Art.
Nature is incomplete. She leaves man to provide for himself his raiment,
shelter, and surroundings. Nature in her works throws out suggestions of
beauty, rather than its perfect and complete embodiment. Her gold is
imbedded in the rock. Her creations are limited by the particular
material and the narrow conditions which are at her disposal at a given
time and place. To seize the pure ideal of beauty which Nature suggests,
but never quite realizes; to select from the universe of space and the
eternity of time those materials and forms which are perfectly adapted
to portray the ideal beauty; to clothe the abodes and the whole physical
environment of man with that beauty which is suggested to us in sky and
stream and field and flower; to present to us for perpetual
contemplation the form and features of ideal manhood and womanhood; to
hold before our imagination the deeds of brave men, and the devotion of
saintly women; to thrill our hearts with the victorious struggle of the
hero and the death-defying passion of the lover;--this is the mission
and the significance of art.
Art is creative. The artist is a co-worker with God. To his hands is
committed the portion of the world which God has left unfinished--the
immediate environment of man. We cannot live in the fields, like beasts
and savages. Art has for its purpose to make the rooms and houses and
halls and streets and cities in which civilized men pass their days as
beautiful and fair, as elevating and inspiring, as the fields and
forests in which the primeval savage roamed. More than that, art aims to
fill these rooms and halls and streets of ours with forms and symbols
which shall preserve, for our perpetual admiration and inspiration, all
that is purest and noblest and sweetest in that long struggle of man up
from his savage to his civilized estate.
THE DUTY.
+Beauty is the outward and visible sign of inward perfection,
completeness, and harmony.+--In an object of beauty there is neither too
little nor too much; nothing is out of place; nothing is without its
contribution to the perfect whole. Each part is at once means and end to
every other. Hence its perfect symmetry; its regular proportions; its
strict conformity to law.
The mind of man can find rest and satisfaction in nothing short of
perfection; and consequently our hearts are never satisfied until they
behold beauty, which is perfection's crown and seal. Without it one of
the deepest and divinest powers of our nature remains dwarfed, stifled,
and repressed.
+How to cultivate the love of beauty.+--It is our duty to see to it that
everything under our control is as beautiful as we can make it. The
rooms we live in; the desk at which we work; the clothes we wear; the
house we build; the pictures on our walls; the garden and grounds in
which we walk and work; all must have some form or other. That form must
be either beautiful or hideous; attractive or repulsive. It is our duty
to pay attention to these things; to spend thought and labor, and such
money as we can afford upon them, in order to make them minister to our
delight. Not in staring at great works of art which we have not yet
learned to appreciate, but by attention to the beauty or ugliness of the
familiar objects that we have about us and dwell with from day to day,
we shall best cultivate that love of beauty which will ultimately make
intelligible to us the true significance of the masterpieces of art.
Here as everywhere, to him that hath shall more be given. We must serve
beauty humbly and faithfully in the little things of daily life, if we
will enjoy her treasures in the great galleries of the world.
THE VIRTUE.
+Beauty is a jealous mistress.+--If we trifle with her; if we fall in
love with pretentious imitations and elaborate ornamentations which have
no beauty in them, but are simply gotten up to sell; then the true and
real beauty will never again suffer us to see her face. She will leave
us to our idols: and our power to appreciate and admire true beauty
will die out.
Fidelity to beauty requires that we have no more things than we can
either use in our work, or enjoy in our rest. And these things that we
do have must be either perfectly plain; or else the ornamentation about
them must be something that expresses a genuine admiration and affection
of our hearts. A farmer's kitchen is generally a much more attractive
place than his parlor; just because this law of simplicity is perfectly
expressed in the one, and flagrantly violated in the other. The study of
a scholar, the office of the lawyer and the business man, is not
infrequently a more beautiful place, one in which a man feels more at
home, than his costly drawing room. What sort of things we shall have,
and how many, cannot be determined for us by any general rule; still
less by aping somebody else. In our housekeeping, as in everything else,
we should begin with the few things that are absolutely essential; and
then add decoration and ornament only so fast as we can find the means
of gratifying cherished longings for forms of beauty which we have
learned to admire and love. "Simplicity of life," says William Morris,
"even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of
refinement: a sanded floor and whitewashed walls, and the green trees,
and flowery meads, and living waters outside. If you cannot learn to
love real art, at least learn to hate sham art and reject it. If the
real thing is not to be had, learn to do without it. If you want a
golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your
houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
THE REWARD.
+The refining influence of beauty.+--Devotion to art and beauty in
simplicity and sincerity develops an ever increasing capacity for its
enjoyment. As Keats, the master poet of pure beauty, tells us,
A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep,
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
The refining influence of the love of beauty draws us mysteriously and
imperceptibly, but none the less powerfully, away from what is false in
thought and base in action; and develops a deep and lasting affinity for
all that is true and good. The good, the true, and the beautiful are
branches of a common root; members of a single whole: and if one of
these members suffer, all the members suffer with it; and if one is
honored, all are honored with it.
THE TEMPTATION.
+Luxury the perversion of beauty.+--Luxury is the pleasure of
possession, instead of pleasure in the thing possessed. Luxury buys
things, not because it likes them, but because it likes to have them.
And so the luxurious man fills his house with all sorts of things, not
because he finds delight in these particular things, and wants to share
that delight with all his friends; but because he supposes these are the
proper things to have, and he wants everybody to know that he has them.
The man who buys things in this way does not know what he wants.
Consequently he gets cheated. He buys ugly things as readily as
beautiful things, if only the seller is shrewd enough to make him
believe they are fashionable. Others, less intelligent than this man,
see what he has done; take for granted that because he has done it, it
must be the proper thing to do; and go and do likewise. Thus taste
becomes dulled and deadened; the costly and elaborate drives out the
plain and simple; the desire for luxury kills out the love of beauty;
and art expires.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
+Ugly surroundings make ugly souls.+--The outward and the inward are
bound fast together. The beauty or ugliness of the objects we have about
us are the standing choices of our wills. As the object, so is the
subject. We grow into the likeness of what we look upon. Without harmony
and beauty to feed upon, the love of beauty starves and dies. Our hearts
become cold and hard. Not being called out in admiration and delight,
our feelings brood over mean and sensual pleasures; they dwell upon
narrow and selfish concerns; they fasten upon the accumulation of wealth
or the vanquishing of a rival, as substitutes for the nobler interests
that have vanished; and the heart becomes sordid, sensual, mean, petty,
spiteful, and ugly. The spirit of man, like nature, abhors a vacuum; and
into the heart from which the love of the beautiful has been suffered to
depart, these hideous and ugly traits of character make haste to enter,
and occupy the vacant space. What Shakspere says of a single art, music,
is true of art and beauty in general:
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils:
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
+The hollowness of ostentation.+--Man is never proud of what he really
enjoys; never vain of what he truly loves; never anxious to show off the
tastes and interests that are essentially his own. In order to take this
false attitude toward an object, it is necessary to hold it apart from
ourselves: a thing which the true lover can never do. He who loves
beautiful things will indeed wish others to share his joy in them. But
this sharing of our joy in beautiful objects, is a very different thing
from showing off our fine things, simply to let other people know that
we have them. Ostentation is the vice of ignorant wealth and vulgar
luxury. It estimates objects by their expensiveness rather than by their
beauty; it aims to awaken in ourselves pride rather than pleasure; and
to arouse in others astonishment rather than admiration.
THE PENALTY.
+Vulgarity akin to laziness.+--Art, and the beauty which it creates,
costs painstaking labor to produce. And to enjoy it when it is produced,
requires at first thoughtful and discriminating attention. The formation
of a correct taste is a growth, not a gift. Hence the dull, the lazy,
and the indifferent never acquire this cultivated taste for the
beautiful in art. This lack of perception, this incapacity for enjoyment
of the beautiful, is vulgarity. Vulgarity is contentment with what is
common, and to be had on easy terms. The root of it is laziness. The
mark of it is stupidity.
At great pains the race has worked out beautiful forms of speech, for
communicating our ideas to each other. Vulgarity in speech is too lazy
to observe these precise and beautiful forms of expression; it clips its
words; throws its sentences together without regard to grammar; falls
into slang; draws its figures from the coarse and low and sensual side
of life, instead of from its pure and noble aspects.
Vulgarity with reference to dress, dwellings, pictures, reading, is of
the same nature. It results from the dull, unmeaning gaze with which one
looks at things; the shiftless, slipshod way of doing work; the "don't
care" habit of mind which calls anything that happens to fall in its way
"good enough."
From all that is precious and beautiful and lovely the vulgar man is
hopelessly excluded. They are all around him; but he has no eyes to see,
no taste to appreciate, no heart to respond to them. "All things
excellent," so Spinoza tells us, "are as difficult as they are rare."
The vulgar man has no heart for difficulty; and hence the rare
excellence of art and beauty remain forever beyond his reach.