A PEASANT is striding across a field in the twilight shadow of a
hill. Beyond, where the fold of the hill dips down into the field,
another peasant is driving a team of oxen at a plow. The distant
figures are aglow with golden mellow light, the last light of day,
which deepens the gloom of the shadowing hillside. The sower's cap
is pulled tight about his head, hiding under its shade the unseeing
eyes. The mouth is brutal and grim. The heavy jaw flows down into
the thick, resistive neck. The right arm swings powerfully out,
scattering the grain. The left is pressed to his body; the big, stubborn
hand clutches close the pouch of seed. Action heroic, elemental; the
dumb bearing of the universal burden. In the flex of the shoulder,
the crook of the outstretched arm, the conquering onward stride, is
expressed all the force of that word of the Lord to the first toiler, "In
the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread."
Three men are standing before Millet's canvas.
One recognizes the subject of the picture. With the pleasure of
recognition he notes what the artist has here represented, and he is
interested in the situation. This is a peasant, and he is sowing his
grain. So the onlooker stands and watches the peasant in his
movement, and he _thinks_ about the sower, recalling any sower he
may have read of or seen or known, his own sower rather than the
one that Millet has seen and would show to him. This man's pleasure
in the picture has its place.
The second of the three men is attracted by the qualities of execution
which the work displays, and he is delighted by what he calls the
"actual beauty" of the painting. With eyes close to the canvas he
notes the way Millet has handled his materials, his drawing, his
color, his surfaces and edges, all the knack of the brush-work,
recognizing in his examination of the workmanship of the picture
that though Millet was a very great artist, he was not a great painter,
that the reach of his ideas was not equaled by his technical skill.
Then as the beholder stands back from the canvas to take in the
ensemble, his eye is pleased by the color-harmony, it rests lovingly
upon the balance of the composition, and follows with satisfaction
the rhythmic flow of line. His enjoyment is both intellectual and
sensuous. And that too has its place.
The third spectator, with no thought of the facts around which the
picture is built, not observing the technical execution as such,
unconscious at the moment also of its merely sensuous charm, feels
within himself, "_I_ am that peasant!" In his own spirit is enacted
the agelong world-drama of toil. He sees beyond the bare subject of
the picture; the medium with all its power of sensuous appeal and
satisfaction becomes transparent. The beholder enters into the very
being of the laborer; and as he identifies himself with this other life
outside of him, becoming one with it in spirit and feeling, he adds
just so much to his own experience. In his reception of the meaning
of Millet's painting of the "Sower" he lives more deeply and
abundantly.
It is the last of these three men who stands in the attitude of full and
true appreciation. The first of the three uses the picture simply as a
point of departure; his thought travels away from the canvas, and he
builds up the entire experience out of his own knowledge and store
of associations. The second man comes a little nearer to appreciation,
but even he falls short of full realization, for he stops at the actual
material work itself. His interest in the technical execution and his
pleasure in the sensuous qualities of the medium do not carry him
through the canvas and into the emotion which it was the artist's
purpose to convey. Only he truly appreciates the painting of the
"Sower" who feels something of what Millet felt, partaking of the
artist's experience as expressed by means of the picture, and making
it vitally his own.
But before the appreciator can have brought himself to the point of
perception where he is able to respond directly to the significance of
art and to make the artist's emotion a part of his own emotional
experience, he must needs have traveled a long and rather devious
way. Appreciation is not limited to the exercise of the intellect, as in
the recognition of the subject of a work of art and in the interest
which the technically minded spectator takes in the artist's skill. It
does not end with the gratification of the senses, as with the delight
in harmonious color and rhythmic line and ordered mass. Yet the
intellect and the senses, though they are finally but the channel
through which the artist's meaning flows to reach and rouse the
feelings, nevertheless play their part in appreciation. Between the
spirit of the artist and the spirit of the appreciator stands
the individual work of art as the means of expression and
communication. In the work itself emotion is embodied in material
form. The material which art employs for expression constitutes its
language. Certain principles govern the composition of the work,
certain processes are involved in the making of it, and the result
possesses certain qualities and powers. The processes which enter
into the actual fashioning of the work are both intellectual and
physical, requiring the exercise of the artist's mind in the planning of
the work and in the directing of his hand; so far as the appreciator
concerns himself with them, they address themselves to his intellect.
The finished work in its material aspect possesses qualities which
are perceived by the senses and which have a power of sensuous
delight. Upon these processes and these qualities depends in part the
total character of a work of art, and they must be reckoned with in
appreciation.
In his approach to any work of art, therefore, the layman is
confronted first of all with the problem of the language which the
work employs. Architecture uses as its language the structural
capabilities of its material, as wood or stone, bringing all together
into coherent and serviceable form. Poetry is phrased in words.
Painting employs as its medium color and line and mass. At the
outset, in the case of any art, we have some knowledge of the
signification of its terms. Here is a painting of a sower. Out of
previous experience of the world we easily recognize the subject of
the picture. But whence comes the majesty of this rude peasant, the
dignity august of this rough and toil-burdened laborer, his power to
move us? In addition to the common signification of its terms, then,
language seems to have a further expressiveness, a new meaning
imparted to it by the way in which the artist uses it. In a poem we
know the meaning of the words, but the _poetry_ of it, which we
feel rather than know, is the creation of the poet, wrought out of the
familiar words by his cunning manipulation of them.
"The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.
"Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!"
A drama in twelve lines. These are words of common daily usage,
every one,--for the most part aggressively so. But the romance
which they effuse, the glamour which envelops the commonplace
incident as with an aura, is due to the poet's strategic selection of his
terms, the one right word out of many words that offered, and his
subtle combination of his terms into melody and rhythm. The
wonder of the poet's craft is like the musician's,--
"That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a
star."
A building rises before us; we recognize it as a building, and again
easily we infer the purpose which it serves, that it is a temple or a
dwelling. And then the beauty of it, a power to affect us beyond the
mere feet that it is a building, lays hold upon us, an influence
emanating from it which we do not altogether explain to ourselves.
Simply in its presence we feel that we are pleased. The fact, the
material which the artist uses, exists out there in nature. But the
beauty of the building, the majesty and power of the picture, the
charm of the poem,--this is the _art_ of the artist; and he wins his
effects by the way in which he handles his materials, by his
_technique._ Some knowledge of technique, therefore,--not the
artist's knowledge of it, but the ability to read the language of art as
the artist intends it to be read,--is necessary to appreciation.
The hut which the traveler through a wild country put together to
provide himself shelter against storm and the night was in essence a
work of art. The purpose of his effort was not the hut itself but
shelter, to accomplish which he used the hut as his means. The
emotion of which the work was the expression, in this case the
traveler's consciousness of his need, embodied itself in a concrete
form and made use of material. The hut which he conceived in
response to his need became for him the subject or motive of his
work. For the actual expression of his design he took advantage of
the qualities of his material, its capabilities to combine thus and so;
these inherent qualities were his medium. The material wood and
stone which he employed were the vehicle of his design. The way in
which he handled his vehicle toward the construction of the hut,
availing himself of the qualities and capabilities of his material,
might be called his technique.
The sight of some landscape wakens in the beholder a vivid and
definite emotion; he is moved by it to some form of expression. If he
is a painter he will express his emotion by means of a picture, which
involves in the making of it certain elements and certain processes.
The picture will present selected facts in the landscape; the
landscape, then, as constructed according to the design the painter
has conceived of it, becomes the motive or subject of his picture.
The particular aspects of the landscape which the picture records are
its color and its form. These qualities of color and form are the
painter's medium. An etching of the scene would use not color but
line to express the artist's emotion in its presence; so line is the
medium of etching. But "qualities" of objects are an abstraction
unless they are embodied in material. In order, therefore, to give his
medium actual embodiment the painter uses pigment, as oil-color or
water-color or tempera, laid upon a surface, as canvas, wood, paper,
plaster; this material pigment is his vehicle. The etcher employs
inked scratches upon his plate of zinc or copper, bitten by acid or
scratched directly by the needle; these marks of ink are the vehicle
of etching. To the way in which the artist uses his medium for
practical expression and to his methods in the actual handling of his
vehicle is applied the term technique. The general conception of his
picture, its total design, the choice of motive, the selection of details,
the main scheme of composition,--these belong to the great strategy
of his art. The application of these principles in practice and their
material working out upon his canvas are an affair of tactics and fall
within the province of technique.
The ultimate significance of a work of art is its content of emotion,
the essential controlling idea, which inspires the work and gives it
concrete form. In its actual embodiment, the expressive power of the
work resides in the medium. The medium of any art, then, as color
and mass in painting, line in drawing and etching, form in sculpture,
sound in music, is its means of expression and constitutes its
language. Now the signification of language derives from
convention. Line, for example, which may be so sensitive and so
expressive, is only an abstraction and does not exist in nature. What
the draughtsman renders as line is objectively in fact the boundary
of forms. A head, with all its subtleties of color and light and shade,
may be represented by a pencil or charcoal drawing, black upon a
white surface. It is not the head which is black and white, but
the drawing. Our acceptance of the drawing as an adequate
representation of the head rests upon convention. Writing is an
elementary kind of drawing; the letters of the alphabet were
originally pictures or symbols. So to-day written or printed letters
are arbitrary symbols of sounds, and grouped together in arbitrary
combinations they form words, which are symbols of ideas. The
word _sum_ stood to the old Romans for the idea "I am;" to
English-speaking people the word signifies a "total" and also a problem in
arithmetic. A painting of a landscape does not attempt to imitate the
scene; it uses colors and forms as symbols which serve for
expression. The meaning attaching to these symbols derives from
common acceptance and usage, Japanese painting, rendering the
abstract spirit of movement of a wave, for example, rather than the
concrete details of its surface appearance, differs fundamentally
from the painting of the western world; it is none the less pregnant
with meaning for those who know the convention. To understand
language, therefore, we must understand the convention and accept
its terms. The value of language as a means of expression and
communication depends upon the knowledge, common to the user
and to the person addressed, of the signification of its terms. Its
effectiveness is determined by the way in which it is employed,
involving the choice of terms, as the true line for the false or
meaningless one, the right value or note of color out of many that
would almost do, the exact and specific word rather than the vague
and feeble; involving also the combination of terms into articulate
forms. These ways and methods in the use of language are the
concern of technique. Technique, therefore, plays an important part
in the creation and the ultimate fortunes of the artist's work.
Just here arises a problem for the layman in his approach to art. The
man who says, "I don't know anything about art, but I know what I
like," is a familiar figure in our midst; of such, for the most part, the
"public" of art is constituted. What he really means is, "I don't know
anything about technique, but art interests me. I read books, I go to
concerts and the theatre, I look at pictures; and in a way they have
something for me." If we make this distinction between art and
technique, the matter becomes simplified. The layman does not
himself paint pictures or write books or compose music; his contact
with art is with the purpose of appreciation. Life holds some
meaning for him, as he is engaged in living, and there his chief
interest lies. So art too has a message addressed to him, for art starts
with life and in the end comes back to it. If art is not the expression
of vital feeling, in its turn communicating the feeling to the
appreciator so that he makes it a real part of his experience of life,
then the thing called art is only an exercise in dexterity for the maker
and a pastime for the receiver; it is not art. But art is not quite the
same as life at first hand; it is rather the distillment of it. In order to
render the significance of life as he has perceived and felt it, the
artist selects and modifies his facts; and his work depends for its
expressiveness upon the material form in which the emotion is
embodied. The handling of material to the end of making it
expressive is an affair of technique. The layman may ask himself,
then, To what extent is a knowledge of technique necessary for
appreciation? And how may he win that knowledge?
On his road to appreciation the layman is beset with difficulties.
Most of the talk about art which he hears is either the translation of
picture or sonata into terms of literary sentiment or it is a discussion
of the way the thing is done. He knows at least that painting is not
the same as literature and that music has its own province; he
recognizes that the meaning of pictures is not literary but pictorial,
the meaning of music is musical. But the emphasis laid upon the
manner of execution confuses and disturbs him. At the outset he
frankly admits that he has no knowledge of technical processes as
such. Yet each art must be read in its own language, and each has its
special technical problems. He realizes that to master the technique
of any single art is a career. And yet there are many arts, all of
which may have some message for him in their own kind. If he must
be able to paint in order to enjoy pictures rightly, if he cannot listen
intelligently at a concert without being able himself to compose or at
least to perform, his case for the appreciation of art seems hopeless.
If the layman turns to his artist friends for enlightenment and a little
sympathy, it is possible he may encounter a rebuff. Artists
sometimes speak contemptuously of the public. "A painter," they
say, "paints for painters, not for the people; outsiders know nothing
about painting." True, outsiders know nothing about painting, but
perhaps they know a little about life. If art is more than intellectual
subtlety and manual skill, if art is the expression of something the
artist has felt and lived, then the outsider has after all some standard
for his estimate of art and a basis for his enjoyment. He is able to
determine the value of the work to himself according as it expresses
what he already knows about life or reveals to him fuller
possibilities of experience which he can make his own. He does not
pretend to judge painting; but he feels that he has some right to
appreciate art. In reducing all art to a matter of technique artists
themselves are not quite consistent. My friends Jones, a painter, and
Smith, a composer, do not withhold their opinion of this or that
novel and poem and play, and they discourse easily on the
performances of Mr. James and Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Shaw; but I
have no right to talk about the meaning to me of Jones's picture or
Smith's sonata, for my business is with words, and therefore I cannot
have any concern with painting or with music. To be sure, literature
uses as its vehicle the means of communication of daily life, namely,
words. But the _art_ in literature, the interpretation of life which it
gives us, as distinct from mere entertainment, is no more generally
appreciated than the art in painting. A man's technical
accomplishment may be best understood and valued by his
fellow-workmen in the same craft; and often the estimate set by artists on
their own work is referred to the qualities of its technical execution.
As a classic instance, Raphael sent some of his drawings to Albert
Dürer to "show him his hand." So a painter paints for the painters.
But the artist gives back a new fullness and meaning to life and
addresses all who live. That man is fortunate who does not allow his
progress toward appreciation to be impeded by this confusion of
technique with art.
The emphasis which workers in any art place upon their powers of
execution is for themselves a false valuation of technique, and it
tends to obscure the layman's vision of essentials. Technique is not,
as it would seem, the whole of art, but only a necessary part. A work
of art in its creation involves two elements,--the idea and the
execution. The idea is the emotional content of the work; the
execution is the practical expressing of the idea by means of the
medium and the vehicle. The idea of Millet's "Sower" is the emotion
attending his conception of the laborer rendered in visual terms; the
execution of the picture is exhibited in the composition, the color,
the drawing, and the actual brush-work. So, too, the artist himself is
constituted by two qualifications, which must exist together: first,
the power of the subject over the artist; and second, the artist's
power over his subject. The first of these without the second results
simply in emotion which does not come to expression as art. The
second without the first produces sham art; the semblance of art may
be fashioned by technical skill, but the life which inspires art is
wanting. The artist, then, may be regarded in a dual aspect. He is
first a temperament and a mind, capable of feeling intensely and
able to integrate his emotions into unified coherent form; in this
aspect he is essentially the _artist_. Secondly, for the expression of
his idea he brings to bear on the execution of his work his command
of the medium, his intellectual adroitness and his manual skill; in
this aspect he is the _technician_. Every artist has a special kind of
means with which he works, requiring knowledge and dexterity; but
it may be assumed that in addition to his ability to express himself
he has something to say. We may test a man's merit as a painter by
his ability to paint. As an artist his greatness is to be judged with
reference to the greatness of his ideas; and in his capacity as artist
his technical skill derives its value from the measure in which it is
adequate to their expression. In the case of an accomplished pianist
or violinist we take his proficiency of technique for granted, and we
ask, What, with all this power of expression at his command, has he
to say? In his rendering of the composer's work what has he of his
own to contribute by way of interpretation? Conceding at once to Mr.
Sargent his supreme competence as a painter, his consummate
mastery of all his means, we ask, What has he seen in this man or
this woman before him worthy of the exercise of such skill? In terms
of the personality he is interpreting, what has he to tell us of the
beauty and scope of life and to communicate to us of larger
emotional experience? The worth of technique is determined, not by
its excellence as such, but by its efficiency for expression.
It is difficult for an outsider to understand why painters, writers,
sculptors, and the rest, who are called artists in distinction from the
ordinary workman, should make so much of their skill. Any man
who works freely and with joy takes pride in his performance. And
instinctively we have a great respect for a good workman. Skill is
not confined to those who are engaged in what is conventionally
regarded as art. Indeed, the distinction implied in favor of "art" is
unjust to the wide range of activities of familiar daily life into which
the true art spirit may enter. A bootblack who polishes his shoes as
well as he can, not merely because he is to be paid for it, though too
he has a right to his pay, but because that is his work, his means of
expression, even he works in the spirit of an artist. Extraordinary
skill is often developed by those who are quite outside the pale of art.
In a circus or music-hall entertainment we may see a man throw
himself from a trapeze swinging high in air, and after executing a
double somersault varied by complex lateral gyrations, catch the
extended arms of his partner, who is hanging by his knees on
another flying bar. Or a man leaning backwards over a chair shoots
at a distance of fifty paces a lump of sugar from between the
foreheads of two devoted assistants. Such skill presupposes
intelligence. Of the years of training and practice, of the sacrifice
and the power of will, that have gone to the accomplishment of this
result, the looker-on can form but little conception. These men are
not considered artists. Yet a painter who uses his picture to exhibit a
skill no more wonderful than theirs would be grieved to be
accounted an acrobat or a juggler. Only such skill as is employed in
the service of expression is to be reckoned with as an element in art;
and in art it is of value not for its own sake but as it serves its
purpose. The true artist subordinates his technique to expression,
justly making it a means and not the end. He cares for the
significance of his idea more than for his sleight of hand; he effaces
his skill for his art.
A recognition of the skill exhibited in the fashioning of a work of art,
however, if seen in its right relation to the total scope of the work, is
a legitimate source of pleasure. Knowledge of any subject brings its
satisfactions. To understand with discerning insight the workings of
any process, whether it be the operation of natural laws, as in
astronomy or chemistry, whether it be the construction of a
locomotive, the playing of a game of foot-ball, or the painting of a
picture, to see the "wheels go round" and know the how and the
wherefore,--undeniably this is a source of pleasure. In the
understanding of technical processes, too, there is a further occasion
of enjoyment, differing somewhat from the satisfaction which
follows in the train of knowledge.
"There is a pleasure in poetic pains
Which only poets know,"
says the poet Cowper. There is a pleasure in the sense of difficulties
overcome known only to those who have tried to overcome them.
But such enjoyment--the pleasure which comes with enlightened
recognition and the pleasure of mastery and triumph--derives from
an intellectual exercise and is not to be confounded with the full
appreciation of art. Art, finally, is not the "how" but the "what" in
terms of its emotional significance. Our pleasure in the result, in the
design itself, is not the same as our pleasure in the skill that
produced the work. The design, with the message that it carries, not
the making of it, is the end of art.
Too great preoccupation with technique conflicts with full
appreciation. To fix the attention upon the manner of expression is
to lose the meaning. A style which attracts notice to itself is in so far
forth bad style, because it defeats its own end, which is expression;
but beyond this, our interest in technical execution is purely
intellectual, whereas art reaches the emotions. At the theatre a critic
sits unmoved; dispassionately he looks upon the personages of the
drama, as they advance, retreat, and countermarch, little by little
yielding up their secret, disclosing all the subtle interplay of human
motives. From the heights of his knowledge the critic surveys the
spectacle; with an insight born of his learning, he penetrates the
mysteries of the playwright's craft. He knows what thought and skill
have gone into this result; he knows the weary hours of toil, the
difficulties of invention and selection, the heroic rejections, the
intricacies of construction, the final triumph. He sees it all from the
point of view of the master-workman, and sympathetically he
applauds his success; his recognition of what has been accomplished
is his pleasure. But all the while he has remained on the outside. Not
for a moment has he become a party to the play. He brings to it
nothing of his own feeling and power of response. There has been
no union of his spirit with the artist's spirit,--that union in which a
work of art achieves its consummation. The man at his side, with no
knowledge or thought of how the effect has been won, surrenders
himself to the illusion. These people on the stage are more intensely
and vividly real to him than in life itself; the artist has distilled the
significance of the situation and communicates it to him as emotion.
The man's reaction is not limited to the exercise of his intellect,--he
gives himself. In the experience which the dramatist conveys to him
beautifully, shaping discords into harmony and disclosing their
meaning for the spirit, he lives.
A true artist employs his medium as an instrument of expression;
and he values his own technical skill in the handling of it according
to the measure that he is enabled thereby to express himself more
effectively. On the layman's part so much knowledge of technique is
necessary as makes it possible for him to understand the artist's
language and the added expressiveness wrought out of language by
the artist's cunning use of it. And such knowledge is not beyond his
reach.
In order to understand the meaning of any language we must first
understand the signification of its terms, and then we must know
something of the ways in which they may be combined into
articulate forms of expression. The terms of speech are words; in
order to speak coherently and articulately we must group words into
sentences according to the laws of the tongue to which they belong.
Similarly, every art has its terms, or "parts of speech," and its
grammar, or the ways in which the terms are combined. The terms
of painting are color and form, the terms of music are tones. Colors
and forms are brought together into harmony and balance that by
their juxtaposition they may be made expressive and beautiful.
Tones are woven into a pattern according to principles of harmony,
melody, and rhythm, and they become music. When technique is
turned to such uses, not for the vainglory of a virtuoso, but for the
service of the artist in his earnest work of expression, then it
identifies itself with art.
A knowledge of the signification of the terms of art the layman may
win for himself by a recognition of the expressive power of all
material and by sensitiveness to it. The beholder will not respond to
the appeal of a painting of a landscape unless he has himself felt
something of the charm or glory of landscape in nature; he will not
quicken and expand to the dignity or force caught in rigid marble
triumphantly made fluent in statue or relief until he has realized for
himself the significance of form and movement which exhales from
every natural object. Gesture is a universal language. The mighty
burden of meaning in Millet's picture of the "Sower" is carried by
the gesture of the laborer as he swings across the background of
field and hill, whose forms also are expressive; here, too, the
elemental dignity of form and movement is reinforced by the
solemnity of the color. Gesture is but one of nature's characters
wherewith she inscribes upon the vivid, shifting surface of the world
her message to the spirit of man. A clue to the understanding of the
terms of art, therefore, is found in the layman's own appreciation of
the emotional value of all objects of sense and their multitudinous
power of utterance,--the sensitive decision of line, the might or
delicacy of form, the splendor and subtlety of color, the magic of
sound, the satisfying virtue of harmony in whatever embodiment, all
the beauty of nature, all the significance of human life. And this
appreciation is to be won largely by the very experience of it. The
more we feel, the greater becomes our power for deeper feeling.
Every emotion to which we thrill is the entrance into larger capacity
of emotion. We may allow for growth and trust to the inevitable
working of its laws. In the appreciation of both life and art the
individual may be his own teacher by experience.
The qualities of objects with their inherent emotional values
constitute the raw material of art, to be woven by the artist into a
fabric of expressive form and texture. Equipped with a knowledge of
the terms of any art, the layman has yet to understand something of
the ways in which the terms may be combined. Every artist has his
idiom or characteristic style. Rembrandt on the flat surface of his
canvas secures the illusion of form in the round by a system of light
and shade; modeling is indicated by painting the parts in greater
relief in light and the parts in less relief in shadow. Manet renders
the relief of form by a system of "values," or planes of more and less
light. The local color of objects is affected by the amount of light
they receive and the distance an object or part of an object is from
the eye of the spectator. Manet paints with degrees of light, and he
wins his effects, not by contrasts of color, but by subtle modulations
within a given hue. Landscape painters before the middle of the
nineteenth century, working with color in masses, secured a total
harmony by bringing all their colors, mixed upon the palette, into
the same key. The "Luminarists," like Claude Monet, work with
little spots or points of color laid separately upon the canvas; the
fusion of these separate points into the dominant tone is made by the
eye of the beholder. The characteristic effect of a work of art is
determined by the way in which the means are employed. Some
knowledge, therefore, of the artist's aims as indicated in his method
of working is necessary to a full understanding of what he wants to
say.
In his effort to understand for his own purposes of appreciation what
the artist has accomplished by his technique, the layman may first of
all distinguish between processes and results. A landscape in nature
is beautiful to the beholder because he perceives in it some harmony
of color and form which through the eye appeals to the emotions.
His vision does not transmit every fact in the landscape;
instinctively his eye in its sweep over meadow and trees and hill
selects those details that compose. By this act of _integration_ he is
for himself in so far forth an artist. If he were a painter he would
know what elements in the landscape to put upon his canvas. But he
has no skill in the actual practice of drawing and of handling the
brush, no knowledge of mixing colors and matching tones; he
understands nothing of perspective and "values" and the relations of
light and shade. He knows only what he sees, that the landscape as
he sees it is beautiful; and equally he recognizes as beautiful the
presentment of it upon canvas. He is ignorant of the technical
problems with which the painter in practice has had to contend in
order to reach this result; it is the result only that is of concern to
him in so far as it is or is not what he desires. The painter's color is
significant to him, not because he knows how to mix the color for
himself, but because that color in nature has spoken to him
unutterable things and he has responded to it. The layman cannot
make a sunset and he cannot paint a picture; but he can enjoy both.
So he cares, then, rather for what the painter has done than for how
he has done it, because the processes do not enter into his own
experience. The picture has a meaning for him in the measure that it
expresses what he perceives and feels, and that is the beauty of the
landscape.
Any knowledge of technical processes which the layman may
happen to possess may be a source of intellectual pleasure. But for
appreciation, only so much understanding of technique is necessary
as enables him to receive the message of a given work in the degree
of expressiveness which the artist by his use of his medium has
attained. A clue to this understanding may come to him by intuition,
by virtue of his own native insight and intelligence. He may gain it
by reading or by instruction. He may go out and win it by intrepid
questioning of those who know; and it is to be hoped that such will
be very patient with him, for after all even a layman has the right to
live. Once started on the path, then, in the mysteries of art as in the
whole complex infinite business of living, he becomes his own tutor
by observation and experience; and he may develop into a fuller
knowledge in obedience to the law of growth. Each partial clue to
understanding brings him a step farther on his road; each new
glimmer of insight beckons him to ultimate illumination. Though
baffled at the outset, yet patient under disappointment, undauntedly
he pushes on in spite of obstacles, until he wins his way at last to
true appreciation.
If the layman seeks a standard by which to test the value of any
technical method, he finds it in the success of the work itself. Every
method is to be judged in and for itself on its own merits, and not as
better or worse than some other method. Individually we may prefer
Velasquez to Frans Hals; Whistler may minister to our personal
satisfaction in larger measure than Mr. Sargent; we may enjoy Mr.
James better than Stevenson; Richard Strauss may stir us more
deeply than Brahms. We do not affirm thereby that impressionism is
inherently better than realism, or that subtlety is more to be desired
than strength; the psychological novel is not necessarily greater than
romance; because of our preference "programme music" is not
therefore more significant than "absolute music." The greatness of
an artist is established by the greatness of his ideas, adequately
expressed. And the value of any technical method is determined by
its own effectiveness for expression.
There is, then, no invariable standard external to the work itself by
which to judge technique. For no art is final. A single work is the
manifestation of beauty as the individual artist has conceived or felt
it. The perception of what is beautiful varies from age to age and
with each person. So, too, standards of beauty in art change with
each generation; commonly they are deduced from the practice of
preceding artists. Classicism formulates rules from works that have
come to be recognized as beautiful, and it requires of the artist
conformity to these rules. By this standard, which it regards as
absolute, it tries a new work, and it pretends to adjudge the work
good or bad according as it meets the requirements. Then a Titan
emerges who defies the canons, wrecks the old order, and in his own
way, to the despair or scorn of his contemporaries, creates a work
which the generation that follows comes to see is beautiful. "Every
author," says Wordsworth, "as far as he is great and at the same time
_original,_ has had the task of creating the taste by which he is to be
enjoyed." Wordsworth in his own generation was ridiculed; Millet,
when he ceased painting nudes for art-dealers' windows and
ventured to express himself, faced starvation. Every artist is in some
measure an innovator; for his own age he is a romanticist. But the
romanticist of one age becomes a classic for the next; and his
performance in its turn gives laws to his successors. Richard Strauss,
deriving in some sense from Wagner, makes the older man seem a
classic and conservative. Then a new mind again is raised up, a new
temperament, with new needs; and these shape their own adequate
new expression. "The cleanest expression," says Whitman, "is that
which finds no sphere worthy of itself and makes one." As all life is
growth, as there are no bounds to the possibilities of human
experience, so the workings of the art-impulse cannot be
compressed within the terms of a hard and narrow definition, and
any abstract formula for beauty is in the very nature of things
foredoomed to failure. No limit can be set to the forms in which
beauty may be made manifest.
"The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters
of beauty." And Whitman's own verse is a notable example of a new
technique forged in response to a new need of expression. Dealing
as he did with the big basic impulses of common experience
accessible to all men, Whitman needed a largeness and freedom of
expression which he did not find in the accepted and current poetic
forms. To match the limitlessly diversified character of the people,
occupations, and aspirations of "these States," as yet undeveloped
but vital and inclosing the seed of unguessed-at possibilities, to tally
the fluid, indeterminate, outward-reaching spirit of democracy and a
new world, the poet required a medium of corresponding scope and
flexibility, all-inclusive and capable of endless modulation and
variety. Finding none ready to his hand, he created it. Not that
Whitman did not draw for his resources on the great treasury of
world-literature; and he profited by the efforts and achievement of
predecessors. But the form in his hands and as he uses it is new.
Whatever we may think of the success of his total accomplishment,
there are very many passages to which we cannot deny the name of
poetry. Nor did Whitman work without conscious skill and
deliberate regard for technical processes. His note-books and papers
reveal the extreme calculation and pains with which he wrote,
beginning with the collection of synonyms applying to his idea and
mood, and so building them up gradually, with many erasures,
corrections, and substitutions, into the finished poem. Much of the
vigor of his style is due to his escape from conventional literary
phrase-making and his return to the racy idiom of common life. His
verse, apparently inchoate and so different from classical poetic
forms, is shaped with a cunning incredible skill. And more than that,
it is art, in that it is not a bare statement of fact, but communicates to
us the poet's emotion, so that we realize the emotion in ourselves.
When his purpose is considered, it is seen that no other technique
was possible. His achievement proves that a new need creates its
own means of expression.
What is true of Whitman in respect to his technique is true in greater
or less degree of every artist, working in any form. It is true of
Pheidias, of Giotto and Michelangelo and Rembrandt, of Dante and
Shakespeare, of Beethoven and Wagner, of Monet, of Rodin, in fine,
from the beginnings of art to the day that now is. All have created
out of existing forms of expression their own idiom and way of
working. Every artist owes something to his predecessors, but
language is re-created in the hands of each master and becomes a
new instrument. There can be then no single formula for technical
method nor any fixed and final standard of judgment.
An artist himself is justified from his own point of view in his
concern with technique, for upon his technique depends his
effectiveness of expression. His practice serves to keep alive the
language and to develop its resources. Art in its concrete
manifestations is an evolution. From Velasquez through Goya to
Manet and Whistler is a line of inheritance. But a true artist
recognizes that technique is only a means. As an artist he is seeking
to body forth in external form the vision within, and he tries to make
his medium "faithful to the coloring of his own spirit." Every artist
works out his characteristic manner; but the progress must be from
within outwards. Toward the shaping of his own style he is helped
by the practice of others, but he is helped and not hindered only in
so far as the manner of others can be made genuinely the expression
of his own feeling. Direct borrowing of a trick of execution and
servile imitation of a style have no place in true art. A painter who
would learn of Velasquez should study the master's technique, not
that in the end he may paint like Velasquez, but that he may
discover just what it was that the master, by means of his individual
style, was endeavoring to express, and so bring to bear on his own
environment here in America to-day the same ability to see and the
same power of sympathetic and imaginative penetration that
Velasquez brought to his environment at the court of seventeenth-century
Spain. The way to paint like Velasquez is to be Velasquez. No man
is a genius by imitation. Every man may seek to be a master
in his own right. Technique does not lead; it follows. Style is the
man.
From within outwards. Art is the expression of sincere and vital
feeling; the material thing, picture, statue, poem, which the artist
conjures into being is only a means. The moment art is worshiped
for its own sake, that moment decadence begins. "No one," says
Leonardo, "will ever be a great painter who takes as his guide the
paintings of other men." In general the history of art exhibits this
course. In the beginning arises a man of deep and genuine feeling,
the language at whose command, however, has not been developed
to the point where it is able to carry the full burden of his meaning.
Such a man is Giotto; and we have the "burning messages of
prophecy delivered by the stammering lips of infants." In the
generations which supervene, artists with less fervor of spirit but
with growing skill of hand, increased with each inheritance, turn
their efforts to the development of their means. The names of this
period of experiment and research are Masaccio, Uccello, Pollaiuolo,
Verrocchio. At length, when the fullness of time is come, emerges
the master-mind, of original insight and creative power. Heir to the
technical achievements of his predecessors, he is able to give his
transcendent idea its supremely adequate expression. Content is
perfectly matched by form. On this summit stand Michelangelo,
Raphael, Leonardo. Then follow the Carracci, Domenichino,
Guercino, Guido Reni, Carlo Dolci, men who mistake the master's
manner for his meaning. The idea, the vital principle, has spent itself.
The form only is left, and that is elaborated into the exuberance of
decay. Painters find their impulse no longer in nature and life but in
paint. Technique is made an end in itself. And art is dead, to be
reborn in another shape and guise.
The relation of technique to appreciation in the experience of the
layman begins now to define itself. Technique serves the artist for
efficient expression; an understanding of it is of value to the layman
in so far as the knowledge helps him to read the artist's language and
thus to receive his message. Both for artist and for layman technique
is only a means. Out of his own intelligent and patient experience
the layman can win his way to an understanding of methods; and his
standard of judgment, good enough for his own purposes, is the
degree of expressiveness which the work of art, by virtue of its
qualities of execution, is able to achieve. Skill may be enjoyed
intellectually for its own sake as skill; in itself it is not art.
Technique is most successful when it is least perceived. _Ars celare
artem:_ art reveals life and conceals technique. We must understand
something of technique and then forget it in appreciation. When we
thrill to the splendor and glory of a sunset we are not thinking of the
laws of refraction. Appreciation is not knowledge, but emotion.