correspondence on the Lord Mayor’s show. Though we may not approve
of its present symbolism or its artistic taste always (and I have
always wondered that a tableau representing Wat Tyler, who struck a
blow for English freedom and the worker in the fourteenth century,
prostrate at the feet of Lord Mayor Walworth was allowed to proceed
through the streets of London), still the fact remains that it is the
one free, popular, open-air spectacle for the people of London, and a
historic relic of great interest; and since it brings people together
in good-humoured crowds it cannot be an anti-social function. Much
more might be made of it if its organisers were inspired by popular
sympathies. It might be at once made more beautiful, more instructive,
and more significant, and I should suggest that the money now spent
on the banquet might be devoted to improving the show as a popular
spectacle; spectacles and processions always will be popular. It is
not as if the community--except perhaps the business part--would gain
anything by the suppression of the show, whereas the poor would lose
what is evidently an excitement and a pleasure.
Few sights are more impressive than the vast processions of workmen
marching to the park with their bands and banners on one of those great
occasions of demonstration or protest, which become so important and
so necessary from time to time. Here, at least, is one of the artistic
aspects of democracy which is likely to increase with the growth of
true democratic institutions, and which affords in the design of
banners and emblems the highest scope for emblematic and decorative art.
Processions as a means of propaganda, too, would be no bad thing. A
series of groups illustrating the progress of political liberty and
social progress from the earliest times to the present, for instance,
or the relations of labour and capital (as in our elephant and
tortoise), would afford splendid dramatic and picturesque material, and
there are still a sufficiently large number of people who take in more
ideas through their eyes than by any other door of the brain luckily.
This fact is at least taken advantage of by the advertising tradesman,
not so much from a love of art, but with a view to gain his private
ends; and so we allow a perfect epidemic of posters and puffery to
pursue us everywhere with their vulgar effrontery and hideous forms
and colours, from the streets to the stations, from the platform into
the railway carriages, trams, buses, in wearisome iteration; or even
to cram themselves impertinently between the leaves of the magazine or
book we are reading. Well, we can but hope that posters are not the
last word in mural decoration, and that perhaps another generation
may think it worth while, instead of throwing away labour and skill
in pasting every temporary boarding with flagrant announcements
and sensational eye-sores, which must come out of the cost price of
the articles puffed, to endeavour to relieve the monotony of our
house-fronts with some attempt at beauty of design or colour for its
own sake.
I have been dwelling on some of the characteristics of our present
transitional state of society. “Now is the winter of our discontent,”
but the spring will surely come. The new leaves are ever ready to
spring from the shrivelled husk. New ideas, new forces, are at work
which are destined to change the face of the earth. We may look either
to the past or the future, but it is to the future we must look to
realise the true ideal democracy--not a commercial, but a social
democracy; the first business of which will be to take care of human
life itself, and its conditions; to see that the tree is nourished at
the roots before we ask for flower or fruit; to raise the standard of
life all round; to make the present extremes of poverty on the one
hand and luxury on the other impossible; to set up a new ideal of
life--simple, but by no means ascetic, which will provide work, as
well as full opportunity for leisure and cultivation of individual
abilities; which will aim at the organisation of such a system of
labour that the useful work of the community shall never press unduly
upon one class; and which will not find it tolerable that the price
of the comfort and enjoyment of one class should be the degradation
of another. No, let our aim be _the abolition of class_ and the
establishment of a truly human society of equals; enough for us if
a man is true to his manhood and a woman to her womanhood--and what
prouder title or higher praise is possible if we consider this true
meaning in all the relations of life?--with full scope for those
infinite varieties of talent and character which are sure to assert
themselves. Faithful service to the community according to the capacity
of each the only compulsion, in exchange for all the possibilities
which a full and human life may afford, stimulated by friendly
emulation in the true service of man.
Every one who contends for human freedom, for justice, and regulates
his actions as far as he is able on the principles of equality and
fraternity, which are practically the love of one’s neighbour,--every
one who does so, not in an ascetic spirit of sour self-denial, but
because he takes his highest happiness in so doing, is helping to
realise this ideal, is adding in his own way a stone to the great
edifice of human effort and human progress, the spirit of which
from remote ages, through persecutions, calumnies, oppressive laws,
tyrannies, superstitions, ignorance, through good report and evil
report, has led man out of the primal darkness, steadfastly bearing the
torch of hope till hope becomes a faith--faith in socialised humanity.
If we are working in this spirit we need not trouble about the fate of
art, for if we take care of life, art will take care of itself; it will
become the natural and spontaneous expression of such a life, both as
its familiar friend and helpmate, and its final crown and aspiration.
[Illustration]
IMITATION AND EXPRESSION IN ART
To any one who has put his head beneath the magic cloth of the
photographer, and has seen, focussed on the glass screen, a beautiful
pre-Raphaelite miniature of nature, the thought must have occurred--if
the secret of retaining colours as well as forms in chiaroscuro by
photography could be discovered, what would become of modern painting?
But, it may be said, photography is already one of the chief props and
ministers of modern painting. As it is, the camera and the dry plate
often supplement, if they do not supersede, the sketch-book and the
laborious study, and the influence of photography and photographic
effect is apparently the paramount influence in contemporary work.
Would painting thus lean upon photography if she felt that she was but
being led to her own destruction? Very likely not; yet, of necessity,
the weaker leans upon the strong, and the object being the imitation of
superficial fact, photography is strong where painting is weak.
For the last quarter-century and more, the stream of tendency in art,
reflecting that in life and thought, has been setting strongly towards
naturalism; and this naturalism (or literalism, as I should prefer to
call it) is both the cause of the effect and the effect of the cause.
It both acts and re-acts, and certainly its action upon art is one of
the most striking signs of the times.
Amid the confusion of critical tongues, the artificial conditions
of the market, the absence of public taste, the false values of
exhibitions, and the hopeless commercialism upon which they are based,
what wonder is it that painters should eagerly seize upon such help as
photography can give, to force still further already forced effects.
But it is a fatal alliance, and photography must win in the long run in
such an unequal race.
Art, like the aged and world-worn sage Faust, ardent for life and
enjoyment, snatches eagerly at the promise of renewed youth--the vision
of realised nature--held out by the demon, and ignores the consequences.
It is time to ask whether the game is worth the candle? The answer of
course depends on our conception of the scope of art; what are its
ends and aims? If it is indeed the exclusive pursuit of naturalism or
literalism, there is nothing but the prospect of this unequal race with
photography, which, in the attainment of fact or of phase, and even in
beauty of tone and effect, puts any painting or drawing hopelessly at a
distance.
On this course it is clear that art is destined to be finally beaten
by science. It may be indeed that art is destined to be absorbed and
comprehended in science, for even the hitherto uncontested field
of ideal conception is threatened by the results of the composite
photograph, and Mr. Galton’s generic images.
Painting would certainly never have been brought to this pass if she
had not been parted from the early companion of her way, but she has
severed herself from craftsmanship, from ornamental design--nay,
generally speaking, from design and invention, too--and given herself
body and soul to literal imitation of nature dominated by commercial
sentiment and sensation.
Again it may be objected, is not the business of painting then to
imitate? I answer, only a part of the business, and only in so far as
imitation contributes to expression, whether of beauty, or thought, or
story, or phase of nature, in which it ceases to be merely imitation
and becomes an art--that of representation. Where would be either use
or enduring pleasure in art, if it did not express something besides
the mere accidents of superficial fact? As well might the poet deal in
nothing but description, or the musician limit himself to reproducing
the noises of the farmyard, as the painter be content to ignore
invention and design, story and poetic suggestion. In these things the
human mind comes into play, and it is these qualities that give life
and endurance to art. Nor is there any substitute for them. We cannot
get our designing done by machinery, or our thinking by photography.
The only known mechanism for these processes is that of the brain
itself.
Mere cunning of hand invariably tires, and this is why superficial
literal imitation by itself is always so dull. We are bored to death by
what is called realism, and can only keep up our interest by a constant
succession of novelties; like the audience in a theatre, who tire of
a mere scene, an arrangement of properties however real, according to
stage realism. On the stage, however, strongly as it reflects the
literal tendencies of the day, art may safely go much farther in that
direction, as the meaning and expression (to which thought, scenery,
and properties may contribute in a high degree) must finally depend
upon the dramatic action of the living persons, and these, at least and
from the pictorial point of view of the stage, from the very fact that
they are alive, can never be overpowered by accessories.
Of course, I admit, as regards painting, apart from any poetic
embodiment or abstract treatment, there is the expression of the facts
of light and colour, texture and tones, and these--although, with
the exception of colour, they can be rendered by photography with an
accuracy and completeness quite unapproachable--really would appear
to be at present the only qualities, the only facts, the expression
of which is worth the attention of the painter. If that is really the
case, painting--pending its final extinction by photography--must be
content to take an inferior intellectual position among the arts. “Art
is art, precisely because it is not nature,” said Goethe, but the
modern painter, so far as he is articulate, would render it, “Art is
art, precisely because it mocks nature.”
The career of an illustrious contemporary (as shown in a recent
collection at the Grosvenor Gallery) illustrates in a remarkable way
certain degrees of expressiveness and imitation in painting. It is
remarkable, too, as showing that, even when the object in painting is
to cast off all convention, and to represent nature without prejudice
or prepossession, how, even then, unconsciously, under the influence
of passionate feeling striving for expression, the painter develops,
as it were, a new convention of his own. The most striking quality
about the earlier pictures of Millais is not what was commonly supposed
to be the chief characteristic of the pre-Raphaelite school, namely,
their unflinching truth to nature, but rather the intellectual force
of their poetic and dramatic expression. Comparing the work of the
earlier period--say from 1849 to 1856--with the work of the later--say
of the last ten years--one may see as totally different aims as are
perhaps possible in the work of one man. The close textures, beautiful
detail, fine and finished execution, deep though not always harmonious
colours, and romantic feeling of the earlier time have in the later
work entirely disappeared, and nearly everything is sacrificed to the
more superficial facts of full relief, and accidents of lighting,
atmosphere, and surface. I do not lay so much stress on the fact that
the recent pictures are chiefly portraits in the technical sense
(although one certainly does rather resent that personages of mere
wealth and fashion should have usurped so much of the painter’s time,
and filled so many of his canvases, to the extinction, in great part,
of the romantic and dramatic element in his art), for Millais has
always been a portrait painter whatever his subject. His one particular
idiosyncrasy as an artist has, from the first, consisted in the force
and directness of his realisation of nature, which is of the essence of
portrayal, or portraiture. He never showed any tendency to idealism in
any shape, so far as I am aware, but has always been content to take
nature as he found her, without endeavouring, by careful and conscious
selection and comparison, to build up types of form, or elaborate
schemes of decorative composition and colour. He is not a seer of
visions or a dreamer of dreams. Life and circumstance are enough,
without reading between the lines. In this directness lie both his
strength and his weakness as an artist.
Again, to compare the last with the first, one is struck with a certain
flatness of the general effect of the early work, as in the Ophelia,
for instance. And to this, no doubt, the multiplicity of careful and
beautiful detail contributes, as well as the deep and frank tones of
colour afore-mentioned. The impressiveness of the results is dependent
upon those qualities--upon this treatment--bound up with them as
inseparably as the words of a poet are with his matter and style. When
relief, and superficial and accidental facts of light are sought after,
the whole feeling changes, and the method with the characteristics
expressed. We stand in the common light of day, and talk with the
members of Society. Gone is the glow of the romance--the passion and
the earnestness of youth, with the beautiful detail, and the even and
certain finish of the workmanship. We have to make the best of it, and
extract what satisfaction we may from the contemplation of a coarser
realism of more obvious facts, including a certain amount of British
brutality, a vulgar ostentation of wealth, and the attraction or
repulsion of matter-of-fact personalities--these things being expressed
by an execution which shows more directness than care, and more force
than finish or beauty.
We draw the lesson that with increased facility there is less care, and
a coarser literalism takes the place of earnest realism, and while the
attention is narrowed to individual and accidental characteristics,
there is a notable decline of thought, dramatic power, and decorative
effect; depth of colouring has departed with beauty of execution, which
are the natural vehicles of the expression of quite different aims.
We are led to the conclusion that the search after a more obvious,
literal, and surface imitation of natural fact is followed at the
sacrifice of the more refined and delightful qualities, and with the
limitation of these comes the limitation of the range of expression.
The more of nature,--at least of her more superficial facts,--the
less, apparently, of art--the less of the expression of the individual
thought of the artist.
If this be a true statement of the tendency of modern painting, let
us be satisfied with photography. If we value literal representation
solely, and the preservation of superficial facts and effects of
surface lighting, photography can give them better and more certainly
than any paint--can produce in a moment of time what years of labour
could never accomplish. And then, too, the photograph gives us the
facts, and, within their limited range, as much force of expression
as belongs to facts, without any false sentiment, which is too often
the case with the painter. If we can get our facts registered for us
with absolute certainty and fidelity, and without individual bias, let
us take them and be thankful: but let art give up the struggle for
territory over which she can no longer claim exclusive or absolute
jurisdiction. Let her rest in her own borders. There is a large
and ample domain in which there is no fear of invasion; a fair and
beautiful region, peopled with the
Forms more real than living men,
flowered and fruited with the rejuvenescence of the thought of all
time; where invention and expression are the familiar friends and
counsellors of art, and truth becomes identical with beauty in the
large control of design.
But this is the possession of merely Decorative Art--despised and
rejected of men; fit only to be lounged upon or trodden under foot:
a toy in the hand, not credited with brain or soul, or power of
expression, speaking in strange tongues and parables, or at the best a
harmless species of lunacy, fed but with the crumbs from the table of
the pictorial Dives.
But the race is not always to the swift brush, or the battle to
strong colours, and painting is not the only eloquent language of
expression in art, although its effects are more obvious and palpable.
We have but to think of the means of expression at the command of the
architect (unrestricted, that is, by Boards of Works and Building
Acts)--even without the aid of sculpture or painting--in the simple
but sublime language of proportion, mass, space, and outline. It is
true, imitation is not unknown even in architecture, and we live under
the shadow of the great historic styles; but in architecture anything
like actual imitation of the materials and surfaces in other materials
is now universally despised and condemned. It remains, so far as it
is an art, a purely expressive one. How emphatically, and with what
subtlety, architecture is capable of expressing ideas and principles of
construction! and in so doing expresses not only these but the laws of
evolution, and the changed temper of peoples, and social conditions in
the long result of time, gathering under the shelter of its wings the
whole family of arts and crafts which are its offspring.
Sculpture, too, eloquent in its severe limitations, and by reason of
them, speaks in the language of pure form. It is true, it has its own
equivalents for colour in contrasts of surface and richness of detail,
but the attempts to introduce pure imitation, as with the Milanese
school of modern Italy, have certainly not elevated the art. Any
imitative success has been gained at the price of higher beauty and
meaning--of the higher qualities of form, and repose and dignity of
expression. I have noticed, too, that in sculpture, where imitation has
been the primary object, the effect is curiously false, as in the case
of a portrait statue in marble in costume, where the lace and different
dress materials are sometimes imitated with surprising dexterity, but
only to give an impression not of life but rather of a whitewashed
effigy. Clearly, a step farther is called for if imitation is the sole
object. We must revise the art of effigy and paint up to the life. Nor,
where faithful portraiture is demanded, can there be any reasonable
objection.
Interesting as coloured monumental effigies may be, and however
undoubted the fact that it was the practice of the ancients to tint
their sculpture, it cannot blind us to the more delicate and elevated
expression of pure form, which no sculptor, I suppose, would forego as
the justest and most eloquent medium for the embodiment of a heroic
or poetic theme--or even solely as a means for the expression of the
carver’s sense of the decorative effect of light and shadow in relief
work.
There can be no doubt, too, that colour obscures and disguises form. I
do not mean to say that it has not an emotional expressiveness all its
own, but it is a different kind. We feel the beauty and expressiveness
of a drawing by Mantegna or Albert Dürer, and do not ask for colour, or
for more heightened and graphic expression than their pen lines convey.
This seems to show how little the highest artistic and intellectual
expressiveness is dependent on close or literal imitation of nature. To
mock nature is one thing, to read and to express her, quite another. I
doubt if, even with the photograph and the modern literalist, we could
get on without line to make clear the nature of many things disguised
in the illusory actuality of light and shadow: facts of construction,
for instance, facts of growth, facts of texture and character, can all
be made more emphatic and expressed clearer in a line drawing; and,
apart from individual skill in its use, this is, perhaps, largely owing
to its capacity of abstraction--which sounds like a paradox! A drawing
in line is the result of a convention--a treaty between the mind and
nature, signed by the free hand of the designer, and sealed by the
understanding and imagination. Nothing shows so completely the quality
and resources of a master as his perception and treatment of the value
of line: nothing more eloquently and distinctly speaks of the vigorous
or enervated condition of art in any period than its line drawings.
Line is the nerve-fibre of art, knitting and controlling the whole
body, but flaccid and meaningless in its day of decline. Compare, for
instance, the woodcuts of the early sixteenth century with those of the
later or of the next century, and the difference corresponds with the
vigour and decline of the Renaissance impulse in design.
The indifference to the value of line as a means of expression in our
day is an ominous sign of the state of the arts--despite the so-called
revival of etching. Our students are taught to stipple and work up
their drawings in chalk, and charcoal seems to be the favourite medium
with the modern painter when he is _obliged_ to draw: but both are far
inferior in delicacy and precision, and therefore in real potentiality
of expression, to the pen-point, or even the firm lead or hair pencil.
Effect, however, is more readily produced in chalk or charcoal. If you
are not forcible you can at least be black, and you can command an
abundance of the convenient obscurity of shadow to hide the want of
invention and the absence of purity and precision of line.
In the rush, too, for directness and the unbiassed imitation of nature,
another expressive resource of line has been thrown overboard, and this
is what is usually included in the term composition. No doubt this
has destroyed the commonplace, second-hand stock-in-trade species of
pictorial composition, but it has also discouraged higher aims. But
few painters nowadays, I imagine, except those more or less interested
in decorative design, trouble themselves about schemes of line and
counterbalancing curves, or think much of their picture in the skeleton.