form. A very bold Pre-Raffaelite was capable of representing a meadow
by two minutely accurate blades of grass. But two minutely accurate
blades of grass are just as irrelevant as two million; it is the formal
significance of a blade of grass or of a meadow with which the artist is
concerned. The Pre-Raffaelite method is at best symbolism, at worst pure
silliness. Had the Pre-Raffaelites been blessed with profoundly
imaginative minds they might have recaptured the spirit of the Middle
Ages instead of imitating its least significant manifestations. But had
they been great artists they would not have wished to recapture
anything. They would have invented forms for themselves or derived them
from their surroundings, just as the mediaeval artists did. Great
artists never look back.
When art is as nearly dead as it was in the middle of the nineteenth
century, scientific accuracy is judged the proper end of painting. Very
well, said the French Impressionists, be accurate, be scientific. At
best the Academic painter sets down his concepts; but the concept is not
a scientific reality; the men of science tell us that the visible
reality of the Universe is vibrations of light. Let us represent things
as they are--scientifically. Let us represent light. Let us paint what
we see, not the intellectual superstructure that we build over our
sensations. That was the theory: and if the end of art were
representation it would be sound enough. But the end of art is not
representation, as the great Impressionists, Renoir, Degas, Manet,
knew (two of them happily know it still) the moment they left off
arguing and bolted the studio door on that brilliant theorist, Claude
Monet. Some of them, to be sure, turned out polychromatic charts of
desolating dullness--Monet towards the end, for instance. The
Neo-Impressionists--Seurat, Signac, and Cross--have produced little
else. And any Impressionist, under the influence of Monet and Watteau,
was capable of making a poor, soft, formless thing. But more often the
Impressionist masters, in their fantastic and quite unsuccessful pursuit
of scientific truth, created works of art tolerable in design and
glorious in colour. Of course this oasis in the mid-century desert
delighted the odd people who cared about art; they pretended at first to
be absorbed in the scientific accuracy of the thing, but before long
they realised that they were deceiving themselves, and gave up the
pretence. For they saw very clearly that these pictures differed most
profoundly from the anecdotic triumphs of Victorian workshops, not in
their respectful attention to scientific theory, but in the fact that,
though they made little or no appeal to the interests of ordinary life,
they provoked a far more potent and profound emotion. Scientific
theories notwithstanding, the Impressionists provoked that emotion which
all great art provokes--an emotion in the existence of which the bulk of
Victorian artists and critics were, for obvious reasons, unable to
believe. The virtue of these Impressionist pictures, whatever it might
be, depended on no reference to the outside world. What could it be?
"Sheer beauty," said the enchanted spectators. They were not far wrong.
That beauty is the one essential quality in a work of art is a doctrine
that has been too insistently associated with the name of Whistler, who
is neither its first nor its last, nor its most capable, exponent--but
only of his age the most conspicuous. To read Whistler's _Ten o'Clock_
will do no one any harm, or much good. It is neither very brilliant nor
at all profound, but it is in the right direction. Whistler is not to be
compared with the great controversialists any more than he is to be
compared with the great artists. To set _The Gentle Art_ beside _The
Dissertation on the Letters of Phalaris_, Gibbon's _Vindication_, or the
polemics of Voltaire, would be as unjust as to hang "Cremorne Gardens"
in the Arena Chapel. Whistler was not even cock of the Late Victorian
walk; both Oscar Wilde and Mr. Bernard Shaw were his masters in the art
of controversy. But amongst Londoners of the "eighties" he is a bright
figure, as much alone almost in his knowledge of what art is, as in his
power of creating it: and it is this that gives a peculiar point and
poignance to all his quips and quarrels. There is dignity in his
impudence. He is using his rather obvious cleverness to fight for
something dearer than vanity. He is a lonely artist, standing up and
hitting below the belt for art. To the critics, painters, and
substantial men of his age he was hateful because he was an artist; and
because he knew that their idols were humbugs he was disquieting. Not
only did he have to suffer the grossness and malice of the most
insensitive pack of butchers that ever scrambled into the seat of
authority; he had also to know that not one of them could by any means
be made to understand one word that he spoke in seriousness. Overhaul
the English art criticism of that time, from the cloudy rhetoric of
Ruskin to the journalese of "'Arry," and you will hardly find a sentence
that gives ground for supposing that the writer has so much as guessed
what art is. "As we have hinted, the series does not represent any
Venice that we much care to remember; for who wants to remember the
degradation of what has been noble, the foulness of what has been
fair?"--"'Arry" in the _Times_. No doubt it is becoming in an artist to
leave all criticism unanswered; it would be foolishness in a schoolboy
to resent stuff of this sort. Whistler replied; and in his replies to
ignorance and insensibility, seasoned with malice, he is said to have
been ill-mannered and caddish. He was; but in these respects he was by
no means a match for his most reputable enemies. And ill-mannered,
ill-tempered, and almost alone, he was defending art, while they were
flattering all that was vilest in Victorianism.
As I have tried to show in another place, it is not very difficult to
find a flaw in the theory that beauty is the essential quality in a work
of art--that is, if the word "beauty" be used, as Whistler and his
followers seem to have used it, to mean insignificant beauty. It seems
that the beauty about which they were talking was the beauty of a flower
or a butterfly; now I have very rarely met a person delicately sensitive
to art who did not agree, in the end, that a work of art moved him in a
manner altogether different from, and far more profound than, that in
which a flower or a butterfly moved him. Therefore, if you wish to call
the essential quality in a work of art "beauty" you must be careful to
distinguish between the beauty of a work of art and the beauty of a
flower, or, at any rate, between the beauty that those of us who are not
great artists perceive in a work of art and that which the same people
perceive in a flower. Is it not simpler to use different words? In any
case, the distinction is a real one: compare your delight in a flower or
a gem with what you feel before a great work of art, and you will find
no difficulty, I think, in differing from Whistler.
Anyone who cares more for a theory than for the truth is at liberty to
say that the art of the Impressionists, with their absurd notions about
scientific representation, is a lovely fungus growing very naturally on
the ruins of the Christian slope. The same can hardly be said about
Whistler, who was definitely in revolt against the theory of his age.
For we must never forget that accurate representation of what the grocer
thinks he sees was the central dogma of Victorian art. It is the general
acceptance of this view--that the accurate imitation of objects is an
essential quality in a work of art--and the general inability to create,
or even to recognise, aesthetic qualities, that mark the nineteenth
century as the end of a slope. Except stray artists and odd amateurs,
and you may say that in the middle of the nineteenth century art had
ceased to exist. That is the importance of the official and academic art
of that age: it shows us that we have touched bottom. It has the
importance of an historical document. In the eighteenth century there
was still a tradition of art. Every official and academic painter, even
at the end of the eighteenth century, whose name was known to the
cultivated public, whose works were patronised by collectors, knew
perfectly well that the end of art was not imitation, that forms must
have some aesthetic significance. Their successors in the nineteenth
century did not. Even the tradition was dead. That means that generally
and officially art was dead. We have seen it die. The Royal Academy and
the Salon have been made to serve their useful, historical purpose. We
need say no more about them. Whether those definitely artistic cliques
of the nineteenth century, the men who made form a means to aesthetic
emotion and not a means of stating facts and conveying ideas, the
Impressionists and the Aesthetes, Manet and Renoir, Whistler and Conder,
&c. &c., are to be regarded as accidental flowers blossoming on a grave
or as portents of a new age, will depend upon the temperament of him who
regards them.
But a sketch of the Christian slope may well end with the
Impressionists, for Impressionist theory is a blind alley. Its only
logical development would be an art-machine--a machine for establishing
values correctly, and determining what the eye sees scientifically,
thereby making the production of art a mechanical certainty. Such a
machine, I am told, was invented by an Englishman. Now if the
praying-machine be admittedly the last shift of senile religion, the
value-finding machine may fairly be taken for the psychopomp of art. Art
has passed from the primitive creation of significant form to the
highly civilised statement of scientific fact. I think the machine,
which is the intelligent and respectable end, should be preserved, if
still it exists, at South Kensington or in the Louvre, along with the
earlier monuments of the Christian slope. As for that uninteresting and
disreputable end, official nineteenth-century art, it can be studied in
a hundred public galleries and in annual exhibitions all over the world.
It is the mouldy and therefore the obvious end. The spirit that came to
birth with the triumph of art over Graeco-Roman realism dies with the
ousting of art by the picture of commerce.
But if the Impressionists, with their scientific equipment, their
astonishing technique, and their intellectualism, mark the end of one
era, do they not rumour the coming of another? Certainly to-day there is
stress in the cryptic laboratory of Time. A great thing is dead; but, as
that sagacious Roman noted:
"haud igitur penitus pereunt quaecumque videntur, quando alid ex
alio reficit natura nec ullam rem gigni patitur nisi morte adiuta
aliena."
And do not the Impressionists, with their power of creating works of art
that stand on their own feet, bear in their arms a new age? For if the
venial sin of Impressionism is a grotesque theory and its justification
a glorious practice, its historical importance consists in its having
taught people to seek the significance of art in the work itself,
instead of hunting for it in the emotions and interests of the outer
world.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 10: I am not being so stupid as to suggest that in the sixth
century the Hellenistic influence died. It persisted for another 300
years at least. In sculpture and ivory carving it was only ousted by the
Romanesque movement of the eleventh century. Inevitably a great deal of
Hellenistic stuff continued to be produced after the rise of Byzantine
art. For how many years after the maturity of Cézanne will painters
continue to produce chromophotographs? Hundreds perhaps. For all that,
Cézanne marks a change--the birth of a movement if not of a slope.]
[Footnote 11: It will be found instructive to study cases 10-14 of
enamels and metal-work at South Kensington. The tyro will have no
difficulty in "spotting" the German and Rheinish productions. Alas! the
only possible mistake would be a confusion between German and English.
Certainly the famous Gloucester candlestick (1100) is as common as
anything in the place, unless it be the even more famous Cologne
Reliquary (1170).]
[Footnote 12: Patriots can take pleasure in the study of Saxon
sculpture.]
[Footnote 13: Several schools of painting and drawing flourished during
these centuries in Italy and north of the Alps. In S. Clemente alone it
is easy to discover the work of two distinct periods between 600 and
900. The extant examples of both are superb.]
[Footnote 14: _The Making of Western Europe_: C.L.R. Fletcher.]
[Footnote 15: Throughout the whole primitive and middle period, however,
two tendencies are distinguishable--one vital, derived from
Constantinople, the other, dead and swollen, from imperial Rome. Up to
the thirteenth century the Byzantine influence is easily predominant. I
have often thought that an amusing book might be compiled in which the
two tendencies would be well distinguished and illustrated. In Pisa and
its neighbourhood the author will find a surfeit of Romanised
primitives.]
[Footnote 16: Pietro is, of course, nearer to Giotto.]
[Footnote 17: Owing to the English invention of "Perpendicular," the
least unsatisfactory style of Gothic architecture, the English find it
hard to realise the full horrors of late Gothic.]
[Footnote 18: In speaking of officialdom it is not the directors of
galleries and departments whom I have in mind. Many of them are on the
right side; we should all be delighted to see Sir Charles Holroyd or Mr.
Maclagan, for instances, let loose amongst the primitives with forty
thousand pounds in pocket. I am thinking of those larger luminaries who
set their important faces against the acquisition of works of art, the
men who have been put in authority over directors and the rest of us.]
[Footnote 19: The Mabuse, however, was a bargain that the merchants and
money-lenders who settle these things could hardly be expected to
resist. The ticket price is said to have been £120,000.]
[Footnote 20: It was Mr. Roger Fry who made this illuminating
discovery.]
[Footnote 21: It is pleasant to remember that by the painters, critics,
and rich amateurs of "the old gang" the pictures of Ingres were treated
as bad jokes. Ingres was accused of distortion, ugliness, and even of
incompetence! His work was called "mad" and "puerile." He was derided as
a pseudo-primitive, and hated as one who would subvert the great
tradition by trying to put back the clock four hundred years. The same
authorities discovered in 1824 that Constable's _Hay Wain_ was the
outcome of a sponge full of colour having been thrown at a canvas. _Nous
avons changé tout ça._]
[Footnote 22: As Mr. Walter Sickert reminds me, there was Sickert.]
IV
THE MOVEMENT
I. THE DEBT TO CÉZANNE
II. SIMPLIFICATION AND DESIGN
III. THE PATHETIC FALLACY
[Illustration: CÉZANNE
_Photo, Druet_]
I
THE DEBT TO CÉZANNE
That with the maturity of Cézanne a new movement came to birth will
hardly be disputed by anyone who has managed to survive the "nineties";
that this movement is the beginning of a new slope is a possibility
worth discussing, but about which no decided opinion can yet be held. In
so far as one man can be said to inspire a whole age, Cézanne inspires
the contemporary movement: he stands a little apart, however, because he
is too big to take a place in any scheme of historical development; he
is one of those figures that dominate an age and are not to be fitted
into any of the neat little pigeon-holes so thoughtfully prepared for us
by evolutionists. He passed through the greater part of life unnoticed,
and came near creeping out of it undiscovered. No one seems to have
guessed at what was happening. It is easy now to see how much we owe to
him, and how little he owed to anyone; for us it is easy to see what
Gaugin and Van Gogh borrowed--in 1890, the year in which the latter
died, it was not so. They were sharp eyes, indeed, that discerned before
the dawn of the new century that Cézanne had founded a movement.
That movement is still young. But I think it would be safe to say that
already it has produced as much good art as its predecessor. Cézanne, of
course, created far greater things than any Impressionist painter; and
Gaugin, Van Gogh, Matisse, Rousseau, Picasso, de Vlaminck, Derain,
Herbin, Marchand, Marquet, Bonnard, Duncan Grant, Maillol, Lewis,
Kandinsky, Brancuzi, von Anrep, Roger Fry, Friesz, Goncharova, L'Hôte,
are Rolands for the Olivers of any other artistic period.[23] They are
not all great artists, but they all are artists. If the Impressionists
raised the proportion of works of art in the general pictorial output
from about one in five hundred thousand to one in a hundred thousand,
the Post-Impressionists (for after all it is sensible to call the group
of vital artists who immediately follow the Impressionists by that
name) have raised the average again. To-day, I daresay, it stands as
high as one in ten thousand. Indeed, it is this that has led some people
to see in the new movement the dawn of a new age; for nothing is more
characteristic of a "primitive" movement than the frequent and
widespread production of genuine art. Another hopeful straw at which the
sanguine catch is the admirable power of development possessed by the
new inspiration. As a rule, the recognition of a movement as a movement
is its death. As soon as the pontiffs discovered Impressionism, some
twenty years after its patent manifestation, they academized it. They
set their faces against any sort of development and drove into revolt or
artistic suicide every student with an ounce of vitality in him. Before
the inspiration of Cézanne had time to grow stale, it was caught up by
such men as Matisse and Picasso; by them it was moulded into forms that
suited their different temperaments, and already it shows signs of
taking fresh shape to express the sensibility of a younger
generation.[24]
This is very satisfactory but it does not suffice to prove that the new
movement is the beginning of a new slope; it does not prove that we
stand now where the early Byzantines stood, with the ruins of a
civilisation clattering about our ears and our eyes set on a new
horizon. In favour of that view there are no solid arguments; yet are
there general considerations, worth stating and pondering, though not to
be pushed too violently. He who would cast the horoscope of humanity, or
of any human activity, must neither neglect history nor trust her
overmuch. Certainly the neglect of history is the last mistake into
which a modern speculator is likely to fall. To compare Victorian
England with Imperial Rome has been the pastime of the half-educated
these fifty years. "_Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento_," is
about as much Latin as it is becoming in a public schoolman to remember.
The historically minded should travel a little further with their
comparison (to be sure, some have done so in search of arguments against
Socialism), on their way, they will not have failed to remark the
materialism, the mechanical cunning, the high standard of comfort, the
low standard of honesty, the spiritual indigence, the unholy alliance of
cynicism with sentimentality, the degradation of art and religion to
menial and mountebank offices, common in both, and in both signifying
the mouldy end of what was once a vital agitation. To similise the state
superstitions and observances of Rome with our official devotions and
ministration, the precise busts in the British Museum with the "speaking
likenesses" in the National Portrait Gallery, the academic republicanism
of the cultivated patricians with English Liberalism, and the thrills of
the arena with those of the playing-field, would be pretty sport for any
little German boy. I shall not encourage the brat to lay an historical
finger on callousness, bravado, trembling militarism, superficial
culture, mean political passion, megalomania, and a taste for being in
the majority as attributes common to Imperial Rome and Imperial England.
Rather I will inquire whether the rest of Europe does not labour under
the proverbial disability of those who live in glass-houses. It is not
so much English politics as Western civilisation that reminds me of the
last days of the Empire.
The facility of the comparison disfavours the raking up of
similarities; I need not compare Mr. Shaw with Lucian or the persecution
of Christians with the savage out-bursts of our shopkeepers against
anarchists. One may note, though, that it is as impossible to determine
exactly when and whence came the religious spirit that was to make an
end of Graeco-Roman materialism as to assign a birth-place to the
spiritual ferment that pervades modern Europe. For though we may find a
date for the maturity of Cézanne, and though I agree that the art of one
genius may produce a movement, even Cézanne will hardly suffice to
account for what looks like the beginning of an artistic slope and a
renaissance of the human spirit. One would hesitate to explain the dark
and middle ages by the mosaics at Ravenna. The spirit that was to revive
the moribund Roman world came from the East; that we know. It was at
work long before the world grew conscious of its existence. Its remotest
origins are probably undiscoverable. To-day we can name pioneers, beside
Cézanne, in the new world of emotion; there was Tolstoi, and there was
Ibsen; but who can say that these did not set out in search of Eldorados
of which already they had heard travellers' tales. Ruskin shook his
fist at the old order to some purpose; and, if he could not see clearly
what things counted, succeeded at least in making contemptible some that
did not. Nietzsche's preposterous nonsense knocked the bottom out of
nonsense more preposterous and far more vile. But to grub for origins is
none of my business; when the Church shall be established be sure that
industrious hagiographers will do justice to its martyrs and
missionaries.
Consider, too, that a great emotional renaissance must be preceded by an
intellectual, destructive movement. To that how shall we assign a
starting-point? It could be argued, I suppose, that it began with
Voltaire and the Encyclopædists. Having gone so far back, the historian
would find cause for going further still. How could he justify any
frontier? Every living organism is said to carry in itself the germ of
its own decay, and perhaps a civilisation is no sooner alive than it
begins to contrive its end. Gradually the symptoms of disease become
apparent to acute physicians who state the effect without perceiving the
cause. Be it so; circular fatalism is as cheerful as it is sad. If ill
must follow good, good must follow ill. In any case, I have said enough
to show that if Europe be again at the head of a pass, if we are about
to take the first step along a new slope, the historians of the new age
will have plenty to quarrel about.
It may be because the nineteenth century was preparing Europe for a new
epoch, that it understood better its destructive critics than its
constructive artists. At any rate before that century ended it had
produced one of the great constructive artists of the world, and
overlooked him. Whether or no he marks the beginning of a slope, Cézanne
certainly marks the beginning of a movement the main characteristics of
which it will be my business to describe. For, though there is some
absurdity in distinguishing one artistic movement from another, since
all works of art, to whatever age they belong, are essentially the same;
yet these superficial differences which are the characteristics of a
movement have an importance beyond that dubious one of assisting
historians. The particular methods of creating form, and the particular
kinds of form affected by the artists of one generation, have an
important bearing on the art of the next. For whereas the methods and
forms of one may admit of almost infinite development, the methods and
forms of another may admit of nothing but imitation. For instance, the
fifteenth century movement that began with Masaccio, Uccello, and
Castagno opened up a rich vein of rather inferior ore; whereas the
school of Raffael was a blind alley. Cézanne discovered methods and
forms which have revealed a vista of possibilities to the end of which
no man can see; on the instrument that he invented thousands of artists
yet unborn may play their own tunes.