THE ARTIST. The impulse to command comes first--the impulse to just
show that stick who is master! the desire to impose your imperial
will upon it. I suppose you might call it Vanity. And that impulse
alone would result in your making something fantastic and grotesque
or strikingly absurd--and yet beautiful in its way. But it is met and
checked by the other impulse--the impulse to obey. No man that ever
whittled wood but has felt that impulse. He feels that he must not do
simply what he wants to do, but also what the wood _wants done_ to it.
The real artist does not care to treat marble as if it were soft, nor
paint and canvas as though they were three-dimensional. He could if he
wanted to--but he respects his medium. There is an instinctive pleasure
in letting it have its way. I suppose you might call it Reverence. And
this Vanity and this Reverence, the desire to command and the desire
to obey, when they are set free in the dream and effort of creation,
produce something which is more than useful. That _something more_
is what we call Beauty.--Do you care to have me go further into the
mechanics of beauty?
THE QUESTIONER. Well--er--I suppose now that we have got this far into
the subject, we might as well get to the end of it. Go on!
THE ARTIST. What I am about to tell you is the only really important
thing about art. Unfortunately, the facts at issue have never been
studied by first-class scientific minds, and so they lack a proper
terminology to make them clear. In default of such a scientific
terminology, we are forced to use the word “rhythm” in the special
sense in which artists understand it. You speak of the movements of
a dance as being rhythmic. The artist understands the word to refer
to the relation of these movements to each other and above all to the
emotion which they express. And to him the whole world is a dance,
full of rhythmic gestures. The gesture of standing still, or of being
asleep, is also rhythmic; the body is itself a gesture--he will speak
of the rhythm of the line of a lifted arm or a bent knee. Trees that
lift their branches to the sky, and rocks that sleep on the ground
have their rhythms--every tree and every rock its own special rhythm.
The rhythm of a pine tree is different from that of a palm--the rhythm
of granitic rocks different from that of limestone. So far the matter
is simple enough. But the relations of these rhythms to each other
are also rhythmic. These relations are in fact so manifold that they
constitute a chaos. But in this chaos each person feels a different
rhythm; and, according as he has the power, transmits his sense of
it to us through a rhythmic treatment of his medium. In the presence
of his work, we feel what he has felt about the world; but we feel
something more than that--we feel also the rhythm of the struggle in
the artist between his impulse to command and his impulse to obey. Our
own impulses of vanity and of reverence go out to welcome his power and
his faithfulness. And just as there are gay rhythms and sad rhythms in
the gesture of movement, so there are magnificent rhythms and trivial
rhythms in the gesture of a soul facing the chaos of the world. What
has he found worth while to play with, and how has he played with it?
What kind of creator is he? Ability to feel and express significant
rhythm--that is nine-tenths of art.
THE QUESTIONER. But my dear fellow, how are we to teach all this to
children?
THE ARTIST. Very simply: by giving them a knife and a piece of wood.
THE QUESTIONER. Well, really!
THE ARTIST. And crayons and clay and singing-games and so forth.--But
perhaps you prefer to show them pictures of alleged masterpieces, and
tell them, “This is great art!” They will believe you, of course; and
they will hate great art ever afterwards--just as they hate great
poetry, and for the same excellent reason: because, presented to
them in that way, it is nothing but a damned nuisance. Yet the child
who enjoys hearing and telling a story has in him the capacity to
appreciate and perhaps to create the greatest of stories; and the
child who enjoys whittling a block of wood has in him the capacity to
appreciate and perhaps to create the greatest art!
THE QUESTIONER. Then you do not think children can be taught to
appreciate art by looking at photographic reproductions of it?
THE ARTIST. I would hardly expect a Fiji Islander to become an
appreciator of civilized music by letting him look at my phonograph
records. The dingy-brownish photograph of a gloriously colored painting
has even less educational value--for it lies about the original. Do you
know that there are thousands and thousands of American school children
who think that the great masterpieces of the world’s painting are the
color of axle-grease? They are never told that their own free efforts
with colored crayons are more like Botticelli in every sense than any
photograph could possibly be; but it is true.
THE QUESTIONER. But don’t you want them to _respect_ Botticelli?
THE ARTIST. No. I want them to look at Botticelli’s pictures as they
look at those of another child--free to criticize, free to dislike,
free to scorn. For only when you are free to despise, are you free to
admire. After all, who was Botticelli? Another child. Perhaps they may
prefer Goya--
THE QUESTIONER. Or the Sunday comic supplement!
THE ARTIST. A healthy taste. And if they know what drawing is, though
having used a pencil themselves, they will prefer the better comic
pictures to the worse, and be ready to appreciate Goya and Daumier--who
were the super-Sunday-supplement comic artists of their day.
THE QUESTIONER. Left to themselves they may come to like Goya, as
you say; but will they ever come to appreciate such a masterpiece as
Leonardo’s Last Supper without some more formal teaching?
THE ARTIST. Do you call it “teaching” to talk solemnly to children
in language they cannot understand? If they are making pictures
themselves, and being assisted in their enthusiastic experiments by a
real artist instead of a teacher, they will naturally wonder why their
friend should have the photograph of the Last Supper in the portfolio
from which he is always taking out some picture in order to illustrate
his answers to their questions. And having wondered, they will ask why,
and their friend will tell them; and perhaps they will get some of
their friends enthusiasm, and perhaps not. But they will know that the
real human being who is like themselves _does_ like that picture.
THE QUESTIONER. But it makes no difference whether _they_ like it or
not?
THE ARTIST. You can’t compel them to like it, can you? You can only
compel them to pretend that they do.
THE QUESTIONER. Can’t you teach them what is called “good taste”?
THE ARTIST. Only too easily. And their “good taste” will lead them
infallibly to prefer the imitations of what they have been taught to
praise, and quite as infallibly to reject the great new art of their
generation. They will think some new Whistler a pot of paint flung in
the public’s face, and the next Cezanne a dauber.
THE QUESTIONER. Then you don’t approve of good taste!
THE ARTIST. Every artist despises it, and the people who have it. We
know quite well that the people who pretend to like Titian and Turner,
because they have been carefully taught that it is the thing to do,
would have turned up their noses at Titian and Turner in their own
day--because they were not on the list of dead artists whom it was
the fashion to call great; they know moreover that these same people
of good taste are generally incapable of distinguishing between a
beautiful and an ugly wall-paper, between a beautiful and an ugly
plate, or even between a beautiful and an ugly necktie! Outside the
bounds of their memorized list, they have no taste whatever.
THE QUESTIONER. Cannot good taste be taught so as to include the whole
of life?
THE ARTIST. It would take too much time. And thank God for that! For
good taste is simply a polite pretense by which we cover up our lack of
that real sense of beauty which comes only from intimate acquaintance
with creative processes. The most cultivated people in the world
cannot produce beauty by merely having notions about it. But the most
uncultivated people in the world cannot help producing beauty if only
they have time to dream as they work--if only they have freedom to let
their work become something besides utilitarian.
THE QUESTIONER. You think, then, that education should not concern
itself with good taste, but rather with creative effort?
THE ARTIST. Exactly.
THE QUESTIONER. You say that children are artists already?
THE ARTIST. And that artists are children.
THE QUESTIONER. Then the task of education in respect to them would
seem to be easy!
THE ARTIST. No--on the contrary, infinitely hard!
THE QUESTIONER. What do you mean?
The Artist. I have said that children are artists and that artists are
children. The task of education is to help them to _grow up_.
THE QUESTIONER. New difficulties!
THE ARTIST. And tremendous ones! But if I am to discuss them, you must
keep still for a while and let me talk in my own fashion.
--Very well, ladies and gentlemen. Shall we adjourn for lunch, and when
we reassemble here give the Artist the platform for half an hour? What
is the sentiment of the meeting? The Ayes have it.