directly, it cannot affect it at all. Society can affect Art indirectly
because it can affect artists directly. Clearly, if the creation of
works of art were made a capital offence, the quantity, if not the
quality, of artistic output would be affected. Proposals less barbarous,
but far more terrible, are from time to time put forward by cultivated
state-projectors who would make of artists, not criminals, but
highly-paid officials. Though statesmanship can do no positive good to
art, it can avoid doing a great deal of harm: its power for ill is
considerable. The one good thing Society can do for the artist is to
leave him alone. Give him liberty. The more completely the artist is
freed from the pressure of public taste and opinion, from the hope of
rewards and the menace of morals, from the fear of absolute starvation
or punishment, and from the prospect of wealth or popular consideration,
the better for him and the better for art, and therefore the better for
everyone. Liberate the artist: here is something that those powerful and
important people who are always assuring us that they would do anything
for art can do.
They might begin the work of encouragement by disestablishing and
disendowing art; by withdrawing doles from art schools, and confiscating
the moneys misused by the Royal Academy. The case of the schools is
urgent. Art schools do nothing but harm, because they must do something.
Art is not to be learned; at any rate it is not to be taught. All that
the drawing-master can teach is the craft of imitation. In schools there
must be a criterion of excellence and that criterion cannot be an
artistic one; the drawing-master sets up the only criterion he is
capable of using--fidelity to the model. No master can make a student
into an artist; but all can, and most do, turn into impostors, maniacs,
criminals, or just cretins, the unfortunate boys and girls who had been
made artists by nature. It is not the master's fault and he ought not to
be blamed. He is there to bring all his pupils to a certain standard of
efficiency appreciable by inspectors and by the general public, and the
only quality of which such can judge is verisimilitude. The only
respects in which one work can be seen to differ from another by an
ordinarily insensitive person (_e.g._ a Board of Education inspector)
are choice of subject and fidelity to common vision. So, even if a
drawing-master could recognise artistic talent, he would not be
permitted to encourage it. It is not that drawing-masters are wicked,
but that the system is vicious. Art schools must go.
The money that the State at present devotes to the discouragement of Art
had better, I dare say, be given to the rich. It would be tempting to
save it for the purchase of works of art, but perhaps that can lead to
nothing but mischief. It is unthinkable that any Government should ever
buy what is best in the work of its own age; it is a question how far
purchase by the State even of fine old pictures is a benefit to art. It
is not a question that need be discussed; for though a State may have
amongst its employés men who can recognise a fine work of art, provided
it be sufficiently old, a modern State will be careful to thwart and
stultify their dangerously good taste. State-acquisition of fine ancient
art might or might not be a means to good--I daresay it would be; but
the purchase of third-rate old masters and _objets d'art_ can benefit no
one except the dealers. As I shall hope to show, something might be said
for supporting and enriching galleries and museums, if only the public
attitude towards, and the official conception of, these places could be
changed. As for contemporary art, official patronage is the surest
method of encouraging in it all that is most stupid and pernicious. Our
public monuments, the statues and buildings that disgrace our streets,
our postage-stamps, coins, and official portraits are mere bait to the
worst instincts of the worst art-students and to the better a formidable
temptation.
Some of those generous prophets who sit at home dreaming of pure
communistic societies have been good enough to find a place in them for
the artist. Demos is to keep for his diversion a kennel of mountebanks.
Artists will be chosen by the State and supported by the State. The
people will pay the piper and call the tune. In the choice of
politicians the method works well enough, but to art it would be fatal.
The creation of soft artistic jobs is the most unlikely method of
encouraging art. Already hundreds take to it, not because they have in
them that which must be expressed, but because art seems to offer a
pleasant and genteel career. When the income is assured the number of
those who fancy art as a profession will not diminish. On the contrary,
in the great State of the future the competition will be appalling. I
can imagine the squeezing and intriguing between the friends of
applicants and their parliamentary deputies, between the deputies and
the Minister of Fine Arts; and I can imagine the art produced to fulfil
a popular mandate in the days when private jobbery will be the only
check on public taste. Can we not all imagine the sort of man that would
be chosen? Have we no experience of what the people love? Comrades, dear
democratic ladies and gentlemen, pursue, by all means, your schemes for
righting the world, dream your dreams, conceive Utopias, but leave the
artists out. For, tell me honestly, does any one of you believe that
during the last three hundred years a single good artist would have been
supported by your system? And remember, unless it had supported him it
would not have allowed him to exist. Remember, too, that you will have
to select or reject your artists while yet they are students--you will
not be able to wait until a name has been imposed on you by years of
reputation with a few good judges. If Degas is now reverenced as a
master that is because his pictures fetch long prices, and his pictures
fetch long prices because a handful of people who would soon have been
put under the great civic pump have been for years proclaiming his
mastery. And during those long years how has Degas lived? On the bounty
of the people who love all things beautiful, or on the intelligence and
discrimination of a few rich or richish patrons? In the great State you
will not be able to take your masters ready-made with years of
reputation behind them; you will have to pick them yourselves, and pick
them young.
Here you are, then, at the door of your annual exhibition of students'
work; you are come to choose two State pensioners, and pack the rest off
to clean the drains of Melbourne. They will be chosen by popular
vote--the only fair way of inducting a public entertainer to a snug
billet. But, unknown to you, I have placed amongst the exhibits two
drawings by Claude and one by Ingres; and at this exhibition there are
no names on the catalogue. Do you think my men will get a single vote?
Possibly; but dare one of you suggest that in competition with any
rubbishy sensation-monger either of them will stand a chance? "Oh, but,"
you say, "in the great new State everyone will be well educated." "Let
them," I reply, "be as well educated as the M.A.s of Oxford and
Cambridge who have been educated from six to six-and-twenty: and I
suggest that to do even that will come pretty dear. Well, then, submit
your anonymous collection of pictures to people qualified to elect
members of parliament for our two ancient universities, and you know
perfectly well that you will get no better result. So, don't be silly:
even private patronage is less fatal to art than public. Whatever else
you may get, you will never get an artist by popular election."
You say that the State will select through two or three highly sensitive
officials. In the first place you have got to catch your officials. And
remember, these, too, in the eyes of their fellow-workers, will be men
who have got hold of a soft thing. The considerations that govern the
selection of State-paid artists will control the election of State-paid
experts. By what sign shall the public recognise the man of sensibility,
always supposing that it is a man of sensibility the public wants? John
Jones, the broker's man, thinks himself quite as good a judge of art as
Mr. Fry, and apparently Mr. Asquith thinks the trustees of the National
Gallery better than either. Suppose you have by some miracle laid hands
on a man of aesthetic sensibility and made him your officer, he will
still have to answer for his purchases to a popularly elected
parliament. Things are bad enough at present: the people will not
tolerate a public monument that is a work of art, neither do their
obedient servants wish to impose such a thing on them; but when no one
can live as an artist without becoming a public servant, when all works
of art are public monuments, do you seriously expect to have any art at
all? When the appointment of artists becomes a piece of party patronage
does anyone doubt that a score of qualifications will stand an applicant
in better stead than that of being an artist? Imagine Mr. Lloyd George
nominating Mr. Roger Fry Government selector of State-paid artists.
Imagine--and here I am making no heavy demand on your powers--imagine
Mr. Fry appointing some obscure and shocking student of unconventional
talent. Imagine Mr. Lloyd George going down to Limehouse to defend the
appointment before thousands of voters, most of whom have a son, a
brother, a cousin, a friend, or a little dog who, they feel sure, is
much better equipped for the job.
If the great communistic society is bent on producing art--and the
society that does not produce live art is damned--there is one thing,
and one only, that it can do. Guarantee to every citizen, whether he
works or whether he loafs, a bare minimum of existence--say sixpence a
day and a bed in the common dosshouse. Let the artist be a beggar living
on public charity. Give to the industrious practical workers the sort of
things they like, big salaries, short hours, social consideration,
expensive pleasures. Let the artist have just enough to eat, and the
tools of his trade: ask nothing of him. Materially make the life of the
artist sufficiently miserable to be unattractive, and no one will take
to art save those in whom the divine daemon is absolute. For all let
there be a choice between a life of dignified, highly-paid, and not
over-exacting employment and the despicable life of a vagrant. There can
be little doubt about the choice of most, and none about that of a real
artist. Art and Religion are very much alike, and in the East, where
they understand these things, there has always been a notion that
religion should be an amateur affair. The pungis of India are beggars.
Let artists all over the world be beggars too. Art and Religion are not
professions: they are not occupations for which men can be paid. The
artist and the saint do what they have to do, not to make a living, but
in obedience to some mysterious necessity. They do not produce to
live--they live to produce. There is no place for them in a social
system based on the theory that what men desire is prolonged and
pleasant existence. You cannot fit them into the machine, you must make
them extraneous to it. You must make pariahs of them, since they are not
a part of society but the salt of the earth.
In saying that the mass of mankind will never be capable of making
delicate aesthetic judgments, I have said no more than the obvious
truth. A sure sensibility in visual art is at least as rare as a good
ear for music. No one imagines that all are equally capable of judging
music, or that a perfect ear can be acquired by study: only fools
imagine that the power of nice discrimination in other arts is not a
peculiar gift. Nevertheless there is no reason why the vast majority
should not become very much more sensitive to art than it is; the ear
can be trained to a point. But for the better appreciation, as for the
freer creation, of art more liberty is needed. Ninety-nine out of every
hundred people who visit picture galleries need to be delivered from
that "museum atmosphere" which envelops works of art and asphyxiates
beholders. They, the ninety-nine, should be encouraged to approach works
of art courageously and to judge them on their merits. Often they are
more sensitive to form and colour than they suppose. I have seen people
show a nice taste in cottons and calicoes, and things not recognised as
"Art" by the custodians of museums, who would not hesitate to assert of
any picture by Andrea del Sarto that it must be more beautiful than any
picture by a child or a savage. In dealing with objects that are not
expected to imitate natural forms or to resemble standard masterpieces
they give free rein to their native sensibility. It is only in the
presence of a catalogue that complete inhibition sets in. Traditional
reverence is what lies heaviest on spectators and creators, and museums
are too apt to become conventicles of tradition.
Society can do something for itself and for art by blowing out of the
museums and galleries the dust of erudition and the stale incense of
hero-worship. Let us try to remember that art is not something to be
come at by dint of study; let us try to think of it as something to be
enjoyed as one enjoys being in love. The first thing to be done is to
free the aesthetic emotions from the tyranny of erudition. I was sitting
once behind the driver of an old horse-omnibus when a string of
sandwich-men crossed us carrying "The Empire" poster. The name of Genée
was on the bill. "Some call that art," said the driver, turning to me,
"but we know better" (my longish hair, I surmise, discovered a fellow
connoisseur): "if you want art you must go for it to the museums." How
this pernicious nonsense is to be knocked out of people's heads I cannot
guess. It has been knocked in so solemnly and for so long by the
schoolmasters and the newspapers, by cheap text-books and profound
historians, by district visitors and cabinet ministers, by clergymen and
secularists, by labour leaders, teetotallers, anti-gamblers, and public
benefactors of every sort, that I am sure it will need a brighter and
braver word than mine to knock it out again. But out it has to be
knocked before we can have any general sensibility to art; for, while it
remains, to ninety-nine out of every hundred a work of art will be dead
the moment it enters a public gallery.
The museums and galleries terrify us. We are crushed by the tacit
admonition frowned from every corner that these treasures are displayed
for study and improvement, by no means to provoke emotion. Think of
Italy--every town with its public collection; think of the religious
sightseers! How are we to persuade these middle-class masses, so patient
and so pathetic in their quest, that really they could get some pleasure
from the pictures if only they did not know, and did not care to know,
who painted them. They cannot all be insensitive to form and colour; and
if only they were not in a flutter to know, or not to forget, who
painted the pictures, when they were painted, and what they represent,
they might find in them the key that unlocks a world in the existence of
which they are, at present, unable to believe. And the millions who stay
at home, how are they to be persuaded that the thrill provoked by a
locomotive or a gasometer is the real thing?--when will they understand
that the iron buildings put up by Mr. Humphrey are far more likely to be
works of art than anything they will see at the summer exhibition of
the Royal Academy?[27] Can we persuade the travelling classes that an
ordinarily sensitive human being has a better chance of appreciating an
Italian primitive than an expert hagiographer? Will they understand
that, as a rule, the last to feel aesthetic emotion is the historian of
art? Can we induce the multitude to seek in art, not edification, but
exaltation? Can we make them unashamed of the emotion they feel for the
fine lines of a warehouse or a railway bridge? If we can do this we
shall have freed works of art from the museum atmosphere; and this is
just what we have got to do. We must make people understand that forms
can be significant without resembling Gothic cathedrals or Greek
temples, and that art is the creation, not the imitation, of form. Then,
but not till then, can they go with impunity to seek aesthetic emotion
in museums and galleries.
It is argued with plausibility that a sensitive people would have no use
for museums. It is said that to go in search of aesthetic emotion is
wrong, that art should be a part of life--something like the evening
papers or the shop windows that people enjoy as they go about their
business. But, if the state of mind of one who enters a gallery in
search of aesthetic emotion is necessarily unsatisfactory, so is the
state of one who sits down to read poetry. The lover of poetry shuts the
door of his chamber and takes down a volume of Milton with the
deliberate intention of getting himself out of one world and into
another. The poetry of Milton is not a part of daily life, though for
some it makes daily life supportable. The value of the greatest art
consists not in its power of becoming a part of common existence but in
its power of taking us out of it. I think it was William Morris who said
that poetry should be something that a man could invent and sing to his
fellows as he worked at the loom. Too much of what Morris wrote may well
have been so invented. But to create and to appreciate the greatest art
the most absolute abstraction from the affairs of life is essential. And
as, throughout the ages, men and women have gone to temples and churches
in search of an ecstasy incompatible with and remote from the
preoccupations and activities of laborious humanity, so they may go to
the temples of art to experience, a little out of this world, emotions
that are of another. It is not as sanctuaries from life--sanctuaries
devoted to the cult of aesthetic emotion--but as class-rooms,
laboratories, homes of research and warehouses of tradition, that
museums and galleries become noxious.
Human sensibility must be freed from the dust of erudition and the
weight of tradition; it must also be freed from the oppression of
culture. For, of all the enemies of art, culture is perhaps the most
dangerous, because the least obvious. By "culture" it is, of course,
possible to mean something altogether blameless. It may mean an
education that aims at nothing but sharpening sensibility and
strengthening the power of self-expression. But culture of that sort is
not for sale: to some it comes from solitary contemplation, to others
from contact with life; in either case it comes only to those who are
capable of using it. Common culture, on the other hand, is bought and
sold in open market. Cultivated society, in the ordinary sense of the
word, is a congeries of persons who have been educated to appreciate
_le beau et le bien_. A cultivated person is one on whom art has not
impressed itself, but on whom it has been impressed--one who has not
been overwhelmed by the significance of art, but who knows that the
nicest people have a peculiar regard for it. The characteristic of this
Society is that, though it takes an interest in art, it does not take
art seriously. Art for it is not a necessity, but an amenity. Art is not
something that one might meet and be overwhelmed by between the pages of
_Bradshaw_, but something to be sought and saluted at appropriate times
in appointed places. Culture feels no imperative craving for art such as
one feels for tobacco; rather it thinks of art as something to be taken
in polite and pleasant doses, as one likes to take the society of one's
less interesting acquaintances. Patronage of the Arts is to the
cultivated classes what religious practice is to the lower-middle, the
homage that matter pays to spirit, or, amongst the better sort, that
intellect pays to emotion. Neither the cultivated nor the pious are
genuinely sensitive to the tremendous emotions of art and religion; but
both know what they are expected to feel, and when they ought to feel
it.
Now if culture did nothing worse than create a class of well-educated
ladies and gentlemen who read books, attend concerts, travel in Italy,
and talk a good deal about art without ever guessing what manner of
thing it is, culture would be nothing to make a fuss about.
Unfortunately, culture is an active disease which causes positive ill
and baulks potential good. In the first place, cultivated people always
wish to cultivate others. Cultivated parents cultivate their children;
thousands of wretched little creatures are daily being taught to love
the beautiful. If they happen to have been born insensitive this is of
no great consequence, but it is misery to think of those who have had
real sensibilities ruined by conscientious parents: it is so hard to
feel a genuine personal emotion for what one has been brought up to
admire. Yet if children are to grow up into acceptable members of the
cultivated class they must be taught to hold the right opinions--they
must recognise the standards. Standards of taste are the essence of
culture. That is why the cultured have ever been defenders of the
antique. There grows up in the art of the past a traditional
classification under standard masterpieces by means of which even those
who have no native sensibility can discriminate between works of art.
That is just what culture wants; so it insists on the veneration of
standards and frowns on anything that cannot be justified by reference
to them. That is the serious charge against culture. A person familiar
with the masterpieces of Europe, but insensitive to that which makes
them masterpieces, will be utterly non-plussed by a novel manifestation
of the mysterious "that." It is well that old masters should be
respected; it were better that vital art should be welcome. Vital art is
a necessity, and vital art is stifled by culture, which insists that
artists shall respect the standards, or, to put it bluntly, shall
imitate old masters.
The cultured, therefore, who expect in every picture at least some
reference to a familiar masterpiece, create, unconsciously enough, a
thoroughly unwholesome atmosphere. For they are rich and patronising and
liberal. They are the very innocent but natural enemies of originality,
for an original work is the touchstone that exposes educated taste
masquerading as sensibility. Besides, it is reasonable that those who
have been at such pains to sympathise with artists should expect artists
to think and feel as they do. Originality, however, thinks and feels for
itself; commonly the original artist does not live the refined,
intellectual life that would befit the fancy-man of the cultured
classes. He is not picturesque; perhaps he is positively inartistic; he
is neither a gentleman nor a blackguard; culture is angry and
incredulous. Here is one who spends his working hours creating something
that seems strange and disquieting and ugly, and devotes his leisure to
simple animalities; surely one so utterly unlike ourselves cannot be an
artist? So culture attacks and sometimes ruins him. If he survives,
culture has to adopt him. He becomes part of the tradition, a standard,
a stick with which to beat the next original genius who dares to shove
an unsponsored nose above water.