WE have been lately told by a brilliant impressionist, no less in words than in paint, that there never have been such things as artistic periods; that art is solely individual, and lives and dies with the artist. And among other interesting facts we learned that, after all, one thing is as beautiful as another (to a painter) if you only get it in the right light; that, in short, those striking features of modern landscape—wharves and factory chimneys—look just as well as antique towers and palaces when merged in the twilight—that is, when you can no longer see what they really are, and the imagination is free to invest them with the romance of a past age.
Now, whatever germs of truth such statements contain, they only throw us back upon the question, “What is art?” If it is the art only of the impressionist, the record in paint of the children of the mist, of factory-smoke even, and London fog; if nature must only be seen with the eyes half shut, and in the abomination of desolation—the squalid outskirts and Stygian rivers of modern cities—then, indeed, former ages were but poorly furnished in the matter of art. What availeth the clear-cut noble sculpture of ancient Greece, and the work of her vase painters? What availeth the endless decorative invention of the Asiatic peoples, and of mediæval and early Renaissance times, lavished upon all the accessories of life, not to speak of its culminating glories in painting and sculpture? Could all this beauty of design and workmanship, in its constant growth and development through the centuries, have hung upon a thread—upon the lives of one or two persons of genius, springing, like mushrooms, from universal indifference, ignorance, and decay?
Such an opinion is, however, only a sign of the times. When every man fights for his own hand, and every artist has to make his own public, such an individualistic conception of art is not altogether surprising; and, were it intended to apply to the art of the present day only, would be very near the truth. But a little inquiry and consideration would show that art has deeper roots. The delight in beauty, be it human or of wild nature, be it of light, colour, form, or sound, is a common possession and a necessity of life, as in the higher sense it must always be, so long as the human has any claim to be the higher animal. And it should be remembered that certain animals and birds have been proved to be sensitive to certain colours and decorative effects, which sensibility is indeed wrapped up with the very fact of the germination and continuity of life itself; and this only convinces us how far down and deeply rooted is this sense in nature which has been so highly developed and specialised in man. Differing, it may be, in degree, but not in kind; cultivated, or uncultivated; modified by centuries of habit and association; influenced by modes of thought and conditions of life—wheresoever humanity dwells, in northern snow or southern sunshine, it flowers and seeds, and springs anew.
Art, in all its forms, is normally but the language of this universal feeling which, shared more or less by all, consciously or unconsciously, is fully comprehended, passionately expressed, and communicated in tangible and eloquent shape by comparatively few. But I should say that every one whose heart is stirred at the voice of music, at the music of poetry; every one who feels the magic of beauty and is touched by its pathos, who is moved by the strangeness of the shifting drama of life; every one who vibrates, as it were, to the harmonies of nature, is a potential or latent artist.
As far as we can judge from its history, it would seem that this power of artistic expression, controlled as it is by countless influences of soil, climate, and character; constantly intercrossing and blending; springing from simple beginnings, and passing through various stages of growth, development, and decline, with the life of nations—this power, I say, seems to have reached its noblest and most beautiful results under collective conditions—of the arts, at all events—when all art was decorative, and all were allied with architecture, depending technically upon a certain continuity of tradition, and intellectually on a certain consentaneousness or universality of sentiment, ere it reached a high perfection among a people, being always at its highest in public monuments. It is obvious, since these conditions depend upon a vast number of other conditions, since art is the flowering of the tree of life in man’s moral nature, the form in which it is cast must, finally, be the outcome of the social, political, and economic conditions of society.
We have only to remember the temples and palaces of antiquity, whether the colossal fragments of the crumbled civilisations of the East, the sculptured triumphs of Greece and Rome, or the cathedrals and public halls of the Middle Ages. Art in such buildings touches sublimity. The effect, for instance, of such a building as that of St. Mark’s at Venice is like embodied music—rich, mysterious, splendid, harmonious; storied with the legends and emblems of a faith, and a conception of the universe then corresponding with the knowledge and aspirations of mankind, full of solemnity, pathos, and dignity. But one of our own English cathedrals, where the ruthless hand of the modern restorer is not too obvious—say our historic Abbey of Westminster—will impress us in the same kind; and this impressiveness is not due merely to the effect of antiquity, though it no doubt contributes. We feel it to be the collective work of artists and craftsmen, as well as of ages, and we feel it embodies the aspirations, the religious sentiment, even the humour and satire, of its time, and, speaking through the architect, the mason, the carver, the glass painter, is heard the voice of a whole people.
But if one should go into a modern church in search of the ideas of the time, I am afraid he would only find the ideas of the new curate.
The former dignity and impressiveness of art is usually accounted for by the fact that it was in the past chiefly devoted to the service of religion; but that was only because religious ideas had the strongest hold upon the human mind—because with religion were wrapped up all other ideas, and the sources of knowledge were in the hands of the priesthood. Art is bound by its very nature to give expression to ascendant ideas. But both art and religion have since been broken to fragments, and these are often so small and so incongruously pieced together, that they refuse to reflect any ideas at all; or so feebly and falsely, that men, in distrust of both art and religion, have turned to nature and science, which in the strongest minds fill the place of both.
But this, after all, is only like saying that the loss of the eyesight is compensated for by the increased stimulation of the other senses. It is a serious loss all the same.
Let us try to find, however, what ideas, even in the fragmentary and artificial condition to which it is now reduced, art gives us in our day. The one great distinction and difference which marks it from the art of ancient times consists in the absence of what is called popular art—the art of the people, hand in hand with everyday handicraft, inseparable from life and use—that spontaneous native art of the potter, the weaver, the carver, the mason, which our economical, commercial, industrial, competitive, capitalistic system has crushed out of existence by division of labour, the factory system, and production for profit; yes, our three-headed Cerberus has devoured the art, together with the wellbeing and the independence of the people, and stands unappeased at the smoke-gloomed industrial gate, over which is written, “All hope abandon ye who enter here.” But this basis of popular art was the soil in which all art germinated, and from which the goodly tree grew and branched out, to blossom in the more delicate kinds of painting and sculpture which, since they have ministered to the caprices of wealth, fashion, and luxury alone, branded in a separate class as “fine arts,” have turned their backs upon their humble relations, the handicrafts, with the result that their house is left unto them desolate. Cut off, as it were, like flowers from their natural stem, they presently languish and wither away, or linger on, fantastic ghosts, shadows, and travesties of their former beauty.
But we are calmly told that “we must recognise, however, that modern art has no tendency in this latter direction (that of beauty). Beauty no longer suffices for us.”[6] This is clear and emphatic enough. It comes from the French, too, who have assumed the position of dictators of taste, at least in painting, to the world at large. It is from a book on æsthetics, by Eugene Véron; I quote from the English translation. The book is an attempt to find a scientific basis and reasonable position for art under the conditions of modern society, and while the author fails to recognise the causes of its deterioration in the quality of beauty, he boldly acknowledges the difference between past and present aims, and insists on freedom of development. Yet the writer is possessed by a distinction which he himself sets up between decorative, and what he calls expressive art, applying this latter title to the pictorial art of the present day. As if all good art was not expressive!
In my view, however, all forms of plastic or graphic art, properly so called, must be dominated by the sense of beauty, as the condition of their normal existence and the condition of their successful appeal to the eye. The expression of beauty naturally controls all other expressions. Otherwise, it seems to me, art is overstepping the border line which divides it from other operations of the mind; from scientific analysis, for instance, and from photography, where the object is totally different, and everything is sacrificed to the attainment of fact.
Yet this is just what is happening in modern painting—everything is being sacrificed to the attainment of fact in some form or other, and painting has almost ceased to be an art of design.
The modern French view is frankly expressed in a passage quoted by Véron from Fromentin, who says: “The time has come for less thought, and for less lofty aims. We must now look at things more closely, and observe better. We must paint as well, though in a different fashion. We must work for the general public, for the citizen, the man of business, and the parvenu—everything is now for them.” And he goes on to point out in effect that the painter must do the best he can under these rather depressing circumstances, copy his model, and take comfort in the belief that henceforward the greatest genius will be the man of the least invention. Here, at all events, it is clearly recognised that painting now exists for a class, which, possessing the wealth, commands all things that may be commanded by wealth, and as these things are many, a money standard is set up, which is in danger of becoming the only standard and test, whether of virtue and character, or artistic ability.
The results of such a state of things are visible on every side. We have seen that in all ages it has been natural to art to express the ascendant characteristics and ideas of its time, as well as to reflect the material facts of life.
Art is the sensitive plate in the dark camera of history, which records both the mental and physical features of humanity without prejudice, when all other sources of light are shut out.
So in an age when commercialism is supreme, and bourgeois ideas are triumphant, it is only natural that they should make themselves felt in art.
Accordingly, we see the influence of profit-making principles in the way in which painters become specialised for certain sorts of work, and in the rise and progress of the middleman or picture-dealer. As illustrating this, it is said of Verboeckhoven, the cattle painter, that the dealers were in the habit of sending orders couched in terms like the following: “Wanted, by Monday, three pictures of the usual description—cow, with two sheep.” There is a story told of him, too, which is very suggestive of the effect of commercial ideas on art. One day an American entered the studio; he saw a picture which pleased him, and bought it at the artist’s price—1200 francs. He could not take it away with him immediately, and when he came for it some time after, the painter had another, just like it, nearly finished. He was putting in an extra lambkin, when the American returned. A happy thought struck the latter; he would take the second picture too; it would form a pendant to the other. But Verboeckhoven wanted 1300 francs for it. His customer hesitated. “Well, well!” said he, “the same price, then;” and dipping a rag in turpentine he wiped out the lamb.
That grand development of the shop, the modern picture exhibition, is, again, another triumph of commercialism in art, which, faithfully following the accepted theory of the trader that supply will produce demand, succeeds in something like real over-production. Consider the huge annual pictorial displays and their chief product—the child of competition in art—the “pot-boiler.” Truly the temple of art is the market, and its high priest the picture-dealer! “Take your choice” (or, rather, the recommendation of the adroit salesman), “go to so-and-so for your fish and your salt-water pieces—fresh every year, but all alike. If your fancy is flesh or fowl, you must go farther. This other gentleman will give you game pieces—he has a special license. Then you can finish with flower and fruit,” and so forth. Yes, division of labour has triumphed even in painting, and to excel a man must specialise his talents; that is to say, adapt them to the continual production of the same sort of thing. Thus, and thus only, can he hope to make either reputation or a living.
Very good; but what becomes of art, unless the whole of art is comprehended in portraiture? For, in spite of our classification, our labels for landscape, portrait, genre, historical; under this specialising, ticketing, commercial system, the tendency is for painting to become really limited to forms of portraiture. I do not mean merely the production of portraits, though that is a noticeable feature, but I apply the term to characterise a certain literal and prosaic habit of regarding all nature, and literal methods of representation, whether of persons, scenes, or animal life; while the conditions of the market, even apart from the tastes of the ascendant class we have been considering, cut against even honest and faithful portraiture, but encourage that conscious making-up, dressing, and forcing of effect to catch the public eye, amid the further falsification of pictorial values caused by the entire want of classification and harmonious arrangement in the picture exhibition. So that in the result, where every inducement is held out in this fierce pictorial competition to painters to consciously work for forced effect, and put out their possible neighbour, pretentiousness and meretriciousness too often win the day.
When the decline in modern art is mentioned, it is usual for the average man, imbued with the commercial ideas of the age, and with the all-sufficient standard of money-value in his mind, to point triumphantly to the enormous sums given for certain pictures in these days, and to the wealth of certain successful artists. But those enormous sums only show that pictures are a marketable commodity in which the chances of large profits are involved, and the fluctuating values in the market make them objects of speculative investments for capitalists. Reputations fall and rise, often according to what appears to be the mere caprice of fashion, though even fashion is controlled by commercialism. And as to the wealth of successful painters, is that always in proportion to the excellence of their work, or the labour bestowed upon it, and is it always the accompaniment of the highest skill and the loftiest aims? Overwhelmed with commissions, the fashionable painter has the alternative before him of over-work or inevitable deterioration. In many cases he becomes the victim of both. Then, too, for one favourite of fame and fortune, how many unfortunate, struggling, obscure? Thus at both ends of the scale the influence of commercialism is only for evil.
Consider, too, the waste of energy and talent in this unequal struggle for artistic life and recognition—this pictorial lottery, where so many blanks are drawn. Think of the capacities now swallowed up in the tasteless contention of exhibitions, which, properly organised and directed, might co-operate to adorn our streets and public places, our lecture halls and railway stations, left desolate now to another and more hideous form of competition in the clamorous posters of commercialism, which cover our waste walls and hoardings, and crowd upon the weary eye in all their shameless self-assertion and sordid language of the market, shouldering one another in the unspeakable coarseness of colour-bedizenment and graceless superscription.
In spite of our refinement, our care for art, our æstheticism, forsooth! and the lavishly-decorated private interiors of wealth, to this complexion must we come out of doors!
And in the meantime we are so inured and hardened to such disfigurements that we cease to feel their enormity. Nay, we must grow to like them, for are not advertising and bill-sticking an inseparable part of our system? There is no escape. So it is, and so it will be, so long as we allow this selfish, demoralising, and unscrupulous demon of commercialism to tyrannise over and exploit us, ever with its continual cry of “Profit, profit, profit!” Every aspiration will be shouted down as visionary and unpractical; every real attempt to better our disorganised condition will be opposed by the dead weight of vested interests.
It is on record that one of the few living artists, properly called ideal—George Frederick Watts—offered to decorate the hall of the Euston Station with frescoes without charge, if the Company would bear the cost of the materials; and the offer was refused. How can monumental art, which is but decorative art in its highest form, exist in such apathetic conditions? To grow the flower you must not only have the seed, but a favourable soil and climate. It will be written of our age that we squandered the talents of our more original writers and artists upon the newspaper and periodical press. We preferred to be amused with a constant succession of brilliant trivialities and passing sensations, to beholding our best thoughts embodied in enduring and noble forms of art; and it did not seem to signify how many lives might be frittered away—how much energy and talent ground to powder in the process.
But monumental art demands the sympathy of a people bound together by common feelings, interested in the drama of history, and proud of their own struggles and sacrifices for freedom; accustomed to dwell with ennobling thoughts and aspirations, and accustomed to give them free and forcible expression; sensible both of the joy and the tragedy of life, delighting in phantasy and invention, and, above all, in beauty of form and colour. Yet there is nothing in these things but what naturally belongs to humanity.
Can such art be found where the best energies are engrossed in the feverish and unequal race for a more or less precarious existence on the one hand, and on the other made artificial by excess of wealth?—where the aspect of life, whether public or private, is neither simple nor dignified, and where cities become unlovely and inorganic accumulations of bricks and mortar?—where, with an appearance of zeal for art, education, and refinement, and the elevation of the masses, we allow mile after mile of mean or pretentious dwellings to carry the desolation of our unwieldy human warrens farther and farther into the green country, as the capitalist and the jerry-builder join house to house and brickfield to brickfield?
So we are thrown back on economic conditions, which, it is impossible to doubt, are finally responsible for these things, as, indeed, they have always been responsible for the form in which the art of a period is cast. How hopeless it is, for instance, to expect varied and beautiful street architecture with the present system of house tenure and the contract system in building! Here and there a dwelling, with some claims to beauty and distinction—or, at least, individuality—perchance arises from the sordid crowd; but these are the homes of men of wealth and exceptional taste, who build for their own delight, and have secured their ground. Here and there a board-school building relieves the monotony, and seems to point to the possibilities of better things. But the mass of modern London consists of the erections of the speculative builder—miles of absolutely uninteresting house fronts, composed chiefly of the repetition of one pattern, and that of the meanest and most uninventive kind, crowded together—the ready-made packing-cases for civilised humanity which enters in and dwells there. Could these things be were it not for the powers of commercialism, based upon the individual possession of land and capital, with the one object of money gain in their disposal?
But all things are in the grasp of commercialism. Let a band of artists and craftsmen associate together, and, working quietly, make to themselves and all whom it may concern things of beauty and utility for the use and adornment of simple homes. Straightway there is a growing desire for these things as a relief from the dreary monotony of ugliness, or the pretentious luxury of second empire taste. Thereupon commercialism, perceiving a demand, brings out what it calls art-furniture, art-colours, and so forth—the addition of the magic word being supposed to make all the difference—sucks the brains of designers, steals their designs, and devotes them to objects for which they were never intended; deluging the market with strange travesties and tortured misapplications of ill-digested ornament, which overruns everything like an irrepressible weed, until, coming down to its lower forms in the cheap furniture shop, one is tempted to think that, in the matter of taste, our last state is worse than the first.
Thus are all the channels of production fouled. Does not commercialism hold the keys of the kingdom of both art and industry? Everything has to pass through the sieve of profit before it reaches the public; and to keep the huge and wasteful machinery of competitive production and distribution going, even at an ordinary jog-trot, it appears to be necessary in every department of trade to make a vain show of so-called “novelties” every season, whether they are really new and better than the old or not.
But the counts of the indictment against commercialism are not yet filled up. The subject is, indeed, too vast and far-reaching to be adequately treated in the limits of a single paper. Hitherto I have kept very near home, but if we look abroad over the world we shall see the same causes at work, the same deterioration going on. Look at the effects of our rule on the native arts of India, The same process of extinction of the art of the people, of the village crafts, is taking place there as has resulted from the action of commercialism at home. (On this point I cannot refer any one who is desirous to pursue the subject to a more competent authority than Sir George Birdwood.) But all over the East, wherever European influence is in the ascendant, the result is disastrous to the arts, and thus the very sources of ornamental design, beauty of colour, and invention are being sullied and despoiled by the sharp practices and villainous dyes of Western commerce. Even in Japan, where the artistic sense seems instinctive among the people, so that everything touched by them bears its impress, since the results of ages of art labour and exquisite craftsmanship have suddenly been placed within the insatiable grasp of commercialism, there are signs that these riches are becoming exhausted, and the rarer and finer kinds grow scarcer every day. We can no longer expect to be given of the best, and wares are being consciously prepared for the European market. This is but the “retort courteous” for the compliments of Manchester in china-clay and size. We actually hear of proposals to establish schools of design on the British model, the more effectually, I suppose, to drive out those quick, spontaneous, characteristic native methods of art-expression, than which nothing, perhaps, has more refreshed and stimulated the jaded sensibilities of European design. Thus even by contact with a vicious civilisation the natural quickness and intelligence of a race may bring about its own destruction.
Thus, in the fierce and unscrupulous struggle for wealth, one after another, virgin markets are opened, and new peoples exploited by commercial enterprise, which, like a huge steam plane, is passing over the world striving to reduce all art, and with it humanity, to one dull level of commonplace mediocrity, leaving us but of vital and beautiful varieties the relics and shavings. Greedy eyes are now turning to Central Africa. The next act in the commercial drama will probably take place there. Already the rampant explorer, posing as the benefactor of humanity, has gone far and wide, and the representatives of the blessings of civilisation, with the Bible in one hand and the revolver in the other, call on the aborigines to stand and deliver. Wheresoever commercialism sets foot, the curse of gold seems to follow. As regards its effect upon art, it is like the old Greek story of Atalanta’s Race, but with a sinister climax. Milanion, the hunter (representing commercialism), enters for the race, and, carrying the fatal apples of gold, casts them one by one in the path of the fair fleet-footed, whom no competitor could hitherto outstrip. She yields, alas! to the seductive spoils—to the greed of gold—and henceforward her fate is sealed.
But commercialism, which seems now so triumphant, carries the seeds of destruction in its own bosom. The penalty of fast living must sooner or later be paid, by nations and systems as by individuals. Dissolution must inevitably set in. Already there are signs of the beginning of the end. Already men’s thoughts and hopes are turned to that which shall succeed. “The old order changeth, giving place to new.” Meanwhile the only hope, alike for art as for humanity, lies in socialism.