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ART
by
CLIVE BELL
1913
[Illustration: WEI FIGURE, FIFTH CENTURY
_In M. Vignier's Collection_]
New York
Frederick A. Stokes Company
Publishers
Printed in Great Britain
All rights reserved
PREFACE
In this little book I have tried to develop a complete theory of visual
art. I have put forward an hypothesis by reference to which the
respectability, though not the validity, of all aesthetic judgments can
be tested, in the light of which the history of art from palaeolithic
days to the present becomes intelligible, by adopting which we give
intellectual backing to an almost universal and immemorial conviction.
Everyone in his heart believes that there is a real distinction between
works of art and all other objects; this belief my hypothesis justifies.
We all feel that art is immensely important; my hypothesis affords
reason for thinking it so. In fact, the great merit of this hypothesis
of mine is that it seems to explain what we know to be true. Anyone who
is curious to discover why we call a Persian carpet or a fresco by Piero
della Francesca a work of art, and a portrait-bust of Hadrian or a
popular problem-picture rubbish, will here find satisfaction. He will
find, too, that to the familiar counters of criticism--_e.g._ "good
drawing," "magnificent design," "mechanical," "unfelt," "ill-organised,"
"sensitive,"--is given, what such terms sometimes lack, a definite
meaning. In a word, my hypothesis works; that is unusual: to some it has
seemed not only workable but true; that is miraculous almost.
In fifty or sixty thousand words, though one may develop a theory
adequately, one cannot pretend to develop it exhaustively. My book is a
simplification. I have tried to make a generalisation about the nature
of art that shall be at once true, coherent, and comprehensible. I have
sought a theory which should explain the whole of my aesthetic
experience and suggest a solution of every problem, but I have not
attempted to answer in detail all the questions that proposed
themselves, or to follow any one of them along its slenderest
ramifications. The science of aesthetics is a complex business and so is
the history of art; my hope has been to write about them something
simple and true. For instance, though I have indicated very clearly, and
even repetitiously, what I take to be essential in a work of art, I
have not discussed as fully as I might have done the relation of the
essential to the unessential. There is a great deal more to be said
about the mind of the artist and the nature of the artistic problem. It
remains for someone who is an artist, a psychologist, and an expert in
human limitations to tell us how far the unessential is a necessary
means to the essential--to tell us whether it is easy or difficult or
impossible for the artist to destroy every rung in the ladder by which
he has climbed to the stars.
My first chapter epitomises discussions and conversations and long
strands of cloudy speculation which, condensed to solid argument, would
still fill two or three stout volumes: some day, perhaps, I shall write
one of them if my critics are rash enough to provoke me. As for my third
chapter--a sketch of the history of fourteen hundred years--that it is a
simplification goes without saying. Here I have used a series of
historical generalisations to illustrate my theory; and here, again, I
believe in my theory, and am persuaded that anyone who will consider the
history of art in its light will find that history more intelligible
than of old. At the same time I willingly admit that in fact the
contrasts are less violent, the hills less precipitous, than they must
be made to appear in a chart of this sort. Doubtless it would be well if
this chapter also were expanded into half a dozen readable volumes, but
that it cannot be until the learned authorities have learnt to write or
some writer has learnt to be patient.
Those conversations and discussions that have tempered and burnished the
theories advanced in my first chapter have been carried on for the most
part with Mr. Roger Fry, to whom, therefore, I owe a debt that defies
exact computation. In the first place, I can thank him, as joint-editor
of _The Burlington Magazine_, for permission to reprint some part of an
essay contributed by me to that periodical. That obligation discharged,
I come to a more complicated reckoning. The first time I met Mr. Fry, in
a railway carriage plying between Cambridge and London, we fell into
talk about contemporary art and its relation to all other art; it seems
to me sometimes that we have been talking about the same thing ever
since, but my friends assure me that it is not quite so bad as that. Mr.
Fry, I remember, had recently become familiar with the modern French
masters--Cézanne, Gauguin, Matisse: I enjoyed the advantage of a longer
acquaintance. Already, however, Mr. Fry had published his _Essay in
Aesthetics_, which, to my thinking, was the most helpful contribution to
the science that had been made since the days of Kant. We talked a good
deal about that essay, and then we discussed the possibility of a
"Post-Impressionist" Exhibition at the Grafton Galleries. We did not
call it "Post-Impressionist"; the word was invented later by Mr. Fry,
which makes me think it a little hard that the more advanced critics
should so often upbraid him for not knowing what "Post-Impressionism"
means.
For some years Mr. Fry and I have been arguing, more or less amicably,
about the principles of aesthetics. We still disagree profoundly. I like
to think that I have not moved an inch from my original position, but I
must confess that the cautious doubts and reservations that have
insinuated themselves into this Preface are all indirect consequences of
my friend's criticism. And it is not only of general ideas and
fundamental things that we have talked; Mr. Fry and I have wrangled for
hours about particular works of art. In such cases the extent to which
one may have affected the judgment of the other cannot possibly be
appraised, nor need it be: neither of us, I think, covets the doubtful
honours of proselytism. Surely whoever appreciates a fine work of art
may be allowed the exquisite pleasure of supposing that he has made a
discovery? Nevertheless, since all artistic theories are based on
aesthetic judgments, it is clear that should one affect the judgments of
another, he may affect, indirectly, some of his theories; and it is
certain that some of my historical generalisations have been modified,
and even demolished, by Mr. Fry. His task was not arduous: he had merely
to confront me with some work over which he was sure that I should go
into ecstasies, and then to prove by the most odious and irrefragable
evidence that it belonged to a period which I had concluded, on the
highest _a priori_ grounds, to be utterly barren. I can only hope that
Mr. Fry's scholarship has been as profitable to me as it has been
painful: I have travelled with him through France, Italy, and the near
East, suffering acutely, not always, I am glad to remember, in silence;
for the man who stabs a generalisation with a fact forfeits all claim on
good-fellowship and the usages of polite society.
I have to thank my friend Mr. Vernon Rendall for permission to make what
use I chose of the articles I have contributed from time to time to
_The Athenaeum_: if I have made any use of what belongs by law to the
proprietors of other papers I herewith offer the customary dues. My
readers will be as grateful as I to M. Vignier, M. Druet, and Mr.
Kevorkian, of the Persian Art Gallery, since it is they who have made it
certain that the purchaser will get something he likes for his money. To
Mr. Eric Maclagan of South Kensington, and Mr. Joyce of the British
Museum, I owe a more private and particular debt. My wife has been good
enough to read both the MS. and proof of this book; she has corrected
some errors, and called attention to the more glaring offences against
Christian charity. You must not attempt, therefore, to excuse the author
on the ground of inadvertence or haste.
CLIVE BELL.
November 1913.
CONTENTS
I. WHAT IS ART?
I. THE AESTHETIC HYPOTHESIS page 3
II. AESTHETICS AND POST-IMPRESSIONISM 38
III. THE METAPHYSICAL HYPOTHESIS 49
II. ART AND LIFE
I. ART AND RELIGION 75
II. ART AND HISTORY 95
III. ART AND ETHICS 106
III. THE CHRISTIAN SLOPE
I. THE RISE OF CHRISTIAN ART 121
II. GREATNESS AND DECLINE 138
III. THE CLASSICAL RENAISSANCE AND ITS
DISEASES 156
IV. ALID EX ALIO 181
IV. THE MOVEMENT
I. THE DEBT TO CÉZANNE 199
II. SIMPLIFICATION AND DESIGN 215
III. THE PATHETIC FALLACY 239
V. THE FUTURE
I. SOCIETY AND ART 251
II. ART AND SOCIETY 276
ILLUSTRATIONS
I. WEI FIGURE FRONTISPIECE
II. PERSIAN DISH 3
III. PERUVIAN POT 75
IV. BYZANTINE MOSAIC 121
V. CÉZANNE 199
VI. PICASSO 251
I
WHAT IS ART?
I. THE AESTHETIC HYPOTHESIS
II. AESTHETICS AND POST-IMPRESSIONISM
III. THE METAPHYSICAL HYPOTHESIS
[Illustration: PERSIAN DISH, ELEVENTH CENTURY (?)
_By permission of Mr. Kevorkian of the Persian Art Gallery_]
I
THE AESTHETIC HYPOTHESIS
It is improbable that more nonsense has been written about aesthetics
than about anything else: the literature of the subject is not large
enough for that. It is certain, however, that about no subject with
which I am acquainted has so little been said that is at all to the
purpose. The explanation is discoverable. He who would elaborate a
plausible theory of aesthetics must possess two qualities--artistic
sensibility and a turn for clear thinking. Without sensibility a man can
have no aesthetic experience, and, obviously, theories not based on
broad and deep aesthetic experience are worthless. Only those for whom
art is a constant source of passionate emotion can possess the data from
which profitable theories may be deduced; but to deduce profitable
theories even from accurate data involves a certain amount of
brain-work, and, unfortunately, robust intellects and delicate
sensibilities are not inseparable. As often as not, the hardest thinkers
have had no aesthetic experience whatever. I have a friend blessed with
an intellect as keen as a drill, who, though he takes an interest in
aesthetics, has never during a life of almost forty years been guilty of
an aesthetic emotion. So, having no faculty for distinguishing a work of
art from a handsaw, he is apt to rear up a pyramid of irrefragable
argument on the hypothesis that a handsaw is a work of art. This defect
robs his perspicuous and subtle reasoning of much of its value; for it
has ever been a maxim that faultless logic can win but little credit for
conclusions that are based on premises notoriously false. Every cloud,
however, has its silver lining, and this insensibility, though unlucky
in that it makes my friend incapable of choosing a sound basis for his
argument, mercifully blinds him to the absurdity of his conclusions
while leaving him in full enjoyment of his masterly dialectic. People
who set out from the hypothesis that Sir Edwin Landseer was the finest
painter that ever lived will feel no uneasiness about an aesthetic which
proves that Giotto was the worst. So, my friend, when he arrives very
logically at the conclusion that a work of art should be small or round
or smooth, or that to appreciate fully a picture you should pace smartly
before it or set it spinning like a top, cannot guess why I ask him
whether he has lately been to Cambridge, a place he sometimes visits.
On the other hand, people who respond immediately and surely to works of
art, though, in my judgment, more enviable than men of massive intellect
but slight sensibility, are often quite as incapable of talking sense
about aesthetics. Their heads are not always very clear. They possess
the data on which any system must be based; but, generally, they want
the power that draws correct inferences from true data. Having received
aesthetic emotions from works of art, they are in a position to seek out
the quality common to all that have moved them, but, in fact, they do
nothing of the sort. I do not blame them. Why should they bother to
examine their feelings when for them to feel is enough? Why should they
stop to think when they are not very good at thinking? Why should they
hunt for a common quality in all objects that move them in a particular
way when they can linger over the many delicious and peculiar charms of
each as it comes? So, if they write criticism and call it aesthetics, if
they imagine that they are talking about Art when they are talking about
particular works of art or even about the technique of painting, if,
loving particular works they find tedious the consideration of art in
general, perhaps they have chosen the better part. If they are not
curious about the nature of their emotion, nor about the quality common
to all objects that provoke it, they have my sympathy, and, as what they
say is often charming and suggestive, my admiration too. Only let no one
suppose that what they write and talk is aesthetics; it is criticism, or
just "shop."
The starting-point for all systems of aesthetics must be the personal
experience of a peculiar emotion. The objects that provoke this emotion
we call works of art. All sensitive people agree that there is a
peculiar emotion provoked by works of art. I do not mean, of course,
that all works provoke the same emotion. On the contrary, every work
produces a different emotion. But all these emotions are recognisably
the same in kind; so far, at any rate, the best opinion is on my side.
That there is a particular kind of emotion provoked by works of visual
art, and that this emotion is provoked by every kind of visual art, by
pictures, sculptures, buildings, pots, carvings, textiles, &c., &c., is
not disputed, I think, by anyone capable of feeling it. This emotion is
called the aesthetic emotion; and if we can discover some quality common
and peculiar to all the objects that provoke it, we shall have solved
what I take to be the central problem of aesthetics. We shall have
discovered the essential quality in a work of art, the quality that
distinguishes works of art from all other classes of objects.
For either all works of visual art have some common quality, or when we
speak of "works of art" we gibber. Everyone speaks of "art," making a
mental classification by which he distinguishes the class "works of art"
from all other classes. What is the justification of this
classification? What is the quality common and peculiar to all members
of this class? Whatever it be, no doubt it is often found in company
with other qualities; but they are adventitious--it is essential. There
must be some one quality without which a work of art cannot exist;
possessing which, in the least degree, no work is altogether worthless.
What is this quality? What quality is shared by all objects that provoke
our aesthetic emotions? What quality is common to Sta. Sophia and the
windows at Chartres, Mexican sculpture, a Persian bowl, Chinese carpets,
Giotto's frescoes at Padua, and the masterpieces of Poussin, Piero della
Francesca, and Cézanne? Only one answer seems possible--significant
form. In each, lines and colours combined in a particular way, certain
forms and relations of forms, stir our aesthetic emotions. These
relations and combinations of lines and colours, these aesthetically
moving forms, I call "Significant Form"; and "Significant Form" is the
one quality common to all works of visual art.
At this point it may be objected that I am making aesthetics a purely
subjective business, since my only data are personal experiences of a
particular emotion. It will be said that the objects that provoke this
emotion vary with each individual, and that therefore a system of
aesthetics can have no objective validity. It must be replied that any
system of aesthetics which pretends to be based on some objective truth
is so palpably ridiculous as not to be worth discussing. We have no
other means of recognising a work of art than our feeling for it. The
objects that provoke aesthetic emotion vary with each individual.
Aesthetic judgments are, as the saying goes, matters of taste; and about
tastes, as everyone is proud to admit, there is no disputing. A good
critic may be able to make me see in a picture that had left me cold
things that I had overlooked, till at last, receiving the aesthetic
emotion, I recognise it as a work of art. To be continually pointing out
those parts, the sum, or rather the combination, of which unite to
produce significant form, is the function of criticism. But it is
useless for a critic to tell me that something is a work of art; he must
make me feel it for myself. This he can do only by making me see; he
must get at my emotions through my eyes. Unless he can make me see
something that moves me, he cannot force my emotions. I have no right to
consider anything a work of art to which I cannot react emotionally; and
I have no right to look for the essential quality in anything that I
have not _felt_ to be a work of art. The critic can affect my aesthetic
theories only by affecting my aesthetic experience. All systems of
aesthetics must be based on personal experience--that is to say, they
must be subjective.
Yet, though all aesthetic theories must be based on aesthetic judgments,
and ultimately all aesthetic judgments must be matters of personal
taste, it would be rash to assert that no theory of aesthetics can have
general validity. For, though A, B, C, D are the works that move me, and
A, D, E, F the works that move you, it may well be that _x_ is the only
quality believed by either of us to be common to all the works in his
list. We may all agree about aesthetics, and yet differ about particular
works of art. We may differ as to the presence or absence of the quality
_x_. My immediate object will be to show that significant form is the
only quality common and peculiar to all the works of visual art that
move me; and I will ask those whose aesthetic experience does not tally
with mine to see whether this quality is not also, in their judgment,
common to all works that move them, and whether they can discover any
other quality of which the same can be said.
Also at this point a query arises, irrelevant indeed, but hardly to be
suppressed: "Why are we so profoundly moved by forms related in a
particular way?" The question is extremely interesting, but irrelevant
to aesthetics. In pure aesthetics we have only to consider our emotion
and its object: for the purposes of aesthetics we have no right, neither
is there any necessity, to pry behind the object into the state of mind
of him who made it. Later, I shall attempt to answer the question; for
by so doing I may be able to develop my theory of the relation of art to
life. I shall not, however, be under the delusion that I am rounding off
my theory of aesthetics. For a discussion of aesthetics, it need be
agreed only that forms arranged and combined according to certain
unknown and mysterious laws do move us in a particular way, and that it
is the business of an artist so to combine and arrange them that they
shall move us. These moving combinations and arrangements I have called,
for the sake of convenience and for a reason that will appear later,
"Significant Form."
A third interruption has to be met. "Are you forgetting about colour?"
someone inquires. Certainly not; my term "significant form" included
combinations of lines and of colours. The distinction between form and
colour is an unreal one; you cannot conceive a colourless line or a
colourless space; neither can you conceive a formless relation of
colours. In a black and white drawing the spaces are all white and all
are bounded by black lines; in most oil paintings the spaces are
multi-coloured and so are the boundaries; you cannot imagine a boundary
line without any content, or a content without a boundary line.
Therefore, when I speak of significant form, I mean a combination of
lines and colours (counting white and black as colours) that moves me
aesthetically.
Some people may be surprised at my not having called this "beauty." Of
course, to those who define beauty as "combinations of lines and colours
that provoke aesthetic emotion," I willingly concede the right of
substituting their word for mine. But most of us, however strict we may
be, are apt to apply the epithet "beautiful" to objects that do not
provoke that peculiar emotion produced by works of art. Everyone, I
suspect, has called a butterfly or a flower beautiful. Does anyone feel
the same kind of emotion for a butterfly or a flower that he feels for
a cathedral or a picture? Surely, it is not what I call an aesthetic
emotion that most of us feel, generally, for natural beauty. I shall
suggest, later, that some people may, occasionally, see in nature what
we see in art, and feel for her an aesthetic emotion; but I am satisfied
that, as a rule, most people feel a very different kind of emotion for
birds and flowers and the wings of butterflies from that which they feel
for pictures, pots, temples and statues. Why these beautiful things do
not move us as works of art move is another, and not an aesthetic,
question. For our immediate purpose we have to discover only what
quality is common to objects that do move us as works of art. In the
last part of this chapter, when I try to answer the question--"Why are
we so profoundly moved by some combinations of lines and colours?" I
shall hope to offer an acceptable explanation of why we are less
profoundly moved by others.
Since we call a quality that does not raise the characteristic aesthetic
emotion "Beauty," it would be misleading to call by the same name the
quality that does. To make "beauty" the object of the aesthetic emotion,
we must give to the word an over-strict and unfamiliar definition.
Everyone sometimes uses "beauty" in an unaesthetic sense; most people
habitually do so. To everyone, except perhaps here and there an
occasional aesthete, the commonest sense of the word is unaesthetic. Of
its grosser abuse, patent in our chatter about "beautiful huntin'" and
"beautiful shootin'," I need not take account; it would be open to the
precious to reply that they never do so abuse it. Besides, here there is
no danger of confusion between the aesthetic and the non-aesthetic use;
but when we speak of a beautiful woman there is. When an ordinary man
speaks of a beautiful woman he certainly does not mean only that she
moves him aesthetically; but when an artist calls a withered old hag
beautiful he may sometimes mean what he means when he calls a battered
torso beautiful. The ordinary man, if he be also a man of taste, will
call the battered torso beautiful, but he will not call a withered hag
beautiful because, in the matter of women, it is not to the aesthetic
quality that the hag may possess, but to some other quality that he
assigns the epithet. Indeed, most of us never dream of going for
aesthetic emotions to human beings, from whom we ask something very
different. This "something," when we find it in a young woman, we are
apt to call "beauty." We live in a nice age. With the man-in-the-street
"beautiful" is more often than not synonymous with "desirable"; the word
does not necessarily connote any aesthetic reaction whatever, and I am
tempted to believe that in the minds of many the sexual flavour of the
word is stronger than the aesthetic. I have noticed a consistency in
those to whom the most beautiful thing in the world is a beautiful
woman, and the next most beautiful thing a picture of one. The confusion
between aesthetic and sensual beauty is not in their case so great as
might be supposed. Perhaps there is none; for perhaps they have never
had an aesthetic emotion to confuse with their other emotions. The art
that they call "beautiful" is generally closely related to the women. A
beautiful picture is a photograph of a pretty girl; beautiful music, the
music that provokes emotions similar to those provoked by young ladies
in musical farces; and beautiful poetry, the poetry that recalls the
same emotions felt, twenty years earlier, for the rector's daughter.
Clearly the word "beauty" is used to connote the objects of quite
distinguishable emotions, and that is a reason for not employing a term
which would land me inevitably in confusions and misunderstandings with
my readers.
On the other hand, with those who judge it more exact to call these
combinations and arrangements of form that provoke our aesthetic
emotions, not "significant form," but "significant relations of form,"
and then try to make the best of two worlds, the aesthetic and the
metaphysical, by calling these relations "rhythm," I have no quarrel
whatever. Having made it clear that by "significant form" I mean
arrangements and combinations that move us in a particular way, I
willingly join hands with those who prefer to give a different name to
the same thing.
The hypothesis that significant form is the essential quality in a work
of art has at least one merit denied to many more famous and more
striking--it does help to explain things. We are all familiar with
pictures that interest us and excite our admiration, but do not move us
as works of art. To this class belongs what I call "Descriptive
Painting"--that is, painting in which forms are used not as objects of
emotion, but as means of suggesting emotion or conveying information.
Portraits of psychological and historical value, topographical works,
pictures that tell stories and suggest situations, illustrations of all
sorts, belong to this class. That we all recognise the distinction is
clear, for who has not said that such and such a drawing was excellent
as illustration, but as a work of art worthless? Of course many
descriptive pictures possess, amongst other qualities, formal
significance, and are therefore works of art: but many more do not. They
interest us; they may move us too in a hundred different ways, but they
do not move us aesthetically. According to my hypothesis they are not
works of art. They leave untouched our aesthetic emotions because it is
not their forms but the ideas or information suggested or conveyed by
their forms that affect us.
Few pictures are better known or liked than Frith's "Paddington
Station"; certainly I should be the last to grudge it its popularity.
Many a weary forty minutes have I whiled away disentangling its
fascinating incidents and forging for each an imaginary past and an
improbable future. But certain though it is that Frith's masterpiece,
or engravings of it, have provided thousands with half-hours of curious
and fanciful pleasure, it is not less certain that no one has
experienced before it one half-second of aesthetic rapture--and this
although the picture contains several pretty passages of colour, and is
by no means badly painted. "Paddington Station" is not a work of art; it
is an interesting and amusing document. In it line and colour are used
to recount anecdotes, suggest ideas, and indicate the manners and
customs of an age: they are not used to provoke aesthetic emotion. Forms
and the relations of forms were for Frith not objects of emotion, but
means of suggesting emotion and conveying ideas.
The ideas and information conveyed by "Paddington Station" are so
amusing and so well presented that the picture has considerable value
and is well worth preserving. But, with the perfection of photographic
processes and of the cinematograph, pictures of this sort are becoming
otiose. Who doubts that one of those _Daily Mirror_ photographers in
collaboration with a _Daily Mail_ reporter can tell us far more about
"London day by day" than any Royal Academician? For an account of
manners and fashions we shall go, in future, to photographs, supported
by a little bright journalism, rather than to descriptive painting. Had
the imperial academicians of Nero, instead of manufacturing incredibly
loathsome imitations of the antique, recorded in fresco and mosaic the
manners and fashions of their day, their stuff, though artistic rubbish,
would now be an historical gold-mine. If only they had been Friths
instead of being Alma Tademas! But photography has made impossible any
such transmutation of modern rubbish. Therefore it must be confessed
that pictures in the Frith tradition are grown superfluous; they merely
waste the hours of able men who might be more profitably employed in
works of a wider beneficence. Still, they are not unpleasant, which is
more than can be said for that kind of descriptive painting of which
"The Doctor" is the most flagrant example. Of course "The Doctor" is not
a work of art. In it form is not used as an object of emotion, but as a
means of suggesting emotions. This alone suffices to make it nugatory;
it is worse than nugatory because the emotion it suggests is false. What
it suggests is not pity and admiration but a sense of complacency in our
own pitifulness and generosity. It is sentimental. Art is above morals,
or, rather, all art is moral because, as I hope to show presently, works
of art are immediate means to good. Once we have judged a thing a work
of art, we have judged it ethically of the first importance and put it
beyond the reach of the moralist. But descriptive pictures which are not
works of art, and, therefore, are not necessarily means to good states
of mind, are proper objects of the ethical philosopher's attention. Not
being a work of art, "The Doctor" has none of the immense ethical value
possessed by all objects that provoke aesthetic ecstasy; and the state
of mind to which it is a means, as illustration, appears to me
undesirable.
The works of those enterprising young men, the Italian Futurists, are
notable examples of descriptive painting. Like the Royal Academicians,
they use form, not to provoke aesthetic emotions, but to convey
information and ideas. Indeed, the published theories of the Futurists
prove that their pictures ought to have nothing whatever to do with art.
Their social and political theories are respectable, but I would suggest
to young Italian painters that it is possible to become a Futurist in
thought and action and yet remain an artist, if one has the luck to be
born one. To associate art with politics is always a mistake. Futurist
pictures are descriptive because they aim at presenting in line and
colour the chaos of the mind at a particular moment; their forms are not
intended to promote aesthetic emotion but to convey information. These
forms, by the way, whatever may be the nature of the ideas they suggest,
are themselves anything but revolutionary. In such Futurist pictures as
I have seen--perhaps I should except some by Severini--the drawing,
whenever it becomes representative as it frequently does, is found to be
in that soft and common convention brought into fashion by Besnard some
thirty years ago, and much affected by Beaux-Art students ever since. As
works of art, the Futurist pictures are negligible; but they are not to
be judged as works of art. A good Futurist picture would succeed as a
good piece of psychology succeeds; it would reveal, through line and
colour, the complexities of an interesting state of mind. If Futurist
pictures seem to fail, we must seek an explanation, not in a lack of
artistic qualities that they never were intended to possess, but rather
in the minds the states of which they are intended to reveal.
Most people who care much about art find that of the work that moves
them most the greater part is what scholars call "Primitive." Of course
there are bad primitives. For instance, I remember going, full of
enthusiasm, to see one of the earliest Romanesque churches in Poitiers
(Notre-Dame-la-Grande), and finding it as ill-proportioned,
over-decorated, coarse, fat and heavy as any better class building by
one of those highly civilised architects who flourished a thousand years
earlier or eight hundred later. But such exceptions are rare. As a rule
primitive art is good--and here again my hypothesis is helpful--for, as
a rule, it is also free from descriptive qualities. In primitive art you
will find no accurate representation; you will find only significant
form. Yet no other art moves us so profoundly. Whether we consider
Sumerian sculpture or pre-dynastic Egyptian art, or archaic Greek, or
the Wei and T'ang masterpieces,[1] or those early Japanese works of
which I had the luck to see a few superb examples (especially two
wooden Bodhisattvas) at the Shepherd's Bush Exhibition in 1910, or
whether, coming nearer home, we consider the primitive Byzantine art of
the sixth century and its primitive developments amongst the Western
barbarians, or, turning far afield, we consider that mysterious and
majestic art that flourished in Central and South America before the
coming of the white men, in every case we observe three common
characteristics--absence of representation, absence of technical
swagger, sublimely impressive form. Nor is it hard to discover the
connection between these three. Formal significance loses itself in
preoccupation with exact representation and ostentatious cunning.[2]
Naturally, it is said that if there is little representation and less
saltimbancery in primitive art, that is because the primitives were
unable to catch a likeness or cut intellectual capers. The contention is
beside the point. There is truth in it, no doubt, though, were I a
critic whose reputation depended on a power of impressing the public
with a semblance of knowledge, I should be more cautious about urging it
than such people generally are. For to suppose that the Byzantine
masters wanted skill, or could not have created an illusion had they
wished to do so, seems to imply ignorance of the amazingly dexterous
realism of the notoriously bad works of that age. Very often, I fear,
the misrepresentation of the primitives must be attributed to what the
critics call, "wilful distortion." Be that as it may, the point is that,
either from want of skill or want of will, primitives neither create
illusions, nor make display of extravagant accomplishment, but
concentrate their energies on the one thing needful--the creation of
form. Thus have they created the finest works of art that we possess.
Let no one imagine that representation is bad in itself; a realistic
form may be as significant, in its place as part of the design, as an
abstract. But if a representative form has value, it is as form, not as
representation. The representative element in a work of art may or may
not be harmful; always it is irrelevant. For, to appreciate a work of
art we need bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its ideas
and affairs, no familiarity with its emotions. Art transports us from
the world of man's activity to a world of aesthetic exaltation. For a
moment we are shut off from human interests; our anticipations and
memories are arrested; we are lifted above the stream of life. The pure
mathematician rapt in his studies knows a state of mind which I take to
be similar, if not identical. He feels an emotion for his speculations
which arises from no perceived relation between them and the lives of
men, but springs, inhuman or super-human, from the heart of an abstract
science. I wonder, sometimes, whether the appreciators of art and of
mathematical solutions are not even more closely allied. Before we feel
an aesthetic emotion for a combination of forms, do we not perceive
intellectually the rightness and necessity of the combination? If we do,
it would explain the fact that passing rapidly through a room we
recognise a picture to be good, although we cannot say that it has
provoked much emotion. We seem to have recognised intellectually the
rightness of its forms without staying to fix our attention, and
collect, as it were, their emotional significance. If this were so, it
would be permissible to inquire whether it was the forms themselves or
our perception of their rightness and necessity that caused aesthetic
emotion. But I do not think I need linger to discuss the matter here. I
have been inquiring why certain combinations of forms move us; I should
not have travelled by other roads had I enquired, instead, why certain
combinations are perceived to be right and necessary, and why our
perception of their rightness and necessity is moving. What I have to
say is this: the rapt philosopher, and he who contemplates a work of
art, inhabit a world with an intense and peculiar significance of its
own; that significance is unrelated to the significance of life. In
this world the emotions of life find no place. It is a world with
emotions of its own.
To appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing but a sense of
form and colour and a knowledge of three-dimensional space. That bit of
knowledge, I admit, is essential to the appreciation of many great
works, since many of the most moving forms ever created are in three
dimensions. To see a cube or a rhomboid as a flat pattern is to lower
its significance, and a sense of three-dimensional space is essential to
the full appreciation of most architectural forms. Pictures which would
be insignificant if we saw them as flat patterns are profoundly moving
because, in fact, we see them as related planes. If the representation
of three-dimensional space is to be called "representation," then I
agree that there is one kind of representation which is not irrelevant.
Also, I agree that along with our feeling for line and colour we must
bring with us our knowledge of space if we are to make the most of every
kind of form. Nevertheless, there are magnificent designs to an
appreciation of which this knowledge is not necessary: so, though it is
not irrelevant to the appreciation of some works of art it is not
essential to the appreciation of all. What we must say is that the
representation of three-dimensional space is neither irrelevant nor
essential to all art, and that every other sort of representation is
irrelevant.
That there is an irrelevant representative or descriptive element in
many great works of art is not in the least surprising. Why it is not
surprising I shall try to show elsewhere. Representation is not of
necessity baneful, and highly realistic forms may be extremely
significant. Very often, however, representation is a sign of weakness
in an artist. A painter too feeble to create forms that provoke more
than a little aesthetic emotion will try to eke that little out by
suggesting the emotions of life. To evoke the emotions of life he must
use representation. Thus a man will paint an execution, and, fearing to
miss with his first barrel of significant form, will try to hit with his
second by raising an emotion of fear or pity. But if in the artist an
inclination to play upon the emotions of life is often the sign of a
flickering inspiration, in the spectator a tendency to seek, behind
form, the emotions of life is a sign of defective sensibility always. It
means that his aesthetic emotions are weak or, at any rate, imperfect.
Before a work of art people who feel little or no emotion for pure form
find themselves at a loss. They are deaf men at a concert. They know
that they are in the presence of something great, but they lack the
power of apprehending it. They know that they ought to feel for it a
tremendous emotion, but it happens that the particular kind of emotion
it can raise is one that they can feel hardly or not at all. And so they
read into the forms of the work those facts and ideas for which they are
capable of feeling emotion, and feel for them the emotions that they can
feel--the ordinary emotions of life. When confronted by a picture,
instinctively they refer back its forms to the world from which they
came. They treat created form as though it were imitated form, a picture
as though it were a photograph. Instead of going out on the stream of
art into a new world of aesthetic experience, they turn a sharp corner
and come straight home to the world of human interests. For them the
significance of a work of art depends on what they bring to it; no new
thing is added to their lives, only the old material is stirred. A good
work of visual art carries a person who is capable of appreciating it
out of life into ecstasy: to use art as a means to the emotions of life
is to use a telescope for reading the news. You will notice that people
who cannot feel pure aesthetic emotions remember pictures by their
subjects; whereas people who can, as often as not, have no idea what the
subject of a picture is. They have never noticed the representative
element, and so when they discuss pictures they talk about the shapes of
forms and the relations and quantities of colours. Often they can tell
by the quality of a single line whether or no a man is a good artist.
They are concerned only with lines and colours, their relations and
quantities and qualities; but from these they win an emotion more
profound and far more sublime than any that can be given by the
description of facts and ideas.
This last sentence has a very confident ring--over-confident, some may
think. Perhaps I shall be able to justify it, and make my meaning
clearer too, if I give an account of my own feelings about music. I am
not really musical. I do not understand music well. I find musical form
exceedingly difficult to apprehend, and I am sure that the profounder
subtleties of harmony and rhythm more often than not escape me. The
form of a musical composition must be simple indeed if I am to grasp it
honestly. My opinion about music is not worth having. Yet, sometimes, at
a concert, though my appreciation of the music is limited and humble, it
is pure. Sometimes, though I have a poor understanding, I have a clean
palate. Consequently, when I am feeling bright and clear and intent, at
the beginning of a concert for instance, when something that I can grasp
is being played, I get from music that pure aesthetic emotion that I get
from visual art. It is less intense, and the rapture is evanescent; I
understand music too ill for music to transport me far into the world of
pure aesthetic ecstasy. But at moments I do appreciate music as pure
musical form, as sounds combined according to the laws of a mysterious
necessity, as pure art with a tremendous significance of its own and no
relation whatever to the significance of life; and in those moments I
lose myself in that infinitely sublime state of mind to which pure
visual form transports me. How inferior is my normal state of mind at a
concert. Tired or perplexed, I let slip my sense of form, my aesthetic
emotion collapses, and I begin weaving into the harmonies, that I
cannot grasp, the ideas of life. Incapable of feeling the austere
emotions of art, I begin to read into the musical forms human emotions
of terror and mystery, love and hate, and spend the minutes, pleasantly
enough, in a world of turbid and inferior feeling. At such times, were
the grossest pieces of onomatopoeic representation--the song of a bird,
the galloping of horses, the cries of children, or the laughing of
demons--to be introduced into the symphony, I should not be offended.
Very likely I should be pleased; they would afford new points of
departure for new trains of romantic feeling or heroic thought. I know
very well what has happened. I have been using art as a means to the
emotions of life and reading into it the ideas of life. I have been
cutting blocks with a razor. I have tumbled from the superb peaks of
aesthetic exaltation to the snug foothills of warm humanity. It is a
jolly country. No one need be ashamed of enjoying himself there. Only no
one who has ever been on the heights can help feeling a little
crestfallen in the cosy valleys. And let no one imagine, because he has
made merry in the warm tilth and quaint nooks of romance, that he can
even guess at the austere and thrilling raptures of those who have
climbed the cold, white peaks of art.
About music most people are as willing to be humble as I am. If they
cannot grasp musical form and win from it a pure aesthetic emotion, they
confess that they understand music imperfectly or not at all. They
recognise quite clearly that there is a difference between the feeling
of the musician for pure music and that of the cheerful concert-goer for
what music suggests. The latter enjoys his own emotions, as he has every
right to do, and recognises their inferiority. Unfortunately, people are
apt to be less modest about their powers of appreciating visual art.
Everyone is inclined to believe that out of pictures, at any rate, he
can get all that there is to be got; everyone is ready to cry "humbug"
and "impostor" at those who say that more can be had. The good faith of
people who feel pure aesthetic emotions is called in question by those
who have never felt anything of the sort. It is the prevalence of the
representative element, I suppose, that makes the man in the street so
sure that he knows a good picture when he sees one. For I have noticed
that in matters of architecture, pottery, textiles, &c., ignorance and
ineptitude are more willing to defer to the opinions of those who have
been blest with peculiar sensibility. It is a pity that cultivated and
intelligent men and women cannot be induced to believe that a great gift
of aesthetic appreciation is at least as rare in visual as in musical
art. A comparison of my own experience in both has enabled me to
discriminate very clearly between pure and impure appreciation. Is it
too much to ask that others should be as honest about their feelings for
pictures as I have been about mine for music? For I am certain that most
of those who visit galleries do feel very much what I feel at concerts.
They have their moments of pure ecstasy; but the moments are short and
unsure. Soon they fall back into the world of human interests and feel
emotions, good no doubt, but inferior. I do not dream of saying that
what they get from art is bad or nugatory; I say that they do not get
the best that art can give. I do not say that they cannot understand
art; rather I say that they cannot understand the state of mind of those
who understand it best. I do not say that art means nothing or little to
them; I say they miss its full significance. I do not suggest for one
moment that their appreciation of art is a thing to be ashamed of; the
majority of the charming and intelligent people with whom I am
acquainted appreciate visual art impurely; and, by the way, the
appreciation of almost all great writers has been impure. But provided
that there be some fraction of pure aesthetic emotion, even a mixed and
minor appreciation of art is, I am sure, one of the most valuable things
in the world--so valuable, indeed, that in my giddier moments I have
been tempted to believe that art might prove the world's salvation.