The second lamp of Greek art is _Simplicity_. The artist sees quite
clearly what he desires to produce, and sets about producing it without
hesitation, without self-consciousness, with no beating about the bush.
Of course the more primitive and less conventional a society is, the
easier it is for artists to be simple. In a complicated society
simplicity and directness are apt to be confused with what is
commonplace or even with the foolish. The simplicity of Wordsworth and
of Tennyson does sometimes cross the line. The Greeks had the great
advantage of coming before other cultivated peoples, so that there was
no commonplace to avoid. They could be simple, as the wild rose and the
primrose are simple. What could be more simple than the _Iliad_? The
same simplicity marks Greek sculpture. It requires no great exercise of
the intellect to understand it. It presents every figure in a clear and
unsophisticated way.
As there is no more sure sign of a fine nature than the absence of
self-consciousness, so there is no more sure sign of greatness in art
than simplicity. The Greeks did not strive to be original, to make
people stare, to do the unusual. One of the most usual subjects in Greek
relief is a battle between male warriors and Amazons. Such battles adorn
many temples. And in every case they are distinctive in style. One could
not mistake a group from the temple at Phigaleia for a group from the
Mausoleum. And there is no sameness: almost every group has some point
or touch of its own, which makes it a variety on the usual theme. One
Amazon is falling from her horse, one is asking for quarter, one is
following up a retreating foe. But no group is insistent that the
passer-by should look at it. The relief was the decoration of a temple;
and if its originality drew men's attention from the temple itself, or
from the Deity seated enthroned within, it might justly be accused of
impertinence, of exceeding due measure. The sculptor did his best; but
he was careful to do nothing which was out of harmony with its
surroundings. He sank himself in his work. And even when he was engaged
on a more serious substantive work, what he most avoided was the
incongruous and unbecoming. He so worked that the attention of the
spectator was concentrated not on the character of the workmanship, but
on the person or the subject portrayed. The idea which he tried to
incorporate in marble or bronze was not his own thought about the
subject, but the character which really belonged to it in the mind of
the people.
This singleness of purpose is well illustrated by a story about the
painter Protogenes. He painted the figure of a Satyr, and beside it, as
a trifle, he inserted a partridge. But when he found that admiration for
the lifelikeness of the partridge tended to distract the attention of
visitors from the main figure, he painted it out.
No doubt simplicity implies limitation. It is not easy in any age to
strike the deepest note without some surrender of simplicity. The higher
phases of the mental and spiritual life, mysticism, symbolism, and the
like are not to be expressed with complete simplicity in any form of
art. One cannot deny that the Greek view of life was limited; that the
Greeks did not attempt to represent in art the highest aspirations of
the soul. It was an entirely perverted ingenuity which sought a
generation ago to find mystic meaning in the representations on Greek
vases. Attempts to portray the Deities of the Mysteries scarcely count
as works of art. Such figures as Sabazius, Isis, Mithras, only come into
ancient art in its decadence. I would not maintain that the modern
world, with its infinitely varied emotions, or the higher aspirations of
religions like the Christian or the Buddhist, could be satisfied with
such simple schemes as those of Greek sculpture, which appeal to human
instinct and human intelligence rather than to the more recondite
emotions. Such emotions, however, in my opinion, do not find any
appropriate embodiment in the arts of which I am treating--the graphic
and plastic arts. In poetry they have at all times found a noble
expression; and in modern days a perhaps still completer expression in
music, which was in pre-Christian days in a very rudimentary condition.
But painting is but ill suited to the rendering of these vague
aspirations. And still more unsuited is sculpture, the most imitative
and objective of all the arts. The attempts which have been made in
recent years by some sculptors to give a mystic turn to their art seems
to me doomed to failure by the essential nature of sculpture. A Western
mind can have little sympathy with the art which has moved most on
mystic lines, the art of India, which in such efforts has abandoned the
search for beauty, and so given up the really artistic point of view.
Mere prettiness no doubt is an unsatisfying ideal: but a loftier beauty,
in harmony with the world around us and the soul within us, is another
thing.
In order that simplicity may be in the highest degree admirable, it must
be combined with two other qualities--intense love of beauty, and the
utmost patience in execution. It must not lead on the one side to a mere
unideal copy of nature, nor on the other to a hasty and slovenly kind of
work.
The figure already mentioned, the Caryatid of the Erechtheum, is a model
of perfect simplicity. For further illustration of the quality I have
chosen the bronze charioteer from Delphi, and the Artemis from Gabii,
now in the Louvre. The former (Fig. 4) is a youth of noble family, clad
in the long dress necessary to protect from the wind a man driving a
chariot. The latter (Fig. 5), a work of the school of Praxiteles,
represents a young girl fastening her dress on her shoulder. Both are as
free as they can be from any attempt at novelty or originality: yet no
one with any taste could for a moment hesitate to pronounce them
admirable. The object of the artist was to make works as perfect as
possible. And to that end he goes straight, without any complication,
and without the least care that others may have done similar works,
against which he must assert originality.
[Illustration: Fig. 4
CHARIOTEER of Delphi]
[Illustration: Fig. 5
ARTEMIS of Gabii]
Beside the two figures I have cited I place a more modern group (Fig.
6), also by a man of genius, Peter Vischer. It has the same simplicity
and the same care in execution as the Greek works, but in beauty it will
not compare with them; and one feels regret that so great an artist
should have spent his powers on so unsuitable a subject as the rivets
and plates of a suit of armour. The lady, though not without charm,
seems artificial and affected beside the exquisite freshness of the girl
of Praxiteles.
[Illustration: Fig. 6. KNIGHT AND LADY
By Peter Vischer]