cads as Keats and Burns were also great poets. They had to be accepted,
and their caddishness had to be explained away. The shocking
intemperance of Burns was deplored in a paragraph, and passed over--as
though Burns were not as essentially a drunkard as a poet! The
vulgarity of Keats's letters to Fanny Brawne did not escape the nice
censure of Matthew Arnold who could not be expected to see that a man
incapable of writing such letters would not have written "The Eve of St.
Agnes." In our day culture having failed to suppress Mr. Augustus John
welcomes him with undiscriminating enthusiasm some ten years behind the
times. Here and there, a man of power may force the door, but culture
never loves originality until it has lost the appearance of originality.
The original genius is ill to live with until he is dead. Culture will
not live with him; it takes as lover the artificer of the _faux-bon_. It
adores the man who is clever enough to imitate, not any particular work
of art, but art itself. It adores the man who gives in an unexpected way
just what it has been taught to expect. It wants, not art, but something
so much like art that it can feel the sort of emotions it would be nice
to feel for art. To be frank, cultivated people are no fonder of art
than the Philistines; but they like to get thrills, and they like to see
old faces under new bonnets. They admire Mr. Lavery's seductive
banalities and the literary and erudite novelettes of M. Rostand. They
go silly over Reinhardt and Bakst. These confectioners seem to give the
distinction of art to the natural thoughts and feelings of cultivated
people. Culture is far more dangerous than Philistinism because it is
more intelligent and more pliant. It has a specious air of being on the
side of the artist. It has the charm of its acquired taste, and it can
corrupt because it can speak with an authority unknown in Philistia.
Because it pretends to care about art, artists are not indifferent to
its judgments. Culture imposes on people who would snap their fingers at
vulgarity. With culture itself, even in the low sense in which I have
been using the word, we need not pick a quarrel, but we must try to free
the artist and the public too from the influence of cultivated opinion.
The liberation will not be complete until those who have already learned
to despise the opinion of the lower middle-classes learn also to neglect
the standards and the disapproval of people who are forced by their
emotional limitations to regard art as an elegant amenity.
If you would have fine art and fine appreciation of art, you must have a
fine free life for your artists and for yourselves. That is another
thing that Society can do for art: it can kill the middle-class ideal.
Was ever ideal so vulnerable? The industrious apprentice who by slow
pettifogging hardness works his way to the dignity of material
prosperity, Dick Whittington, what a hero for a high-spirited nation!
What dreams our old men dream, what visions float into the minds of our
seers! Eight hours of intelligent production, eight hours of thoughtful
recreation, eight hours of refreshing sleep for all! What a vision to
dangle before the eyes of a hungry people! If it is great art and fine
life that you want, you must renounce this religion of safe mediocrity.
Comfort is the enemy; luxury is merely the bugbear of the bourgeoisie.
No soul was ever ruined by extravagance or even by debauch; it is the
steady, punctual gnawing of comfort that destroys. That is the triumph
of matter over mind; that is the last tyranny. For how are they better
than slaves who must stop their work because it is time for luncheon,
must break up a conversation to dress for dinner, must leave on the
doorstep the friend they have not seen for years so as not to miss the
customary train?
Society can do something for art, because it can increase liberty, and
in a liberal atmosphere art thrives. Even politicians can do something.
They can repeal censorious laws and abolish restrictions on freedom of
thought and speech and conduct. They can protect minorities. They can
defend originality from the hatred of the mediocre mob. They can make an
end of the doctrine that the State has a right to crush unpopular
opinions in the interests of public order. A mighty liberty to be
allowed to speak acceptable words to the rabble! The least that the
State can do is to protect people who have something to say that may
cause a riot. What will not cause a riot is probably not worth saying.
At present, to agitate for an increase of liberty is the best that any
ordinary person can do for the advancement of art.
II
ART AND SOCIETY
What might Art do for Society? Leaven it; perhaps even redeem it: for
Society needs redemption. Towards the end of the nineteenth century life
seemed to be losing its savour. The world had grown grey and anæmic,
lacking passion, it seemed. Sedateness became fashionable; only dull
people cared to be thought spiritual. At its best the late nineteenth
century reminds one of a sentimental farce, at its worst of a heartless
joke. But, as we have seen, before the turn, first in France, then
throughout Europe, a new emotional movement began to manifest itself.
This movement if it was not to be lost required a channel along which it
might flow to some purpose. In the Middle Ages such a channel would have
been ready to hand; spiritual ferment used to express itself through the
Christian Church, generally in the teeth of official opposition. A
modern movement of any depth cannot so express itself. Whatever the
reasons may be, the fact is certain. The principal reason, I believe, is
that the minds of modern men and women can find no satisfaction in
dogmatic religion; and Christianity, by a deplorable mischance, has been
unwilling to relinquish dogmas that are utterly irrelevant to its
essence. It is the entanglement of religion in dogma that still keeps
the world superficially irreligious. Now, though no religion can escape
the binding weeds of dogma, there is one that throws them off more
easily and light-heartedly than any other. That religion is art; for art
is a religion. It is an expression of and a means to states of mind as
holy as any that men are capable of experiencing; and it is towards art
that modern minds turn, not only for the most perfect expression of
transcendent emotion, but for an inspiration by which to live.
From the beginning art has existed as a religion concurrent with all
other religions. Obviously there can be no essential antagonism between
it and them. Genuine art and genuine religion are different
manifestations of one spirit, so are sham art and sham religion. For
thousands of years men have expressed in art their ultra-human emotions,
and have found in it that food by which the spirit lives. Art is the
most universal and the most permanent of all forms of religious
expression, because the significance of formal combinations can be
appreciated as well by one race and one age as by another, and because
that significance is as independent as mathematical truth of human
vicissitudes. On the whole, no other vehicle of emotion and no other
means to ecstasy has served man so well. In art any flood of spiritual
exaltation finds a channel ready to nurse and lead it: and when art
fails it is for lack of emotion, not for lack of formal adaptability.
There never was a religion so adaptable and catholic as art. And now
that the young movement begins to cast about for a home in which to
preserve itself and live, what more natural than that it should turn to
the one religion of unlimited forms and frequent revolutions?
For art is the one religion that is always shaping its form to fit the
spirit, the one religion that will never for long be fettered in dogmas.
It is a religion without a priesthood; and it is well that the new
spirit should not be committed to the hands of priests. The new spirit
is in the hands of the artists; that is well. Artists, as a rule, are
the last to organise themselves into official castes, and such castes,
when organised, rarely impose on the choicer spirits. Rebellious
painters are a good deal commoner than rebellious clergymen. On
compromise which is the bane of all religion--since men cannot serve two
masters--almost all the sects of Europe live and grow fat. Artists have
been more willing to go lean. By compromise the priests have succeeded
marvellously in keeping their vessel intact. The fine contempt for the
vessel manifested by the original artists of each new movement is almost
as salutary as their sublime belief in the spirit. To us, looking at the
history of art, the periods of abjection and compromise may appear
unconscionably long, but by comparison with those of other religions
they are surprisingly short. Sooner or later a true artist arises, and
often by his unaided strength succeeds in so reshaping the vessel that
it shall contain perfectly the spirit.
Religion which is an affair of emotional conviction should have nothing
to do with intellectual beliefs. We have an emotional conviction that
some things are better than others, that some states of mind are good
and that others are not; we have a strong emotional conviction that a
good world ought to be preferred to a bad; but there is no proving these
things. Few things of importance can be proved; important things have to
be felt and expressed. That is why people with things of importance to
say tend to write poems rather than moral treatises. I make my critics a
present of that stick. The original sin of dogmatists is that they are
not content to feel and express but must needs invent an intellectual
concept to stand target for their emotion. From the nature of their
emotions they infer an object the existence of which they find
themselves obliged to prove by an elaborately disingenuous metaphysic.
The consequence is inevitable; religion comes to mean, not the feeling
of an emotion, but adherence to a creed. Instead of being a matter of
emotional conviction it becomes a matter of intellectual propositions.
And here, very properly, the sceptic steps in and riddles the _ad hoc_
metaphysic of the dogmatist with unanswerable objections. No Cambridge
Rationalist can presume to deny that I feel a certain emotion, but the
moment I attempt to prove the existence of its object I lay myself open
to a bad four hours.
No one, however, wishes to deny the existence of the immediate object
of aesthetic emotion--combinations of lines and colours. For my
suggestion that there may be a remote object I shall probably get into
trouble. But if my metaphysical notions are demolished in a paragraph,
that will not matter in the least. No metaphysical notions about art
matter. All that matter are the aesthetic emotion and its immediate
object. As to the existence of a remote object and its possible nature
there have been innumerable theories, most, if not all, of which have
been discredited. Though a few have been defended fiercely, they have
never been allowed to squeeze out art completely: dogma has never
succeeded in ousting religion. It has been realised always to some
extent that the significance of art depends chiefly on the emotion it
provokes, that works are more important than theories. Although attempts
have been made to impose dogmas, to define the remote object and to
direct the emotion, a single original artist has generally been strong
enough to wreck the spurious orthodoxy. Dimly it has always been
perceived that a picture which moves aesthetically cannot be wrong; and
that the theory that condemns it as heretical condemns itself. Art
remains an undogmatic religion. You are invited to feel an emotion, not
to acquiesce in a theory.
Art, then, may satisfy the religious need of an age grown too acute for
dogmatic religion, but to do so art must enlarge its sphere of
influence. There must be more popular art, more of that art which is
unimportant to the universe but important to the individual: for art can
be second-rate yet genuine. Also, art must become less exclusively
professional. That will not be achieved by bribing the best artists to
debase themselves, but by enabling everyone to create such art as he
can. It is probable that most are capable of expressing themselves, to
some extent, in form; it is certain that in so doing they can find an
extraordinary happiness. Those who have absolutely nothing to express
and absolutely no power of expression are God's failures; they should be
kindly treated along with the hopelessly idiotic and the hydrocephalous.
Of the majority it is certainly true that they have some vague but
profound emotions, also it is certain that only in formal expression can
they realise them. To caper and shout is to express oneself, yet is it
comfortless; but introduce the idea of formality, and in dance and song
you may find satisfying delight. Form is the talisman. By form the
vague, uneasy, and unearthly emotions are transmuted into something
definite, logical, and above the earth. Making useful objects is dreary
work, but making them according to the mysterious laws of formal
expression is half way to happiness. If art is to do the work of
religion, it must somehow be brought within reach of the people who need
religion, and an obvious means of achieving this is to introduce into
useful work the thrill of creation.
But, after all, useful work must remain, for the most part, mechanical;
and if the useful workers want to express themselves as completely as
possible, they must do so in their leisure. There are two kinds of
formal expression open to all--dancing and singing. Certainly it is in
dance and song that ordinary people come nearest to the joy of creation.
In no age can there be more than a few first-rate artists, but in any
there might be millions of genuine ones; and once it is understood that
art which is unfit for public exhibition may yet be created for private
pleasure no one will feel shame at being called an amateur. We shall not
have to pretend that all our friends are great artists, because they
will make no such pretence themselves. In the great State they will not
be of the company of divine beggars. They will be amateurs who
consciously use art as a means to emotional beatitude; they will not be
artists who, consciously or unconsciously, use everything as a means to
art. Let us dance and sing, then, for dancing and singing are true arts,
useless materially, valuable only for their aesthetic significance.
Above all, let us dance and devise dances--dancing is a very pure art, a
creation of abstract form; and if we are to find in art emotional
satisfaction, it is essential that we shall become creators of form. We
must not be content to contemplate merely; we must create; we must be
active in our dealings with art.
It is here that I shall fall foul of certain excellent men and women who
are attempting to "bring art into the lives of the people" by dragging
parties of school children and factory girls through the National
Gallery and the British Museum. Who is not familiar with those little
flocks of victims clattering and shuffling through the galleries,
inspissating the gloom of the museum atmosphere? What is being done to
their native sensibilities by the earnest bear-leader with his (or her)
catalogue of dates and names and appropriate comments? What have all
these tags of mythology and history, these pedagogic raptures and
peripatetic ecstasies, to do with genuine emotion? In the guise of what
grisly and incomprehensible charlatan is art being presented to the
people? The only possible effect of personally conducted visits must be
to confirm the victims in their suspicion that art is something
infinitely remote, infinitely venerable, and infinitely dreary. They
come away with a respectful but permanent horror of that old sphinx who
sits in Trafalgar Square propounding riddles that are not worth
answering, tended by the cultured and nourished by the rich.
First learn to walk, then try running. An artisan of exceptional
sensibility may get something from the masterpieces of the National
Gallery, provided there is no cultivated person at hand to tell him what
to feel, or to prevent him feeling anything by telling him to think. An
artisan of ordinary sensibility had far better keep away until, by
trying to express himself in form, he has gained some glimmer of a
notion of what artists are driving at. Surely there can be no reason why
almost every man and woman should not be a bit of an artist since
almost every child is. In most children a sense of form is discernible.
What becomes of it? It is the old story: the child is father to the man;
and if you wish to preserve for the man the gift with which he was born,
you must catch him young, or rather prevent his being caught. Can we by
any means thwart the parents, the teachers, and the systems of education
that turn children into modern men and women? Can we save the artist
that is in almost every child? At least we can offer some practical
advice. Do not tamper with that direct emotional reaction to things
which is the genius of children. Do not destroy their sense of reality
by teaching them to manipulate labels. Do not imagine that adults must
be the best judges of what is good and what matters. Don't be such an
ass as to suppose that what excites uncle is more exciting than what
excites Tommy. Don't suppose that a ton of experience is worth a flash
of insight, and don't forget that a knowledge of life can help no one to
an understanding of art. Therefore do not educate children to be
anything or to feel anything; put them in the way of finding out what
they want and what they are. So much in general. In particular I would
say, do not take children to galleries and museums; still less, of
course, send them to art schools to be taught high-toned commercialism.
Do not encourage them to join guilds of art and crafts, where, though
they may learn a craft, they will lose their sense of art. In those
respectable institutions reigns a high conception of sound work and
honest workmanship. Alas! why cannot people who set themselves to be
sound and honest remember that there are other things in life? The
honest craftsmen of the guilds have an ideal which is praiseworthy and
practical, which is mediocre and unmagnanimous, which is moral and not
artistic. Craftsmen are men of principle, and, like all men of
principle, they abandon the habit of thinking and feeling because they
find it easier to ask and answer the question, "Does this square with my
principles?"--than to ask and answer the question, "Do I feel this to be
good or true or beautiful?" Therefore, I say, do not encourage a child
to take up with the Arts and Crafts. Art is not based on craft, but on
sensibility; it does not live by honest labour, but by inspiration. It
is not to be taught in workshops and schoolrooms by craftsmen and
pedants, though it may be ripened in studios by masters who are artists.
A good craftsman the boy must become if he is to be a good artist; but
let him teach himself the tricks of his trade by experiment, not in
craft, but in art.
To those who busy themselves about bringing art into the lives of the
people, I would also say--Do not dabble in revivals. The very word
smacks of the vault. Revivals look back; art is concerned with the
present. People will not be tempted to create by being taught to
imitate. Except that they are charming, revivals of morris-dancing and
folk-singing are little better than Arts and Crafts in the open. The
dust of the museum is upon them. They may turn boys and girls into
nimble virtuosi; they will not make them artists. Because no two ages
express their sense of form in precisely the same way all attempts to
recreate the forms of another age must sacrifice emotional expression to
imitative address. Old-world merry-making can no more satisfy sharp
spiritual hunger than careful craftsmanship or half hours with our "Art
Treasures." Passionate creation and ecstatic contemplation, these alone
will satisfy men in search of a religion.
I believe it is possible, though extremely difficult, to give people
both--if they really want them. Only, I am sure that, for most, creation
must precede contemplation. In Monsieur Poiret's _Ecole Martine_[28]
scores of young French girls, picked up from the gutter or thereabouts,
are at this moment creating forms of surprising charm and originality.
That they find delight in their work is not disputed. They copy no
master, they follow no tradition; what they owe to the past--and it is
much--they have borrowed quite unconsciously with the quality of their
bodies and their minds from the history and traditional culture of their
race. Their art differs from savage art as a French _midinette_ differs
from a squaw, but it is as original and vital as the work of savages. It
is not great art, it is not profoundly significant, it is often frankly
third-rate, but it is genuine; and therefore I rate the artisans of the
_Ecole Martine_ with the best contemporary painters, not as artists, but
as manifestations of the movement.
I am no devout lover of rag-time and turkey-trotting, but they too are
manifestations. In those queer exasperated rhythms I find greater
promise of a popular art than in revivals of folk-song and
morris-dancing. At least they bear some relationship to the emotions of
those who sing and dance them. In so far as they are significant they
are good, but they are of no great significance. It is not in the souls
of bunny-huggers that the new ferment is potent; they will not dance and
sing the world out of its lethargy; not to them will the future owe that
debt which I trust it will be quick to forget. There is nothing very
wonderful or very novel about rag-time or tango, but to overlook any
live form of expression is a mistake, and to attack it is sheer
silliness. Tango and rag-time are kites sped by the breeze that fills
the great sails of visual art. Not every man can keep a cutter, but
every boy can buy a kite. In an age that is seeking new forms in which
to express that emotion which can be expressed satisfactorily in form
alone, the wise will look hopefully at any kind of dancing or singing
that is at once unconventional and popular.
So, let the people try to create form for themselves. Probably they will
make a mess of it; that will not matter. The important thing is to have
live art and live sensibility; the copious production of bad art is a
waste of time, but, so long as it is not encouraged to the detriment of
good, nothing worse. Let everyone make himself an amateur, and lose the
notion that art is something that lives in the museums understood by the
learned alone. By practising an art it is possible that people will
acquire sensibility; if they acquire the sensibility to appreciate, even
to some extent, the greatest art they will have found the new religion
for which they have been looking. I do not dream of anything that would
burden or lighten the catalogues of ecclesiastical historians. But if it
be true that modern men can find little comfort in dogmatic religion,
and if it be true that this age, in reaction from the materialism of the
nineteenth century, is becoming conscious of its spiritual need and
longs for satisfaction, then it seems reasonable to advise them to seek
in art what they want and art can give. Art will not fail them; but it
may be that the majority must always lack the sensibility that can take
from art what art offers.
That will be very sad for the majority; it will not matter much to art.
For those who can feel the significance of form, art can never be less
than a religion. In art these find what other religious natures found
and still find, I doubt not, in impassioned prayer and worship. They
find that emotional confidence, that assurance of absolute good, which
makes of life a momentous and harmonious whole. Because the aesthetic
emotions are outside and above life, it is possible to take refuge in
them from life. He who has once lost himself in an "O Altitudo" will not
be tempted to over-estimate the fussy excitements of action. He who can
withdraw into the world of ecstasy will know what to think of
circumstance. He who goes daily into the world of aesthetic emotion
returns to the world of human affairs equipped to face it courageously
and even a little contemptuously. And if by comparison with aesthetic
rapture he finds most human passion trivial, he need not on that account
become unsympathetic or inhuman. For practical purposes, even, it is
possible that the religion of art will serve a man better than the
religion of humanity. He may learn in another world to doubt the extreme
importance of this, but if that doubt dims his enthusiasm for some
things that are truly excellent it will dispel his illusions about many
that are not. What he loses in philanthropy he may gain in magnanimity;
and because his religion does not begin with an injunction to love all
men, it will not end, perhaps, in persuading him to hate most of them.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 27: An example of this was the temporary police-court set up
recently in Francis Street, just off the Tottenham Court Road. I do not
know whether it yet stands; if so, it is one of the few tolerable pieces
of modern architecture in London.]
[Footnote 28: We may hope much from the Omega Workshops in London; but
at present they employ only trained artists. We have yet to see what
effect they will have on the untrained.]
THE END
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