he created a new manner of +expression. As an artist he reveals a true power of imaginative interpretation. The +casual spectator of to-day finds him naive and quaint. In the eyes of his contemporaries +he was anything but that; they regarded him as a marvel of reality, surpassing nature +itself. When judged with reference to the conditions of life in which he worked and to +the technical resources at his command, Giotto is seen to be of a very high order of +creative mind.</p> + +<p>The year 1300 divides the life of Giotto into two nearly equal parts; the year 1500 +similarly divides the life of Raphael. In the two centuries that intervene, the great age +of Italian painting, initiated by Giotto, reaches its flower and perfection in +Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael. The years which followed the passing of these +greatnesses were the years of decadence and eclipse. If we are to understand and justly +appreciate the work of each man in its own kind, the painting of Giotto must be tried by +other standards than those we apply to the judgment of Raphael. Giotto was a pioneer; +Raphael is a consummation. The two centuries between were a period of development and +change, a development in all that regards technique, a change in national ideals and in +the artist's attitude toward life and toward his art. A quick survey of the period, if so +hasty a generalization permits correctness of statement, will help us in the +understanding of the craft and art of Raphael.</p> + +<p>Giotto was succeeded by a host of lesser men, regarded as his followers, men who +sought to apply the principles and methods of painting worked out by the master, but who +lacked his inspiration and his power. Thus it was for nearly a hundred years. The turn of +the fourteenth century into the fifteenth saw the emergence of new forces in the science +and the mechanics of painting. The laws of perspective and foreshortening were made the +object of special research and practice by men like Uccello (1397-1475), Piero dei +Franceschi (1416-1492), and Mantegna (1431-1506). "Oh, what a beautiful thing this +perspective is!" Uccello exclaimed, as he stood at his desk between midnight and dawn +while his wife begged him to take some rest. In the first thirty years of the fifteenth +century, Masaccio contributed to the knowledge of anatomy by his painting of the nude +form; and the study of the nude was continued by Pollaiuolo and Luca Signorelli, in the +second half of the century. Masaccio, also, was the first to place his figures in +<i>air,</i> enveloping them in atmosphere. Verrocchio, a generation later than Masaccio, +was one of the first of the Florentines to understand landscape and the part played in it +by air and light. The realistic spirit, which suffices itself with subjects drawn from +every-day actual experience, finds expression in the first half of the fifteenth century +in the work of Andrea del Castagno. And so down through that century of spring and +summer. Each painter in his own way carries some detail of his craft to a further point +of development and prepares the path for the supreme triumphs of Michelangelo, Leonardo, +and Raphael.</p> + +<p>The growing mastery of the principles and technique of painting accompanied a change +in the painter's attitude toward his art. Originally, painting, applied in subjection to +architecture and employed in the service of the Church, was decorative in scope; its +purpose was illustration, its function was to teach. As painters, from generation to +generation, went deeper into the secrets of their craft, they became less interested in +the didactic import of their work, and they concerned themselves more and more with its +purely artistic significance. Religious subjects were no longer used merely as symbols +for the expression of piety and as incitements to devotion; they became inherently +artistic motives, valued as they furnished the artist an opportunity for the exercise of +his knowledge and skill and for the exhibition of lovely color and significant form. A +change in the mechanical methods of painting, also, had its influence on a change in the +conception of the function of art. With a very few exceptions, the works of Giotto were +executed in fresco as wall decorations. The principles of mural painting require that the +composition shall be subordinated to the architectural conditions of the space it is to +fill and that the color shall be kept flat. The fresco method meets these requirements +admirably, but because of its flatness it has its limitations. The introduction of an oil +vehicle for the pigment material, in the fifteenth century, made possible a much greater +range in gradated color, and reinforcing the increased knowledge of light and shade, +aided in the evolution of decoration into the "easel picture," complete in itself. +Released from its subjection to architecture, increasing its technical resources, and +widening its interests in the matter of subject so as to include all life, painting +becomes an independent and self-sufficing art.</p> + +<p>Coincident with the development of painting as a craft, a mighty change was working +itself out in the national ideals and in men's ways of thought and feeling. Already in +Giotto's time the spirit of individualism had begun to assert itself in reaction from the +dominance of an all-powerful restrictive ecclesiasticism, but the age was still +essentially pietistic and according to its lights, religious. The fifteenth century +witnessed the emancipation from tradition. The new humanism, which took its rise with the +rediscovery of Greek culture, extended the intellectual horizon and intensified the +enthusiasm for beauty. Men's interest in life was no longer narrowly religious, but +human; their art became the expression of the new spirit. Early Christianity had been +ascetic, enjoining negation of life and the mortification of the flesh. The men of the +Renaissance, with something of the feeling of the elder Greeks, glorified the body and +delighted in the pride of life. Pagan myths and Greek legends take their place alongside +of Bible episodes and stories of saints and martyrs, as subjects of representation; all +served equally as motives for the expression of the artist's sense of the beauty of this +world.</p> + +<p>To this new culture and to these two centuries of growth and accomplishment in the +practice of painting Raphael was heir. With a knowledge of the background out of which he +emerges, we are prepared now to understand and appreciate his individual achievement. In +approaching the study of his work we may ask, What is in general his ideal, his dominant +motive, and in what manner and by what means has he realized his ideal?</p> + +<p>How much was already prepared for him, what does he owe to the age and the conditions +in which he worked, and what to the common store has he added that is peculiarly his +own?</p> + +<p>Whereas Giotto, the shepherd boy, was a pioneer, almost solitary, by sheer force of +mind and by his sincerity and intensity of feeling breaking new paths to expression, for +Raphael, on the contrary, the son of a painter and poet, the fellow-worker and +well-beloved friend of many of the most powerful artistic personalities of his own or any +age, the way was already prepared along which he moved in triumphant progress. The life +of Raphael as an artist extends through three well-defined periods, the Umbrian, the +Florentine, and the Roman, each one of which contributed a distinctive influence upon his +development and witnessed a special and characteristic achievement.</p> + +<p>To his father, who died when the boy was eleven years old, Raphael owed his poetic +nature, scholarly tastes, and love of beauty, though he probably received from him no +training as a painter. His first master was Timoteo Viti of Urbino, a pupil of Francia; +from him he learned drawing and acquired a "certain predilection for round and opulent +forms which is in itself the negation of the ascetic ideal." At the age of seventeen he +went from Urbino to Perugia; there he entered the workshop of Perugino as an assistant. +The ideal of the Umbrian school was tenderness and sweetness, the outward and visible +rapture of pietistic feeling; something of these qualities Raphael expressed in his +Madonnas throughout his career. Under the teaching of Perugino he laid hold on the +principles of "space composition" which he was afterwards to carry to supreme +perfection.</p> + +<p>From Perugia the young Raphael made his way to Florence, and here he underwent many +influences. At that moment Florence was the capital city of Italian culture. It was here +that the new humanism had come to finest flower. Scholarship was the fashion; art was the +chief interest of this beauty-loving people. It was the Florentines who had carried the +scientific principles of painting to their highest point of development, particularly in +their application to the rendering of the human figure. In Florence were collected the +art treasures of the splendid century; here Michelangelo and Leonardo were at work; here +were gathered companies of lesser men. By the study of Masaccio Raphael was led out to a +fresh contact with nature. Fra Bartolomeo revealed to him further possibilities of +composition and taught him some of the secrets of color. In Florence, too, he +acknowledged the spell of Michelangelo and Leonardo. But though he learned from many +teachers, Raphael was never merely an imitator. His scholarship and his skill he turned +to his own uses; and when we have traced the sources of his motives and the influences in +the moulding of his manner, there emerges out of the fusion a creative new force, which +is his genius. What remains after our analysis is the essential Raphael.</p> + +<p>Raphael's residence in Florence is the period of his Madonnas. From Florence Raphael, +twenty-five years old and now a master in his own right, was summoned to Rome by Pope +Julius II; and here he placed his talents and his mastership at the disposal of the +Church. He found time to paint Madonnas and a series of powerful and lovely portraits; +but these years in Rome, which brought his brief life to a close, are preeminently the +period of the great frescoes, which are his supreme achievement. But even in these mature +years, and though he was himself the founder of a school, he did not cease to learn. +Michelangelo was already in Rome, and now Raphael came more immediately under his +influence, although not to submit to it but to use it for his own ends. In Rome were +revealed to him the culture of an older and riper civilization and the glories and +perfectness of an elder art. Raphael laid antiquity under contribution to the +consummation of his art and the fulfillment and complete realization of his genius.</p> + +<p>This analysis of the elements and influences of Raphael's career as an +artist—inadequate as it necessarily is—may help us to define his distinctive +accomplishment. A comparison of his work with that of his predecessors and contemporaries +serves to disengage his essential significance. By nature he was generous and tender; the +bent of his mind was scholarly; and he was impelled by a passion for restrained and +formal beauty. Chiefly characteristic of his mental make-up was his power of +assimilation, which allowed him to respond to many and diverse influences and in the end +to dominate and use them. He gathered up in himself the achievements of two centuries of +experiment and progress, and fusing the various elements, he created by force of his +genius a new result and stamped it with the seal perfection. Giotto, to whom religion was +a reality, was deeply in earnest about his message, and he phrased it as best he could +with the means at his command; his end was expression. Raphael, under the patronage of +wealthy dilettanti and in the service of a worldly and splendor-loving Church, delighted +in his knowledge and his skill; he worshiped art, and his end was beauty. The genius of +Giotto is a first shoot, vigorous and alive, breaking ground hardily, and tentatively +pushing into freer air. The genius of Raphael is the full-blown flower and final fruit, +complete, mature. The step beyond is decay.</p> + +<p>By reference to Giotto and to Raphael I have tried to illustrate the practical +application of certain principles of art study. A work of art is not absolute; both its +content and its form are determined by the conditions out of which it proceeds. All +judgment, therefore, must be comparative, and a work of art must be considered in its +relation to its background and its conventions. Art is an interpretation of some aspect +of life as the artist has felt it; and the artist is a child of his time. It is not an +accident that Raphael portrayed Madonnas, serene and glorified, and Millet pictured rude +peasants bent with toil. Raphael's painting is the culmination of two centuries of eager +striving after the adequate expression of religious sentiment; in Millet's work the +realism of his age is transfigured. As showing further how national ideals and interests +may influence individual production, we may note that the characteristic art of the +Italian Renaissance is painting; and Italian sculpture of the period is pictorial rather +than plastic in motive and handling. Ghiberti's doors of the Florence Baptistery, in the +grouping of figures and the three and four planes in perspective of the backgrounds, are +essentially pictures in bronze. Conversely, in the North the characteristic art of the +thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is carving and sculpture; and "the early painters +represented in their pictures what they were familiar with in wood and stone; so that not +only are the figures dry and hard, but in the groups they are packed one behind another, +heads above heads, without really occupying space, in imitation of the method adopted in +the carved relief." Some knowledge of the origin and development of a given form of +technique, a knowledge to be reached through historical study, enables us to measure the +degree of expressiveness of a given work. The ideas of a child may be very well worth +listening to, though his range of words is limited and his sentences are crude and +halting, A grown man, having acquired the trick of language, may talk fluently and say +nothing. In our endeavor to understand a work of art, a poem by Chaucer or by Tennyson, a +picture by Greco or by Manet, a prelude by Bach or a symphony by Brahms, we may ask, Of +that which the artist wanted to say, how much could he say with the means at his +disposal? With a sense of the artist's larger motive, whether religious sentiment, or a +love of sheer beauty of color and form, or insight into human character, we are aided by +a study of the history of technique to determine how far the artist with the language at +his command was able to realize his intention.</p> + +<p>But not only is art inspired and directed by the time-spirit of its age. A single work +is the expression for the artist who creates it of his ideal. An artist's ideal, what he +sets himself to accomplish, is the projection of his personality, and that is determined +by many influences. He is first of all a child of his race and time; inheritance and +training shape him to these larger conditions. Then his ideal is modified by his special +individuality. A study of the artist's character as revealed in his biography leads to a +fuller understanding of the intention and scope of his work. The events of his life +become significant as they are seen to be the causes or the results of his total +personality, that which he was in mind and temperament. What were the circumstances that +moulded his character and decided his course? What events did he shape to his own purpose +by the active force of his genius? What was the special angle of vision from which he +looked upon the world? The answers to these questions are the clue to the full drift of +his work. As style is the expression of the man, so conversely a knowledge of the man is +an entrance into the wider and subtler implications of his style. We explore the +personality of the man in order more amply to interpret his art, and we turn to his art +as the revelation of his personality. In studying an artist we must look for his +<i>tendency</i> and seek the unifying principle which binds his separate works into a +whole. An artist has his successive periods or "manners." There is the period of +apprenticeship, when the young man is influenced by his predecessors and his masters. +Then he comes into his own, and he registers nature and life as he sees it freshly for +himself. Finally, as he has mastered his art and won some of the secrets of nature, and +as his own character develops, he tends more and more to impose his subjective vision +upon the world, and he subordinates nature to the expression of his distinctive +individuality. A single work, therefore, is to be considered in relation to its place in +the artist's development; it is but a part, and it is to be interpreted by reference to +the whole.</p> + +<p>In the study of biography, however, the man must not be mistaken for the artist; his +acts are not to be confounded with his message. "A man is the spirit he worked in; not +what he did, but what he became." We must summon forth the spirit of the man from within +the wrappages of material and accident. In our preoccupation with the external details of +a man's familiar and daily life it is easy to lose sight of his spiritual experience, +which only is of significance. Whistler, vain, aggressive, quarrelsome, and yet so +exquisite and so subtle in extreme refinement, is a notable example of a great spirit and +a little man. Wagner wrote to Liszt: "As I have never felt the real bliss of love, I must +erect a monument to the most beautiful of my dreams, in which from beginning to end that +love shall be thoroughly satiated." Not the Wagner of fact, but the Wagner of dreams. +Life lived in the spirit and imagination may be different from the life of daily act. So +we should transcend the material, trying through that to penetrate to the spiritual. It +is not a visit to the artist's birthplace that signifies, it is not to do reverence +before his likeness or cherish a bit of his handwriting. All this may have a value to the +disciple as a matter of loyalty and fine piety. But in the end we must go beyond these +externals that we may enter intelligently and sympathetically into the temper of his mind +and mood and there find disclosed what he thought and felt and was able only in part to +express. It is not the man his neighbors knew that is important. His work is the +essential thing, what that work has to tell us about life in terms of emotional +experience.</p> + +<p>Studies in the history of art and in biography are avenues of approach to the +understanding of a work of art; they do not in themselves constitute appreciation. +Historical importance must not be mistaken for artistic significance. In reading about +pictures we may forget to look at them. The historical study of art in its various +divisions reduces itself to an exercise in analysis, resolving a given work into its +elements. But art is a synthesis. In order to appreciate a work the elements must be +gathered together and fused into a whole. A statue or a picture is meant not to be read +about, but to be looked at; and its final message must be received through vision. Our +knowledge will serve us little if we are not sensitive to the appeal of color and form. +There is danger that preoccupation with the history of art may betray us if we are not +careful to keep it in its place. The study of art should follow and not lead +appreciation. We are apt to see what we are looking for. So we ought to come to each work +freshly without prejudice or bias; it is only afterwards that we should bring to bear on +it our knowledge about the facts of its production. Connoisseurship is a science and may +hold within itself no element of aesthetic enjoyment. Appreciation is an art, and the +quality of it depends upon the appreciator himself. The end of historical study is not a +knowledge of facts for their own sake, but through those facts a deeper penetration and +fuller true enjoyment. By the aid of such knowledge we are enabled to recognize in any +work more certainly and abundantly the expression of an emotional experience which +relates itself to our own life.</p> + +<p>The final meaning of art to the appreciator lies in just this sense of its relation to +his own experience. The greatest works are those which express reality and life, not +limited and temporary conditions, but life universal and for all time. Without commentary +these carry their message, appealing to the wisest and the humblest. Gather into a single +room a fragment of the Parthenon frieze, Michelangelo's "Day and Night," Botticelli's +"Spring," the sprites and children of Donatello and Delia Robbia, Velasquez's "Pope +Innocent," Rembrandt's "Cloth-weavers," Frans Hals' "Musician," Millet's "Sower," +Whistler's "Carlyle." There is here no thought of period or of school. These living, +present, eternal verities are all one company.</p><a name="6"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>VI</p> + +<p>THE SERVICE OF CRITICISM</p> + +<p>THE greatest art is universal. It transcends the merely local conditions in which it +is produced. It sweeps beyond the individual personality of its creator, and links itself +with the common experience of all men. The Parthenon, so far as it can be reconstructed +in imagination, appeals to a man of any race or any period, whatever his habit of mind or +degree of culture, as a perfect utterance. The narrow vault of the Sistine Chapel opens +into immensity, and every one who looks upon it is lifted out of himself into new worlds. +Shakespeare's plays were enjoyed by the apprentices in the pit and royalty in the boxes, +and so all the way between. The man Shakespeare, of such and such birth and training, and +of this or that experience in life, is entirely merged in his creations; he becomes the +impersonal channel of expression of the profoundest, widest interpretation of life the +world has known. Such art as this comes closest to the earth and extends farthest into +infinity, "beyond the reaches of our souls."</p> + +<p>But there is another order of art, more immediately the product of local conditions, +the personal expression of a distinctive individuality, phrased in a language of less +scope and currency, and limited as to its content in the range of its appeal. These +lesser works have their place; they can minister to us in some moment of need and at some +point in our development. Because of their limitations, however, their effectiveness can +be furthered by interpretation. A man more sensitive than we to the special kind of +beauty which they embody and better versed in their language, can discover to us a +significance and a charm in them to which we have not penetrated. To help us to the +fullest enjoyment of the great things and to a more enlightened and juster appreciation +of the lesser works is the service of criticism.</p> + +<p>We do not wholly possess an experience until, having merged ourselves in it, we then +react upon it and become conscious of its significance. A novel, a play, a picture +interests us, and we surrender to the enjoyment of the moment. Afterwards we think about +our pleasure, defining the nature of the experience and analyzing the means by which it +was produced, the subject of the work and the artist's method of treating it. It may be +that we tell our pleasure to a friend, glad also perhaps to hear his opinion of the +matter. The impulse is natural; the practice is helpful. And herein lies the origin of +criticism. In so far as an appreciator does not rest in his immediate enjoyment of a work +of art, but seeks to account for his pleasure, to trace the sources of it, to establish +the reasons for it, and to define its quality, so far he becomes a critic. As every man +who perceives beauty in nature and takes it up into his own life is potentially an +artist, so every man is a critic in the measure that he reasons about his enjoyment. The +critical processes, therefore, are an essential part of our total experience of art, and +criticism may be an aid to appreciation.</p> + +<p>The function of criticism has been variously understood through the centuries of its +practice. Early modern criticism, harking back to the method of Aristotle, concerned +itself with the form of a work of art. From the usage of classic writers it deduced +certain "rules" of composition; these formulas were applied to the work under +examination, and that was adjudged good or bad in the degree that it conformed or failed +to conform to the established rules. It was a criticism of law-giving and of judgment. In +the eighteenth century criticism extended its scope by the admission of a new +consideration, passing beyond the mere form of the work and reckoning with its power to +give pleasure. Addison, in his critique of "Paradise Lost," still applies the formal +tests of the Aristotelian canons, but he discovers further that a work of art exists not +only for the sake of its form, but also for the expression of beautiful ideas. This power +of "affecting the imagination" he declares is the "very life and highest perfection" of +poetry. This is a long step in the right direction. With the nineteenth century, +criticism conceives its aims and procedure in new and larger ways. A work of art is now +seen to be an evolution; and criticism adapts to its own uses the principles of +historical study and the methods of scientific investigation. Recognizing that art is +organic, that an art-form, as religious painting or Gothic architecture or the novel, is +born, develops, comes to maturity, lapses, and dies, that an individual work is the +product of "race, environment, and the moment," that it is the expression also of the +personality of the artist himself, criticism no longer regards the single work as an +isolated phenomenon, but tries to see it in its relation to its total background.</p> + +<p>Present-day criticism avails itself of this larger outlook upon art. But the ends to +be reached are understood differently by different critics. With M. Bruneti<font face= +"Times New Roman">è</font>re, to cite now a few representative names, criticism is +authoritative and dogmatic: he looks at the work objectively, refusing to be the dupe of +his pleasure, if he has any; and approaching the work in the spirit of dispassionate +impersonal inquiry as an object of historical importance and scientific interest, he +decrees that it is good or bad. Matthew Arnold considers literature a "criticism of +life," and he values a work with reference to the moral significance of its ideas. +Ruskin's criticism is didactic; he wishes to educate his public, and by force of his +torrential eloquence he succeeds in persuading his disciples into acceptance of his +teaching, though he may not always convince. Impressionistic criticism, as with M. +Anatole France or M. Jules Lema<font face="Times New Roman">î</font>tre, does not +even try to see the work "as in itself it really is," but is an account of the critic's +own subjective reaction on it, a narrative of what he thought and felt in this chance +corner of experience. With Walter Pater criticism becomes <i>appreciation.</i> A given +work of art produces a distinctive impression and communicates a special and unique +pleasure; this active power constitutes its beauty. So the function of the critic as +Pater conceives it is "to distinguish, analyze, and separate from its adjuncts, the +virtue by which a picture, a landscape, a fair personality in life or in a book, produces +this special impression of beauty or pleasure, to indicate what the source of that +impression is, and under what conditions it is experienced." The interpretative +critic—represented in the practice of Pater—stands between a work of art and +the appreciator as mediator and revealer.</p> + +<p>Each kind of criticism performs a certain office, and is of use within its own chosen +sphere. To the layman, for his purposes of appreciation, that order of criticism will be +most helpful which responds most closely and amply to his peculiar needs. A work of art +may be regarded under several aspects, its quality of technical execution, its power of +sensuous appeal, its historical importance; and to each one of these aspects some kind of +criticism applies. The layman's reception of art includes all these considerations, but +subordinates them to the total experience. His concern, therefore, is to define the +service of criticism to appreciation.</p> + +<p>The analysis of a work of art resolves it into these elements. There is first of all +the emotion which gives birth to the work and which the work is designed to express. The +emotion, to become definite, gathers about an idea, conceived in the terms of its own +medium, as form, or color and mass, or musical relations; and this artistic idea presents +itself as the subject or motive of the work. The emotion and artistic idea, in order that +they may be expressed and become communicable, embody themselves in material, as the +marble of a statue, the pigment of a picture, the audible tones of a musical composition. +This material form has the power to satisfy the mind and delight the senses. Through the +channel of the senses and the mind the work reaches the feelings; and the aesthetic +experience is complete.</p> + +<p>As art springs out of emotion, so it is to be received as emotion; and a work to be +appreciated in its true spirit must be enjoyed. But to be completely enjoyed it must be +understood. We must know what the artist was trying to express, and we must be able to +read his language; then we are prepared to take delight in the form and to respond to the +emotion.</p> + +<p>To help us to understand a work of art in all the components that entered into the +making of it is the function of historical study. Such study enables us to see the work +from the artist's own point of view. A knowledge of its background, the conditions in +which the artist wrought and his own attitude toward life, is the clue to his ideal; and +by an understanding of the language it was possible for him to employ, we can measure the +degree of expressiveness he was able to achieve. This study of the artist's purpose and +of his methods is an exercise in explanation.</p> + +<p>The interpretation of art, for which we look to criticism, deals with the picture, the +statue, the book, specifically in its relation to the appreciator. What is the special +nature of the experience which the work communicates to us in terms of feeling? In so far +as the medium itself is a source of pleasure, by what qualities of form has the work +realized the conditions of beauty proper to it, delighting thus the senses and satisfying +the mind? These are the questions which the critic, interpreting the work through the +medium of his own temperament, seeks to answer.</p> + +<p>Theoretically, the best critic of art would be the artist himself. He above all other +men should understand the subtle play of emotion and thought in which a work of art is +conceived; and the artist rather than another should trace the intricacies and know the +cunning of the magician processes by which the immaterial idea builds itself into visible +actuality. In practice, however, the theory is not borne out by the fact. The artist as +such is very little conscious of the workings of his spirit. He is creative rather than +reflective, synthetic and not analytic. From his contact with nature and from his +experience of life, out of which rises his generative emotion, he moves directly to the +fashioning of expressive forms, without pausing on the way to scan too closely the +"meaning" of his work. Mr. Bernard Shaw remarks that Ibsen, giving the rein to the +creative impulse of his poetic nature, produced in "Brand" and "Peer Gynt" a "great +puzzle for his intellect." Wagner, he says, "has expressly described how the intellectual +activity which he brought to the analysis of his music dramas was in abeyance during +their creation. Just so do we find Ibsen, after composing his two great dramatic poems, +entering on a struggle to become intellectually conscious of what he had done." Moreover, +the artist is in the very nature of things committed to one way of seeing. His view of +life is limited by the trend of his own dominant and creative personality; what he gains +in intensity and penetration of insight he loses in breadth. He is less quick to see +beauty in another guise than that which his own imagination weaves for him; he is less +receptive of other ways of envisaging the world.</p> + +<p>The ideal critic, on the contrary, is above everything else catholic and tolerant. It +is his task to discover beauty in whatever form and to affirm it. By nature he is more +sensitive than the ordinary man, by training he has directed the exercise of his powers +toward their fullest scope, and by experience of art in its diverse manifestations he has +certified his judgment and deepened his capacity to enjoy. The qualifications of an +authentic critic are both temperament and scholarship. Mere temperament uncorrected by +knowledge may vibrate exquisitely when swept by the touch of a thing of beauty, but its +music may be in a quite different key from the original motive. Criticism must relate +itself to the objective fact; it should interpret and not transpose. Mere scholarship +without temperament misses art at its centre, that art is the expression and +communication of emotional experience; and the scholar in criticism may wander his leaden +way down the by-paths of a sterile learning. To mediate between the artist and the +appreciator, the critic must understand the artist and he must feel with the appreciator. +He is at once the artist translated into simpler terms and the appreciator raised to a +higher power of perception and response.</p> + +<p>The service of criticism to the layman is to furnish him a clue to the meaning of the +work in hand, and by the critic's own response to its beauty to reveal its potency and +charm. With technique as such the critic is not concerned. Technique is the business of +the artist; only those who themselves practice an art are qualified to judge in matters +of practice. The form is significant to the appreciator only so far as regards its +expressiveness and beauty. It is not the function of the critic to tell the artist what +his work <i>should be;</i> it is the critic's mission to reveal to the appreciator what +the work <i>is</i>. That revelation will be accomplished in terms of the critic's own +experience of the beauty of the work, an experience imaged forth in such phrases that the +pleasure the work communicates is conveyed to his readers in its true quality and foil +intensity. It is not enough to dogmatize as Ruskin dogmatizes, to bully the reader into a +terrified acceptance. It is not enough to determine absolute values as Matthew Arnold +seeks to do, to fix certain canons of intellectual judgment, and by the application of a +formula as a touchstone, to decide that this work is excellent and that another is less +good. Really serviceable criticism is that which notes the special and distinguishing +quality of beauty in any work and helps the reader to live out that beauty in his own +experience.</p> + +<p>These generalizations may be made more immediate and practical by examples. In +illustration of the didactic manner in criticism I may cite a typical paragraph of +Ruskin, chosen from his "Mornings in Florence."</p> + +<blockquote> +First, look at the two sepulchral slabs by which you are standing. That farther of the +two from the west end is one of the most beautiful pieces of fourteenth-century sculpture +in this world. . . . And now, here is a simple but most useful test of your capacity for +understanding Florentine sculpture or painting. If you can see that the lines of that cap +are both right, and lovely; that the choice of the folds is exquisite in its ornamental +relations of line; and that the softness and ease of them is complete,—though only +sketched with a few dark touches,—then you can understand Giotto's drawing, and +Botticelli's;—Donatello's carving, and Luca's. But if you see nothing in +<i>this</i> sculpture, you will see nothing in theirs, <i>of</i> theirs. Where they +choose to imitate flesh, or silk, or to play any vulgar modern trick with +marble—(and they often do)—whatever, in a word, is French, or American, or +Cockney, in their work, you can see; but what is Florentine, and for ever +great—unless you can see also the beauty of this old man in his citizen's +cap,—you will see never. +</blockquote> + +<p>The earnest and docile though bewildered layman is intimidated into thinking that he +sees it, whether he really does or not. But it is a question if the contemplation of the +"beauty of this old man in his citizen's cap," however eager and serious the +contemplation may be, adds much to his experience; it may be doubted whether as a result +of his effort toward the understanding of the rightness and loveliness of the lines of +the cap and the exquisiteness of the choice of folds, which the critic has pointed out to +him with threatening finger, he feels that life is a fuller and finer thing to live.</p> + +<p>An example of the intellectual estimate, the valuation by formulas, and the assignment +of abstract rank, is this paragraph from Matthew Arnold's essay on Wordsworth.</p> + +<blockquote> +Wherever we meet with the successful balance, in Wordsworth, of profound truth of subject +with profound truth of execution, he is unique. His best poems are those which most +perfectly exhibit this balance. I have a warm admiration for "Laodameia" and for the +great "Ode;" but if I am to tell the very truth, I find "Laodameia" not wholly free from +something artificial, and the great "Ode" not wholly free from something declamatory. If +I had to pick out poems of a kind most perfectly to show Wordsworth's unique power, I +should rather choose poems such as "Michael," "The Fountain," "The Highland Reaper." And +poems with the peculiar and unique beauty which distinguishes these, Wordsworth produced +in considerable number; besides very many other poems of which the worth, although not so +rare as the worth of these, is still exceedingly high. +</blockquote> + +<p>Thus does the judicial critic mete out his estimate by scale and measuring-rod. We are +told dogmatically what is good and what is less good; but of distinctive quality and +energizing life-giving virtues, not a word. The critic does not succeed in communicating +to us anything of Wordsworth's special charm and power. We are informed, but we are left +cold and unresponding.</p> + +<p>The didactic critic imposes his standard upon the layman. The judicial critic measures +and awards. The appreciative critic does not attempt to teach or to judge; he makes +possible to his reader an appreciation of the work of art simply by recreating in his own +terms the complex of his emotions in its presence. Instead of declaring the work to be +beautiful or excellent, he makes it beautiful in the very telling of what it means to +him. As the artist interprets life, disclosing its depths and harmonies, so the +appreciative critic in his turn interprets art, reconstituting the beauty of it in his +own terms. Through his interpretation, the layman is enabled to enter more fully into the +true spirit of the work and to share its beauty in his own experience.</p> + +<p>In contrast to the passage from Arnold is this paragraph from an essay on Wordsworth +by Walter Pater.</p> + +<blockquote> +And so he has much for those who value highly the concentrated presentment of passion, +who appraise men and women by their susceptibility to it, and art and poetry as they +afford the spectacle of it. Breaking from time to time into the pensive spectacle of +their daily toil, their occupations near to nature, come those great elementary feelings, +lifting and solemnizing their language and giving it a natural music. The great, +distinguishing passion came to Michael by the sheepfold, to Ruth by the wayside, adding +these humble children of the furrow to the true aristocracy of passionate souls. In this +respect, Wordsworth's work resembles most that of George Sand, in those of her novels +which depict country life. With a penetrative pathos, which puts him in the same rank +with the masters of the sentiment of pity in literature, with Meinhold and Victor Hugo, +he collects all the traces of vivid excitement which were to be found in that pastoral +world—the girl who rung her father's knell; the unborn infant feeling about its +mother's heart; the instinctive touches of children; the sorrows of the wild creatures, +even—their home-sickness, their strange yearnings; the tales of passionate regret +that hang by a ruined farm-building, a heap of stones, a deserted sheepfold; that gay, +false, adventurous, outer world, which breaks in from time to time to bewilder and +deflower these quiet homes; not "passionate sorrow" only, for the overthrow of the soul's +beauty, but the loss of, or carelessness for personal beauty even, in those whom men have +wronged—their pathetic wanness; the sailor "who, in his heart, was half a shepherd +on the stormy seas;" the wild woman teaching her child to pray for her betrayer; +incidents like the making of the shepherd's staff, or that of the young boy laying the +first stone of the sheepfold;—all the pathetic episodes of their humble existence, +their longing, their wonder at fortune, their poor pathetic pleasures, like the pleasures +of children, won so hardly in the struggle for bare existence; their yearning towards +each other, in their darkened houses, or at their early toil. A sort of biblical depth +and solemnity hangs over this strange, new, passionate, pastoral world, of which he first +raised the image, and the reflection of which some of our best modern fiction has caught +from him. +</blockquote> + +<p>Here is the clue to Wordsworth's meaning; and the special quality and power of his +work, gathering amplitude and intensity as it plays across the critic's temperament, is +reconstituted in other and illuminating images which communicate the emotion to us. The +critic has felt more intimately than we the appeal of this poetry, and he kindles in us +something of his own enthusiasm. So we return to Wordsworth for ourselves, more alert to +divine his message, more susceptible to his spell, that he may work in us the magic of +evocation.</p> + +<p>Criticism is of value to us as appreciators in so far as it serves to recreate in us +the experience which the work was designed to convey. But criticism is not a short cut to +enjoyment. We cannot take our pleasure at second hand. We must first come to the work +freshly and realize our own impression of it; then afterwards we may turn to the critic +for a further revelation. Criticism should not shape our opinion, but should stimulate +appreciation, carrying us farther than we could go ourselves, but always in the same +direction with our original impression. There is a kind of literary exercise, calling +itself criticism, which takes a picture or a book as its point of departure and proceeds +to create a work of art in its own right, attaching itself only in name to the work which +it purports to criticise. "Who cares," exclaims a clever maker of epigrams, "whether Mr. +Ruskin's views on Turner are sound or not? What does it matter? That mighty and majestic +prose of his, so fervid and so fiery-coloured in its noble eloquence, so rich in its +elaborate symphonic music, so sure and certain, at its best, in subtle choice of word and +epithet, is at least as great a work of art as any of those wonderful sunsets that bleach +or rot on their corrupted canvases in England's Gallery." A very good appreciation of +Ruskin, this. But the answer is that such writing as is here attributed to Ruskin is +magnificent: it may be art; but it is not true criticism. A work of art is not +"impressive" merely, but "expressive" too. Criticism in its relation to the work itself +has an objective base, and it must be steadied and authenticated by constant reference to +the original feet. Criticism is not the source of our enjoyment but a medium of +interpretation.</p> + +<p>Before we turn to criticism, therefore, we must first, as Pater suggests, know our own +impression as it really is, discriminate it, and realize it distinctly. Only so shall we +escape becoming the dupe of some more aggressive personality. In our mental life +suggestion plays an important and perhaps unrecognized part. In a certain frame of mind +we can be persuaded into believing anything and into liking anything. When, under the +influence of authority or fashion, we think we care for that which has no vital and +consciously realized relation to our own experience, we are the victims of a kind of +hypnotism, and there is little hope of our ultimate adjustment over against art. It is +far better honestly to like an inferior work and know why we like it than to pretend to +like a good one. In the latter case no real progress or development is possible, for we +have no standards that can be regarded as final; we are swayed by the authority or +influence which happens at that moment to be most powerful. In the former case we are at +least started in the right direction. Year by year, according to the law of natural +growth, we come to the end of the inferior work which up to that time has been able to +minister to us, and we pass on to new and greater works that satisfy the demands of our +deepening experience. It is sometimes asked if we ought not to try to like the best +things in art. I should answer, the very greatest things we do not have to <i>try</i> to +like; the accent of greatness is unmistakable, and greatness has a message for every one. +As regards the lesser works, we ought to be willing to grow up. There was a time when I +enjoyed "Robinson Crusoe" in words of one syllable. If I had <i>tried</i> then to like +Mr. George Meredith, I should not really have enjoyed him, and I should have missed the +fun of "Robinson Crusoe." Everything in its time and place. The lesser works have their +use: they may be a starting-point for our entrance into life; and they furnish a basis of +comparison by which we are enabled to realize the greatness of the truly great. We must +value everything in its own kind, affirming what it is, and not regretting what it is +not. But the prerequisite of all appreciation, without which our contact with art is a +pastime or a pretense, is that we be honest with ourselves. In playing solitaire at least +we ought not to cheat.</p> + +<p>So the layman must face the situation squarely and accept the responsibility of +deciding finally for himself. On the way we may look to criticism to guide us to those +works which are meant for us. In art as in the complex details of living, there is need +of selection; and criticism helps toward that. In literature alone, to name but a single +art, there is so much to be left unread which the length of our life would not otherwise +permit us to escape, that we are grateful to the critic who aids us to omit gracefully +and with success. But the most serviceable criticism is positive and not destructive. The +lesser works may have a message for us, and it is that message in its distinctive quality +which the critic should affirm. In the end, however, the use we make of criticism should +not reduce itself to an unquestioning acceptance of authority. In the ceremonial of the +Roman service, at the moment preceding the elevation of the Host, two acolytes enter the +chancel, bearing candles, and kneel between the congregation and the ministrants at the +altar; the tapers, suffusing the altar in their golden radiance, throw the dim figures of +the priests into a greater gloom and mystery. So it happens that art often is enshrouded +by the off-giving of those who would seem to illuminate it; and "dark with excess of +light," the obscurity is intensified. The layman is told of the virginal poetry of early +Italian painting; he is bidden to sit at the homely, substantial feast of the frank +actuality of Dutch art; he listens in puzzled wonder to the glorification of Velasquez +and Goya; he reads in eloquent, glowing language of the splendor of Turner. He is more +than half persuaded; but he does not quite understand. From this tangle of contending +interests there seems for the moment to be no way out. It is assumed that the layman has +no standard of his own; and he yields himself to the appeal which comes to him +immediately at the instant. The next day, perhaps, brings a new interest or another +judgment which runs counter to the old. Back and forth and back again, without purpose +and without reason; it is only an endless recurrence of the conflict instead of +development and progress. Taking all his estimates at second hand, so for his opinion +even of a concert or a play he is at the mercy of a critic who may have dined badly. Some +boy, caught young at the university and broken to miscellaneous tasks on a big newspaper, +is sent to "do" a picture-exhibition, a concert, and the theatre in the same day. He is +expected to "criticise" in an hour the work of a lifetime of struggle and effort and +knowledge and thought and feeling. This is the guide of opinion and the foundation of +artistic creed. I have stated the reduction to absurdity of the case for authority in +criticism. If the layman who leans too heavily upon criticism comes to realize the +hopelessness of his position and thinks the situation through to its necessary +conclusion, he sees that the authority of criticism is not absolute, but varies with the +powers and range of the individual critic, and that at the last he must find his standard +within himself.</p> + +<p>There are, of course, certain standards of excellence recognized universally and +certain principles of taste of universal validity; and to these standards and these +principles must be referred our individual estimates for comparison and correction. Given +a native sensibility to the worth of life and to the appeal of beauty, the justice of our +estimate will be in proportion to the extent of our knowledge of life and of our contact +with art. Our individual judgment, therefore, must be controlled by experience,—our +momentary judgments by the sum of our own experience, and our total judgment by universal +experience. In all sound criticism and right appreciation there must be a basis of +disciplined taste. We must guard ourselves against whims and caprice, even our own. So +the individual may not cut loose altogether from external standards. But these must be +brought into relation to his personal needs and applied with reference to his own +standard. Finally, for his own uses, the individual has the right to determine the +meaning and value to him of any work of art in the measure that it links itself with his +own actual or possible experience and becomes for him a revelation of fuller life. For +beauty is the power possessed by objects to quicken us with a sense of larger +personality; and art, whether the arts of form or of representation, is the material +bodying forth of beauty as the artist has perceived it and the means by which his emotion +in its presence is communicated. Upon this conception of beauty and this interpretation +of the scope and function of art rests the justice of the personal estimate.</p><a name= +"7"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>VII</p> + +<p>BEAUTY AND COMMON LIFE</p> + +<p>TO become sensitive to the meaning of color and form and sound as the artist employs +them for expression, to feel a work of art in its relation to its background, to find in +criticism enlightenment and guidance but not a substitute for one's own +experience,—these are methods of approach to art. But the appreciator has yet to +penetrate art's inmost secret. At the centre, as the motive of all his efforts to +understand the language of art and the processes of technique, as the goal of historical +study and the purpose of his recourse to criticism, stands the work itself with its power +to attract and charm. Here is Millet's painting of the "Sower." In the actual presence of +the picture the appreciator's experience is complex. Analysis resolves it into +considerations of the material form of the work, involving its sensuous qualities and the +processes of execution, considerations also of the subject of the picture, which gathers +about itself many associations out of the beholder's own previous knowledge of life. But +the clue to the final meaning of the work, its meaning both to the artist and to the +appreciator, is contained in the answer to the question, Why did Millet paint this +picture? And just what is it designed to express?</p> + +<p>Art is born out of emotion. Though the symbols it may employ to expression, the forms +in which it may manifest itself, are infinitely various in range and character, +essentially all art is one. A work of art is the material bodying forth of the artist's +sense of a meaning in life which unfolds itself to him as harmony and to which his spirit +responds accordantly. It may be a pattern he has conceived; or he adapts material to a +new use in response to a new need: the artist is here a craftsman. He is stirred by the +tone and incident of a landscape or by the force or charm of some personality: and he +puts brush to canvas. He apprehends the complex rhythms of form: and the mobile clay +takes shape under his fingers. He feels the significance of persons acting and reacting +in their contact with one another: and he pens a novel or a drama. He is thrilled by the +emotion attending the influx of a great idea; philosophy is touched with feeling: and the +thinker becomes a poet. The discords of experience resolve themselves within him into +harmonies: and he gives them out in triumphant harmonies of sound. The particular medium +the artist chooses in which to express himself is incidental to the feeling to be +conveyed. The stimulus to emotion which impels the artist to create and the essential +content of his work is <i>beauty.</i> As beauty, then, is the very stuff and fibre of +art, inextricably bound up with it, so in our effort to relate art to our experience we +may seek to know something of the nature of beauty and its place in common life.</p> + +<p>During a visit in Philadelphia I was conducted by a member of the firm through the +great Locomotive Works in that city. From the vast office, with its atmosphere of busy, +concentrated quiet, punctuated by the clicking of many typewriters, I was led through +doors and passages, and at length came upon the shrieking inferno of the shops. The +uproar and din were maddening. Overhead, huge cranes were swinging great bulks of steel +from one end of the cavernous shed to the other; vague figures were moving obscurely in +the murk; the floor was piled and littered with heaps of iron-work of unimaginable +shapes. After a time we made our way into another area where there was more quiet but no +less confusion. I yelled to my guide, "Such a rumpus and row I never saw; it is chaos +come again!" And he replied, "Why, to me it is all a perfect order. Everything is in its +place. Every man has his special job and does it. I know the meaning and purpose of all +those parts that seem to you to be thrown around in such a mess. If you could follow the +course of making from the draughting-rooms to the finishing-shop, if you could see the +process at once as a whole, you would understand that it is all a complete harmony, every +part working with every other part to a definite end." It was not I but my friend who had +the truth of the matter. Where for me there was only chaos, for him was order. And the +difference was that he had the clue which I had not. His sense of the meaning of the +parts brought the scattering details into a final unity; and therein he found harmony and +satisfaction.</p> + +<p>I went away much impressed by what I had seen. When I had collected my wits a little +in the comparative calm of the streets, it occurred to me that the immense workshops were +a symbol of man's life in the world. In the instant of experience all seems chaos. At +close range, in direct contact with the facts and demands of every day, we feel how +confusing and distracting it all is. Life is beating in upon us at every point; all our +senses are assailed at once. Each new day brings its conflicting interests and +obligations. Now, whether we are aware of it or not, our constant effort is, out of the +great variety of experience pressing in upon us, to select such details as make to a +definite purpose and end. Instinctively we grope toward and attract to us that which is +special and proper to our individual development. Our progress is toward harmony. By the +adjustment of new material to the shaping principle of our experience, the circle of our +individual lives widens its circumference. We are able to bring more and more details +into order, and correspondingly fuller and richer our life becomes.</p> + +<p>The mental perception of order in the parts gives the whole its significance. This +quick grasp of the whole is like the click of the kaleidoscope which throws the tumbling, +distorted bits into a design. The conduct of practical life on the mental plane is the +process also of art on the plane of the emotions. Not only does experience offer itself +to us as the subject of thought; our contact with the world is also the stimulus of +feeling. In my account of the visit to the Locomotive Works I have set down but a part +and not the sum of my reaction. After I had come away, I fell to thinking about what I +had seen, and intellectually I deduced certain abstract principles with regard to unity +and significance. But at the moment of experience itself I simply felt. I was overwhelmed +by the sense of unloosened power. The very confusion of it all constituted the unity of +impression. The emotion roused in me by the roar and riotous movement and the vast gloom +torn by fitful yellow gleams from opened furnaces and shapes of glowing metal was the +emotion appropriate to the experience of chaos. That I can find a single word by which to +characterize it, is evidence that the moment had its harmony for me and consequent +meaning. All the infinite universe external to us is everywhere and at every instant +potentially the stimulus to emotion. But unless feeling is discriminated, it passes +unregarded. When the emotion gathers itself into design, when the moment reveals within +itself order and significance, then and not till then the emotion becomes substance for +expression in forms of art.</p> + +<p>If I were able to phrase what I saw and what I felt in the Locomotive Works, so that +by means of presenting what I saw I might communicate to another what I felt and so rouse +in him the same emotion, I should be an artist. Whistler or Monet might picture for us +the murk and mystery of this pregnant gloom. Wagner might sound for us the tumultuous, +weird emotions of this Niebelungen workshop of the twentieth century. Dante or Milton +might phrase this inferno and pandemonium of modern industry and leave us stirred by the +sense of power in the play of gigantic forces. Whether the medium be the painter's color, +the musician's tones, or the poet's words, the purpose of the representation is fulfilled +in so far as the work expresses the emotion which the artist has felt in the presence of +this spectacle. He, the artist, more than I or another, has thrilled to its mystery, its +tumult, its power. It is this effect, received as a unity of impression, that he wants to +communicate. This power of the object over him, and consequently the content of his work, +is beauty.</p> + +<p>In the experience of us all there are objects and situations which can stir +us,—the twilight hour, a group of children at play, the spectacle of the great +human crowd, it may be, or solitude under the stars, the works of man as vast cities or +cunningly contrived machines, or perhaps it is the mighty, shifting panorama which nature +unrolls for us at every instant of day and night, her endless pageant of color and light +and shade and form. Out of them at the moment of our contact is unfolded a new +significance; because of them life becomes for us larger, deeper. This power possessed by +objects to rouse in us an emotion which comes with the realization of inner significance +expressed in harmony is beauty. A brief analysis of the nature and action of beauty may +help us in the understanding and appreciation of art, though the value to us of any +explanation is to quicken us to a more vivid sensitiveness to the effect of beauty in the +domain of actual experience of it.</p> + +<p>Because the world external to us, which manifests beauty, is received into +consciousness by the senses, it is natural to seek our explanation in the processes +involved in the functioning of our organism. Our existence as individual human beings is +conditioned by our embodiment in matter. Without senses, without nerves and a brain, we +should not <i>be.</i> Our feelings, which determine for us finally the value of +experience, are the product of the excitement of our physical organism responding to +stimulation. The rudimentary and most general feelings are pleasure and pain. All the +complex and infinitely varied emotions that go to make up our conscious life are +modifications of these two elementary reactions. The feeling of pleasure results when our +organism "functions harmoniously with itself;" pain is the consequence of discord. In the +words of a recent admirable statement of the psychologists' position: "When rhythm and +melody and forms and colors give me pleasure, it is because the imitating impulses and +movements that have arisen in me are such as suit, help, heighten my physical +organization in general and in particular. . . . The basis, in short, of any aesthetic +experience—poetry, music, painting and the rest—is beautiful through its +harmony with the conditions offered by our senses, primarily of sight and hearing, and +through the harmony of the suggestions and impulses it arouses with the whole organism." +Beauty, then, according to the psychologists, is the quality inherent in things, the +possession of which enables them to stimulate our organism to harmonious functioning. And +the perception of beauty is a purely physiological reaction.</p> + +<p>This explanation, valid within its limits, seems to me to fall short of the whole +truth. For it fails to reckon with that faculty and that entity within us whose existence +we know but cannot explain,—the faculty we call mind, which operates as +imagination, and the entity we recognize as spirit or soul. I mean the faculty which +gives us the idea of God and the consciousness of self, the faculty which apprehends +relations and significance in material transcending their material embodiment. I mean the +entity within us which expresses itself in love and aspiration and worship, the entity +which is able to fuse with the harmony external to it in a larger unity. When I glance +out upon a winter twilight drenching earth and sky with luminous blue, a sudden delight +floods in upon me, gathering up all my senses in a surging billow of emotion, and my +being pulses and vibrates in a beat of joy. Something within me goes out to meet the +landscape; so far as I am at all conscious of the moment, I feel, There, that is what I +am! This deep harmony of tone and mass is the expression of a fuller self toward which I +yearn. My being thrills and dilates with the sensation of larger life. Then, after the +joy has throbbed itself out and my reaction takes shape as consciousness, I set myself to +consider the sources and the processes of my experience. I note that my eye has perceived +color and form. My intellect, as I summon it into action, tells me that I am looking upon +a scene in nature composed of material elements, as land and trees and water and +atmosphere. My senses, operating through channels of matter, receive, and my brain +registers, impressions of material objects. But this analysis, though defining the +processes, does not quite explain <i>my joy.</i> I know that beyond all this, +transcending my material sense-perception and transcending the actual material of the +landscape, there is something in me and there is something in nature which meet and +mingle and become one. Above all embodiment in matter, there is a plane on which I feel +my community with the world external to me, recognizing that world to be an extension of +my own personality, a plane on which I can identify myself with the thing outside of me +in so far as it is the expression of what I am or may become. Between me and the external +world there is a common term. The effect which nature has upon us is determined, not by +the object itself alone and not by our individual mind and temperament alone, but by the +meeting of the two, the community between the object and the spirit of man. When we find +nature significant and expressive, it is because we make nature in some way a part of our +own experience.</p> + +<p>The material of an object is perceived by the senses. We see that it is blue or green +or brown; we may touch it and note that it is rough or smooth, hard or soft, warm or +cold. But the expressiveness of the object, its value for the emotions, does not stop +with its merely material qualities, but comes with our grasp of the "relations" which it +embodies; and these relations, transmitted through material by the senses, are +apprehended by the mind. There are, of course, elementary data of sense-perception, such +as color and sound. It may be that I prefer red to yellow because my eye is so +constituted as to function harmoniously with a rate of vibration represented by 450 +billions per second, and discordantly with a rate of vibration represented by 526 +billions per second. So also with tones of a given pitch. But though simple color and +simple sound have each the power to please the senses, yet in actual experience neither +color nor sound is perceived abstractly, apart from its embodiment in form. Color is felt +as the property of some concrete object, as the crimson of a rose, the dye of some fabric +or garment, the blue of the sky, which, though we know it to be the infinite extension of +atmosphere and ether, we nevertheless conceive as a dome, with curvature and the definite +boundary of the horizon. Sound in and of itself has pitch and <i>timbre</i>, qualities of +pure sensation; but even with the perception of sound the element of form enters in, for +we hear it with a consciousness of its duration—long or short—or of its +relation to other sounds, heard or imagined.</p> + +<p>Our perceptions, therefore, give us forms. Now form implies <i>relation,</i> the +reference of one part to the other parts in the composition of the whole. And relation +carries with it the possibilities of harmony or discord, of unity or disorder. Before an +object can be regarded as beautiful it must give out a unity of impression. This unity +does not reside in the object itself, but is effected by the mind which perceives it. In +looking at a checkerboard I may see it as an aggregation of white squares set off by +black, or as black squares relieved by white. I may read it as a series of horizontals, +or of verticals, or of diagonals, according as I <i>attend</i> to it. The design of the +checker-board is not an absolute and fixed quantity inherent in the object itself, but is +capable of a various interpretation according to the relative emphasis given to the parts +by the perceiving mind. So with all objects in nature. The twilight landscape which +stirred me may have been quite without interest or meaning to the man at my side; or, if +he responded to it at all, his feelings may have been of a different order and quality +than mine. Where I felt a deep and intimate solemnity in the landscape, he might have +received the twilight as chill and forbidding. Beauty, then, which consists in +harmonious relation, does not lie in nature objectively, but is constituted by the +perception in man's constructive imagination of a harmony and consequent significance +drawn out of natural forms. It is, in Emerson's phrase, "the integrity of +impression made by manifold natural objects." And Emerson says further, "The charming +landscape which I saw this morning is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. +Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them +owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye +can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet." The mere pleasurable excitement of the +senses is hardly to be called beauty. An object to be beautiful must express a harmony of +relations and hence a meaning,—a meaning which goes beyond sense-perception and +does not stop with the intellect, but reaches the spirit. Psychologists tell us that "a +curved line is pleasing because the eye is so hung as best to move in it." Pleasing, yes; +but not beautiful. And precisely herein is illustrated the distinction. A life wearied +with an undulating uniformity of days will find beauty less in the curve than in the +zigzag, because the sight of the broken line brings to the spirit suggestions of change +and adventure. A supine temper finds shock, excitement, and a meaning in the vertical. +Yet the significance of forms is not determined necessarily by contrasts. A quiet spirit +sees its own expression, a harmony of self with external form, in the even lines and flat +spaces of some Dutch etching. Or a vigorous, hardy mind takes fresh stimulus and courage +from the swirling clouds of Turner or the wind-torn landscapes of Constable. An object is +beautiful, not because of the physical ease with which the eye follows its outlines, but +in so far as it has the power to communicate to us the feeling of larger life, to express +and complete for us a harmony within our emotional experience.</p> + +<p>Our senses report to us the material world; we see, we hear, we touch and taste and +smell. But we recognize also that nature has a value for the emotions; it can delight and +thrill and uplift, taking us out of ourselves and carrying us beyond the confines of the +little circle of our daily use and wont. As I look from my window I see against the sky a +pear tree, radiant with blossom, an explosion of light and sensation. Its green and +white, steeped in sunshine and quivering out of rain-washed depths of blue, are good to +behold. But for me, as my spirit goes out to meet it, the tree is spring! In this I do +not mean to characterize a process of intellectual deduction,—that as blossoms come +in the spring, so the flowering of the tree is evidence that spring is here. I mean that +by its color and form, all its outward loveliness, the tree communicates to me the spirit +of the new birth of the year. In myself I feel and live the spring. My joy in the tree, +therefore, does not end with the sight of its gray trunk and interwoven branches and its +gleaming play of leaves: there my joy only begins, and it comes to its fulfillment as I +feel the life of the tree to be an expression and extension of the life that is in me. My +physical organism responds harmoniously in rhythm with the form of the tree, and so far +the tree is pleasing. But, finally, a form is beautiful because it is expressive. +"Beauty," said Millet, "does not consist merely in the shape or coloring of a face. It +lies in the general effect of the form, in suitable and appropriate action. . . . When I +paint a mother, I shall try and make her beautiful simply by the look she bends upon her +child. Beauty is expression." Beauty works its effect through significance, a +significance which is not always to be phrased in words, but is felt; conveyed by the +senses, it at last reaches the emotions. Where the spirit of man comes into harmony with +a harmony external to it, there is beauty.</p> + +<p>The elements of beauty are design, wholeness, and significance. Significance proceeds +out of wholeness or unity of impression; and unity is made possible by design. Whatever +the flower into which it may ultimately expand, beauty has its roots in fitness and +utility; design in this case is constituted by the adaptation of the means to the end. +The owner of a saw-mill wanted a support made for a shafting. Indicating a general idea +of what he desired, he applied to one of his workmen, a man of intelligence and skill in +his craft, but without a conventional education. The man constructed the support, a +triangular framework contrived to receive the shafting at the apex; where there was no +stress within the triangle, he cut away the timber, thus eliminating all surplusage of +material. When the owner saw the finished product he said to his workman, "Well, John, +that is a really beautiful thing you have made there." And the man replied, "I don't know +anything about the beauty of it, but I know it's strong!" The end to be reached was a +support which should be strong. The strong support was felt to be beautiful, for its +lines and masses were apprehended as <i>right.</i> Had the man, with the "little +learning" that is dangerous, attempted embellishment or applied ornament, he would have +spoiled the effect; for ornateness would have been out of place. The perfect fitness of +means to end, without defect and without excess, constituted its beauty; and its beauty +was perceived aesthetically, as a quality inherent in the form, a quality which apart +from the practical serviceableness of the contrivance was capable of communicating +pleasure. So in general, when the inherent needs of the work give shape to the structure +or contrivance, the resulting form is in so far forth beautiful. The early "horseless +carriages," in which a form intended for one use was grafted upon a different purpose, +were very ugly. Today the motor-car, evolved out of structural needs, a thing complete in +and for itself, has in its lines and coherence of composition certain elements of beauty. +In his "Song of Speed," Henley has demonstrated that the motorcar, mechanical, modern, +useful, may even be material for poetry. That the useful is not always perceived as +beautiful is due to the fact that the design which has shaped the work must be regarded +apart from the material serviceableness of the object itself. Beauty consists not in the +actual material, but in the unity of relations which the object embodies. We appreciate +the art involved in the making of the first lock and key only as we look beyond the +merely practical usefulness of the device and so apprehend the harmony of relations +effected through its construction. As the lock and key serve to fasten the door, they are +useful; they are beautiful as they manifest design and we feel their harmony. Beauty is +removed from practical life, not because it is unrelated to life,—just the reverse +of that is true,—but because the enjoyment of beauty is disinterested. The +detachment involved in appreciation is a detachment from material. The appreciator may +seem to be a looker-on at life, in that he does not act but simply feels. But his spirit +is correspondingly alert. In the measure that he is released from servitude to material +he gives free play to his emotion.</p> + +<p>Although beauty is founded upon design, design is not the whole of beauty. Not all +objects which exhibit equal integrity of design are equally beautiful. The beauty of a +work of art is determined by the degree of emotion which impelled its creation and by the +degree in which the work itself is able to communicate the emotion immediately. The +feeling which entered into the making of the first lock and key was simply the inventor's +desire for such a device, his desire being the feeling which accompanied his +consciousness of his need. At the other extreme is the emotion such as attended +Michelangelo's vision of his "David" and urged his hand as he set his chisel to the +unshaped waiting block. And so all the way between. Many pictures are executed in a +wholly mechanical spirit, as so much manufacture; and they exhibit correspondingly little +beauty. Many useful things, as a candle-stick, a pair of andirons, a chair, are wrought +in the spirit of art; into them goes something of the maker's joy in his work; they +become the expression of his emotion: and they are so far beautiful. It is asserted that +Millet's "Angelus" is a greater picture than the painting entitled "War" by Franz Stuck, +because "the idea of peasants telling their beads is more beautiful than the idea of a +ruthless destroyer only in so far as it is morally higher." The moral value as such has +very little to do with it. It is a question of emotion. If Stuck were to put on canvas +his idea of peasants at prayer and if Millet had phrased in pictorial terms his feeling +about war, there is little doubt that Millet's painting would be the more telling and +beautiful. The degree of beauty is fixed by the depth of the man's insight into life and +the corresponding intensity of his emotion.</p> + +<p>Beauty is not limited to one class of object or experience and excluded from another. +A chair may be beautiful, although turned to common use; a picture is not beautiful +necessarily because it is a picture. "Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its +place is bad," says Whitman, Whistler speaks of art as "seeking and finding the beautiful +in all conditions and in all times, as did her high priest, Rembrandt, when he saw +picturesque grandeur and noble dignity in the Jews' quarter of Amsterdam, and lamented +not that its inhabitants were not Greeks." The beautiful must exhibit an integrity of +relations within itself, and it must be in integral relation with its surroundings. The +standard of beauty varies with every age, with every nation, indeed with every +individual. As beauty is not in the object itself, but is in the mind which integrates +the relations which the object manifests, so our appreciation of beauty is determined by +our individuality. And individuality is the resultant of many forces. The self, +inexplicable in essence, is the product of inheritance, and is modified by environment +and training. More than we realize, our judgment is qualified by tradition and habit and +even fashion. Because men have been familiar for so many centuries with the idea that +sculpture should find its vehicle in white marble, the knowledge that Greek marbles +originally were painted comes with something of a shock; and for the moment they have +difficulty in persuading themselves that a Parthenon frieze <i>colored</i> could possibly +be beautiful. Until within comparatively recent years the French have regarded +Shakespeare as a barbarian. The heroic couplet, which was the last word in poetical +expression in the age of Queen Anne, we consider to-day as little more than a mechanical +jingle. Last year's fashions in dress, which seemed at the time to have their merits, are +this year amusingly grotesque. In our judgment of beauty, therefore, allowance must be +made for standards which merely are imposed upon us from without. It is necessary to +distinguish between a formula and the reality. As far as possible we should seek to come +into "original relation" with the universe, freshly for ourselves. So we must return upon +our individual consciousness, and thus determine what is vitally significant to us. For +the man who would appreciate beauty, it is not a question between this or that "school" +in art, whether the truth lies with the classicists or the romanticists; it is not a +question of this or that subject or method to the exclusion of all others. Beauty may be +anywhere or everywhere. It is our task and joy to find it, wherever it may be. And we +shall find it, if we are able to recognize it and we hold ourselves responsive to its +multitudinous appeal.</p> + +<p>The conception of beauty which limits its manifestation to one kind of experience is +so far false and leads to mischievous acceptances and narrowing rejections. We mistake +the pretty for the beautiful and so fail of the true value of beauty; we are blind to the +significance which all nature and all life, in the lowest and commonest as in the highest +and rarest, hold within them. "If beauty," says Hamerton, "were the only province of art, +neither painters nor etchers would find anything to occupy them in the foul stream that +washes the London wharfs." By beauty here is meant the merely agreeable. Pleasing the +river may not be, to the ordinary man; but for the poet and the painter, those to whom it +is given to see with the inner eye, the "foul stream" and its wharfs may be lighted with +mysterious and tender beauty.</p> + +<p> "Earth has not anything to show more fair:<br> + Dull would he be of soul who could pass by<br> + A sight so touching in its majesty:<br> + This city now doth, like a garment, wear<br> + The beauty of the morning.</p> + +<p> . . . . .</p> + +<p> Never did sun more beautifully steep<br> + In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;<br> + Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!<br> + The river glideth at his own sweet will:<br> + Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;<br> + And all that mighty heart is lying still!"</p> + +<p>And Whistler, by the witchery of his brush and his needle, has transmuted the +confusion and sordidness and filth of this Thames-side into exquisite emotion. The +essence of beauty is harmony, but that harmony is not to be reduced to rule and measure. +In the very chaos of the Locomotive Works we may feel beauty; in the thrill which they +communicate we receive access of power and we <i>are,</i> more largely, more universally. +The harmony which is beauty is that unity or integrity of impression by force of which we +are able to feel significance and the relation of the object to our own experience. It is +an error to suppose that beauty must be racked on a procrustean bed of formula. Such +false conceptions result in sham art. To create a work which shall be beautiful it is not +necessary to "smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit." Beauty is not imposed upon material from +without, according to a recipe; it is drawn out from within by the integrating power of +imagination. Art is not artificiality. Art is the expression of vital emotion and +essential significance. The beauty of architecture, for example, consists not in applied +ornament but in structural fitness and adaptability, and grows out of the inherent needs +of the work. The cathedral-builders of old time did not set themselves to create a "work +of art." They wanted a church; and it was a church they built. It is we who, perceiving +the rightness of their achievement, pronounce it to be beautiful. Beauty is not +manufactured, but grows; it cannot be laid on as ornament. Beauty is born out of the +contact of the spirit of man with natural forms, that contact which gives to objects +their significance.</p> + +<p>The recognition of the true nature of beauty may change for us the face of the world. +Some things are universally regarded as beautiful because their appeal is universal. +There are passions, joys, aspirations, common to all the race; and the forms which +objectify these emotions are beautiful universally. We can all enter into the feelings +that gather about a group of children dancing round a Maypole in the Park; but in the +murk and din and demoniacal activity of the Locomotive Works the appeal is not so +obvious. The stupendous workshops become beautiful to me as my being merges into harmony +with them and dilates with the emotion of intenser and fuller life. The Sistine Madonna +is generally regarded as beautiful. But what is the beauty in the unspeakable witch on +the canvas of Frans Hals? Harmony of color and of composition is employed by Raphael in +the rendering of a figure and in the expression of an emotion both of which relate +themselves to the veneration of mankind. Maternity, Christian or pagan, divine or human, +evokes its universal tribute of feeling. On Raphael's canvas complete harmony is made +visible; and the beauty of the picture for us is measured by its power to stir us. In the +painting by Frans Hals the subject represented is in itself not pleasing. The technical +execution of the picture is masterly. But our delight goes beyond any enjoyment of the +skill here exhibited, goes beyond even the satisfaction of the senses in its color and +composition. What the picture expresses is not merely the visible aspect of this woman, +but the painter's own sympathy and appreciation. He saw a beauty in ugliness, a beauty to +which we were blind, for he felt the significance of her life, the eternal rightness to +herself of what she was. His joy in this inner harmony has transfigured the object and +made it beautiful. Beauty penetrates deeper than grace and comeliness; it is not confined +to the pretty and agreeable. Indeed, beauty is not always immediately pleasant, but is +received often with pain. The emotion of pleasure, which is regarded as the necessary +concomitant of beauty, ensues as we are able to merge ourselves in the experience and so +come to feel its ultimate harmony. What is commonly accepted as ugly, as shocking or +sordid, becomes beautiful for us so soon as we apprehend its inner significance. Judged +by the canons of formal beauty, the sky-line of New York city, seen from the North River, +is ugly and distressing. But the responsive spirit, reaching ever outward into new forms +of feeling, can thrill at sight of those Titanic structures out-topping the Palisades +themselves, thrusting their squareness adventurously into the smoke-grayed air, and +telling the triumph of man's mind over the forces of nature in this fulfillment of the +needs of irrepressible activity, this expression of tremendous actuality and life. Not +that the reaction is so definitely formulated in the moment of experience; but this is +something of what is felt. The discovery of such a harmony is the entrance into fuller +living. So it is that the boundaries of beauty enlarge with the expansion of the +individual spirit.</p> + +<p>To extend the boundaries of beauty by the revelation of new harmonies is the function +of art. With the ordinary man, the plane of feeling, which is the basis of appreciation, +is below the plane of his attention as he moves through life from day to day. As a clock +may be ticking in the room quite unheeded, and then suddenly we hear it because our +attention is called to it; so only that emotion really counts to us as experience which +comes to our cognizance. When once the ordinary man is made aware of the underlying plane +of feeling, the whole realm of appreciation is opened to him by his recognition of the +possibilities of beauty which life may hold. Consciously to recognize that forces are +operating which lie behind the surface aspect of things is to open ourselves to the play +of these forces. With persons in whom intellect is dominant and the controlling power, +the primary need is to understand; and for such, first to know is to be helped finally to +feel. To comprehend that there is a soul in every fact and that within material objects +reside meanings for the spirit, or beauty, is to be made more sensitive to their +influence. With the artist, however, the case is different. At the moment of creation he +is little conscious of the purport of the work to which he sets his hand. He is not +concerned, as we have been, with the "why" of beauty; from the concrete directly to the +concrete is his progress. Life comes to him not as thought but as emotion. He is moved by +actual immediate contact with the world about him,—by the sight of a landscape, by +the mood of an hour or place, by the power of some personality; it may be, too, a welter +of recollected sensations and impressions that plays upon his spirit. The resultant +emotion, not reasoned about but nevertheless directed to a definite end, takes shape in +external concrete forms which are works of art. Just because he is so quick to feel the +emotional value of life he is an artist; and much of his power as an artist derives from +the concreteness of his emotion. The artist is the creative mind, creative in this sense, +that in the outward shows of things he feels their inward and true relations, and by new +combinations of material elements he re<font face="Times New Roman">ë</font>mbodies +his feeling in forms whose message is addressed to the spirit. The reason why Millet +painted the "Sower" was that he felt the beauty of this peasant figure interpreted as +significance and life. And it is this significance and life, in which we are made to +share, that his picture is designed to express.</p> + +<p>Experience comes to us in fragments; the surface of the world throws back to us but +broken glimpses. In the perspective of a lifetime the fragments flow together into order, +and we dimly see the purpose of our being here; in moments of illumination and deeper +insight a glimpse may disclose a sudden harmony, and the brief segment of nature's circle +becomes beautiful. For then is revealed the shaping principle. Within the fact, behind +the surface, are apprehended the relations of which the fact and the surface are the +expression. The rhythm thus discovered wakens an accordant rhythm in the spirit of man. +The moment gives out its meaning as man and nature merge together in the inclusive +harmony. If the human spirit were infinite in comprehension, we should receive all things +as beautiful, for we should apprehend their rightness and their harmony. To our finite +perception, however, design is not always evident, for it is overlaid and confounded with +other elements which are not at the moment fused. Just here is the office of art. For art +presents a harmony liberated from all admixture of conflicting details and purged of all +accidents, thus rendering the single meaning salient. To compel disorder into order and +so reveal new beauty is the achievement of the artist. The world is commonplace or +fraught with divinest meanings, according as we see it so. To art we turn for revelation, +knowing that ideals of beauty may be many and that beauty may manifest itself in many +forms.</p><a name="8"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>VIII</p> + +<p>THE ARTS OF FORM</p> + +<p>THE maker of the first bowl moulds the plastic clay into the shape best adapted to its +purpose, a vessel to hold water, from which he can drink easily; the half-globe rather +than the cube affords the greatest holding capacity with the least expenditure of +material. He finds now that the form itself—over and above the practical +serviceableness of the bowl—gives him pleasure. With a pointed stick or bit of +flint he traces in the yielding surface a flowing line or an ordered series of dots or +crosses, allowing free play to his fancy and invention. The design does not resemble +anything else, nor does it relate itself to any object external to the maker; it has no +meaning apart from the pleasure which it gave him as he conceived and traced it, and the +pleasure it now gives him to look at it. To another man who sees the bowl, its form and +its decoration afford likewise a double pleasure: there is first the satisfaction of +senses and mind in the contemplation of harmonious form and rhythmic pattern; and second, +there is communicated to him a feeling of the maker's delight in his handiwork, and +sympathetically and imaginatively the beholder realizes that delight in his own +experience.</p> + +<p>I am walking with a friend along a road which climbs a wooded hillside. A few steps +bring us to the top and the edge of a clearing. There, suddenly a sweep of country is +rolled out before us. A quick intake of the breath, and then the cry, "Ah!" Consciousness +surges back over me, and turning to my friend, I exclaim, "See the line of those hills +over there across the tender sky and those clouds tumbling above them; see how the hills +dip down into the meadows; look at the lovely group of willows along the bank of the +river, how graciously they come in, and then that wash of purple light over everything!" +My simple cry, "Ah!" was the expression of emotion, the unconscious, involuntary +expression; it was not art. It did not formulate my emotion definitely, and although it +was an expression of emotion, it had no power to communicate the special quality of it. +So soon, however, as I composed the elements in the landscape, which stimulated my +emotion, into a distinct and coherent whole and by means of that I tried to convey to my +friend something of what I was feeling, my expression tended to become art. My medium of +expression happened to be words. If I had been alone and wanted to take home with me a +record of my impression of the landscape, a pencil-sketch of the little composition might +have served to indicate the sources of my feeling and to suggest its quality. Whether in +words or in line and mass, my work would be in a rudimentary form a work of +representative art. The objective fact of the landscape which I point out to my friend +engages his interest; his pleasure derives from those aspects of it which my emotion +emphasizes and which constitute its beauty; and something of the same emotion that I felt +he realizes in his own experience.</p> + +<p>The impulse to expression which fulfills itself in a work of art is directed in +general by one of two motives,—the motive of representation and the motive of pure +form. These two motives are coexistent with human activity itself. The earliest vestiges +of prehistoric races and the remains of the remotest civilizations are witnesses of man's +desire to imitate and record, and also of his pleasure in harmony of form. Certain caves +in France, inhabited by man some thousands of years before history begins, have yielded +up reindeer horns and bones, carved with reliefs and engraved with drawings of mammoths, +reindeer, and fish. On the walls and roofs of these caves are paintings in bright colors +of animals, rendered with correctness and animation. Flint axes of a still remoter epoch +"are carved with great dexterity by means of small chips flaked off the stone, and show a +regularity of outline which testifies to the delight of primitive man in symmetry."[*] +Burial mounds, of unknown antiquity, and the rude stone monuments such as Stonehenge and +the dolmens of Brittany and Wales, emerging out of prehistoric dawns, are evidence of +man's striving after architectural unity in design and harmony of proportion.</p> + +<p>[*] S. Reinach, <i>The Story of Art throughout the Ages,</i> chapter i.</p> + +<p>The existence of these two separate motives which impel creation, man's desire to +imitate and his delight in harmony, gives rise to a division of the arts into two general +classes, namely, the representative arts and the arts of pure form. The representative +arts comprise painting and sculpture, and literature in its manifestations of the drama, +fiction, and dramatic and descriptive poetry. These arts draw their subjects from nature +and human life, from the world external to the artist. The arts of form comprise +architecture and music, and that limitless range of human activities in design and +pattern-making for embellishment—including also the whole category of "useful +arts"—which may be subsumed under the comprehensive term <i>decoration.</i> In +these arts the "subject" is self-constituted and does not derive its significance from +its likeness to any object external to it; the form itself is the subject. Lyric poetry +stands midway between the two classes. It is the expression of "inner states" but it +externalizes itself in terms of the outer world. It has a core of thought, and it employs +images from nature which can be visualized, and it recalls sounds whose echo can be +wakened in imaginative memory.</p> + +<p> "Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,<br> + And Phoebus 'gins arise,<br> + His steeds to water at those springs<br> + On chaliced flowers that +lies;<br> + And winking Mary-buds begin<br> + To ope their golden eyes;<br> + With everything that pretty bin,<br> + My lady sweet, arise!<br> + +Arise, arise!"</p> + +<p>The intellectual and sensuous elements which lyric poetry embodies are finally +submerged under the waves of emotional stimulus which flow from the form as form. Such +poetry does not depend upon the fact of representation for its meaning; the very form +itself, as in music, is its medium of communicating the emotion. Art, therefore, to +phrase the same matter in slightly different terms, has a subjective and an objective +aspect. In the one case, the artist projects his feeling into the forms which he himself +creates; in the other case, the forms external to him, as nature and human life, inspire +the emotion, and these external forms the artist reproduces, with of course the necessary +modifications, as the symbol and means of expression of his emotion.</p> + +<p>The distinction between the representative arts and the arts of form is not ultimate, +nor does it exclude one class wholly from the other; it defines a general tendency and +serves to mark certain differences in original motive and in the way in which the two +kinds of work may be received and appreciated. In actual works of art themselves, though +they differ as to origin and function, the line of division cannot be sharply drawn. The +dance may be an art of form or a representative art according as it embodies the rhythms +of pure movement or as it numerically figures forth dramatic ideas. Painting, as in the +frescoes of the Sistine Chapel and the wall paintings of Tintoretto and Veronese in the +Ducal Palace of Venice, may be employed in the service of decoration. Decoration, as in +architectural sculpture and in patterns for carpets and wall-coverings, often draws its +motives from nature, such as leaves, flowers, fruits, and animals; but when the function +of the work is decorative and not representative, the naturalistic and graphic character +of the subject is subordinated to the purposes of abstract and formal design. A picture, +on the other hand, which is frankly representative in purpose, must submit its +composition and color-harmony to the requirements of unity in design; in a sense it must +make a pattern. And a statue, as the "Victory of Samothrace," bases its ultimate appeal, +not upon the fact of representation, but upon complete, rhythmic, beautiful form.</p> + +<p>To the appreciator the arts of form carry a twofold significance. There is first the +pleasure which derives from the contemplation and reception of a harmony of pure form, +including harmony of color, of line, and of flat design as well as form in the round, a +pleasure of the senses and the mind. Second, works of art in this category, as they are +the expression for the artist of his emotion, become therefore the manifestation to the +appreciator and means of communication of that emotion.</p> + +<p>Man's delight in order, in unity, in harmony, rhythm, and balance, is inborn. The +possession of these qualities by an object constitutes its form. Form, in the sense of +unity and totality of relations, is not to be confounded with mere regularity. It may +assume all degrees of divergence from geometric precision, all degrees of variety, +ranging from the visual perfectness of the Parthenon to the sublime and triumphant +inconsequence of the sky-line of New York city. It may manifest all degrees of complexity +from a cup to a cathedral or from "Home, Sweet Home" to Tschaikowski's "Pathetic +Symphony." Whatever the elements and the incidents, our sense of order in the parts and +of singleness of impression endows the object with its form. The form as we apprehend it +of an object constitutes its beauty, its capability to arouse and to delight.</p> + +<p>Because of the essential make-up of man's mind and spirit, powers that are innate and +determined by forces still beyond the scope of analysis, the perception of a harmony of +relations, which is beauty, is attended with pleasure, a pleasure that is felt and cannot +be explained. This inborn, inexplicable delight is at once the origin of the arts of form +and the basis of our appreciation. Each art, as the fashioning of objects of use, as +decoration, architecture, and music, is governed by its own intrinsic, inherent laws and +rests its appeal upon man's pleasure in form. There is no standard external to the laws +of the art itself by which to judge the rightness and the beauty of the individual work. +In the arts of use and in decoration and architecture, the beauty of a work, as the +beauty of a chair, as in the ordering and appointments of a room, as the beauty of a +temple, a theatre, a dwelling, derives primarily from the fitness of the object to its +function, and finally from the rhythm of its lines and the harmony of its masses and +proportions,—its total form. A chair which cannot be sat in may be interesting and +agreeable to look at, but it is not truly beautiful; for then it is not a chair but a +curiosity, a bijou, and a superfluity; to be beautiful it must be first of all frankly +and practically a chair. A living-room which cannot be lived in with comfort and +restfulness and peace of mind is not a living-room, but a museum or a concentrated +department store; at best it is only an inclosed space. A beautiful building declares its +function and use, satisfies us with the logic and coherence of its parts, and delights us +with its reticence or its boldness, its simplicity or its inventiveness, in fine, its +personality, as expressed in its parts and their confluence into an ordered, +self-contained, and self-sufficing whole. Music, using sound for its material, is a +pattern-weaving in tones. The power of music to satisfy and delight resides in the +sensuous value of its material and in the character of its pattern as form, the balance +and contrast of tonal relations, the folding and unfolding of themes, their development +and progress to the final compelling unity-in-variety which constitutes its form and +which in its own inherent and self-sufficing way is made the expression of the composer's +emotion and musical idea. Lyric poetry is the fitting of rhythmic, melodious, colored +words to the emotion within, to the point where the very form itself becomes the meaning, +and the essence and mystery of the song are in the singing. Beauty is harmony +materialized; it is emotion ordered and made visible, audible, tangible. If in the arts +of form we seek further a standard of truth, their truth is not found in their relation +to any external verity, but is determined by their correspondence with inner +experience.</p> + +<p>In the category of the arts of form the single work is to be received in its entirety +and integrity as form. The whole, however, may be resolved into its parts, and the +individual details may be interesting in themselves. Thus into decorative patterns are +introduced elements of meaning which attach themselves to the world and experience +external to the artist. Many ornamental motives, like the zigzag and the egg-and-dart, +for example, had originally a symbolic value. Sometimes they are drawn from primitive +structures and fabrics, as the checker-board pattern, with its likeness to the plaitings +of rush mattings, and the volute and spiral ornaments, which recall the curves and +involutions of wattle and wicker work. Again, decoration may employ in its service +details that in themselves are genuinely representative art. The frieze of the Parthenon +shows in relief a procession of men and women and horses and chariots and animals. The +sculptures of Gothic churches represent men and women, and the carvings of mouldings, +capitals, and traceries are based on naturalistic motives, taking their designs from +leaves and flowers. The essential function of ornament is to emphasize form and not to +obscure it, though nowadays in machine-made things a kind of pseudo-embellishment is laid +on to distract attention from the badness and meaninglessness of the form; in true +decoration the representative elements are subordinated to the formal character of the +whole. The representative interest may be enjoyed separately and in detail; but finally +the graphic purpose yields to the decorative, and the details take their place as parts +of the total design. Thus a Gothic cathedral conveys its complete and true impression +first and last as form. Midway we may set ourselves to a reading of the details. The +figure of this saint on the jamb or the archivolt of the portal is expressive of such +simple piety and enthusiasm! In this group on the tympanum what animation and spirit! +This moulding of leaves and blossoms is cut with such loving fidelity and exquisite +feeling for natural truth! But at the last the separate members fulfill their appointed +office as they reveal the supreme function of the living total form.</p> + +<p>Music, too, in some of its manifestations, as in song, the opera, and programme music, +has a representative and illustrative character. In Chopin's "Funeral March" we hear the +tolling of church bells, and it is easy to visualize the slow, straggling file of +mourners following the bier; the composition here has a definite objective base drawn +from external fact, and the "idea" is not exclusively musical, but admits an infusion of +pictorial and literary elements. In listening to the love duet of the second act of +"Tristan," although the lovers are before us in actual presence on the stage, I find +myself involuntarily closing my eyes, for the music is so personal and so spiritualized, +it is in and of itself so intensely the realization of the emotion, that the objective +presentment of it by the actors becomes unnecessary and is almost an intrusion. The +representative, figurative element in music may be an added interest, but its appeal is +intellectual; if as we hear the "Funeral March," we say to ourselves, This is so and so, +and, Here they do this or that, we are thinking rather than feeling. Music is the +immediate expression of emotion communicated immediately; and the composition will not +perfectly satisfy unless it is <i>music,</i> compelling all relations of melody, harmony, +and rhythm into a supreme and triumphant order.</p> + +<p>Whereas the representative arts are based upon objective fact, drawing their +"subjects" from nature and life external to the artist; in decoration, in architecture, +and in music the artist creates his own forms as the projection of his emotion and the +means of its expression. Richard Wagner, referring to the composition of his "Tristan," +writes: "Here, in perfect trustfulness, I plunged into the inner depth of soul events, +and from out this inmost centre of the world I fearlessly built up its outer form. . . . +Life and death, the whole import and existence of the outer world, here hang on nothing +but the inner movements of the soul. The whole affecting Action comes about for the +reason only that the inmost soul demands it, and steps to light with the very shape +foretokened in the inner shrine." The form, thus self-constituted, has the power to +delight us, and the work is at the same time the expression of emotion. The arts of form +please us with the pleasure that attends the perception of formal beauty; but this +pleasure docs not exhaust their capability to minister to us. What differentiates art +from manufacture is the element of personal expression. Born out of need, whether the +need be physical or spiritual, fulfilling the urge to expression, a work of art embodies +its maker's delight in creating. Correspondingly, beyond our immediate enjoyment of the +work as form, we feel something of what the man felt who was impelled to create it. His +handiwork, his pattern, his composition, becomes the means of communicating to us his +emotional experience.</p> + +<p>Obviously the significance of any work is determined primarily by the intensity and +scope of emotion which has prompted it. The creation of works of art involves all degrees +of intention, from the hut in the wilderness rudely thrown together, whose purpose was +shelter, to a Gothic cathedral, in its multitudinousness eloquent of man's worship and +aspiration. The man who moulded the first bowl, adapting its form as closely as possible +to its use and shaping its proportions for his own pleasure to satisfy his sense of +harmony and rhythm, differs from the builders of the Parthenon only in the degree of +intensity of his inspiring emotion and in the measure of his controlling thought. The +beauty of accomplished form of cathedral and of temple is compelling; and we may forget +that they rose out of need. Both hut and bowl are immediately useful, and their beauty is +not so evident,—that little touch of feeling which wakens a response in us. But in +their adaptation to their function they become significant; the satisfaction which +accompanies expression is communicated to us as we apprehend in the work the creator's +intention and we realize in ourselves what the creation of it meant to him as the +fulfillment of his need and the utterance of his emotion.</p> + +<p>So the expressive power of an individual work is conditioned originally by the amount +of feeling that enters into the making of it. Every phrase of a Beethoven symphony is +saturated with emotion, and the work leads us into depths and up to heights of universal +experience, disclosing to us tortuous ways and infinite vistas of the possibilities of +human feeling. A simple earthen jug may bear the impress of loving fingers, and the +crudely turned form may be eloquent of the caress of its maker. So we come to value even +in the humblest objects of use this autographic character, which is the gate of entrance +into the experience of the men who fashioned them. Every maker strives toward perfection, +the completest realization of his ideal within his power of execution. But the very +shortcomings of his work are significant as expressive of what he felt and was groping +after; they are so significant that by a curious perversion, machinery, which in our +civilized day has supplanted the craftsman, tries by mechanical means to reproduce the +roughness and supposed imperfections of hand work. Music is the consummate art, in which +the form and the content are one and inextricable; its medium is the purest, least +alloyed means of expression of instant emotion. Architecture, in its harmonies and +rhythms, the gathering up of details into the balanced and perfect whole, partakes of the +nature of music. But the arts of use and decoration also have their message for the +spirit. There is no object fashioned by the hand of man so humble that it may not embody +a true thought and a sincere delight. There is no pattern or design so simple and so +crude that it may not be the overflow of some human spirit, a mind and heart touched to +expression.</p><a name="9"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>IX</p> + +<p>REPRESENTATION</p> + +<p>BEFORE me is a little bowl of old Satsuma. As I look at it there wakens in me a +responsive rhythm, and involuntarily my fingers move as if to caress its suave and lovely +lines. The rich gold and mingled mellow browns of its surface pattern intricately woven +are a gracious harmony and a delight. Gradually, as I continue to look on it, a feeling +is communicated to me of the maker's own joy in his work; and the bowl, its harmonies and +rhythms, and all that it expresses, become part of me. There it is, complete in itself, +gathering up and containing within itself the entire experience. My thoughts, sensations, +feelings do not go beyond the bowl.</p> + +<p>Another time I am standing in the hall of the Academy in Florence. At the end of the +corridor towers a superb form. I see that it is the figure of a youth. His left hand +holds a sling drawn across his shoulder; his right arm hangs by his side, his hand +grasping a pebble close to his thigh; calm and confident, his head erect, his strength +held in leash waiting to be loosed, he fronts the oncoming of the foe. The statue is the +presentation of noble form, and it wakens in me an accordant rhythm; I feel in myself +something of what youthful courage, life, and conscious power mean. But my experience +does not stop there. The statue is not only presentation but representation. It figures +forth a youth, David, the Hebrew shepherd-boy, and he stands awaiting the Philistine. I +have read his story, I have my own mental image of him, and about his personality cluster +many thoughts. To what Michelangelo shows me I add what I already know. Recognition, +memory, knowledge, facts and ideas, a whole store of associations allied with my previous +experience, mingle with my instant emotion in its presence. The sculptor, unlike the +potter, has not created his own form; the subject of his work exists outside of him in +nature. He uses the subject for his own ends, but in his treatment of it he is bound by +certain responsibilities to external truth. His work as it stands is not completely +self-contained, but is linked with the outer world; and my appreciation of it is affected +by this reference to extrinsic fact.</p> + +<p>An artist is interested in some scene in nature or a personality or situation in human +life; it moves him. As the object external to him is the stimulus of his emotion and is +associated with it, so he uses the object as the symbol of his experience and means of +expression of his emotion. Here, then, the feeling, to express which the work is created, +gathers about a subject, which can be recognized intellectually, and the fact of the +subject is received as in a measure separate from the feeling which flows from it. In a +painting of a landscape, we recognize as the basis of the total experience the fact that +it is a landscape, so much water and field and sky; and then we yield ourselves to the +<i>beauty</i> of the landscape, the emotion with which the artist suffuses the material +objects and so transfigures them. Into representative art, therefore, there enters an +element not shared by the arts of pure form, the element of <i>the subject,</i> carrying +with it considerations of objective truth and of likeness to external fact. Toward the +understanding of the total scope of a picture or a statue, and by inference and +application of the principles, toward the understanding of literature as well, it may +help us if we determine the relation of beauty to truth and the function and value of the +subject in representative art.</p> + +<p>The final significance of a work of art is beauty, received as emotional experience. +Nature becomes beautiful to us at the point where it manifests a harmony to which we feel +ourselves attuned. At the moment of enjoyment we unconsciously project our personality +into this harmony outside of us, identifying ourselves with it and finding it at that +instant the expression of something toward which we reach and aspire. When we come +consciously to reason about our experience, we see that the harmony external to us which +we feel as the extension of ourselves does not stop with the actual material itself of +nature, but emanates from it as the expression of nature's spirit. The harmony is a +harmony of relations, made visible through material, and significant to us and beautiful +in the measure that we respond to it.</p> + +<p>It is the beauty of the object, its significance for the spirit, that primarily moves +the artist to expression. Why one landscape and not another impels him to render it upon +his canvas is not to be explained. This impulse to immediate and concrete utterance is +inspiration. And inspiration would seem to be a confluence of forces outside of the +individual consciousness or will, focused at the instant into desire, which becomes the +urge to creation. "The mind in creation," says Shelley, "is as a fading coal, which some +invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this +power rises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is +developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its +approach or its departure." The artist does not say, "Lo, I will paint a landscape; let +me find my subject!" The subject presents itself. There it is, by chance almost,—a +sudden harmony before him, long low meadows stretching away to the dark hills, the late +sun striking on the water, gold and green melting into a suffusing flush of purple light, +a harmony of color and line and mass which his spirit leaps out to meet and with which it +fuses in a larger unity. In the moment of contact all consciousness of self as a separate +individuality is lost. Out of the union of the two principles, the spirit of man and the +beauty of the object, is born the <i>idea,</i> which is to come to expression as a work +of art.</p> + +<p>But the artist is a mind as well as a temperament. Experience is a swing of the +pendulum between the momentary ecstasy of immediate contact and the subsequent reaction +upon the moment, which is consciousness of it. In order to make his vision actual, the +artist rises out of the domain of feeling into that of thought. The landscape has +compelled him; it is now he who must compel the landscape. To the shaping of his work he +must bring to bear all his conscious power of selection and organization and all his +knowledge of the capabilities and resources of his means. Art springs out of emotion; +painting is a science. The artist's command of his subject as the symbol of his idea +derives from the stern and vigorous exercise of mind. The rightness of his composition is +determined by a logic more flexible, perhaps, but no less exacting than the laws of +geometry. By the flow of his line and the disposition of his masses, the artist must +carry the eye of the beholder along the way he wants it to travel until it rests upon the +point where he wants it to rest. There must be no leaks and no false directions; there +must be the cosmos within the frame and nothing outside of it. The principles of +perspective have been worked out with a precision that entitles them to rank as a +science. Color has its laws, which, again, science is able to formulate. These processes +and formulas and laws are not the whole of art, but they have their place. The power to +feel, the imaginative vision, and creative insight are not to be explained. But knowledge +too, acquired learning and skill, plays its part, and to recognize its function and +service is to be helped to a fuller understanding of the achievement of the artist.</p> + +<p>Gifted with a vibrant, sensitive temperament, endowed with discriminating and +organizing power of mind, equipped with a knowledge of the science and the mechanics of +his craft, and trained to skill in manual execution, the artist responds to the impulse +of his inspiration. His subject is before him. But what is his subject? A scene in nature +furnishes him the objective base of his picture, but properly his work is the expression +of what he feels. A storm may convey to different men entirely different impressions. In +its presence one man may feel himself overwhelmed with terror. These wild, black skies +piling in upon him, the hilltops that seem to race through the clouds, the swaying, +snapping trees, the earth caught up in the mad grasp of the tempest, may smite his soul +with the pitilessness of nature and her inexorable blind power. Another thrills with joy +in this cosmic struggle, the joy of conflict which he has known in his own life, the +meeting of equal forces in fair fight, where the issue is still doubtful and victory will +fall at last upon the strong, though it is not the final triumph but the present struggle +that makes the joy. In rendering the "subject" upon his canvas, by the manipulation of +composition and line and mass and color, he makes the storm ominous and terrible, or +glorious, according as he feels. The import of his picture is not the natural fact of the +storm itself, but its significance for the emotions.</p> + +<p>A work of representative art is the rendering of a unity of impression and harmony of +relations which the artist has perceived and to which he has thrilled in the world +external to him. He presents not the facts themselves but their spirit, that something +which endows the facts with their significance and their power to stir him. As the +meaning of nature to the beholder is determined by the effect it produces on his mind and +temperament, so the artist, in the expression of this meaning, aims less at a statement +of objective accuracy of exterior appearance than at producing a certain effect, the +effect which is the equivalent of the meaning of nature to him. Thus the painter who sees +beyond the merely intellectual and sensuous appeal of his subject and enters into its +spirit, tries to render on his canvas, not the actual color of nature, but the sensation +of color and its value for the emotions. With the material splendor of nature,—her +inexhaustible lavish wealth of color, the glory of life which throbs through creation, +the mystery of actual movement,—art cannot compete. For the hues and tones of +nature, infinite in number and subtlety, the painter has only the few notes within the +poor gamut of his palette. How can he quicken his dull paint with the life-beat of +palpitating flesh, or the sculptor animate the rigid marble with the vibrations of vivid +motion? But where nature is infinite in her range she is also scattering in her effects. +By the concentration of divergent forces, art gains in intensity and directness of +impression what it sacrifices in the scope of its material. Michelangelo uses as his +subject David, the shepherd-boy; but the person, the mere name, does not signify. What +his work embodies is triumphant youth, made visible and communicable. When Millet shows +us the peasant, it is not what the peasant is feeling that the artist represents, but +what Millet felt about him. The same landscape will be rendered differently by different +men. Each selects his details according to the interest of his eye and mind and feeling, +and he brings them into a dominant harmony which stands to him for the meaning of the +landscape. None of the pictures is an accurate statement of the facts as they are, off +there in nature; all are true to the integrating inner vision. The superficial observer +sees only the accidents, and he does not distinguish relative importance. The artist, +with quicker sensibilities and a trained mind, analyzes, discovers the underlying +principle, and then makes a synthesis which embodies only the essential; he seizes the +distinctive aspect of the object and makes it salient. There may be, of course, purely +descriptive representation, which is a faithful record of the facts of appearance as the +painter sees them, without any feeling toward them; here he works as a scientist, not as +an artist. Merely imitative painting falls short of artistic significance, for it +embodies no meaning beyond the external fact. It is the expressiveness of the object that +the true artist cares to represent; it is its expressiveness, its value for the emotions, +that constitutes its beauty.</p> + +<p>To achieve beauty the representative artist bases his work upon the truth of nature. +It is nature that supplies him with his motive,—some glimpse, some fragment, which +reveals within itself a harmony. It may be a form, as a tree, a man, a mountain range, +the race of clouds across the sky; it may be a color-harmony or "arrangement," in which +color rather than form is the dominant interest, as with a landscape or an interior; it +may be the effects of light, as the sunshine playing over golden haystacks, or the glint +of light on metal, or the sheen of lovely fabrics. Out of the complex of interests and +appeals which an object offers, what is the <i>truth</i> of the object? The truth of +nature resides not in the accidents of surface but in the essential relations, of which +the surface is the manifestation. A birch tree and an apple tree are growing side by +side. Their roots strike down into the same soil, their branches are warmed by the same +sun, wet by the same rains, and swept by the same winds. The birch tree is always lithe +and gracious and feminine; the apple tree is always bent and sternly gnarled like the +hand of an old man. The life-force which impels the tree to growth is distinctive to each +kind. Within all natural objects, then, a crystal, a tree, a man, there is a shaping +principle which determines their essential form. But no two individual apple trees are +precisely alike; from the essential form of the tree there are divergences in the single +manifestations. Though subject to accident and variation, however, every tree exhibits a +characteristic, inviolate <i>tendency,</i> and remains true to the inner life-principle +of its being. The "truth" of the apple tree is this distinctive, essential form, by +virtue of which it is an apple tree and not some other kind, the form which underlies and +allows for all individual variations. What the painter renders on his canvas is not the +superficial accidents of some single tree, but by means of that, he seeks to image forth +in color and form the tendency of all trees. The truth of an object presents itself to +the imagination as design, for this organic, shaping principle of things, expressed in +colored myriad forms throughout the endless pageantry of nature, is apprehended by the +spirit of man as a harmony; and in the experience of the artist truth identifies itself +with beauty.</p> + +<p>The distinction between the accidental surface of things and the significance that may +be drawn out of them is exemplified by the difference between accuracy and truth in +representation. Accurate drawing is the faithful record of the facts of appearance as +offered to the eye. Truth of drawing is the rendering in visible terms of the meaning and +spirit of the object, the form which the object takes not simply for the eye but for the +mind. A pencil sketch by Millet shows a man carrying in each hand a pail of water. The +arms are drawn inaccurately, in that they are made too long. What Millet wanted to +express, however, was not the physical shape of the arms, but the feeling of the burden +under which the man was bending; and by lengthening the arms he has succeeded in +conveying, as mere accuracy could not express it, the sensation of weight and muscular +strain. In Hals' picture of the "Jester" the left hand is sketched in with a few swift +strokes of the brush. But so, it "keeps its place" in relation to the whole; and it is +more nearly right than if it had been made the centre of attention and had been drawn +with the most meticulous precision. The hand is not accurate, but it is true. Similarly, +size is an affair not of physical extent but of proportion. A figure six inches high may +convey the same value as a figure six feet high, if the same proportions are observed. A +statue is the presentation, not of the human body, but of the human form, and more than +that, of what the form expresses. When I am talking with my friend I am aware of his +physical presence detaching itself from the background of the room in which we are. But I +feel in him something more. And that something more goes behind the details of his +physical aspect. His eyes might be blue instead of brown, his nose crooked rather than +straight; he might be maimed and disfigured by some mishap. These accidents would not +change for me what is the reality. My friend is not his body, though it is by his body +that he exists; the reality of my friend is what he essentially is, what he is of the +spirit. A photograph of a man registers certain facts of his appearance at that moment. +The eye and the mind of the artist discern the truth which underlies the surface; the +artist feels his sitter not as a face and a figure, a mere body, but as a personality; +and the portrait expresses a man.</p> + +<p>As grasped by our finite minds, there are partial truths and degrees of truth. There +are, for example, the facts of outer appearance, modified in our reception of them by +what we know as distinct from what we really see. Thus a tree against the background of +hill or sky seems to have a greater projection and relief than is actually presented to +the eye, because we <i>know</i> the tree is round. Manet's "Girl with a Parrot," which +appears to the ordinary man to be too flat, is more true to reality than any portrait +that "seems to come out of its frame." Habitually in our observation of objects about us, +we note only so much as serves our practical ends; and this is the most superficial, +least essential aspect. Projection is a partial truth, and to it many painters sacrifice +other and higher truths. Manet, recovering the "innocence of the eye" and faithful to it, +has penetrated the secrets and won the truth of light. Botticelli saw the world as +sonorous undulations of exquisite line; and his subtly implicated, evanescent patterns of +line movement, "incorrect" as they may be superficially in drawing, caress the eye as +music finds and satisfies the soul. When such is his power over us, it is difficult to +say that Botticelli had not some measure of the truth. The world of the Venetians sang +full-sounding harmonies of glorious color. Velasquez saw everything laved around with a +flood of silver quiet atmosphere. All in their own way have found and shown to us a +truth.</p> + +<p>To render what he has seen and felt in the essence and meaning of it, the artist seeks +to disengage the shaping principle of the particular aspect of truth, which has impressed +him, from all accidents in its manifestation. To make this dominant character salient +beyond irrelevant circumstance, art works by selection. Art is necessarily a compromise. +It isolates some elements and sacrifices others; but it is none the less true on that +account. The mere material of the object is more or less fixed, but the relations which +the object embodies are capable of many combinations and adjustments, according to the +mind and temperament of the individual artist who is moved by it. All art is in a certain +sense abstraction; all art in a measure idealizes. It is abstraction in the sense that it +presents the intrinsic and distinctive qualities of things, purged of accident.</p> + +<p>Art does not compete with nature; it is a statement of the spirit and intention of +nature in the artist's own terms. The test of the work is not apparent and superficial +likeness, but truth. Art idealizes in the measure that it disengages the truth. In this +aspect of it the work is ideal as distinct from merely actual. There is a practice in art +which draws its standard of beauty, its ideal, not from nature but from other art, and +which seeks to "improve nature" by the combination of arbitrarily chosen elements and by +the modification of natural truth to fit a preconceived formula. The Eclectics of +Bologna, in the seventeenth century, sought to combine Raphael's perfection of drawing +and composition, Michelangelo's sublimity and his mastery of the figure, and Correggio's +sweet sentiment and his supremacy in the rendering of light and shade, fondly supposing +thus that the sum of excellent parts is equivalent to an excellence of the whole. This is +false idealism. The Greeks carried their research for certain truths of the human form to +the point of perfection and complete realization. The truth of the Greeks was mistaken by +the pseudo-classicists and misapplied. Thus Delacroix exclaimed ironically, "In order to +present an ideal head of a negro, our teachers make him resemble as far as possible the +profile of Antin<font face="Times New Roman">ö</font>us, and then say, 'We have done +our utmost; if, nevertheless, we fail to make the negro beautiful, then we ought not to +introduce into our pictures such a freak of nature, the squat nose and thick lips, which +are so unendurable to the eyes.'" True idealism treats everything after its own kind, +making it more intensely itself than it is in the play of nature; the athlete is more +heroically an athlete, the negro more vividly a negro. True idealism seeks to express the +tendency by virtue of which an object is what it is. The abstraction which art effects is +not an unreality but a higher reality. It is not the mere type, that art presents, for +the type as such does not exist in nature. The individual is not lost but affirmed by +this reference to the inner principle of its being. A good portrait has in it an element +of caricature; the difference between portraiture and caricature is the difference +between emphasis and exaggeration. Art is not the falsification of nature, but the fuller +realization of it. It is the interpretation of nature's truth, the translation of it, +divined by the artist, into simpler terms to be read and understood by those of less +original insight. The deeper the penetration into the life-force and shaping principle of +nature, the greater is the measure of truth.</p> + +<p>In representative art the truth of nature is the work's objective base. What the +artist finally expresses is the relation of the object to his own experience. A work of +art is the statement of the artist's insight into nature, moulded and suffused by the +emotion attending his perception. Of the object, he uses that aspect and that degree of +truth which serve him for the expression of his feeling toward it. What is called +"realism" is one order of truth, one way of seeing. "Impressionism" is another order of +truth. "Idealism" is still another. But all three elements blend in varying proportion in +any work. Even the realist, who "paints what he sees," has his ideal, which is the effect +he sets himself to produce by his picture, and he paints according to his impression. He +renders not the object itself but his mental image of it; and that image is the result of +his way of seeing and feeling, his habit of mind, his interest, and his store of +memories. The idealist must base his work upon some kind of reality, or it is a +monstrosity; he is obliged to refer to the external world for his symbols. The +impressionist, who concerns himself with the play of light over surfaces in nature, is +seeking for truth, and he cares to paint at all because that play of light, seemingly so +momentary and so merely sensuous, has a value for his spirit of which he may or may not +be wholly conscious; and these shifting effects are the realization of his ideal. +Unwitting at the moment of contact itself of the significance that afterwards is to flow +articulately from his work, the artist, in the presence of his object, knows only that he +is impelled to render it. As faithfully as possible he tries to record what he sees, +conscious simply that what he sees gives him delight. His vision wakens his feeling, and +then by reaction his feeling determines his vision, controlling and directing his +selection of the details of aspect. When Velasquez, engaged on a portrait of the king, +saw the maids of honor graciously attending on the little princess, he did not set about +producing a <i>picture,</i> as an end in itself. In the relation of these figures to one +another and to the background of the deep and high-vaulted chamber in which they were +standing, each object and plane of distance receiving its just amount of light and fusing +in the unity of total impression, were revealed to him the wonder and the mystery of +nature's magic of light. This is what he tried to render. His revelation of natural +truth, wrung from nature's inmost latencies and shown to us triumphantly, becomes a thing +of beauty.</p> + +<p>So the differences among the various "schools" in art are after all largely +differences of emphasis. The choice of subject or motive, the angle from which it is +viewed, and the method of handling, all are determined by the artist's kind of interest; +and that interest results from what the man is essentially by inheritance and individual +character, and what he is moulded into by environment, training, and experience. It may +happen that the external object imposes itself in its integrity upon the artist's mind +and temperament, and he tries to express it, colored inevitably by his feeling toward it, +in all faithfulness to the feet as he sees it. Millet said, "I should never paint +anything that was not the result of an impression received from the aspect of nature, +whether in landscape or figures." Millet painted what he saw, but he painted it as only +he saw it. Or again it happens that an artist imposes his feeling upon nature. Thus +Burne-Jones said, "I mean by a picture a beautiful romantic dream of something that never +was, never will be—in a light better than any that ever shone—in a land no +one can define or remember, only desire." Whether true to nature or true to the creative +inner vision, the work of both men embodies truth. Sometimes an artist effaces entirely +his own individuality, as in Greek sculpture and Gothic architecture, and the mere name +of the creator does not signify. George Frederick Watts is reported to have said, "If I +were asked to choose whether I would like to do something good, as the world judges +popular art, and receive personally great credit for it, or, as an alternative, to +produce something which should rank with the very best, taking a place with the art of +Pheidias or Titian, with the highest poetry and the most elevating music, and remain +unknown as the perpetrator of the work, I should choose the latter." Sidney Lanier wrote, +"It is of little consequence whether <i>I</i> fail; the <i>I</i> in the matter is small +business. . . . Let my name perish,—the poetry is good poetry and the music is good +music, and beauty dieth not, and the heart that needs it will find it." Or on the +contrary, a work may bear dominantly, even aggressively, the impress of the distinctive +individuality of its creator, as with Carlyle's prose and Browning's poetry. Whistler +seems at times to delight less in the beauty of his subject than in the <i>exercise</i> +of his own power of refinement. Where another man's art is personal, as with Velasquez or +Frans Hals, Whistler's art becomes egotistical. He does not say, "Lo, how mysterious is +this dusk river-side, how tenderly serene this mother, how wistful and mighty is this +prophet-seer!" He exclaims rather, "Note how subtly I, Whistler, have seen. Rejoice with +me in my powers of vision and of execution." There is no single method of seeing, no one +formula of expression and handling. The truth both of nature and of art is great and +infinitely various. For art, like nature, is organic, allowing for endless modifications, +while remaining true to the inner principle of its being.</p> + +<p>The judgment of truth is a delicate business. To test the truth of a work of art by +reference to the truth of nature is to presuppose that our power of perception is equal +to the artist's power, and that our knowledge of the object represented is equal to his +knowledge of it. The ordinary man's habitual contact with the world is practical, and his +knowledge of natural fact, based upon the most superficial aspect of it and used for +practical purposes, tends to falsify his vision. The artist's contact with the world, in +his capacity as artist, is one of feeling; he values life, not for its material rewards +and satisfactions, but for what it brings to him of emotional experience. The ordinary +man uses nature for his own workaday ends. The artist loves nature, and through his love +he understands her. His knowledge of natural fact, instead of falsifying his vision, +reinforces it. He studies the workings of nature's laws as manifested in concrete +phenomena around him,—the movement of storms, the growth of trees, the effects of +light,—penetrating their inmost secrets, that he may make them more efficient +instruments of expression. He uses his understanding of anatomy, of earth-structure, of +the laws of color, as the means to a fuller and juster interpretation. As he receives the +truth of nature with reverence and joy, so he transmutes truth into beauty.</p> + +<p>An artist's interest in the truth of nature is not the scientist's interest, an +intellectual concern with knowledge for the sake of knowledge. The artist receives +nature's revelation of herself with emotion. The deeper he penetrates into her hidden +ways, the greater becomes her power to stir him. The artist values his "subject," +therefore, as the stimulus of emotion and as the symbol by means of which he expresses +his emotion and communicates it. The value of the subject to the appreciator, however, is +not immediately clear. It is not easy for us to receive the subject purely as the artist +shows it to us and independently of our own knowledge of it. About it already gather +innumerable associations, physical, practical, intellectual, sentimental, and emotional, +all of them or any of them, which result from our previous contact with it in actual +life. Here is a portrait of Carlyle. I cannot help regarding the picture first of all +from the point of view of its likeness to the original. This is a person with whom I am +acquainted, an individual, by name Carlyle. And my reaction on the picture is determined, +not by what the artist has to say about a great personality interpreted through the +medium of color and form, but by what I already know about Carlyle. Or here a painting +shows me a landscape with which I am familiar. Then instead of trying to discover in the +picture what the artist has seen in the landscape and felt in its presence, letting it +speak to me in its own language, I allow my thoughts to wander from the canvas, and I +enjoy the landscape in terms of my own knowledge and remembrance of it. The artist's work +becomes simply a point of departure, whereas it should be not only the beginning but also +the end and fulfillment of the complete experience. What is, then, we may ask, the +relation of the fact of the subject to the beauty and final message of the work?</p> + +<p>The pleasure which attends the recognition of the subject is a legitimate element in +our enjoyment of art. But the work should yield a delight beyond our original delight in +the subject as it exists in nature. The significance of a work of representative art +depends not upon the subject in and of itself, but upon what the artist has to say about +it. A rose may be made to reveal the cosmos; a mountain range or cloud-swept spaces of +the upper air may be niggled into meanness. The ugly in practical life may be +transfigured by the artist's touch into supreme beauty. <i>"Il faut pouvoir faire servir +le trivial <font face="Times New Roman">à l'</font>expression du sublime, c'est +l<font face="Times New Roman">a</font> vraie force,"</i> said one who was able to invest +a humble figure with august dignity. Millet's peasants reveal more of godlike majesty +than all the array of personages in the pantheon of post-Raphaelite Italy and the classic +school of France. Upon his subject the artist bases that harmony of relations which +constitutes the beauty and significance of his work. Brought thus into a harmony, the +object represented is made more vivid, more intensely itself, than it is in nature, with +the result that we receive from the representation a heightened sense of reality and of +extended personality. The importance of the subject, therefore, is measured by the +opportunity it affords the artist, and with him his appreciators, to share in the beauty +of nature and life. A picture should not "standout" from its frame, but should go back +into it, reaching even into infinity. Our own associations attaching to the subject lose +themselves as they blend with the artist's revelation of the fuller beauty of his object; +and finally all becomes merged in the emotional experience.</p> + +<p>Eliminating the transient and accidental, a work of art presents the essential and +eternal. Art appeals not to the intellect and the reason, but to the imagination and the +emotions. The single work, therefore, is concrete and immediate. But universal in its +scope, it transcends the particularities of limited place and individual name. We must +distinguish between the abstractly typical and the universal. The representative artist +does not conceive an abstraction and then seek to find a symbol for it. That is the +method of allegory, where spring, for example, is figured as a young woman scattering +flowers. Allegory is decorative rather than representative in intention. The artist +receives his inspiration and stimulus from some actual concrete bit of nature, a woodland +wrapt in tender mists of green, a meadow gold and softly white with blossoms, a +shimmering gauze of sun touched air, moist and vibrating, enfolding it. That is what he +paints. But he paints it so that it is spring, and instinct with the spirit of all +springs. Michelangelo does not intellectually conceive youth and then carve a statue. +Some boy has revealed to him the beauty of his young strength, and the sculptor moves to +immediate expression. He calls his statue David, but the white form radiates the rhythm +and glory of all youth. And as we realize youth in ourselves, more poignantly, more +abundantly, the mere name of the boy does not matter. The fact that the portrait shows us +Carlyle is an incident. Carlyle is the "subject" of the picture, but its meaning is the +twilight of a mighty, indomitable mind, made visible and communicable. His work is done; +the hour of quiet is given, and he finds rest. Into this moment, eternal in its +significance, into this mood, universal in its appeal, we enter, to realize it in +ourselves. The subject of picture or statue is but the means; the end is life. Objective +fact is transmuted into living truth. Art is the manifestation of a higher reality than +we alone have been able to know. It begins with the particular and then transcends it, +admitting us to share in the beauty of the world, the cosmic harmony of universal +experience.</p><a name="10"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>X</p> + +<p>THE PERSONAL ESTIMATE</p> + +<p>ART starts from life and in the end comes back to it. Art is born out of the stirring +of the artist's spirit in response to his need of expression, and it reaches its +fulfillment in the spirit of the appreciator as it answers his need of wider and deeper +experience. Midway on its course from spirit to spirit it traverses devious paths. The +emotion out of which art springs and of which it is the expression is controlled and +directed by the shaping force of mind, and it embodies itself in material form. This +material form, by virtue of its qualities, has the power to delight our senses; the skill +which went into the fashioning of it, so far as we can recognize the processes of +execution, gives us pleasure; the harmony which the work of art must manifest satisfies +the mind and makes it possible for us to link the emotion with our own experience.</p> + +<p>These paths which a work of art traverses in its course from its origin to its +fulfillment I have tried to follow in their ramifications, and I have tried to trace them +to their issue in appreciation. Some lovers of art may linger on the way and rest content +with the distance they have come, without pressing forward to the end. A work of art is +complex in its appeal; and it is possible to stop with one or another of its elements. +Thus we may receive the work intellectually, recognizing its subject, and turning the +artist's emotion into our thought and translating it from his medium of color and form or +sound into our own medium of words. Here is a portrait of Carlyle; and Carlyle we +<i>know</i> as an author and as a man. This landscape is from the Palisades, where we +have roamed in leisure hours. Before us is a statue of Zeus, whom our classical reading +has made a reality to us. This symphony gathers about a day in the country, suggesting an +incident in our own experience of which we have pleasant remembrances. Intellectually, +also, we enjoy the evidence of the artist's skill which the work exhibits. Or we may pass +beyond the simple exercise of the intellect, and with a refinement of perception we may +take a sensuous delight in the qualities of the material in which the work is embodied. +This portrait is a subtle harmony of color and exquisite adjustment of line and mass. The +luminous night which enwraps the Palisades is a solemn mighty chord. The white rhythm of +this statue caresses the eye that follows it. This symphony is an intricate and wonderful +wave-pattern upon a sea of billowing sound in which the listener immerses himself +voluptuously. The essential significance of a work of art is not to be received apart +from its form, but the form is more than merely sensuous in its appeal. Finally, +therefore, the color and the composition of the portrait are but the point of meeting +where we touch in energizing contact a powerful personality. Our spirit goes out into the +night of these Palisades and dilates into immensity. This statue is Olympian majesty made +visible, and in its presence we feel that we too are august. The symphony is a resolution +of the struggle of our own tangled lives, a purification, and the experience of joy.</p> + +<p>Art is the expression of experience, whether the experience enacts itself within the +spirit of the artist or derives from his contact with the external world. So by the same +token, art is finally to be received as experience. The ultimate meaning of a work of art +to the appreciator is what it wakens in him of emotion. It is the artist's business, by +the manipulation of his materials and his elements, by the choice of motive and the +rendering, by the note and pitch of his color, the ordering of his line, the disposition +of his masses, to compel the direction of the emotion; he must not allow the solemnity +and awe with which his night invests the Palisades to be mistaken by the beholder for +terror or for mere obscurity. But the quality and the intensity of the emotion depend +upon the temper of the appreciator's sensibilities and the depth and range of his +experience of life. Art is not fixed and invariable in its effect. "Vanity Fair" is a +great novel. One man may read it for the sake of the story, and in his amusement and +interest in following the succession of incident, he may for a while forget himself. A +possible use to put one's reading to; yet for that man the book is not art. Another may +be entertained by the spectacle of the persons as they exhibit themselves in Thackeray's +pages, much as he might stop a moment on the curbstone and watch a group of children at +play in the street. Here he is a looker-on, holding himself aloof; and for him, again, +the book is not art. Still a third may find in "Vanity Fair" a record of the customs and +manners of English people at the beginning of the nineteenth century; and he adds this +much to his stock of information. Still for him the book is not art. Not one of the three +has touched in vital contact the essential meaning of "Vanity Fair." But the man who sees +in the incidents of the book a situation possible in his own life, who identifies himself +with the personages and acts out with them their adventures, who feels that he actually +knows Rawdon Crawley and Becky Sharp, Jo Sedley, Dobbin, and Amelia, and understands +their character and personality better here than in the actual world about him by force +of Thackeray's greater insight and power of portraiture, who sees in English manners here +represented the interpretation of his own surroundings, so that as a result of it all, +his own experience becomes richer for his having lived out the life of the fictitious +persons, his own acquaintances have revealed themselves more fully, his own life becomes +more intelligible,—for him at last the book is a work of art. So any work may be a +mirror which simply reflects the world as we know it; it may be a point of departure, +from which tangentially we construct an experience of our own: it is truly art only in +the degree that it is revelation.</p> + +<p>A work of art, therefore, is to be received by the individual appreciator as an added +emotional experience. It appeals to him at all because in some way it relates itself to +his own life; and its value to him is determined by the measure in which it carries him +out into wider ranges of feeling. There are works whose absolute greatness he recognizes +but yet which do not happen at the moment to find him. Constable comes to him as +immensely satisfying; Turner, though an object of great intellectual interest, leaves him +cold. He knows Velasquez to be supreme among painters, but he turns away to stand before +Frans Hals, whose quick, sure strokes call such very human beings into actuality and +rouse his spirit to the fullest response. Why is it that of two works of equal depth of +insight into life, of equal scope of feeling, of the same excellence of technical +accomplishment, one has an appeal and a message for him and not the other? What is the +bridge of transition between the work and the spirit of the appreciator by which the +subtle connection is established?</p> + +<p>It comes back to a matter of harmony. Experience presents itself to us in fragments; +and in so far as the parts are scattering and unrelated, it is not easy for us to guess +the purpose of our being here. But so soon as details, which by virtue of some selecting +principle are related to one another, gather themselves into a whole, chaos is resolved +into order, and this whole becomes significant, intelligible, and beautiful. +Instinctively we are seeking, each in his own way, to bring the fragments of experience +into order; and that order stands to each of us for what we are, for our individual +personality, the self. We define thus our selecting principle, by which we receive some +incidents of experience as related to our development and we reject others as not related +to it. Thus the individual life achieves its integrity, its unity and significance. This, +too, is the process of art. A landscape in nature is capable of a various, +interpretation. By bringing its details into order and unity, the artist creates its +beauty. His perception of the harmony which his imagination compels out of the landscape +is attended with emotion, and the emotion flows outward to expression in a form which is +itself harmonious. This form is a work of art. Art, therefore, is the harmonizing of +experience. Appreciation is an act of fusion and identification. In spirit we +<i>become</i> the thing presented by the work of art and we merge with it in a larger +unity. The individual harmony which a work of art manifests becomes significant to us as +we can make it an harmonious part of our own experience and as it carries us in the +direction of our development.</p> + +<p>But how to determine, each man for himself, what is the direction of our development? +A life becomes significant to itself so soon as it is conscious of its purpose, and it +becomes harmonious as it makes all the details of experience subserve that purpose. The +purpose of the individual life, so far as we can guess it, seems to be that the life +shall be as complete as possible, that it shall fulfill itself and provide through its +offspring for its continuance. It is true that no life is isolated; as every atom +throughout the universe is bound to every other atom by subtlest filaments of influence, +so each human life stands related to all other lives. But the man best pays his debt of +service to others who makes the most of that which is given him to work with; and that is +his own personality. We must begin at the centre and work outwards. My concern is with my +own justice. If I worry because my friend or another is not just, I not only do not make +him more just, but I also fail of the highest justice I can achieve, which is my own. We +must be true to ourselves. We help one another not by precept but by <i>being;</i> and +what we are communicates itself. As physical life propagates and thus continues itself, +so personality is transmitted in unconscious innumerable ways. The step and carriage of +the body, the glance of the eye, the work of our hands, our silences no less than our +speech, all express what we are. As everything follows upon what we are, so our +responsibility is to <i>be,</i> to be ourselves completely, perfectly.</p> + +<p>A tender shoot pushes its way out of the soil into light and air, and with the years +it grows into a tree. The tree bears fruit, which contains the seed of new manifestations +of itself. The fruit falls to the ground and rots, providing thus the aliment for the +seed out of which other trees are to spring. From seed to seed the life of the tree is a +cycle, without beginning and without end. At no one point in the cycle can we say, Here +is the purpose of the tree. Incidentally the tree may minister to the needs and comfort +and pleasure of man. The tree delights him to look upon it; its branches shade him from +the noonday sun; its trunk and limbs can be hewn down and turned to heat and shelter; its +fruit is good to eat. The primary purpose of the fruit, however, is not to furnish food +to man, but to provide the envelope for the transmission of its seed and the continuance +of its own life. Seen in its cosmic bearing and scope, the purpose of the tree is to be a +tree, as fit, as strong, as beautiful, as complete, as tree-like, as it can be. The leaf +precedes the flower and may be thought on that account to be inferior to it in the scale +of development. If a leaf pines and withers in regret that it is not a flower, it not +only does not become a flower, but it fails of being a good leaf. Everything in its place +and after its own kind. In so far as it is perfectly itself, a leaf, a blossom, a tree, a +man, does it contribute to the well-being of others. Man has subdued all things under his +feet and turned them to his own uses. By force of mind he is the strongest creature, but +it is not to be inferred that he is therefore the aim and end of all creation. Like +everything else, he has his place; like everything else he has the right to live his own +life, triumphing over the weaker and in his turn going down before a mightier when the +mightier shall come; like everything else he is but a part in the universal whole. Only a +part; but as we recognize our relation to other parts and through them our connection +with the whole, our sense of the value of the individual life becomes infinitely +extended. We must get into the rhythm, keeping step with the beat of the universal life +and finding there our place, our destiny, the meaning of our being here, and joy. The +goods which men set before themselves as an end are but by-products after all. If we +pursue happiness we overtake it not. If we do what our hands find to do, devotedly and +with our might, then, some day, if we happen to stop and make question of it, we discover +that happiness is already there, in us, with us, and around us. The aim of a man's life +in the world, as it would seem, is to be perfectly a man, and his end is to fulfill +himself; as part of this fulfillment of himself, he provides for the continuance of his +life in other lives, and transmitting his character and influence, he enriches other +lives because of what he is. The purpose of seeing is that we may see more, and the eye +is ever striving to increase its power; the health of the eye is growth. The purpose of +life is more life, individual in the measure that it lies within a man's power to develop +it, but cosmic in its sources and its influence.</p> + +<p>As the harmony which a work of art presents finds a place in that harmony of +experience and outward-reaching desire which constitutes our personality, art becomes for +us an entrance into more life. In the large, art is a means of development. But as any +work embraces diverse elements and is capable of a various appeal, it may be asked in +what sense the appreciation of art is related to education and culture. Before we can +answer the question intelligently, we must know what we mean by our terms. By many people +education is regarded as they regard any material possession, to be classed with +fashionable clothes, a fine house, a carriage and pair, or touring-car, or steam yacht, +as the credential and card of entr<font face="Times New Roman">é</font>e to what +is called good society. Culture is a kind of ornamental furniture, maintained to impress +visitors. Of course we ourselves do not think so, but we know people who do. Nor do we +believe—as some believe—that education is simply a means of gaining a more +considerable livelihood. It is pathetic to see young men in college struggling in +desperate, uncomplaining sacrifice to obtain an education, and all the while mistaking +the end of their effort. Not all the deeds of daring in a university course are enacted +on the athletic field; the men I am thinking of do not have their pictures published in +the newspapers,—the unrecorded heroisms of college life are very moving to those +who know. But the tragedy I have in mind is this—for tragedy consists not in +sacrifice itself but in needless and futile sacrifice—that some of these young men +suppose <i>there</i> is a magic virtue in education for its own sake, that it is the +open-sesame to all the wealth and beauty of life. With insufficient ability to start +with, they are preparing to be unfit professional men, when they might be excellent +artisans. The knowledge of books is in no sense the whole story nor the only means of +education. In devotion to some craft or in the intelligent conduct of some business they +might find the true education, which is the conscious discipline of one's powers. The man +who can do things, whether with his hands or with his brain, provided intelligence govern +the exercise of hand and brain, and who finds happiness in his work because it is the +expression of himself, is an educated man. The end of education is the building of +personality, the making of human power, and its fruit is wisdom.</p> + +<p>Wisdom, however, does not consist in the most extensive knowledge of facts. Oftentimes +information overweights a man and snuffs out what personal force there might otherwise +have been. On the futility of mere learning there is abundant testimony. Walt Whitman, as +we might expect from his passion for the vital and the human, has said: "You must not +know too much and be too precise and scientific about birds and trees and flowers and +watercraft. A certain free margin, perhaps ignorance, credulity, helps your enjoyment of +these things and of the sentiment of feather'd, wooded, river or marine nature generally. +I repeat it—don't want to know too exactly or the reasons why." Even Ruskin, whose +learning was extensive and various, bears witness to the same effect. He notes "the +diminution which my knowledge of the Alps had made in my impression of them, and the way +in which investigation of strata and structure reduces all mountain sublimity to mere +debris and wall-building." In the same spirit he planned an essay on the Uses of +Ignorance. From the midst of his labors in Venice he wrote: "I am sure that people who +work out subjects thoroughly are disagreeable wretches. One only feels as one should when +one doesn't know much about the matter." In other words, we are not to let our knowledge +come between us and our power to feel. In thus seeming to assail education I am not +seeking to subvert or destroy; I want simply to adjust the emphasis. The really wise man +is he who knows how to make life yield him its utmost of true satisfaction and furnish +him the largest scope for the use of his powers and the expression of himself. In this +sense a newsboy in the streets may be wiser than a university professor, in that one may +be the master of his life and the other may be the servant of his information. Education +should have for its end the training of capacities and powers, the discipline and control +of the intelligence, the quickening of the sympathies, the development of the ability to +live. No man is superior to his fellows because of the fact of his education. His +education profits him only in so far as it makes him more of a man, more responsive +because his own emotions have been more deeply stirred, more tolerant because his wider +range has revealed more that is good, more generous to give of his own life and service +because he has more generously received. It is not what we know nor what we have that +marks our worth, but what we are. No man, however fortunate and well-circumstanced he may +be, can afford to thank God that he is not as other men are. In so far as his education +tends to withdraw him from life and from contact with his fellows of whatever station, in +so far as it fosters in him the consciousness of class, so far it is an evil. Education +should lead us not to judge lives different from our own, but to try to understand and, +to appreciate. The educated man, above all others, should thank God that there are +diversity of gifts and so many kinds of good.</p> + +<p>Art is a means of culture, but art rightly understood and received. Art does not aim +to teach. It may teach incidentally, tangentially to its circle, but instruction, either +intellectual or ethical, is not its purpose. It fulfills itself in the spirit of the +appreciator as it enables him in its presence to become something that otherwise he had +not been. It is not enough to be told things; we must make trial of them and live them +out in our own experience before they become true for us. As appreciation is not +knowledge but feeling, so we must live our art. It is well to have near us some work that +we want to be <i>like.</i> We get its fullest message only as we identify ourselves with +it. If we are willing to be thought ignorant and to live our lives as seems good to us, I +believe it is better to go the whole way with a few things that can minister to us +abundantly and so come to the end of them, than to touch in superficial contact a great +many lesser works. The lesser works have their place; and so far as they can carry us +beyond the point where we are, they can serve us. In a hurried touch-and-go, however, +there is danger of scattering; whereas true appreciation takes time, for it is less an +act than a whole attitude of mind. This is an age of handbooks and short cuts. But there +is no substitute for life. If for one reason or another the opportunity to realize art in +terms of life is not accorded us, it is better to accept the situation quite frankly and +happily, and not try to cheat ourselves with the semblance. But if it is indeed the +reality, then we maybe content with the minutes of experience, though we are denied the +hours or the years. "The messages of great poems," says Whitman, "to each man and woman +are, Come to us on equal terms; only then can you understand us." The power of response +must be in us, and that power is the fruit of experience. The only mystery of art is the +mystery of all life itself. In nature the artist finds the manifestation of a larger self +toward which he aspires, and this is what his work expresses. Alone with his spirit, he +cries to us for that intimate mystic companionship which is appreciation, and our +response gives back the echo of his cry. He reaches out across the distance to touch +other and kindred spirits and draw them to himself. Says the poet,—</p> + +<p> "Thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as +I,<br> + Therefore for thee the following chants."</p> + +<p>We appreciate the artist's work as in it we live again and doubly.</p> + +<p>Thus art links itself with life. The message of art to the individual defines itself +according to his individual needs. Life rises with each man, to him a new opportunity and +a new destiny. We create our own world; and life means to us what we are in ourselves. In +art we are seeking to find ourselves expressed more fully. The works that we care for, if +we consider it a moment, are the works we understand; and we understand them because they +phrase for us our own experience. Life and the truth of life are relative. Truth is not +in the object but in our relation to it. What is true for me may or may not be true for +another. This much is true for me, namely, whatever tallies with my experience and +reveals to me more of the underlying purpose of the universe. We are all, each in his own +way, seeking the meaning of life; and that meaning is special and personal to the +individual, each man deciding for himself. By selection here, by rejection there, we are +trying to work toward harmony. The details of life become increasingly complex with the +years, but living grows simpler because we gradually fix a selecting and unifying +principle. When we have truly found ourselves, we come to feel that the external +incidents do not signify; which chance happens, whether this or that, is indifferent. It +is the spirit in which the life is lived that determines its quality and value. The +perception of purpose in the parts brings them into order and gives them meaning. A man's +life is an expanding circle, the circumference of which is drawn around an order or +interplay and adjustment of part with part. Whatever lies without the circle does not +pertain to the individual—as yet. So soon as any experience reveals its meaning to +us and we feel that it takes its place in our life, then it belongs to us. Whatever +serves to bring details, before scattering and unrelated, into order, is for that moment +true. Art has a message for us as it tallies with what we already know about life; and, +quickening our perceptions, disclosing depths of feeling, it carries us into new ranges +of experience.</p> + +<p>In this attitude toward life lies the justice of the personal estimate. The individual +is finally his own authority. To find truth we return upon our own consciousness, and we +seek thus to define our "original relation" to the universal order. So as one stands +before the works of the Italian painters and sculptors, for example, in the endeavor +rightly to appreciate what they have achieved, one may ask: How much of life has this +artist to express to me, of life as I know it or can know it? Has the painter through +these forms, however crude or however accomplished, uttered what he genuinely and for +himself thought and felt? The measure of these pictures for me is the degree of reality, +of vital feeling, which they transmit. Whether it be spring or divine maternity or the +beauty of a pagan idea, which Botticelli renders, the same power is there, the same sense +of gracious life. Whether it be Credi's na<font face="Times New Roman">ï</font>ve +womanhood, or Titian's abounding, glorious women and calm and forceful men, or Delia +Robbia's joyous children and Donatello's sprites, the same great meaning is expressed, +the same appreciation of the goodness and beauty of all life. This beauty is for me, +here, to-day. In the experience of a man who thinks and feels, there is a time when his +imagination turns toward the past. At the moment, as the world closes in about him, his +spirit, dulled by the attrition of daily use and wont, is unable to discern the beauty +and significance of the present life around him. For a time his imagination finds +abundant nourishment in the mighty past. Many spirits are content there to remain. But +life is of the present. To live greatly is to live now, inspired by the past, corrected +and encouraged by it, impelled by "forward-looking thoughts'" and providing for the +future, but living in to-day. Life is neither remembrance nor anticipation, neither +regret nor deferment, but present realization. Often one feels in a gallery that the +people are more significant than the pictures. Two lovers furtively holding hands and +stopping before a canvas to press closer together, shoulder to shoulder; a young girl +erect and firm, conscious of her young womanhood and rejoicing in it, radiating youth and +life; an old man, whose years are behind him yet whose interest reveals his eager welcome +of new experience, unconsciously rebuking the jaded and indifferent: here is reality. +Before it the pictures seem to recede and become dimmed. Our appreciation of these things +makes the significance of it all. Only in so far as art can communicate this sensation, +this same impression of the beauty and present reality of life, has it a meaning for us. +The painter must have registered his appreciation of immediate reality and must impart +that to us until it becomes, heightened and intensified, our own. The secret of +successful living lies in compelling the details of our surroundings to our own ends. +Michelangelo lived his life; Leonardo lived his; neither could be the other. A man must +paint the life that he knows, the experience into which he enters. So we must live our +lives immediately and newly. We have penetrated the ultimate mystery of art when we +realize the inseparable oneness of art with life.</p> + +<p>Art is a call to fuller living. Its real service is to increase our capacity for +experience. The pictures, the music, the books, which profit us are those which, when we +have done with them, make us feel that we have lived by just so much. Often we purchase +experience with enthusiasm; we become wise at the expense of our power to enjoy. What we +need in relation to art is not more knowledge but greater capability of feeling, not the +acquisition of more facts but the increased power to interpret facts and to apply them to +life. In appreciation it is not what we know about a work of art, it is not even what we +actually see before us, that constitutes its significance, but what in its presence we +are able to feel. The paradox that nature imitates art has in it this much of truth, that +art is the revelation of the possibilities of life, and we try to make these +possibilities actual in our own experience. Art is not an escape from life and a refuge; +it is a challenge and re<font face="Times New Roman">ë</font>nforcement. Its action +is not to make us less conscious but more; in it we are not to lose ourselves but to find +ourselves more truly and more fully. Its effect is to help us to a larger and juster +appreciation of the beauty and worth of nature and of life.</p> + +<p>Art is within the range of every man who holds himself open to its appeal. But art is +not the final thing. It is a means to an end; its end is personality. There are exalted +moments in the experience of us all which we feel to be finer than any art. Then we do +not need to turn to painting, music, literature, for our satisfaction. We are living. Art +is aid and inspiration, but its fulfillment and end is life.</p> + +<p>"We live," says Wordsworth, "by admiration, hope, and love." Admiration is wonder and +worship, a sense of the mystery and the beauty of life as we know it now, and +thankfulness for it, and joy. Hope is the vision of things to be. And love is the supreme +enfolding unity that makes all one. Art is life at its best, but life is the greatest of +the arts,—life harmonious, deep in feeling, big in sympathy, the life that is +appreciation, responsiveness, and love.</p><br> +<br> +<br> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Gate of Appreciation, by Carleton Noyes + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GATE OF APPRECIATION *** + +***** This file should be named 27183-h.htm or 27183-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/7/1/8/27183/ + +Produced by Ruth Hart + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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