characteristics of which I have been endeavouring to describe, we
should have been under the shadow of a Royal Academy of Arts--a
chartered and privileged body, presumably established to foster
the arts of the country, but which, while it nominally includes
architecture, sculpture, and engraving, and recognises their existence
to a certain limited extent, as an institution really exists for
the painter, and as far as the weight of its influence goes, almost
exclusively encourages one form of art production, that of easel
and marketable pictures--not only indirectly by the training of its
schools, but by the far wider and more popular influence of its annual
exhibitions, and those it controls throughout the country; but so
far as the applied arts and decorative designs are concerned, or are
dependent upon academic recognition, they might scarcely exist at all.
Not that I think academies or academic influences are at all desirable
or beneficial in their effects upon art or artists. Academic influence
tends to crystallise both men and ideas. An academy, of course, can
never originate, it can only recognise; and is apt to be exceedingly
slow at that. Every new, vigorous, and characteristic movement in art
has grown up outside, and in opposition to its teaching and influence;
and as each independent school becomes prominent and influential, its
leaders, unable as a rule to resist the substantial worldly advantages
which academic distinction and titles bestow, become absorbed, and
help to increase the weight of academic power, and become part of
that crystallising influence against which every original mind has to
struggle. It is not surprising; I merely note the fact that it is so.
I have no personal feeling in the matter. The Academy includes many
distinguished artists--men whose acquaintanceship I am proud to claim,
but I fail to see that being Academicians makes them better artists;
it does not prevent me feeling that the Academy exists for painters
rather than painting, as to which I venture to think it has only
succeeded practically in encouraging one form of that art, and that not
the highest. It offers prestige and position to individual artists who
have already won a position, and produces a keen competition among the
candidates for its honour, but once inside its charmed circle a man
seems, as a rule, inclined to rest on his laurels, or to eat the lotus.
At the same time I desire freely to acknowledge at least the verbal
recognition that has been extended to the arts and crafts of design,
and the claim of those who work in them to the title of artists, to
which my accomplished friend Sir Frederick Leighton gave expression in
his eloquent address at the opening of the Art Congress at Liverpool.
It may seem I have been saying hard things of the Royal Academy. Well,
here is a splendid opportunity of proving the reality of its new grand
enthusiasm for the arts and crafts. Why not lend the noble galleries at
Burlington House to the Society I represent, in the Exhibition of Arts
and Crafts? I throw out this as a suggestion.
There is another institution which was established for the express
purpose of dealing with the arts of design--I mean the National Art
Training Schools of the country in connection with the Science and Art
Department at South Kensington; with which I may say I have a kind of
connection as one of the examiners in design.
The primary and excellent object of these schools was to afford a
general artistic training to a craftsman, to the end that he might
cultivate his artistic capacities in draughtsmanship and design, and
apply them to the improvement of his own particular craft, under the
stimulus of prizes for proficiency in various studies by means of a
national competition every year.
But here, again, owing to the domination of the pictorial ideas and
pictorial aims and methods in art, and their paramount influence in
teaching, it has been found that students who develop pictorial skill
and draughtsmanship, so far from endeavouring, or being able, to carry
such skill back into their own craft or industry, aspire--as indeed
under the circumstances is not surprising--to be painters of easel
pictures, and follow the popular art with all its possibilities of
personal distinction and fortune.
I say it is not surprising, for, even if the kind of training
obtainable in these schools was in all cases, as it is in some, of such
a nature that it could be made of real practical value in its bearing
on particular handicrafts and industries, what strong inducements are
there for a student working in any industry to remain in that industry,
applying his school acquirements to it, when he has no prospect of
gaining either personal credit or distinction for his work as an
individual, or even substantial reward beyond a certain point within
the margin of profit in that trade, a limit which, in proportion as the
number of skilled workers increased, would necessarily tend to diminish
by the competition among themselves?
I think this shows that existing economic conditions are dead against
the aim of the schools. There are, of course, many schools of high
proficiency as such, and as examples of good working models, under the
South Kensington system. I am not, however, personally able to feel
much more enthusiasm for schools of art, as such, however efficient
according to the official standards, than I am for academies, because I
believe that the only training worth having in the arts must be in the
workshop, as of old; since I hold that the true root and basis of all
art lies in the handicrafts, and that artistic impulse and invention
weakens as it loses its close connection and intimate relationship with
them.
The weakness, too, of art schools is that, though an energetic master
with ideas may, by dint of untiring zeal, build up his school to a
certain high standard of proficiency, with the immediate object of
passing as many students in the various grades as he can, under the
system of payment by results, the students are apt under such a system
to depend upon the qualities of their teacher--the distinction of the
school as such collapses without him, and the personal individual
element, owing to the student being rather subordinated to particular
courses and methods of study, and the cultivation generally of a
particular style, is not worth, or does not seem to leave, such
permanent or desirable results as might be expected.
Of course it is true that the great increase in the ranks of picture
painters of late years has had the usual effect under competition of
lowering prices and diminishing sales; and also of making the struggle
for distinction harder, since the standard of mediocrity is raised.
In fact, the market is overstocked, and though, unlike the labourer
who supports him, the painter can generally employ himself, his work
remains unsold. With his purely pictorial training, he, as a rule,
has no idea of applying his art in any way to any form of industry.
There are plenty of clever sketchers from nature, who, when they come
to making a design for any special purpose or for execution in some
particular material, are quite at sea; and even if they were ever so
able, I am afraid that the market for art and industry combined is as
yet but limited.
The craftsman himself, as we have seen, has been wellnigh extinguished
by the development of that machine industry, which, while it has
isolated the pictorial artists as a class, has also brought them to
their present state. So that there are abundant reasons why art, as
applied to industry, should not be in a flourishing and vigorous
condition.
It is not surprising, bearing these thoughts in mind, that design has
come to be regarded as a sort of Cinderella of art; her fine sisters,
bedecked in paint and public favour, go to the ball and leave her to
mind the hearth or the workshop. But she is not without her fairy
godmother--Inventive Adaptation--who comes to her aid; and though it
is hoped she will never lose her domestic qualities and substantial
household virtues, she may yet win her share of applause, and, wearing
the shoe of good luck, be recognised as the true bride of the prince
Imagination.
At the preliminary meeting for the formation of the National
Association for the Advancement of Art, I took occasion to say that,
“We must turn our artists into craftsmen, and our craftsmen into
artists,” That is the problem before us in this matter of art and
industry.
I do not pretend to have found a cut-and-dried solution, but there is
one first necessary step to be taken, it seems to me, as a matter of
common honesty, if we are really sincere in our desire to unite art
and industry, and it is this: that the workman should have the credit
of the work of his own head and hands, whether designer or craftsman.
We must no longer be content with the vague, however convenient,
designation of authorship, or rather proprietorship--So-and-So
& Co.--now commonly affixed to works of art or industry in our
exhibitions; but we should require the actual names of the contrivers
and craftsmen whose actual labour, thought, and experience produced
what we see.
Make a man responsible, and give him the credit of his own skill in
his work: his self-respect at once increases, and he is stimulated to
do his best; he will take pride and pleasure in his work; it becomes
personal and therefore interesting.
I am associated with a movement in London--in which I have had
the advantage of the co-operation and sympathy of many able and
distinguished men in the arts--the immediate outcome of which has been
an Exhibition of the Arts and Crafts with the object of ascertaining
to some degree not only our artistic condition in the applied arts,
and the amount of genuine public interest in them, as distinct from
picture-painting, but also of giving the names of the responsible
designers and executants of the works exhibited, as far as possible. We
do not pretend, in the face of various difficulties inseparable from an
initial movement, that our exhibition was all that we should have liked
to make it, but the success which has attended it has been quite beyond
our expectations, and the amount of public interest and support we have
received and the general recognition of the justness of the principle
have been most encouraging--so much so that we held a second exhibition
on the same lines in the autumn of 1889.
There is no reason why the movement should not be taken up
independently and locally in other towns, on the same principles,
managed by local committees, and supported by local sympathisers. Such
exhibitions might afford valuable tests of the state of the arts and
crafts generally, and, in particular, of the condition of design in the
special industries of the district; while the association of the name
of the actual designer and workman with their work would tend to bring
out in emulation individual skill and invention under the stimulus of
public recognition.
Another suggestion--in which I have been anticipated--I venture to
make is that in every manufacturing town a permanent collection should
be formed of the best procurable examples of design and artistic
workmanship in different materials, especially with reference to the
particular industries of the place or district. Designs and working
drawings, together with the finished product, might be arranged side
by side, and so constantly to be seen and studied and compared by
designers and workmen. Such collections might comprise both old and new
work; and specimens might be acquired from time to time from the annual
or occasional arts and crafts exhibitions, such as those suggested.
The formation of guilds of artists and craftsmen for the study and
discussion and illustration of the arts and crafts, and all questions
concerning their interests, and those of workers in them, would also
be found a very useful and interesting way of keeping designers and
craftsmen in touch with one another, and preserving that unity and
solidarity in art which is so essential to its vitality.
This idea has already been adopted in Liverpool, and the “Liverpool
Art Workers’ Guild” also held an exhibition of applied art a year or
two ago, which I understand was very successful, though I had not the
pleasure of seeing it.
These, then, are some of the immediately practical ways of working
towards a healthier condition of things in the arts.
Discussion and counsel must come before action. Hereafter we may be
able to meet and gauge our progress. In the meantime I think it is most
important to recognise certain facts--to know exactly how and where we
stand in this matter of art and industry; which, moreover, cannot be
separated from the great economic question of which, indeed, it is but
a part.
Do not let us deceive ourselves, or expect to gather the grapes of
artistic or industrial prosperity from economic thorns, or æsthetic
figs from commercial thistles.
It is idle to expect artistic sense and refinement to spring from dull
and sordid surroundings, or a keen sense of beauty amid the conditions
of monotonous and mechanical toil. Unless your artist and craftsman has
personal freedom, leisure and cultivation, and continued access to the
beauty of both art and nature, you will get neither vigorous design nor
good craftsmanship.
Let us look the Sphinx fairly in the face, and take the length of her
claws and wings before we offer our solution of the riddle. It may be
that the problem will solve itself in the course of time, as part of
that great and constant movement of evolution in which we ourselves and
our lives and interests are involved; which no man can do much either
to impede or to accelerate, though the action of the least of us counts
in the total sum--since it is the slow but sure result of causes at
work through the long progress of centuries, bound up with the laws of
nature, and the course of human destiny itself.
THE END
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A splendid instance of its principle in combination with
another--the scale--may be found in the construction of the peacock’s
tail, or rather tail coverts, the magnificent effect of which when
spread is as much owing to its construction as to its colour.
[2] As showing the constructive sense in Japanese design see, for
instance, the small books of designers’ patterns and crests for
demonstrations of the way in which designs not geometric in themselves,
such as animals, may yet be governed or bounded by geometric forms,
such as the circle, and the immense variation of which similar pattern
systems are capable.
[3] Patterns, like plants, illustrate, in their arrangement and
structure, those broad principles which divide the world of design--the
symmetrical, the alternate, and the spiral systems.
[4] Yet if art depends upon labour, labour also depends upon art. The
architect must plan the house before the labourer can get to work, and
design of all kinds must exist in the head before it can be executed by
the hands. What we want is to bring heads and hands together again, and
on the same shoulders, and not keep them as classes apart.
[5] It is curious to note, by the way, that terms then used in speaking
of pictures and painting, such as “performing” and “piece,” are now
almost exclusively confined to another art——the drama.
[6] The same author says in another place: “No! perfect art does not
necessarily concern itself with beauty of form, unless the object
has been specially designed for art use. We must expel the idea”
(_Æsthetics_, p. 125).
Transcriber's Notes:
Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Perceived typographical errors have been changed.