THE INS AND THE OUTS
There are two types of human temperament and attitude which manifest
themselves in the world’s art product: the Art of Beauty and the Art of
Power.
The Art of Beauty is produced by ruling classes when they are
established and safe, and wish to be entertained, and to have their
homes and surroundings set apart from the common mass. I do not mean
that simple and primitive people do not produce beauty of a naïve sort;
but for such art to develop and mature, it must be taken up by the
privileged classes, patronizing and encouraging the artist, and making
his work a form of class distinction. The fact that the men who produce
this art have come from the people is a fact of no significance; for the
ruling classes take what they want where they find it, and shape it to
their own class ends. The characteristics of the Art of Beauty, whether
in painting, or sculpture, or music, or words, or actions, are those of
rest and serenity, pleasure in things as they actually exist; also
clarity of form--because the leisure-class artist has time to study
technique, and knows what he wants to do.
In every human society there is one group which controls, and another
which struggles for control; the “ins” versus the “outs,” the “haves”
versus the “have-nots.” In every well-developed civilization this latter
class will be strong enough to have its art, which is apt to be crude
and instinctive, full of surging, half-expressed and half-realized
emotion. Such art lays stress upon substance, rather than form; it aims,
or at any rate tends, to arouse to action; and so we call it the Art of
Power.
This is the art which is generally described as “propaganda” by
established criticism; the distinction being, as we have previously
explained, itself a piece of propaganda. The Art of Beauty is equally
propaganda; it is the gas-barrage of the “haves,” and the essence of its
deadliness lies in the fact that it looks so little like a weapon. But
to me it seems clear enough that when a leisure-class artist portrays
the graces and refinements of the civilization which maintains him, when
he paints the noble features, and quotes the imaginary golden words of
ruling-class ladies and gentlemen, he is doing the best he knows how to
protect those who give him a living. Nor is he, as a rule, without some
awareness of the harsh and rough and dangerous forces which surround
him, besieging the ivory tower, or the temple, or the sacred grove, or
wherever it is that he keeps his working tools. But even where the
artist is instinctive and naïve, the class which employs him knows what
he is doing; it knows what is “safe and sane,” and “of sound tendency”;
it approves of such art, and pays its money to maintain such art.
Unless the society is stagnant, like China, its social life is marked by
changes of power. The revolutionary classes succeed, and replace the old
rulers; whereupon we note at once a change in their art. Those who were
dissatisfied now find peace; those whose emotions overwhelmed them now
find themselves able to order their thoughts; those who were interested
in what they had to say now achieve triumphs of technique; in short,
those who were producing an Art of Power now begin to produce an Art of
Beauty. And so we are in position to understand what happened to
Christian art, when the martyrs and the saints broke into “good
society.”
The Roman Empire fell about five hundred years after Christ, and for
another five hundred years the Italian peninsula was a battle-ground of
invading barbarian hordes. When finally things settled down, the land
was held by a great number of feudal princes and plundering groups,
having their lairs in castles and walled cities. Christianity was the
official religion, and abbots and bishops and popes were robber chiefs
commanding armies. In between their military campaigns they took their
pleasures like other princes; and among their pleasures were those of
art.
The inner emotions which Christianity cultivated were free to those who
sought them in monks’ cells and hermits’ caves, but they could not be
purchased nor rented out, and they wilted in the atmosphere of palaces
and courts. So gradually we find Italian religious art undergoing a
change. The saints become gentlemen of refinement wearing scholars’
robes; Jesus becomes a heavenly prince, in spotless linen garments and a
golden crown, casting benevolent looks upon the clergy; the Virgin Mary
becomes the favorite mistress of a duke or abbot or pope--or perhaps the
painter’s own mistress. This latter arrangement is common, for business
reasons easy to understand. The lady is at hand, and has nothing to do
while the painter is painting; he gets the service of a model free, he
flatters his lady love’s vanity, and at the same time he keeps her safe
from other painters. So the poison of luxury creeps into what is
supposed to be religious art; and we see the symbols of martyrdom and
holy sacrifice employed to glorify the vanities and cloak the vices of
the predatory classes.
But the soul of man never dies; it goes on struggling for justice and
brotherhood, in spite of all betrayal and persecution. So inside the
church and outside comes a long line of heroic souls, fighting to
restore the primitive simplicity and honesty of the faith. The struggle
between the “ins” and the “outs,” the “haves” and the “have-nots,” takes
the form of heresy and schism, of mendicant and preaching orders and
Protestant sects. Young and obscure servants of God arise, denouncing
the corruption of the church machine. Some retire to monasteries,
spurning the wicked world; others take literally the words of Jesus, and
go out upon the road without scrip or cloak, preaching to whoever will
hear them, and living on charity. They are denounced and excommunicated,
their followers are slaughtered by the tens and hundreds of thousands;
but the movement persists, and when the leaders die they are canonized,
and become in their turn themes for artists--to be “idealized,” and
dressed in spotless raiment, and made fit for stained glass windows and
the art galleries of prelates and princes. St. Francis of Assisi in the
thirteenth century, putting on beggar’s clothing and being publicly
disinherited by his father; Savonarola in the fifteenth century,
persuading the rich to throw their jewels into the flames, and being
publicly hanged in Florence; Martin Luther in the sixteenth century,
preaching against the sale of indulgences and nailing his theses to the
church door; George Fox in the eighteenth century, crying out against
priestly corruption in the streets, and jailed time after time; Bishop
Brown in the twentieth century, kicked out of the Episcopal church for
repudiating dogma and defending Communism--such are the figures which
have kept the Christian religion alive, and such are the themes of vital
religious art.