***,rºſae）， wae…&#*****
…**>'，¿¿.*
*-*--***************** », «+» ‹+ · ·,≤)-șŒº.
*tae****. º.- -*…*s）«¿¿.*.*¿¿.*¿¿.*&*）（.*）'， , , …}}-**************，*^*
----• →--------- ** - - ） w. •§§§） ***£®，,，，.，:.，，，，*）&&x（）;
į，-~********
----|×!:::：：،
（№. !
,，-，*x*…*
·
șił„*****#！"， ſº
.ae … ！！”.*， ** **
（±）'，
.ſº· ！！！ vs.
· · · ·:|- ſ.º. ºr +'~…, （* * · · · · · · ·
, . ; „48 · 4 + · · · * * **~*~*…* --> -, ， ,
************ę
<！*********
∞
********¿¿.*
?*>.***
ś&r.-
~~~rºuſſº»， «a， º ~*~ ~~~~*~> , ！
ºy，x）-º…» º ^ ^* * * * *
Ź- ſ.º. º. º.
... ;） --- «+ · · · *** º * *
*…*…¿?&4"?|§.ºffſ ***;*
};&-！%-
■■■****
«»
ARCHITECTURE
· · · · · · · · · · · · · --- … . . . -|-
••• • • • • • •*-* º. --+（~~~~*** yºº ~*~* - *******---- « №ſº，·%??? ！！！
…' -， - ）…-…），→→→→→→→→→→→→，_，_，_，_，_|
~~~~*~*~*~~~~--~~~~. --~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~--~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~

ºE.
º
**
ºf:
º
º:
&
º
*
l: ,
sº
| ?
º 3.
gº º
Ciº-
rº-
§§ 3.
º º
* º
t
º:
º
pº
º
ſº -
# * *
# *
º
****
&;
:: *.i
º
tºº
- #:
2 < *.
§º
º:
s
|
is:
§
§ 3.
tº:
§ 3.
Fº
; :
&
#
º
§:
;
tº."
#
:
*: tº
:
:
i
:
;
º
§
#
#
i
#
i
~ ||Y->
N
º
Tºº
Wº:
º *Sºº-sº º
H;
J.
lºſ' '...lºº ( ;
+ §§ \
- N
y
t ºsmººn.
vsºas a sºlº Gº
| 2
P
. . . . . .
º
.Sf
-NNN
^§*
||-
i
-- --- -
:
ºº
--~
* Dº GA.J.M. Ny Cº.J.J.J. J." Lºſ Ja
O F
- - ... Lº - º º -
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTIRºſſIIIITIII
|Fº aſsºs \; |U||{{{tlſ||
[- gº-
OF THE
co LLEGE &
AR c\- ITECTURE
& Tºº ºdºº º 'º º ºs º ºs º ºr ººm º ºsmººsººº tº º 'º ºr sº * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ſº
-5
sºftj
Nº||||IIITTHITIII C.
bººs
i--
Citiºn
;
%~3.
wi
i.* T.*
º§-
*-*
#º:
NE
Vº Vº
|||||||||||||||||||ſ:









































Arel,
T42.5-
, P$2.
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
The Dance, by Carpeaur
The Conception of ART

THE CONCEPTION
OF ART
By
HENRY RANKIN POORE
Author of “Pictorial Composition, and the Critical
Judgment of Pictures,” and “The Pictorial Figure”
ILLUSTRATED
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1913
Copyright, 1913, by
DoubleDAY, PAGE & CoMPANY
All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages
TO MY WIFE
KATHARINE STEVENS POORE
THIS PERSONAL CONCEPTION OF ART IS DEDICATED
AS A SLIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THOSE COUNT*
LESS OBLIGATIONS WHICH UNCONSCIOUSLY ACCUMU-
LATE IN FAvoR of THE ARTIST's wiFE AGAINST
THE ARTIST HUSBAND,
º,
26} 305
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
A volume containing in condensed form a
painter’s opinion of the meaning of art in its
application to past and present periods. It is a
book addressed in the simple phrases of ready
discourse to the layman and student of art, and
seeks to clarify to such minds much that for
want of ea:planation or argument has assumed
an aspect of mystery and speculation.
II.
º
V.
VII.
XI.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Definition .
The Logic of Art .
Philosophic Conceptions.
Past Theories and Popular Mis-
conceptions . © e
Realism and Idealism .
Individual Expression
Tolstoy and Delsarte
Body, Soul, and Spirit
The Genesis of Art
The AEsthetics of . Chinese and
Japanese Art
Conception of Painting
Later Tendencies—Post Impres-
sionism – Matise and Picasso
PAGE
XI
25
39
50
79
89
94.
112
122
135
152
165
XIII.
XIV.
Futurism—The Final Develop-
ment © O © O Gº O ©
Conclusion . . . . . . . .
206
217
[vii)
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Dance . . . . . . Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
Effort of Scientific Intention, the pur-
pose of which is Record or Acquire-
ment of Knowledge . . . . . .
Effort conscious of an added quality.
Application of form to AEsthetic Pur-
DOSé . . . . . . . . . .
Ancient Symbolism — man associated
with attributes of varied significance
The Extremes of Modern Symbolism:
Objective and Subjective tº º
Platonic Idealism: Sculpture .
Platonic Idealism: Painting . . . .
Works expressive of Universal Ideas
(mistakenly called Idealism) . . .
Allegory. The presentation of an Imag-
inative Idea . . . . . . . .
Allegory of Universal Ideas. . . . .
Allegory of History — Figurative presen-
tation of Fact e e g º º
Realism — varied types — Painting .
Realism — Sculpture
Neoclassic Painting
Romantic Painting . .
Hindu and Chinese Art
Japanese Art — Pictorial, Decorative.
Modern Japanese Painting.
16
17
32
33
48
49
64
65
84
85
92
93
96
97
112
II3
116
[ix]
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
Western Influence in Japanese Art . 117
Western Influence in Japanese Sculpture . 124
Japanese Influence in Occidental Art . 125
The Japanese subject by the Westerner 128
Expressive Line, Japanese . º 129
Expressive Line, Occidental . . . 144
Influence of Decoration on Illustration 145
Poster Art . . . . . . . . 148
Decorative Landscape. The subject seen
with reference to its possibilities of line,
spots and spaces . . . . . 149
Figure Painting influenced by Decoration 156
Decorative Sculpture 157
Impressionism . . . . . . . 160
Post Impressionism: Primitivism and
Elementalism . . . . . . 161
Post Impressionism concerned with
Rhythmic Line, Design and Primitive
Expression. . . . . . . . 176
Post Impressionistic Sculpture . 177
Varied Examples of Post Impressionism 192
Cubism 193
Futurism . . . . . . . . . . 208
Retrospection . . . . . . . . 209
[x]
INTRODUCTION
IN PUTTING forth this book on “ The Con-
ception of Art,” a subject on which the school-
men of all ages have had their say, I wish at
the start to disclaim philosophic pretension. I
much prefer that what is said be taken only at its
face value as the individual opinions of an artist.
By this disclaimer I exchange the cumulative
and troubled authority of the past for the
ingenuous mind left free with its own lines of
inductive reasoning, and steadied by the simple
confidence of Albert Dürer who declared,
“Whoever could wish to take counsel of the
fine arts let him take it from him who can
prove what he sayeth by his own hand”; and
again by Oscar Wilde when he said, “Don’t
take your critic as any test of art, for artists,
like the Greek gods, are only revealed to one
another.”
That artists, despite their controversies,
carry with them an intelligible code of com-
munication which some critics share not, and
of which the public is practically ignorant, is
a sufficient reason why, when they are moved
to do so, they should take up the pen without
more than that natural hesitation born of
seeming to know more than they are able to
“prove by the hand.”
Ixi)
INTRODUCTION
Realizing the magnitude of the subject in
its opportunities for controversial erudition,
of weighing this theory over against that, I
have kept to the inner trail and discarded much
material of interest, because I know my audience
— the art student and those allied with him —
in their regard for realities and in their natural
impatience for anything but a concise word
thereon.
In searching the field of art it was discovered
that many writers had not attended to what,
to me, seemed of living importance to the
subject, but had stopped short, using their
heavy fire in philosophic discussions which had
little to do with art as a fact. Emboldened by
the disagreement among themselves of the
varied groups of writers, I proceeded with
increasing unconcern as more and more it
became apparent that being for the most part
theorists, they were willing to stop before they
had really found the vital thing which should
warrant these elaborate introductions; that
which the everyday man wants when he asks
an everyday question concerning art; or what
the artist wants when he seeks to make his
art an inspiration to the everyday man.
Once caught in the maelstrom of these
philosophic discussions the fascination becomes
so absorbing that the danger is the voyager
keeps on in the easy-circling current, forgetting
after all the ship set out to get somewhere,
and that around about him is the high sea to be
traversed, filled with dangers and problems, and
beyond the port for the delivery of a cargo.
[ xii)
INTRODUCTION
With the author's conclusions in aesthetics
quite at variance with some of the wise men,
the reader may judge of his delight in finding
by accident one out of their number who agreed
with him. Sir William Armstrong in his intro-
duction to his life of Gainsborough has pro-
duced a short tract on art so filled with modern
thought and logic, so clear in its conclusions
and convincing in the development of his theory,
that one regrets its association with a biography
which cripples it in the far-reaching good that
a separate brochure would have secured. It
was as though he had it so thoroughly developed
in his system that at the moment he launched
it, there seeming no other vent.
In Chapter III enough is quoted from it to
prove what an exhilarating breeze of thought
it is, blowing life and freshness into the musty
pages of the Rabbis and overturning with a
breath the formulas with which they have
hedged in the subject of art. When he says
“a certain small group of writers, is uncom-
fortably conscious that the very materials of art
have intrinsic powers of expression,” he brings
his argument to the practical point with which
this book and its sequel, “The Constructive
Principles of Art,” are much concerned. Per-
haps he has meanwhile taken up his studies
here; if so, the writer can have no more earnest
hope than that they tally with the conclusions
which are made in these pages.
Nor was it any less a pleasure to find cor-
roboration for my division of the work of art
into Body, Soul, and Spirit, and the Trinity
[xiii)
INTRODUCTION
which was the outgrowth of these, in that Del-
sarte, after fifteen years’ study of Greek art,
asserted with enthusiasm that he had discovered
this to be the basis of not only their art but of
all art.
As to the point made against the special
sense by which beauty is apprehended, ad-
vanced by Kant, I may here say that I appre-
ciate the fact that a liking may be had without
a reason for it, and doubtless most art appre-
ciation of the public is had in this wise, merely
knowing what one likes, like the child, without
knowing why.
The need to dignify this state of mental
inactivity by supplying it with a name, as an
added sense, becomes less apparent as the
science of aesthetics develops, and which now
can be regarded only as an accommodation
which those affecting art should outgrow.
Every one who confronts a work of art forms
an opinion, and few deny themselves an ex-
pression of it. This opinion is usually based
on some familiar notion concerning art in
general, by which it is measured. One cannot
talk long with a layman upon the subject of art
before knowing what his determining idea is.
Before one is qualified to become a critic in
even a casual degree he should at least be able
to define that branch of human endeavor upon
which an opinion is expressed. It is safe to
say that from educated people a satisfactory
definition of art would be less easily obtained
than one for any other human product.
For a number of years the writer presented
[ xiv)
INTRODUCTION
the simple question, “What is art?” before
large classes of art students, and found it was
a poser. No responses were made that covered
the case of art, but such only as applied to the
branch of painting, the reasons behind mere
technical production being apparently un-
thought of, or that the term art included both
literature and music.
That the thing “looks like,” or not, is our
first criterion of judgment, and for many this
remains the sum and substance of a critical
attitude toward painting and sculpture.
Let us first call to mind, therefore, that there
are a great many kinds of art. In fact art
plays so large a part in our life, entering into it
through so many different channels, that it is
surprising its principles are not taught in the
schools. One might at least suppose that art
would be taught in art schools, but this is not
necessarily the case. It depends upon the
school. Within a short time the art school
was merely a place where drawing and painting
were taught, and the entire emphasis laid upon
that; and twenty years ago it was possible to
take a two or three years’ course in the best
schools of the country and hear nothing save
of the technique of drawing and painting.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The reader of this book will find errors of
typography; punctuations which here and
there impair the sense and the misspelling of a
few proper names.
As it was impossible for me to read the page
proof I accept these as a result and make this
general explanation not only for those obvious
errors, which the reader corrects for himself,
but in particular to call attention to the un-
fortunate printing of the word “form * instead
of quality in my definition of art.
The reader will notice that the argument of
the first chapter, and of the book as well, has
to do with this point.
That the epigram “Art is form * weakens
under scrutiny is obvious when form is found
to be both good and bad: much form is there-
fore unavailable as a basis for art. It is not
until form offers an opportunity for the devel-
opment of quality, such as the principles of
art may secure for it, that it is of real service,
and it is no more possible to have amorphous
art than it is to have art founded on that
which lacks this essential.
Again: though art is expressed in (qualified)
form in literature, painting, and sculpture we
must avoid this term when we come to an
important phase of music, and select a broader
term, for one cannot speak of the form of a
tone; and the difference between musical art
and musical effort is a matter of quality at
this point. Realizing that quality is the iden-
tification of essential character, becoming “one
with the being of the object,” we must accept
it as the larger term, regulative of form, color,
and tone, and also of conception. This regula-
tion entails the creative processes of art and
may be expressed in degree.
The reader will correct the spelling of Berg-
son, Puvis de Chavannes, Augustus John,
Fancher, and Huneker. -
Finally the coupling of “The Reason of
Design º’ with the “Conception of Art,” in the
title, was an anticipation of a book which is to
follow this, and that subject is not herein
discussed. Respectfully,
THE AUTHOR.
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
CHAPTER I
DEFINITION
First know art, then music, eloquence, painting, and
sculpture.” — Delsarte.
ART is the expression of that power in man
which is regulative of the form of that which
he creates for his aesthetic and intellectual
pleasure.”
At first sight the word “quality” may seem
to weaken the larger scope of this definition,
but were art regulative of the thing which
man creates for this pleasure, she would then
have to do with subject, with which she has
nothing to do.
By this definition art is distinctively placed
out of the class of things and in the class of
attributes. An appeal to the intellect or to
the aesthetic sense becomes pleasurable in the
degree of its quality.
“The power to produce an idea in our mind,”
said John Locke, “I call quality of the subject
wherein that power is.”
Instead of art being a thing, it is the ex-
pression, through that thing, of certain fixed
and essential principles whose presence, like
yeast in the lump, raises it from the inert con-
*The difference should be noted between pleasure and satis-
faction.
[3]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
dition of simples, through varied degrees of
change, to a more admirable estate and service.
Fact is fixed, positive, determinate. Quality
is variable, elastic, and regulative. The thing,
the fact, exists by itself unaided and without
dependence; the quality must naturally adhere
to the thing as an influence working upon it.
Here, then, is the difference between art and
that upon which art acts. The reporter brings
in a plain statement of fact; the editor recon-
structs its style so that its form seems goodly
and delights us by a sensation apart from the
fact; the poet sees in it a greater opportunity
and raises again the quality of its form. The
fact under each hand remains unchanged, but
meanwhile it has passed through two degrees
of art.
“What,” said Goethe, “is the use of poets if
they but repeat the records of historians?”
And what can be the use of art of any sort if,
as a means, it raises not its subject through
varying degrees of quality to perfection? He
of the limited voice may gain favor by the
superior quality of interpretation, through a
particular heed to such principles of art as
produce quality.
How, if not an act of art production, shall
we designate the substitution of one word for
a better, the change in the tone of a color, the
reconstruction of a line, the refinement of a
musical passage, in each case an effort to ap-
proach closer to the essence of the conception
through an advance in quality.
There is objective quality of form, color, tone,
| 4 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
and construction. There is likewise subjective
quality of conception.
Quality, for those who must have an explicit
and practical gauge for their measurements of
value, becomes the little weight which they
may push upon the graduated arm of the scale
until it covers all the attributes to be weighed.
The greatest works in painting are perforce
those registering the greatest amount of quality
in each of the essentials, drawing, color, tone,
conception. Meissonier had the first in excess,
but his tone was accidental and his color unin-
spired.
By comparison the quality of Millet’s drawing
was subjective rather than objective, and in
its own order quite as good, while in tone and
color he was the other's superior. Time has
found this out, and the little quality gauge may
be pushed farther in the case of the one than
the other. The illustration is more ingenuous
than elegant, but its homely simplicity contains
undeniable truth.*
The vast majority of us, following the philo-
Sophical thought of the past, have construed art
into being a product or at least an “activity,”
and demand definition of these things. That
*In the painter's art the quality of color and tone has ever
outweighed that of form or drawing. This has been the world’s
judgment.
It is for this reason that in time the scale of value always turns
toward the painter who shows quality as a colorist. The judg-
. ment of the ages decides in favor of the Venetian School as against
the Romanesque or Umbrian; in favor of Delacroix as against
Delaroche, of Monet and Troyon as against Ruysdael and Paul
Potter; of the colorist rather than the draughtsman e
In sculpture, which is essentially an art of form, the quality
of this attribute is the sole test, aside from that of conception.
[ 5 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
it is neither of these, but rather the endowment
of these products and activities by specific quali-
ties, is the proposition of this thesis.
This distinction was made clear with never-
to-be-forgotten force some years ago when at
one of the theatres of Paris a group of the
actors and singers of the French metropolis
appeared for charity. Among the number was
one amateur who sang in a subdued chamber
voice and scarcely filled the auditorium. He
proved a distinct disappointment to the audi-
ence until they learned the capacity of his voice,
and, this settled, they were then prepared to
pay heed to the quality of his performance. As
the song proceeded, the exquisite taste and
judgment in the use of that limited capacity,
the modulation, the fervor, the reserve, the
precise articulation had produced such an im-
pression that the singer received an ovation
greater than that of any other of the rare com-
pany. By comparison, other voices were fuller,
of greater register and efficiency as instruments
of sound; the material in each case was there,
the music as written and the voice of inter-
pretation, but by unanimous consent the palm
was awarded not to those things, but rather to
the manner of their setting forth, the form in
which they were used; in short, for the quality of
their expression: this then became the essence
of the art and the basis for its appraisement.
Instead of art being an expression of the
beautiful, a thinker has declared it to be an
expression in the beautiful, and thus made
an advance in the comprehensibility of the
[6]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
subject. The beautiful has long been regarded
the necessary “objective” upon which the
artist acts. The first ceremony then to the
processes of most philosophic thought from
Plato to Rodin is the act of baptism of the
object into the kingdom of the beautiful, after
which its artistic salvation is undertaken.
So insistent was the Greek mind for the
beautiful object in art that the Thebans created
a law which provided that if ugliness of subject
were essayed the artist should redeem it by
making it more beautiful than nature had left
it.
Rodin, in the latest pronouncement upon this
subject, falls in with the ancient idea that art
is the expression of the beautiful, and defends
the realism of his “Old Courtesan” (a woman
of eighty in the nude) by declaring that all
nature is beautiful, a proposition which, with
its illustration, practically denies the existence
of the ugly. If, however, all nature is beautiful,
and art’s business is the expression of the
beautiful, then anything in nature is a fit sub-
ject for art, a proposition which eliminates
selection and, furthermore, reduces art to the
level of plenary imitation. It is, however, no
tenet of realism that all nature is beautiful;
rather is it the boast and pride of the average
realist of both literature and the plastic arts
that realism conveys them to the haunts of the
ugly, and their justification of its application
to art is the standpoint of Ruskin, who taught
that art was the closest expression of nature.
Rodin's preference to be a classic and old-
[7]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
fashioned in his philosophy possesses that
grim nobility of mind in its contemplation of
God’s creation, accepting it as right, that it
hails our respect at least from the viewpoint
of its simple reverence. Realism can have no
ideals, since all is good. Realism and Stoicism
clasp hands adown the highway, making the
best of things. They do not stray afield, they
climb no heights for the far view, they see no
visions. They are content with creation as it
is, and whatever idea their art would convey
is consigned in simple trust to nature for its
conveyance.
I
The production may please the senses and
not be art of any valued degrees, but if it
please the intelligence it has passed the true
sentry in charge of the countersign. The child
is delighted with the pictures and music
created for his aesthetic sense. The savage
takes delight in his pictured art and music.
But neither of these pleases us. Pleasure there-
fore becomes a test of art, but not the crite-
rion. Art’s criterion rests on taste, and taste
is founded on universal education. This dis-
tinction impugns the theory of Professor Von
Richard Kralik, who presumes that art springs
from the five senses. He therefore treats
seriously the art of the sense of touch and taste
and smell as well as the art of the sense of
sight and hearing. An address made to the
sight and hearing is conveyed to the intelli-
gence, where enjoyment is consummated; but
[8]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
that which appeals to the sense of touch, of
smelling and tasting merely, affects the senses
directly and establishes no intellectual pleasure.
This fact — namely, that the sensations from
the three remaining senses are not delegated
to the intelligence — excludes them from art
impression and incidentally proves that the
sensations produced by works of art aspire
to the intelligence and are but rarely limited
to a “sense” of beauty.
The “sense of beauty” has come into recog-
nized currency as a convenient term, still used
by some modern writers of art. The senses
are five, and they still continue to respond to
all necessary demands. To my own mind and
that of many another artist the question arises,
why make mysterious the principles of art:
creating an added sense, when we may carry
the sensations which are at the seat of emotion,
together with the mechanical methods which
exploit them, straight to the intelligence and
know the basis for the pleasure they produce?
In the sequel to this book, “The Constructive
Principles of Art,” the basis of what is here
denominated “aesthetic pleasure,” is discussed.
The above definition of art is inclusive of
many subjects which are popularly not included
in the art category and is exclusive of certain
ones which are thus popularly included.
II
There are certain subjects denominated as
art which merely contain some art; there are
[9]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
others which contain less; there are a few which
are altogether art. Instead therefore of divid-
ing the products of human creation into sub-
jects which are art or not art, a more reasonable
and clarifying designation would be art, and
subjects containing art; or, more particularly,
Pure Art and Some Art. The definition of art
kept in mind would quickly set the subjects
into their categories. The uncritical habit of
man, who has for generations used this term art
without being able to define it, and having only
in a very general way a notion of what it means,
has furnished him with objections to accepting
a conception of it which upsets his vague and
indefensible usage.
The writer’s hypothesis that art is addressed
to the intelligence, though seemingly to the
aesthetic sense, not only paves the way for its
intellectual analysis, but incidentally safeguards
its foundation from varying degree of taste.
The art of the savage or barbarian, that which
pleases him as decoration, imagery, or music,
delight his fancy merely. Noble, dignified,
and transcendental art would either not please
him at all, or, if it did, would do so only when
apprehended by his awakened intelligence. It
is because this faculty is required in the appre-
hension of art that the barbarian of this or
other lands can take no pleasure in it.
Says the critic of the Saturday Review (Lon-
don): “The laws by which beauty may become
enmeshed become in the same age hostile from
man to man, and in the same man are hostile
from man in his nonage to man who has ed-
[10]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
ucated his sensibilities.” This supports the
writer’s contention that in making its address
to the intelligence art becomes more and more
plain as the intelligence of man arises toward it.
No better argument for adding intelligence
to intuition in the production of art may be
supplied than the writing of Gertrude Stein,
who is a product of the Post Impressionistic
movement. These amazing cycles of repetitious
commonplaces are the result of emptying the
mind of all ideas and then putting to paper
such thoughts as the intuitious supply without
aid of the intelligence.
In reducing art to its simplest form, that of
easiest comprehension for the child either of
years or in mental growth, Tolstoy would seem
to degrade art to the low level of accommoda-
tion instead of raising it to the high level
of intelligent appreciation. He therefore is
obliged to dismiss on this basis many of the
world’s masterpieces in painting, music, and
literature as above and beyond universal ap-
preciation.
The analysis of any work for the art con-
tained in it is the same process that we apply
in chemistry. It will show such a per cent. of
art as specimens of quartz will expose here and
there glints of gold; or, by contrast, the whole
as a nugget is pronounced pure. Calling a
work which contains some art, a work of art,
is as uncategorical as to designate as gold a
specimen of quartz containing some of that
metal. Herein lies the complication now aris-
ing in poetry which is a combination of art and
[11]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
non-art, a question taken up more fully later
Oſl.
There is no small per cent. that goes for art
in poetry, music, and painting which is justified
as such through its environment. There are
the unmusical passages where the composer
seems at sea, drawing us after him in our faith
that he will yet speak again, much of which
is unjustified on the principle of contrast,
arrest, or discord, with the purpose of creating
a greater vitality in what ensues. There are
the prolonged commonplaces in prose and
oratory which we endure while waiting the
lightning flash. There are many surfaces of
accessory and minor parts in painting and
sculpture which are devoid of “quality.” There
is, finally, the one good spot in the work of
the beginner which is frequently as good as a
master could make it. In all this the gold
merely suffers from the dross, but in our esti-
mate of the whole we judge it to be either one
or the other, a conclusion rendered on the
philosophic postulate of identity. In such
criticism the question of what proportion of
art to non-art one may accept and call the prod-
uct art, or what amount of real art may exist
and by virtue of the taint be condemned as
non-art, is settled as purely a matter of taste.
This attitude is essential for the practical one
to whom art shall be pleasure, for the product
must be judged and accepted as an entity; but
to the student it is of great importance that
the work shall be analyzed for its dross and its
gold.
[12]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
It is by such process that the labor of purifi-
cation culminates, and in his own case he may
in time put his work out of one class and into
another. The true conception of art, then,
the writer holds to be an acknowledgment of
pleasure which may come spontaneously on
viewing or hearing a creative work, which
pleasure may be justified, qualified, or destroyed
as it is later reviewed by the intelligence for
the expression of those vital principles on which
art must rest, productive as they are of the
quality which determines artistic value. The
ease with which pseudo-art may please the
majority of mankind would indeed make pleas-
ure therein a flimsy and worthless test of it,
unassisted by a faculty with which the worth
of the test might be gauged.
III
Business, science, and religion are founded
on truth, and when they remove themselves
from it they fail. Art has likewise its alleged
foundation in truth, but its first mission being
to please, truth is forced to become elastic, to
be turned, twisted, manipulated, cajoled, threat-
ened, outraged — all this merely that man may
keep on being pleased.
But man is no such tyrant that for a holiday
he could wish Truth murdered; no, she always
escapes, or if not, man finds that together with
her he has killed Art also.
If man were not of this sort and his mental
processes merely reasonable and mechanical,
[13]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
one form of graphic presentation would suit
him for all time.
But from the cradle to the grave man keeps
on outgrowing his toys. This demand for
change must therefore be recognized in his
pleasures. In art he is constantly craving it,
and the pleasure demand in art and the truth
demand by the makers of art creeds will later
on be placed before the reader.
Let art be judged (and classified) by her
intentions.
All art, then, is divided into three classes:
that which is created as decorative, that which
is created for the expression of an idea, that
which is purely imitative and is created solely
as an expression of reality. In each case the
ultimate effort of the artist is pleasure, his own
and that of others. While these three great
divisions may be clearly traced, so positively
as to leave no doubt of a first intention, the
majority of art as clearly proves that with the
opportunity apparent for including in the same
work the qualities of two, if not three, of these
divisions, the artist has reached out in favoring
caress or positive adaptation of these.
It is only at the beginning and at the (present)
end of art that emphasis is laid on but a single
one of these points of view.
In what may be called art’s inception, when
the cave man made use of his crude ability
to trace a form, the intention was purely
realistic. His sole effort was to make his record
as like the object as possible, and at this point
he rested. He had no thought of beauty, and
[14]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
aesthetics was as valueless as finger bowls or a
floral centrepiece in his daily life. Without
significance of mental pleasure his effort was
compassed by the sensation of mental satisfac-
tion. He was therefore no more an artist than
the child, who, in the same scientific spirit,
makes a drawing of a parent or playmate or
depicts, out of the realm of his fancy, a likeness
of something of which he has heard. The
visual language to the child of the stone age
or of the nursery is no more nor less than to
him of the workshop who finds it easier to call
for a pencil when description fails, and says,
“Well, it is something like this.”
The parent declares: “This drawing by
Willie gives me great pleasure; I am immensely
pleased with it.” Oh, fond parent, cannot you
see that the reason of your pleasure in this
effort is entirely a sentimental one? It is
because you suddenly realize that your boy is
using a language of his own which you had not
taught him, and has amused and interested
you, as did his efforts at getting up from his
knees, standing unaided, and making a step.
This bit of scientific exposition, this proof that
he has observed and is able to chronicle his
observation, must not be interpreted as art, but
as his other means of describing a natural fact.
Thus far he has observed that the head sets
on the neck, the neck on the shoulders, and the
body on the trunk, but he has not observed the
relationship of size in either features or body.
The drawing by Rodin page (16) is in like
measure scientific data. To call this art would
[15]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
be equivalent to declaring that the “notes” of
the speaker were literary art. But lest even
this be asserted as a privilege in the present
state of the philosophic atmosphere, we may
take Rodin’s own assertion as proof that this
is not art, for to Rodin art is “servile imitation.”
In the sketch of the nude model there is no
servility and but meagre imitation. It is, in
short, but a passing reminder of human ac-
tion.
But as to the effort which is more than this,
and which sets out to imitate the object, the
careful drawing of the model, is not this art?
On the contrary, this is still science. This is
clearly inspired by the demands of science to
know, and the student labors faithfully under
this demand. “Art only begins with the
liberty of the artist, as flight only begins with
the liberty of the bird.” “The law of relativ-
ity,” says Hamerton, “governs everything in
the world of art. To exercise the great art
faculty is to extract the power from these
relations; and the copyism of objects in isolated
studies does not exercise the high art faculty
at all. Goethe perceived this long since. He
perceived that the effect of everything depends
on its surroundings, and that to detach and
isolate is to destroy.”
To persist in the inquiry, however, what
shall be said of the plastic study of the student
of sculpture? This is isolated and is likely to
turn out as well as some of the things which,
dignified by the term art, find a place at the
exhibitions. Isolation does not impair the
[16]
toº º
His Mother
MoDEL – Rodin
º º
* - º
LIFE Class Drawing Child's Sketch
Effort of SciExtific INTExtiox, the PURpose of Which Is Record on AcquireMENT of KNowledge


Sux EMBLEM – Bowl Decoration
AMERICAN INDIAN
Lizard – Food Bowl
AMERICAN INDIAN
Red FIGURED WASE
GREEk—Metropolitan Museum
BEAR Paw – Decoration Twin Birds – Decoration
AMERICAN INDIAN AMERICAN INDIAN
Effort Conscious of AN ADDED QUALITY
Application of Form to Æsthetic PURPose





THE CONCEPTION OF ART
quality of the Venus de Milo, nor the portrait
of Augustus.
Here, then, is the point where the wording
of the writer’s definition finds partial justifi-
cation. If art were a something which was
made for our intellectual (aesthetic) pleasure,
then the thing itself thus pleasing us would be
art. Instead, however, the contention is that
it is not the thing but the quality in the thing,
and this becomes that subtle and sensitive line
of demarcation which qualifies or disqualifies.
If the work, undertaken under the scientific en-
deavor of the seeker for knowledge, appeals
to his intelligence or to that of another, with a
delight distinctly apart from the joy of ac-
complishment or satisfaction in its skill, the
work thereby crosses the line into the realm of
art, though this was not its goal.
Here, then, is established that line of separa-
tion varied and changeable as the shore line of
a continent. There never was a straight line
serving this purpose; it is a line strangely in-
clusive and as strangely exclusive. It invades
the schoolroom and encloses the modest per-
formance of a questioning student and leaves
upon the shoals the creations of empty confi-
dence in the gallery. It furthermore frequently
overlaps parts of the same work, including these
and rejecting the remainder of the work. Art,
in short, announces itself to be a regulative
quality, applied to the form and expression of
man’s intellectual pleasures.
The pure arts are those which conform strictly
to the broad definition of art. Produced for
[17]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
man’s aesthetic and intellectual pleasure, the
following may be admitted as “pure”: music,
decorative design, including all patterns for
adornment whose intrinsic mission is to please;
landscape gardening, window dressing, the plan
for the city beautiful, all ornament for utensils,
for architecture or personal adornment, dancing,
and all forms of exercise giving pleasure to the
beholder through its design, painting and
sculpture, the effect from which is pleasure
apart from any idea which may be contained.
Pure art, therefore, supposedly addresses the
primitive faculties of appreciation; but as the
mistress whose first appeal has been a simple
loveliness of form and feature may add thereto
the fascination of wit, and later the deeper
charm of soul, so in its development under the
hand either of intelligent craftsmanship or alert
appreciation this creature of simple beauty may
become intellectually companionable and in time
the revealer for us of those deeper delights
which lay hold on eternity. Art, whose first
intention was an address to the senses, may
become at length a source of ideas and through
them an inspiration.
IV
When art moves from this simple precinct
she takes on phases which are either associated
ones or by-products of art.
Most architecture is therefore not pure art,
but rather scientific construction. The art con-
tained is added to this science either as a design
[18]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
or its adornment. We may view the structure
exteriorly and conclude it gives us pleasure.
We enter to find rooms for living, halls for
entrance and exit arranged for man's conven-
ience. The art in architecture is discovered
in the aesthetic adaptation of spaces and ele-
vations and in the beautifying of essential
requirements. Art, therefore, is the handmaid
of architecture, and not basal. The proportions
of the building, — i.e., its relation of line to line,
or line to mass — is governed by certain
principles of aesthetics, and the building as a
subject may thereby become a subject for art
expression in its conception, but the fact that
much building exists and fully conserves its
purpose without in anywise giving expression
to these possibilities in aesthetics proves that
architecture may survive and proceed without
them. It may be said, however, that there is
no subject which offers a worthier opportunity
for the expression of art’s principles than
architecture. The cases wherein architecture
is entirely art are rare monuments to art’s true
definition. Architecture is a utility, the archi-
tect being more deeply exercised over his prob-
lem of habitation and its requirements than
with the inexorable demands of proportion,
space, and balance, or with decoration and its
pleasures.
The inclusion in a scheme of art of rudi-
mentary or temple architecture such as the
Celtic monuments or the Dolmen of Poitiers,
where great slabs are supported by upright
stones, even though these were inspired by
[19]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
creative emotion, is to leave the true line of
art in our quest by overlooking its great es-
sential. These early examples of architecture,
though not made for utilitarian purposes, were
set up as memorials or temples for the deities,
embodying a notion of reverence and worship,
and do not include any demand for beauty.
That later such architecture was discovered to
present opportunity for the expression of the
beautiful, and that the opportunity in time
developed San Marco and the Taj Mahal, in
which one finds those qualities which excite
man's aesthetic and intellectual pleasure, leaves
architecture still knocking for admittance as a
pure art.
Neither as a utility or as a work of superero-
gation can architecture lay claim to a place in
art's genesis. Yet with many minds architec-
ture is assumed as the parent of the arts.
If, however, we are to apply the contention
of Fichte and others of his school that art is
an expression of a beautiful soul in its effort
at self-expression, an admission would follow
toward a few architects who exercise this faculty
of soul-loveliness and express themselves in dis-
regard of the demands of the ultimate tenant
and with the avowed purpose only of having
the beholder exclaim, “How beautiful.” But
why should architecture crave the stamp of a
“pure” art? Her great service as a utility is
to prove that utilities may be made beautiful,
and in this she becomes the parent of a long
and increasing progeny. In Art’s record of
national thought, as mirrored in her divers
[20]
THE CCNCEPTION OF ART
works the world round, in painting, in sculp-
ture, and architecture, the latter’s expressions
probably give forth more of the timbre of a
people’s life, becoming more of an exponent
of its philosophy, its politics, its struggles, its
ideals than may be discovered in the other
tWO.
V
Language, like architecture, responds to
Art’s réveillon and awakes to the widest
capacity of influence obtainable between man
and man. Communication, written or verbal,
may exist among people throughout a lifetime
without the discovery that they have been
using a soil which not only produces wheat,
potatoes, and cabbages, but roses, lilies, and
palms. The Garden of Allah springs from the
desert as a surprise which was designed.
Language, oral or written, becomes art or
artistic in degree as it attracts our judgment
for its completeness and fitness of expression.
It must charm by its form. The words which
we know as everyday currency in everyday
service must be so placed as to become, as
Coleridge declares, the best words in the best order.
The result is, therefore, art, either of poetry or
prose; and language is turned into art no less
in the one than the other.
Applying the definition of art to dancing, it
is found to be a pure art in that its contempla-
tion gives pleasure in the balanced and fitting
association of its parts. Its purpose is entirely
to please. We cannot, however, speak of a
[21]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
game of football or baseball as art, except from
the viewpoint of our pleasure in following the
wonderful variety in unity, as part joins with
part in balanced and fitting association. This
much is artistic, but the game fails of being a
work of art because, though all its elements
may be present, it does not become a creation
of some controlling mind, such for instance as
does the formal dance.
Music springs into being so spontaneously,
as not only an expression of emotional pleasure
on the part of its creator, but likewise for the
pleasure of others, that it takes rank as the
purest of the arts.
In this connection let us return to our defini-
tion: Art is the expression of that power in
man which is regulative of the quality of all
which he creates for his aesthetic and intellectual
pleasure.
Art is a creation having for its purpose to give
pleasure; not an” “activity” nor an “achieve-
ment,” so, unless the would-be artistis a creator,
he does not qualify. Therefore, the artisan in
working out a beautiful thing from the master’s
design is not an artist; nor the musician who
with masterly activity interprets the composer’s
thought; not until any of these, so closely in
touch with the principles and practice of art,
actually creates it, can he truly be called an
artist. Yet the constant proximity to the
creative thought and technical expression of
any art in numerous cases stimulates creation,
and most interpreters of musical art have to
*Tolstoy.
[22]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
their credit the impromptu or written score
of some melodic inspiration on which they
“qualify.” At the same time, the musician in
his interpretation makes use of every principle
of art, which under his hand may attain a power
never conceived by the composer himself.
Beholding an opportunity in the motif of a
score he may raise the degree of the latent
emotion contained in it by the quality of those
art principles therein discerned and which he
exercises in their highest degree, leaving the
original conception gasping at its unknown
potency.
By this ability the distinction between the
artisan who merely chips away the marble as
he follows the sculptor's cast model and in
time is able to present the master’s concept to
the world, and the musician with his personal
emotional range of interpretation, takes each
one his place, in widely distinctive classes.
Just here arises the case, fine drawn, of the
actor versus the interpreter of music; for al-
though the former interprets the thought of
another he sets before us a visible creation,
himself. Just as the painter or sculptor takes
a man and makes him into art, so does the
actor use himself with his component parts,
which we find him working into a unified
creation. It is no longer McCreedy, or Booth,
or Terry that we see, but Iago, Hamlet, and
Rosalind, and these creations have good title
to their signatures.
Although the art in all painting and sculp-
ture is that part only which gives pleasure,
[23]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
pleasure from its construction or technique, or
that gratification which follows the rendition
of character, still to that as the essential art
part of the work is naturally allied another
capacity — namely, the expressing of an idea,
illustrative, didactic, emotional, argumentative,
moral, patriotic, or religious. So easily does
art do this that early writers supposed this was
art’s business, whereas her only real duty is to
please. So capable is she with these latter
opportunities that the magazine editor wants
art’s assistance for his novel or nature story,
and the composer of music and song writer
mutually embrace her. The newspaper ac-
knowledges that the strongest and most direct
arguments in the political campaign are made
by the cartoonist, and not the editor. Her
power for good or evil in the field of ethics is
incalculable, the sublime heights of patriotism
are reached no less by the art of eloquence than
by the symbolism of the painted or sculptured
appeal, and the benign influence infecting the
devotee of religion, whether he kneels at the
wayside shrine or in the vaulted cathedral and
looks reverently into the face of the Madonna,
plays so large a part in the effect which is to
be produced in each that art, as to its associated
dea, assumes giant proportions.
So great was art conceded to be from these
associated possibilities that in numerous philos-
ophies the possibility was strangely confused
with the parent idea.
[24]
CHAPTER II
THE LOGIC OF ART
“There is no expedient to which man will not resort to
evade the real labor of thinking.” — Sir Joshua Reynolds.
ART must be logical; in short, art is the logic
of form. The processes of logic invariably give
intellectual pleasure. Art’s chief purpose is
also to give intellectual pleasure. Logic and
art are each the expression of unity in the
balanced and fitting association of the different
parts of a subject. Art selects her materials;
logic directs their form, for logic is the science
of the laws of thought, and art is the form of
that thought expressed through natural ele-
ments.
While this is true, it is not all: man may
express his thought through natural elements
and not produce art. It does not become art
until it gives both pleasure to the mind that
creates and the mind that receives it. This is
its sign, and under this qualification the term
intelligence should be understood to be de-
weloped and normal. A treatise on a scientific
theme which is so handled by its author as to
give, besides the mere information pertaining
to the subject, a distinct intellectual pleasure,
is a work of art. The art and the science are
easily separated. The art of it lies in the
[25 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
manner of presentation. Whereas, through a
different form of words, the facts of the matter
only would be impressed, under the hand en-
dowed by the artistic impulse these facts are
clothed in such apparel as causes us to pause
and admire.
The point is necessary to perceive, for on
it depends the notion that art must be some-
thing apart from mere expression of fact, and
that the difference lies in intellectual pleas-
ure, which may be analyzed. The doctrine of
Heine and others that “art is form” becomes
the first proposition in a syllogism which is
developed by Schelling in his assertion that
art is the uniting of nature with reason, and
strengthened by Kant, who declares that the
production of art out of nature is pure
7°00'SO??.
If this be so the apprehension of a work of
art created by reason is entirely the work of
the intellectual apparatus and needs no partic-
ular faculty for its perception. The form,
either dictated by reason when the product is
created by the artist, or accepted by him be-
cause found in nature to be “fitting” in the
association of its different parts, insures accep-
tance, which, gratified by such completeness,
receives it in pleasure. True, the intuitions
may substitute for the intelligence at the start,
as they do with the art of children and with
artists who do not plan a design but trust to
luck. To all such, however, in time must
come the realization that the difference in the
worth and quality of their designs is based
[26 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
upon one or more reasons, and forthwith
the intelligence is set to work and discovers
these.
The theory of Mr. Bergsen that we act by
impulse and intuition, as original forces, is
but the other side of the shield. The result
by either method may be found identical in
its results, the good result of the good intuition
proving to be in logical line with the intelligence,
just as completely as the bad result from the
bad intuition proves itself in conflict with the
intelligence.
It is our apprehension of the intelligence,
working nature into form, which constitutes one
of our pleasures in art, and the difference be-
tween two works, let us say of painting, manu-
factured out of the same materials may either
express on this basis the wide difference between
art and no art or the lesser difference between
some art and less art.
For instance: we have a number of fishes as
subject to be converted into a work of painting
and made worthy a frame. If these are ar-
ranged on two or three shelves one above the
other, or so placed in other arrangement that
there is no cohesion of parts, the work, though
well executed as imitation, lacks the intelligence
which creates unity as a design, and as a work
of art is a failure. Let there be rearrangement
in the parts so that the form-giving principles
may begin to operate, and the work moves into
the range of art. Let these become fully opera-
tive, and what was at first regarded as uninter-
esting or frankly absurd fascinates by a
[27 J
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
wonderful and convincing unity. It becomes,
to use the current phrase, beautiful.
But this beauty was not inherent in the
subject. It did not begin to dawn until the
intelligence took hold and created a design.
When during the process it was neither good
nor bad, but on the way toward a satisfactory
arrangement of parts, our critical disappoint-
ment was not with the subject nor with the
technique, but with the intelligence of the
artist in its insufficient coördination of the parts
of his subject, his lack of knowledge concerning
art’s regulative principles. The thing called
beauty therefore was quite dependent upon
man's intelligence, a creation based on logical
procedure, directed by a demand for the highest
efficiency of parts in the whole.
Adding to this interest in art yet another —
namely, that of sentimental or associated ideas—
we find in that likewise does our pleasure make
acknowledgment to the intelligence of the artist
quite as much as to the beauty in the work.
In his landscape the chord of sadness, reverie,
or exultation might be struck for us, but he
could not have expressed it had he not effected
a mental grasp of it so that it becomes his gift
to you, and when his work excites in you the
deeper moral qualities of courage, reverence,
devotion, sublimity and the like, it cannot be
regarded by chance, but rather by design that
he has uplifted you, and should you choose to
deny the moral purpose in the work, you must
at least give credit to the intelligence of the
artist in having defended his conception from
[28
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
falling to the level of the ridiculous when sub-
limity was its goal.
At this point should be mentioned the strong
attempt on the part of J. J. Rousseau and Schel-
ling to romanticize art by their effort to exalt
spontaneity at the expense of rationality, to
give full rein to the imagination, under the
suggestion from Goethe that the imagination
might be freed from reason. The spectacular
break which Rousseau made with the classicists
of his day is epitomized in his epigrams, “the
man who thinks is a depraved animal,” and
“if the artist is to have logic let it be the logic
of dreamland,” an attitude of mind naturally
forced upon one in a decaying régime of both
art and letters.
The drawings and crude paintings of children,
in which we take a veritable pleasure, may at
the first and superficial glance be placed out-
side the pale of logical analysis. So far as the
child is concerned, they are to him simply a
blossoming, from his intuitive sense, an attempt
to talk in another language than the language
of words, and to this new opportunity he gives
a joyous expression. At times his intuitions
are pronouncedly right, as judged by a maturer
standard; at other times, and more frequently,
they are pronouncedly wrong and are therefore
productive of worthlessness. The happy hits
are quite as frequently due to a judiciously
selected list of colors and to a natural love of
colors which he uses daringly and usually with
a feeling for harmony in the employment of
the three primaries. His natural sense for
[29]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
balance, which every person possesses in greater
or lesser degree, will now and then provoke
the something-or-other in the right place which
happily gives a unity to the whole. At times,
through mere inability of technique, the mys-
terious element so valuable to art is happily
created. It is refreshing because devoid of
all science, all formula and rule. If the attempt
be an imitation in the classroom, let us say
with water color, how frequently is the best
result an accidental one. How, in so many of
the best examples of children’s aquarelles, has
the happy accident been saved by the ever-
watchful eye of the teacher before the deter-
mined attempt of the pupil to attain what he
was after shall have ruined its quality. In
both imaginative and realistic work, the child,
in the candor of his conviction, will tell you
that his picture turned out quite different from
his intention. In the first instance, his seniors
see in it things which he never intended, and
frequently misjudge his conception; and, in the
second case, what he felt to be a failure in ex-
pressing the copy before him was held up to
the class as exemplifying the freedom and
charm which art should possess. Accuracy,
which he is taught in the other classes is a
virtue, here does not seem to be rated as high
as a quality clearly beyond him to comprehend.
Intention seems to have scored beyond attain-
ment. The child is bewildered and is ready
to agree with Rousseau.
But years pass, and out of the old portfolio
are taken the forgotten things, dated and signed.
[30
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
Following the recognition of merit is the quick
calculation of age; five, six, seven, and the man
muses in a reverie. He sees qualities for which
he is now searching, the easy and fearless
technique, the assurance of undaunted belief,
the willingness to rest the case when it had
passed the impulsive and emotional stage; and
again he sees that quality of suggestion, the
force which inheres in crude color, and the invi-
tation toward mysticism in the opportunity for
varied solutions of meaning. Then with loving
and tender discrimination he sorts out two
piles, he may even pause in his enthusiasm to
pin one here and one there upon his wall.
Some he reserves to look at another day and
the rest he crumples into the waste-paper
basket.
Those that have survived have each expressed
certain valued principles of art — those in the
basket lack them. Unknown to the childish
mind were the ideas of dominance, opposition,
sequence, and poise, but they followed on in
the line of intuitive effort even at that early
day, and when they failed to connect with the
naïve attempt of childhood they missed the
valuable quality. There are certain men so
captivated by the ingenuous touch of child-
hood’s art that they long to imitate it, unaware
that experience has disqualified them from that
for all time. Not even in their dotage could
they attain this subtle and ephemeral point of
view; but even so, some in their anxiety have
sought to hasten this state in their attempt.
A keen observer remarks: “The direct rendering
[31]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
of an impression without giving it mental
significance cannot constitute a genuine work
of art. The work of children is the product of
only one of the elements of art — intense
perception.” This, however, may beintuitively
right.
The beauty “sense,” in large degree, then, is
the intelligence at work upon conclusions which
give intellectual pleasure.
Let the reader test the proposition which,
at variance with much that has gone before,
may be misunderstood. The colorist at once
demands, “What about the simple relation of
several harmonious hues! Are they not beauti-
ful, and if so are they not acknowledged by
sense?”
In reality, the appreciation of certain colors
or hues in combination can be scientifically
explained,” becoming, as a matter of fact, cor-
roborative of our intuitive selection. The ap-
prehension thereof gives pleasure which, though
immediate, becomes a matter to be dis-
sected and understood by us. So, likewise,
with what may be termed a beautiful concate-
nation of lines in a pattern. This may be
scientifically explained, and reasons given why
lines, meeting at certain points and at given
angles, produce a unity of pattern and are there-
fore accounted as beautiful, productive of intel-
lectual pleasure through such apprehension.
Indeed, it would be difficult to mention any-
thing appealing to what has been called the
aesthetic sense which is more frankly intellectual
*The theories of Chevreul, Delsarte, Ross, and others do this.
[32]
Hindu: Suprumanian AND His Wives
Assyntax: WiNGEd Bulls
Ancient Symbolism – Max Associated with ATTRIBUTEs of VARIED Significance


The ANGEL or DEATH AND THE Sculptor – Dan. C. French
The Extremes of MoDERN SYMbolism, OBJEctive AND SUBJEctive


THE CONCEPTION OF ART
and logical in its appeal than a fine space-filling
design. With the key once discovered, the
procedure from one step to another is so direct
and the reason thereof so apparent that one
furnished with the principles of art enjoys it
quite as much as an intellectual as a sensuous
pleasure.
So likewise with sound. The theory of music
is reducible to a science, but at this point I am
willing to admit that art’s appeal is more
aesthetic than intellectual, and merely remind
the reader of the possibility of adding to his
pleasure of intuitive apprehension the interest
of constructive knowledge.
II
The apprehension of pure beauty, which may
appear to be an exercise above the reach of
reason, depends after all upon taste, and
leaves the case at any rate in the ignus fatuus
of personal preference. Such combination of
colors as is accounted beautiful to one is ab-
horrent to another. The music of the Chinese
or the South Sea Islanders is a distress to the
votaries of the modern school of opera, and
conversely Wagner is doubtless as incompre-
hensible to the Chinese and Malay as to Tolstoy,
who derided it. In the realm of absolute pure
beauty, taste will always be a subverting factor
in any hypothesis. When, however, we bring
our attention to the intellectual apprehension
of art, the question of beauty opens to analysis;
and in many cases, markedly in those where
[33]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
positive ugliness is the subject, it is found that
art's demand for pleasure is satisfied wholly by
the means of expression. If these adequately
fit the character of its ugliness so that the
subject is made explicitly and pronouncedly so,
the intellectuality of the artist in its discern-
ment of character is our pleasure. But why
deceive ourselves into the supposition that the
work is beautiful? Could we gaze upon Rodin’s
aged strumpet or MacCameron’s “Absinthe
Drinkers’ groping in the last stages of paranoia
and exclaim, “How beautiful!” Is it not time
that we used terms for our ideas that express
them and thereby obtain a revelation of truth?
Let the ejaculation be, “How characterful!”
and acknowledgment made that the means em-
ployed which technically express it are masterly
and that constructively the work exploits the
principles of art. These are added reasons for a
Sane pleasure in such works; and the three
reasons of character, of technique, and con-
struction are what qualify them as art, despite
Tolstoy's contention that only such works as
can show a moral basis can be considered
art.
But let us push the inquiry still farther, for
present art is laboring hard to escape from
beauty, and ask what exclamation is befitting
that grade of German and French art of latest
manifestation. Here ugliness is slammed upon
a pedestal with the fiat: Let it be! In neither
painting nor sculpture has it any beauty that
we shall desire it. Bereft of the graces of good
drawing, color, or construction, we analyze it
[34]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
to find its only quality to be character, and this
usually enforced to caricature. If art is the
expression of the beautiful, what is to be done
with these? They must either be ruled out
of court as not art, or the admission be made
that beauty is not an essential in art.
Under the first proposition they have the
defence of Taine, declaring that art demands
the exaggeration of the natural character of
the subject, and the clamor likewise of pres-
tidigitative philosophy striving to make us see
the ugly as beautiful.
If retained as art, a modification of our notion
of beauty must necessarily take place."
That beauty is the first cause of art is the
confusing and confounding notion over which
philosophers have wrangled from the days of
Plato and Aristotle down to the last dictum by
Tolstoy, who, after declaring they were all wrong,
closes his argument thus: “Learned people
write long cloudy treatises on art as a member
of the aesthetic trinity of Beauty, Truth, and
Goodness. . . . In reality, these words
have no definite meaning, but hinder us in
attaching any definite meaning to existing art.”
The contention is this: the artist does not set
forth to create beauty, but rather to give ex-
pression to a thought or emotion. In moulding
this in a manner which to his own mind is most
effectual he falls back on certain intellectual pro-
*So brief a chapter on so vast a theme must be incomplete
without shaping its conclusion toward the area of conflict between
the two great philosophers of antiquity whose influence extends
to the present. Coleridge has reminded us that all men are
either Platonists or Aristotelians.
[35]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
cesses expressed in the principles of art. This
usually results in something which the world
calls beauty, and the more skilful does his
hand become in expressing his mind the more
beauty does the work contain.
The “beauty” habit is bad because as a term
having no definable meaning it is used to express
a definite number of things, and furthermore is
seldom made to submit to a limited or com-
parative degree.
Instead, therefore, of challenging Beauty,
analyzing her, discovering wherein she may be
more beautiful, in short, submitting her to
the intellectual test, the habit of the centuries
has been to accept her on the certificate of a
“divine right,” and even create for her an extra
sense for her apprehension. The child in the
school is asked to look at something and is
told it is beautiful. He is asked to decide
between several objects as to which he thinks
most beautiful, but is he given reasons why one
is not beautiful and never could be and also
reasons why another, though beautiful, could
be rendered more so? But that a “sense of
beauty” is necessary to the apprehension of art
is on a par in its conception with the manu-
facture of this “sense” under the supposition
that man required it.
Let the reader for a moment glance at the
field of battle upon which has been waged this
warfare over beauty, and let him make a
calculation as to the effort, both mental and
physical, which has been required to establish,
to undo, to reëstablish, to revise, to limit, to
[36]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
extend, to condemn, to defend these varying
notions concerning beauty.
“Hardly,” says Schasler, “in any sphere of
philosophic science can we find such diverg-
ent methods of investigation and exposition,
amounting even to self-contradiction, as in
the sphere of aesthetics. On the one hand, we
have elegant phraseology without substance,
and, on the other hand, with undeniable depths
of investigation, we get revolting awkwardness
of philosophical terminology. A style of ex-
position which expresses itself in clear and
popular philosophic language can be found
nowhere less frequently than in the domain
of aesthetics.”
Eugène Veron, who in 1878 summed up more
satisfactorily than any of his predecessors in
the aesthetic field the end and aim of art,
declared: “There is no science which more than
aesthetics has been handed over to the reveries
of metaphysicians. From Plato down to the
received doctrines of the day, people have made
of art a strange amalgam of fancies and trans-
cendental mysteries which find their expression
in the conception of an absolute ideal beauty.”
To confound “natural” beauty with man-
made beauty exhibits poverty of analysis in
a misuse of terms. Art and natural beauty
are distinctly separate in their origin; the one,
a creation by the Almighty, employing many
standards according to the separate types of
His choice, and the other the hand-made affair
of man seeking in its efficiency the most com-
plete means of expression.
[37]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
What appears that complete means to the
Hindu, the Alaskan, or the Anglo-Saxon may
be so disparate as to be mutually incompre-
hensible.
If we were to change our term of “beauty”
in art for the more rational conception of
efficient expression in art, and make acknowl-
edgment to the standards of intelligence of the
producers of art, we would find, instead of dam-
ming art’s flow by countless diversions toward
our own charted course, we would give it the
liberty to a right of way in its own channel.
The first cause of art was desire for expression
and not the exploitation of the beautiful. As
man became more critical of his expression
and more insistent of its efficiency he brought to
bear upon it certain principles which made his
expression the more effective.
This the world has called beautiful, using
for it the same term as is applied to the thing
beautiful by nature — the form, let us say, of
woman or man in its perfection — a beauty
which cannot be analyzed, strive howsoever
We may.
[38]
CHAPTER III
PHILOSOPHIC CONCEPTIONS
“Any creation of man's intelligence may be analyzed
by man's intelligence.”
THE first writers to revise the science of
aesthetics after a lapse of fifteen hundred years,
Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, of the English
school, both held that beauty is recognized by
the mind only. Hutcheson modifies this to a
degree by asserting that we recognize art by
“an internal sense.”
Baumgarten was part way right in declaring
that beauty was recognized by the senses —
sight and hearing — a self-evident statement,
but that the apprehension of art is an intel-
lectual process was first conceived by the two
English philosophers. From that point beauty
falls into the hands of taste, which only can
decide what is beautiful, and since taste cannot
be definite, neither can beauty. This is the
conclusion of Voltaire and other French writers
of his day.
Winckelmann, who makes beauty the aim of
art, establishes a threefold division of his sub-
ject: beauty of form, beauty of idea, and beauty
of expression, the last a combination of the first
two. Since then, however, art has been prov-
*Tolstoy's “What is Art?”
[39]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
ing that the first and second of his divisions
are not essential and has paused in deliberation
over the last.*
With the advent of Kant much light was
turned on, for his conception of subject and
object, of nature apart from man himself, and
of himself, as a part of nature, was good analysis.
In nature man exercises his reason for the dis-
covery of truth. He adds what he considers
necessary — namely, a “judging capacity,”
which forms judgments without reasoning and
which, he declares, is the basis of the aesthetic
feeling.
Why Kant should have felt the addition a
necessity is hard to understand. If the reason
apprehends truth, and beauty was held to be
truth, the reason should have been sufficient
for its apprehension.
At that time it must be remembered, how-
ever, that there had been no scientific analysis
of the processes of art except the rhetoric of
literary art. There had been no works on
constructive art, bringing it into the range of a
science. Judgment without reason (which for a
philosopher is a strained case of elastic accom-
modation) was therefore Kant's invention for
what he thought to be unanalyzable. Had
he turned his perceptive analysis into art at
this point his Urteilskraft (judgment without
reason) would not have played the part of a
rag doll in place of a living and breathing thing
which he would have discovered.
*The Decadents surely would not leave us with beauty of expres-
sion; form and idea have nearly perished in their art.
[40]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
That art must have a faculty invented for its
understanding and appreciation suggests that
the Creator forgot about art when endowing
mankind with the original faculties. Judgment
without reason is quite as illogical as reason
without judgment, and the case of art does not
demand this accommodation. It assumes the
position that there is something in the cosmos
that has been made either by the Creator or
man which is not only not the result of a
process but which process is not reducible to
analysis.
The point is a particular one in this argument,
which places the apprehension and appreciation
of art upon the basis of the intellectual process
and denies that there is such a thing as inde-
finable beauty in art."
The special sense for the appreciation of
beauty provided by Kant outside of mere in-
telligence might be agreed to by the casual
visitor to an art museum who looks vaguely
at a picture which gives him a favorable im-
pression, and, , not being able to analyze his
thought, turns helplessly to the guide book
wherein with gºlded pen the appreciative critic
has brought out every lurking charm and set
them before him with wonderful and captivat-
ing clarity. . He exclaims with delight: “I felt
all this but could not express it. It seemed to
have an appeal beyond expression.” True,
beyond his expression, because he had never
investigated art’s principles nor used her phrase-
ology. Let, however, this same man familiarize
*Later in this argument the point will be taken up again.
[41]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
himself with both, and in time the vague quali-
ties which he thought appealed to a separate
sense are easily defined as they assort them-
selves in a logical unfolding of the subject, one
point following another with a natural certainty,
and the whole appealing to an awakened intelli-
gence. The appeal of the work of art was, in
both cases, an appeal to the same faculty. In
the first it was as though the beholder had used
a near-sighted glass which blurred his vision,
and what he saw was merely an ill-defined
suggestion of what was there. In the other
case, he wore glasses adjusted to his vision and
the impression was firmer, more explicit, more
intelligible and therefore intellectually more
enjoyable.
With the new glasses he could double and
treble his enjoyment, and what is more, he
could explain to some other man who seemed
dazzled with an impression of indefinable
beauty, that there was little or no mystery
about it, the case needing only an average
intelligence made appreciative by an inquiry
into the nature of art.
One beholds a landscape of whatever char-
acter, either charming or depressing, and dis-
covers an interest in it. This interest is wholly
unlike the interest one finds possessing him in
looking at a representation of the scene by a
painter. In nature he accepts the impression
without challenge, the miracle of creation being
long since taken for granted. His interest in
the reproduction of this through man’s skill is
not alone for the magician’s touch which had
[42]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
created it, but in the processes which have
necessarily been applied in the systematic un-
folding of it, and it is just in this range that the
real and growing interest in art exists. It lies
not in the scene itself which may be such as in
nature one would never care to dwell upon,
but in the mind discoverable therein. But for
the majority, they may thank Kant for his
“Urteilskraft.” It has the comfort of a Morris
chair wherein, without thought, one may lounge
and gaze or listen and get a decent amount of
enjoyment from whatever happens.
Passing from the truly high-class perception
of the subject by Fichte, who held that beauty
exists not in the world but in the soul of the
creator of art and that art is the expression of
this soul-beauty and that its aim is the endow-
ment of the mind and soul of man, to Schlegel
and Müller, whose philosophies were closely
allied to each other, we come to Schelling, who
held that art was the union of nature with
reason, an alliance of the unconscious with the
conscious. He declared that it was not man
who produced the beautiful in his work by
what he knew, but it was the idea or sentiment
of beauty in himself which produced it. In
this respect Hegel, following him, agreed. But
he went farther, declaring truth was beauty.
Deity expresses himself at once in Nature and
Spirit.
That and that only which the artist possesses
of beauty can be reflected into his work from
nature. Beauty is but the artist’s expression
of his idea through matter and he endows it
[43]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
with its charm. With him, therefore, beauty
becomes truth both subjective and objective.
Hartmann modifies this to a degree, assuming
that beauty does not exist in the external world
or in the soul of man. Nothing is beautiful
in itself, but is adorned with beauty by the
artist.
He leaves us to suppose that the ordinary
man without the aid of an artist will know
but little of beauty.
Finally, Hogarth, in grim determination to
show us beauty, does the thing most natural
to the artist, he sketches it. He selects from a
series of curves what he thinks the best, accord-
ing to his taste and judgment, and holds it up
to us as “the line of beauty.”
The quest so long and diligently pursued for
beauty which may give to art a reason for
being, and “an accommodation” which shall fit
both beauty and taste in what the artist chooses
as his subject, has been the absorbing problem
in the philosophy of art.
Under the assumption that art was beauty,
many of the theories put forth, therefore, ap-
peal to us as clever and ingenious explanations
for an impossible case.
An admission that the expression of beauty
is not the first cause, but the result of art is the
final attitude that brings illumination into this
much-abused subject. The expression of any
subject in conformity with such methods as
may best express its full essence is bound to be
a work of beauty and give pleasure. This con-
clusion has come to a few modern writers on
[44]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
aesthetics. Herbart and Schopenhauer, Cher-
buliez and Todhunter declare what we term
beauty — the striving of the artist — is merely
such relations in nature as may be unified.
These relations are viewed as simultaneous in
painting, sculpture, and architecture; as simul-
taneous and successive in music; and successive
in all literature.
One step in advance of these is Sully's declara-
tion that there is no such thing as beauty.
“Art,” to him, “is the production of some per-
manent object or passing action fitted to supply
active enjoyment to the producer and a pleasur-
able impression to a number of spectators or
listeners, quite apart from any personal advan-
tage to be derived from it.”
II
From the long quest for beauty one turns in
the same degree of weariness as in the search
for happiness; both are found to be smaller
things contained in larger, and always depend-
ent. The essence of art need not have a name;
it is not one thing but several, and never the
same in any work.
The latest writer of importance who has
distinct ideas on this subject, Sir Walter Arm-
strong, in his introduction to the Life of Gains-
borough says : “The long delay in perceiving
the real nature of a work of art is simple enough.
It has been left to those who had never learned
to see a work of art as art at all. They saw its
literary, its dramatic, its imitative qualities,
[45]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
but were quite unaware that a curve can be as
expressive as a gesture” (in other words, that
the curve means as much in graphic or sculp-
tured art as a gesture in dramatic art). “None
of the philosophers from Aristotle to Kant
could have pointed out the difference between
Delacroix and Delaroche, of real art and imita-
tion. They have almost invariably considered
the objective of art to be representation, and its
highest form idealization, the imaginative im-
provement of the objects represented.
“Their analyses at best have therefore been
directed to the comprehension of objective
beauty rather than art.
“A certain small group of writers is indeed
uncomfortably conscious that the very materials
of art have intrinsic powers of expression,
powers to convey ideas or emotions without
the help of any sort of imitation, but they seem
to find the nature of these powers so elusive
that they shrink from tracing them back to
their source.
“The vital fact in the whole question escapes
the thinker who has not trained himself in art
as it escapes those who have, like Ruskin, con-
centrated their interest on the duties rather
than the nature of art.
“What we have to discover is an element
which runs through all créative activities and
justifies the distinction between a book, a dress,
or a dinner; which is a work of art and which is
not.
“Much speculation about the nature of art
has been vitiated at its source by endeavors
[46]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
to discover some absolute constituent of beauty.
If Hogarth had been content to think of beauty
as a relative and not as an absolute quality
he never would have entangled himself in the
absurdity of his ‘line of beauty,’ and many a
writer since his time, misled by the same un-
fruitful idea, has failed to distinguish the point
at which a discussion of art should part com-
pany with one of beauty.”
From that early period when an analysis of
art was first attempted, down to the present,
the dividing line in philosophic opinion when
Aristotle followed Plato, amending and dis-
puting his theories, leaves debatable the ques-
tion whether art was a matter of the unfettered
intuition or was reducible to scientific formula
founded on principles. For the most part the
world has been aligning itself on the Aristotelian
side, largely for the reason that the world is
becoming scientific, and has been able to reduce
to a formula pretty much everything which
exists, as a simple question of cause and
effect.
Coleridge in his “Table Talk” declares that
every man is born an Aristotelian or a Platon-
ist. . . . “There are two classes of men of
which it is next to impossible to conceive a
third. The one considers reason a quality, an
attribute; the other considers it a power.”
With Plato the soul of the thing subordinates
the outer expression. With Aristotle the soul
of the thing is dependent upon the outer ex-
pression. The Orientalists are Platonists, the
Occidentals are Aristotelians. They of course
[47]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
touch at many points for with Aristotle the
soul or essence bore a large importance.
That these two influences are salutary and
mutually corrective, as necessary to the health
of art, as opposing political opinion is to the
body politic, there can be no question. When
the classicism of Aristotle smothers romantic
freedom, it incubates a brood of conventions.
In due time the intuitive, personal sense, which
must enter into even the most formal and ex-
acting expression of art, asserts itself above the
convention and the shift to the opposite pole
commences. Art usually follows literature; she
usually reflects the philosophy of her own age,
and some find Jean Jacques Rousseau to be
largely accountable for the rise of the romantic
school of painting. The Abbé Batteau had,
to be sure, paved the way for Rousseau, in
his attempt to prove that art was not imitation,
that the artist need not be true to natural fact,
that he should become subjective and not
objective, leading and not following nature.
The trouble, however, with this wholesale guil-
lotining of the things held precious, as with the
French Revolution, was that much of the good
was inevitably buried with the bad and in
time the mistake was of course acknowledged. '
Spontaneity, intuition, and a face set hard
against the formative principles of art in an
effort to strike the back-to-nature path at any
cost found a few, to be sure, at the goal, but
distributed most of the following en route in
the thick mazes of the woods.
The freedom, the enchantment, the wonder,
[48]
GREEk
The STATUE of the REPublic – Paris
Platoxic IDEAlism: Sculpture


ANCIENT GREECE - IMAGINATIVE LANdscape – René Ménard
The DRAGox AND THE Flood – Eitoku
Platoxic IDEALism: Painting


THE CONCEPTION OF ART
the irresponsibility which the romanticists
wished to introduce into art they realized not
could all take place in a broadened conception
of rationalism. It was not necessary to sacri-
fice any principles of art to attain these effects.
Rousseau's high fling at conventions was noth-
ing more than a protest at the amount of
unnecessary harness Pegasus was then carrying,
and he and his following wished to prove that
the animal was just as good and serviceable
when ridden bare-back.
After a lapse of two centuries, Henri Bergsen
has taken his place in the centre of the philo-
sophic stage and in his “Creative Evolution”
holds up an even more radical notion concern-
ing the nature and importance of intuitions.
In this new philosophy one’s expressions in art
are tempered by one’s antecedents through
indeterminate periods, and it is presumed that
these affect the product to a greater degree than
acquired education.
[49]
CHAPTER IV
PAST THEORIES AND POPULAR MISCONCEPTIONS
“If the passion for creation be not accompanied by the
critical spirit, it will surely waste its strength.” — Oscar
Wilde.
When the church ceased its patronage, with-
drawing the beauty of the god-head from
before the failing gaze of her retainers, art, as
to its subject, was free. Even the purely
classical themes of the period have the stamp
of beauty which the church demanded and
which to all workers in art seemed as appro-
priate as it was desirable. But art at length
was forced to seek new channels — channels
in which the purity of the former time
seemed not only uncalled for but out of place.
The artist proceeded at this tangent, for-
saking an orbit in which the beauty of subject
and the beauty of its expression had coa-
lesced.
But, having broken with the traditional sub-
ject and bent on seeking her fortune in newer
fields, Art found the household gods and tradi-
tions of former times were bundled after her,
and these have been accepted thoughtlessly
and without repudiation; so that even to-day
this ancient codicil in the will makes beauty
the paramount and exacting mark which must
[50]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
be affixed to every work — none genuine with-
out it."
How natural it was that the influence of
beautiful presentation left as a heritage to art
by Botticelli, Raphael, and Titian should
mold the form of thought to those who suc-
ceeded them not only as imitators, but those
as well who diverged to a radically different
subject. We therefore find the portrayals of
low and degraded life are frequently adorned
by this beauty gift of form which has been
stamped upon much of the painting of the
Netherlands of the seventeenth century.
The confusion existing for so long a period
was the result of including too much in a
definition, and of accepting an epigram on its
face value, which is usually fatal. Truth being
juggled into meaning beauty, the artist was
supposed to gain this by expressing truth, and
So if he were sincere in his work and wrought
with truth his result was acquitted on this
basis and pronounced beautiful. This tangle of
philosophical sophistry was woven around the
unsuspecting artist from the earliest days of
his craftsmanship. He, meanwhile, quite un-
concerned as to whether his work measured up
with the requirements of the wise man or not,
kept on expressing himself; the painter painting
whatever pleased him, be it saint, peasant, or
* So grounded had thought become in the idea that art's
mission was the expression of beauty, that all sorts of accommoda-
tion was invented for admitting into the arcanum of art the
exploits of the incapables and the “originals” whose deliberate
intention was to produce the ugly, the morbid, and the unbeauti-
ful aspects of life, usually presented in an unbeautiful design.
[51]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
beggar, and anxious only concerning its essential
character, the methods of applying pigments
and with certain principles of construction
which experience taught him aided the pres-
entation of his theme. If this turned out
good the philosophic critic stamped it with
his label of beauty, though it were a defiance
by Giotto or the terrors of hell by Michael
Angelo, the nightmares of Weirtz, the apolo-
gies of the catacombs, the offences of the mod-
ern decadents, or the graven monstrosities of
Oriental art.
The drawing apart of such art which in its
first intention was merely expressive, from that
which had been this and more, in its conception
and form, forces the admission that art may
be quite lacking in beauty and still rank.
Veron in his “AEsthetics” therefore divides
art in general into decorative and eacpressive art.
In the former beauty registers, as the first
cause, as in decorative design the non-emotional
statues of the Greeks, and music; in the second,
the first cause is a desire for expression; and
beauty (of form) may or may not aid this.
That expressive art may exercise its function
without beauty is apparent to any who in this
latter day will regard the modern tendencies.
When, therefore, under the general impression
that the work of art should be beautiful, the
layman finds it impossible to agree with the
artist in the choice of his subject on this basis,
it is for him to seek that element of beauty in
the artist’s arrangement of unpromising mate-
rial. How this is put together may in time
[52]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
come to be a delightful and surprising study,
directing the mind toward the creative in place
of the objective qualities of work. The willing-
ness of the layman in his pursuit of beauty
may be repulsed on finding that both the
subject and its expression may lack it, and yet
conclude in its acceptation as art that it qualifies
on some sort of basis. The only one left is
technique. Good painting or good modelling
is accounted a beautiful thing and indeed it is
expressive of the mental attitude of the artist
hardly less than is construction. With the
technical expression of the subject, then, our
intelligence may be greatly pleased, and though
crippled by unsatisfying form, or ugliness of
subject, the work may yet hold us by such
pleasurable interest.
The argument is that though intrinsically
non-beautiful and lacking fitting presentation
through composition, a work may win the
acknowledgment of pleasure through technique;
but it has meanwhile been descending by the
neglect of other qualities from its higher to its
lowest grade.
When, therefore, the questioner in art stands
before a Van Steen, a Weirtz, or some of the
works of the “new tendency” whispering to his
rebellious intelligence these must be beautiful
because they are art, or conversely this is art
because they are accounted beautiful, he sub-
jects his intelligence to such subversions of
reason for which people are committed to
insane asylums. The question clears itself
over this simple division of the subject: Art,
[53]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
the subject of which is beautiful; that in which
the non-beautiful subject is expressed in beauti-
ful design; that in which the non-beautiful
subject is expressed for character only and
without beauty of design.
BEAUTY vs. TRUTH
Art has been in due course disproving another
philosophical dictum which has been attached
to her — namely, that beauty is truth and truth
is beauty. In reality, to the artist, truth but
rarely contains the beauty which he desires, and
beauty may or may not be dependent upon
truth.
Truth, to the mind of the average man, is
the absolute, without qualification or restriction.
Truth is the fact, supporting no theories,
favoring no man. Color photography by its
combination of right form and right color sets
forth absolute truth, but appeaks only to the
scientist and never to him of artistic instinct;
and this for two reasons: In the high, though
dead level of its color perfection there is no
place to be found for the personal, the thinking,
the exaggerating element so important to art;
and by contrast with painting, the weakness
of naked truth as an exponent of the true im-
pression, is unmistakenly exposed.
The wax-colored manikin expresses such
truth as to deceive the visitor of the dime
museum, but its place is just there or in the
museum of ethnology, but never in the gallery
of art. That truth is beauty is a doctrine
[54]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
which the artist combats and overturns in about
every work he undertakes. If he has put any
faith in the statement, it bothers him for he
cannot reconcile it with his procedure. When
Turner declared that “nature put him out,”
he meant that his conscience, pecking at him
to be truthful, got to be a bore. He knew he
did not want truth all the time, but only now
and then, for by making certain parts untruth-
ful he was able to call to the aid of other parts
greater importance, by contrast.
But just here the truth-is-beauty adherent
says: “And in doing so he is able to express the
greater and more important truth.” To which
I reply that this is the fallacy that has been
befogging the situation since the days of Plato
down to the present and brings me very near
the point of my argument — i. e., that beauty
is not truth but unity. But of this later.
For the moment let us inspect this popular
statement which has had currency with so
many people, accepted so willingly that the
poet who followed their thought did it in verse.
Looking the matter over, he set it again in its
place on the top shelf, remarking, “This is all
ye know or all ye need to know.”
Rodin who declares for realism, claiming
himself to be “servilely faithful to nature,”
modifies this statement by stating “there are
two ways to offend nature — not to observe
her sufficiently and to observe her wrongly.
In both cases, artists are well punished. By
failure to observe they devote themselves to
romanticism; or by excess of detail to banal
[ 55]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
realism. They become either dilettanti or
photographers; aesthetes or disciples of Zola.”
Herein he suggests that the truth lies not in
extreme realism, but in the mean.
It must be remarked, however, that no art
is more adapted to realistic treatment than
sculpture. Sculpture selects its subjects with
much more scrutiny than Painting or Poetry.
The worthwhileness of a creation in bronze or
marble and the immense labor involved in the
production of a sculptured work acts as a
sobering mentor to the exuberant temptation
besetting the painter who in a moment may jot
down an experimental idea. That many an
ephemeral mood or passing fancy if treated
realistically would lose its entire charm; or
that many subjects of a repulsive character
which seem opened to the painter could not in
the nature of the case be treated realistically
would prove that in art, at least, beauty and
truth are often antagonistic. But no surer
controversion for the doctrine in the range
of art, ancient or modern, could be found than
that small work by Rodin, “The Old Courte-
san.” The beholder who could stick to the
theory in the presence of this simple proof of
the possibilities for ugliness to the human
animal should at the same time concede that
our language was in need of a new word with
which to express his thought.
To the painter, the theory that truth is beauty
is best controverted by the reductio ad absurdum.
Det him express the color truths and the form
truths of things as they happen to coalesce in
[56 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
nature and before long he will realize that the
philosophers have been talking all these years
to a theory; and when Rodin asserts “the sole
principle of art is to be servilely faithful to
nature,” he is either to be taken as qualifying
this by sculptured art or lays himself open to
contradictions, which he unguardedly expresses
in his own art.
The man who glories in telling the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is
created for the witness stand, but is a failure
as a social factor, since intercourse demands
that truth be tempered with justice, mercy,
and humor, qualities which are human, and in
the art of depicting life he will also fail and for
the same reason.
“This art of telling the truth,” says Woodrow
Wilson,” requires imagination as well as scholar-
ship, art as well as candor and honesty.”
That a proposition which has engaged so
much of the sober thought of philosophy should
be passed with seeming haste or with but a
shot or two when the dignified proportions
of this fortress might well excite the use of more
ammunition, leads the writer to offer one more
rebuttal from the painter’s point of view to
the dogma that beauty is truth.
Let us then take the case of Monticelli as
one out of many artists whose execution has
grown toward freedom and away from matters
of fact. In his first period this poet of the
palette plainly showed his endowment by the
sister muses of painting and poetry. His
striving was to honor the latter through his
[57]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
servitude to the former. His poems on canvas
were the conscious performances of the student
under orders to speak the truth. Trees were
trees such as might bear labels; the figures were
right, by the standard of the life-class; sky and
land bore witness to their scientific aspect.
Herein beauty and truth were well wedded, and
in much art they remain so. But Monticelli’s
temperament grew rebellious. The serene truth
palled. He experienced a matter-of-fact com-
placency under its yoke. His art demanded
more. So more and more he broke with truth
until truth and beauty signed separation papers
and the artist was free; free to pay court to
either without hindrance by the other. Accord-
ing to his mood for color, design, or effect, as
seemed him best, he thenceforth labored. This
liberation was the sign of his greatness and this
sign received at once the seal of value. During
his great period, and before the incursions into
his vitality of the absinthe habit gave to his
work the fragmentary and uncertain character
which so much of it unfortunately possesses,
the figures were measures of this or that degree
in his game of design, moved as pawns, knights,
or castles on the chessboard of his canvas.
The truth-lover, fresh from the thrall of
“Modern Painters,” inquires what trees are
those among whose foliage the nymphs disport
themselves; and Monticelli replies perhaps by
quoting Dundreary, “One twee is like another
twee” to me; something to encase my figures,
to throw a shadow, to give me a scheme of
light and dark — not this fact, nor that, but
[58]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
all in one; not nature, but design; not color
truth, but color sensation; not probability, but
possibility; not fact, but fancy; not truth, but
art. When you behold my work you need not
be reminded of truth or even nature herself,
but first of all of me, the creator, fervid, pas-
sionate, color-loving, truth-defying man that
I am, striving to make a beauty where truth
would fail, to rouse emotion in your heart
where nature would leave you cold! And so
his case without the knowledge perhaps that
Plato agreed centuries before that this was the
business of the artist, he lifts art into a range
above and beyond nature, into the realm of
pure beauty.
When truth falls in with the principles of
art, with the emotionalism of the artist and
with the sensation, which he creates, there is
formed a happy family which it is a pleasure
to contemplate. And much art expresses these
conditions. The particular member, however,
of this aggregation holding the whip hand is
not truth.*
Finally, that the author be not mistaken in
what may seem the belittling of truth, it is
necessary to reassert that what is written is for
that practical class who have neither time for
nor patience with the long-drawn theories of
philosophic art discourse, the perusal of which
as often leaves an impression of vagueness as
of clarity. Across twenty-four centuries Plato
* “Art gives what nature cannot give. In the energy of the
free ego, conscious of harmony not found in nature, beauty is
disclosed.” – Schnasse.
[59]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
asserts that “beauty is the splendor of the true,”
which has left men and still leaves them with
an exalted notion of each element of the defini-
tion. Delsarte was the first man who dared
to rise in the convention of philosophers and
say, Yes, this is fine, but it means nothing! The
true thing in art must mean a definite thing.
Just here Taine in his “Philosophy of Art”
is illuminating. He says: “Imitation in art
applies to relationships and mutual dependence
of parts.” Imitation of facts he proves neither
necessary nor desirable. “As a general rule,
therefore, whatever interests us in a real per-
sonality and which we entreat the artist to
extract and render, is his outward and inward
logic.” (This inward logic is the soul.) Here,
therefore, is discovered a more elevated char-
acter for art which thus becomes intellectual
and not mechanical.
“But art is more than imitation, even in
the broad construction of it. The greatest
schools are justly those in which active relation-
ships are most modified; examples, The exagger-
ations of Michael Angelo's de Medici statues
and of Rubens’s characters in his ‘Kermesse’
with all its abandon of brutishness.
“The end of a work of art is to manifest
some essential of salient character, consequently
some important idea, clearly and more com-
pletely than is attainable from real objects.
Art accomplishes this by employing a group of
connected parts, the relationships of which it
systematically modifies. To this end the artist
must suppress whatever conceals this essential
[60 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
character, select whatever manifests it, correct
every detail by which it is enfeebled and recast
those in which it is neutralized.”
ALL TRUTH, BEAUTY
Another proposition and more dangerous is
that all truth is beauty, under the goad of
which the enthusiast rushes in and helps himself
to anything in nature, declaring it to be beauti-
ful and worthy of his effort; hence the product
has for its only interest its technique or color,
thus forcing upon art the trivial subject, under
the burden of which modern art groans.
This rider which was for a time saddled upon
the Impressionistic formula at variance with
the greater demands of unity in art is less and
less seen — a tacit acknowledgment of the in-
effectualness of kicking against the pricks of
art’s immutable principles. The “back to na-
ture garden” with its seed sown broadcast may
or may not prove to be artistic. It depends
on who selects the seed and likewise how it is
mixed. Just here Mr. Whistler, who declares
himself an Impressionist, and M. Monet come
into sharp conflict. “To say to the painter
that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to
the player that he may expect music by sitting
on the piano. That Nature is always right is
an assertion artistically as untrue as it is
one whose truth is universally taken for
granted.”
Art is hedged in by conventions. In sculpt-
ure she has to do with pedestals, in painting,
[61 J
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
with frames. The least part of her mission is
to imitate, the larger part of it is to assist man
in expressing himself. Truth and Beauty have
each their pedestals and prayer rugs in art’s
sanctuary, but the artist somehow goes his
way between them with a sweet consciousness
of the value of their presence as an influence,
and now and then he dusts the pedestals and
adjusts the rugs.
BEAUTY, FITNESS
The plea that beauty is fitness is so feeble a
one as scarcely to warrant controversy and
to get this notion out of the way is necessary
before we may frankly confront the art of the
world (after it lost its religious character) with
the fair criticism which the artist’s point of
view demands.
Whereas up to the time of this cleavage of
art and religion, the artist could scarcely be
called the originator of his subject, after that
time he was responsible, and went wandering
with his wits, free to express himself. While
therefore the inspiration of the divine subject
was wanting, the gauge of man as an artist,
as one who would express his own emotions, is
more justly made from beyond the point of the
high water of the Renaissance. With the notion
of beauty as art’s first purpose out of the
calculation, a notion which Imaintain influenced
the artist in but variable degree, but which he
winked at as explained for him by the poets
or philosophers, he went his way and in time
[62 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
proved that achievement in art follows the
natural union of the tripartite nature of man,
a union of the body, soul, and spirit of man
with their correspondences in art. The descent
from the pinnacle of the religious renaissance
to the level of man’s best when bereft of that
inspiration is history, and needs no comment.
The religious nature of man finds expression
through the finer channels of his psychic nature,
expressed without restriction in any direction,
and out of these are born the heroic decoration,
the allegory, the pith of the art of Millet and
the romantic painters. By this sign are to be
discovered those works which are germane with
the spiritual works of the Renaissance and which
are quite lost in our calculation in a comparison
of present and past art because of their subtlety
or their rarity in this latter day.
THE MORAL MOTIVE
That art must have a moral motive is another
confusing proposition; for since the time of
Plato this notion has been recognized in many
philosophical creeds.
It is at this point that Tolstoy in bearing with
his whole colossal weight upon the subject and
purpose of art gives us after all but a one-sided
answer to his question, “What is Art?” insisting
as he does in the conclusion of his exhaustive
treatise that “the destiny of art is to transmit
from the realm of reason to the realm of feeling
the truth that the well-being of men consists
in being united together.
[63 ]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART.
Through the entire book, naturally influ-
enced as a writer toward the viewpoint of written
art, he has used his battering rams against
any form of art which does not coincide with
his theory. Under the demand that moral
teaching be the inspiring purpose of art, he
discards a majority of the works of all the great
writers. Music and Painting suffer a like holo-
Caust.
In defending the writer of “What Is Art?”
from the hailstorm of criticisms which rained
about him, his translator, Aylmer Maude, while
straightening many a crooked place and setting
forth Tolstoy's evident intention in much
clearer and more cleverly chosen phrases than
the author, stumbles into a pitfall which he
himself prepared, in striving to justify morality
as a prime necessity of art. He says in com-
pany with an artist, a maiden lady of refinement,
he looked over a print collection published by
private subscription, depicting men and women
in varied situations in one of the cabinets of
a restaurant. The pictures were admirably
executed, but owing to their shocking sugges-
tion he could not look at them without ill
effects. “But my companion (who prided her-
self on being an artist) remarked with conscious
superiority that from an artist’s point of view
the subject was of no consequence. The
pictures, being very well executed, were artistic
and therefore worthy of her attention and
study. Morality, she declared, had nothing to
do with art.” The lady was right, for with her
education as an artist her vision was trained
[64 |
Love, and DEAth – Watts
“THE Earth" – Franz Metzner
Works ExPREssive of UNIVERsal, IDEAs (Mistakenly CALLED IDEALism)


THE Fountain of TIME – Loredo Taft. – Chicago
This impressive group, eighty feet in length, is a part of one of the greatest sculptural projects of the world's art. It is to complete one end of a
lagoon spanned by three bridges, dedicated by special sculptural adornment to Literature, Science and Art. At the other end of the lagoon rises the
impressive pile of the Deucalean, the Greek myth of the Creation – the evolution of man from stones to his completest type.
ALLEgory—The PRESENTAtion of AN IMAGINATive IDEA
THE DEucALEAN – Taft


THE CONCEPTION OF ART
to look almost entirely for the aesthetic expres-
sion of the work.
In short, she realized what has escaped both
Tolstoy and his defender—namely, that art is
not a thing; it is a way!
And it is not only a way, but an individual
way, which gives an added zest to our interest
in art.
“Art,” as Coleridge reminds us, “is the middle
quantity between the thought and the thing.”
It operates in the capacity of a common carrier
transmitting what is entrusted to it, intent
only in delivering the goods in the best and
most satisfactory manner without the right to
question what they be.
But even this concession is either made grudg-
ingly or denied explicitly by that school of art
philosophy set up upon the dethronement of
Mr. Ruskin. The sage of Turnerian England had
an inherited tendency for the rôle of the prophet;
he had a yearning to do his age some practical
good and the concessions with which his country
had surrounded him afforded at once a bulwark
of defence, and that imposing rostrum from
which he proclaimed his judgments.
In his assertion that art should be moral he
uttered no new dictum; for the association of
the beautiful, the true, and the good in art had
rung down the ages since the fourth century
B. C. and the moral in art was conceded to be
as appropriate as that appended to an AEsopian
fable. But Ruskin emphasized this. He took
strongest hold on the idea of morality in art,
declaring that only as the fountain was pure
[65 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
could the stream be such. He insisted that the
artist be good and moral as well as his art and
thereby proved himself a theorist, neglecting
to observe through history or by a glance at
those near to him, that art and artists are quite
consistently paradoxical, ever revealing the
element of uncertainty, and never standing
close to the findings of the doctrinaire. If
morality in the art is dependent upon the like
quality in the artist the rule would surely be
proven by its exceptions. From Botticelli to
Cellini and thence to Hals — but who in this
manner could wish to prove Ruskin wrong or
recall the death of Raphael: let Mr. Ruskin
have Angelo and Leonardo of the immortals.
When Gérôme was asked to purge his class
of a few infamous camarades, he replied: “You
would have me turn out my best pupils.”
The most spiritual painter in Paris a few years
ago was seemingly the most depraved. Thus
does art prove itself an enigma and the beautiful
and consistent theory of Mr. Ruskin just a
theory. But granted that fresh streams flow
from roiled springs, that the morality of the
artist may or may not have to do with his art,
the question remains concerning the right to
demand a moral to art’s story; or that art to
be true art must guarantee this.
In the triumph of right over wrong through
all literature until that of the present generation,
we concede that this universal rule of the ages
is altogether more satisfying than its opposite.
We agree with Dante’s notion of justice, merely
wishing for it the mitigation of modern explana-
[66 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
tions of prenatal influence and environment;
with the ever-sure Shakespearian conquest of
the right and the be-virtuous-and-you-will-be-
happy envoi of the average novel. We submit
to Hogarth’s “Rake's Progress,” and his “Gin
Lane,” because of the lesson back of them, but
can find no excuse for Nana or Tom Jones or
Toulouse Lautrec and his school because of
their author's evident delight in those themes
wherein a moral, which might justify them, is
lacking.
And again there is much art that does not call
for a moral, where its presence would be clearly
an interpolation, an attempt to give more than
the receiver wants or the case permits. This
is art which we love, as we do a person, purely
for its own sake, without reward. “It is the
uncommunicable element of artistic delight
which in poetry, for instance, comes from what
Keats calls the ‘sensuous life of verse,” the
element of the song in singing, and in painting
that which is to be sought for from the subject
never, but from pictorial charm.”
On this point Oscar Wilde in his clear epit-
ome of art, while acknowledging with loving
gratitude the obligation which he, as a pupil of
Ruskin together with all the world, owes the
great apostle of art, frankly declared: “To us
(of the newer school) the rule of art is not the
rule of morals,” and again: “Poems are either
well written or badly written, that is all. Any
element of morals or an implied reference to a
standard of good and evil in art is often a sign
of incompetence.”
[67 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
There are, however, many opportunities for
making art better, stronger, more interesting
and more valuable through inferential qualities,
which are frequently omitted.
ART OF THE PRESENT
That art should express its own age, though
a more modern demand, is none the less fal-
lacious, and moreover its shallowness is in
contrast with the sincerity of the foregoing
propositions. A glance at history shows it to
be without warrant in either literature or the
plastic arts. It is a dogma set up in the creed
of both modern writers and painters, a hand-
made affair, created out of expediency and
justified because it was deemed to be a good
thing. A protest it certainly is against classi-
cism and an efficient eye-opener to the subject
at our feet over which we have looked in strain-
ing for the more remote inspiration. It is the
advice given a generation ago by Emerson,
“Tell men what they knew before,
Paint the prospect from their door —”
and while expanding the objective range of art
toward the foreground should by no means
obscure her vistas. Under this demand art
closes the door upon imagination and discounts
memory. Art can have no part in expressing
history, and has no place in the land of the un-
known, the realm of fancy.
A regard for the past is no proof that one
I68]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
lacks sympathy with the present, but rather
that his view is universal. Such a one resents
clapping an up-to-date gown on art and making
her a creature of fashion. The ambition to be
up-to-date in art should prove either that the
fashion satisfies one’s mood or that the artist
does not dare assert himself. The painter who
changes his technique to fit a passing fad would
be as likely to change his subject when assured
of the vogue.
That art must be modernized is not nearly
so important as that art should be , saved.
Toward this dual ambition the missionary’s
first act usually is to put the subject into stiff
hats and trousers of the period. Against all this
Delsarte reared his impressive art philosophy,
and in the midst of the chaos of modern aca-
demic teaching referred the standard of true
artistic perception to the formula of the Greek
antique on the broad basis of which he most
clearly demonstrated the universality of art
and art principles.
It must be forgiven the fervid temperament
of the artist that in the heat of a new concept,
the boiler becomes so charged with steam that
additions are both unnecessary and dangerous.
It was always so. Artists are in their dogmas
the most narrow-minded of mortals; while in
their sympathies the largest hearted. The
Impressionist sees good only in his own sort;
the follower of Whitman calls Tennyson “old
hat!” The man of modern subject dubs him
who expresses the flavor of the past, a back
number.
[69 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
This all comes from the narrow, unthinking,
provincial notion which the students of art,
failing, as the majority do, to grow out of the
warped and specialized influence of the acad-
emies, carry with them into professional life.
They don’t know what art is; for few academies
think it necessary to inform them; sufficient if
they keep on making the drawing “look like”
getting the true color. Groping for some sort
of affiliation, they accept the most influential
at hand and become, naturally, ardent Sup-
porters of the method of this man or that.
If the man of influence says: “Paint life
around you. Go to the slums, the alleys, the
workshops, the parks, and watering places; art
must express its own age,” the bevy of students
at once accept the voice as final and in com-
plete conviction of its wisdom declare nothing
else is worth while. In such national art as that
of the Chinese or Japanese, which is wholly con-
cerned with the native subject, native philoso-
phy, and above all with idealism, one can
neither expect nor ask that it do else than re-
flect its own national spirit; but in contradis-
tinction with these conditions, the artist of the
West has ever stood for individuality, declaring
there is no nationality in art. Art should not
only be accounted not national, it should be so
universal in its aims and so elastic in its means
as to make no account of time. History attends
to this. The man of the twentieth century who
was born in the spirit of the fourteenth or fif-
teenth, should express that spirit.
When Mr. Oppenheim announces, “It is the
[70)
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
poet’s function to express his own age,” averring
“if I want Elizabethan England I go to Shake-
speare,” he seemingly forgets that Shakespeare
thought his art also worthy to exploit the life of
Greece, of Italy, and Denmark, or to invade
fairyland or no-man’s land in “A Midsummer
Night’s Dream” or “The Tempest,” proving
himself the universal genius whose spirit could
find response in any place or time.
The art whose subject reflects its own age is
necessarily the art of the reporter, and that a
people’s history should be written in their art
is a notion which keeps art at the business of
illustration. But the measure of art is larger:
she proclaims from the housetop upon all topics.
With her ear in readiness for response from any
Quarter, art is dependent solely in her product
upon whether or no the instrument through
whom she speaks (the artist) can justify his
longing to present her.
Would we have Watts painting the ragpickers
of the Ghetto when his hand and heart were
fitted for the great messages of transcendental-
ism, or should Cabanel have painted in place of
his Aphrodite caressed by waves and attended
by cherubs, a French bourgeoisie lying on the
sand surrounded by her children? Could art be
any better conserved by this shift?
But should there be an amendment of the
formula and Art be required to express herself
in the spirit of her own age, the proposition is
no less debatable; for to put a subject out of its
own environment, to treat an ideal subject with
the insisting detail of modern realism, to phrase
[71]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
a poem on Love or to the Faerie Queene in the
popular vernacular of the present might be to
compliment Kipling, but would leave an ac-
counting with Arthur Dobson and Coventry Pat-
more, to say nothing of Keats, Coleridge, and
Shelley. To fall out with Charles Kingsley
or Maurice Hewlett because the chronicles of
“Hereward” and “Richard Yea and Nay”
were not given in the present style of modern
fiction, is to deny an added charm to the sub-
ject’s environment. It is by the grace of art
that we are granted selection, not alone of
material but of method, a matter in which art
is freeing herself more and more as individ-
ualism becomes dominant. Quite up to the
present, art has followed “the trend.” But
nations are ceasing to move as units, the
people are beginning to do their individual
thinking, and a catholicity of taste in both the
subject of art and its expression has become
the most welcome and promising index of our
age.
The comprehension of Goethe’s advice, “Fill
your mind and heart with the ideas and senti-
ments of your own age and the work will follow,”
could not of course mean anything else from
this universal genius than that the work of what-
ever sort, modern or classic, should find best
expression in the man alive to the spirit of his
Own age.
And as to subject, let us thank the seers of
artistic vision that have discovered subject in
the alleys, the factory, the skyscrapers, the
canal, the blast furnace, the coal derrick, and in
[72]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
those that labor there amid the steam, the hurry,
the clamor of bells and the clank of machinery.
Their results are proofs to those too absorbed to
really know the fulness of their own age that the
sensation which art can produce and which they
have looked for as of necessity the product of
different conditions, may be able to rise and
grasp them out of the jar and jostle of our
chaotic life.
THE NEW POETRY
The call from the younger school of poets that
the technique of their art must reflect the spirit
of our age, or what one of them declares to be
the “dominant chaos of our age,” is completely
in line with modern unrest. The fervent desire
on all sides to discover something is likely to
produce as much experimentation in poetry
and painting as in science. The argument of
the advertiser — “It is different” — here like-
wise has its lure. Difference of subject is not
enough; but a new thing in a new way!
And so we have “poetry” which cannot be
sung, which lacks the very song sense, which
lapses into prose when it started in metre, a
hybrid creature, like the statue part of gold,
part of iron, part of clay as distinguished from
the golden image of Athene. Would Phidias
have held the same place in the hearts of his
countrymen or of succeeding generations had
he completed his task with iron legs or clay
feet? Nay, but this is the spirit of our age and
the politicians are the first who brazenly prac-
[73]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
tise it. If the artist is of any practical use to
his time it is to hold up standards of true beauty
and not apologize for makeshifts. It is the
compliment of Philosophy to him that in being
accorded the finer vision, the more cultured
taste, the more practised hand, he was prepared
by nature and contact to know and to do the
thing conservative of the best. In coming
down to the level of his age, the result is likely
to be, as those compromises usually are, not a
redemption of the majority, but the loss to the
minority.
The artist is held to be the “exemplar of
orderly enthusiasms,” the one whose tempera-
ment can never quite disturb the poise of the
principles by which he is governed. It is an
interesting fact which all poetry of the new cult
exposes, that in every case it sets forth at a
given rhythmic pace and proceeds for a time
like Peter on the wave crests, achieving in this
element, when suddenly the embarrassment of
distrust assails, and the slump follows, but with
help at hand the joy of procedure comes again,
and Peter as he clambers over the gunnel
exclaims with excited pride, “Well, I kept
going, anyhow! I have got here all the same!”
The great and generic difference, in a word,
between prose and poetry is form; the one may
be sung, the other cannot be. If the “cannot
be sung” element is allowed to qualify with the
“can be sung,” in what proportion may this be
permitted? Here is a very practical question.
May not the inch in time become the ell? If
the poet may dismount every time Pegasus
[74]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
bucks it would be as well for him to admit he is
not a Pegasus rider and change his means of
locomotion. If he would express the spirit of
his age, behold the automobile, the aeroplane;
in these there is no effort to him who employs
them. He is not obliged to use reins, stirrups,
nor cantle, nor show form.
Should the non-metrical “poetry” of the pres-
ent be presented as prose few there would be to
detect the poet. The writer has made tests in
reading some of this to varied groups and in
every case it was pronounced prose. When
shown to the company the exclamation has
been, “Ah, this is poetry!” “Why?” “It
is so printed.” If the prose of Washington
Irving and Théophile Gautier is more rhythmic
than some modern poetry, by what standards
are the two sorts of literature to be classified?
In none of the arts does the product qualify
by either its subject matter or the will to do. All
art of whatever sort is form, design, performing
by virtue of limitations, and under bonds, and
the emotions must accept the conditions.
Poetic measure should not be accounted a
restriction, but a privilege.
Here Plato bows to Aristotle, and the writer
of “The Poetics” tells us the musical throb of
the emotions is necessarily most distinctly felt
in metre. He who throws form to the winds
may continue to be a wise man and an enter-
taining one, but compromises his claims as a
poet: the difference between poetry and non-
poetry is not psychological, it is aesthetic, not
subjective but objective.
[75]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
“It is, after all,” said Oscar Wilde, “merely
that perfection of execution without which a
poem or painting, however noble its sentiment,
is but wasted and unreal work.”
But one’s emotions are stirred no less by
prose than poetry, and their evocation proves
effective, alike for either expressive mode and
includes in its embrace this third species in
literature. Its distinct separation from the
other two creates a just demand for recognition
— under an independent banner. “A mule!”
says Lessing, “is a very useful beast in spite
of the fact that he is neither a horse nor an ass.”
Instead of altering the definition of poetry to
include non-metrical phrase, a new term should
be supplied for it. Granting the real and
positive exhilaration which these works afford,
let us enjoy this manifestation of literature
from its proper point of view. When we read
it let us prepare for shocks and discords; when
we dance with it let us expect our feet will clash
and that gowns will be torn, and when we name
it let it be with the real conception of art in
mind. Says the author of the “New Laocoon”:
“To satisfy the standards of poetry without
offending the standards of prose — this is a
miracle which has only been achieved by the
great poets.”
In like manner should we observe the present
development in painting. On the basis of
universal principles and with neither fear nor
favor for the fact of its appearance just now —
at a time which we call the present — let us
gauge it at its worth, not as the last word, but
[76]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
as a passing word in the great perspective of
art.
How applicable to the “new tendencies” in
this art are the remarks on Whitman by Arthur
Jerome Eddy: “The revolt of Whitman is
nothing new; it is perfectly natural; it is the
revolt of the child, of the savage, of the natural
man against convention (made so often in
some degree by every individual) to dispense
with experience, to learn it all and do it all for
himself regardless of the precepts and practices
of others; of the failures and successes of others.
It will never do; the attempt must end in failure
more or less pronounced. Form is more than
convention, more than precept: it is the mold
in which ideas are most perfectly cast; not only
a source of delight to the beholder but an in-
valuable discipline to the thinker, the poet, the
painter, and the sculptor. Few are the poets
in whose work the struggle of form is not felt.
Whitman might have been stricken dumb had
he been obliged to follow up his first lines with
lines in the same exquisite metre, to say nothing
of the additional fetter of rhyme; but, and
herein lies the essence of the matter, would not
the world have been the gainer if Whitman had
said less and said that less better?
“The restraint of form is wholesome. Ideas
that seem to come to us with the force of thun-
derbolts — great, broad, glittering generalities
that seem like universal truths the world will
hardly wait to hear — these ideas shrink to
their proper proportions when reduced to form.
There is nothing lost in the process save, pos-
[77]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
sibly, some of our vanity. It is a good deal
easier to wander on indefinitely with neither
beginning nor end, jotting down every fragment,
suggestion, or inkling of thought as it comes,
filling great, broad, white pages or smearing
over great, broad, clean canvases, than it is to
think it out, wrestle it out.
“The method of Whitman was to turn his
mind upside down like a bag, leaving his readers
to sift those heaps for whatever of value they
contained, to do the work he should have done.
“If you read Whitman and read him in con-
nection with any other great singer you will
know what riot and license mean as applied to
art, and you regret that a man who could write
so well did not always do so, with that severity
and serenity which come only with a mastery
of form.”
In a word, Whitman too often used his note-
book sketches for finished pictures, unwilling to
exchange the magic touch of primitive inspira-
tion for that something which, though better,
could not contain and preserve it.
[78 )
CHAPTER V
REALISM AND IDEALISM
“Ye cannot serve two masters”
THERE is probably no conception affecting
art more beclouded to the average mind than
the distinction between Realism and Idealism.
Indeed, were one to appeal directly to members
of the profession he would be likely to receive
counter opinions, or, what is quite as con-
fusing, evasive answers. Here the philos-
ophers will give us quite as wide a choice of
definition as they have concerning beauty or
art itself.
The simple first cause for this confusion is the
supposition that art is divided into Realism and
Idealism, and that therefore artists are either
realists or idealists. In fact, since Idealism
must find its base for expression in realistic
presentation, the idealist at the start is some
sort of a realist and in his idealistic effort may
express numerous degrees of realism.
Seeking light at the fountain head, we may
find that in the philosophy of Greece, both
Platonic and Aristotelian, the ideal was the
archetype, the perfect pattern, of which all
created things were the imperfect anti-types or
representations. God saw that it was good –
[79 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
that is, good enough — but perfection was re-
served for a better world. The ideal therefore
exists not in nature, but in the mind, and when
expressed by the artist becomes necessarily a
composite of nature and man’s constructive
will. The product thus shaped illustrates a
concept or idea concerning some generic or
abstract subject. Thus to the artists of Greece
in their attempt to make manifest the spirit of
their gods, each a personification of a specific
abstract quality, man was used as the base, and
to this either by the accompaniment of some
symbol or by an especial and sublime expression,
the model or base was fitted to body forth an
abstract idea. That the realistic copying of the
model under these conditions would have
thwarted the larger conception in charge of a
still greater idea is plainly apparent — that is,
to have modelled a good-looking Greek youth
and with the addition of winged sandals thought
this sufficient to represent Mercury, or to
select a good-looking grandfather and with a
thunderbolt in his hand let him answer for
Jove, would have been to the Greek mind a
sacrilege no less to the gods than to art itself.
The sense of the archetype, so essential to the
Platonic ideal, would have been lacking. Ex-
actly the same feeling also did the Greek
express in his statue to his hero or to the actual
representation of the athlete. It is easily read
upon these countenances that imitation of that
intimate and personal kind that means “like-
ness” or “realism” is wanting. It has been
carefully eliminated. The effort has been rather
[80]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
to record a type, a type existing in the realm
of the ideal.
Now these types were an agreement on the
part of the nation, and in their visible creation
through their artists a consensus of the national
opinion was expressed; they, therefore, typify
not merely ideals of Praxiteles, Phidias, or
Scopas, but of the whole people.
With us, the ideal type is expressed in Uncle
Sam, John Bull, the Goddess of Liberty, Bri-
tannia, or Germania, etc.; universal types to
all men for generic ideas. So likewise does the
behooded figure become a universal idealization
of Death, a concept still further assisted by the
symbol of the scythe or inverted torch. Keep-
ing close to the original Platonic conception of
the term, Idealism draws, in this latter day, a
very limited bow. Some one has said it lived
and died in Greece.
The term as commonly used to-day, however,
is something distinct and apart from the
primal conception and would differentiate itself
from its original and truer significance if in
place of idealism we were to create a new word,
ideaism, and reverting again to the Platonic
notion of the word “idea,” which to this phil-
osophy signified a form seen in the mind, we
would endow this new word with what the other
has been obliged to express. Ideaism might
long since have come into the glossary to the
enlightenment and relief of philosophic ter-
minology but for its apparent lack of euphony.
Because of this, doubtless, we have been willing
to make one word do the duty of two, and the
[81 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
confusion arising has been the consequence of
our unwillingness to accept this or coin another
word to clearly express an important idea.
The need of a term of unimpeachable character
and above suspicion and without entangling
alliances with any other term is apparent when
the word “idealism” is made to likewise do
service in the case, for instance, of Millet’s
“Sower” as an expression of the larger idea of
Labor.
This is not an idealization of the peasant in
order that he should stand for a specific idea.
In fact, the more of a peasant he is in his
lowliness and simplicity and in those realistic
qualities that affiliate him with the soil, the
better fitted he would be to express this abstract
idea. The only anxiety on the part of the artist
would be that he should not look like any
particular peasant, for were this allowed, forth-
with would his idea be deprived of flight and
brought to earth, and the concept become
particular instead of generic. Here, then, is
something practically in the range of reality
used to typify an abstract idea. This is wide of
the original or Grecian notion, the creation of
the archetype, or ideal type. The ideas which
may enter in and modify the art concept are
innumerable as man’s individuality is varied.
We are distinctly lacking a term to correctly
express this situation in art. The surrender to
the outer vision is Realism, the surrender to the
inner vision is Idealism; but what word shall
express this broad and most important feature
of art creation—namely, an abstract idea ex-
[82 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
pressed in natural form, the form remaining
unchanged.
The painter who creates a landscape “out of
his head” in nine times out of ten finds it to be
a reconstruction of forms already used by him,
or the figure painter of the Monticelli-Diaz
type merely supplies through the imagination
his idea of form and color, and presents us with
something original, founded on fact. They are,
therefore, not idealists in the true sense of
creating a type or expressing a general concep-
tion. These people occupying a distinct and
important position in art should be furnished
with a fitting term of designation in art’s
nomenclature.
II
The five distinct types of painting classified
on the basis of subject are :
(a) The ideal, or creation of the archetype;
(b) the symbolistic, in which form stands for or
symbolizes a general idea, a range in which
mural decoration plays its most important rôle;
(c) those subjects expressive of a sentiment or a
mood of man, or in recognition by him of that
which is provocative of a sentiment found in
nature, a range covered largely by landscape;
(d) those subjects illustrative of an event, the
historic, the story-telling or genre subject; (e)
subjects of purely representative intention,
either imitative, in the strictly nature-like
sense, or interpretive, but in which the purpose
of the artist is realistic expression
[83]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
Between strict Idealism and strict Realism
are three classes, which Realism, in varying
degrees, assists.
But while the idealist must of necessity
become a realist up to that point of preparing
a tenement for his conception, the realist,
especially of the sworn and outspoken sort, is
usually so devoid of sympathy with this an-
tipodal mode as to give it wide berth. For a
realist to attempt the universal concept is as
illogical an act as in the province of art can
well be performed.
To take one Smith, an American, and make
him do for Uncle Sam, or use the portrait of
Jones, an Englishmen, as the typical John Bull,
or create a silver portrait statue of Ada Rehan
and make her do for Nevada,” should be no more
shocking to one’s sense of propriety in art than
to see the portrait of a French model doing
service as a goddess of Grecian mythology,
or the close counterfeit of a Spaniard or an
Italian made to answer for an Apollo or Orpheus.
Spanning these frowning cliffs of Idealism
and Realism, M. Rodin has essayed to throw a
bridge uniting Platonic ideality to an individual
type. Psyche is a French girl whose address
may be had on application. Eurydice, she of
the hair drawn over the forehead from its part
on the side in the latest of modes, will give
you her address without asking; one may pass
her on the Boulevard Mt. Parnasse almost
any day, or see her riding a student’s back at
the Bal des Quatre Arts; and Orpheus, so well
*World’s Fair, Chicago.
[84 J
svaq I tv swaai NȚn aero xºrobatºry
yffoſsig （I — woºrhos bºilwowoo sarrow， IN ‘ah）,

Edict of Toleration –Edwin Blashfield
ALLEgony of History-Figurative PREsºxtation of Fact

THE CONCEPTION OF ART
known at Julian’s! He has posed thus aca-
demically many a time; so easily identified by
the enormous seventh cervical vertebra almost
the size of a pigeon's egg, by his long arms, his
thin wrists and heavy shoe-distorted feet, and
the tensor vaginae femoris thrown out as it
always is at the end of a seance in awkward
assertiveness of line, but so characteristic of
this model. These specific identifications re-
mind us that idealism is being performed by a
realist, by one who claims that art means “the
servile imitation of nature,” and at the same
time by one who, sensitively alive to this
inconsistency with both philosophic sense and
artistic feeling, would fain work some miracle
that will, in part at least, conceal it. Idealism,
then, if incorporated, must here be applied to
the surface, and necessarily becomes a process
of technical manipulation. Realism crosses the
chasm and enters the realm of the spirit, of
Platonic idealism, by making Mademoiselle
Chose, who has posed for Psyche, representing
to us, no less than the Greeks, the abstract
notion of pure love, by making this French girl,
with the pug nose and of distinctive individual
type, a little less like herself by idealizing the
technique. In place then of Rodin vigor of
true realism, we have in these ideal subjects
a weakened, hot-housed, hectic substitute,
smothered contours and candle dip finish.
To sculptors the process is simple. If the
material be clay, a continuous sprinkle
from the syringe will produce it — if wax,
heating the surface with a taper will effect the
[85 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
same result, an operation assuming that the
process of baptism effects regeneration, that the
significance of redemption lies in an altered
exterior, rather than a change of spirit. But
to deny no credit where credit is due, let us
acknowledge in this that as a realist the sculptor
has been true to his creed. He has servilely
copied reality; but had he allowed any one of
these models of the Latin Quarter to stand as
realistic embodiments of general, abstract ideas,
defying the world in the brusque assertion that
to his mind they did represent the ideal, our
respect would have been evoked to a degree
now denied in the acknowledgment through
this technical subterfuge that he believes noth-
ing of the kind.
Returning to the Rodin gallery after a tour
through the adjacent halls of Greek sculpture
in the Metropolitan Museum one may be able
to quickly compare the two types of Idealism.
A brief sojourn in the presence of this higher
philosophy of art should be able to speak the
convincing word not only regarding the pur-
pose of Greek art, but of its separation from
the modern point of view. It is not a question
of externals, for in Rodin’s St. John or Madam
X, the surface quality is as remarkable in the
distinctive excellencies as that of the Elgin
marbles; it is the question of an operation
commencing from within and working its way
out, instead of a reverse process. It is the
difference between the philosophies of Plato
and Hobbs.
One of the sages has curtly epitomized the
[86 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
situation thus : “Strictly speaking, all men are
idealists — the difference is in their ideals.
What we believe to be best is our ideal — our
inspiration or damning limit. Vulgar ideals
make vulgar people. Consecration of thought
to transcendent ideals make poets and seers.
The materialist is a man of material ideals.”
III
But as to Realism, let us hasten to make the
distinction between imitation and reality, and
again between the real and the sensation of the
real. Here are three degrees in the conception
of art.
When Manet gave voice to the epigram,
“Not nature, but the natural,” he covered
the entire case of modern painting. These
diamond-studded words deserve to be inscribed
over the door posts of every atelier, for under
this insignia most makers of modern art may
draw up in the banqueting hall and proceed
with the lovefeast. This, in fine, becomes the
criterion of judgment for all juries; it describes
the circle in which modern art performs.
As to imitation, per se; it had its short day
of recognition, but soon wearying our real sense
of art it was banished from the sanctuary and
died in the arms of Science. The common
mind glories in the fly with his six legs, sipping
sweets from the punctured peach or pear,
pictured with such deception that we want to
shoo him away, and its final delight is expressed
over the dollar bill that could pass current if
[87 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
only we could get it off the panel. The task
of imitation can have for its goal but one thing,
deception, and it seems paradoxical that truth
could have as its goal this same end. Under
such constraint truth would naturally be con-
tent with a degree short of this, and somehow
one may almost consider the Greek art of
painting as fortunate in its destruction lest we
should be compelled to witness its supreme
efforts in imitation; and no less fortunate that
time has cleansed Greek statues of the paint
which, applied for imitative effect, sought to
endow with greater reality what now exists in
its more transcendent beauty bereft of it.
As to reality; here is a goal worthy the
ingenuity of any mimetic art — to call forth
upon the pedestal, the page, or canvas, Nature
in her essence and fulness. The various methods
of this accomplishment are well-nigh as varied
as the membership of the artistic professions.
We have the designations of tonists, impres-
sionists, pleinairists, etc., but no two members
in any class are alike. Each interprets his
problem as seemeth him best, and lastingly
to the glory and interest of art it is so.
[88 |
CHAPTER VI
INDIVIDUAL EXPRESSION
“‘This is my habit, quoth the stork.”
A FINAL misconception is one shared equally
by the public and the profession — namely,
that there is but one way. True, there are lay-
men and artists who know better; but the
majority in both classes are frankly partisan.
The artist who achieves, will naturally believe
in the method of his choice, and the public
quite as naturally falls in with the vogue.
There is therefore as much effort to make any
particular way fashionable as to make it good.
Both artists and the handlers of art must con-
fess to the impeachment of such effort toward
the making of one kind and the unmaking of
the rest. Just here a glance down the per-
spective of art suggests a place for Tolstoy's
notion of brotherhood in art — a conception
of universality based on a simple idea.
One man will have nought but old masters,
and cannot believe the impulse of his own age;
another would as positively discard everything
save “the last word.” The men who cannot
own a Millet and a Monet are more frequently
found than those who can, and more rare than
either is he who knows that they merely
[89 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
require separate walls to free themselves from
conflict.
The warfare in painting centres largely on
technique. The mode of doing pictures is as
essential to the monde as that of doing hair.
True there may be several styles in each, yet
each must have the mark of its style. This is
the most persistently aggressive bee which
infests the art bonnet. The one-way enthu-
siast declares all is valueless that is not executed
in the presence of nature, another asserts that
only through process can the best and deepest
significance of nature be reached, a third, pro-
testing that nature is but byplay, decries all
technique which is imitation, exalting spiritual
significance and belittling technique which
might compete with it.
The broker of the wheat or cotton pit, turning
wearily toward art in its offer of “repose,” could
find a real surprise in a competition concerning
ways and means in art which would make the
vehemence of the Exchange seem humdrum.
We glance again down the perspective of art;
there, brightly shining from cloudless skies, the
sun reveals, as in centuries past, the same
placid face of the Sphinx, the statues of kings
in static serenity. Across the Ægean we are
met with a welcome of beauty; fauns pipe to us,
Silenus is kindly, the gods hush our ecstasy
with quiet gestures; in the orient the artist,
musing before nature seeks in time the seclu-
sion of his workshop and there extracts her
spirit; again, we pause at the fervor of the prim-
itives, we comprehend their message, but find it
[99]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
expressed in increasing degree of clarity and
strength as we mount to the farthest heights of
art’s golden age; we feel the artist released
from the bonds of the church and mark his
descent into the varied paths of individualism;
we join him in the brothel, on the hillside,
among the sheep and cattle; he interests us
with the lesser phases of nature, trees, flowers,
windmills, rivers, butcher shops, still life; all
of these he renders with curious care; his work
is good because he has learned the trade of
painting and is interested in his work; his ex-
pression is adequate; none live beyond their age,
but in it; in time we detect revolution, a draw-
ing apart and greater individualism; it is of
interest to mark the different mold of mind;
one magnifies color; another form; another
design, a group haunting the forest expresses
its large and massive sobriety, but following
closely a group pronouncing for the opposite
quality of vivacity, here a shout of triumph
toward the light, there a recoil toward the rude
strength of a former time, here an uplift of
nature, supreme; there, mysticism, symbolism
and a return to childhood.
From all of them we gather a varied pleasure;
each has its own sensation, its mode; each has
justified its place in the chain of art, each is
valued as a separate link.
If one lapses into a reverie during such a
contemplation he can be rudely awakened
almost any day by the honest and emphatic
assertion of some modern man that in his
opinion there is only one way.
[91]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
II
One has said: “In order to find the highest
reach of the idea of man we have to look beyond
personality, and the totality of expressions of
the individual is but the synthesis of the collec-
tive idea. These collective ideas condensed
and synthesized by the individual genius are
precisely those that are expressed in the master-
pieces of art.” The point is a fundamental one,
for on it rests the whole fabric of Greek aesthetic
achievement.
“It was the insistent opinion of Delsarte,
waxing stronger as year after year he delved
into the heart of Greek art, that modern artists
have not so far mastered the underlying prin-
ciples of art, because no matter how grand
their subject, or how sublime their conception
of it, or how perfect the execution, they have one
and all since antiquity failed to express true
art whenever they attempted to be original.
That is to say, their expression is always per-
sonal and not universal, not divine — it is
purely human. Their faces are ideal faces of
their countrymen or of women they love. An
Italian madonna is an idealized Italian, and
appeals to the imagination of the Italian only,
as an ideal of divine maternity. Dutch ma-
donnas are all Dutch women and cannot there-
fore appeal to other than Dutch men.”
But Greek beauty is universal because it is
strictly impersonal and divine in its expression.
“Greece, apprehending the true principles of
*Genevive Stebbins.
[92]
WATCH AND WARD - Bouguereau
REALism – VARIED TYPEs – PAINTING

Womax AND PEacock – Falguiere
REALism – Sculpture

THE CONCEPTION OF ART
art, reduced expression of nature to its grand
universal law; a law demanding the personified
delineation of impersonal ideas, powers, pas-
sions, and principles; and the balanced atti-
tude, the changing curve, and spiral line are the
artistic expression of universal, hence godlike,
potentialities.”
[93 ]
CHAPTER VII
TOLSTOY AND DELSARTE
THAT Tolstoy persisted in forcing himself to
the evidently uncongenial task of writing on art
will remain a lasting regret to the friends of
the great novelist. By his cast of mind Tolstoy
was neither artistic nor scientific. He, in fact,
was too much of an ascetic to be touched by art.
His was the stuff that prophets and hermits are
made of. His disdain for the “cultured crowd”
and their appurtenances was radical. In early
manhood he turned his back on all of that. His
delight was to hold it up to ridicule, and to this
end he followed doggedly with the keen eye of
relentless criticism. Exclusive of that life, he
naturally excluded its environment, its man-
ners, its music, its literature, its painting. He
could see no good in what appealed merely to
the aesthetic sense, or lacked a moral basis.
To him the literature of the Greeks was “mean-
ingless” — Sophocles, Euripides, AEschylus, and
especially Aristophanes. The critics, he de-
clared, are responsible for our admiration of
Dante, Tasso, Milton, and Shakespeare, and
for Raphael and Michael Angelo, whose “Last
Judgment” he calls “absurd.” In music he
condemns “the whole of Bach,” and ‘‘the whole
of Beethoven, including his last period.” Wag-
[94 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
ner, Liszt, Berlioz, Brahms, and Richard
Strauss, in modern music, and Puves de Cha-
vannes, Klinger, Böcklin, Stuck, Schneider, etc.,
in modern painting, affected him in like manner.
The present modern tendencies lashed his furies
to greater vehemence.
For his pleasure in art as in life he demanded
simplicity, facing the whole fabric of it behind
his natural ward, the under man. To him of
clouded life, of limited resource, to him lacking
opportunity for knowledge, art should come as
a link of union between such a one and his
fellows. As an agent for promoting a uni-
versal brotherhood, art’s first requisite should
therefore be comprehensibility. Art can be
universal only by being simple.
“Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amuse-
ment; art is a great matter. Art is an organ
of human life, transmitting man’s reasonable
perception into feeling. In our age the com-
mon religious perception of men is the con-
sciousness of the brotherhood of man — we
know that the well being of man lies in union
with his fellow men. Science should indicate
the methods of applying this to life. Art
should transform this perception into feeling.”
This is a true epitome of the privilege of art,
but the enthusiasm of the moral teacher blinds
him to the simple fact that this could not be
done if it were not possible to interest men
in art by pleasing them therewith. The emotion
(or feeling) which will unite two men over the
painting of a landscape cannot be evoked unless
* “What Is Art?”— Leo Tolstoy.
[95
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
they enjoy the picture, nor can the design of a
Turkish rug unite men unless it first please
them. When we enter the range of “instruc-
tive” art which easily holds up a lesson to our
comprehension, then it becomes the lesson and
not the art that unites men in this agreement
over the moral of the picture. Art is the
silver salver upon which these moral lessons are
handed out, but the method by which a thing
is done and its effects are distinct matters, and
it is of first importance to separate two such
notions.”
II
We are under true obligation to this unflinch-
ing prophet in his use of the whipcords for the
riddance from the temple of the false wor-
shippers and money changers; for Art is full of
unworthy parasites, those who make and those
who barter her, but in his overturnings and
iconoclasm he has broken many an image of
true aesthetic interest whose only failure was in
not being consecrated to his particular shrine.
The initial premise in this scheme is an error,
founded directly on Tolstoy's assumption that
art is a “great matter.”
Instead of this, as Coleridge, (whom he
seems to have omitted in his voluminous quota-
tions from writers on art) might have reminded
him, “Art is not a thing; it is a way.” That
idea tersely stated by one of the keenest thinkers
*Whatever has not moral significance is excluded by Tolstoy
from “real art.” •
[96]
Shepherds of Arcady – Poussin
The Oath of the HoRATII - David
NEo-Classic Painting



THE RAFT of the Medusa – Géricault
Romaxtic PAINTING

THE CONCEPTION OF ART
of all time, plunges the inevitable crowbar
beneath this imposing monument.
And what a pity! It was fifteen years a-
building, and Tolstoy tells us he made six dis-
tinct attempts to complete it and failed. He
finally finished it in desperation and with
“hopes.”
Tolstoy seems more engrossed concerning
subject for art expression than the essence of
art which is involved in his question, “What is
Art?” The subject matter, he declares, for
the best art can be of but two kinds: (1)
Feelings flowing from the highest perception
of our relation to our neighbors and to the
source from which we come, uniting us in a
more vivid sense of compassion and love; (2)
the simple feelings of common life accessible to
every one, provided they do not hinder our
well being.
“The religious perception of our time which
consists in acknowledging that the aim of life
(both collective and individual) is the union of
mankind — is already so sufficiently distinct
that people have now only to reject the false
theory of beauty according to which enjoyment
is considered to be the purpose of art, and
religious perception will naturally take its place
as the guide of the art of our time.”
Religious perception when finally clarified
will be the one universal perception, and such
works as those of Dickens, Hugo, Dostoevski,
the story of Joseph sold by his brethren, and in
painting those of Millet, Bastien-Lepage, Jules
Breton, L'Hermitte, and such feelings which
[97 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
all may understand will be known as the proper
exemplars of true art.
The difference between science and art, he
declares, is that science instigates and brings
to human perception such truths and knowledge
as people consider most important. Art trans-
mits these truths from the region of perception
to the region of emotion.
Art may be known by its “power of infec-
tion.” The greater, the more universal art is,
the greater number will it infect. The infec-
tion is potent in degree as it causes the one
addressed to receive the same emotions which
the artist desires to pass on to him. Tolstoy,
therefore, has in this treatise supplied us with
elaborate tests for proving this side of art, but has
given no reasons for his question, “What is Art?”
He discusses no principles. To the painter’s
query, for instance, as to what is alcohol, he
would deem it sufficient to reply: “You may
know what alcohol is by dropping a little on a
varnished surface. If it infects and softens it,
you may know it is alcohol.”
The test of infection is efficient only as we
have the proper subject to deal with, one who
possesses the allied germ.
To the doctor's question, what is the active
principles of scarlet fever, Tolstoy would reply:
“You may know it by infection. If the subject
comes down with the disease you may know the
active principle was present.” The activity of
the principles was apparent in its being passed
on to some other person so that he has the fever.
These examples are not invented in the spirit
[98 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
of jest, but as justifiable conclusions from Tol-
stoy's course of reasoning.
Whereas he derides, and with some fairness,
all writers who place art upon the basis of
beauty, inasmuch as beauty is dependent upon
taste, and taste is variable, he stretches the
truth over the point he himself deems im-
portant to the degree of selecting what works
of art are infectious and therefore good and
what are not and therefore bad.
“The feelings with which the artist infects
others may be most varied; very strong or very
weak, very important or very insignificant,
very bad or very good; feelings of love for
native land, self-devotion or submission to fate
or to God expressed in drama, raptures of
lovers described in a novel, feelings of voluptu-
ousness expressed in a picture, courage expressed
in a triumphal march, merriment evoked by a
dance, humor evoked by a funny story, the feel-
ing of quietness transmitted by an evening land-
scape or by a lullaby, or the feeling of admiration
evoked by a beautiful arabesque—it is art. If
only the spectators or auditors are infected by
the feelings the author has felt, it is art.”
This, therefore, leaves out of Tolstoy's calcu-
lation the question of the quality of the means of
infection. The statement that infection is the
only criterion by which art asserts itself and
may be recognized, is absolute and unqualified.
It would therefore come to pass that what
infects one man fails to infect the next. To
the one it is art, to the other not. One man is
entirely indifferent to the story of an emotional
[99]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
experience, the next is affected to tears. One
finds no interest in the subject of a picture,
another is not happy until he owns it.
In time the first man appreciates the story
and the one lacking interest in the picture
learns to esteem and even love it; but per con-
tra, the first man changes his mind regarding
the emotional story and in time calls it “rot,”
and the man who bought the picture quietly
hangs it in the third-story guest room and
later sells it at auction.
There have thereby been accomplished four
changes of opinion as to what was art and what
not — sufficient to prove that Tolstoy's founda-
tion for art was naught but a test of it, and that
at best an unsafe one.
The infection which may but feebly stand
for the test of art is logically the result of forces
working behind it. Tuberculosis infects; but
what causes tuberculosis?
In short, then, art which “infects” accom-
plishes this because of certain properties inher-
ing in it. Tolstoy nowhere speaks of these; but
that they do eacist is proved both from the result
of their infection and the fact that mankind has
felt the infection of the same works for genera-
tion after generation. This could not ensue
unless these works possessed in themselves qual-
ities denied to other works which have failed
thus to infect us.
III
The complete comprehension of art can best
be had through its principles and these must be
[100 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
run down by induction. Man has lived long
enough to have established a reasonable crite-
rion for his judgments and it is not begging the
question to assert that a few principles of con-
struction which may be named as underlying
the great examples of the arts of prose and
poetry, painting and sculpture, pure design and
music are the necessary and infallible living
principles upon which all art exists and which
prove their genuineness and vitality by the in-
fectiousness which draws all men together. It
is the more to be deplored that having rendered
such valuable service in clearing away the
mold and leaf rot which has collected about the
conception of art through centuries of philo-
Sophic writing, Tolstoy should in the end have
reached his goal in a limp.
Let the reader imagine this possible case:
In the same household dwells an artist and a
young lady that paints. They both go forth
with their sketching traps, but seek different
subjects. The young lady establishes herself
upon a gentle slope of land leading to a castle.
The castle being the most important item in the
scene before her, she places it in the centre of
her canvas, trees and outbuildings occur about
it, and beyond is a winding river. With thin
color and cautious brush she traces the forms
before her and extracts a semblance. As the
afternoon wanes, a glow suffuses the sky and
glorifies the castle wall. This added beauty
the young lady quickly introduces into her
canvas. The pink clouds lie softly in the gray-
blue sky, and a little cadmium added upon the
| 101 ||
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
original tone of the castle's stones gives a truly
striking effect of departing day. She rises,
backs away and views her performance with a
thrill, and bearing it home in triumph displays
it before the family. When set up in a good
light the mother exclaims, “How beautiful!”
and deeply affected by its loveliness sits tran-
quilly before it in a reverie. The father rises
from his library chair and surveys the picture.
“My daughter,” says he, “you have truly
found and depicted a beautiful subject. It has
in it what Ruskin calls repose. It is pictu-
resque in that it conforms to the definition of
that term.”
The young brother crowds in and ejaculates,
“Say, that’s bully I don’t know anything
about art, but I know that gets me!”
The maid asks for a peep and stands for
several moments speechless. Then she mur-
murs, “Now, isn’t that fine? It makes me
feel I would like to be there.”
The young lady, meanwhile, now that she
sees her picture indoors under a subdued light,
acknowledges to herself that its shadows are
heavy, that the lights look thin and lifeless,
that the general tone, instead of possessing a
buoyancy and brilliancy suggesting out of doors,
seems brown. She, however, holds her own
counsels and allows the work of infection to
proceed.
At this point the artist returns and is called
in to show what he has. The pictures are
placed side by side. His subject is two figures
discovered in an ash bank gathering from the
[102 J
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
heaps of rubbish anything they account of
value. The boy looks like a fit specimen for
the juvenile court; the man’s face is dirty and
his hands begrimed with coal dust, a repul-
sive type of foreigner. About them lie rusting
iron, tomato cans, broken bottles, and the sug-
gestion of a dead cat.
Instantly the young lady acknowledges to
herself that what she found lacking in her own
picture this one possesses. The light on the
varied surfaces is the light of day; the figures
seem alive, squirming through the débris and
clawing at the refuse. The two figures are
so disposed on the canvas that they effect a
striking pattern as a mass, and their clothes as
notes of color are both harmonious and well
related to the whole. She therefore exclaims,
“Isn’t that stunning!” The servant, reminded
of the subject of labor, steals away to her own
duties without comment. The boy remarks
soberly, “I wouldn’t want that job,” and after
a searching inspection at close range goes off
whistling. The father of the family clears his
throat and diplomatically avers that the last
picture is certainly a strong bit of realism,
“And yet,” he continues after a pause, “if I
read my Plato aright, the aim of art is the
production of beauty, that which might fairly
appeal to the aesthetic sense. Now it seems
to me that you have brought out more of the
degraded character of these people and their
avocation than even reality demands, and in
that you emphasized everything which opposes
the idea of beauty.”
| 103 ]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
The artist shrugs his shoulders: “I have
never read a treatise on art, and in that I am
derelict, but what I try to do is to extract just
as much of the character of the subject as pos-
sible, and to make sure of it I hit it rather hard;
in fact, I will admit I exaggerate it. This sub-
ject appealed to me not only because it is new
and not hackneyed, but from its intrinsic
interest of color, line, and contrast. These con-
siderations are what we have to work with in
the production of what you call beauty.”
“Your admission of exaggeration calls to
mind what I came across in Taine’s “Philosophy
of Art” — namely, that ‘beauty is the manifes-
tation of the essential characteristics of a sub-
ject more completely than it is expressed in real
life.” But it seems to me when it comes to a
subject like this it is sufficient to be just true
to facts. In fact, you might defend yourself
on the old dictum of the philosophers, that
beauty is truth and truth beauty.”
“No,” says the artist, “discussions concern-
ing beauty never interested me because I never
have once considered in all my professional
career whether the thing I chose to paint was
beautiful or not. All I care for is whether the
subject is interesting enough to me to be
painted and good enough to be accepted by the
jury after it is painted.”
“But,” says the mother, “we have so many
horrible things occurring every day about us
that we do not need art to perpetuate them,
but rather to turn our thoughts away from
them and toward the realm of beauty.”
[104 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
“Well, madam,” says the artist, as he gathers
up his traps and picture, “it seems as though
that ought to be right. It sounds like good
doctrine, and I presume it would be better if the
figure painters taught lessons of morality in
their work and the landscape painters dealt
in the most beautiful aspects of nature. It
occurs to me I have somewhere seen that almost
all the philosophers claim the vocation of art
is to inculcate morals.”
A month later the two pictures were sent to
the Academy. The young lady had been given
a copy of Tolstoy’s “What Is Art?” and, dis-
covering that the proof of art is “infection,”
recalled the infectious impression her canvas
had made upon the family.
When its turn came before the jury the
attendant did not quite get it on to the easel.
The jury caught a glimpse of it upside down,
but that was enough. A weary wave of the
hand was sufficient, and the other attendant
with the red chalk inscribed a circle on the back.
The “Rag Pickers” attracted the prompt atten-
tion of the committee, some of whom applauded,
while others crowded the easel during a brief
moment for a closer view.
The conclusions, self-evident, assist us at
least to know where not to look for the gauge
and measure of art.
IV
One to whom we are indebted more than the
public is aware for the practical elucidation of
[105 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
the principles of art is François Delsarte, whose
lifework has been made to serve the utilities
of personal grace and tragic action.
Delsarte, like Socrates, was a philosopher
whose teachings are preserved for us through
his disciples. His profoundest public utterance
was made in an address before the Philotechnic
Society of Paris. In this he rode roughshod
at the academic methods of French art instruc-
tion, exposing by ridicule the fact that their
masters possessed no standard of art nor clear
conception of its meaning. As a student, he
declared he found himself in a house divided
against itself, each one of his instructors giving
him contradictory advice.
“When I asked for a principle, a law, a reason,
my questions were invariably lost in the void.”
“AEsthetics will be at length truly consti-
tuted under the severe forms of a positive
science,” was his prophecy. “To know what
he ought to seek, the artist needs an exactly
formulated definition of art, its object, its
aim, its means. This definition, to be practical,
should carry the irrefragable character of a
demonstration. Art is at once the knowledge,
the possession and free direction of agents by
virtue of which are revealed life, mind, and soul.
It is application knowingly appropriated of the
sign to the thing, an application of which the
triple object is to move, to convince, and to
persuade. Art is not, as is said, an imitation
of nature. It elevates in idealizing her; it is
the synthetic rapport of scattered beauties of
nature to a superior and definite type.”
[106 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
This definition of art is a true and natural
reflex of the Delsartean notion founded on the
Greek antique, which he claimed was the
infallible basis for a correct comprehension.
A shorter definition from him is, “Art is emo-
tion passed through thought and fixed in form.”
One may well share the author’s regret in
not finding his way clear to accept this defini-
tion of Delsarte, which with its recommenda-
tion of simplicity in terms and clarity of idea
has been for many years by common consent
the most acceptable definition to artists. “Art
is emotion passed through thought and fixed
in form.”
Two objections, however, lie against it; the
lesser, the fact that no idea of pleasure in the
product is suggested, a point considered so
necessary by the great majority of writers on
art as to be almost universally incorporated in
their definitions and dignified by some of them
to the extent of its being the theme of entire
volumes or special essays. The more important
objection lies in the notion that artis emotion.
That art may well plant its roots in the well
springs of emotion no one will deny nor argue
on the comparative excellencies of such art as is
emotive and such as is not. By common consent
the world receives more of this necessary pleas-
ure which art may give from emotional work
than from the coldly classic, but it is only a
Bunthorne who asserts that classicism has no
place in art because it neither has its seat in
emotion nor excites it in the beholder.
One may read Macaulay and well imagine
[107 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
that the form of utterance fell, entirely shaped,
from his intellectual apparatus with no more
effort on the part of the emotions than that
suggested by the machine of the mint which
drops its exquisitely graven dollars as a result
of perfected machinery. Given the materials,
the idea, the brain of the writer applies the
principles of his art so instinctively that the
process is entirely an intellectual one. The
choice to us, however, is between this sort of
product and that produced, for instance, by
Victor Hugo, Walt Whitman or Jean Jacques
Rousseau in which varied grades of emotion
are traceable; and no less an opportunity for
judgment of the essence of art exists in a com-
parison of David with Millet, Holman Hunt
with Delacroix, Gérôme with Gauguin, the
conventional portrait statue of a Pharaoh with
the martial group of Rude on the Arc de
Triumph. To deny the qualities of art to the
unemotional works of the above brief list would
be to deny the basis of all art which those
works surely possess.
We speak of the emotion of the actor and
know it to mean that which has added a quality
to the utterance, or of the emotion of the orator
and know it to mean not the source of the
thought, but the spring whereat the thought
has imbibed added inspiration and has thereby
received an added glory.
Instead of emotion being the base and,
thought its modification, thought necessarily
becomes the base and this is modified in vary-
ing degrees by emotion.
[108 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
Had Delsarte shaped his definition to read:
Art is thought passed through emotion and
fixed in form, the conditions which most fre-
quently exist would have been covered.
In music, which is the most emotional of the
arts, the creation may often be intuitive, but
can one deny the title of art to such music as is
distinctly imitative? The theme founded on
a bird’s carol where, as we know, the composer
has striven to be mimetic; or upon the chants
of the American Indian or the “Sons of Ham,”
where the study is to secure representative
character, has surely not emotion for its base.
The ideas thus supplied may pass through the
emotive processes and thereby gain that quality
which would raise its value as art.
Art, therefore, is not absolute: it is an in-
fluence acting in degree whether one’s philosophy
determines that emotion precedes thought or
thought stimulates emotion, the gist of the
matter lies this side that controversy. Art
has only to do with the last clause of the Del-
sarte Delsartian definition. It has only to do
with thought's fia’ation in form.
V
The Law of Trinity Delsarte states as fol-
lows, declaring that the principle of this system
is contained therein: “Three expressions are
requisite for the formation of the Trinity, each
presupposing and implying the other two.
There must be absolute co-necessity between
them. Thus, the three principles of our being,
[109]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
life, mind, and soul, form a trinity. Why?
Because life and mind are one and the same
soul, soul and mind are one and the same life,
life and soul are one and the same mind.”
“The intellect, mental imagery, and feeling
are the real motor forces, the personality or
mask; the physical organism being nothing
more than the external medium for their mani-
festation. In exact proportion to the strength
and range of this trinity within, are we enabled
to express the heights and depths of human
feeling. To place ourselves in rapport with the
idea or thing, to create a living image of it in
the mind and reproduce it with the vividness
of its own natural life, is the essence of Del-
Sarte's formula. The three fundamental prin-
ciples of the Delsarte system in constructive art
are opposition, sequence, and poise. Opposi-
tion is to motion what harmony is to music;
sequence is to motion what melody is to music,
poise in combination of the two, being the
account of time in the art of expression.
The fact that Delsarte, doubtless under the
influence of Swedenborg, has seen fit to expand
his system on the basis of the Trinity has
seemingly made it necessary to limit the prin-
ciples of art to three. These, he discovers, are
expressed in all the great antiques, the poise or
repose being the result of opposition and se-
quence. For the construction of the single
figure these are sufficient, but Delsarte's studies
seem limited to this simple range of art. Other
and even more important principles loom up
immediately the idea of construction is applied
[110]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
to many elements. Principality, relativity,
subordination, congruity, to mention but a few,
knock at the door of this system and receive no
response.
Like Tolstoy, whose larger view of art
seemed bedimmed by his intense focalizing
upon his own art of literature and the moral
possibilities which this presented, Delsarte
seems satisfied to settle the capacities of uni-
versal art on the basis of the human figure and
its coördination with man’s mental and spiritual
States.
To Delsarte every piece of ancient sculpture
was the embodiment of an idea or a sentiment,
and was produced on the principle that ideas
are eternal and constitute the only divine part
of the human soul, and that between the
mental states corresponding to ideas and their
physical expression there is perfect correspond-
ence. This he felt to be the grand idea of the
ancients both in their philosophy and their art.
The law he defines as the Law of Correspon-
dence.
[111 ||
CHAPTER VIII
BODY, SOUL, AND SPIRIT
“Imitation will carry you but a short way. Personifi-
cation contains the Promethean spark.”
THE work of art, the picture and the piece
of sculpture, or of music, the poem, the decora-
tion and some architecture, has each one, body
and soul, like the man who created it and whom,
in varying degree, it bodies forth, an expression
in part of his body and soul. “Art is nature
with the man added,” nay, but rather, Art is
man with nature added, the addition a branch
grafted into the parent trunk, by whose strength
it lives. It is the stock on which this is placed
rather than the stem itself which gives value
to the graft. This is quickly proved when the
same excerpt from nature is interpreted by one
artist or another. Under the hand of one it
lives and under the other it dies. That which
man adds is art, for nature seen in a mirror is
surely not art. The human element supplies
therefore the real value. Now as no two men
talk alike or write alike, certainly no two men
paint alike. The individual mode of expres-
sion is the gauge of value. There is no other,
even though for a time the wise in art may not
listen, and confound the unknown voice with
that of a babbler groping his way in the dark-
| 112 |
IN THE GRotto-Hindu WINTER LANDsCAPE The GAME – Tang-Ying
Attributed to the Emperor Huitsung
Hindu AND CHINEs. ART


THE PILGRIMAGE – Hokusai
- - º s
- º º -
-
º
- -
º
Pawloxia AND CHRYsANTHEMUM – Hoitsu
JAPANEse ART - Pictorial, DEcoRative












THE CONCEPTION OF ART
ness. The unknown voice may be found to
have a message, and with the names of Paul
Potter, Goya, Delacroix, Corot, Millet, Puves
de Chavannes, Monet, Pissarro, and Cézanne
in mind, modern criticism is more timid if not
more liberal and lenient, in its attitude toward
these new and uncertain sounds.
In fact, the liberality of the present is largely
accountable for most of the crimes now com-
mitted under the caveat and protection of this
modern bid for originality, and the striving of
those who wish to be heard is rather concerned
to proclaim something in a new tongue, than
with the worth or quality of its message. But
in all this, the modern tendency to accept the
individual in art and lay stress upon his per-
sonality has drawn attention to the larger
interest that art possesses. The true analysis of
any work of art must include this, especially
when the work seeks to express mental and not
merely the imitable qualities. Superficially its
subject or story may be the only thing ob-
servable, as with many a contact in human
life, in the converse of man with man, we dis-
cover and grasp but a part of what was there.
Beyond this, however, the reflex of another
mind may hold two distinct possibilities. If
man is a union of body, soul, and spirit, why
should not the thing into which man has
poured all of these divisions of himself possess
them? The “body” contains the constituent
parts, the materials of form, composition,
color. The “soul” is the animating principle
through which the materials are quickened into
I 113
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
life. It is the manner, the phrasing, the differ-
entiation between one man’s method and
another’s. It is the individual note to which
the elements are attuned. It therefore means
style. It has to do with methods, with tech-
nique. It signifies personal distinction. It is
therefore epitomized in the single word indi-
widuality. This, of course, embraces the emo-
tional quality of the work of which technique
and construction are the visible signs. Soul
has to do only with the human end of the
performance. ”
Spirit is an essence which associates itself
with body, a natural development through soul
and may or may not inhere in a work of art.
In these correspondences, the first or physical
state stands for Life, the second or expressive
state for the Soul, the third or spiritual state,
for the Mind founding its conclusions upon the
other two.
II
The case thus far may be explained over a
piece of still-life. The group of objects set
before the student concerns him only as to its
form and color. He must shape the orange
and apple in character and exactly match the
hue of each. When he has accomplished this,
his task is complete. In this the artisan has
proceeded with his tools cleverly, and when
with advancing skill he paints a roll of bills so
* “Not all the laws of the universe,” declares Mr. Ruskin, “will
enable you to draw a line or see a color without that singular
force anciently called the soul.”
[114 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
that it deceives the multitude and it is bought
for $500 by the proprietor of a saloon, and
is declared one of the greatest works of art of
the century, he justly feels that he has reached
the top — and so he has — of the first stage;
but there are three. The second degree is
attained over the same set of objects, but by
Some other man whose added experience has
caused him to believe that imitation is but an
arbitrary demand of art and that the personal
quality is more valuable. With this point of
view, the master looks over the subject and
while emphasizing every consideration which
the student thought essential, places that other
thing to the fore, so that in rendering the sub-
ject each stroke partakes of the man himself.
The work when finished is, therefore, personal,
whereas the first must be signed for identifica-
tion the other requires no signature, except
to the dealer who knows its value. It becomes
“a Wollon” or “a Chase,” the while becoming
fruit or fish.
But the last stage is impossible to this subject.
Spirit cannot inhere in either fruit or fishes, and
from this it might be inferred that only the
subject of man, possessed of a spirit, could
accommodate it; but on the contrary the inani-
mate trees and sky and fields may be its hiding
place, for here man may find communion
through the common bond which unites him
with the eternal. He may apprehend the di-
vinity which presides there, the “Kokoro” of
the Japanese, whom their artists so zealously
seek to discover. He may find in the sentiment
[115 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
which at times broods over the fields, among
the trees or in the sky something which grasps
and holds his own spirit. It is with the body
that the school has most to do, that which
makes the copy “look like.” This mere identi-
fication of things because of likeness plays so
large a part in the effort of most academies
that a well-trained student comes out of them
thinking he has thereby proved himself an
artist. The fact is, however, the student who
has learned to draw and paint has been study-
ing science, not art. Art has yet to be induced,
and she may or may not attach herself to his
science. It is, in short, possible to paint sub-
jects with the scientific knowledge and get them
only into the lowest range. They may express
only “body.” Take whatsoever subject, from
a landscape to a nativity, it may easily speak
chiefly of an intense effort to make the indi-
vidual parts right, to such a degree, in fact,
that this is the insistent impression on the
beholder. He is obliged to observe separate
items, each in itself right and each existing in
defiance of concord through sacrifice, on which
art is built. Have we not seen the head of a
saint or an angel, the only impression from
which is the artist’s effort to get it right, and
with no whit of the spiritual quality which
saints and angels should possess P Beyond this
point of right drawing and right color the
artist takes a step which separates him from
the student. He not only puts “soul” into it —
he may spiritualize it. The first is attained by
putting himself into it, the second by putting it
[116 ||
The Race Track – Takahashi Koko
The Journey – Kawai Gyokudo
Modern Japanese Painting


The BREEze – Nada Sauzo
WEsterN INFLUENCE is JAPANEs E ART


THE Cé)NCEPTION OF ART
out of the particular into the general class,
causing, in short, the man made to stand for
mankind or some attribute expressive of a
general truth.
It would be a matter worth debating, as to
which is the more endurable, a work which
has good body and no soul or spirit, or the
soul and spirit with a feeble body. The latter
has been shown us in the art of the primitives
or the modern pre-Raphaelites, which always
excites our sympathy and occasionally our
interest.
Between this and the classic cold truth of
David or Prudhon there is yet a wide range in
which the larger proportion of art moves and
has its being. As with the inert clay which
in the beginning resembled man, the breath of
life was necessary before it could become a
living spirit, so the semblance of reality may
stand and wait for the subtle something which
its creator has the ability to supply.
When we examine a work of art for the
quality of “soul,” let us be sure of the meaning
of the term, that it be not confounded with a
higher quality. The term signifies life, per-
sonal and responsive.
The actor in knowing his lines has the body
of his discourse, but his expression of them
adds a value which in the degree of this ex-
pression gives us his rating. The musician is
supplied with a score which has intrinsic value,
but he adds to this value through interpretation.
The painter confronts a subject supplied out of
nature, history or poetry. How he passes on
[117 j
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
his impression of it is to us the sign of his
distinction.
In this range, then, exist those differences
which make one man’s work sought for on
every hand and the other man’s work a drug
on the market. Shall it be described as charm,
such as we encounter in the conversation of
certain people, and which is all lacking in that
of others — that would seem the nearest anal-
ogy from the simplest of the arts, conversation.
Granted the story-telling, illustrative quality
of a work to be the practical quality, and that
the personal equation may affect this but little
for him who wishes to read as he runs, it must
still be remembered that the real people for
whom art is created are not those who have
to read as they run, and the best judgments
concerning it are made by those who have time
to sit down over against it and think about it.
For them, the subject is quickly dispatched,
but the lasting pleasure lies in the how, the
why, the why this and the why not that, of
personal selection and expression. This has
all to do with the second or soul division of
the work and upon it the majority of modern
painters expend their energy. Realism is close-
hauled to the fewest possible conditions —
character, color, and light, but its commands
are inexorable; although it permits entire free-
dom for the expression of temperament.
III
That the work of art contains a capacity
beyond the material, however, endows it with
[118 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
a Supreme significance. Just here Mr. Steven-
son’s illustration comes to mind. It is the
case of the juggler with the oranges. While he
keeps two in the air he fascinates and pleases
us; with three going we marvel; at four we are
enthralled. The tossing of a single orange is
on a par with the life-class drawing. Here the
student is merely becoming acquainted with
Oranges, a necessary introduction to the art of
juggling.
Through his reticence toward a display of
the material in landscape, Mr. Twachtman has
made us feel the spiritual essence which he per-
sistently pushed to the fore. It was not
Smith's farm on Willow Creek, but rather the
spirit of Winter or of Springtime; the farmhouse
and the creek merely incidents which aided his
larger intention.
The later work of Charles H. Davis expresses
a like character; impressions of a day’s walk,
but of no particular place — a mood evoked by
viewing nature during a whole morning, and
expressive of sensation rather than particular-
ized fact.
By no means is this final thing limited to
those who evolve their pictures from stored-up
knowledge, as may be witnessed by such real
poets of landscape who while working in her
presence, under the dictation of the intense
realistic impression, are still able to fasten upon
this quality.
In figure painting, the idealism of a genera-
tion ago has entirely passed, but a new and
better sort is now appearing. It is not a por-
[119 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
trait of the artist’s wife and children which we
accept from Mr. Brush, but rather the larger
theme of motherhood and the family. The
ideal, in its emancipation from the realistic,
breaks upward and enters the larger field.
Granted, however, that every effect must
have its cause, it is for the insistent student of
art to run down these qualities which are
singled out as admirable and to know whereby
they become effective. Leaving out the aca-
demic qualities, imitative form and color, the
thing that remains after such elimination is
largely what makes art valuable. It is the differ-
ence, for instance, between the pictures of Jean
François Millet and those of his son, also
a painter of French peasants, a gentleman
living in affluence on the results of the post-
mortem sale of his father’s effects. Each has
put his life into his art and the world decides
in favor of the art through which the soul emits
its fragrance when crushed; the one whose eacpe-
Tience has rendered it truly emotional. The
sunny cottages and smiling peasants of the
other's art barely more than qualify in the
range of body. Its personality at best is com-
monplace.
Personal art becomes more interesting and
hence more valuable through its separation not
only from all other art, but from the contact
imprint of nature herself. This element of
separation is the man’s soul.
And how is this expressed? Largely by con-
struction and somewhat by technique. In
these ranges the artist asserts himself, modeling
[120 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
nature with the confidence of a potter with his
clay, and giving expression to her facts in such
manner as seemeth him best.
His domination does not result in the be-
littling of nature. The contest in which he
becomes winner proves the fitting place which
mind commands as related to matter.
[121]
CHAPTER, DK
I
THE GENESIS OF ART
“The ideal rises out of a felt contrast of what we are and
what we long to be.”
MAN first has a philosophy and then an art,
and as man’s philosophy is usually the out-
growth of his religion, it has come to pass that
art is reflective of both.
What a man thinketh so is he, in all his
expressions, including art. Where Greek art
touched the Egyptian it recoiled from its
formalism as from a corpse. Hand bound as
this was by a system conventionalized through
the formalism of an absolute monarchy, it was
an art executed by command not of the artist’s
will, but that of his master.” To the Greek
mind life meant freedom, freedom within the
perfect circle of that high-minded philosophy
which became for them the law of life.
The keenly analytical philosophies which
were subjects of popular discussion sought to
clear the world of mystery rather than foster it.
* “The sausage shaped columns of Egyptian temples and the
shapeless entablatures, so blind to all structural purpose, so in-
tellectually unconscious of their relation and proportion to each
other, have seemed the mere expression of the state of intellectual
insensibility in which they were conceived, and were equally
significant of a state of being in which the power of conscious
observation and analysis was altogether dormant.” – L. M.
Phillips, in his “Art and Environment.”
[122]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
Their wise men argued for absolute analysis
in which the statement should be so clear as to
guard itself from attack at any point. They
observed the subject from every angle; they,
in short, insisted on its form.
Adding to the political and mental freedom
of the Greek their stimulating, sobering, quali-
fying, organizing philosophy; and to that again
the positive and strangely familiar notion of
deity, developed into the tangible personalities
of the deities, and we have a basis such as
never before was offered as a stage for the
action of art.
How natural that a perfectly poised intel-
lectuality should have created without hesita-
tion a perfectly formed notion of its idea.
Greek philosophy was bounded by the senses,
and strove by their aid to construct a system
concerning the visible world. This sufficed,
and the most important member in their aggre-
gation of things — Man — was set forth in
his absolute perfection. The gods, elevated
but slightly above his station, were his arche-
types in whom his slight imperfections were
completely adjusted and set right.
With suggestions for gods and goddesses to
be seen at every turn of the street, the oppor-
tunity to absorb not only the subject of their
art but its inspiration by daily contact, offers
a reason for their creation of a standard which
for two score centuries the world has accepted
as universal.
Quite as much in his architecture as in his
sculpture was the Greek artist a reflex of this
I 123 ]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
same pronounced philosophy, this rightness of
mind. The Parthenon in its perfected unity
is an aggregation of minor perfections, governed
first by mathematical formulas of proportion
and finally dominated by the greater considera-
tion of an appeal to the eye, which necessitated
setting columns out of plumb to make them
look vertical, or raising at the centre the long
lines of the temple’s platform to correct the
common optical error of seeing such lines
slightly concave. -
It was, again, a part of the philosophy of the
senses, the effectupon them being of more impor-
tance than absolute exactitude, the first notable
exception to the doctrine that beauty is truth.
Leaving this base line of art, which by com-
mon consent is conceded, we penetrate the
East to find art in the embrace of mysticism
and idealism, a result of that philosophy; and
to the West to find the philosophy of the middle
ages shaping the channel which later received
the flood of the Renaissance, a philosophy which
strove to confine religious faith with natural-
istic rationalism, interpreting divine truth by
man-made formula.
The art of it was conspicuously of this sort.
The feast of Cana of Galilee becomes with
Paul Veronese a Venetian fête, altar pieces
were incidentally opportunities for making
saints of art patrons, “The Last Judgment”
and “Inferno” give Dante and Michael Angelo
a chance to roast their enemies; here religion
was royally entertained under the conditions
which happened to exist.
[124 J
Hobby Horse – Y. Choun “SEIJyA '' – Home:
II. Deuchi,
The Moon – Yonehara Unkai Woodcarving
WestERN INFLUENCE IN JAPANEst, Sculpture


Battersea Bridge – Whistler
The Guitar – Manet
JAPANEse INFLUENCE IN Occidental
ART


THE CONCEPTION OF ART
With modern philosophy man becomes the
centre, the endeavor being to harmonize in
him and to him the world we see; no longer
man in his perfection as with the Greeks but
man as he is; man in his multiform capacities
and interests.
At once then art becomes decentralized.
It moves restlessly in many directions. It
analyzes, experiments. The present is an
age of science with its command to
know.
The faith of the Humanists glorified with its
divine aureole the art of the Renaissance. The
painter and sculptor accepted his commission
with a simple belief in his subject. Faith
therefore conquered.
The present, rejoicing in the radiance of the
many-eyed Argus, has lost the eye single; it
has exchanged for its desire to know all things,
the simple joy of belief. The past, however,
can be useful for no better purpose than a back-
ground, the actions of the present taking place
in front of this. If our age has become aggres-
sive by reason of its insistence to know, the
wise man of to-day must accept the exchange
of this simple joy of the past for the rational
order of pleasure which charms by its greater
truth.
To his contemplation the great scroll of art
is unrolled. He finds himself in his true per-
spective, the last item in its unfolding, and
before he may judge of his own age and his
own place therein, his eye must have traversed
the whole.
[125 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
II
In all ages those who produce art have
usually done so because some one else wanted
it: art for art’s sake people are very few.
Art has existed because some one could pay
the artist, which is really her justification,
proving that art has been able to take root and
expand because she is needed. Were this not
so, we would return to an undecorated, inex-
pressive life. Utility would be the compass of
our practical demand and unadorned expression
our habit. Instead of this in every nation
there has been the artist.
He was the orator who stirred men’s blood,
the poet whose song was phrased so that men
got a new vision out of common speech, the
artisan who gave to what he wrought an un-
common turn at which men smiled in pleasure.
All this was not necessary but yet enjoyable,
and so it was allowed to stay, indeed art has
always been encouraged to remain.
But art has ever demanded leisure. “Art,”
as Ruskin declares, “is incompatible with
hurry.” Indeed it is really more at home in a
pueblo village than among the blast furnaces
of Pittsburgh or Birmingham. One might wait
from the creation to the millennium for art to
evince itself under the conditions of a factory
whistle at seven and a return of the workers at
nightfall, with houses for the operators all
of one shape and plainness, with no opportunity
for beauty’s influence and no time for her
contemplation.
[126
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
That art should be so simple that it can
appeal to the common man in the hurry and
rush of his unsympathetic life was Tolstoy's
ambition for it. But art is no more intended
for a man who has no time for it than is
religion or any other good thing.
The nations, then, which had time for aes-
thetic thought and in whose philosophy of life
was a place reserved for idealism, are those
where she has really sustained herself, growing
and unfolding the wonderful capacities which
lie in the simple conception of the thing beautiful.
With leisurely civilization art had an early
birth. The contemplation of religious belief
was soon made tangible and expressed in sym-
bol. The world had always had a yearning to
see God, and among man’s first attempts at
representation was an effort to express either
deity or persons and things closely allied.
From the Sphinx, the world’s earliest monu-
ment, one may trace the unfolding of art along
the line of contemplation of the abstract idea,
art expressions which have to do either with
divinity or man’s immortality. The presence
of these impassive monuments gave assurance
to a belief in the unseen, and the unseen was
made impressive because of the aesthetic and
psychological qualities which they guarded.
This habit of contemplation, which the re-
ligions of all ethnic peoples cultivated, fostered
likewise the possibilities of art; and from the
day of the image which Nebuchadnezzar the
Ring set up to the Madonna and Child of
Christian Europe, the great proportion of art
[127]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
was idealistic; it was the idea embodied in such
form as to make man’s contemplation more
easy. As art pushed eastward from the centre
of earliest civilization, toward the nations whose
religion was shaped by Buddha, Zoroaster, and
Confucius, repose, one of the highest qualities
of religious effort, became the dominant one of
their art, affecting all types of it'—architecture,
sculpture and painting. In fact, so deep-seated
and necessary was this quality held that the
landscape of the Chinese was founded upon the
notion of reverie.
Imitation to these peoples has always had
but secondary consideration, and everything
which impinged upon the larger quality was
either mitigated or left out. The great period
of scroll and screen painting of the Sung Ming
and T'ang Dynasties was characterized by the
breadth and magnitude of their subjects. If
with its attempt at perfected detail the theme
awakened no thoughts of sublimity, nor pro-
duced a calm and tranquil impression, the
work with them had no rating. It must above
all prove able to lead one out of himself into
the universal life. It must supply hints of the
infinite, whisperings from esoteric sources and
naturally join hands with their philosophy of life.
We therefore cannot look at much of this
early art without quickly inferring that realism
was of small moment, realities serving only in
the capacity of pegs on which to hang ideas,
sensations, emotions. Here we have moun-
tains in the abstract, steep and oftentimes
impassable, rising out of the mists and piercing
I 128 )
-THE Forge — Mortimer Mempes
The BAMBoo FENCE – Helen Hyde
Colored Wood Engraving Executed in Japan
The JAPANEse, Subject by the WEstERNER


º º
º
º
ſº- º
* N .
2 NN
º
º
º | º º
|W º |
H/ | | Nº. º
|-
---
- -
º º
º


THE CONCEPTION OF ART
them again, but leaving an emotion of sub-
limity; of rivers in which the impression was
that of swift-moving currents; of waterfalls
coming from nowhere and disappearing without
explanation; of mysterious and conventional-
ized cloud forms, in outlined strata, invading
the land and leaving only glimpses here and
there of meadow, lake, or mountainside; of
the ocean tossed and turbid in wildly fan-
tastic wave forms, but expressive of the
abstract idea of movement and intense commo-
tion. With these painters the essence of the
theme was of chief concern. The notion of
transmigration of soul, passing from Egypt
through India and into China and Japan, in-
vested the philosophies of all these peoples with
the idea of the spirit in the thing.
In the rendition of the object the first
requisite was to find the way of its life. If it be
a flower, a tree, a river, an animal, the ocean,
or even a locality, to find its mode of growth
and existence was imperative in the procedure
of the artist. In short, the majority of the
native critics of the celestial kingdom agree
that the echo of the spirit, or spiritual tone, is
the highest essential in painting.
III
The six canons in Chinese art are: Spirit-
ual tone and life movement; manner of brush
work in lines; form in relation to objects;
choice of colors appropriate to objects; compo-
sition; copying of classic masterpieces.
[129 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
Chinapin, although urging a close scrutiny
of form, declared it to be impossible to paint
waves, because ever changing, and so in place
thereof we behold all degrees of moving chaos.
Strange their faithful observation of nature did
not reveal the simple logic of marine form;
that because one plane is, another must be;
and that practically every third wave repeats
itself and every seventh is of the largest size,
and therefore to the student easily studied.
Instead, witness the mélange of forms repre-
senting the sea by Korin, acknowledged as one
of the greatest painters of Japan.
Although numerous characteristics may be
discovered separating the Chinese and Japan-
ese peoples, in their art they are practically
united; in fact, the latter was a development
of the former, the art of each passing through a
long classic period. The sages and critics of
the Sung period were replaced by the “Lofty
Talkers” and the “Wise Men of the Bamboo
Grove,” of Japan, who maintained for art the
ancient traditions.
The philosophy of art, its methods and
technique were identical. The kinship in the
result is therefore not surprising. Critics agree,
however, that, all things considered, the older
country produced the better art.
In every nation one can trace the abstract
idea in art (idealism) working side by side
with the concrete idea, mere imitation pro-
duced either for the sake of personal record or
in illustration of an event.
Whereas in Egypt the Sphinx was a symbol,
[130 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
the portrait statues of the kings were records,
as were the sculptured reliefs upon the walls of
Karnak or from the Book of the Dead, from
the Assyrian temples of Nimrud and Khorsabad,
wherein art was used for no aesthetic effect
primarily, but wherein these and most other
cases, the results of the utilitarian efforts
proved to be asthetic.
In the case of the portrait statues of Egypt,
these may be classed as idealizations, but it
must not be forgotten that idealism and con-
ventionalism approach so closely at times as to
confuse their identity. Deprived of those lines
of construction which mean life and which
even in repose are the secret of charm in all
Greek sculpture, they have been created, one
the counterpart of another, on an arbitrary for-
mula. With the basic idea of their construc-
tion, frontality, depriving the image of action
and emotion, naught is left but the possibility
of these attributes, and the result is the symbol
of a once living and active man.
IV
Although the strong trend was ever toward
idealism, in time, into oriental art came the
influence of realism, the thing imitated for its
own sake, because it was a part of nature.
Century after century had held this in check
in the art of India, China, and Japan, for
although in each of these arts the painting of
actual scenes in the mythology of their times
is preserved for us, this is not the realism of
[131 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
the world about us, but the reality of fancy or
belief. As an exception to this, however, must
be cited the love of animal nature expressed
with remarkable realism in Assyrian sculpture.
What is known in Japanese art as Ukiyoye,
or “pictures of the fleeting world,” a term of
Buddhistic reproach, came in with Matahei,
who, born in 1578, may be accounted the
father of Japanese genre. Before his time
religion, allegory, painting of the symbols (the
dragon always expressive of water, the tiger of
land, etc.), war, mythology, and portraiture had
been the compass of art’s subject. With him
the everyday life as a theme was added to this
list, and yet, together with his purely genre
subject, Matahei spent many years depicting
the legendary goddesses and heroes, and his
series of the Thirty-Six Poets, done in black, is
regarded his most important work. Together
with Okyo, a powerful draughtsman, who, like
him, had been influenced by some Dutch en-
gravings brought to Nagasaki, these two in
time established the realistic movement in
Japan, breaking with the formal tradition of
Chinese art. The freedom in the depiction of
life around them soon became an irresistible
temptation to painters and the Ukiyoye, or
“Common” school. This, however, did not
become thoroughly popular until the invention
of wood engraving at about 1680. Up to that
time the art of the orient had been a privilege
of the rich, screen and scroll paintings often
representing months and even a year's labor.
With the process of reproduction, art for the
[132 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
people was initiated and, although many artists
of the highest rank went into this newer branch,
the traditions in both China and Japan are
such that only until recently were the print
artists recognized as having any standing.
Socially they were for generations rated with
the mechanics.
The craze of Europe and America over the
Japanese print is wholly incomprehensible to
the kakemono painters of Japan. Mr. H. P.
Bowie, in his charming book on Japanese art,
declares that never in his visits to the studios
of the important painters of Japan (and he has
visited them all) did he ever see a Japanese
print. The painters regard them as the efforts
of four men, in which the original intention
of the artist suffers much. The engraver, the
color smearer, and the printer all work quite
independently of the designer, who never over-
sees the work. In Japan the market for them
is entirely among the lower classes. But it
nevertheless has naturally come to pass that
the names of the great draughtsmen of the
block are known the world round, while they
of the scroll and the screen are now only spar-
ingly receiving their introduction through the
constricted channel of those publications deal-
ing with their classic art."
* Fortunately there has been cultivated sufficient popular
interest in these older painters of the scroll and screen, to make
possible such a publication as the “Kokka,” a magazine de luxe
of oriental art, and others of more modest pretensions. The
works, therefore, of Chinese and Japanese antiquity may be seen
in reduced size, and some notion of the great artists of the North-
ern and Southern schools of China be obtained.
Of the former, Kuo Hsi, Ma Yuan, Li T'ang, Li SSu-hsun,
[ 133 ]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
While Moronobu, Kunisada, Goshichi, Uta-
maro, Toyokuni, Chosun, Toyoharu, Kiyonage,
Haronobu, who declared, “Though I work in
prints I will style myself the master painter
of Japan,” Hoitsu, Kitagawa, Hiroshige and
Hokusai are names very familiar to any collec-
tor or student of Japanese print art, the masters
of the Tosa and Kano schools of Japan or the
Hangchow artists of Sung Dynasty of China
who have left behind them art exceeding these
others, are practically unknown, reproductions
of their works being limited to very expensive
editions which are but recently appearing.
Ching Hao and Chon ch'en are most notable, and of the Southern
school Wau. Meng, Mi Fu, and Fau Kuan.
The pictures of the north express the boldness, amplitude, and
freedom of their vast mountain ranges; those of the south are
wrought in the more delicate fibre sweetened and gracious influ-
ences of the valley lands.
[1341
CHAPTER X
THE AESTHETICS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART
“In short, the effort of art is to interpret the workings
of the human spirit.” — J. A. Symonds.
ONE cannot approach these oriental arts in
the spirit of criticism without assuming the
conditions for himself under which they were
produced. The idealism, pervasive of all east-
ern philosophy, must first be acknowledged,
and the first condition must be the first great
canon of idealism, that the idea is initial, and
the fact of secondary importance.
Facts, thus regarded, must in time become
conventionalized; they serve as symbols; they
stand for ideas, just as, though in lesser degree,
the characters of picture writing were trans-
muted into letters.
The way to do things was pressed out in a
mold which had the whole nation at the end
of the leverage. Only occasionally in the long
history of the world’s most consecutive art do
we find an artist ready to start in an untried
direction. The criticism by a patron so
wounded the sense of conventional fitness of the
art of a Tokyo painter that after refusing to
make the desired change he committed hari-
kari. In such a land we are not surprised to
find a long code of Art Laws which every
student of art must learn and practise.
[135 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
The Japanese preserve to this day a practice
in eighteen different formative lines, as, for
example, the line wrinkled like a horse’s teeth,
that like a folded belt, that like a bullock's hair,
that like a frayed rope, that like eddying water,
that like a thunder head, etc. These all are
applied to the draperies of certain orders; the
nobleman has his, the beggar his, the saint, the
philosopher, the woman of the aristocracy, the
geisha, all have their distinctive lines; there
must be no confounding of these. Running
water has its line, the cataract has likewise its
distinctive line. Branch forms require varied
lines; the hand and arm being held in given
postures to produce these and the brush sup-
plied with little or less water as the character
of the bark may be smooth or rough.
Rock strata are of course lineal, and are pro-
duced by as many given lines as may be dis-
cerned in surface geology.
The whole art system has stood for genera-
tions waiting for the next painter — it is indeed
only one system of many in the land of systems
—but in its ample yoke he has room to move in
almost any direction. Were these technical
conventions loosened and this art given
an unbridled rein, free of all conditions, who
will not say that much of its greatest claim
on our interest and sympathies would dis-
appear?
Indeed, the study or casual contemplation of
this art leaves us with a satisfied feeling that the
system has been well thought out. It pleases,
nay, often amuses us, and thereby charms. We
[136 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
are lead captive, bound by its handcuffs, willing
prisoners.
But those who have witnessed a kakemono
in process can add to this enchantment another
and greater. The mastery of technique of
which the painting informs us, in actual process
enthralls us as does the exhibition of any of their
magic arts. There is no hesitation, for the con-
ception is re-conception. It proceeds straight
from the mental reservoirs along the conduits
of nerve, tendon and muscle, emitting its con-
stant and never-failing stream. We thank the
conventions for being present, for the precedents
established centuries before and found to be
good during all succeeding periods; we praise a
system which makes perfect through practice.
The paper or silk is placed on the floor; by his
side the artist has a few bowls of liquid color, the
soft pliable brushes, each coming to a point, are
held at arm’s length. The stroke may be a
combination movement of shoulder, arm, and
wrist; it must frequently be a graduated stroke,
the brush being rolled so that the color grades
itself, as in the bamboo. At times two brushes
are held in the same hand, manipulated by
different fingers and often loaded with separate
colors. Under these conditions there must be
no such word as fail, for the false stroke cannot
be eliminated. Quick and ingenious devices,
however, are ever present for foiling adverse
fate.
In an attempt on the part of the writer before
a distinguished painter of Japan to produce a
landscape by this method, my clumsiness let
[137 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
fall across the sky three graduated spots of
gray color.
“I have spoiled that one!” I ejaculated, as
I laid down the brush. But my silent observer
smilingly picked it up and, touching wings and
heads to my spots, set me going again.
With these quick, lightning-like strokes,
delivered with the freedom of a full arm swing,
the subtle intricacies of form are often slurred.
Form must be known as a generality and ren-
dered in the abstract. There is no other way.
The special features of eyes, nose, and mouth
are conventionalized, especially the nose, which
even in purported likenesses is a truly conven-
tionalized character; drapery has been reduced
to formula, and the avoidance of embarrassing
complications where disparite lines touch or
masses blend has all been settled long ago
by convention.
The writer once urged a Chinese artist of his
acquaintance, who for a long period had executed
scrolls of a like sort, to look over a hand-book on
perspective and one also on figure drawing.
His attachment of hands to wrists and feet to
ankles was in the true conventionalized manner
of curves, observable in both Chinese and
Japanese art, and always the same. This
failure to depict Nature as she is was pointed
out, but he politely refused all suggestion and
both books, and thereon prompted the thought
that with these earmarks lacking the quaint
and faraway character, so cherished in their
works, would be sacrificed. When the prophet
said of Ephraim, “He is joined to his idols,
[138 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
let him alone,” it was not altogether a decree
that saving grace was forever denied, but that
the idol, plus the belief that went with it, was
not, after all, such a bad asset, and was certainly
better than no idol and no belief.
II
The method of painting should account
largely not only for their manner of technique,
but for the composition. The fact that the
paper or silk dries rapidly forces one character-
istic and fosters another. It necessitates rapid
execution and naturally gives birth to this con-
ventionalized treatment. It is the problem of
Schiller’s Bell; material must be added while
the matter is molten. Everything must be
waiting. The sure way is the old tried way and
so the painters of one school are all echoes of the
masters, and the master’s art is a bundle of re-
ceipts working with rare certainty. The wonder-
ful dexterity in loading the brushes with color
and water so that by the right pressure a single
graduated stroke might give such a result as
we would produce with three or more, must be
rated as conventionalized skill, the result of
recurring experiences.
Again the really high-class notion of building
his art around the spiritual essence of his sub-
ject braces the Japanese artist to impart the
inner character of the subject as of first impor-
tance. The tiger, a theme so often portrayed,
must be thought of as a ferocious beast. The
spirit of ferocity therefore must be exhibited in
[139 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
every stroke. The eye especially must express
this. The result is plainly a ferocious beast,
but not always a good tiger," and he who had
never seen a tiger and whose demand is for form
rather than spirit must go to the menagerie for
a real knowledge of what he looks like, or refer
to a painting by an artist of the west.
Even when the realistic movement started
at the end of the seventeenth century in Japan,
and subjects changed from mythological, leg-
endary, and spiritual themes to those of
everyday genre, the trace or taint of the con-
ventional was still apparent. In fact, if realism
is to be secured, inadequate means (those
restricted to the first and second dimensions
merely) are insufficient. The later realism of
Japan is still far away from modern reality.
The aesthetics of Chinese and Japanese art
which may be traced to most ancient sources
contain much of what constitutes our own code.
Their universal law of Buddhism applying not
only to painting but to poetry, its “elder sister”
is the ten-chi-jin, or heaven, earth, and man;
that everything represented must be presented
in a proportional value as indicated by this
ratio, the most important item being heaven,
the next earth, and the last man.
Herein is expressed our two principles of
principality and subordination in ratio.
The sei-do, or principle of living movement
is one already referred to, demanding that the
artist actually possess himself of the life of the
*On page 117, see Tigers by a modern artist of Japan, a marked
improvement in character over anything discoverable in Japanese
art.
[140 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
thing depicted. The insistence that kokoro, or
the essence and presiding genius of a thing or
place be preserved, is of most vital concern.
The principle of suggestion, esorgoto, is one
insisting that the work be not too real. Its
value is guaged not so much by its literalism
as by its kokoro, or inner spirit.
Ki-in is the result of that personal distinction
that with us signifies style. There is no formula
for this, but a picture must possess it or else
fail before their critics.
Keisho, besides meaning shape, also signifies
art prosperity. It is the principle of taste, and
frowns upon all unclassical vagaries or personal
peculiarities
The principle of in yo is, in a word, that of
contrast. Like most of the principles of art its
origin is Chinese, in meaning darkness, and yo
light; beyond this it signifies negative and
positive, passive and active, female and male,
lower and upper, even and odd. The presence
of this principle interrupts sameness and pro-
duces its opposite, variety. It is the base of
their scheme of light and dark or notan. A
demand for this division of tonic forces is really
the same feeling which leads them further to-
ward the variety in like objects introduced,
those active and those passive, a difference
descending to the minutest detail of trivial
objects.
With the principles of proportion, ichi, the
designer of the screen or scroll, is most con-
cerned. Here his forces must balance and
prove unified in the allotted space. Though
[14] ]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
no positive analysis of balance is known to them
they show the necessary feeling for the principle
of the steelyard — of the small isolated member
weighing out with the larger mass. The small
accent is most thoughtfully placed and when
nothing appropriate occurs, the signature is
made to serve. Whistler was deeply sensitive
to this balance by the isolated spot and would
test it here and there until it satisfied him in
the ensemble. Note, for this quality, his por-
trait of Miss Alexander as well as for the balance
of spaces revealed by its architectual line.
Although we of the west feel that perspective
was a branch of art that never very deeply
affected the Chinese or Japanese conscience,
one of the most important precepts of Chu
ECaishu, laid down in his great classic entitled
“Poppy Garden Conversations,” refers to the
en kin, or the far and the near, insisting that
all available devices be employed to secure
this. That perspective of line did not become
scientific until recently the great mass of their
art attests. Aerial perspective, however, was
never more delicately and satisfactorily ex-
ploited than in the wonderful landscapes of
China and Japan. Indeed, herein they express
the great quality of water over oil as a solvent
for color, advantaged by the superior lightness
inherent in watercolor.
This art is never produced from nature, but
by observation and sketchbook notes. From
early childhood the study of all living things
becomes a part of education, the frequent walks
with the teacher who talks about what they
[142 j
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
encounter being as essential as the correct hold-
ing of the brush to produce the forty-eight
symbols of their alphabet.
The Japanese artist with this training behind
him has already an important start, and the
seventy-two rules of art with which he is con-
fronted become largely truisms founded on a
knowledge of nature already obtained in child-
hood.
III
The broad difference between the art of the
east and that of the west is that the former is
subjective and the later objective, the former
striving to express the idea through the object
depicted, the latter intent on enforcing the
character of the object depicted. The former
art never shocks: though oft appealing to sen-
sation, it is not sensational. It is often mys-
terious but seldom profound. It has largely to
do with allegory, legend, and illustration. Its
matter-of-fact realities always lie closely upon
the basis of influential design. We detect the
story in much of it, but we should never miss
its important expression of decoration. The
pictorial elements strive after an aesthetic re-
modeling of necessary material.
Save for the introduction of genre, little
change in manner and none in technique are
observable throughout this history of a people’s
art, beginning before Odoacer the Goth swept
over Italy, showing highest development before
Columbus discovered America, and continuing
its uninterrupted stream from the fountain of
[143 ]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
pure classicism quite down to the present.
While our western art is scientific and intel-
lectual, standing for form, the spirit of eastern
art demands a sensuous and emotional expres-
sion of rhythm. The incarnation of the genius
of rhythm, declares one of their critics of the
sixth century, the inner spirit and not the outer
semblance, is what the artist should aspire to.
Says Lawrence Binyon: “The limitations
of eastern tradition keep its art pure and make
even the productions of insignificant artists a
pleasure to look upon. In our more burdened
art, failure is more frequent, though to its
greater triumphs attaches a greater glory.”
IV
Line, so important and diligent a study to the
Japanese artist, is a means of expressing char-
acter; the second of the six canons of the critic
Shakaky of the fifth century deals with line, and
is termed the law of Bones and Brush work.
This name explains its purpose; the line is
looked upon as the skeleton of the growth
depicted, practically its inner spirit, the lines
expressing the nerves and arteries. This princi-
ple has to do with nature likeness but not neces-
sarily with organization.
“The sacredness of caligraphy is the worship
of line pure and simple,” says the author of the
“Ideals of the East.” “Each stroke of the brush
contains in itself the principle of life. It must
not be thought that the excellence of a great
Chinese or Japanese painting lies in its accent-
[144 )
Fortuny WIERGE
Expressive LiNE, Occidental

-->
* -
º º*
T
-- - -
ºriº &
- *
º “-
Pºs.
-
º
[. *-
- |- -
º
* *
*- |TC) -
º Sº-
-
º -
-


THE CONCEPTION OF ART
uation of outlines and contours; nevertheless,
these do, as simple lines, possess an abstract
beauty of their own.”
This last phrase is very true, the great variety
of line, offered the selection of the artist, opens
a most interesting study to the amateur of
Japanese art.
Besides this, line means organization. One
may often fail, however, to get a strong im-
pression of line that means such constructive
unity, in Oriental art, unless the subject is
some form of growth. Nor does it represent
a means of technique, as with the etching of the
west; but rather the thing itself. In fact, the
Oriental designers cares much more about the
“spirit” of the things presented than about
their final organization, though the sense of
composition is one in which their art has had
its development during the latter periods.
Their greatest designer of prints, Hokusai and
Hiroshigi I, had, undoubtedly, seen examples
of the engraved art of Europe and this must
have been in a measure a strong influence. To
one of decided inclination toward construction,
much of the early art of both China and Japan
is necessarily regarded with but half-hearted
enthusiasm, as over and over again one comes
upon examples fairly groping for this structural
quality and which, without sacrificing any of
their sacred canons, might have been incorpo-
rated.
The sense of movement, sequence, and the
dominating item, however, generally finds for-
cible adaptation among their best artists.
[145 ||
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
Comparison for efficiency of line might well
be made between the best draughtsmen of the
west and those of the east, bearing in mind
always that the art best able to suggest a truth
is, in the scale of art, rated higher than that
which labors to imitate the actual. With this
conceded, and, also, that even in their realistic
period conventional line is still almost entirely in
use, we submit a drawing by Hokusai (page 113)
or Kiosai or Toyokuni (page 129) and place it
beside a pen drawing by ‘Abbey or Fortuny or
Reene or Frost or Vierge (page 144). The
drawings of the former group will call vividly to
one’s mind the figures and drapery, etc., if he
has seen them. The lines will be found to be
organic, displaying large synthetic knowledge
of form. The work of the other group will
enable you to know about the subject without
former acquaintance. The treatment of drapery
by Abbey will give you the folds of a skirt
exactly as they fall and you may decide by the
weight and character of the fold whether it is of
silk, satin, linen, or fustian. One warms at once
to the actuality, feeling the appropriateness of
reality in a subject which is real.
But beyond this consideration, it is interest-
ing to continue the comparison. Here are two
great art systems competing in the range of
eacpressive line, the first means employed by
man in graphic attempt and a means which has
remained the most potent in both decorative
*It is impossible to include an example by Mr. Abbey as his
publisher is now guarding all of his productions with scrupulous
Care.
[146
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
and expressive art. The recommendation of
line above other methods is twofold; because
of its simplicity it is the most direct emotional
and personal mode open to the artist, the quick
strokes of the telegraphic keyboard being
scarcely more rapid than those of the pen
draughtsman in pursuit of a hot thought.
Fitting this capacity to the demands of
expression has secured results more varied
through the simple modifications of a personal
psychology than one may discover in either
painting or sculpture.
In noting the limitations of the Japanese
line, the way of its making must be borne in
mind. The line is at best an adjustment of
expression from fingers to shoulder. It must
be rendered with a full arm swing, a fact that
accounts largely for its ample and synthetic
character. The Orientalist cannot pause for
the ever varying niceties of drapery or the exact
character-giving modulations of the face. His
method clearly prescribes his limitations. His
intimacy with fact, therefore, is such as is
obtainable at arm’s length.
Not so with those draughtsmen whose fingers
have a support at the wrist. What infinite
possibilities are at once added. Look upon the
added nature quality, not to mention the
greater force and range of technique. The
purely dexterous ability of the Japanese, easily
exemplified as greater than our own through
his wonderful carvings of wood and ivory and
his creations in lacquer, no less than by his
performances with the brush in the detail of
[147 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
flowers, fish, etc., might be readily turned
toward a higher degree of linear expression
were he to take up the pen and use it in our
method.
With Abbey and Menzel, both of whom had
the instinct of painters, the pen became as
ready a tool for expressing a surface as the
brush. In the case of each it may be said they
painted with the point and with Fortuny no less
do we realize that he confronts his subject as a
painter with full respect for “values.” With
Reene, Frost, and Vierge, more thought is put
into the line, as a line, which as a means is quite
as interesting to them as the result."
V
A proper conception of modern art could not
be had without acknowledgment of the Japan-
ese blend. This art did not serve as an in-
fluence in bulk as, let us say, did Impressionism
where the convert swallowed whole. The
impassable gulf between eastern and western
art, a gulf deepened by both the technique and
by the limitations of the two-dimentional
range of the former, was sufficient to preserve
it from infringement, and administer sober
*Especially may this be said of Frost whose constantly active
hand is never more agreeably employed than when shaping no
matter what with his “303 Spencerian.” The accompanying
group of sketches is one of a score of pages in the possession of
the author upon which this artist has let go his delight for line
creation. They range from the most delicately conceived heads
and hands to the wildest extravagances of caricature of animals
and men. They all explain the infinite capacity of line for
expression no less than testifying to the joy of creating with it
3.S. a. Iſleå.I.S.
[148 ||
CoNFEtti – Francher Autumn – W. H. Eve
PostER ART

FALLEN LEAVEs – Wm. Wendt
-
CyPREss, PINEs – Maurice Denis
DEcoRATIVE LANDscAPE
THE SUBJECT SEEN with REFERENCE to Its Possibilities of LINE, Spots, AND Spaces


THE CONCEPTION OF ART
restraint on the western admirer who longed to
appropriate. While western pride in our own
aims and antecedents would in any case have
been sufficient to hold in check a too obvious
regard for this mode, it was inevitable that the
sensation which fell from the clear sky of the
Island Kingdom during the London Exposition
of 1862 startled and delighted Europe with a
new vision. Artists made love to it on sight,
courted it over its high bamboo fence, and then
settled down to consider how it would be
possible to attach it piecemeal. Its warm
reception opened an immediate market for
everything Japanese, and the Paris Exposition
following five years later was seized upon by
the Japanese Government to drive the wedge.
An analysis of the new picture art revealed
these possibilities which were available alike for
expression in three dimensions as intwo; namely,
the attractiveness of spacing, the attractiveness
of spotting, its suggestiveness through repres-
sion, its tendency to parallelism, to repetition,
and, in its best compositions, to inclusion. The
exhilaration of the empty space and of the plane
seen from above fitted the temperament and
subject of Degas to a nicety. His ballet dancer
proved most striking in such arrangement.
Whistler found that his own subject as well as
his sense for reserved and tonal color exactly
fadged with the clever bridge and village sub-
jects of the school of the “outer world,” and
that the ancient screens and prints contained
the subdued harmony of color which was his
by nature. With Whistler it never was so
[149 j
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
much a case of kidnapping as adoption, adop-
tion of something hailed as germane to his per-
sonal predilections.
True, Whistler boldly took the Japanese
subject in his “Lady of the Land of Porcelain.”
and a few other canvases, and in his balcony
arrangements either with or without the Jap-
anese subject, but his accommodation of the flat,
low-toned Japanese print to his own portraits
and landscapes was in a more natural course.
He had always seen the Thames and London
under the simplified reserve produced by the
flat washes of Japanese painting, and he, at any
time, would rather have the shadow’s mystery
for his subject’s repose than a noon-tide revela-
tion of its character.
It is reasonable to suppose also that Manet
admired this art of two dimensions to his own
good as a personal influence, as likewise the
truly impressionistic savor of this art. Monet
evidently seized upon it to strengthen his
natural disregard for obvious composition.
The poster painters of Paris and Munich found
in its flatness and simplicity exactly what they
needed; the mural painters learned from it the
effectiveness of large spaces and perhaps learned
something from its psychology of line. Our
own Winslow Homer doubtlessly simplified his
arrangements to a few large areas, a trait
noticeable in his marine paintings and many of
his watercolors. His most Japanesque canvas,
the “Fox and the Crows,” under a dull gray
sky of winter, with the Snow lying deep along a
rocky coast, is one of his happiest concepts.
[150 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
With the painters, adaptation was neces-
sarily limited. With the bookmen, in cover
design, and with the illustrators it was appro-
priated en bloc. Vierge, Steinlen, Louis Rhead,
Parrish, Penfield and a host of others knew the
value of simplification and exercised it. Before
the Japanese print habit had become fixed, illus-
tration had been of a distinctly different order.
The fascination of the Japanese subject in its
distinct Japanese technique to some has been
so great that a coterie of excellent artists has
given itself to the production of “Japanese
prints.” Among the more successful of these
may be mentioned F. M. Fletcher, J. D. Batten,
and Edgar Wilson of England. Riviere, Lepere
of France, Emil Orlik of Austria, Fraulein Hein
of Germany, and Miss Helen Hyde of America.
[151 |
y CHAPTER XI
CONCEPTION OF PAINTING
“You can never show truly more than you are capable
of experiencing.— Delsarte.
WHEN Gauguin asserted that “artists were
either plagiarists or revolutionists,” his rapier
slashed in two directions. It penetrated to the
heart of Tradition, scoring, however, what can
be called only a “fair touch” without the sting
of blood letting; and it likewise became a
vigorous prick in the side of the young artist
with his career before him.
The artist must either shake himself free of
what has gone before or submit to the taunt of
being but a “derivative.” That the artist is a
plagiarist, as to his technique at least, had
better be acknowledged and that cheerfully;
but so is the scientist and the musician and the
man of letters. They all stand on Tradition.
It is their platform, but from this they reach
out, adding a truth or substituting one in the
long chain of ultimate truth. Revolutions are
never necessary save as it is proven that the
trail is hopelessly lost or leads nowhere.
But has this ever been so in art? Has not
rather the torch been handed from one genera-
tion to another over the heads of the wavering
and halting ones, and Tradition stood as the
[152 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
saving bulwark to which art has appealed for
reinstatement after its discursions into the
mazes of experiment or degeneration?
In the time of art’s darkness — the night
between the setting of its sun with the end of
the Greco-Roman period and its rising after a
lapse of thirteen centuries, that period when the
art instinct was kept alive by the more tangible
experience of architecture, graphic expression
withered, and men only yearned without
strength for articulation. The art feeling had
died because of the simple lack of intellectual
ability to make their expression cogent. They
had the material, and even a desire, of , an
impotent sort, but they lacked a sense of co-
ordinate values between these, and the product
was therefore a haphazard thing in which the
elements were frequently out of scale, and
neither adequate intrinsically nor balanced and
fitting by association. They therefore appealed
to another feeling, not the aesthetic, which is
unhappily confounded with it; namely, the
sympathetic, which is naught else but apprecia-
tion of an intention. Thus it happens that what
is merely aimed in the direction of art, and has
no claim upon recognition by any essential
attribute or quality, is often admitted to its
association from a historic point of interest.
And so we find in many museums, works
lacking every requisite save emotion, set up to be
viewed and rated as true art to the confusion of
those people for whose art education the mu-
seum chiefly exists, remaining as a perpetual
enigma to their confused intelligence.
[ 153 ]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
Art begins where their authors have left off;
it begins by producing unity in place of un-
related, misfitted parts which in such works
repel pleasure. They therefore have little
place in the gallery of art but rather in the
museum dealing with art’s history. Among
these works at times is found toneful and attrac-
tive color, very frequently the gift of the cen-
turies. By these conditions they qualify under
the category of some art, and the aesthetic
pleasure from this source may at times justify
their presence among works of greater unity,
but I submit that the will to do should no more
be taken in lieu of accomplishment in the tenth
century than in the fifteenth or twentieth A. D.
or the third or second B. C.
The singular but accepted fact that pity finds
kinship with love may be largely explained by a
truly sporting instinct in man which credits an
honest effort even in defeat. “Well tried for”
often smothers failure with a garland, and in
all departments of personal effort sympathy is
ever ready with her minority report. But has
criticism, which is supposed to hold the scales
with blinded eyes, anything to do with these
special pleadings?—only in so far as art is
acknowledged to have its wellsprings for accom-
plishment in both love and emotion and in our
natural willingness to honor this source.
It must not be supposed that the above
applies to all primitive painting but to that only
which is practically destitute of art quality,
samples of which may be found in many mu-
seums, furnished them in the spirit of the anti-
[154 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
quary having in mind the history of painting
rather than the saner spirit which regulates and
directs with the single purpose of aesthetic
achievement and the natural educational result
which such contact has upon the people.
This sympathy with the yearning for speech
of dumb tongues, the longing for accomplish-
ment of unskilled fingers, the effort of song by
the tuneless voice is the starting point of ora-
tory, painting, sculpture, and music, and the
same point also for the beginning of an educa-
tion which an expression in any of these de-
mands.
“Ea: nihilo nihil fit” will continue to be one
of those pillars of creation which no new philos-
ophy will ever disturb, and when we may
pause to admire evidences of true art in the
modern primitiveness of Post Impressionism
we may feel assured that it is something besides
sympathy which has moved us toward it.
II
Certain ideals and standards applying both
to the subject and to the technique of art there
have always been which have tacitly governed
the great producers; standards so good and true
as to prove their worth without argument by
what they have created. These are dialects of
art’s language — slightly differing modes of
using the same figures of speech. They were
invented and introduced by different original
men and solely, let it be assumed, in the hope of
improving the means of their expression.
[155
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
In fact, technique the means, has long been
the absorbing thought in art. The emphasis
of the schools is placed just here, scant attention
being paid until recently to the real creation
of the aesthetic thing. So engrossed indeed
have we become with method that subject in
art no longer counts.
The jury, representing, for the moment, one
of the most important art institutions of the
country, in its reward of prizes, recently hov-
ered in its decision between two works, the first
a large canvas painted by one of our foremost
artists abroad, a man recognized by many of the
European governments. It was a notable com-
position of twelve life-sized figures, its many
difficulties ably managed and displaying a noble
theme with adequate technique and superior
color. The other was a study of a draped model.
To make more sure in their decision the smaller
picture was taken down and placed beside the
other. It was found in such a comparison that
the “study” was technically better than any
single figure of the composition and the decision
therefore was for that. Such a judgment as a
proclamation for technique as the important
quality, becomes a humiliation of art herself and
the numerous and necessary attributes which
that word implies, a discouragement to great
achievement in its substitution of the means for
the end. But producers are naturally inter-
ested in the way.
The Wan Eyck brothers, as the fathers of
painting, proceeded with oil colors as one would
with water color, relying on a brilliant white
[156]
WENETIAN SERENADERs – Frank Brangwyn
Figure PAINTING INFLUENCED BY DEcoRAtion

DEcoRATIVE Use of the ANGEL of PURITY – St. Gaudens
HUMAN ForM
THE DANCE – Bela Pratt
DEcoRATIVE Sculpture


THE CONCEPTION OF ART
ground to make effective their pure and trans-
parent color applied as a glaze. This is practi-
cally Titian’s method, and with slight modifica-
tion, that of the whole Venetian School.
Rubens, founding his method on the tech-
nique of the lower Italian schools, sought to
produce his effect with the most direct means,
painting with impasto over a warm undertone
of glazed color.
Rembrandt, ever searching for the ultimate
qualities of nature, resolved that depth was one
of them, and the Rembrandt surface, intimating
blood, fibre, and bone beneath, “the far in
quality” which George Eliot demands in litera-
ture, he obtained by both of these methods
combined with scrumbling and scraping. As to
technique there was nothing other than these
until the advent of the Impressionists. What
they did was to apply the magnifying glass to
color and separate the combination of any com-
posite color into its simples, making the small
grain of pigment a large one, so that the mixt-
ure became more vivacious and therefore to
the technique more important.
This allows to the artist but four methods of
pigmental usage, and it is not likely that paint-
ing will soon find another.
The subdivisions of the Impressionistic for-
mula; that of pointillisme, the use of points
or dots of color, as exploited by Pissarro, or the
long linear tache of color, or that of Van Gogh,
which may be described as ribbons of pigment,
or the style Gauguin formed for himself when
he sought an entirely new method of expression,
[157]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
an attempt which finally drove him from the
environment of his native art to the freedom
and lavishness of Nature in the tropics; these
are subdivisions of the technique of Monet.
Attempts have been made by Signac, Seurat
and their following to further disintegrate color
in the effort to establish individual modes for
the new idea.
In this scientific analysis of color, Impression-
ism, there is more opportunity for personal tech-
nique than in the methods which preceded it,
founded as they were on close imitation. And
so we have, together with the non-comformish
spirit, which came in with Manet when he
startled Paris with his introduction of nude fig-
ures with draped, at a picnic party,’ this new
ideal both of subject and technique, stimulat-
ing original license of every description. The
positive worth of the color end of the new thing
was so unquestionable that it has covered a
number of petty sins which have sought shelter
beneath it. There is no logical reason why Im-
pressionism should have taken on and fostered
a dislike for the constructive form of design in
art, why the nature-taken-as-she-is idea has
anything germane to the use of pure color, or the
real principles of the new creed.
The popular notion concerning Impression-
ism is as chaotic to the average mind as is Ideal-
ism or the aims of Matisse. The reason lies
largely in our swift demand that every new
thing be christened and registered. That
*Though this picture met refusal at the Salon it was sub-
sequently bought for the State and is now in the Louvre.
[158]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
accomplished by way of introduction, we then
draw up and become acquainted. In many
cases it turns out that the naming was pre-
mature, and when grown up, the character of
the child stands often ready to prove the error.
It was so with Impressionism.
When a casual entry in the Salon catalogue
announced that the work by Monet was an
“impression of nature,” the author doubtless
believed he had thrown a torpedo over the high
fence of the Academy. Indeed, it did go off
with a bang, but they in power treated the little
noise with scorn. This scorn was, of course,
both earth and water for the new seed which
straightway shot up like Jack’s beanstalk and
was believed to be a new thing. In fact, how-
ever, as so often happens with the new idea in
art, it proved to be a very old one.
III
Impressionism had been the soul of Chinese
and Japanese art for centuries and is the
means of expression to their mysticism and
idealism. Their best art has always fought
shy of realism, for to the Oriental mind the
mirror held up to nature eliminated the very
essence of what they felt art to be. In less
emphatic degree the same feeling is evinced in
the art of Ancient Egypt. The impression of
the thing in place of its actuality is as a gen-
erality the soundest sort of art doctrine and
of much more difficult attainment than abso-
lute imitation which renders man a technical
[159 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
counterfeiter of natural fact. What degree of
originality of impression may be substituted
for natural fact or what part of any natural
fact may be treated as an impression is a ques-
tion as varied as the taste of man may make it,
and so to a degree almost every artist is part
realist and part impressionist. “How inept it
is,” says de Maupassant, “to believe in reality,
since each of us carries his own in his mind.
Our eyes, ears, nose, tastes create as many differ-
ent varieties of taste as there are men in the
world. Each creates an illusion of the world for
himself, poetical, sentimental, gay, melancholy,
uglyor sad according to his nature,” and further-
more he creates it in every degree of impres-
sionism or realism. Gérôme, who is, of course,
rated a realist, was impressionistic in the sug-
gestion of handling of the loft over his “Sword-
dancer.” The sweeping together of detail into
a maze of indefinability as a background for his
sitter unites true impressionism with the real-
ism of the portrait painter, no less than does, in
the case of Oriental art, the carefully wrought
tree or flower or figure with its background of
mysticism in suggestion of mountain, mist or
torrent, which under the conditions could have
no basis in reality and which stand as an impres-
sion of these things.
The impression of the real in place of the real
is the true impressionism and such art may be
as well expressed in black and white as in color.
But at the moment when this notion was
revived in France, the disintegration of color
as a scientific experiment available to painting
[160 |
Young GIRL READING – Childe Hassam
Courtesy of N. E. Montross
IMPREssionism


lº
- - -
-
-
- -
A Woman – Henri Matisse
Post IMPREssionism
PRIMItivisM AND ELEMENTALIsM



THE CONCEPTION OF ART
was being exploited and to the Impressionistic
notion it very happily applied. The use of pure
broken color depriving the surface of its actual
reality was a substitution for the accepted imita-
tion which had been the striving of academic
art. It therefore became impressionistic tech-
nique, and Monet, heralded as the prophet of
the “new idea,” was able to put a scientific
foundation under it. Manet, who with some
justice was regarded as its founder, was in no-
wise reconciled to the spectacle of his own ism
being switched up this new and untried track.
The two became claimants for the discovery of
anidea which was in reality two ideas, and should
be so rated. Meanwhile, Whistler let itbeknown
that long before Manet became impressionistic
he had been; and as to Monet, it was found that
he had been studying hard over Turner’s works
just before launching his final practice. What
better foundation could the new art have, either
for its suggestive form or its juxtaposed color,
than the “Slave Ship” or “Rain, Steam, and
Speed — the Great Western Railway” of the
English painter? But as was the case with
Columbus and Vespucci, it was Monet who
brought the new thing into a final, categoried
system fit to represent a school, which quickly
formed, and will in history be the recognized
head and front of Impressionism, the fourth
great manner of painting.
Disciples flocked to the standard. Plunging
beneath the tide, they came up with the rain-
bow tints snapping in their eyes and cleansed
of every vestige of bitumen and Van Dyke
[161 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
brown. A healthy reaction followed. The
simon-pure dealt in these new tints and
painted blue tree trunks, purple cows, and
yellow hillsides. Others clarified their palettes
and bought no more brown or umber. All along
the line there was change of some sort. A
generation has now passed, time sufficient
over which to render an estimate of art’s new
departure.
In a word, then, Monet’s impressionism has
wrought a mighty regeneration in painting,
giving to paint a keener edge and endowing it
with a potency for imitating nature’s quality
such as it never possessed afore time.
Monet’s impressionism in its suggestiveness
of rendering natural fact has brought back a
neglected quality in art and has proved the
“cross counter” to the direct lunge of classic
art in its effort to touch the whole truth. In
sculpture this phase of Impressionism, as the
only one open to it, has naturally resulted in a
truly interesting development and with the
opportunity thus afforded for uniting an awak-
ened imagination with the chisel’s cold fact an
interest by suggestion, so long the exclusive
privilege of painting, has been secured.
IV
During its first generation it is of interest to
note the changes which of necessity have taken
place. “The innocence of eye” which the
creed demanded resulted in an implicit reliance
upon the facts of nature evento the subtleties of
[162]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
change which may be marked in the quality of
color between 9:20 and 11 A. M. Whereas a
romanticist would put through an inspiration
from nature at white heat weaving his web out
of himself and with his back probably turned
upon the source of his inspiration, the new creed
demanded an absolute dependence upon nature.
Thus it is that extraordinary and quickly chang-
ing aspects.of nature are rejected by this brother-
hood. Their eyes have been trained with such
singleness of purpose as to serve as a lens which
must confront its subject before it may act.
There is enough interest in nature’s varying
modes between dawn and sunset however to
supply subjects of universal interest to the
impressionistic painter.
In America, perhaps unconsciously influenced
by the conservatism of the American public, its
adherents have cautiously weeded out its non-
essentials. Were a collection of impressions
made by the “Ten American Painters” twenty
years ago put on view to-day those changes
would be marked. How by this time have we
been allowed to forget its manifestos in ma-
roon and gold, and the purple cow, once passed
beyond the horizon, has never been recalled.
While preserving every good thing in the creed
they have since mixed it with American sagacity
and American personality, so that now the
manner is quite forgot, and each in his own way
has worked out for himeslf his own formula.
While at that time they were merely exploiting
the new way of representing a surface, they are
now more interested in making that surface
[163 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
look like nature, an acknowledgment to the
relative importance that ends have always fi-
nally secured as compared with means. With the
slogan of “making it look like” there are some in
this small number who have about completed an
actual circuit, returning by way of Impression-
ism to the mirrored nature of the seventeenth
century Flemings. Others of them face nature
merely in the sense of artists striving to repro-
duce her, rather than as votaries of an ism which
they feel bound to uphold. The latitude which
Monet himself allows his own technique gives
the notion that the latter-day Impressionism is
applicable rather to the expression of a mood
than the hard and fast insistence of formula.
[164]
CHAPTER XII
LATER TENDENCIES — POST IMPRESSIONISMI –
MATISSE AND PICASSO
“Evolution is not only a movement forward; in many
Cases we observe a marking time and still more often a devi-
ation or turning back.” — Henri Bergsen.
THE later movement in art is coincident with
the new philosophy, a philosophy of primitive-
ology and intuitive creation. Though the
philosophy of Bergsen" is an elaborate advocacy
for intuitiveness and stimulates a confidence in
and an approval of its use, it by no means dis-
counts the logical process which it distinctly
asserts the intuitions epitomize. The intui-
tions are right only through a right organization
by which they are produced and therefore a
product from them can only be good in such
degree as the source is good. Like will produce
like in every philosophy, and this universal
law is proved by the empty echoes with which
the halls of “Art” are now resounding.
“We must,” he declares, “break with scien-
tific habits which are adapted to the funda-
mental requirements of thought. We must do
violence to the mind, go counter to the natural
bent of the intellect, but that is just the function
of philosophy.
(*Henri Bergsen's “Creative Evolution.”)
[165 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
“Evolution does not mark out a specific
route; it takes directions rather than aiming
at ends and remains inventive even in its
adaptations.”
It is this latest trend in thought which more
than anything else has produced the point of
view for the school of Matisse and Picasso; for
literature now is forcing art’s helm as it always
has, from the time of Plato, who preceded
Phidias, and of Dante, who preceded Angelo,
and J. J. Rousseau, who preceded Manet, and
Guy de Maupassant, who helped to close the
epoch of genre.
The revolution of the Post Impressionists
originates as a protest to the idea that imitation
is the business of art; that technique is the goal
where the effort of the artist must finally stop,
that the result must be beautiful, that art’s
pleasure is sensuous rather than intellectual.
The movement is logical. After Bouguereau'
the deluge! To surpass the perfection of the
school of Cabanel, Lefebvre, Meissonier, and
Alma Tadema was technically impossible.
The fact is there was a great deal of Bou-
guereau in art’s last generation, and when the
days of a sweetened and perfected beauty were
waning and the naturalism of Bastien Lepage
and the imperious gesture of Impressionism led
us out of doors, there was too much young lady
with the parasol. She has been too willing.
She has sat beneath her parasol for a full quar-
ter century, allowing the light to fall on her at
all angles and every degree of intensity in order
that the painter might study mere aspect. Dur-
| 166 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
ing this last period painters have learned and
expressed more about sunlight than the world
has ever known before; but it is almost time to
let the young lady off.
Art has capacities that these technical en-
thusiasts are neglecting. Their neglect has
been rudely pointed out by the seers and
prophets of our modern day. They deride the
notion that any man should enslave his per-
ceptions and craftsmanship with the imitation
of surfaces; and instead they place man’s
rational pleasure in art on a higher level. They
perceive the striving of the student, intent on
making his copy “look like,” and with a stroke
across his back straighten him to face the
inquiry. Don’t you know the difference be-
tween the real, and the sensation of the real!
You are circumscribing your subject by what
you know about it. Give the imagination scope
without frontier, where it may range unre-
stricted in vaster areas. Whereas you have
been tying weights to your ideas, free them;
whereas you have been looking straight at na-
ture, look below and beneath her, look above
and around her. There are things you will find
in these ranges that will surprise you!
This movement is directing attention to
universal ideas in a broadened and lengthened
perspective, tapping the sources of subconscious
emotion, and denying such value for the
obvious as was placed upon it by a former time.
In this scheme of art the aesthetic sense, de-
frauded of sustenance in the object, is asked to
find it in the stimulation of the imagination, em-
[167]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
phasized through the rhythmic and decorative
enlivenment of the design. The art of Matisse
and his school is a smart challenge to the exist-
ing order. Its tilt is not altogether at the beauty
with which art has been busy, but with the
academic notion that truth of “aspect” is of
such vital importance.
In all fairness should we not be willing to
pause and inquire whether, after all, the shock
received from these expressions of ideas sud-
denly stripped of the conventional clothing,
which a fashion of long tenure has prescribed,
is not in part due to our equally conventional
expectancy to find the fashion unchanged?
The frankness of the creed is enough to give
it shelter, and with any open mind it should not
be cast out because it looks like a serpent, but
rather granted hearth room, with an oppor-
tunity to watch it. It may prove fangless and
it may prove wise.
With Cézanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh
there can be no doubt of sincerity. Cézanne
was a recluse who wanted to be let alone, con-
tent to probe into the essence of natural aspect
and render its elemental qualities. The direct-
ness of his painting would appeal to any one,
in whatever station of life or ignorance of art,
as a great simple honesty. It was not subtle,
it was not finished, it was merely the reflex of
a genuine mind.
Nor can we give a less sympathetic hearing
to the cry of Van Gogh, that anything toward
which he was drawn provoked a “holy ecstasy.”
in him, nor deny belief in his assertion that the
[168 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
more ill (crazy) he was the better he painted.
The mere feverish, cataclysmic technique of his
work bears evidence sufficient of genuineness.
Gauguin, the man, was sui generis, a per-
fectly simple and natural anarchist who brushed
aside convention in his search for fundamental
things. So important to his art did he esteem
the unfettered mind that he declared himself
in revolt against all influences: “Everything
I have learned from others has been a hindrance
to me.”
From these to Matisse is a long step.
Matisse announces that, “Expression lies
not in the passion which breaks upon the face,
or which shows itself in violent movement, but
in the whole disposition of the picture.
“I condense the significance of the body by
looking for the essential lines.
“That for which I dream is an art of equi-
librium, of purity, of tranquillity, with no sub-
ject to disquiet or preoccupy; such as will be for
every brain worker a sedative, something anala-
gous to an armchair.”
On the basis of these pronouncements he has
won friends among the critics. Selecting from
a number I present the opinions of four advo-
cates of the new movement:
“We all agree that any form in which an artist
can express himself is legitimate, and the more
sensitive perceive that there are things worth
expressing that could never have been expressed
in traditional forms. We have ceased to ask,
“What does this picture represent?’ and ask
[169 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
instead, ‘What does it make us feel?' We
expect a work of plastic art to have more in
common with a piece of music than with a
colored photograph.
“That such a revolutionary movement was
needed is proved, I think, by the fact that every
one of them has something to say which could
not have been said in any other form. New
wine abounded and the old bottles were found
wanting. These artists are of the movement
because, in choice of subject, they recognize no
authority but the truth that is in them; in
choice of form, none but the need of expressing
it. That is Post Impressionism.
“How, then, does the Post Impressionist
regard an object? He regards it as an end in
itself, as a significant form related on terms of
equality with other significant forms. Thus
have all great artists regarded objects. Forms
and the relation of forms have been, for them,
not means of suggesting emotion but objects
of emotion. It is this emotion they have ex-
pressed. They are intended neither to please,
to flatter, nor to shock, but to express great
emotions and to provoke them.”
CLIvE BELL.
“With these, ostentation of skill is likely to
be even more fatal than downright incapacity.
“Now, these artists do not seek to give what
can, after all, be but a pale reflex of actual
appearance, but to arouse the conviction of a
new and definite reality. They do not seek to
imitate form, but to create form; not to imitate
[170 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
life, but to find an equivalent for life. By that
I mean that they wish to make images which by
the clearness of their logical structure, and by
their closely knit unity of texture, shall appeal
to our disinterested and contemplative imagina-
tion with something of the same vividness as
the things of actual life appeal to our practical
activities. In fact, they aim not at illusion but
at reality.
“The logical extreme of such a method would
undoubtedly be the attempt to give up all re-
semblance to natural form, and to create a
purely abstract language of form — a visual
music; and the later works of Picasso show this
clearly enough. They may or may not be
successful in their attempt. It is too early to
be dogmatic on the point, which can only be
decided when our sensibilities to such abstract
form have been more practised than they are
at present. But I would suggest that there is
nothing ridiculous in the attempt to do this.
Such a picture as Picasso’s “Head of a Man”
would undoubtedly be ridiculous if, having set
out to make a direct imitation of the actual
model, he had been incapable of getting a
better likeness.” ROGER FRY.
“For twenty years past, or more, painters
have been following the lead set by writers, not
only in the novels and dramas of life, but also
in philosophy, and have been trying to get
back to something fundamental.
“On the one hand, they have tried to express
what we feel of life instinctively; and, on the
| 171 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
other, to express that feeling intellectually, in as
abstract a manner as possible. In a word,
pure feeling is what they aim to express; that
is to say, feeling, unalloyed by association of
ideas; the sort of feeling, in fact, that one may
experience while listening to music; the sort of
feeling that I have enjoyed, as many of my
readers have, in the glorious experience of a
walk among the mountains. The incidents,
the personalities that make up the accidents
of life have been left behind; the narrowness of
time and space that hedges one around in the
valley or the plain have been forgotten. . . .
“This being so, what can the artist do to
create an illusion of the fact? How far can he
substitute for actual experiencein its purest form
the suggestion and stimulation of its imagined
equivalent? This, as I understand it, has been
for some time and continues to be the reason
and explanation of the modern movement.
“The movement is necessarily the antithesis
of representation, considered as an end in
itself, whether the representation be natural-
istic, such as our eyesight immediately recog-
nizes the truth of, or academic, namely, such as
we would have the facts appear if we could make
them over to conform to certain associated
ideas we have acquired of what is perfect.”
CHARLES H. CAFFIN.
Says C. Lewis Hind: “The solid aspect of
things has been painted superbly. Our sensa-
tion of them, which is really a much commoner
experience to all of us, is rarely touched. That
[172]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
is why pictures are not popular. They deal
only with a fourth of life. When a man like
Matisse audaciously flashes something of the
unexplored three fourths on canvas it startles
and angers us.
“Van Gogh broke a path into that three
fourths of life which I repeat has never been
explored in painting.
“We are now offered the beginning of an art
that gives to a thing the part that endures.
The work of these painters appeals to the
imagination.”
In the two opinions, selected from scores in
opposition to the movement, it will be noticed
that no answer is made to the argument of the
new cult. These writers assume that the bur-
den of proof lies with the innovators.
“To go to an exhibition with a solicitude
‘about meaning and about life’ at the expense
of matters of technique is not simply to beg the
question; it is to give it away with both hands.
In art, elements of ‘meaning’ and ‘life” do not
exist until the artist has mastered those techni-
cal processes by which he may or may not have
the genius to call them into being. This is not
an opinion. It is a statement of fact. To
exclude technique from art is no more possible
than it is to dispense in architecture with pon-
derable substances. If we lay stress upon the
point it is because we have here the one chief
source of danger. What the student of these
strange “isms’ needs to be warned against is
[173 ]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
the specious argument that he cannot test them
by any principles of criticism hitherto known
to him, but must look at a picture as though it
were something else, and admire it for qualities
which he cannot see in it but must take on faith.
There are numbers of nominally intelligent
persons who seem really to believe that such an
hypothesis is defensible. . . .
“In the process Matisse would appear to have
relinquished all respect for technique, all feeling
for his medium, to have been content to daub
his canvas with linear and tonal coarseness.
The bulbous, contorted bodies in his figure-
pieces are in no wise expressive of any new and
rationalized canon of form. They are false to
nature, they are ugly as the halting efforts of
the veriest amateur are ugly, and, in short, their
negation of all that true art implies is significant
of just the smug complacency to which we have
alluded. Whether through laziness or through
ignorance Matisse has come to the point where
he feels that in painting an interior like his
‘Panneau Rouge’ or nudes like “Les Capu-
cines’ or ‘Le Luxe,” he is exercising the
function of an artist, and, of course, there are
crowds of half-baked individuals who are ready
to tell him that he is right. As a matter of
fact these things are not works of art; they are
feeble impertinences.” ROYAL CORTISSoz.
Says Mr. Kenyon Cox, speaking upon the
“Illusions of Progress”:
“The race grows madder and madder. It is
hardly two years since we first heard of Cubism,
[174 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
and already the Futurists are calling the
Cubists reactionary. Even the gasping critics,
pounding manfully in the rear, have thrown
away all impedimenta of traditional standards
in the desperate effort to keep up with what
seems less a march than a stampede. Let us
then clear our minds of the illusion that there is
such a thing as progress in the fine arts. We
may with a clear conscience judge each new
work for what it appears in itself to be, asking
of it that it be noble and beautiful and reason-
able, not that it be novel and progressive.
If it be a great art it will be novel enough, for
there will be a great mind behind it, and no two
great minds are alike. And if it be novel with-
out being great, how shall we be the better off?
Even should the detestable things produced
now prove to be not the mere freaks of a dis-
eased intellect they seem, but a necessary out-
growth of the conditions of the age and a true
prophecy of the ‘art of the future,” they are not
necessarily the better for that. It is only that
the future will be unlucky in its art.”
“These amorphous conceits, we read, aim
to pictorially represent’ the ‘cellular and ner-
vous reactions which carry the messages of
sense perception to the brain.” Right here let
us see whether we are in the realm of sense or
nonsense. ‘Pictorial’ means nothing else than
presentation over again — hence representation
— of visual experiences. It can mean no
other experiences than visual ones, because
vision is the only sense by which we can become
[175]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
cognizant of a design on canvas. Non-visual
experiences are therefore impossible of represen-
tation, so that to talk of reproducing ‘shivers,”
‘emotions,’ and ‘thrills’ is nonsense, and the
same is true of the claim to represent ‘the
cellular and nervous reactions which carry
messages to the brain.” Do not laugh — merely
recall that obviously all expression is of some
element of consciousness, and that “cellular
reactions carrying messages’ are no more ele-
ments of consciousness than is the growth of
one's toe-nails – nor a bit more important to
one’s neighbors.
“And it is further nonsense to talk of ‘carry-
ing messages of sense perception to the brain,”
because ‘perception’ takes place only in the
brain itself, and hence there is no such thing
as a ‘message of sense perception.” This whole
farrago of jargon of scientific language empty
of scientific knowledge is nonsense. These
‘sensations’ we hear about ‘reproducing’ are
impossible of reproduction — even in the mind,
still more on canvas – for when they are gone
they are gone forever. What takes their place
is not a sensation at all, but a memory, and a
memory is not a sensation.”—N. Y. Post.
The presumption of soundness of premise and
argument on the part of the Post Impression-
ists may be had in the announcement of Clive
Bell when in his article upon the second exhibi-
tion at the Grafton Galleries, London, he de-
clares, “The victory is already won.”
In the face of this, and of such a statement
[176 )
- - - -
Potato GATHERERs – Van Gogh
IDYLL-Gauguin
Post IMPREssionism Concensed with Rhythmic LiNE,
Design AND PRIMutive Expressiox


- -
-
.
-
-
ELEMENTAL LINE – Jo. Davidson
The Shade – Hansen–Jacobsen
Post Impressioxistic Sculpture



THE CONCEPTION OF ART
from another as that “the best thing for real
art would be to burn all existing galleries of art,”
it would seem worth while to hold up to the
minutest inspection the claims of this new
philosophy of art.
II
The first thing that may be noticed in the
pronouncements of several of the advocates
quoted, is that they have not come together on
any fixed creed and that their platforms dis-
agree in essential particulars.
While Clive Bell declares that the “new”
artist regards his object as “an end in itself,”
Mr. Fry makes it clear that it is not the thing
itself which shall engage us but what is sug-
gested thereby to “our contemplative vision,”
and Mr. Hind reminds us that these painters
are breaking a path toward the unexplored,
their work appealing to the imagination.
Mr. Caffin most ably states the case when he
inquires, “How far can the artist substitute
for actual experience the suggestion of its
imagined equivalent? The movement is neces-
sarily the antithesis of representation considered
as an end in itself.”
“We expect,” says Mr. Bell, “a work of
plastic art to have more in common with a
piece of music than a colored photograph.”
The principles governing plastic art and
music are of course identical; the two arts are
therefore germane. The colored photograph
is only one of these arts in emphasis through
an artless process; but the strict difference
[177]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
between these arts is that we hear one and see
the other, and in consequence the technical proc-
esses are as wide as creating a perfume for
smelling or a sweetmeat for tasting.
Says Mr. Davidson: “The extremists are
always comparing their work with music. But
the parallel is not true. Take the composi-
tions of Debussy, for example; no matter how
far they depart from their predecessors they are
never incomprehensible, because their author
keeps within the limitations of the science of
music.”
Herein is quite the crux of the whole matter;
these people are attempting to touch one sense
through the processes belonging distinctively to
another. To ask us to hear the music of a
statue or picture is no less absurd than to ask
how the perfume of the lily tastes or what its
odor looks like; or what a nocturne in F smells
like. For one, architecture has seemed like
“frozen music,” to Corot his painting appealed
as “my little music,” but the charm of these
golden metaphors may be spoiled by forcing the
fact, and, having killed the poetry, we are left
with only the dead goose.
“Every one of them,” says Mr. Hind, “has
something to say that could not be said in
another form;” and here again we are obliged
to challenge.
In reality everything for which expression is
evoked by these means could be better said
through the form of literature.
Post Impressionism is an attempt to make
plastic art accomplish what by its nature it is
[178]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
less fitted to perform than poetry or music. Di-
rectly upon using a line as a symbol, a color
or a form as symbols, the mind engages itself
with these, it sees them in their dimensions and
color; it sees them likewise as associated with
other lines, dimensions, and colors in the same
work; it begins its activity of comparison, it
takes their measures, it apprehends their
quantities, their qualities; the mind receives,
inspects, and perchance enjoys them. All this,
literature relieves one of. The word has no such
quantitative encumbrance. It does not pass
through long corridors handing out its passport
to several sentries. It arrives at once, the
“winged word” of the Greek poet; and Pegasus
is its true symbol. The words arm, hand, leg,
call up only a general notion of these objects,
but when these are spoken by graphic art they
become particular. The fundamentality of
idea which they aim at, alas! becomes concrete,
and their generalization, particularized.
Lessing’s Essay on the Laocoon is still a
vital document which Post Impressionism may
do well to study. Their line thins and melts
away at this point.
When the greatest of Greek poets was con-
tent to describe his heroine, Helen of Troy, by
the simple declaration that when she appeared
old men experienced the emotions of youth, he
created a far more lovely woman than had he
particularized, and a lovelier woman than any
sculptor or painter could express, strive how-
soever hard he may; but what, were Matisse
to essay the task!
[179 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
What point in the scale of approach to the
Homeric attainment would he be likely to
touch? or can it be reasonably expected that
this system, with its handicap both of omissions
and commissions, can ever be expressive of
physical beauty? And further, is it possible
that the national mind of any people, even
that of the progressive French nation, would
be willing to accept such expression as this
school offers for sculpture commemorative of
its great ones? Can we imagine the statesman,
the soldier, or philanthropist put into the eternal
marble or bronze and erected on a public
pedestal as a lasting inheritance for the Nation
— executed in the manner of Post Impres-
sionist formulas?
If art be “the manifestation of the eternal
ideal,” the acceptation of the art here offered
can take place only after the uprooting of all
that is back of that ideal, a reconstruction
of those processes of thought universally ac-
cepted for twenty-five centuries.
Again, both Mr. Bell and Mr. Fry agree that
the object of this art is to express and provoke
emotion, and that in this accomplishment
“ostentation of skill is more fatal than down-
right incapacity.” Here again the advocate
is assuming an unfair premise in his argument
before the jury. The true artist is never
ostentatious. With an emotion as his inspira-
tion and goal, he resorts to no subterfuge, but,
full panoplied, strives for the creation of a like
emotion in “the other man,” which he assures,
by every expedient, to be made what is wanted,
[180 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
rather than a haphazard sensation from a
vague expression provoking the emotion — for-
sooth of pity for incapacity.
Meanwhile Mr. Caffin’s enthusiasm has put
him off his guard, and in rapt exultation over
the freedom of the new art he takes a fling at
the solicitude which an Academician has for
“values.”
Too true, they also are marked for the guil-
lotine. What a carnival of anarchy! Now
watch the moplots dance on the corpse of that
which has outlived its usefulness. But what
are values, and why are they at last thought
valueless!
If for the painter tone is the polar star, value
is the rudder. By these two means the artist
steers his craft. The steering is proved to be
wrong when he is betrayed by a false value.
In music it is the one voice out of pitch with the
chorus, it is the illogical note which ruins the
solo. In poetry it is the weak rhyme or the
lame spot in the metre. In architecture it is
the element out of scale. In oratory it is the
climax in the wrong place, or even the right
word in the wrong place. In painting it is any
error of tone upon a surface, and howsoever
small it may be, it announces itself at once,
the dead fly in the ointment. It may not be
of importance in itself; the damage is not meas-
ured by its size or degree, but by the area
which it influences.
We cannot believe that Mr. Caffin is willing
to assume Samson's responsibility of pushing
away this pillar and demolishing the temple.
[181 j
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
It is cited as an example of the power of this
new intoxicant, which, like the loco-weed, will
set the best-mannered horse in the world upon a
series of mad plunges in his effort to free him-
self of all restraint. To rail at “values” and the
quality which they insure is to discountenance
painting from the time when, lifted out of the
hands of the children who sought to revive it
in the twelfth century, it took its place as an
art reborn under the control of maturer minds,
and up to the present, a period spanned by
Botticelli and Sargent. The new species of art
introduced by Matisse makes no use of the super
qualities through which each one of the arts has
attained development. The “quality” which is
the gauge differentiating art from “some art”
and “less art” is with him traced, now and then,
in the happy grasp of an essential expression or
characteristic, or, and quite as rarely, in an
agreeable harmony of color, or design. The
assay of Post Impressionism as an art would
seem therefore to be very light, its dross out-
weighing its gold in overwhelming measure.
But this is not the final word nor the end of
the argument any more than the present phase
of Post Impressionism is its final expression.
As every art grows out of its primitive condition,
so may this. As an art it may be contemp-
tible, as a philosophy it may be right. There is no
need of harking back to childhood, of coddling
the intuitions and slamming the door in the face
of our intelligence to accomplish that for which
this philosophy stands. It is a mistake to sup-
pose that the end of “suggesting emotion” and
[182 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
“finding an equivalent for life” is best attained
by uncertainty of means. Simplicity of line
may attain it, but not in the hands of the
ingénue.
Ten years ago the writer made the prediction
that the painting of the future would make
much more out of the great capacity which
line contains. The present tendency comes
as a proof of that, but it starts too far back.
When line becomes the contemplation of
painters in its serious and scientific essence,
a truly" new art may be evolved. In sculpture a
striking example is had in bas-relief by David-
son. In the “Potato Gatherers,” here with,
by Van Gogh, there is also an expression of it.
III
Simplification through the synthesis, of which
this movement is the culmination may be seen
all the way up and down the pathway of art.
When instead of making all the twigs on a win-
ter branch, as per the Dusseldorf school, these
were swept together as one may see in Corot,
it was a step in the direction of Matisse. Here
was one stroke of the brush suggesting a number
of separate facts. Such a statement contains
the soul of the branch in exactly the degree
that the soul of the face in manifested by the
newer cult and as may be seen no less in the
technique of Millet. When Whistler made
smudges on his Battersea Bridge and called
*For an expansion of this see “Constructive Principles of Art,”
by same author.
[ 183 ]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
them figures, to the disgust of Ruskin, or when
Inness used the suggestion of a daub of paint
for a cow or a countryman, to the confusion of
the bourgeois, their proceedure in art was
exactly that of Matisse. The only artists who
have kept away from the open door of sugges-
tion are those whose natural love of detail
promoted their creed for absolute truth: Ruys-
dael, David, Meissonier, Alma Tadema, etc.
But it is necessary to perceive two kinds of
suggestion in graphic art; that which is partial
and that which is complete; and again that
which is highly synthetic, thoughtful, and even
profound in its technique, and that which, in its
failure at representation, frankly leaves the
beholder to his own conclusions.
The suggestion, through thoughtfully selected
parts, touches the highest reaches of art.
Behold the pen drawings of Rembrandt, or
his etchings in their first states, wherein a line
may stand for several attributes of a thing;
its length, contour, weight, etc. We take a
vast delight in creating a sky out of the few
eloquent lines from the needle of a great etcher,
or wander with him afield over wide areas,
occupying them at leisure where he has rapidly
passed, staking his claims. This is that sug-
gestion which the artist commands by his
mastery of the whole subject and by his selec-
tion of specific means. No less may it be seen
in the Corot branch or the face of the “Sower.”
In these, completeness is sedulously omitted
with the same caution as with Stevenson
when he approaches his dénoument.
[184 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
Not so with Matisse. With his art there
is no space unfilled, there is no part unde-
veloped. Every part is accounted for and
every part bespeaks design, (which really has
nothing to do with the idea for which Post
Impressionism stands). In place of the sensa-
tion of masterful capacity held in reserve
through unfinish, rises the impression of apol-
ogy for what has been inadequately performed.
In place of an opportunity to complete the
incomplete we are confronted with the job all
done, and so badly, that we are provoked to do
it all over again. And at this admission there
are persons rising all over the hall of the “new”
convention, exclaiming: “That is just what
we want!” But the artist is a creator, the
maker of a given thing which as a creation is
complete. Instead, Matisse uses the means of
outline and pigment for the creation by the
observer of something at which he hints. We
take no pleasure in the surfaces which he
paints for they are without quality, nor in the
semblance perse for these are monstrous. The
pleasure to us is in finding something which lies
beyond his guide post.
It is but a repetition of what the world has
already lived through and rebelled against, a
mistaken notion that the innocent cause of
goodness is adorable. To the devout one
kneeling before the image of the Virgin the
newer thought has said: “Why magnify Mary
— had you not better see Christ?” The col-
lector of cocoons from which beauty has escaped
may take a scientific pleasure in his collection
[1851
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
but they give him no aesthetic thrill. To him
the lover of art says: “These have an interest,
but only in their possibilities. If you seek
a fuller rapture, come look at my butterflies.”
To which the other retorts: “If you can’t see
a butterfly by looking at a cocoon you have no
imagination.”
Matisse and his imitators are busying them-
selves with speculative philosophy, assisted by
the first principles of drawing and painting, and
they touch art only as graphic assistants of an
idea, and not as creators of art. Their work is
the scaffold of the building and pointing to it
they bid us enjoy the edifice.
To him yearning for an aesthetic thrill it
should only be necessary to call Nelly from her
blocks and say, “Make me a picture that I
may dwell upon it and see visions,” or appeal
to the postman or the car conductor. In any-
thing these may do in their innocence of mind
will be found the pure soul out of which aesthetic
joy may be evolved.
The artist will then be he who hands out
his synopsis of a play, complete from the rise
to the fall of the curtain, with the exits and
entrances marked, and the general thread of
dialogue indicated; or that serviceable man of
the magazine who indicates what might be
written and how illustrated, the poet who
produces his unmetrical scheme and tells you
to finish it in rhyme and metre. The soul is
surely here but as to the rest of it, what
matter; hand it over to the imagination.
Passing from the “innocence of eye” of true
[186 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
Impressionism we have at length reached the
level of the innocence of brain which seems
readily to soften to those numerous influences
outheld by the imagination.
IV
Up to the present the real art in painting
has rested with greatest force upon the quality
of tone. The worth in the scales of the col-
lector and the seller of pictures has been deter-
mined with greatest attention to that point.
Consciously or unconsciously judgment of all
ages past and that of the present upon all
past ages of painting has found in this the
pivot of value. Now tone, with slightly varied
interpretation, means one thing to all men.
It means color association in all parts of a
picture, dominating colors of the picture dis-
tributed in lesser degrees of force through-
out the work. In short, it is color unity,
either of analogous or contrasted harmony,
more easily appreciated in a Whistlerian
“symphony” than in a full orchestration of
color by Rubens, but, nevertheless, the point
of effort to all painters and quite as important
to Monet as to Dupré or Puvis. By universal
agreement the sense of tone is the polar star
of the painter. There have been periods
when this was wrongly judged as to its impor-
tance and those periods have never failed of
their snubbing. The draughtsmen, of the classic
period of David, forgot it, the landscape
painters of a time previous to this have had it
[1871
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
secured to their works by time and varnish,
which in consequence now possesses value as
painting which is not entirely their own. The
chief difference between Raphael and Titian,
Delaroche and Delacroix lies just here. The
general influence of Ruskin, directing the
painter toward truth as all paramount, and with
no thought of tone, is accountable for the arid
period in English landscape following Turner
and for our own Hudson River School. So
insistent to the modern mind has the grasp of
this commanding idea become, that even
Gauguin, who thought to break all conventions,
was still, true artist as he was, never dis-
possessed of this restraint. No more was
Lautrec-Toulouse who aimed at the raw essence
of things, but was nevertheless a painter; nor
indeed any one howsoever stimulated he might
be by what he conceived to be the vital thing
in art. All these have remained painters,
loving the surface and steadfast in the quality
of it; Bellows, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Glackens,
Mark Fisher, Dearth, Weir, Hassam, and the
many others who in any degree have embraced
the impressionistic formula come together,
joining hands upon this line, arranging them-
selves along the cliff where Matisse has led,
and look down to find him at the bottom where
he has chosen to go in his escape from the past.
His separation from all of these is complete.
He frankly chooses not to be a painter. He
has ignored the quality of painting. He pre-
fers to be the child in spite of those conditions
which strongly demand the mature mind.
[ 188 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
In Matisse therefore we have a man intent
on presenting a fundamental, unadorned, un-
developed idea, as a babe in its cradle, asking
us to reclaim, clothe, and in time find it com-
panionable, through those possibilities which are
bound to evolve into completeness.
One may admit reason in the idea, but
demand proof of rationality in the means.
His efforts, he declares, satisfy him, and also
that he would not have different any picture
he ever painted. In this he strikes a note of
insincerity; for he admits some of his work was
so turbulent that he could not bear it on his
own wall. A second comes with his reply to
the lady who exclaimed: “That self-portrait
looks as if it might have been done by your
little daughter.” “My striving,” retorted the
painter, “is to see things just as she does.”
The seeing with the pure and unsullied
vision of childhood is a beautiful, and perhaps
an interesting, mode, but does this purity of
vision entail the immaturity of its expression,
which belongs to childhood?
The seeing eye is not the intuitive eye; it is the
eye of eacperience. The difference in the work
of a student during the first season out of doors
and the third is not one of eyes, but of plain
utility in the employment of his vision. The
universal law of development has been expressed
by one of the wise men of antiquity: “When
I became a man I put away childish things,”
and the effort to back away from man’s estate
and recoil from its obligations, seeking absolu-
tion for incompetency of expression beneath
[189 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
the shelter of the primitive vision of childhood
is unmanly.
The assumption in defending the “move-
ment” from this aspersion is that the windows
of childhood open to the purest vistas, expos-
ing the most adequate means for the expression
of ideas and emotions, and altogether the most
worthy to offer the vast majority of mankind
to whom art appeals. Whether the child be one
in years, or merely childish in his capacity for
form expression, this condition is frankly pre-
ferred by the votaries of the new school to that
condition of maturity enabling man to both
conceive a subject with judgment and express
it with adequacy.
Jacob Epstein might well be asked why his
statue of Euphemia is more of a Euphemia by
turning her toes out at an angle of 180 degrees,
a feat which cannot be accomplished without
falling, or why a woman with plump cheeks and
a staunch neck should have wasted to a skeleton
at her hips.
Why in the portrait of Père Tanguy, by
Van Gogh, does an arm of one half man’s length
aid our impression of the man, or the place-
ment of the eye, purposely too high. Endless
multiplication of such questions must of neces-
sity follow the increasing flux of these enigmas.
If it is not necessary to express the character
of a landscape, a human figure, its hands and
feet, a silk hat or a tree, why does Matisse fall
back on drawing sufficiently to make his self-
portrait look like himself and not like some other
man or no man! Why, in a word, if his own
[190 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
nose demands a determinate line for its ex-
pression, should he deny as expressive a line
to any other man for his nose, or why for his
foot or his hand. Why in the one case lean on
Nature, accepting an intelligent line for her
revealing, and in another case refuse the intel-
ligent means for her revealing. If, in the one
case, a given line was acknowledged to be right,
why in an analogous case should it be regarded
wrong by the use of a totally different line, a
conclusion determined by the artist’s assertion
that whatever he had done he was satisfied
with. At this point therefore we are approach-
ing close to the area of whims: we indeed come
near to childhood, and this frankly is the goal
of ambition to the Matisse school.
Howsoever willing the mind and catholic
the sentiments which one may turn toward
this newest conception of art, the questionable-
ness of its sincerity evoked by these and count-
less other like “eccentricities” causes us to
place it for some time at least in the “house
of detention.”
In nine cases out of ten that which we
recognize as giving an interest to this work
beyond the childlikeness is the knowledge of art
expressed therein, and which the child has not
attained unto.
It is a case of the newcomer in sheep’s
clothing, we think we see the lamb, and he
beneath the disguise wishes us to see just
this — the lamb; but he nevertheless on occa-
sions discloses more than lamblike intelligence.
And so at first we are bewildered and then
[191 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
sense the deception. The whole is an attempt
to bring together two poles which naturally
separate toward opposite directions.
That this however has been accomplished
with measurable success, some of the great
designs of Matisse will attest, for in his effort
to give out an idea through a design he has
reduced that idea to its simplest expression.
Herein he strikes a chord divested of every
extraneous embellishment. It is fundamental
and therefore powerful; and the sound of it
is lasting because uninterrupted. Additions
might prove interesting, but to his mind are
unnecessary. Look at his conception of the
Dance; awkward, ponderous people disporting
themselves with unfeigned abandonment. They
move with no especial rhythm, but each ani-
mated with an individual sense of pleasure in
the exercise. Each is emotional, each expres-
sive of that energy which is stimulated by
rhythmic music. There are no accessories, for
accessories would not aid the truly fundamental
notion of the dance.
Again in his group of three, with a tortoise,
this group of three has been put together with
a knowledge of the requirements for the best
adjustment of that number. Herein the child
is clearly outclassed, and knowledge by experi-
ence is substituted for childlike intuition. But
the primitive sense is introduced in making
the outline purposely faulty. The lines of the
legs are wrong. The anatomy is uncertain in
spots. The longing to accomplish, despite
these disabilities however, conquers, and the
[192 )
(.
$.
IMPRESSION – Meeter de Zorn
LA CRíoDE AU PERROQUETTE UNE TYPE — Kalus
Mérodack-Jeaneau
VARIED ExAMPLES OF POST IMPRESSIONISM



PANEL-Tchouyco
Cubism. See also Picasso (Facing PAGE 33)

THE CONCEPTION OF ART
group is placed before us in its crude organic
lines in such a way as to make us feel the
elementalism of the design revealing a primitive
idea.
When applied to Decoration one must can-
didly admit that this archaism contains a
charm; for decoration as an art of two dimen-
sions has, in its simplicity, appealed to all
primitive peoples, and their designs, if balanced
and rhythmic, possess therein the desideratum.
Could one demand a more perfect mode of
graphic portrayal for decorative purposes than
that employed by Mr. Chanler in his sump-
tuously colored panels. See “The Stag Hunt,”
herewith.
But the question naturally arises, could not
all the sensation produced by these pictures of
Matisse be accomplished with correct though
simplified drawing? Matisse declares he draws
“emotionally and without the aid of the intelli-
gence.” Analyzed, this signifies that the co-
ordination which should exist between his
emotions and his means of expression is lacking:
his emotion unaided by his intellect is inade-
quate. In short, he does not know how to
draw automatically, intuitively. He has not
perchance heard of a method of drawing organ-
ized in Philadelphia by C. G. Leland, and
further expanded by J. L. Tadd, which develops
the faculties of coördination between the brain
and the hand. Pupils of this system are able
to create marvels in design which are so wonder-
fully balanced as to give impression of mathe-
matical measurement. In pictorial design the
[193 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
figures are conceived in good proportion, but
without detail — men, children, running deer,
horses, dogs, etc., are rendered with a swift
elementalism which is truly marvellous. It is
all a matter of automatic control which, when
acquired, gives rein to emotional suggestion in
an endless variety of forms.
A few years ago I witnessed a public perfor-
mance of the most expert students from a class
of two thousand from the common schools of
Philadelphia. On the stage was one of the
most accomplished virtuosos of painting in
this country. After watching their swift magic
of creation in design and pictorial composition,
executed in huge size at arm’s length, he turned
quickly and asked: “Could you do that?”
66 NO. 5 9
“Nor Iſ I am going to get a blackboard
and learn how to draw.”
Here then is Matisse wishing to draw emo-
tionally and supposing that this means clumsily;
a man having a large class of pupils whom he
forces to draw academically only to have them
forget it all and in time imitate his clumsi-
IleSS.
What a pity he could not shorten his march
around Robin Hood's barn by acquaintance
with a system which forestalled his experiments
by about twenty years. What a pity that he
and others who are attempting emotional
drawing by a method which should be dubbed
second-childhood art should not know that the
horse cannot be taught new tricks, in his
maturity, by old rules; but, if at all, only by
| 194 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
a logical method starting with that faculty
which has in charge the result.
No one can successfully coördinate his brain
and hand, intuitively, whose life’s training has
been to acquire knowledge through his reason.
Yet we see attempts at this by a growing group
of Frenchmen, now of the present fashion, some
of whom are willing to place their signatures
in the corners of these little trifles, and we also
see collections of these drawings in all degrees
of success and failure hung in some of our
academies to the bewilderment of the students
who are learning to draw rationally.
Augustus Johns, quite in sympathy with the
new movement, declares, “Matisse has a big
idea but cannot yet express it.” Will not
some one interested in these newer struggles di-
rect attention to such illumination as may be
found in “New Methods of Art Education,” by
J. Liberty Tadd; Orange Judd and Co., New
York. Price $3.00 net.
V
The Greek mind, the most keen and penetrat-
ing of any which has yet turned its insight
toward art, believed that the complete physical
and mental man at his best was barely adequate
to the task of producing worthy art. Their
notion of the inner spirit of things was as
sagacious and demanding as that of the modern
“man with a vision,” but in proportion as
their vision was clear did they regard imperative
the necessity to give it a man’s ea pression.
[195 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
The desire of the “new” artist to express
the spirit of the subject through an innocence
of brain, leaves out of account the fact that
the spirit naturally prefers to take up its
residence in a completed not to say a well-made
temple.
It is no more unreasonable to expect this
than to suppose the spirit of God will take up
his abode in the heart of man which has been
polluted. The Greeks did not expect the
essence of wisdom could find expression in a
Minerva on whom to look would only be to
shudder. While declaring sincerity to be the
essence of the new movement, the greatest part
of this multiform effort is expressed in various
inventions seeking some different mode than is
natural to the direct, unaffected, normal estate
of manhood.
Elsewhere it has been pointed out in the
discussion on Body, Soul, and Spirit which as-
sumes that art, expressive of man, shall repre-
sent him in his entirety, that its privilege is to
proclaim his trinity.
Complete art recognizes an opportunity in
body, in soul, and in spirit. That which has
body only, contains scientific truth, the work
of a student. Uniting soul with this it becomes
individual, both in conception and technique.
Advancing into the range of spiritual signifi-
cance, it sacrifices neither of the preceding
Qualities, but merely expands from this broad-
ened basis.
Our rating of manhood decides that physique
is but one third of the man, use of that physique
[196 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
for labor (physical performance), another
third, and an expansion toward mental pos-
sibilities, the last division of the tripartite
organism.
The latest comers in art discount the physique
of art, enfeeble a manly use of that physique
to the grade of childhood’s capacity, and present
the last third for a complete whole. What is
the result of a like unsymmetrical development
of man himself? Witness it in the high priest
of present Pueblo Indians of America, the
medicine man of the recent nomadic tribes, or
the truly wonderful fakirs of India. Their
communion with the spirit-world cannot be
obtained through the robust integument of
good health. The body must be sacrificed
and reduced through vigils and starvation until
the spirit can dominate. Thus forced it may
find its affinity in the overworld.
But when we set forth to hunt up a man
we do not pause for one of these specimens of
the race.
The balance of power in the empire of art
is surely strengthened by this triple alliance.
I therefore venture the following two reasons
why that which appeals to the great majority
of persons practically or sentimentally inter-
ested in art, as a storm now menacing its past
and present glory, will in due course break and
scatter with no other ill effects than the cloud-
ing of certain non-essentials in our present art,
and with the much desired result of clearing
the atmosphere grown dense in an obsession
concerning the objective of art.
[197]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
In the first place the claim of “sincerity”
which is declared to be the heart of the move-
ment is not sincerity. The attention called
to this point in their creed cleverly forestalls
its denial in an attempt to guard its weakest
spot, but it nevertheless must be assumed that
any one who willingly adopts the rôle of child-
hood in both conception and expression is not
sincere with himself. His attempted return
to childhood involves an avowal of disbelief,
not only in his own growth, but in the growth
of the race, and in so grave a premise we must
detect insincerity. The supposition that the
faith of little children is a recommendation
having to do with mental or physical capacity
of children is a strange subversion of a palpable
truth — namely, that faith has nothing in com-
mon with thought, and thought remains even to
this present the lever of Archimedes.
Touching this general point M. De Zayas
offers an important truth: “The impression
caused by form, the conception of it, its inter-
pretation, obeys in every race an inevitable
law. The progressive evolution marks the
anthropological estate of the races, the repre-
sentation of form being more intense the more
inferior the race is; for it is a principle recog-
nized by psychology that the psychic intensity
of the work is in an inverse ratio to the
mental state of the individual who produced
it, while the "artistic comprehension of the indi-
*Incidently this psychic phenomenon is applicable to the gen-
eral argument of “The Conception of Art” in its emphasis upon
“quality.”
[198]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
vidual is in direct ratio to the degree of civili-
zation.
“From this we conclude that those who
imitate the work of children produce childish
work but not the work of children.”
In the case of Picasso whose philosophy is an
ingenuous, generalized point of view, broad
enough to accommodate all the world that
prefers symbols to realities, one can but be
annoyed by the evident care with which some
parts of his symboled scheme are executed, to a
degree beyond any possible necessity of indicat-
ing a plane, which is the only important matter,
and the free carelessness in which other planes
quite as essential are executed. Study the
accompanying example entitled “A Woman”
(page 33) and perhaps the palpable fumbling
and juggling of these mysteries, weighed care-
fully in the mind, may excite the question; if
Picasso were to do another “woman” would
he put in all the different touches and smudges
just as here presented, and which are so cal-
culated to persuade us that each touch is
weighted with thought? If so, and the symbols
representing woman have been thus standard-
ized in his system, then must we not have them
always so, for since no individual is expressed,
we take this to be the generic woman. In his
sculpture, where he contends with form in the
third dimension and seeks the essential planes,
his results have a directness, a force, and in
rare cases a beauty unmanifested in his work
upon the flat. The suspicion therefore be-
comes just as sincere as the “sincerity” claimed
[199]
"THE CONCEPTION OF ART
by the newer cult that much of this evidence of
thought and care, the tapping here of the char-
coal, the firmer drawing there, the multiplica-
tion of edges and the attempt of exquisite
shading is but a combination of digital flourishes
executed over what is of the real importance,
dust blown in the eyes as a last ceremony of
mystery over what, to the mind of this particu-
lar painter at least no one need deny, has a
meaning. It is no part of criticism to challenge
what a man does, but there are two points in
criticism which every work submits itself to: the
first, is the effort sincere, the second, is the ex-
pression adequate for the intention.
Admitting that one can be truly sincere
in this belief such a one would be found only
once in a generation, and takes his place among
the “great solitaries.” How absurd it would
have been to see a group of little people perched
upon pillars surrounding Simon Stilites, or to
suppose that their purpose could be anything
more than to secure some of the echoed glory
through imitation.
A second reason for believing that the new
movement will never become general is the
natural character of the public. The public
(and art has always been dependent upon the
public in its natural preferences, will in time
fall back upon the legitimate aesthetic craving
for the thing beautiful.
It may recognize the claims of the spirit, it
may indeed take on a conviction that material-
ism is not reality, that the hidden things
are the most worthy and that the suggestion
[200
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
is worth more than the visible and tangible
mark, but the public has always been grossly
material, at least sufficiently to demand the
goods for the money. The idealism of Berkeley
is not a popular philosophy, and to many an
absent treatment is not effective and convinc-
ing. The public, in short, will have realities,
the public will foster traditions, the public
retains that same childlike intuitive sense, so
lauded by the new movement, that will make
it cling to what successive ages by agreement
have pronounced both good and great. If art
is to change it will never be by revolution of
the summersault, but by reason of a sane ten-
dency through evolution. The subversive thing
may gain a place side by side with the art of
the ages and will appeal to its own type of
mind. The man who likes that sort of a thing
will be happy in finding it just that sort of a
thing which his sort of man will like; and again,
there will doubtless be found those who, still
satisfied by traditional art, may yet broadly
open their hearts to results which are dis-
covered in these attempts to speak through the
spirit of art, and who are frankly able to see the
good in varied approaches to the great source
thereof.
Such a movement gaining momentum with a
rapidity never before equalled and having as its
allies both the newer music and the newer
literature will by very force of numbers impel
its invasion and command its territory.
The literature and music of this movement
lags in no whit behind its painting and sculpture.
[201 ||
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
The Salon d’Automne likewise throws its mantle
over these.
VI
In Picasso and his principles it would seem
the ne plus ultra had been reached, for in his
case it is not with the matter but with the
manner that he is completely engrossed.
Herein therefore his contemplation is entirely
that of an artist. It is the artist’s labor to
extract the essence from his subject and reveal
what he finds it to be. Herein also lies the
range of art opening to different individuals.
To one the subject is expressed through
externals, to another through a suggestion of the
subject’s characteristics, to another through the
spiritual element clearly controlling the physical,
to Picasso through an abstract sensation which
in his peculiar mental workshop is turned out
through geometric figures, and to his mind these
concatenation of cubes, triangles, and parallel-
ograms are expressive of the essential character-
istics of his subject. Whether a committee of
alienists would report with a clean bill of health
is not so much the question as to know whether
his mind can find anywhere in the world its
affinity, any who can honestly follow this lead
and arrive at his conclusions. To all such, his
work should be a pleasure, for almost every
point in his creed is a perfectly logical one.
When we look into his perspective, however,
we find it can have no place in any logical
scheme. He justifies this act of representing
the child as smaller than the adult, no matter
[202 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
where placed in perspective, by the assertion
that form has intrinsic but not relative value
with regard to other forms. The child in the
foreground is therefore always smaller than
the parent one, two, or three hundred yards
away. Very good, if you insist; but what shall
be done in the case of objects of like size as to
foreground and background? Why, if a visual
art is to become the base for psychological ex-
pression should it fail us in respect of vision.
One should not fall out with his terms, having
assumed them, and this conflict with natural fact
with respect to him who defies nature leaves
such a one in the position of Canute, inside
the surf line.
As to colour, the same assertion denies to it
any existence. What is of much greater appeal
to Picasso is vibration of light, which to his
mind is more productive of sensation.
His art is therefore an appeal to the psy-
chology by man by means of his own particular
code of signs and symbols. Conceiving form as a
matter of surfaces he creates these by a series
of equivalents. AEsthetics being entirely dis-
missed and the address made wholly to the
psychological faculty, one might properly ask
why, with a code established and understood, it
would not be as well to simplify still further,
and have a represent a head and y a hand, and
m the feet, a, b, and c respectively land, water,
sky, etc. There being no relativity in art it
would not matter how these signs were thrown
together. To the knowing it could soon be
understood whether the artist wished to call
[203 ]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
up an impression of a young lady taking a walk
with her dog or a peasant returning home in his
cart, a man and his wife sitting by the fire or
lovers walking by the shore. This would
frankly place us back in the era of sign language,
which, if approved by the majority, would be a
proof to the majority that progress out of that
condition had been a mistake, and degeneration
the path of true wisdom.
VII
The impressions made of New York by M.
François Picabia to the order of the New York
Tribune brings this theory to a focus and has
enabled one to include its rating in the intense
question: Does this art appeal to me?
The subjects decided upon were Skyscrapers,
Peacock Alley, and Fifth Avenue at Thirty-
fourth Street.
The results lacked even the remotist objective
significance, and it is possible in a few years,
when the New York experience is forgotten,
the author of them may find himself in the
case of Browning when confronted with some
of his own lines. To know which is which may
embarrass this exponent of Cubism.
But, it is explained by M. Picabia, that his
result was a picture of his own mental mood,
created upon approaching these subjects. Yet
as one gazes upon the picture of the mental
mood of this man, intelligible to himself alone
and impossible to any other one in the world,
he rightly demands, “of what concern is his
[204]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
mood to me, especially if he cannot communi-
cate it!” “Art is the ability of man to pass
on his emotion to another,” and if Tolstoy had
attempted no other proposition than this, its
thorough proof by him entitles him to a place
among the art philosophers."
The amusement which the baby obtains in
making marks and mounds in the sand, which he
tells us represent houses, roads, men, trees, and
the like is of an interest to us commensurate
with our interest in the child’s imagination. If
he continues to create these symbols and insist
upon them at seven or eight we send him to
the school for Feeble Minded Children. If in
mature life he insists, the Asylum doors open.
Yet what injustice. These institutions in-
clude many well-educated individuals whose
only wrong has been that they were symbolists.
They make one thing and insist that it means
another. Numbers of them can doubtless
bring proof from Socrates through Plato that
they are right in their point of view. The only
reason for their detention is that, in their
insistence upon these things, their relatives
become bored — a wholly insufficient argument
and one which for them must become a mockery,
if perchance the drawings alluded to and pub-
lished by the New York Tribune should come
to their scrutiny.
Nay, truly, art is free, and should be, but
why eacempt? What of these others — aye what
of them?
“The starting point of genius is original discovery: the second
step is its interpretation to the world.”—John C. Van Dyck.
[205 |
CHAPTER XIII
FUTURISMI — THE FINAL DEVELOPMENT
“They assume an epoch.” — James Hunecker.
To KEEP pace with the eager enthusiasm of
developing artistic thought in these latter days
is fraught with discouragement. No sooner
have we made our plunge into the thought
wave of one approaching sea than another is
beheld. To add to the perplexities of the
tossing and many centred turbulence, yet
another is about to break upon us which in the
course of events was destined for a latter day,
but which in the anxiety and impatience of its
discoverers has been pushed forward, and is now
resounding upon the shore line of art’s farthest
promontories. The name it bear suggests that
when it has expanded upon the entire coast it
will be here to stay. Indeed, one may find
scattered upon the sands the forewords of its
creed. We examine and find its pronounce-
ments stated in a clear and strident tone.
One reads and queries:
THE FUTURISTEs’ CREED
1. “We contend that every form of imitation
must be scorned, and that every form of originality
must be glorified.” At once we wish to have a
[206 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
definition for imitation. But proceeding we
get the notion that this signifies reality.
Why then do the newcomers make the face
of a woman like the face of a woman; why not
like that of a child, or perhaps a man? This
would certainly show scorn for imitation.
How much better a caricature of a man than
the Apollo Belvedere!
“Every form of originality must be glorified.”
Art in the future is to be placed on the basis
of the labor union; a reward, and what’s more
a “glorified” one, for any kind of work.
2. “That we must break away from the bondage
of ‘harmony” and ‘good taste,” overlastic terms
with which one could easily condemn any of
Rembrandt’s, Goya's, or Rodin’s works.”
Rembrandt and Goya cannot reply, but
Rodin might yet be asked if he thought his
works required the defence here offered against
good taste and harmony which it is implied they
violate.
3. “That art critics are useless, if not harmful.”
Suppose they agreed with the Futuristes’
creed, how then would “3” read? Critics are
“useless” when they fail to defend art, and
usually “harmful” to the enemy thereof.
4. “That we must make a clean sweep of all
hackneyed subjects, and eacpress henceforth the
whirlwind life of our day, dominated by steel,
egotism, feverish activity, and speed.”
Why fall out with a subject? Originality is
more surely proved by exploiting an old subject
in a new way than by hunting up a virgin sub-
ject. We cannot demand a new Bible, but
[207 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
nevertheless long for original conceptions from
the pulpit, based upon the old. Art has nothing
to do with subject; art is expression. Art is uni-
versal; it knows neither nationality nor period,
neither yesterday nor to-day. That art must
“illustrate” a period and that period the present
is to tie art up to the fashion magazine and the
daily newspaper. Why, forsooth, the “whirl-
wind life” of to-day, why of steel, egotism,
feverishness, or speed? These promoters of a
new art creed must have submitted drawings to
a yellow journal and had a heart to heart talk
with the art editor. Art is a few sizes larger
than this. It sometimes exploits “repose,”
for instance.
5. “That we must prize highly the title of
‘cranks,” that gag applied by Philistines to the lips
of innovators.”
Words of true policy if not wisdom. Nothing
better to an assured success than the accom-
paniment of martyrdom for any new is m.
6. “That complementary subjects and colors
are as absolutely necessary in painting as blank
verse is in poetry and polyphony in music.”
No one objects.
7. “That the universal dynamism must be
rendered through canvases producing dynamic
sensation.”
Fine! Dynamic sensation is just what all art
wants; but what is this brand of universal
dynamism? Who makes it; who holds its
patent?
8. “That mature must be interpreted with a
sincere and virgin mind.”
[208 |
The Revolt – Rossolo
Futurism

LATEst TENDENcy
Merodack-Jeaneau
LoRExzo de Medicts
Michael Angelo
MEMNow - Egyptian Early Etruscan
Retrospection



THE CONCEPTION OF ART
What, ho! The trouble up to date was
supposed to be that nature had been so inter-
preted.
9. “That motion and light destroy the con-
crete aspect of objects.
Neither proposition is true, but if believed
to be by the Futuriste, the inevitable should
take place. He should forthwith withdraw
from art and try something easier.
The reverse of the shield reads thus:
“We disapprove:
1. “Of the bituminous tint by which painters try
to impart to modern canvas the patina of age.”
No one tries to make a new picture look like
an old one except the dealer in fakes and those
he employs. º
2. “Of the superficial and primitive archaism
which uses absolute colors and which in its
tmitation of the Egyptian’s linear drawings
reduces painting to a childish and ridiculous
synthesis.”
Besides its fling at Post Impressionism, this is
an honest attempt perhaps at falling in with
No. 8 of the “creed”; seeing Nature with a sin-
cere and virgin mind.
3. “Of the progressive pretence of the ‘Session-
ists’ and ‘Independents’ who have intrenched
themselves behind academic rules as platitudinous
and conservative as those of the old academies.”
The “Sessionists” and “Independents” have
been going just a trifle longer than the
latest development of originality — long enough
to have learned that the pricks they kicked
against were not broken by the contact but
[209 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
kept on remaining the foreguard to the
chariot. Art, like everything else which is
evolved, has laws of being — everything else
save anarchy.
4. “Of the nude in painting, as nauseating and
cloying as adultery in fiction.”
Too much of any good thing seems good for
nothing. The bad taste in the mouth the day
after proves the man a glutton, not that the
meat, wine, and cigars were not good.
At long intervals it becomes possible in the
average of chances for a small boy to push his
face into a group of older boys and after calling
them all fools and liars obtain immunity
through the admirable nerve and bravado of
the undertaking. It is in some such spirit as
this that we loosen up the circle and let the new
one in. He is at least amusing, he is intense,
he is self-confident, but is too immature to know
whether he believes in himself or not; yet
we stretch a point and for the moment strive to
believe with him that he does. There are
several reasons why he should be humored, and
the cat too, in her solicitous care for the mouse
which she would keep alive, suggests still
another.
Though his creed does not make good litera-
ture it is rather through the lack of education
and general mental poise and literary endow-
ment that it stands forth as a bundle of mental
fallacies, or platitudes, than that the real inten-
tion of the spirit behind the creed is shallow.
Indeed, the performance is in quite a different
[210 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
class. This at least awakens an interest not
founded on humor, and we quickly resolve,
on approaching some products of the creed of
the Futurist, that we would rather see than
tead him.
The arrival at this is in the course of most
natural procedure, and on second thought no
one need be surprised at the bombshell nor
give more than ordinary credit for any original-
ity in its device.
We have come to this simply because we are
at the end of the road and there was no other
turn. To the makers of new sensations, an
occupation with which the stimulated brain
of the Romance nations is ever amusing itself,
the putting of two pictures onto one canvas
was, all things considered, not a very original
diversion. Photography has been exploiting
it for some time, and were the American genius
out for this sort of sensation it would have ap-
pealed long since to the keen Yankee mind.
The fact is the Yankee does not yet feel that
he has reached the end of his road, and, more-
over, a large part of his sagacity lies in keeping
this open. The fact that in literature, painting,
music, and sculpture American and English art
has been practically uninfluenced by “Primit-
ivolatry” and “Savageopathy” is evidence
that these nations are ascending instead of
descending. Our ambition is beyond, in this
same direction — we have not yet reached our
perihelion but are persisting in our orbit, as yet
dissatisfied with accomplishment of what is at
hand and reaching toward the fuller illumina-
[211 ||
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
tion of it, which we know must lie beyond.
To us therefore neither Post Impressionism
nor Futurism appeals as a necessity but rather
as a point of view which we may indulge and
even patronize in very much the spirit of the
Romans of the Colosseum. Nor would it be
either true or gracious to deny that the game
gives us genuine pleasure, mingled it is true
with the grip of tension, despair, and distrust,
yet beheld by all of open mind as having some-
where at its base a reason which is sufficient
for its creation.
II
To my own mind the Futuristes are de-
cidedly more inspiring than the Post and Neo-
Impressionists, and pictures by them would
doubtless prove an endless source upon which
to practise the fascinating ingenuities of the
imagination.
Their attempt in brief is to present successive
events as simultaneous. A street scene is not
such as may be made with an instantaneous
exposure in photography but rather by uncap-
ping the lens at intervals to receive super-
imposed impressions. We may see the same
character several times in the same picture:
coming down the street, ascending the stairs,
and entering the room.
The qualities arising out of suggestion, intima-
tion, and inference, which are so subtly applied
in literature, sculpture and painting, are in this
art of the future substituted for actualities.
These, besides interfering with the main proj-
[212
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
ect, fail to align themselves in the natural
course of sequence and in the scheme of events
are as likely to be taken upside down as right
side up, hind side fore as in the rational course
of events, and though it is possible to select
from the mass of material dumped at our feet
such as may be constructed into logical infer-
ences, it must be remembered that there is but
a certain proportion of the race that is able to
entertain and comment upon two or more ideas
presented at the same time.
Up to this point in history the boundaries
of the fine arts have been as fixed as those of
the United States or the coast line of England.
If there ever had existed any doubt concerning
the, territory claimed by painting and literature,
Lessing’s “Laocoon” sought to establish them.
In this exhaustive comparison between the
capacities of poetry and painting it is proved
that poetry deals with successive impressions,
and painting with simultaneous impressions.
This limitation of painting necessitates, there-
fore, such selection as will make the most of
a limited opportunity. Painting must deter-
mine the “fertile moment,” and must so order
her resources that the greatest possible sensation
may result from her material.
The Futuristes have now invaded the realm
of successive impression thus far conceded to
literature. And why, shall we not ask, may
not this be done? If painting is able to
strengthen the sensation for which her forms
exist there is no understanding with literature
forbidding her attempt. There is no proof of
[213 ]
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
authority to Lessing, Winkelmann, or Goethe
for fixing the capacity of graphic activity.
Let Pragmatism here have its chance. That
thing is good which proves iself, and there are
certain subjects open to art wherein more of
their character may be evoked by such means
than by the simultaneous method; in all sub-
jects of naturally chaotic character, such as
battles, street scenes, interiors where the com-
pany is constantly moving, subjects of the dance,
games,the action of horses, etc. In all such cases
the new movement may be able to supply as true
if not a truer sensation of reality than by our
conventional means. To rightly cajole the
visual sense, coaxing it from rebellion, is no
easy task, but demands an ability to draw
and to paint such as will put this art technically
to the strictest test, and call for highly trained
performances. Herein will come a blessed
relief from the shallow prosecutions of crude
color and cruder draughtsmanship of the imi-
tators of Matisse.
The assertion, however, that this is to
become the art of the future is on a par with
declaring that in the future the only drink for
mankind will be a certain brand of champagne,
or other wine warranted to make men see
double.
The liberal acceptance during the past decade
of the many isms which art has proposed should
be proof to all new cults that no one can
dominate to the exclusion of the others, but
that each must prove its right to live before
the tribunal of a universal intelligence.
[214 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
III
The artist has always held the mirror up to
nature; the difference in the art of the world
has been a difference in mirrors, nature serving
each with her unchangeable pose. In Greek
art she was reflected from the perfectly polished
silver surface of the classic disc which was placed
before her, and the response she made was
flawless. We are absorbed by the creation and
are not reminded of the creator, save in our
afterthought. The perfect mirror never re-
minds us of itself."
But after the Greeks, other painters have also
polished mirrors, though not as well, and so we
have been conscious of the surface, and finding
the surface have recalled the artificer. But
therein we have discovered a double interest,
we have thought of the man with the mirror,
pounding out his surface, putting himself into
its fibre and polishing it to his notion of fitness.
We have at first perhaps been irritated by the
unevennesses. When we looked for perfection
we have found but analogies; what we thought
was a counterfeit of reality was but a suggestion
*We might marvel now, as no doubt our fathers did, at the
inventor of the camera when first reviewing its results; but science
we quickly take for granted as a record in the discovery of things
which have always existed. We do not stop to-day to think of
De Guerre and thank him for the kodak picture, or Lumiere when
enjoying the color print of figure or landscape. Phidias and
Scopas we honor because their names are attached to a few specific
things; and Zeuxis and Apelles we hold in honor by a reputation
for the flawless reflection known to us through the comments of
their contemporaries. It is not likely that any of them painted
any better than Mr. B., the still life painter, or M. Bouguereau,
both of whom the world is now cruelly trying to forget.
[215 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
of it. Some mirrors were so rudely fashioned
as to be no better than the reflection, refracted
and broken, of troubled water, the facets so
sharply bent as to act like prisms, flashing the
rainbow colors. Again the mirror has been
hammered out in large planes so that the im-
age comes to us in cubes, parallelopipedons,
triangles, bent, twisted and contorted. We
scowl at such a one, dividing nature into elemen-
tal fragments. We think hard thoughts of him,
willing to inflict us with his careless craftsman-
ship. We exclaim, “What childish effort
at mirror making!” And when he declares he
could make a better one but does not want to,
we jeer the more and question his motives, his
ability, and even his sanity.
Finally, we find the mirror has been etched
upon, it bears suggestions here and there
which we cannot but see while absorbed with
the mirror’s reflection. Instead of a singled
thought, two, three or more are suggested.
It seems as though the mirror had been quite
defaced, but as we withdraw and go our way
the impression we carry with us is the impres-
sion of reality.
[216 J
CHAPTER XIV
CONCLUSION
.*Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment
slippery, judgment difficult.” — Epictetus.
JUDGMENT of art is difficult in that ratio
which measures not alone our ignorance but
our lack of sympathy and our lack of proportion.
Were the subject in hand a science, the study
of that science would in time render us expert,
but no amount of knowledge of the fine arts
ever made one a competent critic of art any
more than a knowledge of the world’s religions
would enable one to apprehend the essence of
religion. In both art and religion the discern-
ment of the spirit is what counts; and the spirit
must be spiritually discerned. It is for lack
of this that we are constantly applying the
wrong formulas. We use our own creed to meas-
ure the other man's.
The new dogma is supposedly vicious because
it seems to upset our own. Both artists and
critics rush to the rescue of what they think is
right by fighting what they imagine is wrong;
frequently without investigation and on the
general premise that man is as capable of folly
as of wisdom. To save tradition has been the
first and last reason for the greatest conflicts
of the ages.
[217)
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
Tradition never needed saving: it somehow
has a way of looking out for itself, and if it has
not the seeds of perennial generation it had
better die. The greatest fools of history are
those who have not believed this; those who
have assumed that the way of their present
was right, and resented interference.
To-day Art is in the whirlpool; the tumult of
the waters are about her. She has no sooner
escaped the Charybdian suction than she is
threatened by the more awful fate of the daugh-
ters of Crataesis. Many are the shouts of
caution, awful the moments of suspense; but
ye in charge of Art’s true destiny spare the gag
law at least. Again history stands ready to
prove that this has always meant galvanic
batteries and blood transfusion to the oppressed.
The cause that is not proven by martyrdom
lacks the best species of advertisement.
This the opposition is insisting to supply.
Instead, a better policy would be to play out
the tether cheerfully and grant all possible rope
for the hanging. This would be both sports-
manlike — and sagacious.
The craft of art weathered the Impressionistic
squall a generation ago, and the drenching she
received only stiffened her sails so that to-day
she rides better than ever.
Post Impressionism is but a relapse which
when spent will doubtless give Art the regular
“added lease of life,” passing forth as she is
bound to from the fever of the present. Through
anxiety that the currents which now are divid-
ing will not eventually merge, the presumption
[218 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
obtains that Art may be two things and not
one, that the definition must be changed to
accommodate a changed significance. Art fre-
quently has been wrongly interpreted both at
the hands of philosophers and artists, and set
to performing feats which by her nature were
impossible.
While being the cause for the total confusion
of many a one, the newer creed of Post Impres-
sionism need only be found to apply to Post
Impressionism instead of to Art in general, and
there will be no more reason for fighting her
than for a Baptist to wage war upon a Meth-
odist.
What says the creed of these two distinctive
arts? In brief, one wishes to create a mental
mood under the spell of which the mind may be
stimulated to a new creating; the other offers
the compass of that stimulation and assumes
responsibility for its dimensions, which may be
measured.
Is there anything incongruous in the same
mind accepting these two separate kinds of
stimulation! Because the barbaric color and
crude forms of Matisse stir the somnolent
primitive microbe which still lingers with some
of us, must he therefore straightway cast out
Alma Tadema or John Sargent who substitute
the visual for the mental picture. Should a
man be accused of treachery who would keep
an example of each sort of art under one roof —
duly provided with separate chambers?
If there be conflict, the cause is the old story,
the story of “one way.”
[219 |
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
Coventry Patmore longs for the formation
of what he calls “Institutes of Art which
would supersede and extinguish nearly all the
desultory chatter which now passes for criti-
cism, and which would go far to form a true
and abiding popular taste.”
This would be all very well, compiled, as he
suggests, “from the writings of Aristotle,
Goethe, Hegel, and others” who have crystal-
lized in words the practice of artists. As these
principles, however, have invariably followed
Art’s expressions rather than preceded it and
are necessarily the discoverable essence of its
life, it would fall out that a brand new sort of
art would demand at least one or two new
principles. Some of the old would stand, it is
true, in any change, but nothing of the hard
and fast sort can bind art, which is broadly an
expression of that power in man which is
regulative of the quality of all that he creates,
his aesthetic and intellectual pleasure. What
these pleasures may be in one age and another
are controvertible; but Art’s business is wholly
to see to the quality of that which is created for
this pleasure.
With this gauge we may not only estimate
Art but the age as well. We may justly con-
clude that the art of the dark ages was sufficient
to give pleasure to the beclouded intelligence
of that age and with the same process of reason-
ing, without recourse to its philosophy or
poetry, may get in touch with the keener civili-
zation which prevailed in the Greece of Pericles.
The intellectual calmness of Egypt, the spiritual
[220)
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
contemplation of the Orient betokened that
trend of intellectual reach, together with its
limitations, the pleasure in which has been
proclaimed in their art. As a man thinketh
so is he; and so we may apprehend the intellec-
tual joy of both the painters and beholders of
the early religious art, regarding the altar
pieces which, through a fervent realism, strove
to express the spirituality of their ideal. With
most of them the spirit was the directing force.
No one can gaze on the early art of the Renais-
sance, from Giotto to Fra Angelico and Fra
Bartolomeo and not be arrested and held in
thrall by that sanctified intellectual approach
which gave them birth.
This same criterion must absolutely apply
to-day. Our civilization is many sizes larger
than aforetime. It is inventive and furtively
seeks new modes with incessant unrest. Art
should be lenient, ready, and even anxious to
put her arm about the shoulders of any new
creed which can prove its case, and with the
adoption remind it that the newcomer is but
one of many of an endless chain and in no wise
can take the place of any other.
“Before my tale of days is told,
O may I watch, on reverent knees,
The “Unknown Beauty” once unfold ,
The magic of her mysteries!
“New arts, new raptures, new desires
Will stir the new-born souls of men;
New fingers smite new-fashioned lyres —
And O, may I be listening then.
[221 )
THE CONCEPTION OF ART
“Shall I reject the green and rose
Of opals with their shifting flame,
Because the classic diamond glows
With lustre that is still the same?
“Change is the pulse of life on earth;
The artist dies, but Art lives on.
New rhapsodies are ripe for birth
When every rhapsodist seems gone.
“So to my day’s extremity,
May I in patience infinite
Attend the beauty that must be
And, though it slay me, welcome it.”
- Edmond Gosse, closing his last book of poems.
THE END
[222]
, ; ; ; ; , sº *** .
untv. of
JAN 20 1914
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

•）› ‹、、、、、、&&{{{:ſſſſſſſ！！！!！!！！！！!！!！！!！！!！
ſae±Raeſ ºsť，3，*，*\ſ* ***-
ſ ≡·***** 2x34ș********+ $， rețºșaerț ș*****@*?**ț****** ...?，：¿
،-r - - - ----ſz-，ſºšº¿:};};***¿¿.**********¿¿cº，§§§§§
RARY
, or M1CFls
July 15 1943
A-lº
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 06825 4013
U N \\/
|||||||||||
|
|
{
rºg， ſå ¿¿eſºſ， ſe yº :
Ķķ，ļ，ņ，š， ĒĶĒ，
*** Ar ſae, *g*：
•r•ſ•.•
：
§ 3，4，3，stºsºſ，
№ſ （3.），!!！！！！！!
|×： #; faeſ （* &#:#*ae. №w. ** **-
kaewae ſae ， ， , , ********************
ſae:




· · · · · · · · · · · · · * * · * •{-*-- «... .. ' + '.*, **, * · * * *
* … … * * · *': ** * · ***... & .:-） · · * . –****…*.*）… •• • • • •
*:·... :） …..…..:…,,,,，, ,，.:.,，，.，:.，，，.,:;": “ ”” ********************* • ** , ，
· ·· · · ·:
„… • • • .•* • • •
'.',%,，，,,’
-- - --№: ***.* ** * · * *
· · · · · · · · * * · · · ***4. ******
, !· * * * * * *± − × … **
· · · * * * *, ** * ****-
... „ ! ！！», **, º „ș*******· · · · · · · · · ·
. . . . ******…« *a*****************¿¿.*; ****:（ * * * * *.º, , ,
. … …, …„..., - ， »， , ** • ********* ** *șeș， * * * * * *, º* ' ° ' '） ***** •
* ~~~x~（; ，，，**;“（…）::::>}';**********j*^ ; * ~, , … .
-* , ， ，，，*************\\· · · « »ę º. º. º
*: №, №ſſº** * * * · * * * · · ·
„ş%****-ſá，\！årſae， &§wſ:* ***ſ ·-- ----（）:！ ！！ſ ºſ}）;:：： №§§•º ，ſae，•，， º |-！ ！!----• s×！#ſåſae? | №ºaeè:---- -·
-ſº *: *）<.** ***saeº · *ºg ș* *-***&.§， ſå！|×| （（ºſ）， º· · · · žºgae ！！！&~~）;ſºšº， ºsº： ），）！·|-**…*;?aeæ：，- ·-
**æį№ſº,?\，.«**§§§:ſae（&?#*）^*®********¿¿.ſae;•，,，§;·ſaevae-**º-»|-?žģī£
·ș și și• ſ^º ， ， <~~ : ~~~）;**-ſaewae， *** √∞+ $*）;· · · · * ！-·× × ×∞ș，|ſå©∞-* * * ·****·L'ae|-
§ 3， ºgſ,*****.**ș::§$%&！！！ſºț¢-！§*****§Ë！！！£§§§§§§ſaeſſae§ ¶√∞Œ¿
ſae ，
*，，,。
、、。、、。、、、。∞ √°... :**）^w
º №ſſºſ:
***********************
·-، ، ،*\.*,,ș*#！*…********）
*********************）•
}}}}**::::::::::::ſºſ，
··- ،¿¿.**å·|-·-. ., … ?|---:*„ “
----------（ --.--- --******■■■■■■¿¿.*sae， ，·， , ，•ſaeae;ſae-*·* .*? *******è：}|--Ķºšķº· *…*，，，，，，，is，į #！***!·;:####-- ，
• • • • • ► --·*-， ，· · ***§¶√≠√∞ääaeg¿·3*） · · · ***--------· ■ ■！****** * · * * ·,·，≤ . . …"，********-************ºgaeaeae; &ºr;.$$$$$
-** *****.*?）&#}swae;-rºw-ºx-a****-:§§§§¶√∞ √∞i√∞， √æ√≠√{+§§*ae（, ， ， ， ,ſiaerć，----，，… . . ：: ：-§：ſſä，§），*********№， ſaegaeº ： · ·，≤）،…ș->par...！！!... * & * , , ºwe”.
|-·-- -----·ſae-ſae -¿№ſsaevišķº****$%^&*）$'，
·£**） ******„*', … ***
********* • ** ***…*\ſ*'-,-，*, ********§§©®°¶√≠√≠√≠≤≥Ķķ，·§§************Ř， ae:：****§， №··sººſ|מºgºj$（'$', '（↓）',
*:：::::::::::::::：:::::::::::::::::::::：:#####################$£§§§§:::::::::::::：:::::::::::::::::::::::::::Oe
***-*-* * *************>.-șe， „ ... *s…！！！! ºn 3-5§• …，~«… … … ***- -§§*?）$'，§§---…-…-- ~--~、、、、、、、、、、.*$'）.
ſaegſå■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■;$ſ;…iš，
ſae;;;;ſºſiaeff***ſae, ¿
- - ...…….... • ... ………. ， • ** * * *••••••• • •-- ** ** * *+.************… …，,，…-…）： r+s +.
* · · * * * „……..………” … ：-* * * * * * ** ********************** → …,,,，, ， , , ，
' + ' ' +[...）， º ~*~*~~~~ ………+…--~~~~ ~~*******~*~~~）;******V rºwº,
… … .… * * * ***** • ** --,&~~~„...º.º. （***）^*, º*， … ••• • ►+-*** * · · ·*….. • •wº \***…*?< ** * · * * … ».*** --- -_-'！*• • • • .' ….*.* tº#x
→ ·… …, s… §）, ..（, „ae v., ºr， * ** ** ** * * · * * · ***-- ·- - - -ș***
»**~*~*~*~$3!
· · * * ， ，*…» +*^.）： *****----^«^* * * * * *
* *-ſłºwae ś ** * · · · · *§:?}{，}{C},\;{*• ***·-
>.*...! :，:.，，，.，:.，,，:; ſ.
-· ‘…ººº »… + · · · -• • • • •^- + ·
·.. : • • • „+ 1 ***~* * **Aør. *: *…*, **
-, , ; , * · * .*.*…！” . &.***， … ~4*！***!*
* : « …*…*…*…* # :）. ¿•••• • ••••••••••••••••
***,*\ſ** • „“， „-, «…? --ºº, ** ** *
~* * …..“
-• • • • • ►. ， „ . . ; ** ***- ~~~*~*** •••••• • • •
**g, *~~ ,• ~~~~ ~~~~）+.… ~*~~~~*~*~ ~~~~ ******…*..**
~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~ ~ ~~~~ ~~~~）; ***… fº\,* …? * * * · * ***- ：-） • ） *.·！，****&&#*****）----ż:#::¿.*¿*
. . . . ~~~ ~~~. . . … ~~~~ ~~~~*~*~~~~ ~~~~ * *~*~~~~ ~~~~ · ·• • • • • •.•-----* * *.·-*· · · ·:*:）*;¿¿.*************
… … *aer •-- *...*..*..*…*.**.**…* - : » . * *-w wys ;º» :-* ,***¿¿.*， …-... ：º） -, ！-----*ae*::3:::ſºwº）,
--· ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~ ~~~~ ·**… * * *•* •^~• • •••••••••••••••* * · *¿¿.****************ºſſº:|×**
¿??¿??????:???????¿??¿??¿¿?-
•.· · · * * *-º- + · · *-... •—•••… -…".* •· *:*----****^®*-º- + …..----ș§§§§§;• - 1#<！»;*4）};$£*, **----$ſ;
-°，** ** ***********}} }}zººae-|--
}，,,，,，************|-- - ----· Ijº. ----*****¿ºj§§3 #！***:-（ - - ~iº·* … ：-）
-\，-+-***#！********·gaeae№z:w·*********@***¿¿.-******-****.**.
§§
ſº º cºn ºff-rº
----*...ſº<.* * …， «ºſ-·
·§，ș***
* ºr ºș************** · · **********+, ·）; ******Ź;~*~~~~）;
ķ*\，\！,::::::::：::::::::::::::::::::::::：:*（±±±±¿;&#1, ºr ~~~~~ （=rº
• ț¢ºſºſ （**）（.*）& >***********************.**… ， +,++）， ±√**.·*** ### *（?：-） ***|-
Zſº;，&&ğț¢’.Ķī£X® }• × ° € ← → --***::::::§:ſſ:!ș&:::::：:::ir ***ș.· · *
|-|-Yº， ：*%?-：-- |-
yº.«****************************: <r.5 ***.**.*;4，i ſº ſewaeſ ***.*№gº.º**************.**. ****************…eš，·??¿?，|-
* • ** **ş· · * * .*s+v%;§ž.**~* º *ſ*…* ， ） （ ? ::Zº . " _ …!！！·***********¿¿.*;..），*********¿**） ***§§
·· -：****************************************$\ſ*.*** • *.*¿¿.*¿¿-?） •
„ ， ！¿¿ †*********Źº:šºſ ī£äſſ;
ș~~）;*** • *）:*******）***********~~ ~ ~
►►****************ņš
-·
* · · · · * * * *;-
, * --★ → · · · -4* **
• • •- - -|-