her spirit dwells on the mountains. To him who woos, but woos impurely,
she returns enriched what is brought. Like the sun, she warms the good
seed in good soil and causes it to bring forth good fruit. But only to
the perfect lover does she give a new strange gift--a gift beyond all
price. Imperfect lovers bring to art and take away the ideas and
emotions of their own age and civilisation. In twelfth-century Europe a
man might have been greatly moved by a Romanesque church and found
nothing in a T'ang picture. To a man of a later age, Greek sculpture
meant much and Mexican nothing, for only to the former could he bring a
crowd of associated ideas to be the objects of familiar emotions. But
the perfect lover, he who can feel the profound significance of form, is
raised above the accidents of time and place. To him the problems of
archaeology, history, and hagiography are impertinent. If the forms of a
work are significant its provenance is irrelevant. Before the grandeur
of those Sumerian figures in the Louvre he is carried on the same flood
of emotion to the same aesthetic ecstasy as, more than four thousand
years ago, the Chaldean lover was carried. It is the mark of great art
that its appeal is universal and eternal.[3] Significant form stands
charged with the power to provoke aesthetic emotion in anyone capable of
feeling it. The ideas of men go buzz and die like gnats; men change
their institutions and their customs as they change their coats; the
intellectual triumphs of one age are the follies of another; only great
art remains stable and unobscure. Great art remains stable and unobscure
because the feelings that it awakens are independent of time and place,
because its kingdom is not of this world. To those who have and hold a
sense of the significance of form what does it matter whether the forms
that move them were created in Paris the day before yesterday or in
Babylon fifty centuries ago? The forms of art are inexhaustible; but all
lead by the same road of aesthetic emotion to the same world of
aesthetic ecstasy.
II
AESTHETICS AND POST-IMPRESSIONISM
By the light of my aesthetic hypothesis I can read more clearly than
before the history of art; also I can see in that history the place of
the contemporary movement. As I shall have a great deal to say about the
contemporary movement, perhaps I shall do well to seize this moment,
when the aesthetic hypothesis is fresh in my mind and, I hope, in the
minds of my readers, for an examination of the movement in relation to
the hypothesis. For anyone of my generation to write a book about art
that said nothing of the movement dubbed in this country
Post-Impressionist would be a piece of pure affectation. I shall have a
great deal to say about it, and therefore I wish to see at the earliest
possible opportunity how Post-Impressionism stands with regard to my
theory of aesthetics. The survey will give me occasion for stating some
of the things that Post-Impressionism is and some that it is not. I
shall have to raise points that will be dealt with at greater length
elsewhere. Here I shall have a chance of raising them, and at least
suggesting a solution.
Primitives produce art because they must; they have no other motive than
a passionate desire to express their sense of form. Untempted, or
incompetent, to create illusions, to the creation of form they devote
themselves entirely. Presently, however, the artist is joined by a
patron and a public, and soon there grows up a demand for "speaking
likenesses." While the gross herd still clamours for likeness, the
choicer spirits begin to affect an admiration for cleverness and skill.
The end is in sight. In Europe we watch art sinking, by slow degrees,
from the thrilling design of Ravenna to the tedious portraiture of
Holland, while the grand proportion of Romanesque and Norman
architecture becomes Gothic juggling in stone and glass. Before the late
noon of the Renaissance art was almost extinct. Only nice illusionists
and masters of craft abounded. That was the moment for a
Post-Impressionist revival.
For various reasons there was no revolution. The tradition of art
remained comatose. Here and there a genius appeared and wrestled with
the coils of convention and created significant form. For instance, the
art of Nicolas Poussin, Claude, El Greco, Chardin, Ingres, and Renoir,
to name a few, moves us as that of Giotto and Cézanne moves. The bulk,
however, of those who flourished between the high Renaissance and the
contemporary movement may be divided into two classes, virtuosi and
dunces. The clever fellows, the minor masters, who might have been
artists if painting had not absorbed all their energies, were throughout
that period for ever setting themselves technical acrostics and solving
them. The dunces continued to elaborate chromophotographs, and continue.
The fact that significant form was the only common quality in the works
that moved me, and that in the works that moved me most and seemed most
to move the most sensitive people--in primitive art, that is to say--it
was almost the only quality, had led me to my hypothesis before ever I
became familiar with the works of Cézanne and his followers. Cézanne
carried me off my feet before ever I noticed that his strongest
characteristic was an insistence on the supremacy of significant form.
When I noticed this, my admiration for Cézanne and some of his followers
confirmed me in my aesthetic theories. Naturally I had found no
difficulty in liking them since I found in them exactly what I liked in
everything else that moved me.
There is no mystery about Post-Impressionism; a good Post-Impressionist
picture is good for precisely the same reasons that any other picture is
good. The essential quality in art is permanent. Post-Impressionism,
therefore, implies no violent break with the past. It is merely a
deliberate rejection of certain hampering traditions of modern growth.
It does deny that art need ever take orders from the past; but that is
not a badge of Post-Impressionism, it is the commonest mark of vitality.
Even to speak of Post-Impressionism as a movement may lead to
misconceptions; the habit of speaking of movements at all is rather
misleading. The stream of art has never run utterly dry: it flows
through the ages, now broad now narrow, now deep now shallow, now rapid
now sluggish: its colour is changing always. But who can set a mark
against the exact point of change? In the earlier nineteenth century
the stream ran very low. In the days of the Impressionists, against whom
the contemporary movement is in some ways a reaction, it had already
become copious. Any attempt to dam and imprison this river, to choose
out a particular school or movement and say: "Here art begins and there
it ends," is a pernicious absurdity. That way Academization lies. At
this moment there are not above half a dozen good painters alive who do
not derive, to some extent, from Cézanne, and belong, in some sense, to
the Post-Impressionist movement; but tomorrow a great painter may arise
who will create significant form by means superficially opposed to those
of Cézanne. Superficially, I say, because, essentially, all good art is
of the same movement: there are only two kinds of art, good and bad.
Nevertheless, the division of the stream into reaches, distinguished by
differences of manner, is intelligible and, to historians at any rate,
useful. The reaches also differ from each other in volume; one period of
art is distinguished from another by its fertility. For a few fortunate
years or decades the output of considerable art is great. Suddenly it
ceases; or slowly it dwindles: a movement has exhausted itself. How far
a movement is made by the fortuitous synchronisation of a number of
good artists, and how far the artists are helped to the creation of
significant form by the pervasion of some underlying spirit of the age,
is a question that can never be decided beyond cavil. But however the
credit is to be apportioned--and I suspect it should be divided about
equally--we are justified, I think, looking at the history of art as a
whole, in regarding such periods of fertility as distinct parts of that
whole. Primarily, it is as a period of fertility in good art and artists
that I admire the Post-Impressionist movement. Also, I believe that the
principles which underlie and inspire that movement are more likely to
encourage artists to give of their best, and to foster a good tradition,
than any of which modern history bears record. But my interest in this
movement, and my admiration for much of the art it has produced, does
not blind me to the greatness of the products of other movements;
neither, I hope, will it blind me to the greatness of any new creation
of form even though that novelty may seem to imply a reaction against
the tradition of Cézanne.
Like all sound revolutions, Post-Impressionism is nothing more than a
return to first principles. Into a world where the painter was expected
to be either a photographer or an acrobat burst the Post-Impressionist,
claiming that, above all things, he should be an artist. Never mind,
said he, about representation or accomplishment--mind about creating
significant form, mind about art. Creating a work of art is so
tremendous a business that it leaves no leisure for catching a likeness
or displaying address. Every sacrifice made to representation is
something stolen from art. Far from being the insolent kind of
revolution it is vulgarly supposed to be, Post-Impressionism is, in
fact, a return, not indeed to any particular tradition of painting, but
to the great tradition of visual art. It sets before every artist the
ideal set before themselves by the primitives, an ideal which, since the
twelfth century, has been cherished only by exceptional men of genius.
Post-Impressionism is nothing but the reassertion of the first
commandment of art--Thou shalt create form. By this assertion it shakes
hands across the ages with the Byzantine primitives and with every vital
movement that has struggled into existence since the arts began.
Post-Impressionism is not a matter of technique. Certainly Cézanne
invented a technique, admirably suited to his purpose, which has been
adopted and elaborated, more or less, by the majority of his followers.
The important thing about a picture, however, is not how it is painted,
but whether it provokes aesthetic emotion. As I have said, essentially,
a good Post-Impressionist picture resembles all other good works of art,
and only differs from some, superficially, by a conscious and deliberate
rejection of those technical and sentimental irrelevancies that have
been imposed on painting by a bad tradition. This becomes obvious when
one visits an exhibition such as the _Salon d'Automne_ or _Les
Indépendants_, where there are hundreds of pictures in the
Post-Impressionist manner, many of which are quite worthless.[4] These,
one realises, are bad in precisely the same way as any other picture is
bad; their forms are insignificant and compel no aesthetic reaction. In
truth, it was an unfortunate necessity that obliged us to speak of
"Post-Impressionist pictures," and now, I think, the moment is at hand
when we shall be able to return to the older and more adequate
nomenclature, and speak of good pictures and bad. Only we must not
forget that the movement of which Cézanne is the earliest manifestation,
and which has borne so amazing a crop of good art, owes something,
though not everything, to the liberating and revolutionary doctrines of
Post-Impressionism.
The silliest things said about Post-Impressionist pictures are said by
people who regard Post-Impressionism as an isolated movement, whereas,
in fact, it takes its place as part of one of those huge slopes into
which we can divide the history of art and the spiritual history of
mankind. In my enthusiastic moments I am tempted to hope that it is the
first stage in a new slope to which it will stand in the same relation
as sixth-century Byzantine art stands to the old. In that case we shall
compare Post-Impressionism with that vital spirit which, towards the end
of the fifth century, flickered into life amidst the ruins of
Graeco-Roman realism. Post-Impressionism, or, let us say the
Contemporary Movement, has a future; but when that future is present
Cézanne and Matisse will no longer be called Post-Impressionists. They
will certainly be called great artists, just as Giotto and Masaccio are
called great artists; they will be called the masters of a movement; but
whether that movement is destined to be more than a movement, to be
something as vast as the slope that lies between Cézanne and the masters
of S. Vitale, is a matter of much less certainty than enthusiasts care
to suppose.
Post-Impressionism is accused of being a negative and destructive creed.
In art no creed is healthy that is anything else. You cannot give men
genius; you can only give them freedom--freedom from superstition.
Post-Impressionism can no more make good artists than good laws can make
good men. Doubtless, with its increasing popularity, an annually
increasing horde of nincompoops will employ the so-called
"Post-Impressionist technique" for presenting insignificant patterns and
recounting foolish anecdotes. Their pictures will be dubbed
"Post-Impressionist," but only by gross injustice will they be excluded
from Burlington House. Post-Impressionism is no specific against human
folly and incompetence. All it can do for painters is to bring before
them the claims of art. To the man of genius and to the student of
talent it can say: "Don't waste your time and energy on things that
don't matter: concentrate on what does: concentrate on the creation of
significant form." Only thus can either give the best that is in him.
Formerly because both felt bound to strike a compromise between art and
what the public had been taught to expect, the work of one was
grievously disfigured, that of the other ruined. Tradition ordered the
painter to be photographer, acrobat, archaeologist and littérateur:
Post-Impressionism invites him to become an artist.
III
THE METAPHYSICAL HYPOTHESIS
For the present I have said enough about the aesthetic problem and about
Post-Impressionism; I want now to consider that metaphysical
question--"Why do certain arrangements and combinations of form move us
so strangely?" For aesthetics it suffices that they do move us; to all
further inquisition of the tedious and stupid it can be replied that,
however queer these things may be, they are no queerer than anything
else in this incredibly queer universe. But to those for whom my theory
seems to open a vista of possibilities I willingly offer, for what they
are worth, my fancies.
It seems to me possible, though by no means certain, that created form
moves us so profoundly because it expresses the emotion of its creator.
Perhaps the lines and colours of a work of art convey to us something
that the artist felt. If this be so, it will explain that curious but
undeniable fact, to which I have already referred, that what I call
material beauty (_e.g._ the wing of a butterfly) does not move most of
us in at all the same way as a work of art moves us. It is beautiful
form, but it is not significant form. It moves us, but it does not move
us aesthetically. It is tempting to explain the difference between
"significant form" and "beauty"--that is to say, the difference between
form that provokes our aesthetic emotions and form that does not--by
saying that significant form conveys to us an emotion felt by its
creator and that beauty conveys nothing.
For what, then, does the artist feel the emotion that he is supposed to
express? Sometimes it certainly comes to him through material beauty.
The contemplation of natural objects is often the immediate cause of the
artist's emotion. Are we to suppose, then, that the artist feels, or
sometimes feels, for material beauty what we feel for a work of art? Can
it be that sometimes for the artist material beauty is somehow
significant--that is, capable of provoking aesthetic emotion? And if the
form that provokes aesthetic emotion be form that expresses something,
can it be that material beauty is to him expressive? Does he feel
something behind it as we imagine that we feel something behind the
forms of a work of art? Are we to suppose that the emotion which the
artist expresses is an aesthetic emotion felt for something the
significance of which commonly escapes our coarser sensibilities? All
these are questions about which I had sooner speculate than dogmatise.
Let us hear what the artists have got to say for themselves. We readily
believe them when they tell us that, in fact, they do not create works
of art in order to provoke our aesthetic emotions, but because only thus
can they materialise a particular kind of feeling. What, precisely, this
feeling is they find it hard to say. One account of the matter, given me
by a very good artist, is that what he tries to express in a picture is
"a passionate apprehension of form." I have set myself to discover what
is meant by "a passionate apprehension of form," and, after much talking
and more listening, I have arrived at the following result. Occasionally
when an artist--a real artist--looks at objects (the contents of a room,
for instance) he perceives them as pure forms in certain relations to
each other, and feels emotion for them as such. These are his moments
of inspiration: follows the desire to express what has been felt. The
emotion that the artist felt in his moment of inspiration he did not
feel for objects seen as means, but for objects seen as pure forms--that
is, as ends in themselves. He did not feel emotion for a chair as a
means to physical well-being, nor as an object associated with the
intimate life of a family, nor as the place where someone sat saying
things unforgettable, nor yet as a thing bound to the lives of hundreds
of men and women, dead or alive, by a hundred subtle ties; doubtless an
artist does often feel emotions such as these for the things that he
sees, but in the moment of aesthetic vision he sees objects, not as
means shrouded in associations, but as pure forms. It is for, or at any
rate through, pure form that he feels his inspired emotion.
Now to see objects as pure forms is to see them as ends in themselves.
For though, of course, forms are related to each other as parts of a
whole, they are related on terms of equality; they are not a means to
anything except emotion. But for objects seen as ends in themselves, do
we not feel a profounder and a more thrilling emotion than ever we felt
for them as means? All of us, I imagine, do, from time to time, get a
vision of material objects as pure forms. We see things as ends in
themselves, that is to say; and at such moments it seems possible, and
even probable, that we see them with the eye of an artist. Who has not,
once at least in his life, had a sudden vision of landscape as pure
form? For once, instead of seeing it as fields and cottages, he has felt
it as lines and colours. In that moment has he not won from material
beauty a thrill indistinguishable from that which art gives? And, if
this be so, is it not clear that he has won from material beauty the
thrill that, generally, art alone can give, because he has contrived to
see it as a pure formal combination of lines and colours? May we go on
to say that, having seen it as pure form, having freed it from all
casual and adventitious interest, from all that it may have acquired
from its commerce with human beings, from all its significance as a
means, he has felt its significance as an end in itself?
What is the significance of anything as an end in itself? What is that
which is left when we have stripped a thing of all its associations, of
all its significance as a means? What is left to provoke our emotion?
What but that which philosophers used to call "the thing in itself" and
now call "ultimate reality"? Shall I be altogether fantastic in
suggesting, what some of the profoundest thinkers have believed, that
the significance of the thing in itself is the significance of Reality?
Is it possible that the answer to my question, "Why are we so profoundly
moved by certain combinations of lines and colours?" should be, "Because
artists can express in combinations of lines and colours an emotion felt
for reality which reveals itself through line and colour"?
If this suggestion were accepted it would follow that "significant form"
was form behind which we catch a sense of ultimate reality. There would
be good reason for supposing that the emotions which artists feel in
their moments of inspiration, that others feel in the rare moments when
they see objects artistically, and that many of us feel when we
contemplate works of art, are the same in kind. All would be emotions
felt for reality revealing itself through pure form. It is certain that
this emotion can be expressed only in pure form. It is certain that most
of us can come at it only through pure form. But is pure form the only
channel through which anyone can come at this mysterious emotion? That
is a disturbing and a most distasteful question, for at this point I
thought I saw my way to cancelling out the word "reality," and saying
that all are emotions felt for pure form which may or may not have
something behind it. To me it would be most satisfactory to say that the
reason why some forms move us aesthetically, and others do not, is that
some have been so purified that we can feel them aesthetically and that
others are so clogged with unaesthetic matter (_e.g._ associations) that
only the sensibility of an artist can perceive their pure, formal
significance. I should be charmed to believe that it is as certain that
everyone must come at reality through form as that everyone must express
his sense of it in form. But is that so? What kind of form is that from
which the musician draws the emotion that he expresses in abstract
harmonies? Whence come the emotions of the architect and the potter? I
know that the artist's emotion can be expressed only in form; I know
that only by form can my aesthetic emotions be called into play; but can
I be sure that it is always by form that an artist's emotion is
provoked? Back to reality.
Those who incline to believe that the artist's emotion is felt for
reality will readily admit that visual artists--with whom alone we are
concerned--come at reality generally through material form. But don't
they come at it sometimes through imagined form? And ought we not to add
that sometimes the sense of reality comes we know not whence? The best
account I know of this state of being rapt in a mysterious sense of
reality is the one that Dante gives:
"O immaginativa, che ne rube
tal volta sì di fuor, ch' uom non s'accorge
perchè d'intorno suonin mille tube;
chi move te, se il senso non ti porge?
Moveti lume, che nel ciel s'informa,
per sè, o per voler che giù lo scorge.
* * * * *
e qui fu la mia mente sì ristretta
dentro da sè, che di fuor non venia
cosa che fosse allor da lei recetta."
Certainly, in those moments of exaltation that art can give, it is easy
to believe that we have been possessed by an emotion that comes from the
world of reality. Those who take this view will have to say that there
is in all things the stuff out of which art is made--reality; artists,
even, can grasp it only when they have reduced things to their purest
condition of being--to pure form--unless they be of those who come at it
mysteriously unaided by externals; only in pure form can a sense of it
be expressed. On this hypothesis the peculiarity of the artist would
seem to be that he possesses the power of surely and frequently seizing
reality (generally behind pure form), and the power of expressing his
sense of it, in pure form always. But many people, though they feel the
tremendous significance of form, feel also a cautious dislike for big
words; and "reality" is a very big one. These prefer to say that what
the artist surprises behind form, or seizes by sheer force of
imagination, is the all-pervading rhythm that informs all things; and I
have said that I will never quarrel with that blessed word "rhythm."